Finance Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Financial
UK > UK excluding London

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Finance in contract job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Finance over the 6 months leading up to 19 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,219 2,144 2,703
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.80% 16.89% 12.85%
As % of the General category 27.49% 27.40% 23.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,024 1,343 1,725
10th Percentile £315 £305 £300
25th Percentile £402 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £625
90th Percentile £688 £688 £729
UK median daily rate £533 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -7.39% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 67 178
10th Percentile £13.95 £18.04 £11.87
25th Percentile £16.75 £22.50 £14.29
Median hourly rate £22.00 £52.50 £30.41
Median % change year-on-year -58.10% +72.63% -13.11%
75th Percentile £25.38 £73.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £64.22 £78.47 £53.82
UK median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £27.50
% change year-on-year -35.70% +34.75% -9.84%

All General Skills
UK excluding London

Finance falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring general skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 11,711 7,825 11,625
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.85% 61.64% 55.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,108 4,839 6,850
10th Percentile £214 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £591
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,274 497 1,502
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.80 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £15.00
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.94 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.68% +11.76% -13.79%
75th Percentile £57.05 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £25.75
% change year-on-year -16.67% +16.50% -24.06%

Finance
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Finance relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Finance job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Finance
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Finance.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Finance

Finance
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Finance in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 19 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Finance in the UK excluding London

Finance
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Finance.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Finance

Finance
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Finance in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 19 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Finance in the UK excluding London

Finance
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Finance within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 19 March 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North of England +4 1,046 £475 - 714
South East -2 609 £503 -8.64% 1,038
Midlands -1 587 £475 -5.00% 431
North West +6 550 £455 -3.45% 382
Yorkshire 0 448 £500 +2.56% 254
West Midlands +2 386 £500 -4.76% 259
Scotland 0 364 £475 - 180
South West -3 327 £525 +4.90% 316
East Midlands 0 196 £450 +4.96% 171
East of England 0 194 £520 -5.45% 267
Wales +28 106 £413 +6.45% 91
North East -7 48 £481 +3.49% 93
Northern Ireland -1 46 £525 +61.54% 53
Channel Islands +5 1 - - 1
Finance
UK

