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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,531 6,474 8,126
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.12% 22.19% 18.76%
As % of the General category 33.26% 35.10% 32.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,366 4,248 5,406
10th Percentile £352 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £572 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.77% -0.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £700
90th Percentile £798 £827 £819
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 110 246
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.16 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.12 £22.27 £15.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £35.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.89% +31.48% -11.84%
75th Percentile £50.00 £67.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £83.20 £55.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £36.00 £32.12
% change year-on-year -38.68% +12.10% -28.63%

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 25,650 18,445 25,224
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.48% 63.22% 58.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,833 11,783 15,923
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £409 £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 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £496
% change year-on-year - -4.23% -0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,652 796 1,931
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.08 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% -6.42% -14.29%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.83
90th Percentile £79.90 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £25.29 £27.84
% change year-on-year +1.90% -9.14% -8.86%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 7,560 £538 -6.52% 3,566
London 0 4,562 £575 -8.00% 1,795
UK excluding London 0 3,401 £500 - 2,446
Work from Home -2 2,388 £530 -11.67% 1,457
North of England +3 1,134 £475 - 589
South East -1 652 £503 -2.88% 858
North West +6 612 £464 -0.27% 313
Midlands -1 586 £475 -5.00% 368
Yorkshire +1 481 £500 - 211
Scotland 0 400 £500 +2.25% 113
West Midlands 0 389 £492 -6.29% 225
South West -2 342 £508 +1.50% 267
East of England -4 199 £525 -4.55% 197
East Midlands 0 193 £450 +0.67% 140
Wales +25 98 £413 +10.00% 45
Northern Ireland -1 42 £513 +28.13% 68
North East -10 42 £488 +4.84% 76
Channel Islands - 2 £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
1 333 (3.90%) Confluence
2 217 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.03%) Apache Spark
4 56 (0.66%) Apache
4 56 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
5 53 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
6 39 (0.46%) SAS
7 25 (0.29%) CMS
8 20 (0.23%) CICS
9 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.19%) Appian
11 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.16%) Camunda
11 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.15%) IIS
13 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) TPMS
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 539 (6.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 232 (2.72%) Microsoft Office
3 179 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 174 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
5 128 (1.50%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 34 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.16%) Trello
9 8 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.094%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
10 7 (0.082%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 363 (4.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 99 (1.16%) NetSuite
5 85 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 73 (0.86%) Oracle EBS
7 64 (0.75%) SAP FI
8 60 (0.70%) Oracle ERP
8 60 (0.70%) Oracle General Ledger
9 53 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
10 52 (0.61%) SAP CO
11 48 (0.56%) SAP FI/CO
12 41 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
13 35 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
14 34 (0.40%) Oracle Cash Management
14 34 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
15 31 (0.36%) Aladdin
16 30 (0.35%) SAP ERP
16 30 (0.35%) Workday HCM
17 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,285 (15.06%) Azure
2 982 (11.51%) AWS
3 618 (7.24%) Power Platform
4 393 (4.61%) GCP
5 290 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
6 283 (3.32%) SaaS
7 268 (3.14%) Microsoft 365
8 242 (2.84%) Dynamics 365
9 238 (2.79%) GitHub
10 148 (1.73%) Serverless
