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

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,302 6,735 8,288
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.57% 21.17% 19.15%
As % of the General category 32.57% 34.39% 32.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,671 4,219 5,649
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -1.71%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £823 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £501 £513
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.34% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 93 125
10th Percentile £15.00 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.50 £14.22
Median hourly rate £23.50 £29.00 £22.87
Median % change year-on-year -18.97% +26.80% -8.52%
75th Percentile £40.00 £60.75 £48.00
90th Percentile £65.98 £78.69 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.31 £19.50
% change year-on-year -19.45% +40.06% -40.00%

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 22,421 19,586 25,516
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.10% 61.57% 58.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,109 11,683 16,675
10th Percentile £283 £285 £270
25th Percentile £400 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £727 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,372 660 1,289
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.48 £13.48
25th Percentile £16.48 £19.94 £15.75
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.36% -5.17% +16.00%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £56.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.38 £26.50 £27.08
% change year-on-year -19.32% -2.15% +20.37%

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 17 January 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 17 January 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 17 January 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 6,435 £535 -9.70% 5,575
London -1 3,928 £575 -5.74% 1,360
UK excluding London -2 2,879 £500 -0.10% 5,075
Work from Home -1 2,020 £525 -12.50% 2,274
North of England +1 923 £475 -4.26% 961
South East -2 537 £504 -4.05% 1,683
Midlands -3 503 £475 -9.52% 678
North West +1 445 £450 -8.16% 407
Yorkshire 0 431 £500 -2.68% 406
Scotland 0 377 £500 +9.41% 200
West Midlands -6 307 £525 -4.98% 278
South West -4 287 £525 - 631
East Midlands +1 196 £420 - 390
East of England -3 171 £529 +0.71% 694
Wales +22 75 £413 - 244
Northern Ireland -1 55 £513 +57.69% 114
North East -5 47 £481 +1.32% 161
Channel Islands +1 1 - -

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
1 302 (4.14%) Confluence
2 207 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 71 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 65 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 62 (0.85%) Apache
5 62 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
6 32 (0.44%) SAS
7 30 (0.41%) CMS
8 23 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
9 21 (0.29%) IIS
10 19 (0.26%) HCL Notes
11 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 13 (0.18%) Appian
12 13 (0.18%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 12 (0.16%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.15%) CICS
14 11 (0.15%) JBoss
Applications
1 508 (6.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 288 (3.94%) Microsoft Office
3 206 (2.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 164 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
5 133 (1.82%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 20 (0.27%) Sketch
9 19 (0.26%) Trello
10 14 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 9 (0.12%) InVision
13 6 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.068%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.055%) Notion
16 3 (0.041%) Camtasia
16 3 (0.041%) Snagit
17 2 (0.027%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 293 (4.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.70%) Oracle Payables
3 98 (1.34%) Oracle EBS
4 95 (1.30%) Oracle Receivables
5 84 (1.15%) Oracle General Ledger
6 71 (0.97%) SAP FI
7 69 (0.94%) NetSuite
8 61 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
9 60 (0.82%) SAP CO
10 55 (0.75%) Oracle Assets
10 55 (0.75%) Oracle EBS R12
11 54 (0.74%) Oracle Cash Management
11 54 (0.74%) SAP FI/CO
12 52 (0.71%) Oracle Financials
13 50 (0.68%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 48 (0.66%) Oracle ERP
15 38 (0.52%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 38 (0.52%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
17 27 (0.37%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,078 (14.76%) Azure
