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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,312 6,379 8,307
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.60% 21.97% 18.77%
As % of the General category 33.09% 34.98% 32.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,273 4,232 5,568
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £534 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.13% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 211 109 242
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.45 £12.76
25th Percentile £18.38 £22.27 £15.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +45.45% -14.06%
75th Percentile £45.39 £72.50 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £80.64 £54.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £30.41
% change year-on-year -57.95% +72.63% -28.44%

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 25,119 18,234 25,765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.22% 62.79% 58.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,660 11,696 16,405
10th Percentile £300 £300 £268
25th Percentile £406 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,557 715 1,850
10th Percentile £13.71 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.14 £19.00 £15.38
Median hourly rate £25.38 £29.07 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.69% +11.81% -25.71%
75th Percentile £59.00 £58.56 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.15 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £27.70 £25.00
% change year-on-year -13.36% +10.80% -19.35%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 7,346 £538 -6.52% 4,228
London 0 4,460 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,281 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -2 2,333 £550 -6.38% 1,715
North of England +3 1,072 £475 - 695
South East -2 633 £503 -6.07% 1,010
Midlands 0 584 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +6 571 £450 -3.23% 371
Yorkshire 0 453 £500 +2.56% 253
West Midlands +1 386 £496 -5.52% 251
Scotland 0 377 £494 +3.95% 161
South West -4 323 £525 +5.00% 302
East of England -2 199 £514 -5.52% 271
East Midlands 0 193 £450 +4.96% 171
Wales +27 106 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -5 48 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 42 £525 +61.54% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 4

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
1 335 (4.03%) Confluence
2 211 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.70%) Microsoft Exchange
5 50 (0.60%) Apache
6 48 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
7 35 (0.42%) SAS
8 30 (0.36%) CMS
9 18 (0.22%) Appian
9 18 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.20%) CICS
11 15 (0.18%) Camunda
12 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.14%) TPMS
15 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
15 11 (0.13%) Mendix
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.096%) IIS
Applications
1 544 (6.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 248 (2.98%) Microsoft Office
3 189 (2.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 178 (2.14%) Microsoft Project
5 135 (1.62%) MS Visio
6 54 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 11 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.096%) InVision
12 6 (0.072%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.060%) Notion
13 5 (0.060%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.048%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe Captivate
15 2 (0.024%) InDesign
15 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.024%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 350 (4.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.44%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.25%) Oracle Receivables
4 83 (1.00%) NetSuite
5 80 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 73 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.81%) SAP FI
8 65 (0.78%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.64%) SAP CO
11 49 (0.59%) SAP FI/CO
12 48 (0.58%) Oracle ERP
13 44 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
14 39 (0.47%) Oracle Cash Management
15 35 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
16 33 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
17 31 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.35%) Aladdin
19 26 (0.31%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,262 (15.18%) Azure
2 968 (11.65%) AWS
3 598 (7.19%) Power Platform
4 389 (4.68%) GCP
5 288 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
6 273 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
