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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,105 6,348 8,349
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.73% 21.65% 18.77%
As % of the General category 32.90% 34.56% 32.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,131 4,167 5,618
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £660 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £508
% change year-on-year - -1.48% -3.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 206 103 225
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.26 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.83 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.79 £36.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -33.92% +30.91% -9.84%
75th Percentile £42.22 £73.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £72.50 £82.56 £55.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £52.50 £30.41
% change year-on-year -58.10% +72.63% -13.11%

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 24,639 18,367 25,993
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.94% 62.65% 58.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,366 11,681 16,636
10th Percentile £300 £300 £263
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,513 669 1,810
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.22 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.38
Median hourly rate £24.55 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.17% +15.38% -23.53%
75th Percentile £56.96 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.20 £75.45 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £27.85 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.41% +11.40% -14.53%

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 March 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 March 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 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
England -1 7,170 £538 -10.42% 4,213
London 0 4,342 £575 -8.00% 1,961
UK excluding London 0 3,206 £500 - 3,025
Work from Home -2 2,275 £550 -8.33% 1,751
North of England +3 1,039 £475 - 709
South East -2 606 £501 -8.86% 1,053
Midlands -1 582 £475 -5.00% 446
North West +6 546 £452 -3.37% 381
Yorkshire 0 446 £500 +1.01% 254
West Midlands +1 381 £500 -4.76% 261
Scotland 0 363 £475 - 183
South West -1 329 £525 +4.95% 310
East Midlands 0 196 £450 +4.96% 183
East of England -1 194 £520 -5.45% 261
Wales +31 106 £413 +6.45% 81
North East -8 47 £481 +2.39% 88
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +61.54% 50
Channel Islands +5 1 - - 3

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
1 334 (4.12%) Confluence
2 207 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.02%) Apache Spark
4 56 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 50 (0.62%) Apache
6 47 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.39%) SAS
8 24 (0.30%) CMS
9 18 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
11 16 (0.20%) CICS
12 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 14 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.15%) Camunda
14 12 (0.15%) TPMS
15 11 (0.14%) Mendix
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.099%) IIS
Applications
1 525 (6.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 267 (3.29%) Microsoft Office
3 187 (2.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 182 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
5 136 (1.68%) MS Visio
6 46 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 13 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.099%) InVision
12 6 (0.074%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.062%) Notion
13 5 (0.062%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.049%) Adobe Captivate
14 4 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.037%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 334 (4.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 114 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 99 (1.22%) Oracle Receivables
4 76 (0.94%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 75 (0.93%) NetSuite
6 71 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
7 66 (0.81%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
9 56 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.67%) SAP CO
11 49 (0.60%) SAP FI/CO
12 43 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
13 42 (0.52%) Oracle ERP
14 38 (0.47%) Oracle Cash Management
14 38 (0.47%) Oracle EBS R12
15 32 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
15 32 (0.39%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 32 (0.39%) Workday HCM
16 31 (0.38%) Aladdin
17 22 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,241 (15.31%) Azure
2 969 (11.96%) AWS
