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 10 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Finance 3,875 2,665 2,719
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 13.76% 16.82% 15.56%
As % of the General category 25.95% 27.73% 27.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,233 1,766 1,577
10th Percentile £345 £308 £303
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £700 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £550 £525 £570
% change year-on-year +4.76% -7.89% -4.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 287 74 99
10th Percentile £14.25 £13.49 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.50 £15.53 £22.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +29.41%
75th Percentile - £29.95 £55.13
90th Percentile £73.50 £56.90 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +59.85% -16.67% +28.35%

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 14,934 9,611 9,851
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 53.03% 60.68% 56.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,857 5,822 5,369
10th Percentile £260 £206 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% -4.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £660 £678
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,370 971 791
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.70
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.65 £15.99
Median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +28.56% -33.09% +21.79%
75th Percentile £53.87 £42.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +10.00% -23.08% +18.18%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 £514 +9.13% 1,821
South East -1 732 £500 -2.72% 1,872
North West -2 649 £502 +11.44% 950
Yorkshire 0 623 £515 +2.90% 649
Midlands -3 603 £525 +10.53% 1,038
Scotland +1 543 £463 -6.00% 1,026
West Midlands -3 448 £507 -1.55% 617
South West -6 338 £525 -4.55% 767
East of England +2 200 £534 -5.44% 644
East Midlands -2 149 £525 +25.00% 422
North East -9 72 £538 +22.51% 237
Wales +4 69 £525 +20.34% 188
Northern Ireland 0 62 £486 -7.38% 440
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 8
South Coast - 1 £450 -
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
1 142 (3.66%) Confluence
2 97 (2.50%) SharePoint
3 24 (0.62%) Apache
4 12 (0.31%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.31%) CMS
4 12 (0.31%) SAS
5 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 11 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
6 9 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.21%) WebSphere
8 6 (0.15%) Camunda
9 5 (0.13%) CICS
9 5 (0.13%) IIS
10 4 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
10 4 (0.10%) nginx
10 4 (0.10%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle Coherence
12 2 (0.052%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.052%) JBoss
12 2 (0.052%) Tomcat
Applications
1 258 (6.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 106 (2.74%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 75 (1.94%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 4 (0.10%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.10%) Trello
8 2 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.052%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.052%) EngageOne
8 2 (0.052%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.026%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.026%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.026%) Maple
Business Applications
1 205 (5.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 45 (1.16%) Oracle Receivables
4 33 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
5 32 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
6 31 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
7 29 (0.75%) NetSuite
7 29 (0.75%) SAP FI
8 24 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
9 23 (0.59%) Unit4 Business World
10 22 (0.57%) SAP GRC
11 21 (0.54%) SAP PSCD
12 20 (0.52%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 20 (0.52%) Workday HCM
13 17 (0.44%) SAP BRIM
14 13 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
14 13 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
14 13 (0.34%) SAP CO
14 13 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
14 13 (0.34%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 473 (12.21%) Azure
2 354 (9.14%) AWS
3 252 (6.50%) GCP
4 217 (5.60%) Power Platform
5 113 (2.92%) GitHub
6 105 (2.71%) Dynamics 365
7 104 (2.68%) Azure DevOps
8 98 (2.53%) Microsoft 365
9 89 (2.30%) SaaS
10 76 (1.96%) Entra ID
11 46 (1.19%) Serverless
