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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,214 6,388 8,273
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.74% 21.78% 18.69%
As % of the General category 32.94% 34.67% 32.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,211 4,201 5,550
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.96% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 214 104 227
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.29 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.83 £22.27 £15.33
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.70% +32.34% -4.24%
75th Percentile £44.44 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.40 £79.63 £55.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.04 £48.82 £31.47
% change year-on-year -54.86% +55.12% -10.09%

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 24,936 18,425 25,810
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.88% 62.82% 58.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,582 11,746 16,473
10th Percentile £300 £297 £266
25th Percentile £405 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £493
% change year-on-year - -3.60% -1.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,533 670 1,803
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.20 £12.81
25th Percentile £17.05 £20.12 £15.38
Median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +15.38% -25.71%
75th Percentile £57.50 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.75 £75.03 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £27.97 £25.00
% change year-on-year -15.98% +11.88% -16.67%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 7,272 £540 -7.69% 4,377
London 0 4,401 £575 -8.00% 2,079
UK excluding London 0 3,253 £500 - 3,035
Work from Home -2 2,310 £550 -5.82% 1,835
North of England +3 1,061 £475 - 707
South East -2 616 £503 -8.64% 1,045
Midlands -1 591 £475 -5.00% 444
North West +6 564 £455 -2.26% 387
Yorkshire 0 449 £500 +4.82% 243
West Midlands +2 390 £496 -5.52% 270
Scotland 0 368 £475 - 186
South West -3 327 £525 +4.95% 310
East of England -1 200 £520 -5.45% 274
East Midlands 0 196 £450 +4.05% 173
Wales +28 107 £413 +3.13% 94
North East -6 48 £481 +3.49% 90
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +61.54% 51
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
1 343 (4.18%) Confluence
2 208 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 51 (0.62%) Apache
6 46 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 33 (0.40%) SAS
8 25 (0.30%) CMS
9 18 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
11 16 (0.19%) CICS
12 15 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.17%) Camunda
13 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
14 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
15 12 (0.15%) TPMS
16 11 (0.13%) Mendix
17 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 8 (0.097%) IIS
Applications
1 528 (6.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 266 (3.24%) Microsoft Office
3 186 (2.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 184 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
5 139 (1.69%) MS Visio
6 47 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 13 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.097%) InVision
12 6 (0.073%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.061%) Notion
13 5 (0.061%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.049%) Adobe Captivate
14 4 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.037%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.024%) InDesign
16 2 (0.024%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 337 (4.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 100 (1.22%) Oracle Receivables
4 78 (0.95%) NetSuite
5 77 (0.94%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 73 (0.89%) Oracle EBS
7 66 (0.80%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.78%) Oracle General Ledger
9 55 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.65%) SAP CO
11 49 (0.60%) SAP FI/CO
12 43 (0.52%) Oracle Assets
13 42 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
14 37 (0.45%) Oracle Cash Management
15 36 (0.44%) Oracle EBS R12
16 35 (0.43%) Oracle Financials
17 32 (0.39%) Aladdin
17 32 (0.39%) Workday HCM
18 31 (0.38%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
19 22 (0.27%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,260 (15.34%) Azure
2 984 (11.98%) AWS
3 581 (7.07%) Power Platform
4 388 (4.72%) GCP
5 286 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
6 280 (3.41%) Microsoft 365
7 256 (3.12%) SaaS
8 242 (2.95%) Dynamics 365
