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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,233 6,370 8,274
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.79% 21.87% 18.69%
As % of the General category 33.11% 34.77% 32.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,227 4,209 5,541
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £444 £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 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 215 104 235
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.29 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.98 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.70% +32.34% -8.96%
75th Percentile £43.88 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.40 £79.63 £53.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £48.82 £30.83
% change year-on-year -54.78% +58.36% -15.95%

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 24,864 18,322 25,812
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.74% 62.89% 58.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,517 11,749 16,454
10th Percentile £300 £296 £265
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 £649 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,544 678 1,819
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.00 £15.27
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 £75.55 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £27.97 £25.00
% change year-on-year -15.71% +11.88% -19.70%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 7,287 £538 -8.12% 4,205
London 0 4,412 £575 -8.00% 2,008
UK excluding London 0 3,258 £500 - 2,929
Work from Home -2 2,307 £550 -5.58% 1,687
North of England +3 1,068 £475 +1.28% 690
South East -2 619 £503 -8.64% 1,015
Midlands -1 591 £475 -5.00% 410
North West +6 569 £452 -2.74% 377
Yorkshire 0 450 £500 +5.04% 241
West Midlands +2 387 £492 -6.29% 249
Scotland 0 367 £475 - 169
South West -4 322 £525 +2.94% 290
East Midlands 0 199 £450 +2.68% 161
East of England -2 199 £520 -5.45% 270
Wales +27 107 £413 +3.13% 85
North East -6 49 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +61.54% 59
Channel Islands - 1 - - 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
1 344 (4.18%) Confluence
2 211 (2.56%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.70%) Microsoft Exchange
5 51 (0.62%) Apache
6 46 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 33 (0.40%) SAS
8 24 (0.29%) 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
1 527 (6.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 261 (3.17%) Microsoft Office
3 188 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 184 (2.23%) Microsoft Project
5 137 (1.66%) MS Visio
6 48 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.45%) 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 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.024%) InDesign
15 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.024%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 341 (4.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 117 (1.42%) Oracle Payables
3 101 (1.23%) 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%) Oracle General Ledger
7 66 (0.80%) SAP FI
8 55 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
9 53 (0.64%) SAP CO
10 49 (0.60%) SAP FI/CO
11 43 (0.52%) Oracle Assets
12 42 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
13 37 (0.45%) Oracle Cash Management
14 36 (0.44%) Oracle EBS R12
15 35 (0.43%) Oracle Financials
16 33 (0.40%) Workday HCM
17 32 (0.39%) Aladdin
18 31 (0.38%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
19 23 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,265 (15.36%) Azure
2 985 (11.96%) AWS
3 586 (7.12%) Power Platform
4 388 (4.71%) GCP
5 290 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
6 282 (3.43%) Microsoft 365
7 258 (3.13%) SaaS
8 248 (3.01%) Dynamics 365
9 226 (2.75%) GitHub
10 161 (1.96%) Serverless
11 134 (1.63%) OCI
12 132 (1.60%) Snowflake
13 121 (1.47%) Entra ID
14 115 (1.40%) Amazon S3
15 96 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 92 (1.12%) GitHub Actions
