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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,739 7,395 8,172
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.51% 22.79% 19.12%
As % of the General category 33.83% 36.17% 33.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,041 4,859 5,475
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £422 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £719
90th Percentile £800 £813 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £494 £500
% change year-on-year +1.27% -1.25% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 148 248
10th Percentile £15.82 £16.00 £13.31
25th Percentile £20.45 £22.43 £17.97
Median hourly rate £42.30 £32.41 £32.20
Median % change year-on-year +30.54% +0.63% -0.92%
75th Percentile £56.38 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £87.10 £76.63 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.40 £35.00
% change year-on-year +60.44% -21.71% -13.42%

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 28,784 20,447 24,473
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.71% 63.01% 57.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,221 12,834 15,299
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £472 £490
% change year-on-year +5.93% -3.67% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,006 1,047 1,882
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.36 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.31 £16.00
Median hourly rate £33.00 £26.50 £32.90
Median % change year-on-year +24.53% -19.44% +7.71%
75th Percentile £62.94 £52.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £70.06 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.63 £32.12
% change year-on-year +45.82% -29.53% +23.52%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 8,493 £550 - 6,677
London 0 5,094 £581 -3.19% 2,966
UK excluding London +1 3,887 £500 +1.27% 4,864
Work from Home -1 2,839 £550 -4.35% 4,022
North of England 0 1,303 £500 +6.61% 1,237
South East 0 731 £500 -4.76% 1,235
North West +3 684 £475 +5.56% 600
Midlands +1 662 £500 +11.11% 718
Yorkshire 0 569 £525 +7.69% 480
Scotland 0 500 £475 -2.86% 453
West Midlands +1 489 £500 +1.63% 369
South West -4 381 £525 -4.55% 451
East of England +4 209 £530 -7.83% 491
East Midlands -1 165 £500 +15.61% 348
Wales +4 85 £525 +13.51% 186
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +11.76% 173
North East -19 51 £500 +13.96% 165
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 337 (3.46%) Confluence
2 226 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.84%) Apache Spark
4 75 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
5 61 (0.63%) Apache
6 45 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.35%) SAS
8 32 (0.33%) CMS
9 28 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.20%) CICS
10 19 (0.20%) IIS
11 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.12%) Camunda
12 12 (0.12%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.072%) Appian
16 6 (0.062%) Hyperledger
17 5 (0.051%) WebLogic
18 4 (0.041%) WordPress
Applications
1 515 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.28%) Microsoft Office
3 173 (1.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 156 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 110 (1.13%) MS Visio
6 70 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.051%) Sketch
9 5 (0.051%) Trello
10 4 (0.041%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.041%) Notion
10 4 (0.041%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.021%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.021%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.021%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.021%) Final Cut Pro
11 2 (0.021%) InVision
Business Applications
1 451 (4.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.23%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.16%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.04%) Oracle Receivables
5 82 (0.84%) Oracle ERP
6 75 (0.77%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 70 (0.72%) SAP FI
8 62 (0.64%) Oracle EBS
9 58 (0.60%) Oracle General Ledger
10 52 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
11 49 (0.50%) SAP CO
12 48 (0.49%) Oracle Financials
13 47 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
14 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
15 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
16 29 (0.30%) Workday HCM
17 27 (0.28%) SAP ERP
17 27 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
18 26 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
18 26 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,508 (15.48%) Azure
2 1,100 (11.29%) AWS