7 271 (3.26%) SaaS
8 245 (2.95%) Dynamics 365
9 222 (2.67%) GitHub
10 153 (1.84%) Serverless
11 139 (1.67%) OCI
12 134 (1.61%) Snowflake
13 121 (1.46%) Entra ID
14 113 (1.36%) Amazon S3
15 94 (1.13%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
17 85 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
18 84 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
19 80 (0.96%) OpenShift
20 73 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.96%) Firewall
2 102 (1.23%) Network Security
3 83 (1.00%) WAN
4 67 (0.81%) DNS
5 58 (0.70%) VPN
6 49 (0.59%) LAN
7 45 (0.54%) TCP/IP
8 44 (0.53%) SD-WAN
9 35 (0.42%) BGP
10 31 (0.37%) HTTP
10 31 (0.37%) SSL
11 30 (0.36%) OSPF
12 29 (0.35%) Multicast
13 26 (0.31%) Internet
14 25 (0.30%) Wireless
15 23 (0.28%) MPLS
16 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
17 19 (0.23%) DHCP
18 18 (0.22%) Skype
19 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 522 (6.28%) Power BI
2 216 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
3 207 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 180 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
5 154 (1.85%) Metadata
6 147 (1.77%) Tableau
7 123 (1.48%) Data Lake
8 120 (1.44%) Relational Database
9 101 (1.22%) NoSQL
9 101 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
10 77 (0.93%) Big Data
11 63 (0.76%) Oracle Database
12 61 (0.73%) BigQuery
13 55 (0.66%) MongoDB
14 48 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
17 40 (0.48%) Power Query
18 39 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
18 39 (0.47%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 679 (8.17%) JIRA
2 221 (2.66%) Jenkins
3 210 (2.53%) Git
4 139 (1.67%) GitLab
5 59 (0.71%) Cucumber
5 59 (0.71%) JUnit
6 43 (0.52%) Selenium
6 43 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
7 33 (0.40%) Postman
8 29 (0.35%) Bitbucket
8 29 (0.35%) Visual Studio
9 23 (0.28%) MLflow
10 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
11 19 (0.23%) Maven
12 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
12 17 (0.20%) SonarQube
13 16 (0.19%) ERwin
13 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
14 14 (0.17%) Hudson
15 13 (0.16%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,623 (31.56%) Social Skills
2 1,589 (19.12%) Banking
3 1,111 (13.37%) Analytical Skills
4 627 (7.54%) Public Sector
5 341 (4.10%) Financial Institution
6 317 (3.81%) Legal
7 283 (3.40%) Front Office
8 276 (3.32%) Investment Banking
9 246 (2.96%) Manufacturing
9 246 (2.96%) Marketing
10 244 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
11 240 (2.89%) Organisational Skills
12 224 (2.69%) Telecoms
13 207 (2.49%) Retail
14 191 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
15 139 (1.67%) General Ledger
16 125 (1.50%) Law
16 125 (1.50%) Local Government
17 121 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
18 120 (1.44%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,286 (15.47%) Analyst
2 846 (10.18%) Senior
3 844 (10.15%) Developer
4 787 (9.47%) Lead
5 738 (8.88%) Architect
6 687 (8.27%) Business Analyst
7 666 (8.01%) Project Manager
8 619 (7.45%) Consultant
9 290 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
10 232 (2.79%) Data Engineer
11 193 (2.32%) Financial Analyst
12 189 (2.27%) Senior Manager
13 185 (2.23%) Data Analyst
14 180 (2.17%) Finance Manager
15 173 (2.08%) Programme Manager
16 143 (1.72%) Java Developer
17 142 (1.71%) Accountant
18 141 (1.70%) Delivery Manager
19 132 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
19 132 (1.59%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (3.20%) REST
2 265 (3.19%) Kafka
3 206 (2.48%) .NET
4 194 (2.33%) React
5 159 (1.91%) Middleware
6 157 (1.89%) Oracle Fusion
7 141 (1.70%) Spring
8 139 (1.67%) RESTful
9 126 (1.52%) Spring Boot
10 115 (1.38%) Node.js
11 100 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 94 (1.13%) PySpark
13 82 (0.99%) XML
14 79 (0.95%) OAuth
15 76 (0.91%) JSON
16 74 (0.89%) HTML
17 71 (0.85%) Redux
18 70 (0.84%) CSS
19 65 (0.78%) Pandas
20 63 (0.76%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 351 (4.22%) Onboarding
2 308 (3.71%) Product Ownership
3 262 (3.15%) Cloud Native
4 205 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
5 182 (2.19%) Management Information System
6 165 (1.99%) Derivative
7 152 (1.83%) Data Centre
7 152 (1.83%) Data Structures
7 152 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
8 148 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
9 146 (1.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 141 (1.70%) Fixed Income
11 116 (1.40%) Equities
12 109 (1.31%) Public Cloud