Finance
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 156 (4.85%) Confluence
2 115 (3.57%) SharePoint
3 27 (0.84%) Apache Spark
3 27 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
4 24 (0.75%) Apache
5 13 (0.40%) SAS
6 11 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (0.31%) TPMS
8 8 (0.25%) CICS
9 6 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 6 (0.19%) CMS
10 5 (0.16%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 4 (0.12%) Hyperledger
12 3 (0.093%) Camunda
12 3 (0.093%) IIS
13 2 (0.062%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.062%) HCL Notes
13 2 (0.062%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.062%) Tomcat
Applications
1 247 (7.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 146 (4.54%) Microsoft Office
3 117 (3.63%) Microsoft Project
4 86 (2.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 49 (1.52%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.19%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.19%) InVision
8 6 (0.19%) Sketch
9 5 (0.16%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.16%) Trello
10 4 (0.12%) Adobe Captivate
11 2 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.031%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.031%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.031%) UXPin
12 1 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 145 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 51 (1.58%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.40%) Oracle Receivables
4 39 (1.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 38 (1.18%) Oracle EBS
6 35 (1.09%) Oracle General Ledger
7 29 (0.90%) SAP FI
8 28 (0.87%) Oracle Assets
9 27 (0.84%) Oracle Cash Management
9 27 (0.84%) Oracle ERP
10 22 (0.68%) Oracle EBS R12
11 19 (0.59%) SAP CO
12 18 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
12 18 (0.56%) SAP FI/CO
13 15 (0.47%) NetSuite
13 15 (0.47%) SAP BRIM
13 15 (0.47%) SAP Hybris
13 15 (0.47%) SAP PSCD
14 13 (0.40%) NEC Housing
14 13 (0.40%) Oracle AGIS
Cloud Services
1 394 (12.24%) Azure
2 372 (11.56%) AWS
3 185 (5.75%) Power Platform
4 162 (5.03%) GCP
5 118 (3.67%) Microsoft 365
6 83 (2.58%) GitHub
7 76 (2.36%) Dynamics 365
7 76 (2.36%) SaaS
8 73 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
8 73 (2.27%) Serverless
9 51 (1.58%) Entra ID
10 42 (1.30%) OpenShift
11 39 (1.21%) OCI
12 38 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
13 36 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
14 34 (1.06%) Snowflake
15 33 (1.03%) Amazon S3
16 32 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
17 30 (0.93%) Microsoft Copilot
18 24 (0.75%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 85 (2.64%) Firewall
2 42 (1.30%) WAN
3 35 (1.09%) DNS
3 35 (1.09%) Network Security
4 31 (0.96%) VPN
5 22 (0.68%) LAN
6 21 (0.65%) SD-WAN
6 21 (0.65%) Wireless
7 18 (0.56%) Skype
8 17 (0.53%) SSL
9 16 (0.50%) TCP/IP
10 14 (0.43%) Internet
10 14 (0.43%) SSH
11 11 (0.34%) DHCP
12 10 (0.31%) SNMP
13 9 (0.28%) MPLS
14 8 (0.25%) Cisco IOS
14 8 (0.25%) Kerberos
15 7 (0.22%) BGP
15 7 (0.22%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (5.50%) Power BI
2 84 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
3 78 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (1.65%) NoSQL
5 42 (1.30%) Metadata
6 40 (1.24%) Relational Database
7 39 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
8 36 (1.12%) Tableau
9 32 (0.99%) SQL Server
10 26 (0.81%) DynamoDB
11 24 (0.75%) Data Lake
12 23 (0.71%) Big Data
13 22 (0.68%) Power Query
14 19 (0.59%) BigQuery
15 14 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
16 13 (0.40%) MongoDB
16 13 (0.40%) Oracle ODI
16 13 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
17 12 (0.37%) MySQL
18 11 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 310 (9.63%) JIRA
2 125 (3.88%) Jenkins
3 75 (2.33%) GitLab
4 53 (1.65%) Git
5 37 (1.15%) Sonatype Nexus
6 36 (1.12%) JUnit
7 31 (0.96%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.62%) Selenium
9 16 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 13 (0.40%) Liquibase
10 13 (0.40%) Postman
11 12 (0.37%) Gradle
12 10 (0.31%) SonarQube
13 9 (0.28%) Hudson
13 9 (0.28%) JMeter
14 8 (0.25%) Jaeger
14 8 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 7 (0.22%) Maven
16 6 (0.19%) Snyk
17 5 (0.16%) MLflow
General
1 1,119 (34.76%) Social Skills
2 506 (15.72%) Banking
3 405 (12.58%) Analytical Skills
4 356 (11.06%) Public Sector
5 176 (5.47%) Manufacturing
6 159 (4.94%) Telecoms
7 139 (4.32%) Marketing
8 131 (4.07%) Organisational Skills
9 105 (3.26%) Legal
10 98 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
11 96 (2.98%) Financial Institution
12 95 (2.95%) Electronics
13 77 (2.39%) Local Government
14 66 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
15 60 (1.86%) Retail
16 58 (1.80%) General Ledger
17 51 (1.58%) Billing
18 47 (1.46%) Investment Banking
18 47 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
19 29 (0.90%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 487 (15.13%) Analyst
2 328 (10.19%) Project Manager
3 275 (8.54%) Architect
4 259 (8.05%) Senior
5 258 (8.01%) Lead
6 230 (7.15%) Consultant
7 213 (6.62%) Business Analyst
8 192 (5.96%) Developer
9 113 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 94 (2.92%) Programme Manager
11 84 (2.61%) Accountant
12 80 (2.49%) Senior Manager
13 78 (2.42%) Data Analyst
14 73 (2.27%) Finance Manager
15 66 (2.05%) SAP Consultant
16 55 (1.71%) Administrator
16 55 (1.71%) Functional Consultant
17 54 (1.68%) Java Developer
18 53 (1.65%) Data Engineer
18 53 (1.65%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (3.45%) REST
