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 15 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,902 2,708 2,615
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 14.17% 17.66% 14.32%
As % of the General category 27.45% 28.84% 26.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,354 1,788 1,608
10th Percentile £349 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £506
Median % change year-on-year - -1.14% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £626
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £543 £575
% change year-on-year +1.38% -5.65% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 229 69 159
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.69 £14.50
25th Percentile £22.00 £16.41 £23.64
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +65.89% -30.48% +18.86%
75th Percentile - £57.50 £39.63
90th Percentile £83.40 £75.00 £70.04
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £29.64 £38.12
% change year-on-year +48.34% -22.26% +45.22%

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 14,214 9,391 9,846
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 51.63% 61.24% 53.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,879 5,653 5,668
10th Percentile £263 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £360 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £497
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.45% -0.58%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,944 850 1,171
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.00 £13.86
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +48.91%
75th Percentile £60.25 £46.92 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.88 £70.25
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +25.25% -34.02% +37.42%

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 15 August 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 15 August 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 15 August 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 0 1,351 £500 +6.50% 1,206
South East -2 734 £500 -4.76% 1,360
North West 0 696 £500 +11.11% 683
Midlands 0 636 £500 +11.11% 619
Yorkshire 0 584 £514 +7.31% 384
Scotland 0 499 £473 -5.50% 561
West Midlands +1 480 £525 +5.00% 394
South West -4 382 £538 -4.44% 594
East of England +5 202 £525 -8.70% 421
East Midlands -2 150 £500 +21.21% 225
Wales +1 66 £528 +14.05% 157
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 +0.53% 222
North East -13 64 £500 +11.11% 149
Channel Islands +5 4 £500 - 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
1 151 (3.87%) Confluence
2 96 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 16 (0.41%) Apache
3 16 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 15 (0.38%) CMS
5 14 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
6 11 (0.28%) SAS
7 10 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
8 8 (0.21%) IIS
8 8 (0.21%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.18%) WebSphere
10 6 (0.15%) CICS
11 5 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.077%) Camunda
12 3 (0.077%) nginx
12 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 3 (0.077%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.051%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.051%) Jupyter
13 2 (0.051%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 246 (6.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 112 (2.87%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (2.18%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (1.05%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.92%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
9 5 (0.13%) Trello
10 4 (0.10%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.051%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.026%) Maple
12 1 (0.026%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.026%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 197 (5.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.28%) Oracle Payables
3 47 (1.20%) Oracle ERP
4 44 (1.13%) Oracle Receivables
5 41 (1.05%) NetSuite
6 31 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 25 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
8 24 (0.62%) Unit4 Business World
9 22 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
10 21 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
10 21 (0.54%) SAP GRC
11 20 (0.51%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.38%) Workday HCM
13 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.33%) SAP PSCD
14 12 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
14 12 (0.31%) SAP CO
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
15 11 (0.28%) SAP FI/CO
16 10 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 485 (12.43%) Azure
