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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,795 7,510 7,824
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.55% 22.79% 19.48%
As % of the General category 33.77% 36.19% 33.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,044 4,939 5,252
10th Percentile £358 £332 £356
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £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 278 145 208
10th Percentile £16.18 £15.69 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +31.49%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £42.31
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.29 £38.12
% change year-on-year +61.07% -28.40% +15.72%

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 29,004 20,749 23,018
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.93% 62.96% 57.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,299 12,986 14,521
10th Percentile £313 £280 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £634 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £494
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.86% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,057 1,094 1,537
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.36 £13.67
25th Percentile £18.27 £16.25 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.00 £25.32 £36.17
Median % change year-on-year +30.33% -29.99% +18.42%
75th Percentile £61.18 £51.16 £57.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.11 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.32 £37.50
% change year-on-year +47.85% -40.48% +42.86%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 8,548 £550 - 5,143
London 0 5,152 £585 -2.50% 2,911
UK excluding London -1 3,867 £500 +2.04% 2,962
Work from Home -1 2,837 £550 -3.93% 1,936
North of England 0 1,315 £500 +6.50% 784
South East -1 737 £501 -4.52% 903
North West +1 693 £492 +9.33% 410
Midlands 0 634 £500 +11.11% 465
Yorkshire 0 568 £517 +6.56% 271
Scotland 0 489 £475 -3.46% 179
West Midlands +1 488 £514 +8.21% 272
South West -4 384 £525 -4.55% 318
East of England +8 213 £530 -7.83% 208
East Midlands -3 141 £500 +19.05% 192
Wales +2 78 £525 +13.51% 85
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +1.06% 69
North East -17 54 £500 +14.29% 110
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 2

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
1 325 (3.32%) Confluence
2 241 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 85 (0.87%) Apache Spark
4 78 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
5 64 (0.65%) Apache
6 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) CMS
8 32 (0.33%) SAS
9 27 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.12%) Camunda
14 9 (0.092%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.082%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 521 (5.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 216 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
3 169 (1.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (1.65%) Microsoft Project
5 106 (1.08%) MS Visio
6 72 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) 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
1 446 (4.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.20%) Oracle Payables
3 115 (1.17%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 88 (0.90%) Oracle ERP
6 70 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 70 (0.71%) SAP FI
7 68 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
8 58 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
10 51 (0.52%) Oracle Financials
11 48 (0.49%) SAP CO
12 46 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
13 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
14 35 (0.36%) Unit4 Business World
15 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
16 31 (0.32%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.29%) SAP GRC
18 27 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
18 27 (0.28%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,536 (15.68%) Azure
2 1,106 (11.29%) AWS
3 657 (6.71%) Power Platform
4 518 (5.29%) GCP
5 332 (3.39%) Azure DevOps
5 332 (3.39%) SaaS
6 287 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
7 277 (2.83%) GitHub
8 252 (2.57%) Dynamics 365
9 211 (2.15%) Snowflake
10 199 (2.03%) Entra ID
11 140 (1.43%) Serverless
12 135 (1.38%) OCI
13 125 (1.28%) Amazon S3
14 113 (1.15%) Power Automate
15 109 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