3 570 (7.03%) Power Platform
4 384 (4.74%) GCP
5 279 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
6 276 (3.41%) Microsoft 365
7 259 (3.20%) SaaS
8 236 (2.91%) Dynamics 365
9 219 (2.70%) GitHub
10 157 (1.94%) Serverless
11 138 (1.70%) OCI
12 131 (1.62%) Snowflake
13 120 (1.48%) Entra ID
14 112 (1.38%) Amazon S3
15 95 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 89 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
17 87 (1.07%) AWS Lambda
18 84 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
19 77 (0.95%) OpenShift
20 76 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 159 (1.96%) Firewall
2 106 (1.31%) Network Security
3 84 (1.04%) WAN
4 60 (0.74%) DNS
5 53 (0.65%) LAN
6 51 (0.63%) VPN
7 45 (0.56%) SD-WAN
8 40 (0.49%) TCP/IP
9 34 (0.42%) Wireless
10 31 (0.38%) BGP
11 27 (0.33%) Internet
11 27 (0.33%) OSPF
12 25 (0.31%) HTTP
12 25 (0.31%) Multicast
12 25 (0.31%) SSL
13 23 (0.28%) MPLS
14 20 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
15 18 (0.22%) DHCP
15 18 (0.22%) Skype
16 16 (0.20%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 504 (6.22%) Power BI
2 221 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
3 195 (2.41%) SQL Server
4 188 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
5 148 (1.83%) Metadata
6 144 (1.78%) Tableau
7 120 (1.48%) Data Lake
8 115 (1.42%) Relational Database
9 104 (1.28%) NoSQL
10 88 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (0.93%) Big Data
12 65 (0.80%) Oracle Database
13 63 (0.78%) BigQuery
13 63 (0.78%) MongoDB
14 47 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 45 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
16 44 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
17 37 (0.46%) Delta Lake
17 37 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
18 36 (0.44%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 674 (8.32%) JIRA
2 232 (2.86%) Jenkins
3 212 (2.62%) Git
4 151 (1.86%) GitLab
5 65 (0.80%) JUnit
6 62 (0.76%) Cucumber
7 46 (0.57%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.53%) Selenium
9 34 (0.42%) Bitbucket
9 34 (0.42%) Postman
10 31 (0.38%) Visual Studio
11 24 (0.30%) MLflow
12 22 (0.27%) REST Assured
13 21 (0.26%) Gradle
14 18 (0.22%) Maven
15 17 (0.21%) SonarQube
16 16 (0.20%) ERwin
16 16 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 15 (0.19%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,648 (32.67%) Social Skills
2 1,565 (19.31%) Banking
3 1,068 (13.18%) Analytical Skills
4 646 (7.97%) Public Sector
5 346 (4.27%) Financial Institution
6 311 (3.84%) Legal
7 283 (3.49%) Front Office
8 275 (3.39%) Investment Banking
9 274 (3.38%) Marketing
10 266 (3.28%) Manufacturing
11 247 (3.05%) Organisational Skills
12 240 (2.96%) Telecoms
13 236 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
14 186 (2.29%) Retail
15 178 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
16 140 (1.73%) Electronics
17 133 (1.64%) General Ledger
18 127 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
19 118 (1.46%) Local Government
20 117 (1.44%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,239 (15.29%) Analyst
2 842 (10.39%) Developer
3 834 (10.29%) Senior
4 734 (9.06%) Lead
5 701 (8.65%) Architect
6 669 (8.25%) Project Manager
7 662 (8.17%) Business Analyst
8 608 (7.50%) Consultant
9 280 (3.45%) Solutions Architect
10 217 (2.68%) Data Engineer
11 189 (2.33%) Data Analyst
12 177 (2.18%) Programme Manager
13 176 (2.17%) Financial Analyst
14 175 (2.16%) Senior Manager
15 160 (1.97%) Finance Manager
16 138 (1.70%) Delivery Manager
17 135 (1.67%) Java Developer
18 131 (1.62%) Senior Developer
19 130 (1.60%) Senior Analyst
20 127 (1.57%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (3.29%) REST
2 265 (3.27%) Kafka
3 204 (2.52%) .NET
4 198 (2.44%) React
5 157 (1.94%) Oracle Fusion
6 149 (1.84%) Middleware
7 140 (1.73%) Spring
8 138 (1.70%) RESTful
9 123 (1.52%) Spring Boot
10 114 (1.41%) Node.js
11 104 (1.28%) AngularJS
12 96 (1.18%) PySpark
13 84 (1.04%) XML
14 79 (0.97%) HTML
15 77 (0.95%) JSON
16 76 (0.94%) OAuth
17 75 (0.93%) CSS
18 71 (0.88%) Pandas
19 69 (0.85%) Redux
20 67 (0.83%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 345 (4.26%) Onboarding
2 314 (3.87%) Product Ownership
3 255 (3.15%) Cloud Native
4 198 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
5 185 (2.28%) Management Information System
6 168 (2.07%) Derivative
7 162 (2.00%) Data Centre
8 146 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
8 146 (1.80%) Fixed Income
9 144 (1.78%) Data Structures
9 144 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
10 140 (1.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 125 (1.54%) Equities
12 106 (1.31%) Public Cloud
13 105 (1.30%) Analytical Mindset
14 95 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
