Finance Contract Job Trends

Financial
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Finance in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Finance over the 6 months leading up to 18 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,817 7,414 8,094
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.56% 22.78% 19.22%
As % of the General category 33.82% 36.19% 33.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,067 4,871 5,425
10th Percentile £356 £345 £350
25th Percentile £450 £420 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £719
90th Percentile £800 £813 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 146 228
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.74 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.90 £18.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £32.41 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.66% -7.41% +10.66%
75th Percentile £54.17 £63.75 £40.56
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.40 £35.00
% change year-on-year +60.44% -21.71% -8.74%

All General Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 29,030 20,484 24,110
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.87% 62.93% 57.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,339 12,845 15,110
10th Percentile £313 £280 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £488
% change year-on-year +6.61% -3.94% -2.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,028 1,056 1,756
10th Percentile £14.02 £13.30 £13.12
25th Percentile £18.38 £16.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £33.00 £26.21 £33.97
Median % change year-on-year +25.91% -22.83% +11.21%
75th Percentile £62.00 £51.93 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £71.38 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.50 £33.07
% change year-on-year +46.67% -31.95% +26.01%

Finance
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Finance job vacancy trend in the UK

Finance
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Finance
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Finance over the 6 months to 18 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Finance in the UK

Finance
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Finance
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Finance over the 6 months to 18 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Finance in the UK

Finance
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 18 July 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
England -1 8,550 £550 - 3,936
London 0 5,147 £582 -2.98% 2,137
UK excluding London 0 3,895 £500 +2.04% 2,386
Work from Home -1 2,875 £550 -4.35% 1,459
North of England 0 1,308 £500 +6.61% 646
South East 0 733 £500 -4.53% 768
North West +2 688 £490 +8.89% 335
Midlands 0 656 £500 +11.11% 368
Yorkshire 0 569 £525 +7.69% 237
Scotland 0 501 £475 -2.06% 123
West Midlands +1 493 £500 +4.17% 206
South West -4 383 £525 -4.55% 243
East of England +5 211 £530 -3.64% 182
East Midlands -1 156 £500 +19.05% 161
Wales +2 85 £525 +18.31% 55
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 +5.56% 39
North East -15 52 £500 +14.29% 82
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 -