2 882 (12.08%) AWS
3 548 (7.50%) Power Platform
4 350 (4.79%) GCP
5 246 (3.37%) Microsoft 365
6 221 (3.03%) SaaS
7 215 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
8 209 (2.86%) Dynamics 365
9 187 (2.56%) GitHub
10 140 (1.92%) OCI
10 140 (1.92%) Serverless
11 139 (1.90%) Snowflake
12 116 (1.59%) Entra ID
13 100 (1.37%) GitHub Actions
14 88 (1.21%) Power Automate
15 85 (1.16%) Amazon S3
16 75 (1.03%) PowerApps
17 74 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
18 69 (0.94%) Figma
19 66 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 117 (1.60%) Firewall
2 66 (0.90%) Network Security
3 62 (0.85%) WAN
4 41 (0.56%) DNS
5 40 (0.55%) SD-WAN
6 37 (0.51%) VPN
7 34 (0.47%) LAN
7 34 (0.47%) TCP/IP
8 32 (0.44%) Wireless
9 29 (0.40%) HTTP
10 27 (0.37%) Skype
10 27 (0.37%) SSL
11 23 (0.31%) SSH
12 21 (0.29%) DHCP
13 18 (0.25%) BGP
13 18 (0.25%) OSPF
14 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
15 15 (0.21%) Cisco IOS
15 15 (0.21%) Internet
16 14 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 479 (6.56%) Power BI
2 198 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
3 194 (2.66%) SQL Server
4 154 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
5 128 (1.75%) NoSQL
5 128 (1.75%) Tableau
6 124 (1.70%) Relational Database
7 117 (1.60%) Data Lake
8 108 (1.48%) Metadata
9 90 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
10 77 (1.05%) MongoDB
11 72 (0.99%) Big Data
12 71 (0.97%) Oracle Database
13 50 (0.68%) BigQuery
14 47 (0.64%) Hadoop
15 41 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
16 40 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
17 39 (0.53%) Power Query
18 37 (0.51%) DB2
19 36 (0.49%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 560 (7.67%) JIRA
2 255 (3.49%) Jenkins
3 211 (2.89%) Git
4 150 (2.05%) GitLab
5 76 (1.04%) JUnit
6 57 (0.78%) Cucumber
7 56 (0.77%) Selenium
8 51 (0.70%) Bitbucket
9 46 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
10 36 (0.49%) Postman
11 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 25 (0.34%) Liquibase
13 24 (0.33%) Gradle
14 23 (0.31%) Cypress.io
15 20 (0.27%) Maven
15 20 (0.27%) MLflow
15 20 (0.27%) REST Assured
16 19 (0.26%) JMeter
17 17 (0.23%) SonarQube
17 17 (0.23%) webpack
General
1 2,536 (34.73%) Social Skills
2 1,519 (20.80%) Banking
3 997 (13.65%) Analytical Skills
4 589 (8.07%) Public Sector
5 338 (4.63%) Financial Institution
6 324 (4.44%) Marketing
7 305 (4.18%) Manufacturing
8 300 (4.11%) Investment Banking
9 280 (3.83%) Telecoms
10 279 (3.82%) Front Office
11 270 (3.70%) Legal
12 213 (2.92%) Organisational Skills
13 194 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
14 192 (2.63%) Electronics
15 154 (2.11%) Influencing Skills
16 142 (1.94%) Retail
17 132 (1.81%) General Ledger
18 131 (1.79%) Presentation Skills
19 126 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 108 (1.48%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,177 (16.12%) Analyst
2 828 (11.34%) Developer
3 710 (9.72%) Senior
4 595 (8.15%) Business Analyst
5 588 (8.05%) Consultant
6 581 (7.96%) Project Manager
7 558 (7.64%) Architect
8 518 (7.09%) Lead
9 229 (3.14%) Solutions Architect
10 192 (2.63%) Data Analyst
11 165 (2.26%) Data Engineer
12 158 (2.16%) Financial Analyst
13 147 (2.01%) Java Developer
13 147 (2.01%) Programme Manager
14 145 (1.99%) Software Engineer
15 144 (1.97%) Senior Developer
16 122 (1.67%) Senior Manager
17 112 (1.53%) IT Manager
17 112 (1.53%) Oracle Consultant
18 109 (1.49%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (3.71%) REST
2 231 (3.16%) Kafka
3 217 (2.97%) .NET
4 167 (2.29%) React
5 159 (2.18%) RESTful
6 156 (2.14%) Oracle Fusion
7 148 (2.03%) Spring
8 121 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 102 (1.40%) Middleware
10 100 (1.37%) AngularJS
11 97 (1.33%) Pandas
12 91 (1.25%) XML
13 87 (1.19%) HTML
14 86 (1.18%) NumPy
15 83 (1.14%) Node.js
16 78 (1.07%) CSS
17 75 (1.03%) PySpark
18 74 (1.01%) SOAP
19 71 (0.97%) OAuth
20 70 (0.96%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 318 (4.35%) Onboarding
2 289 (3.96%) Product Ownership
3 212 (2.90%) Cloud Native
4 184 (2.52%) Derivative
5 169 (2.31%) Management Information System
6 158 (2.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 151 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
8 133 (1.82%) Data Centre
9 132 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
9 132 (1.81%) Equities
10 126 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
11 125 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
11 125 (1.71%) Fixed Income
12 124 (1.70%) Data Structures
13 106 (1.45%) Public Cloud
14 96 (1.31%) Hedge funds