12 45 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
13 44 (1.14%) Snowflake
14 42 (1.08%) OCI
15 41 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
16 39 (1.01%) OpenShift
17 32 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
18 31 (0.80%) Power Automate
19 30 (0.77%) Anthropic Claude
20 29 (0.75%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 84 (2.17%) Network Security
2 82 (2.12%) Firewall
3 41 (1.06%) VPN
4 28 (0.72%) DNS
5 22 (0.57%) SSL
5 22 (0.57%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.52%) WAN
7 18 (0.46%) Broadband
8 15 (0.39%) LAN
9 12 (0.31%) BIG-IP
9 12 (0.31%) HTTP
10 11 (0.28%) BGP
11 10 (0.26%) DHCP
12 8 (0.21%) SAN
13 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 7 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 7 (0.18%) OSPF
13 7 (0.18%) VSAN
13 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (4.54%) Power BI
2 77 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
3 71 (1.83%) Metadata
4 70 (1.81%) SQL Server
5 65 (1.68%) Relational Database
6 46 (1.19%) Data Lake
7 35 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
8 34 (0.88%) Tableau
9 32 (0.83%) MongoDB
10 29 (0.75%) Db2
11 25 (0.65%) BigQuery
12 22 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
12 22 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
13 20 (0.52%) NoSQL
14 18 (0.46%) Oracle Database
15 17 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
16 16 (0.41%) Azure SQL Database
16 16 (0.41%) Data Vault
16 16 (0.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 15 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 232 (5.99%) JIRA
2 124 (3.20%) Git
3 76 (1.96%) Jenkins
4 32 (0.83%) GitLab
5 21 (0.54%) JUnit
6 20 (0.52%) Claude Code
7 16 (0.41%) Cucumber
8 15 (0.39%) Maven
8 15 (0.39%) Selenium
8 15 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
9 13 (0.34%) Postman
10 11 (0.28%) Gradle
11 9 (0.23%) Mockito
11 9 (0.23%) REST Assured
12 8 (0.21%) ERwin
12 8 (0.21%) SonarQube
13 7 (0.18%) Hudson
13 7 (0.18%) JMeter
13 7 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,355 (34.97%) Social Skills
2 620 (16.00%) Banking
3 534 (13.78%) Analytical Skills
4 287 (7.41%) Organisational Skills
5 281 (7.25%) Public Sector
6 258 (6.66%) Legal
7 157 (4.05%) Retail
8 145 (3.74%) Influencing Skills
9 111 (2.86%) Manufacturing
10 95 (2.45%) Billing
11 93 (2.40%) General Ledger
12 85 (2.19%) Local Government
13 82 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 79 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
15 73 (1.88%) Investment Banking
16 71 (1.83%) Marketing
17 64 (1.65%) Financial Institution
18 62 (1.60%) Telecoms
19 59 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
20 46 (1.19%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 473 (12.21%) Analyst
2 389 (10.04%) Lead
3 381 (9.83%) Senior
4 294 (7.59%) Architect
5 293 (7.56%) Developer
6 284 (7.33%) Project Manager
7 262 (6.76%) Consultant
8 226 (5.83%) Business Analyst
9 148 (3.82%) Accountant
10 143 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
11 101 (2.61%) IT Manager
12 98 (2.53%) Administrator
13 91 (2.35%) Financial Analyst
13 91 (2.35%) Java Developer
14 88 (2.27%) Systems Accountant
15 83 (2.14%) Senior Manager
16 79 (2.04%) Finance Manager
17 76 (1.96%) Programme Manager
18 73 (1.88%) Data Analyst
19 66 (1.70%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 149 (3.85%) Oracle Fusion
1 149 (3.85%) Terraform
2 121 (3.12%) REST
3 80 (2.06%) Kafka
4 75 (1.94%) React
5 70 (1.81%) Middleware
6 68 (1.75%) Spring Boot
7 61 (1.57%) Spring
8 57 (1.47%) .NET
9 52 (1.34%) RESTful
10 47 (1.21%) JSON
11 46 (1.19%) OAuth
12 34 (0.88%) OpenID
13 33 (0.85%) Node.js
13 33 (0.85%) SAP Fiori
14 30 (0.77%) SOAP
14 30 (0.77%) XML
15 28 (0.72%) HTML
15 28 (0.72%) OAuth2
16 27 (0.70%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 183 (4.72%) Onboarding
2 178 (4.59%) Cloud Native
3 166 (4.28%) Product Ownership
4 158 (4.08%) Virtual Team
5 136 (3.51%) Data Protection Act
6 124 (3.20%) Management Information System
7 113 (2.92%) Web Conferencing
8 111 (2.86%) Podcast
9 84 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
10 72 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
11 70 (1.81%) AI Agents
12 69 (1.78%) Data Structures
13 66 (1.70%) Data Centre
14 62 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
15 52 (1.34%) Public Cloud
16 48 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
16 48 (1.24%) Mainframe
17 44 (1.14%) Mobile App
18 43 (1.11%) Security Posture
19 40 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 112 (2.89%) Linux
2 106 (2.74%) Windows