3 642 (6.59%) Power Platform
4 501 (5.14%) GCP
5 328 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
6 325 (3.34%) SaaS
7 277 (2.84%) Microsoft 365
8 275 (2.82%) GitHub
9 226 (2.32%) Dynamics 365
10 199 (2.04%) Snowflake
11 188 (1.93%) Entra ID
12 144 (1.48%) Serverless
13 129 (1.32%) OCI
14 126 (1.29%) Amazon S3
15 106 (1.09%) Power Automate
16 103 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
17 101 (1.04%) GitHub Actions
18 98 (1.01%) dbt
19 97 (1.00%) Microsoft Copilot
20 93 (0.95%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 191 (1.96%) Firewall
2 149 (1.53%) Network Security
3 88 (0.90%) DNS
4 84 (0.86%) VPN
5 64 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 59 (0.61%) WAN
7 45 (0.46%) BGP
7 45 (0.46%) SSL
8 39 (0.40%) LAN
9 36 (0.37%) DHCP
9 36 (0.37%) HTTP
10 34 (0.35%) Multicast
11 30 (0.31%) OSPF
12 26 (0.27%) Internet
13 24 (0.25%) MPLS
14 22 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
15 19 (0.20%) SD-WAN
15 19 (0.20%) Wireless
16 18 (0.18%) SAN
17 17 (0.17%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 539 (5.53%) Power BI
2 269 (2.76%) SQL Server
3 247 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.08%) Metadata
5 180 (1.85%) Relational Database
6 174 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
7 151 (1.55%) Tableau
8 142 (1.46%) Data Lake
9 91 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
10 81 (0.83%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 70 (0.72%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.71%) BigQuery
14 66 (0.68%) Big Data
15 65 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
16 50 (0.51%) Power Query
17 48 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 47 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
19 44 (0.45%) Delta Lake
20 40 (0.41%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 689 (7.07%) JIRA
2 261 (2.68%) Git
3 174 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.00%) GitLab
5 56 (0.58%) JUnit
6 45 (0.46%) Cucumber
7 42 (0.43%) Selenium
8 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.29%) Postman
10 27 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 25 (0.26%) ERwin
12 24 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 24 (0.25%) Visual Studio
13 23 (0.24%) Maven
13 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
14 20 (0.21%) MLflow
15 19 (0.20%) Zephyr
16 18 (0.18%) Bitbucket
17 17 (0.17%) Hudson
17 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,853 (29.29%) Social Skills
2 1,799 (18.47%) Banking
3 1,318 (13.53%) Analytical Skills
4 561 (5.76%) Public Sector
5 486 (4.99%) Legal
6 373 (3.83%) Investment Banking
7 366 (3.76%) Financial Institution
8 340 (3.49%) Front Office
9 332 (3.41%) Organisational Skills
10 324 (3.33%) Retail
11 263 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
12 241 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
13 189 (1.94%) Manufacturing
14 167 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 167 (1.71%) Local Government
15 162 (1.66%) Billing
16 157 (1.61%) General Ledger
17 147 (1.51%) Marketing
18 135 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
19 133 (1.37%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,437 (14.76%) Analyst
2 1,049 (10.77%) Lead
2 1,049 (10.77%) Senior
3 988 (10.14%) Developer
4 893 (9.17%) Architect
5 746 (7.66%) Business Analyst
6 716 (7.35%) Project Manager
7 653 (6.71%) Consultant
8 341 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
9 315 (3.23%) Data Engineer
10 239 (2.45%) Financial Analyst
11 237 (2.43%) Senior Manager
12 212 (2.18%) Java Developer
13 205 (2.10%) Accountant
14 200 (2.05%) Data Analyst
15 186 (1.91%) Finance Manager
16 185 (1.90%) Programme Manager
17 181 (1.86%) Senior Developer
18 178 (1.83%) Software Engineer
19 174 (1.79%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (3.17%) REST
2 270 (2.77%) React
3 269 (2.76%) .NET
4 268 (2.75%) Kafka
5 215 (2.21%) Oracle Fusion
6 200 (2.05%) Middleware
7 185 (1.90%) Spring
8 174 (1.79%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.40%) RESTful
10 117 (1.20%) PySpark
11 116 (1.19%) Redux
12 112 (1.15%) Node.js
13 94 (0.97%) AngularJS
13 94 (0.97%) JSON
14 93 (0.95%) OAuth
15 82 (0.84%) XML
16 66 (0.68%) CSS
17 65 (0.67%) SOAP
18 64 (0.66%) GraphQL
18 64 (0.66%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 460 (4.72%) Onboarding
2 424 (4.35%) Product Ownership
3 416 (4.27%) Cloud Native
4 270 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
5 221 (2.27%) Data Structures
6 219 (2.25%) Management Information System
7 179 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
7 179 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
8 176 (1.81%) Derivative