Finance
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 332 (3.38%) Confluence
2 232 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 83 (0.85%) Apache Spark
4 77 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
5 62 (0.63%) Apache
6 44 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) SAS
8 32 (0.33%) CMS
9 28 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
13 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.081%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.071%) Appian
16 5 (0.051%) Hyperledger
16 5 (0.051%) WebLogic
17 4 (0.041%) WordPress
Applications
1 520 (5.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 173 (1.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.11%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.092%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.041%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 449 (4.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
3 114 (1.16%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 84 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
6 74 (0.75%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 68 (0.69%) SAP FI
8 63 (0.64%) Oracle EBS
9 57 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 49 (0.50%) Oracle Financials
12 47 (0.48%) SAP CO
13 45 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
14 42 (0.43%) Aladdin
15 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
16 31 (0.32%) Unit4 Business World
17 30 (0.31%) Workday HCM
18 27 (0.28%) SAP ERP
19 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
20 25 (0.25%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,528 (15.56%) Azure
2 1,101 (11.22%) AWS
3 653 (6.65%) Power Platform
4 505 (5.14%) GCP
5 329 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
6 328 (3.34%) SaaS
7 281 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
8 277 (2.82%) GitHub
9 242 (2.47%) Dynamics 365
10 204 (2.08%) Snowflake
11 195 (1.99%) Entra ID
12 142 (1.45%) Serverless
13 130 (1.32%) OCI
14 126 (1.28%) Amazon S3
15 112 (1.14%) Power Automate
16 107 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
17 102 (1.04%) Microsoft Copilot
18 100 (1.02%) dbt
18 100 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
19 93 (0.95%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 189 (1.93%) Firewall
2 146 (1.49%) Network Security
3 90 (0.92%) DNS
4 84 (0.86%) VPN
5 65 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 57 (0.58%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) BGP
8 46 (0.47%) SSL
9 39 (0.40%) LAN
10 38 (0.39%) HTTP
11 37 (0.38%) DHCP
12 36 (0.37%) Multicast
13 30 (0.31%) OSPF
14 26 (0.26%) Internet
15 24 (0.24%) MPLS
16 23 (0.23%) Wireless
17 22 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
18 21 (0.21%) VLAN
19 18 (0.18%) SAN
19 18 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 544 (5.54%) Power BI
2 274 (2.79%) SQL Server
3 250 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.07%) Metadata
5 177 (1.80%) Relational Database
6 169 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
7 154 (1.57%) Tableau
8 144 (1.47%) Data Lake
9 91 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
10 82 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.72%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.70%) BigQuery
14 66 (0.67%) Big Data
15 65 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
16 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
16 49 (0.50%) Power Query
17 48 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 46 (0.47%) Delta Lake
19 41 (0.42%) Db2
Development Applications
1 682 (6.95%) JIRA
2 265 (2.70%) Git
3 169 (1.72%) Jenkins
4 92 (0.94%) GitLab
5 54 (0.55%) JUnit
6 44 (0.45%) Cucumber
7 41 (0.42%) Selenium
8 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.29%) Postman
10 27 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 26 (0.26%) ERwin
11 26 (0.26%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 24 (0.24%) SonarQube
13 22 (0.22%) Maven
14 21 (0.21%) Bitbucket
15 20 (0.20%) MLflow
15 20 (0.20%) Zephyr
16 17 (0.17%) Hudson
16 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,875 (29.29%) Social Skills
2 1,817 (18.51%) Banking
3 1,325 (13.50%) Analytical Skills
4 557 (5.67%) Public Sector
5 497 (5.06%) Legal
6 370 (3.77%) Investment Banking
7 362 (3.69%) Financial Institution
8 347 (3.53%) Organisational Skills
9 342 (3.48%) Front Office
10 330 (3.36%) Retail
11 270 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
12 244 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
13 186 (1.89%) Manufacturing
14 167 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 164 (1.67%) Billing
16 159 (1.62%) Local Government
17 156 (1.59%) General Ledger
18 154 (1.57%) Marketing
19 135 (1.38%) Law
19 135 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,458 (14.85%) Analyst
2 1,053 (10.73%) Senior
3 1,050 (10.70%) Lead
4 995 (10.14%) Developer
5 894 (9.11%) Architect
6 754 (7.68%) Business Analyst
7 719 (7.32%) Project Manager
8 651 (6.63%) Consultant
9 339 (3.45%) Solutions Architect
10 313 (3.19%) Data Engineer
11 246 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 232 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 211 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 209 (2.13%) Accountant
15 205 (2.09%) Data Analyst
16 191 (1.95%) Programme Manager
17 186 (1.89%) Finance Manager
18 184 (1.87%) Senior Developer
19 177 (1.80%) Software Engineer
20 176 (1.79%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 318 (3.24%) REST
2 273 (2.78%) .NET