16 104 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
17 100 (1.02%) dbt
17 100 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
18 94 (0.96%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 188 (1.92%) Firewall
2 139 (1.42%) Network Security
3 92 (0.94%) DNS
4 88 (0.90%) VPN
5 64 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 53 (0.54%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) SSL
8 47 (0.48%) BGP
9 40 (0.41%) DHCP
10 37 (0.38%) HTTP
11 36 (0.37%) LAN
12 34 (0.35%) Multicast
13 29 (0.30%) OSPF
14 25 (0.26%) VLAN
14 25 (0.26%) Wireless
15 23 (0.23%) Internet
16 21 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
17 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
18 19 (0.19%) MPLS
18 19 (0.19%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 545 (5.56%) Power BI
2 276 (2.82%) SQL Server
3 254 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
4 206 (2.10%) Metadata
5 178 (1.82%) Relational Database
6 167 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
7 156 (1.59%) Tableau
8 141 (1.44%) Data Lake
9 86 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
10 83 (0.85%) NoSQL
11 75 (0.77%) Oracle Database
12 72 (0.74%) BigQuery
12 72 (0.74%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.67%) Big Data
14 65 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
15 49 (0.50%) Delta Lake
15 49 (0.50%) Power Query
16 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
17 47 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 42 (0.43%) Db2
Development Applications
1 674 (6.88%) JIRA
2 265 (2.71%) Git
3 156 (1.59%) Jenkins
4 93 (0.95%) GitLab
5 49 (0.50%) JUnit
6 40 (0.41%) Selenium
7 39 (0.40%) Cucumber
8 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.29%) ERwin
9 28 (0.29%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.26%) Postman
11 24 (0.25%) Bitbucket
12 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 23 (0.23%) SonarQube
12 23 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 22 (0.22%) Maven
13 22 (0.22%) REST Assured
14 19 (0.19%) MLflow
14 19 (0.19%) TeamCity
15 18 (0.18%) ER Studio
General
1 2,853 (29.13%) Social Skills
2 1,844 (18.83%) Banking
3 1,348 (13.76%) Analytical Skills
4 555 (5.67%) Public Sector
5 505 (5.16%) Legal
6 369 (3.77%) Organisational Skills
7 367 (3.75%) Investment Banking
8 359 (3.67%) Financial Institution
9 348 (3.55%) Front Office
10 343 (3.50%) Retail
11 264 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
12 232 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
13 191 (1.95%) Manufacturing
14 171 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 163 (1.66%) Billing
16 161 (1.64%) Marketing
17 157 (1.60%) Local Government
18 154 (1.57%) General Ledger
19 139 (1.42%) Law
19 139 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,447 (14.77%) Analyst
2 1,069 (10.91%) Lead
3 1,045 (10.67%) Senior
4 989 (10.10%) Developer
5 880 (8.98%) Architect
6 743 (7.59%) Business Analyst
7 710 (7.25%) Project Manager
8 657 (6.71%) Consultant
9 330 (3.37%) Solutions Architect
10 316 (3.23%) Data Engineer
11 249 (2.54%) Financial Analyst
12 223 (2.28%) Senior Manager
13 213 (2.17%) Java Developer
14 208 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 205 (2.09%) Accountant
16 186 (1.90%) Programme Manager
16 186 (1.90%) Senior Developer
17 181 (1.85%) Finance Manager
18 180 (1.84%) Software Engineer
19 173 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 321 (3.28%) REST
2 275 (2.81%) .NET
3 273 (2.79%) React
4 270 (2.76%) Kafka
5 226 (2.31%) Oracle Fusion
6 198 (2.02%) Middleware
7 185 (1.89%) Spring
8 174 (1.78%) Spring Boot
9 132 (1.35%) RESTful
10 128 (1.31%) PySpark
11 120 (1.23%) Redux
12 113 (1.15%) Node.js
13 97 (0.99%) JSON
14 92 (0.94%) OAuth
15 90 (0.92%) AngularJS
16 89 (0.91%) XML
17 69 (0.70%) SOAP
18 66 (0.67%) Web Services
19 64 (0.65%) CSS
20 63 (0.64%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 468 (4.78%) Onboarding
2 445 (4.54%) Product Ownership
3 410 (4.19%) Cloud Native
4 271 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
5 239 (2.44%) Data Structures
6 223 (2.28%) Management Information System
7 184 (1.88%) Virtual Team
8 182 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
9 177 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
10 175 (1.79%) Derivative
11 171 (1.75%) Fixed Income
12 168 (1.72%) Data Centre
13 160 (1.63%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 145 (1.48%) AI Agents