9 170 (1.75%) Fixed Income
10 168 (1.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 166 (1.70%) Data Centre
12 165 (1.69%) Virtual Team
13 141 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
14 131 (1.35%) AI Agents
15 126 (1.29%) Equities
16 120 (1.23%) Public Cloud
17 110 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 106 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
19 94 (0.97%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 325 (3.34%) Windows
2 283 (2.91%) Linux
3 160 (1.64%) Unix
4 72 (0.74%) Windows Server
5 39 (0.40%) Solaris
6 37 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 37 (0.38%) zOS
7 36 (0.37%) Apple iOS
7 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
8 29 (0.30%) Android
9 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.21%) AIX
11 9 (0.092%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.092%) VMS
12 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
13 6 (0.062%) HPUX
13 6 (0.062%) SUSE
14 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.041%) MVS
16 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,136 (21.93%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,962 (20.15%) Agile
3 1,352 (13.88%) Migration
4 1,302 (13.37%) Problem-Solving
5 1,135 (11.65%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,115 (11.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,078 (11.07%) AI
8 1,020 (10.47%) DevOps
9 1,006 (10.33%) CI/CD
10 1,002 (10.29%) ERP
11 967 (9.93%) Analytics
12 866 (8.89%) Decision-Making
13 814 (8.36%) Validation
14 805 (8.27%) Roadmaps
15 798 (8.19%) Data Modelling
16 770 (7.91%) User Acceptance Testing
17 767 (7.88%) Project Management
18 704 (7.23%) Change Management
19 677 (6.95%) Business Intelligence
20 625 (6.42%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,273 (13.07%) SQL
2 1,179 (12.11%) Python
3 652 (6.69%) Java
4 379 (3.89%) C#
5 262 (2.69%) TypeScript
6 260 (2.67%) JavaScript
7 223 (2.29%) PowerShell
8 100 (1.03%) Bash
9 92 (0.94%) PL/SQL
10 83 (0.85%) Go
11 81 (0.83%) C++
12 74 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 71 (0.73%) Shell Script
14 61 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 50 (0.51%) VBA
16 45 (0.46%) Scala
17 41 (0.42%) Bicep
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
19 34 (0.35%) Kotlin
20 28 (0.29%) Rust
Qualifications
1 743 (7.63%) Degree
2 738 (7.58%) Security Cleared
3 527 (5.41%) SC Cleared
4 228 (2.34%) PMP
5 206 (2.12%) ACCA
6 205 (2.10%) PMI Certification
7 191 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
8 184 (1.89%) CIMA
9 161 (1.65%) CISSP
10 128 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 110 (1.13%) DV Cleared
12 95 (0.98%) CISM
13 93 (0.95%) Azure Certification
14 85 (0.87%) Master's Degree
15 74 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
16 61 (0.63%) AWS Certification
17 46 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
17 46 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 602 (6.18%) Data Quality
2 422 (4.33%) QA
3 345 (3.54%) PMO
4 287 (2.95%) GDPR
5 163 (1.67%) NIST
6 129 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.15%) GRC
8 108 (1.11%) SLA
9 106 (1.09%) IFRS
10 102 (1.05%) Accessibility
11 96 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 69 (0.71%) ISO 20022
13 62 (0.64%) GAAP
14 54 (0.55%) PCI DSS
15 44 (0.45%) SEPA
16 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
17 34 (0.35%) NCSC
18 30 (0.31%) PSD2
18 30 (0.31%) SOC 2
19 29 (0.30%) MiFID
System Software
1 275 (2.82%) Docker
2 207 (2.13%) Active Directory
3 63 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.27%) vSphere
6 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
7 21 (0.22%) RACF
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.062%) IAG
12 6 (0.062%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.031%) ACF2
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
14 3 (0.031%) SRDF
15 2 (0.021%) zsh
Systems Management
1 441 (4.53%) Kubernetes
2 317 (3.25%) Terraform
3 161 (1.65%) Ansible
4 95 (0.98%) Grafana
5 80 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 69 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
8 50 (0.51%) SCCM
9 27 (0.28%) Control-M
10 19 (0.20%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,235 (12.68%) Microsoft
2 843 (8.66%) SAP
3 831 (8.53%) Oracle
4 345 (3.54%) ServiceNow
5 293 (3.01%) Databricks
6 218 (2.24%) Salesforce
7 212 (2.18%) Google
8 139 (1.43%) IBM
9 132 (1.36%) Workday
10 125 (1.28%) VMware
11 121 (1.24%) Splunk
12 108 (1.11%) Cisco
13 94 (0.97%) CyberArk
14 91 (0.93%) Ariba
15 68 (0.70%) Sage
16 67 (0.69%) OpenAI
17 65 (0.67%) Citrix
18 57 (0.59%) Informatica
19 54 (0.55%) Bloomberg
20 47 (0.48%) Murex