13 103 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
14 100 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
15 95 (1.14%) Virtual Team
16 86 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
17 62 (0.75%) Hedge funds
17 62 (0.75%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 300 (3.61%) Linux
2 274 (3.30%) Windows
3 137 (1.65%) Unix
4 66 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 53 (0.64%) Windows 10
6 42 (0.51%) Android
7 35 (0.42%) Mac OS
8 25 (0.30%) Apple iOS
9 20 (0.24%) zOS
10 17 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.13%) AIX
12 10 (0.12%) Solaris
13 7 (0.084%) VMS
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,747 (21.02%) Agile
2 1,621 (19.50%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,234 (14.85%) Problem-Solving
4 1,104 (13.28%) Migration
5 942 (11.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 906 (10.90%) DevOps
7 878 (10.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 837 (10.07%) ERP
9 815 (9.81%) CI/CD
10 811 (9.76%) Analytics
11 797 (9.59%) Project Management
12 789 (9.49%) Business Intelligence
13 714 (8.59%) AI
14 656 (7.89%) Decision-Making
15 639 (7.69%) Data Modelling
16 633 (7.62%) Roadmaps
17 601 (7.23%) Validation
18 597 (7.18%) Change Management
19 587 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
20 578 (6.95%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,169 (14.06%) SQL
2 997 (11.99%) Python
3 549 (6.60%) Java
4 300 (3.61%) C#
5 226 (2.72%) JavaScript
6 190 (2.29%) TypeScript
7 167 (2.01%) PowerShell
8 114 (1.37%) C++
9 81 (0.97%) Go
10 71 (0.85%) Bash
11 70 (0.84%) PL/SQL
12 58 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 55 (0.66%) VBA
14 48 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.47%) Scala
17 38 (0.46%) R
18 30 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.34%) Bicep
20 26 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 781 (9.40%) Degree
2 715 (8.60%) Security Cleared
3 505 (6.08%) SC Cleared
4 203 (2.44%) PMP
5 202 (2.43%) PMI Certification
6 187 (2.25%) ACCA
7 176 (2.12%) CIMA
8 166 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
9 149 (1.79%) Master's Degree
10 143 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
11 119 (1.43%) CISSP
12 86 (1.03%) DV Cleared
13 83 (1.00%) CISM
14 70 (0.84%) Azure Certification
15 61 (0.73%) AWS Certification
16 43 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
17 37 (0.45%) ISTQB
17 37 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (0.41%) Microsoft Certification
19 29 (0.35%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 453 (5.45%) Data Quality
2 403 (4.85%) QA
3 343 (4.13%) PMO
4 296 (3.56%) GDPR
5 152 (1.83%) NIST
6 131 (1.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.36%) SLA
8 104 (1.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 92 (1.11%) IFRS
10 76 (0.91%) Accessibility
10 76 (0.91%) PCI DSS
11 71 (0.85%) GRC
12 59 (0.71%) ISO 20022
13 48 (0.58%) GAAP
14 40 (0.48%) PSD2
15 37 (0.45%) SEPA
16 36 (0.43%) NCSC
17 33 (0.40%) MiFID
18 28 (0.34%) Basel III
19 25 (0.30%) COBIT
System Software
1 307 (3.69%) Docker
2 150 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.40%) vSphere
5 24 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 15 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.14%) NFS
8 11 (0.13%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.096%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.060%) HDFS
13 4 (0.048%) ISA Server
13 4 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.036%) Firmware
14 3 (0.036%) GridGain
14 3 (0.036%) KVM
14 3 (0.036%) RACF
14 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 401 (4.82%) Kubernetes
2 261 (3.14%) Terraform
3 138 (1.66%) Ansible
4 97 (1.17%) Grafana
5 81 (0.97%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.60%) SCCM
8 35 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.24%) vRealize
11 18 (0.22%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.19%) Control-M
13 15 (0.18%) Argo
14 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.16%) Puppet
16 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.14%) CASB
16 12 (0.14%) HP ALM
17 11 (0.13%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,096 (13.19%) Microsoft
2 801 (9.64%) SAP
3 710 (8.54%) Oracle
4 322 (3.87%) ServiceNow
5 208 (2.50%) Databricks
6 193 (2.32%) Salesforce
7 179 (2.15%) Google
8 150 (1.80%) Cisco
9 141 (1.70%) Workday
10 131 (1.58%) Splunk
11 112 (1.35%) VMware
12 101 (1.22%) IBM
13 76 (0.91%) Citrix
14 74 (0.89%) Ariba
15 73 (0.88%) CyberArk
16 68 (0.82%) Sage
17 58 (0.70%) Informatica
18 53 (0.64%) OpenAI
19 52 (0.63%) Bloomberg
20 49 (0.59%) Murex