2 81 (2.52%) Spring
3 77 (2.39%) Spring Boot
4 72 (2.24%) Oracle Fusion
5 65 (2.02%) Kafka
6 59 (1.83%) Middleware
7 57 (1.77%) RESTful
8 36 (1.12%) Node.js
9 34 (1.06%) .NET
10 33 (1.03%) JSON
11 32 (0.99%) React
12 30 (0.93%) OAuth
12 30 (0.93%) SOAP
13 29 (0.90%) XML
14 24 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
14 24 (0.75%) HTML
15 22 (0.68%) OpenTelemetry
16 21 (0.65%) AngularJS
17 20 (0.62%) CSS
18 18 (0.56%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 158 (4.91%) Onboarding
2 128 (3.98%) Product Ownership
3 101 (3.14%) Cloud Native
4 98 (3.04%) Management Information System
5 92 (2.86%) Data Centre
6 74 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
7 68 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
7 68 (2.11%) Public Cloud
8 67 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
9 41 (1.27%) Data Structures
10 39 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
11 38 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
12 35 (1.09%) PMI
13 34 (1.06%) Virtual Team
14 33 (1.03%) Mobile App
15 26 (0.81%) CMDB
16 24 (0.75%) Mainframe
17 19 (0.59%) NHS
18 18 (0.56%) Security Posture
19 16 (0.50%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 127 (3.95%) Linux
2 105 (3.26%) Windows
3 42 (1.30%) Unix
4 31 (0.96%) Android
5 30 (0.93%) Windows 10
6 27 (0.84%) Mac OS
7 21 (0.65%) Windows Server
8 8 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.22%) AIX
9 7 (0.22%) Solaris
10 6 (0.19%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.12%) VMS
13 3 (0.093%) zOS
14 1 (0.031%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.031%) MVS
14 1 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 665 (20.66%) Agile
2 643 (19.98%) Stakeholder Management
3 515 (16.00%) Problem-Solving
4 460 (14.29%) Migration
5 427 (13.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 391 (12.15%) Project Management
7 357 (11.09%) Continuous Improvement
8 352 (10.94%) ERP
9 341 (10.59%) DevOps
10 322 (10.00%) Business Intelligence
11 293 (9.10%) CI/CD
12 278 (8.64%) Change Management
13 276 (8.57%) Project Delivery
14 229 (7.11%) Decision-Making
15 221 (6.87%) Analytics
15 221 (6.87%) User Acceptance Testing
16 216 (6.71%) Roadmaps
17 199 (6.18%) Data Modelling
18 194 (6.03%) AI
19 189 (5.87%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 326 (10.13%) SQL
2 271 (8.42%) Python
3 194 (6.03%) Java
4 68 (2.11%) PowerShell
5 33 (1.03%) TypeScript
6 32 (0.99%) JavaScript
7 28 (0.87%) Go
8 22 (0.68%) Bash
9 21 (0.65%) C#
9 21 (0.65%) VBA
10 19 (0.59%) PL/SQL
11 18 (0.56%) Shell Script
12 12 (0.37%) Kotlin
12 12 (0.37%) Perl
12 12 (0.37%) R
13 10 (0.31%) ABAP
13 10 (0.31%) COBOL
13 10 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 10 (0.31%) Rust
14 9 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 340 (10.56%) Security Cleared
2 325 (10.10%) Degree
3 217 (6.74%) SC Cleared
4 93 (2.89%) PMI Certification
4 93 (2.89%) PMP
5 87 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
6 80 (2.49%) ACCA
7 75 (2.33%) CIMA
8 66 (2.05%) DV Cleared
8 66 (2.05%) Master's Degree
9 60 (1.86%) CISSP
9 60 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
10 42 (1.30%) CISM
11 37 (1.15%) AWS Certification
12 28 (0.87%) ITIL Certification
13 23 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
14 18 (0.56%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
15 16 (0.50%) MBA
16 13 (0.40%) DBS Check
16 13 (0.40%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 183 (5.68%) PMO
2 151 (4.69%) Data Quality
3 141 (4.38%) QA
4 125 (3.88%) GDPR
5 53 (1.65%) NIST
6 52 (1.62%) SLA
7 45 (1.40%) PCI DSS
8 38 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 29 (0.90%) Accessibility
9 29 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 26 (0.81%) IFRS
11 23 (0.71%) ISO 20022
12 21 (0.65%) PSD2
13 18 (0.56%) GRC
14 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
15 13 (0.40%) GAAP
16 12 (0.37%) Basel III
16 12 (0.37%) SEPA
17 10 (0.31%) GLBA
18 9 (0.28%) NCSC
System Software
1 121 (3.76%) Docker
2 76 (2.36%) Active Directory
3 36 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.62%) vSphere
5 14 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
6 12 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
7 11 (0.34%) GPFS
8 10 (0.31%) NFS
9 6 (0.19%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.12%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.093%) Firmware
12 3 (0.093%) KVM
12 3 (0.093%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.062%) ACF2
13 2 (0.062%) HDFS
13 2 (0.062%) RACF
13 2 (0.062%) SRDF
13 2 (0.062%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 162 (5.03%) Kubernetes
2 85 (2.64%) Terraform
3 82 (2.55%) Ansible
4 54 (1.68%) Grafana
5 49 (1.52%) Prometheus
6 18 (0.56%) SCCM
6 18 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.43%) Progress Chef
8 13 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
9 12 (0.37%) vRealize
10 10 (0.31%) Nessus
11 9 (0.28%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.25%) HP ALM
12 8 (0.25%) Kiali
13 5 (0.16%) CASB
13 5 (0.16%) Control-M
13 5 (0.16%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.16%) Puppet
13 5 (0.16%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.16%) VxRail
Vendors
1 430 (13.36%) Microsoft
2 369 (11.46%) SAP
3 265 (8.23%) Oracle
4 149 (4.63%) ServiceNow
5 95 (2.95%) Google
6 81 (2.52%) Cisco
7 74 (2.30%) Splunk
8 50 (1.55%) VMware
9 49 (1.52%) Sage
10 48 (1.49%) IBM
11 45 (1.40%) Databricks
11 45 (1.40%) Salesforce
12 35 (1.09%) HP
13 34 (1.06%) Workday
14 33 (1.03%) Dell
15 26 (0.81%) IFS
16 23 (0.71%) Adobe
17 18 (0.56%) Citrix
17 18 (0.56%) Remedy
17 18 (0.56%) Thales