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 20 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,952 7,350 7,764
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.23% 22.34% 20.15%
As % of the General category 32.69% 35.13% 34.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,046 4,803 4,935
10th Percentile £359 £338 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -6.61% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £712
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £494 £513
% change year-on-year +3.29% -3.66% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 132 146
10th Percentile £14.85 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £20.06 £22.98
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -11.30% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £60.56 £53.94
90th Percentile £73.75 £78.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £33.00
% change year-on-year +71.18% -22.18% +23.39%

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 30,448 20,925 22,374
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.78% 63.60% 58.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,837 12,966 13,391
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £419 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% 0.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,565 1,206 1,101
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £29.60 £25.15 £35.03
Median % change year-on-year +17.69% -28.20% +27.38%
75th Percentile £54.40 £48.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.50 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.29 £35.02
% change year-on-year +40.94% -39.21% +27.33%

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 20 September 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 20 September 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 20 September 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 8,540 £550 - 17,775
London 0 5,183 £590 - 11,627
UK excluding London 0 3,889 £510 +3.29% 7,799
Work from Home -1 2,816 £550 -2.65% 6,867
North of England 0 1,334 £514 +11.74% 1,790
South East -3 733 £500 -2.20% 2,046
North West -1 652 £500 +11.11% 1,007
Yorkshire 0 602 £525 +5.00% 573
Midlands -3 596 £500 +5.26% 1,045
Scotland 0 554 £467 -4.50% 933
West Midlands -2 441 £525 +1.01% 653
South West -5 358 £525 -8.70% 885
East of England +3 210 £550 -2.44% 644
East Midlands -4 152 £500 +19.05% 392
North East -6 73 £500 +14.29% 226
Northern Ireland 0 66 £510 -1.92% 354
Wales +1 61 £525 +20.69% 184
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 16

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 (3.27%) Confluence
2 260 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 82 (0.82%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.72%) Apache
6 47 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 16 (0.16%) Jupyter
12 15 (0.15%) Camunda
13 13 (0.13%) CICS
14 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.080%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.060%) Appian
16 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
17 5 (0.050%) JBoss
17 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 538 (5.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 201 (2.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 143 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
5 86 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 68 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
11 3 (0.030%) Windchill
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 446 (4.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.24%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.05%) NetSuite
4 103 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 91 (0.91%) Oracle ERP
6 77 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
7 75 (0.75%) SAP FI
8 74 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
9 67 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
10 52 (0.52%) Oracle Financials
10 52 (0.52%) SAP CO
11 51 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 47 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
13 38 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
14 36 (0.36%) Aladdin
14 36 (0.36%) Workday HCM
15 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
15 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
16 27 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
17 25 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,546 (15.53%) Azure
2 1,081 (10.86%) AWS
3 663 (6.66%) Power Platform
4 554 (5.57%) GCP
5 341 (3.43%) Azure DevOps
6 331 (3.33%) SaaS
7 323 (3.25%) GitHub
8 313 (3.15%) Microsoft 365
9 270 (2.71%) Dynamics 365