17 90 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
18 87 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
19 76 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
20 75 (0.91%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.98%) Firewall
2 105 (1.28%) Network Security
3 86 (1.04%) WAN
4 66 (0.80%) DNS
5 58 (0.70%) VPN
6 54 (0.66%) LAN
7 45 (0.55%) TCP/IP
8 44 (0.53%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.41%) Wireless
10 33 (0.40%) BGP
11 29 (0.35%) HTTP
11 29 (0.35%) OSPF
12 27 (0.33%) Internet
12 27 (0.33%) Multicast
13 26 (0.32%) SSL
14 23 (0.28%) MPLS
15 20 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
16 19 (0.23%) DHCP
17 18 (0.22%) Skype
18 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 514 (6.24%) Power BI
2 224 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
3 205 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 184 (2.23%) PostgreSQL
5 150 (1.82%) Metadata
6 145 (1.76%) Tableau
7 123 (1.49%) Data Lake
8 121 (1.47%) Relational Database
9 104 (1.26%) NoSQL
10 94 (1.14%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (0.94%) Big Data
12 63 (0.77%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.75%) MongoDB
14 57 (0.69%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
17 45 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
18 37 (0.45%) Delta Lake
18 37 (0.45%) Snowflake Schema
19 36 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 687 (8.34%) JIRA
2 239 (2.90%) Jenkins
3 211 (2.56%) Git
4 151 (1.83%) 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
10 33 (0.40%) Postman
11 31 (0.38%) Visual Studio
12 25 (0.30%) MLflow
13 21 (0.26%) REST Assured
14 20 (0.24%) Maven
15 19 (0.23%) Gradle
16 17 (0.21%) ERwin
16 17 (0.21%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
18 15 (0.18%) SpecFlow
19 14 (0.17%) Zephyr
General
1 2,671 (32.44%) Social Skills
2 1,582 (19.22%) Banking
3 1,079 (13.11%) Analytical Skills
4 645 (7.83%) Public Sector
5 347 (4.21%) Financial Institution
6 319 (3.87%) Legal
7 288 (3.50%) Front Office
8 281 (3.41%) Investment Banking
9 269 (3.27%) Marketing
10 262 (3.18%) Manufacturing
11 247 (3.00%) Organisational Skills
12 242 (2.94%) Telecoms
13 240 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
14 192 (2.33%) Retail
15 184 (2.23%) Influencing Skills
16 137 (1.66%) Electronics
16 137 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 123 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
18 121 (1.47%) Local Government
19 116 (1.41%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,262 (15.33%) Analyst
2 847 (10.29%) Developer
2 847 (10.29%) Senior
3 758 (9.21%) Lead
4 722 (8.77%) Architect
5 677 (8.22%) Business Analyst
6 676 (8.21%) Project Manager
7 615 (7.47%) Consultant
8 286 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
9 221 (2.68%) Data Engineer
10 186 (2.26%) Data Analyst
10 186 (2.26%) Programme Manager
11 185 (2.25%) Senior Manager
12 180 (2.19%) Financial Analyst
13 169 (2.05%) Finance Manager
14 140 (1.70%) Delivery Manager
15 138 (1.68%) Java Developer
16 133 (1.62%) Senior Developer
17 132 (1.60%) Accountant
18 129 (1.57%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (3.28%) REST
2 266 (3.23%) Kafka
3 205 (2.49%) .NET
4 196 (2.38%) React
5 155 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
6 153 (1.86%) Middleware
7 141 (1.71%) Spring
8 139 (1.69%) RESTful
9 125 (1.52%) Spring Boot
10 115 (1.40%) Node.js
11 104 (1.26%) AngularJS
12 96 (1.17%) PySpark
13 84 (1.02%) XML
14 78 (0.95%) JSON
15 77 (0.94%) HTML
15 77 (0.94%) OAuth
16 73 (0.89%) CSS
17 71 (0.86%) Pandas
18 69 (0.84%) Redux
19 64 (0.78%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 352 (4.28%) Onboarding
2 314 (3.81%) Product Ownership
3 259 (3.15%) Cloud Native
4 200 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
5 189 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 168 (2.04%) Derivative
7 155 (1.88%) Data Centre
8 152 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
9 148 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
10 147 (1.79%) Data Structures
11 146 (1.77%) Fixed Income