15 92 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
16 87 (1.07%) Virtual Team
17 68 (0.84%) Hedge funds
18 63 (0.78%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 306 (3.78%) Linux
2 270 (3.33%) Windows
3 140 (1.73%) Unix
4 64 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 56 (0.69%) Windows 10
6 54 (0.67%) Android
7 43 (0.53%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.32%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.21%) zOS
10 16 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.14%) AIX
12 8 (0.099%) Solaris
13 7 (0.086%) VMS
14 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.037%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) MVS
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,754 (21.64%) Agile
2 1,582 (19.52%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,228 (15.15%) Problem-Solving
4 1,055 (13.02%) Migration
5 906 (11.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 897 (11.07%) DevOps
7 809 (9.98%) CI/CD
8 808 (9.97%) Continuous Improvement
9 789 (9.73%) Analytics
9 789 (9.73%) Project Management
10 786 (9.70%) Business Intelligence
11 764 (9.43%) ERP
12 653 (8.06%) AI
13 624 (7.70%) Data Modelling
13 624 (7.70%) Decision-Making
14 617 (7.61%) Roadmaps
15 567 (7.00%) Validation
16 566 (6.98%) Project Delivery
17 556 (6.86%) Change Management
18 548 (6.76%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,155 (14.25%) SQL
2 1,012 (12.49%) Python
3 544 (6.71%) Java
4 295 (3.64%) C#
5 236 (2.91%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.42%) TypeScript
7 163 (2.01%) PowerShell
8 115 (1.42%) C++
9 80 (0.99%) Go
10 69 (0.85%) Bash
11 64 (0.79%) PL/SQL
12 53 (0.65%) T-SQL
13 52 (0.64%) VBA
14 46 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 41 (0.51%) Scala
15 41 (0.51%) Shell Script
16 37 (0.46%) R
17 35 (0.43%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.36%) Rust
19 26 (0.32%) Korn
Qualifications
1 791 (9.76%) Degree
2 695 (8.57%) Security Cleared
3 494 (6.10%) SC Cleared
4 200 (2.47%) PMI Certification
5 197 (2.43%) PMP
6 172 (2.12%) ACCA
7 168 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 162 (2.00%) CIMA
9 158 (1.95%) Master's Degree
10 137 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
11 111 (1.37%) CISSP
12 79 (0.97%) DV Cleared
13 78 (0.96%) CISM
14 70 (0.86%) Azure Certification
15 69 (0.85%) AWS Certification
16 36 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
17 35 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
17 35 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
18 34 (0.42%) ISTQB
18 34 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (5.35%) Data Quality
2 408 (5.03%) QA
3 332 (4.10%) PMO
4 290 (3.58%) GDPR
5 140 (1.73%) NIST
6 122 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 110 (1.36%) SLA
9 85 (1.05%) IFRS
10 80 (0.99%) Accessibility
11 76 (0.94%) PCI DSS
12 67 (0.83%) GRC
13 57 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 45 (0.56%) GAAP
15 43 (0.53%) PSD2
16 37 (0.46%) MiFID
16 37 (0.46%) SEPA
17 36 (0.44%) NCSC
18 28 (0.35%) Basel III
18 28 (0.35%) COBIT
System Software
1 309 (3.81%) Docker
2 152 (1.88%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 25 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
6 15 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.14%) GPFS
8 11 (0.14%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.099%) Hyper-V
10 8 (0.099%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.062%) HDFS
12 4 (0.049%) Firmware
12 4 (0.049%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.037%) KVM
13 3 (0.037%) RACF
13 3 (0.037%) SRDF
13 3 (0.037%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.025%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 396 (4.89%) Kubernetes
2 254 (3.13%) Terraform
3 149 (1.84%) Ansible
4 95 (1.17%) Grafana
5 86 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 48 (0.59%) SCCM
8 40 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.22%) vRealize
11 17 (0.21%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.20%) Argo
13 15 (0.19%) Control-M
14 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
16 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
17 11 (0.14%) Kibana
17 11 (0.14%) Nessus
17 11 (0.14%) Puppet
18 9 (0.11%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,052 (12.98%) Microsoft
2 803 (9.91%) SAP
3 678 (8.37%) Oracle
4 302 (3.73%) ServiceNow
5 193 (2.38%) Databricks
6 192 (2.37%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.16%) Google
8 157 (1.94%) Cisco
9 139 (1.71%) Workday
10 127 (1.57%) Splunk
11 109 (1.34%) VMware
12 95 (1.17%) IBM
13 72 (0.89%) CyberArk
14 71 (0.88%) Ariba
14 71 (0.88%) Citrix
15 63 (0.78%) Sage
16 57 (0.70%) Informatica
17 53 (0.65%) HP
18 51 (0.63%) Murex
19 50 (0.62%) OpenAI