10 224 (2.25%) Entra ID
11 223 (2.24%) Snowflake
12 158 (1.59%) Serverless
13 144 (1.45%) OCI
14 132 (1.33%) GitHub Actions
15 131 (1.32%) Amazon S3
16 128 (1.29%) Power Automate
17 127 (1.28%) dbt
18 122 (1.23%) Microsoft Copilot
19 109 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
20 103 (1.03%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.74%) Firewall
2 151 (1.52%) Network Security
3 103 (1.03%) VPN
4 83 (0.83%) DNS
5 61 (0.61%) TCP/IP
6 55 (0.55%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.45%) BGP
9 44 (0.44%) SSL
10 34 (0.34%) HTTP
10 34 (0.34%) Multicast
10 34 (0.34%) VLAN
11 31 (0.31%) LAN
12 30 (0.30%) Wireless
13 29 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
14 25 (0.25%) Internet
14 25 (0.25%) OSPF
14 25 (0.25%) SAN
15 18 (0.18%) Broadband
16 17 (0.17%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 532 (5.35%) Power BI
2 283 (2.84%) SQL Server
3 253 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
4 207 (2.08%) Metadata
5 178 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 140 (1.41%) Data Lake
7 136 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
8 123 (1.24%) Tableau
9 85 (0.85%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.83%) BigQuery
11 81 (0.81%) Oracle Database
12 77 (0.77%) MongoDB
13 70 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
14 58 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (0.55%) Power Query
16 52 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 48 (0.48%) Big Data
18 46 (0.46%) Db2
19 44 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
20 43 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 651 (6.54%) JIRA
2 321 (3.23%) Git
3 173 (1.74%) Jenkins
4 111 (1.12%) GitLab
5 64 (0.64%) Selenium
6 48 (0.48%) JUnit
7 36 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 36 (0.36%) Claude Code
8 35 (0.35%) Maven
8 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
9 33 (0.33%) Cucumber
10 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
11 30 (0.30%) Gradle
12 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
13 28 (0.28%) ERwin
14 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
15 25 (0.25%) Cypress.io
16 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
16 22 (0.22%) Postman
17 20 (0.20%) Zephyr
General
1 3,101 (31.16%) Social Skills
2 2,056 (20.66%) Banking
3 1,414 (14.21%) Analytical Skills
4 545 (5.48%) Legal
5 529 (5.32%) Public Sector
6 449 (4.51%) Organisational Skills
7 394 (3.96%) Investment Banking
8 382 (3.84%) Retail
9 347 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
10 341 (3.43%) Front Office
11 305 (3.06%) Financial Institution
12 215 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
13 212 (2.13%) Manufacturing
14 195 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 176 (1.77%) Marketing
16 173 (1.74%) General Ledger
17 170 (1.71%) Billing
18 154 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
19 149 (1.50%) Local Government
20 142 (1.43%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,428 (14.35%) Analyst
2 1,088 (10.93%) Senior
3 994 (9.99%) Lead
4 989 (9.94%) Developer
5 882 (8.86%) Architect
6 734 (7.38%) Business Analyst
7 715 (7.18%) Consultant
8 683 (6.86%) Project Manager
9 341 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
10 302 (3.03%) Data Engineer
11 267 (2.68%) Financial Analyst
12 216 (2.17%) Senior Manager
13 212 (2.13%) Java Developer
14 203 (2.04%) Data Analyst
14 203 (2.04%) Senior Developer
15 191 (1.92%) Programme Manager
16 178 (1.79%) IT Manager
17 175 (1.76%) Accountant
18 171 (1.72%) Finance Manager
19 152 (1.53%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 400 (4.02%) Terraform
2 390 (3.92%) REST
3 270 (2.71%) Kafka
4 263 (2.64%) .NET
5 262 (2.63%) Oracle Fusion
6 239 (2.40%) React
7 199 (2.00%) Spring
8 192 (1.93%) Spring Boot
9 191 (1.92%) Middleware
10 143 (1.44%) PySpark
10 143 (1.44%) RESTful
11 108 (1.09%) JSON
12 107 (1.08%) OAuth
13 106 (1.07%) XML
14 95 (0.95%) SOAP
15 84 (0.84%) Web Services
16 83 (0.83%) Redux
17 79 (0.79%) AngularJS
18 78 (0.78%) Node.js
19 73 (0.73%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 523 (5.26%) Onboarding
2 509 (5.11%) Product Ownership
3 457 (4.59%) Cloud Native
4 256 (2.57%) Management Information System
5 252 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 235 (2.36%) Data Structures
7 229 (2.30%) Virtual Team
8 209 (2.10%) AI Agents
9 203 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
10 198 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
11 188 (1.89%) Derivative
12 167 (1.68%) Data Centre
13 156 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
14 155 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 132 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