12 142 (1.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 126 (1.53%) Equities
14 107 (1.30%) Public Cloud
15 102 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
16 97 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
17 90 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
17 90 (1.09%) Virtual Team
18 68 (0.83%) Hedge funds
19 62 (0.75%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 313 (3.80%) Linux
2 276 (3.35%) Windows
3 142 (1.72%) Unix
4 65 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 56 (0.68%) Windows 10
6 53 (0.64%) Android
7 43 (0.52%) Mac OS
8 24 (0.29%) 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 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) MVS
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,779 (21.61%) Agile
2 1,600 (19.43%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,239 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
4 1,079 (13.11%) Migration
5 917 (11.14%) DevOps
6 916 (11.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 848 (10.30%) Continuous Improvement
8 826 (10.03%) CI/CD
9 798 (9.69%) Analytics
10 796 (9.67%) Project Management
11 795 (9.66%) Business Intelligence
12 789 (9.58%) ERP
13 683 (8.30%) AI
14 649 (7.88%) Decision-Making
15 631 (7.66%) Data Modelling
15 631 (7.66%) Roadmaps
16 584 (7.09%) Validation
17 580 (7.04%) Change Management
18 577 (7.01%) Project Delivery
19 570 (6.92%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,168 (14.19%) SQL
2 1,023 (12.43%) Python
3 556 (6.75%) Java
4 301 (3.66%) C#
5 232 (2.82%) JavaScript
6 193 (2.34%) TypeScript
7 174 (2.11%) PowerShell
8 116 (1.41%) C++
9 82 (1.00%) Go
10 73 (0.89%) Bash
11 65 (0.79%) PL/SQL
12 56 (0.68%) T-SQL
13 53 (0.64%) 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 28 (0.34%) Rust
20 27 (0.33%) Korn
Qualifications
1 789 (9.58%) Degree
2 714 (8.67%) Security Cleared
3 512 (6.22%) SC Cleared
4 199 (2.42%) PMI Certification
5 196 (2.38%) PMP
6 171 (2.08%) ACCA
7 169 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 160 (1.94%) CIMA
9 155 (1.88%) Master's Degree
10 137 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
11 116 (1.41%) CISSP
12 82 (1.00%) CISM
12 82 (1.00%) DV Cleared
13 70 (0.85%) Azure Certification
14 66 (0.80%) AWS Certification
15 42 (0.51%) Cisco Certification
16 36 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
16 36 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
17 35 (0.43%) ISTQB
18 33 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (5.38%) Data Quality
2 418 (5.08%) QA
3 338 (4.11%) PMO
4 293 (3.56%) GDPR
5 143 (1.74%) NIST
6 124 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 110 (1.34%) SLA
9 86 (1.04%) IFRS
10 79 (0.96%) Accessibility
11 75 (0.91%) PCI DSS
12 70 (0.85%) GRC
13 58 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.56%) GAAP
15 44 (0.53%) PSD2
16 38 (0.46%) SEPA
17 37 (0.45%) MiFID
18 36 (0.44%) NCSC
19 27 (0.33%) Basel III
19 27 (0.33%) COBIT
System Software
1 320 (3.89%) Docker
2 151 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.68%) 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 8 (0.097%) Hyper-V
10 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.061%) HDFS
12 4 (0.049%) Firmware
12 4 (0.049%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.036%) GridGain
13 3 (0.036%) KVM
13 3 (0.036%) RACF
13 3 (0.036%) SRDF
13 3 (0.036%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 409 (4.97%) Kubernetes
2 262 (3.18%) Terraform
3 151 (1.83%) Ansible
4 97 (1.18%) Grafana
5 87 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.62%) SCCM
8 41 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.34%) 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 1,083 (13.15%) Microsoft
2 807 (9.80%) SAP
3 688 (8.36%) Oracle
4 310 (3.77%) ServiceNow
5 194 (2.36%) Databricks
6 191 (2.32%) Salesforce
7 177 (2.15%) Google
8 158 (1.92%) Cisco
9 142 (1.72%) Workday
10 131 (1.59%) Splunk
11 111 (1.35%) VMware
12 98 (1.19%) IBM
13 75 (0.91%) Citrix
14 72 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 70 (0.85%) Ariba
16 64 (0.78%) Sage
17 60 (0.73%) Informatica
18 54 (0.66%) HP
19 53 (0.64%) Bloomberg
20 52 (0.63%) Murex