9 222 (2.70%) GitHub
10 159 (1.94%) Serverless
11 137 (1.67%) OCI
12 133 (1.62%) Snowflake
13 119 (1.45%) Entra ID
14 112 (1.36%) Amazon S3
15 97 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
17 88 (1.07%) AWS Lambda
18 87 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
19 79 (0.96%) OpenShift
20 76 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.97%) Firewall
2 106 (1.29%) Network Security
3 87 (1.06%) WAN
4 64 (0.78%) DNS
5 57 (0.69%) VPN
6 55 (0.67%) LAN
7 45 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 44 (0.54%) TCP/IP
9 34 (0.41%) Wireless
10 33 (0.40%) BGP
11 29 (0.35%) OSPF
12 28 (0.34%) HTTP
13 27 (0.33%) Internet
13 27 (0.33%) Multicast
14 25 (0.30%) SSL
15 23 (0.28%) MPLS
16 20 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
17 18 (0.22%) DHCP
17 18 (0.22%) Skype
18 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 510 (6.21%) Power BI
2 223 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
3 203 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 185 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
5 150 (1.83%) Metadata
6 146 (1.78%) Tableau
7 121 (1.47%) Data Lake
8 120 (1.46%) Relational Database
9 103 (1.25%) NoSQL
10 92 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
11 78 (0.95%) Big Data
12 64 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.75%) MongoDB
14 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
15 46 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
17 42 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
18 37 (0.45%) Delta Lake
18 37 (0.45%) Power Query
18 37 (0.45%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 686 (8.35%) JIRA
2 241 (2.93%) Jenkins
3 211 (2.57%) Git
4 152 (1.85%) GitLab
5 65 (0.79%) JUnit
6 62 (0.75%) Cucumber
7 49 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.52%) Selenium
9 34 (0.41%) Bitbucket
9 34 (0.41%) Postman
10 31 (0.38%) Visual Studio
11 24 (0.29%) MLflow
12 22 (0.27%) REST Assured
13 21 (0.26%) Gradle
13 21 (0.26%) Maven
14 17 (0.21%) ERwin
14 17 (0.21%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.18%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.18%) TeamCity
General
1 2,667 (32.47%) Social Skills
2 1,580 (19.24%) Banking
3 1,083 (13.18%) Analytical Skills
4 648 (7.89%) Public Sector
5 347 (4.22%) Financial Institution
6 315 (3.83%) Legal
7 289 (3.52%) Front Office
8 282 (3.43%) Investment Banking
9 272 (3.31%) Marketing
10 265 (3.23%) Manufacturing
11 249 (3.03%) Organisational Skills
12 241 (2.93%) Telecoms
13 237 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
14 189 (2.30%) Retail
15 184 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
16 138 (1.68%) Electronics
17 135 (1.64%) General Ledger
18 126 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
19 121 (1.47%) Local Government
20 117 (1.42%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,261 (15.35%) Analyst
2 848 (10.32%) Senior
3 847 (10.31%) Developer
4 750 (9.13%) Lead
5 712 (8.67%) Architect
6 680 (8.28%) Project Manager
7 677 (8.24%) Business Analyst
8 610 (7.43%) Consultant
9 286 (3.48%) Solutions Architect
10 217 (2.64%) Data Engineer
11 188 (2.29%) Data Analyst
12 184 (2.24%) Programme Manager
13 183 (2.23%) Senior Manager
14 177 (2.15%) Financial Analyst
15 168 (2.05%) Finance Manager
16 139 (1.69%) Delivery Manager
16 139 (1.69%) Java Developer
17 132 (1.61%) Senior Developer
18 130 (1.58%) Accountant
19 129 (1.57%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (3.31%) REST
2 267 (3.25%) Kafka
3 206 (2.51%) .NET
4 196 (2.39%) React
5 157 (1.91%) Oracle Fusion
6 151 (1.84%) Middleware
7 140 (1.70%) Spring
8 138 (1.68%) RESTful
9 124 (1.51%) Spring Boot
10 114 (1.39%) Node.js
11 105 (1.28%) AngularJS
12 96 (1.17%) PySpark
13 84 (1.02%) XML
14 78 (0.95%) HTML
15 77 (0.94%) JSON
16 76 (0.93%) OAuth
17 74 (0.90%) CSS
18 71 (0.86%) Pandas
19 69 (0.84%) Redux
20 66 (0.80%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 355 (4.32%) Onboarding
2 313 (3.81%) Product Ownership
3 259 (3.15%) Cloud Native
4 202 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
5 189 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 169 (2.06%) Derivative
7 157 (1.91%) Data Centre
8 150 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
9 149 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
10 147 (1.79%) Data Structures
11 146 (1.78%) Fixed Income
12 142 (1.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 126 (1.53%) Equities
14 109 (1.33%) Public Cloud
15 104 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
16 96 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