3 270 (2.75%) React
4 269 (2.74%) Kafka
5 216 (2.20%) Oracle Fusion
6 202 (2.06%) Middleware
7 182 (1.85%) Spring
8 171 (1.74%) Spring Boot
9 138 (1.41%) RESTful
10 119 (1.21%) PySpark
10 119 (1.21%) Redux
11 112 (1.14%) Node.js
12 97 (0.99%) JSON
13 96 (0.98%) OAuth
14 94 (0.96%) AngularJS
15 86 (0.88%) XML
16 69 (0.70%) SOAP
17 64 (0.65%) CSS
17 64 (0.65%) GraphQL
18 63 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 465 (4.74%) Onboarding
2 438 (4.46%) Product Ownership
3 412 (4.20%) Cloud Native
4 277 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
5 233 (2.37%) Data Structures
6 222 (2.26%) Management Information System
7 184 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
8 176 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
9 175 (1.78%) Virtual Team
10 173 (1.76%) Derivative
11 170 (1.73%) Data Centre
11 170 (1.73%) Fixed Income
12 167 (1.70%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 141 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
14 138 (1.41%) AI Agents
15 124 (1.26%) Equities
16 114 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
17 109 (1.11%) Public Cloud
18 105 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
19 97 (0.99%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 329 (3.35%) Windows
2 288 (2.93%) Linux
3 163 (1.66%) Unix
4 75 (0.76%) Windows Server
5 39 (0.40%) Solaris
6 38 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 37 (0.38%) zOS
8 36 (0.37%) Apple iOS
8 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
9 29 (0.30%) Android
10 26 (0.26%) Mac OS
11 20 (0.20%) AIX
12 9 (0.092%) Ubuntu
12 9 (0.092%) VMS
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 5 (0.051%) MVS
15 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
16 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,180 (22.21%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,986 (20.23%) Agile
3 1,365 (13.90%) Migration
4 1,300 (13.24%) Problem-Solving
5 1,162 (11.84%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,138 (11.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,095 (11.15%) AI
8 1,023 (10.42%) DevOps
9 1,021 (10.40%) ERP
10 1,008 (10.27%) CI/CD
11 972 (9.90%) Analytics
12 885 (9.01%) Decision-Making
13 819 (8.34%) Validation
14 814 (8.29%) Roadmaps
15 797 (8.12%) Data Modelling
16 768 (7.82%) User Acceptance Testing
17 766 (7.80%) Project Management
18 712 (7.25%) Change Management
19 678 (6.91%) Business Intelligence
20 635 (6.47%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,279 (13.03%) SQL
2 1,193 (12.15%) Python
3 652 (6.64%) Java
4 386 (3.93%) C#
5 264 (2.69%) JavaScript
6 262 (2.67%) TypeScript
7 228 (2.32%) PowerShell
8 104 (1.06%) Bash
9 95 (0.97%) PL/SQL
10 83 (0.85%) C++
10 83 (0.85%) Go
11 75 (0.76%) T-SQL
12 74 (0.75%) Shell Script
13 61 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 50 (0.51%) VBA
15 44 (0.45%) Bicep
15 44 (0.45%) Scala
16 37 (0.38%) Apex Code
16 37 (0.38%) Kotlin
17 27 (0.28%) Korn
Qualifications
1 749 (7.63%) Security Cleared
2 741 (7.55%) Degree
3 539 (5.49%) SC Cleared
4 230 (2.34%) PMP
5 209 (2.13%) PMI Certification
6 207 (2.11%) ACCA
7 196 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
8 185 (1.88%) CIMA
9 158 (1.61%) CISSP
10 129 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 113 (1.15%) DV Cleared
12 94 (0.96%) Azure Certification
13 91 (0.93%) CISM
14 83 (0.85%) Master's Degree
15 74 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
16 59 (0.60%) AWS Certification
17 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
18 46 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 610 (6.21%) Data Quality
2 425 (4.33%) QA
3 352 (3.59%) PMO
4 289 (2.94%) GDPR
5 166 (1.69%) NIST
6 133 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 109 (1.11%) GRC
8 107 (1.09%) IFRS
9 106 (1.08%) SLA
10 104 (1.06%) Accessibility
11 98 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 66 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 64 (0.65%) GAAP
14 54 (0.55%) PCI DSS
15 42 (0.43%) SEPA
16 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
17 32 (0.33%) NCSC
18 31 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 29 (0.30%) EMIR
20 28 (0.29%) COBIT
System Software
1 274 (2.79%) Docker
2 211 (2.15%) Active Directory
3 63 (0.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.26%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 20 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) NFS
10 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.061%) IAG
11 6 (0.061%) KVM
12 5 (0.051%) ACF2
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.031%) GridGain
13 3 (0.031%) SRDF
14 2 (0.020%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 440 (4.48%) Kubernetes
2 321 (3.27%) Terraform
3 161 (1.64%) Ansible
4 95 (0.97%) Grafana
5 79 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 69 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 54 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.50%) SCCM
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 20 (0.20%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,262 (12.86%) Microsoft
2 839 (8.55%) SAP
3 837 (8.53%) Oracle
4 350 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 296 (3.02%) Databricks
6 220 (2.24%) Salesforce
7 212 (2.16%) Google
8 148 (1.51%) IBM
9 138 (1.41%) Workday
10 127 (1.29%) VMware
11 119 (1.21%) Splunk
12 109 (1.11%) Cisco
13 94 (0.96%) CyberArk
14 92 (0.94%) Ariba
15 69 (0.70%) OpenAI
16 68 (0.69%) Sage
17 64 (0.65%) Citrix
18 55 (0.56%) Informatica
19 51 (0.52%) Bloomberg
20 46 (0.47%) F5