11 146 (1.71%) Snowflake
12 137 (1.61%) OCI
13 130 (1.52%) Entra ID
14 119 (1.39%) Amazon S3
15 107 (1.25%) Power Automate
16 92 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
16 92 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 88 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
17 88 (1.03%) OpenShift
18 79 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.90%) Firewall
2 113 (1.32%) Network Security
3 76 (0.89%) WAN
4 68 (0.80%) DNS
5 61 (0.72%) VPN
6 46 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 42 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 40 (0.47%) LAN
9 35 (0.41%) BGP
10 31 (0.36%) HTTP
11 30 (0.35%) OSPF
12 28 (0.33%) SSL
13 27 (0.32%) Multicast
14 24 (0.28%) MPLS
15 22 (0.26%) DHCP
15 22 (0.26%) Internet
16 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
18 17 (0.20%) VSAN
19 16 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 534 (6.26%) Power BI
2 215 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
3 212 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 165 (1.93%) Metadata
5 163 (1.91%) PostgreSQL
6 149 (1.75%) Tableau
7 135 (1.58%) Relational Database
8 125 (1.47%) Data Lake
9 93 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
10 88 (1.03%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.93%) Big Data
12 66 (0.77%) Oracle Database
13 59 (0.69%) BigQuery
13 59 (0.69%) MongoDB
14 47 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
15 42 (0.49%) Power Query
15 42 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
16 41 (0.48%) DynamoDB
16 41 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 40 (0.47%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 686 (8.04%) JIRA
2 218 (2.56%) Git
3 192 (2.25%) Jenkins
4 116 (1.36%) GitLab
5 55 (0.64%) Cucumber
5 55 (0.64%) JUnit
6 44 (0.52%) Selenium
7 40 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
8 30 (0.35%) Postman
9 27 (0.32%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.29%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.29%) MLflow
11 22 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
14 18 (0.21%) Maven
15 17 (0.20%) ERwin
15 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
16 16 (0.19%) Hudson
17 15 (0.18%) TeamCity
General
1 2,611 (30.61%) Social Skills
2 1,566 (18.36%) Banking
3 1,162 (13.62%) Analytical Skills
4 562 (6.59%) Public Sector
5 339 (3.97%) Legal
6 331 (3.88%) Financial Institution
7 282 (3.31%) Front Office
8 280 (3.28%) Investment Banking
9 240 (2.81%) Organisational Skills
10 236 (2.77%) Retail
11 235 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
12 211 (2.47%) Manufacturing
13 207 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
14 199 (2.33%) Marketing
15 173 (2.03%) Telecoms
16 140 (1.64%) General Ledger
17 124 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
18 123 (1.44%) Local Government
19 121 (1.42%) Law
20 119 (1.39%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,307 (15.32%) Analyst
2 876 (10.27%) Developer
2 876 (10.27%) Senior
3 850 (9.96%) Lead
4 770 (9.03%) Architect
5 698 (8.18%) Business Analyst
6 680 (7.97%) Project Manager
7 602 (7.06%) Consultant
8 307 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
9 265 (3.11%) Data Engineer
10 209 (2.45%) Financial Analyst
11 202 (2.37%) Senior Manager
12 189 (2.22%) Finance Manager
13 186 (2.18%) Data Analyst
14 171 (2.00%) Programme Manager
15 157 (1.84%) Accountant
16 155 (1.82%) Java Developer
17 139 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
17 139 (1.63%) Senior Analyst
18 127 (1.49%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (3.14%) Kafka
2 250 (2.93%) REST
3 229 (2.68%) .NET
4 197 (2.31%) React
5 174 (2.04%) Middleware
6 151 (1.77%) Oracle Fusion
7 149 (1.75%) Spring
8 138 (1.62%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.58%) RESTful
10 109 (1.28%) Node.js
11 99 (1.16%) PySpark
12 93 (1.09%) AngularJS
13 85 (1.00%) OAuth
14 76 (0.89%) JSON
14 76 (0.89%) XML
15 73 (0.86%) Redux
16 72 (0.84%) HTML
17 69 (0.81%) CSS
18 66 (0.77%) Pandas
19 60 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 358 (4.20%) Onboarding
2 329 (3.86%) Product Ownership
3 296 (3.47%) Cloud Native
4 227 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
5 195 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 173 (2.03%) Data Structures
7 168 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
8 167 (1.96%) Derivative
9 140 (1.64%) Data Centre
9 140 (1.64%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 138 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
10 138 (1.62%) Fixed Income
11 109 (1.28%) Analytical Mindset
12 107 (1.25%) Equities
13 101 (1.18%) Public Cloud