3 54 (1.39%) Unix
4 34 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (0.67%) Windows Server
5 26 (0.67%) zOS
6 19 (0.49%) Solaris
7 15 (0.39%) Android
8 14 (0.36%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.23%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.18%) AIX
11 6 (0.15%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.077%) CentOS
13 3 (0.077%) HPUX
13 3 (0.077%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.077%) SUSE
14 2 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.026%) MVS
15 1 (0.026%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,105 (28.52%) Stakeholder Management
2 746 (19.25%) Agile
3 546 (14.09%) Continuous Improvement
4 534 (13.78%) Problem-Solving
5 494 (12.75%) Migration
6 483 (12.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 453 (11.69%) ERP
8 431 (11.12%) AI
9 428 (11.05%) CI/CD
10 389 (10.04%) Decision-Making
11 347 (8.95%) DevOps
12 339 (8.75%) Project Management
13 335 (8.65%) Roadmaps
14 323 (8.34%) Change Management
15 305 (7.87%) Project Delivery
16 304 (7.85%) Analytics
17 293 (7.56%) Validation
18 286 (7.38%) Risk Management
19 271 (6.99%) User Acceptance Testing
20 227 (5.86%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 378 (9.75%) Python
2 359 (9.26%) SQL
3 246 (6.35%) Java
4 85 (2.19%) JavaScript
5 80 (2.06%) PowerShell
6 67 (1.73%) C#
7 62 (1.60%) Bash
8 51 (1.32%) TypeScript
9 41 (1.06%) Go
10 37 (0.95%) PL/SQL
11 36 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 22 (0.57%) C++
13 19 (0.49%) Bicep
13 19 (0.49%) Scala
14 17 (0.44%) Perl
15 14 (0.36%) ABAP
16 12 (0.31%) PHP
16 12 (0.31%) T-SQL
17 9 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 8 (0.21%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 354 (9.14%) Security Cleared
2 235 (6.06%) Degree
3 216 (5.57%) SC Cleared
4 177 (4.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 99 (2.55%) ACCA
6 98 (2.53%) CIMA
7 93 (2.40%) DV Cleared
8 91 (2.35%) PMP
9 80 (2.06%) PMI Certification
10 58 (1.50%) CISSP
11 42 (1.08%) AWS Certification
12 41 (1.06%) Azure Certification
13 39 (1.01%) Cisco Certification
14 38 (0.98%) CISM
15 29 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
16 28 (0.72%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 26 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 24 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
19 22 (0.57%) CCSP
20 20 (0.52%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 264 (6.81%) Data Quality
2 185 (4.77%) PMO
3 131 (3.38%) QA
4 83 (2.14%) GDPR
5 52 (1.34%) GRC
6 46 (1.19%) Accessibility
7 39 (1.01%) SLA
8 37 (0.95%) NIST
9 30 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 28 (0.72%) IFRS
11 25 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 18 (0.46%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.31%) WCAG
14 11 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
15 10 (0.26%) COBIT
15 10 (0.26%) GAAP
16 9 (0.23%) EMIR
16 9 (0.23%) ISO 20022
16 9 (0.23%) NCSC
16 9 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 82 (2.12%) Docker
2 71 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 53 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) RACF
5 18 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
6 11 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.28%) vSphere
7 10 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.13%) NFS
10 4 (0.10%) GPFS
10 4 (0.10%) zsh
11 3 (0.077%) ACF2
11 3 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.052%) IAG
13 1 (0.026%) Firmware
13 1 (0.026%) KVM
13 1 (0.026%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.026%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 219 (5.65%) Kubernetes
2 79 (2.04%) Ansible
3 39 (1.01%) Grafana
4 36 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
5 32 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 20 (0.52%) Progress Chef
8 18 (0.46%) OMEGAMON
9 15 (0.39%) SCCM
10 11 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.26%) Argo
11 10 (0.26%) Istio
12 8 (0.21%) Control-M
12 8 (0.21%) Kustomize
12 8 (0.21%) Tivoli
13 6 (0.15%) logstash
14 5 (0.13%) FortiGate
15 4 (0.10%) Kibana
15 4 (0.10%) Puppet
15 4 (0.10%) QRadar
Vendors
1 595 (15.35%) Microsoft
2 447 (11.54%) SAP
3 357 (9.21%) Oracle
4 161 (4.15%) ServiceNow
5 114 (2.94%) Google
6 97 (2.50%) IBM
7 79 (2.04%) Databricks
8 70 (1.81%) VMware
9 68 (1.75%) Salesforce
10 55 (1.42%) Splunk
11 50 (1.29%) Ariba
12 45 (1.16%) Workday
13 43 (1.11%) Cisco
14 29 (0.75%) Sage
15 25 (0.65%) Adobe
16 24 (0.62%) Red Hat
17 23 (0.59%) MuleSoft
18 22 (0.57%) Dynatrace
18 22 (0.57%) Snow
19 20 (0.52%) F5