15 140 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
16 123 (1.26%) Equities
17 112 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
18 104 (1.06%) Public Cloud
19 102 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
20 98 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 342 (3.49%) Windows
2 285 (2.91%) Linux
3 157 (1.60%) Unix
4 78 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (0.40%) Solaris
7 38 (0.39%) Apple iOS
8 37 (0.38%) zOS
9 35 (0.36%) Windows 10
10 30 (0.31%) Android
11 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
12 20 (0.20%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 9 (0.092%) VMS
15 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 5 (0.051%) MVS
18 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2012
19 2 (0.020%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,198 (22.44%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,999 (20.41%) Agile
3 1,363 (13.92%) Migration
4 1,293 (13.20%) Problem-Solving
5 1,156 (11.80%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,121 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,110 (11.33%) AI
8 1,030 (10.52%) ERP
9 1,006 (10.27%) DevOps
10 1,000 (10.21%) CI/CD
11 986 (10.07%) Analytics
12 890 (9.09%) Decision-Making
13 815 (8.32%) Roadmaps
14 812 (8.29%) Validation
15 782 (7.98%) Data Modelling
16 762 (7.78%) User Acceptance Testing
17 753 (7.69%) Project Management
18 706 (7.21%) Change Management
19 677 (6.91%) Business Intelligence
20 635 (6.48%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,263 (12.89%) SQL
2 1,198 (12.23%) Python
3 654 (6.68%) Java
4 381 (3.89%) C#
5 261 (2.66%) JavaScript
6 255 (2.60%) TypeScript
7 230 (2.35%) PowerShell
8 109 (1.11%) Bash
9 93 (0.95%) PL/SQL
10 80 (0.82%) Go
11 78 (0.80%) C++
12 76 (0.78%) Shell Script
13 73 (0.75%) T-SQL
14 61 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 49 (0.50%) VBA
16 48 (0.49%) Bicep
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 36 (0.37%) Scala
19 34 (0.35%) Apex Code
20 29 (0.30%) Korn
Qualifications
1 766 (7.82%) Security Cleared
2 721 (7.36%) Degree
3 545 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 234 (2.39%) PMP
5 212 (2.16%) PMI Certification
6 198 (2.02%) ACCA
7 196 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
8 175 (1.79%) CIMA
9 153 (1.56%) CISSP
10 132 (1.35%) DV Cleared
11 121 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 97 (0.99%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.89%) CISM
14 79 (0.81%) Master's Degree
15 75 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 61 (0.62%) AWS Certification
17 53 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 623 (6.36%) Data Quality
2 425 (4.34%) QA
3 363 (3.71%) PMO
4 279 (2.85%) GDPR
5 148 (1.51%) NIST
6 121 (1.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 109 (1.11%) GRC
8 106 (1.08%) SLA
9 105 (1.07%) Accessibility
10 103 (1.05%) IFRS
11 99 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 63 (0.64%) GAAP
13 62 (0.63%) ISO 20022
14 50 (0.51%) PCI DSS
15 38 (0.39%) SEPA
16 33 (0.34%) Solvency II
17 30 (0.31%) MiFID
17 30 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 29 (0.30%) EMIR
19 28 (0.29%) PSD2
System Software
1 274 (2.80%) Docker
2 215 (2.19%) Active Directory
3 66 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.27%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 20 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
14 3 (0.031%) SRDF
15 2 (0.020%) zsh
Systems Management
1 432 (4.41%) Kubernetes
2 328 (3.35%) Terraform
3 159 (1.62%) Ansible
4 93 (0.95%) Grafana
5 76 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 69 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.50%) SCCM
9 27 (0.28%) Control-M
10 20 (0.20%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) Argo
11 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 13 (0.13%) Puppet
15 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.12%) Nessus
16 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,286 (13.13%) Microsoft
2 843 (8.61%) Oracle
3 835 (8.52%) SAP
4 355 (3.62%) ServiceNow
5 301 (3.07%) Databricks
6 222 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 211 (2.15%) Google
8 154 (1.57%) IBM
9 136 (1.39%) Workday
10 129 (1.32%) VMware
11 107 (1.09%) Cisco
11 107 (1.09%) Splunk
12 90 (0.92%) Ariba
13 86 (0.88%) CyberArk
14 71 (0.72%) OpenAI
15 65 (0.66%) Sage
16 62 (0.63%) Citrix
17 53 (0.54%) Informatica
18 52 (0.53%) Bloomberg
19 44 (0.45%) F5