14 99 (1.16%) Virtual Team
15 94 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
16 79 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
17 68 (0.80%) Mainframe
18 67 (0.79%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 277 (3.25%) Linux
1 277 (3.25%) Windows
2 146 (1.71%) Unix
3 72 (0.84%) Windows Server
4 49 (0.57%) Windows 10
5 31 (0.36%) Android
6 30 (0.35%) Apple iOS
7 26 (0.30%) Solaris
7 26 (0.30%) zOS
8 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.25%) Mac OS
10 18 (0.21%) AIX
11 8 (0.094%) VMS
12 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.059%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.047%) HPUX
14 4 (0.047%) MVS
14 4 (0.047%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,781 (20.88%) Agile
2 1,682 (19.72%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,242 (14.56%) Problem-Solving
4 1,163 (13.63%) Migration
5 948 (11.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 943 (11.05%) Continuous Improvement
7 917 (10.75%) DevOps
8 900 (10.55%) ERP
9 866 (10.15%) CI/CD
10 831 (9.74%) Analytics
11 805 (9.44%) AI
12 800 (9.38%) Project Management
13 756 (8.86%) Business Intelligence
14 707 (8.29%) Decision-Making
15 677 (7.94%) Data Modelling
16 669 (7.84%) Roadmaps
17 653 (7.65%) Validation
18 636 (7.46%) User Acceptance Testing
19 589 (6.90%) Change Management
20 573 (6.72%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,190 (13.95%) SQL
2 1,017 (11.92%) Python
3 570 (6.68%) Java
4 327 (3.83%) C#
5 215 (2.52%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 165 (1.93%) PowerShell
8 103 (1.21%) C++
9 73 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 71 (0.83%) Bash
11 67 (0.79%) Go
12 62 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 52 (0.61%) Shell Script
13 52 (0.61%) VBA
14 49 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 42 (0.49%) Scala
16 36 (0.42%) R
17 31 (0.36%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.32%) Bicep
19 26 (0.30%) Korn
Qualifications
1 756 (8.86%) Degree
2 692 (8.11%) Security Cleared
3 487 (5.71%) SC Cleared
4 208 (2.44%) ACCA
5 206 (2.41%) PMP
6 196 (2.30%) PMI Certification
7 193 (2.26%) CIMA
8 147 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
9 145 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
10 124 (1.45%) Master's Degree
11 123 (1.44%) CISSP
12 83 (0.97%) CISM
13 81 (0.95%) DV Cleared
14 67 (0.79%) Azure Certification
15 63 (0.74%) AWS Certification
16 45 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
17 40 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
18 38 (0.45%) ISTQB
19 32 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
20 31 (0.36%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 486 (5.70%) Data Quality
2 423 (4.96%) QA
3 335 (3.93%) PMO
4 305 (3.58%) GDPR
5 149 (1.75%) NIST
6 121 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 103 (1.21%) SLA
8 98 (1.15%) IFRS
9 96 (1.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 77 (0.90%) Accessibility
11 72 (0.84%) PCI DSS
12 71 (0.83%) GRC
13 56 (0.66%) ISO 20022
14 52 (0.61%) GAAP
15 38 (0.45%) PSD2
16 36 (0.42%) SEPA
17 34 (0.40%) NCSC
18 27 (0.32%) Basel III
19 25 (0.29%) MiFID
20 24 (0.28%) EMIR
System Software
1 293 (3.43%) Docker
2 150 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 58 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.36%) vSphere
5 24 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.13%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.059%) HDFS
10 5 (0.059%) RACF
11 4 (0.047%) ACF2
11 4 (0.047%) Firmware
11 4 (0.047%) KVM
11 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.035%) GridGain
12 3 (0.035%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 400 (4.69%) Kubernetes
2 257 (3.01%) Terraform
3 124 (1.45%) Ansible
4 89 (1.04%) Grafana
5 70 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.57%) SCCM
8 35 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.30%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.22%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Control-M
12 16 (0.19%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.16%) Progress Chef
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
15 11 (0.13%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,105 (12.95%) Microsoft
2 781 (9.15%) SAP
3 716 (8.39%) Oracle
4 315 (3.69%) ServiceNow
5 224 (2.63%) Databricks
6 190 (2.23%) Salesforce
7 177 (2.07%) Google
8 143 (1.68%) Workday
9 120 (1.41%) Cisco
10 114 (1.34%) Splunk
11 108 (1.27%) VMware
12 98 (1.15%) IBM
13 78 (0.91%) Citrix
14 76 (0.89%) Ariba
15 75 (0.88%) Sage
16 74 (0.87%) CyberArk
17 55 (0.64%) Informatica
17 55 (0.64%) OpenAI
18 52 (0.61%) Bloomberg
19 49 (0.57%) Murex