2 324 (8.30%) AWS
3 229 (5.87%) GCP
4 226 (5.79%) Power Platform
5 102 (2.61%) SaaS
6 94 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
6 94 (2.41%) GitHub
7 90 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
7 90 (2.31%) Microsoft 365
8 68 (1.74%) Entra ID
9 47 (1.20%) OCI
10 43 (1.10%) Snowflake
11 41 (1.05%) Serverless
12 40 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
13 37 (0.95%) OpenShift
14 29 (0.74%) GitHub Actions
15 28 (0.72%) Power Automate
16 26 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 25 (0.64%) PowerApps
18 24 (0.62%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 79 (2.02%) Firewall
2 69 (1.77%) Network Security
3 45 (1.15%) VPN
4 35 (0.90%) DNS
5 27 (0.69%) WAN
6 24 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 23 (0.59%) SSL
8 22 (0.56%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) DHCP
9 12 (0.31%) VSAN
10 10 (0.26%) HTTP
11 9 (0.23%) SD-WAN
11 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
12 8 (0.21%) BGP
12 8 (0.21%) BIG-IP
13 7 (0.18%) Internet
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
14 6 (0.15%) Broadband
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco ASA
14 6 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 185 (4.74%) Power BI
2 80 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (1.79%) Metadata
3 70 (1.79%) Relational Database
4 66 (1.69%) SQL Server
5 47 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
6 43 (1.10%) PostgreSQL
7 39 (1.00%) Data Lake
8 34 (0.87%) Tableau
9 31 (0.79%) MongoDB
10 24 (0.62%) Db2
11 23 (0.59%) Oracle ODI
12 22 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
13 21 (0.54%) Data Vault
13 21 (0.54%) NoSQL
13 21 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 18 (0.46%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 17 (0.44%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.38%) Oracle Database
16 15 (0.38%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 249 (6.38%) JIRA
2 106 (2.72%) Git
3 55 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 23 (0.59%) JUnit
5 16 (0.41%) Selenium
6 15 (0.38%) Claude Code
6 15 (0.38%) GitLab
6 15 (0.38%) Hudson
7 14 (0.36%) Cucumber
8 13 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 11 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.26%) Postman
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.18%) Zephyr
14 6 (0.15%) Gradle
14 6 (0.15%) LoadRunner
14 6 (0.15%) Maven
15 5 (0.13%) IntelliJ
General
1 1,246 (31.93%) Social Skills
2 559 (14.33%) Analytical Skills
3 549 (14.07%) Banking
4 283 (7.25%) Public Sector
5 235 (6.02%) Legal
6 234 (6.00%) Organisational Skills
7 162 (4.15%) Retail
8 137 (3.51%) Influencing Skills
9 115 (2.95%) Manufacturing
10 101 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
11 100 (2.56%) Local Government
12 83 (2.13%) General Ledger
13 77 (1.97%) Financial Institution
13 77 (1.97%) Investment Banking
14 74 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 72 (1.85%) Billing
16 57 (1.46%) Telecoms
17 53 (1.36%) Marketing
18 52 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
19 50 (1.28%) Law
Job Titles
1 519 (13.30%) Analyst
2 425 (10.89%) Lead
3 361 (9.25%) Senior
4 329 (8.43%) Project Manager
5 306 (7.84%) Architect
6 282 (7.23%) Developer
7 266 (6.82%) Consultant
8 244 (6.25%) Business Analyst
9 168 (4.31%) Accountant
10 135 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
11 104 (2.67%) IT Manager
12 101 (2.59%) Systems Accountant
13 98 (2.51%) Senior Manager
14 92 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
15 81 (2.08%) Java Developer
16 77 (1.97%) Finance Manager
17 74 (1.90%) Administrator
18 72 (1.85%) Programme Manager
19 67 (1.72%) Data Analyst
19 67 (1.72%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (3.79%) Oracle Fusion
2 85 (2.18%) REST
3 77 (1.97%) Middleware
4 65 (1.67%) Kafka
5 62 (1.59%) Spring Boot
6 61 (1.56%) Spring
7 58 (1.49%) .NET
8 56 (1.44%) React
9 36 (0.92%) OAuth
10 34 (0.87%) RESTful
11 33 (0.85%) Node.js
12 30 (0.77%) JSON
12 30 (0.77%) XML
13 28 (0.72%) SAML
14 27 (0.69%) SAP Fiori
15 25 (0.64%) OpenID
16 22 (0.56%) SailPoint
17 20 (0.51%) HTML
17 20 (0.51%) OAuth2
17 20 (0.51%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 159 (4.07%) Onboarding
2 157 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 150 (3.84%) Cloud Native
4 134 (3.43%) Virtual Team
5 113 (2.90%) Management Information System
6 109 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
7 107 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
8 90 (2.31%) Podcast
8 90 (2.31%) Web Conferencing
9 68 (1.74%) Data Structures
10 59 (1.51%) Data Centre
11 55 (1.41%) Public Cloud
12 52 (1.33%) Mainframe
13 51 (1.31%) Security Posture
14 49 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