15 94 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
16 73 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
16 73 (1.00%) Virtual Team
17 72 (0.99%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 352 (4.82%) Linux
2 325 (4.45%) Windows
3 150 (2.05%) Unix
4 66 (0.90%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.88%) Android
6 63 (0.86%) Mac OS
6 63 (0.86%) Windows Server
7 34 (0.47%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 11 (0.15%) zOS
10 7 (0.096%) CentOS
11 6 (0.082%) VMS
12 4 (0.055%) Solaris
12 4 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.041%) AIX
13 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.041%) Windows Server 2019
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
14 2 (0.027%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,703 (23.32%) Agile
2 1,323 (18.12%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,202 (16.46%) Problem-Solving
4 826 (11.31%) Migration
5 783 (10.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 776 (10.63%) DevOps
7 762 (10.44%) Business Intelligence
8 758 (10.38%) CI/CD
9 713 (9.76%) Analytics
9 713 (9.76%) Project Management
10 629 (8.61%) ERP
11 609 (8.34%) Continuous Improvement
12 522 (7.15%) Decision-Making
13 519 (7.11%) Risk Management
14 506 (6.93%) Change Management
15 505 (6.92%) AI
16 494 (6.77%) Roadmaps
17 470 (6.44%) Data Modelling
18 463 (6.34%) Project Delivery
19 457 (6.26%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,082 (14.82%) SQL
2 955 (13.08%) Python
3 520 (7.12%) Java
4 315 (4.31%) C#
5 220 (3.01%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.67%) PowerShell
7 155 (2.12%) C++
8 153 (2.10%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.16%) PL/SQL
10 70 (0.96%) Bash
10 70 (0.96%) Go
11 56 (0.77%) Shell Script
12 52 (0.71%) VBA
13 45 (0.62%) R
14 41 (0.56%) Kotlin
15 37 (0.51%) Groovy
16 34 (0.47%) T-SQL
17 33 (0.45%) Perl
17 33 (0.45%) Rust
18 29 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 785 (10.75%) Degree
2 556 (7.61%) Security Cleared
3 403 (5.52%) SC Cleared
4 187 (2.56%) PMI Certification
5 180 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 175 (2.40%) PMP
7 168 (2.30%) Master's Degree
8 148 (2.03%) ACCA
9 129 (1.77%) CIMA
10 105 (1.44%) BPSS Clearance
11 93 (1.27%) AWS Certification
11 93 (1.27%) CISSP
12 65 (0.89%) DV Cleared
13 62 (0.85%) Azure Certification
13 62 (0.85%) CISM
14 45 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
15 35 (0.48%) CBAP
15 35 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
16 28 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 27 (0.37%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (5.15%) QA
2 330 (4.52%) Data Quality
3 274 (3.75%) PMO
4 252 (3.45%) GDPR
5 118 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 111 (1.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 107 (1.47%) NIST
8 100 (1.37%) Accessibility
9 97 (1.33%) SLA
10 75 (1.03%) IFRS
10 75 (1.03%) PCI DSS
11 54 (0.74%) GRC
12 44 (0.60%) ISO 20022
12 44 (0.60%) PSD2
13 39 (0.53%) MiFID
14 32 (0.44%) Basel III
15 28 (0.38%) GAAP
15 28 (0.38%) SEPA
16 27 (0.37%) COBIT
17 26 (0.36%) NCSC
System Software
1 328 (4.49%) Docker
2 190 (2.60%) Active Directory
3 51 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (0.26%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) HDFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) NFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 6 (0.082%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.068%) Firmware
10 5 (0.068%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.055%) BitLocker
11 4 (0.055%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.041%) RACF
12 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 366 (5.01%) Kubernetes
2 270 (3.70%) Terraform
3 178 (2.44%) Ansible
4 86 (1.18%) Grafana
5 76 (1.04%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.86%) SCCM
7 56 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 34 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 14 (0.19%) Control-M
14 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
14 14 (0.19%) Puppet
15 9 (0.12%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,015 (13.90%) Microsoft
2 796 (10.90%) SAP
3 709 (9.71%) Oracle
4 267 (3.66%) ServiceNow
5 178 (2.44%) Salesforce
6 159 (2.18%) Databricks
7 156 (2.14%) Google
8 154 (2.11%) Splunk
9 146 (2.00%) Workday
10 145 (1.99%) Cisco
11 98 (1.34%) VMware
12 90 (1.23%) IBM
13 72 (0.99%) Citrix
14 64 (0.88%) Ariba
15 58 (0.79%) CyberArk
16 56 (0.77%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.73%) HP
18 51 (0.70%) Murex
19 47 (0.64%) Apple
20 46 (0.63%) Informatica