16 125 (1.26%) Fixed Income
17 116 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
18 114 (1.15%) Podcast
19 113 (1.14%) Equities
19 113 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 381 (3.83%) Windows
2 321 (3.23%) Linux
3 167 (1.68%) Unix
4 91 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 58 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.41%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 38 (0.38%) zOS
10 33 (0.33%) Solaris
11 31 (0.31%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 12 (0.12%) VMS
14 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
15 7 (0.070%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 4 (0.040%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,683 (26.96%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,023 (20.33%) Agile
3 1,344 (13.50%) Migration
4 1,321 (13.27%) Problem-Solving
5 1,299 (13.05%) AI
6 1,140 (11.45%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,139 (11.44%) CI/CD
7 1,139 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,019 (10.24%) Analytics
9 1,000 (10.05%) ERP
10 989 (9.94%) DevOps
11 927 (9.31%) Decision-Making
12 869 (8.73%) Validation
13 850 (8.54%) Roadmaps
14 775 (7.79%) Data Modelling
15 773 (7.77%) Project Management
16 752 (7.56%) User Acceptance Testing
17 733 (7.37%) Change Management
18 706 (7.09%) Risk Management
19 667 (6.70%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,351 (13.58%) SQL
2 1,262 (12.68%) Python
3 660 (6.63%) Java
4 355 (3.57%) C#
5 283 (2.84%) PowerShell
6 249 (2.50%) JavaScript
7 216 (2.17%) TypeScript
8 154 (1.55%) Bash
9 111 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 93 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 79 (0.79%) C++
12 68 (0.68%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.67%) Go
14 60 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 57 (0.57%) Bicep
16 51 (0.51%) Korn
17 42 (0.42%) Scala
18 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
18 36 (0.36%) VBA
19 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 768 (7.72%) Security Cleared
2 738 (7.42%) Degree
3 547 (5.50%) SC Cleared
4 255 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 254 (2.55%) PMP
6 223 (2.24%) PMI Certification
7 195 (1.96%) ACCA
8 170 (1.71%) CIMA
9 142 (1.43%) DV Cleared
10 134 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 133 (1.34%) CISSP
12 117 (1.18%) Azure Certification
13 82 (0.82%) AWS Certification
14 81 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
15 76 (0.76%) Master's Degree
16 72 (0.72%) CISM
17 53 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.37%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 696 (6.99%) Data Quality
2 432 (4.34%) QA
3 354 (3.56%) PMO
4 214 (2.15%) GDPR
5 139 (1.40%) NIST
6 126 (1.27%) GRC
7 120 (1.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 97 (0.97%) IFRS
10 96 (0.96%) SLA
11 76 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 66 (0.66%) ISO 20022
13 47 (0.47%) GAAP
14 43 (0.43%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.37%) SEPA
16 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) COBIT
18 28 (0.28%) EMIR
19 24 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 273 (2.74%) Docker
2 240 (2.41%) Active Directory
3 90 (0.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) RACF
6 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
7 22 (0.22%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 9 (0.090%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
12 6 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
13 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 494 (4.96%) Kubernetes
2 189 (1.90%) Ansible
3 97 (0.97%) Grafana
4 80 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
5 68 (0.68%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.64%) SCCM
7 61 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
8 30 (0.30%) Progress Chef
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 19 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
13 13 (0.13%) Istio
13 13 (0.13%) Puppet
14 12 (0.12%) HP ALM
15 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 10 (0.10%) Packer
17 9 (0.090%) vRealize
18 8 (0.080%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,427 (14.34%) Microsoft
2 880 (8.84%) Oracle
3 874 (8.78%) SAP
4 375 (3.77%) ServiceNow
5 363 (3.65%) Databricks
6 240 (2.41%) Google
7 238 (2.39%) Salesforce
8 195 (1.96%) IBM
9 143 (1.44%) VMware
10 140 (1.41%) Workday
11 126 (1.27%) Cisco
12 118 (1.19%) Splunk
13 105 (1.06%) Ariba
14 89 (0.89%) CyberArk
14 89 (0.89%) OpenAI
15 59 (0.59%) Citrix
16 56 (0.56%) Bloomberg
17 52 (0.52%) Sage
18 49 (0.49%) Informatica
18 49 (0.49%) Murex