15 42 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
16 40 (1.03%) AI Agents
17 39 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
18 38 (0.97%) Mobile App
19 35 (0.90%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 123 (3.15%) Windows
2 106 (2.72%) Linux
3 57 (1.46%) Unix
4 31 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 31 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.64%) zOS
6 23 (0.59%) Solaris
7 12 (0.31%) Android
8 11 (0.28%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) AIX
10 8 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.13%) HPUX
12 5 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.13%) SUSE
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
13 4 (0.10%) MVS
14 3 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.051%) CentOS
16 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 953 (24.42%) Stakeholder Management
2 713 (18.27%) Agile
3 548 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
4 535 (13.71%) Problem-Solving
5 523 (13.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 520 (13.33%) Migration
7 512 (13.12%) ERP
8 371 (9.51%) Decision-Making
9 367 (9.41%) AI
10 360 (9.23%) CI/CD
11 353 (9.05%) Project Management
12 351 (9.00%) DevOps
13 341 (8.74%) Change Management
14 311 (7.97%) Project Delivery
15 286 (7.33%) Roadmaps
16 282 (7.23%) Risk Management
17 276 (7.07%) User Acceptance Testing
18 274 (7.02%) Analytics
19 270 (6.92%) Validation
20 237 (6.07%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 329 (8.43%) SQL
2 323 (8.28%) Python
3 219 (5.61%) Java
4 75 (1.92%) PowerShell
5 56 (1.44%) Bash
6 55 (1.41%) C#
7 53 (1.36%) JavaScript
8 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
8 37 (0.95%) TypeScript
9 36 (0.92%) Shell Script
10 23 (0.59%) C++
10 23 (0.59%) Go
11 15 (0.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 14 (0.36%) T-SQL
13 13 (0.33%) Bicep
14 12 (0.31%) ABAP
14 12 (0.31%) PHP
14 12 (0.31%) VBA
15 11 (0.28%) Scala
16 9 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 367 (9.41%) Security Cleared
2 271 (6.95%) Degree
3 224 (5.74%) SC Cleared
4 149 (3.82%) BPSS Clearance
5 112 (2.87%) ACCA
6 108 (2.77%) CIMA
7 100 (2.56%) PMP
8 88 (2.26%) DV Cleared
9 87 (2.23%) PMI Certification
10 73 (1.87%) CISSP
11 44 (1.13%) CISM
12 36 (0.92%) AWS Certification
12 36 (0.92%) Azure Certification
12 36 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
13 30 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 28 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
15 24 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
16 21 (0.54%) Master's Degree
17 20 (0.51%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 229 (5.87%) Data Quality
2 179 (4.59%) PMO
3 134 (3.43%) QA
4 129 (3.31%) GDPR
5 50 (1.28%) GRC
5 50 (1.28%) NIST
6 47 (1.20%) SLA
7 38 (0.97%) Accessibility
7 38 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 32 (0.82%) IFRS
9 30 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 18 (0.46%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.33%) SOC 2
12 10 (0.26%) EMIR
13 9 (0.23%) GAAP
14 8 (0.21%) COBIT
14 8 (0.21%) ISO 9001
15 7 (0.18%) ISO 20022
15 7 (0.18%) Solvency II
15 7 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 73 (1.87%) Active Directory
2 72 (1.85%) Docker
3 42 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.54%) RACF
5 17 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (0.23%) vSphere
9 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.15%) Hyper-V
11 5 (0.13%) GPFS
11 5 (0.13%) NFS
12 4 (0.10%) zsh
13 3 (0.077%) ACF2
14 2 (0.051%) KVM
14 2 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.051%) SRDF
15 1 (0.026%) Firmware
15 1 (0.026%) IAG
15 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 173 (4.43%) Kubernetes
2 119 (3.05%) Terraform
3 74 (1.90%) Ansible
4 33 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 30 (0.77%) Grafana
6 29 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
8 17 (0.44%) Progress Chef
8 17 (0.44%) Prometheus
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Istio
11 10 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.23%) Argo
12 9 (0.23%) Control-M
13 7 (0.18%) HP ALM
13 7 (0.18%) vRealize
14 6 (0.15%) Kustomize
14 6 (0.15%) Puppet
15 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 5 (0.13%) VxRail
Vendors
1 552 (14.15%) Microsoft
2 404 (10.35%) SAP
3 387 (9.92%) Oracle
4 178 (4.56%) ServiceNow
5 116 (2.97%) Google
6 88 (2.26%) IBM
7 80 (2.05%) Databricks
8 61 (1.56%) Salesforce
9 58 (1.49%) VMware
10 48 (1.23%) Sage
11 45 (1.15%) Cisco
12 37 (0.95%) Splunk
12 37 (0.95%) Workday
13 31 (0.79%) IFS
14 30 (0.77%) Ariba
15 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
16 21 (0.54%) MuleSoft
17 20 (0.51%) HP
17 20 (0.51%) Sybase
18 19 (0.49%) Adobe