17 90 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
18 88 (1.07%) Virtual Team
19 68 (0.83%) Hedge funds
20 63 (0.77%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 313 (3.81%) Linux
2 275 (3.35%) Windows
3 143 (1.74%) Unix
4 64 (0.78%) Windows Server
5 56 (0.68%) Windows 10
6 54 (0.66%) Android
7 43 (0.52%) Mac OS
8 25 (0.30%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.21%) zOS
10 16 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.13%) AIX
12 8 (0.097%) Solaris
13 7 (0.085%) VMS
14 5 (0.061%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.061%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.061%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.037%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.012%) MVS
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,782 (21.69%) Agile
2 1,597 (19.44%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,243 (15.13%) Problem-Solving
4 1,070 (13.03%) Migration
5 913 (11.12%) DevOps
6 911 (11.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 833 (10.14%) Continuous Improvement
8 821 (10.00%) CI/CD
9 799 (9.73%) Project Management
10 796 (9.69%) Analytics
11 791 (9.63%) Business Intelligence
12 778 (9.47%) ERP
13 675 (8.22%) AI
14 643 (7.83%) Decision-Making
15 633 (7.71%) Roadmaps
16 629 (7.66%) Data Modelling
17 582 (7.09%) Validation
18 580 (7.06%) Project Delivery
19 577 (7.02%) Change Management
20 561 (6.83%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,166 (14.20%) SQL
2 1,029 (12.53%) Python
3 555 (6.76%) Java
4 301 (3.66%) C#
5 234 (2.85%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.37%) TypeScript
7 172 (2.09%) PowerShell
8 116 (1.41%) C++
9 80 (0.97%) Go
10 73 (0.89%) Bash
11 65 (0.79%) PL/SQL
12 54 (0.66%) T-SQL
13 52 (0.63%) VBA
14 47 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 45 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 41 (0.50%) Scala
17 37 (0.45%) R
18 35 (0.43%) Kotlin
19 30 (0.37%) Rust
20 27 (0.33%) Korn
Qualifications
1 793 (9.65%) Degree
2 711 (8.66%) Security Cleared
3 511 (6.22%) SC Cleared
4 205 (2.50%) PMI Certification
5 201 (2.45%) PMP
6 173 (2.11%) ACCA
7 169 (2.06%) Computer Science Degree
8 162 (1.97%) CIMA
9 155 (1.89%) Master's Degree
10 138 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
11 115 (1.40%) CISSP
12 82 (1.00%) CISM
13 79 (0.96%) DV Cleared
14 71 (0.86%) Azure Certification
15 66 (0.80%) AWS Certification
16 41 (0.50%) Cisco Certification
17 36 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
17 36 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 35 (0.43%) ISTQB
19 33 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 441 (5.37%) Data Quality
2 414 (5.04%) QA
3 337 (4.10%) PMO
4 290 (3.53%) GDPR
5 140 (1.70%) NIST
6 122 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 110 (1.34%) SLA
9 85 (1.03%) IFRS
10 79 (0.96%) Accessibility
11 75 (0.91%) PCI DSS
12 69 (0.84%) GRC
13 58 (0.71%) ISO 20022
14 45 (0.55%) GAAP
15 44 (0.54%) PSD2
16 38 (0.46%) SEPA
17 37 (0.45%) MiFID
18 36 (0.44%) NCSC
19 28 (0.34%) Basel III
20 27 (0.33%) COBIT
System Software
1 321 (3.91%) Docker
2 149 (1.81%) Active Directory
3 57 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.40%) vSphere
5 25 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.13%) GPFS
8 11 (0.13%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.061%) HDFS
13 4 (0.049%) Firmware
13 4 (0.049%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.037%) GridGain
14 3 (0.037%) KVM
14 3 (0.037%) RACF
14 3 (0.037%) SRDF
14 3 (0.037%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 411 (5.00%) Kubernetes
2 263 (3.20%) Terraform
3 154 (1.87%) Ansible
4 97 (1.18%) Grafana
5 87 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.62%) SCCM
8 40 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.23%) Progress Chef
10 19 (0.23%) vRealize
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
11 16 (0.19%) Control-M
12 14 (0.17%) Puppet
12 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
13 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.16%) HP ALM
14 12 (0.15%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Kibana
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,073 (13.06%) Microsoft
2 807 (9.82%) SAP
3 691 (8.41%) Oracle
4 305 (3.71%) ServiceNow
5 196 (2.39%) Databricks
6 192 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 177 (2.15%) Google
8 158 (1.92%) Cisco
9 143 (1.74%) Workday
10 130 (1.58%) Splunk
11 111 (1.35%) VMware
12 97 (1.18%) IBM
13 74 (0.90%) Citrix
14 71 (0.86%) CyberArk
15 70 (0.85%) Ariba
16 65 (0.79%) Sage
17 58 (0.71%) Informatica
18 54 (0.66%) HP
19 53 (0.65%) Bloomberg
19 53 (0.65%) Murex