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 19 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,609 6,458 8,069
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 17.92% 22.11% 18.95%
As % of the General category 33.47% 34.96% 32.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,386 4,208 5,396
10th Percentile £356 £350 £356
25th Percentile £438 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £549 £553 £581
Median % change year-on-year -0.77% -4.82% -3.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 189 112 248
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.73 £22.27 £15.13
Median hourly rate £23.83 £39.06 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -39.00% +44.81% +4.90%
75th Percentile £54.00 £66.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £42.92 £30.00
% change year-on-year -44.49% +43.06% -31.43%

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 25,725 18,470 24,687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.55% 63.25% 57.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,701 11,732 15,577
10th Percentile £310 £285 £275
25th Percentile £411 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.69% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +2.63% -4.62% -0.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,648 796 1,927
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.95 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.95 £15.41
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £59.63 £56.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £66.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.96 £24.62 £28.00
% change year-on-year +13.55% -12.06% -3.45%

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 19 May 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 19 May 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 19 May 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 7,615 £550 -4.35% 4,517
London 0 4,583 £575 -8.00% 2,328
UK excluding London 0 3,449 £500 - 2,905
Work from Home -2 2,398 £538 -8.90% 1,805
North of England +3 1,171 £491 +3.37% 737
South East -2 640 £503 -3.83% 962
North West +5 618 £466 +0.11% 412
Midlands -1 584 £492 +3.58% 397
Yorkshire +1 513 £517 +8.22% 246
Scotland 0 418 £500 +4.82% 171
West Midlands 0 394 £500 -4.76% 233
South West -2 354 £525 - 308
East of England 0 203 £523 -5.00% 249
East Midlands 0 186 £465 +4.55% 162
Wales +19 89 £450 +16.13% 69
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +28.05% 64
North East -14 41 £488 +3.72% 86
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 1

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
1 319 (3.71%) Confluence
2 218 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 54 (0.63%) Apache
5 53 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
6 51 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
7 34 (0.39%) SAS
8 23 (0.27%) CMS
9 20 (0.23%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 17 (0.20%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Appian
13 12 (0.14%) Camunda
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
16 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
16 9 (0.10%) Jupyter
17 8 (0.093%) TPMS
Applications
1 504 (5.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
3 167 (1.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 166 (1.93%) Microsoft Project
5 127 (1.48%) MS Visio
6 46 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 8 (0.093%) Sketch
10 7 (0.081%) InVision
10 7 (0.081%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) MicroStation
14 1 (0.012%) UXPin
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 391 (4.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.20%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 83 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 65 (0.76%) Oracle ERP
7 61 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
8 56 (0.65%) SAP FI
9 55 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
10 47 (0.55%) SAP CO
11 44 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
12 43 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
13 37 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
14 35 (0.41%) Aladdin
15 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
16 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
17 28 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
17 28 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 24 (0.28%) SAP ERP
18 24 (0.28%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,324 (15.38%) Azure
2 951 (11.05%) AWS
3 597 (6.93%) Power Platform
4 385 (4.47%) GCP
5 299 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
6 294 (3.42%) SaaS
7 270 (3.14%) Microsoft 365
8 240 (2.79%) Dynamics 365
9 227 (2.64%) GitHub
10 153 (1.78%) Snowflake
11 144 (1.67%) Entra ID
12 134 (1.56%) Serverless
13 125 (1.45%) OCI
14 114 (1.32%) Power Automate
15 110 (1.28%) Amazon S3
16 94 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
17 85 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 84 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
19 78 (0.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 76 (0.88%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 155 (1.80%) Firewall
2 116 (1.35%) Network Security
3 74 (0.86%) WAN
4 73 (0.85%) DNS
5 60 (0.70%) VPN
6 55 (0.64%) TCP/IP
7 39 (0.45%) BGP
8 38 (0.44%) SD-WAN
9 37 (0.43%) LAN
10 32 (0.37%) HTTP
11 30 (0.35%) SSL
12 29 (0.34%) OSPF
13 28 (0.33%) Multicast
14 27 (0.31%) DHCP
15 24 (0.28%) MPLS
16 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 20 (0.23%) VSAN
17 18 (0.21%) Internet
18 17 (0.20%) VLAN
19 12 (0.14%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 503 (5.84%) Power BI
2 212 (2.46%) SQL Server
3 209 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
4 166 (1.93%) Metadata
5 158 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
6 151 (1.75%) Tableau
7 148 (1.72%) Relational Database
8 122 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 88 (1.02%) NoSQL
10 81 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (0.87%) Big Data
12 66 (0.77%) Oracle Database
13 61 (0.71%) BigQuery
14 57 (0.66%) MongoDB
15 48 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
16 44 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 43 (0.50%) Snowflake Schema
18 41 (0.48%) Delta Lake
19 38 (0.44%) DynamoDB
20 36 (0.42%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 665 (7.72%) JIRA
2 197 (2.29%) Git
3 167 (1.94%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.13%) GitLab
5 45 (0.52%) JUnit
6 43 (0.50%) Cucumber
7 38 (0.44%) Selenium
8 31 (0.36%) Visual Studio
9 28 (0.33%) Postman
9 28 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 23 (0.27%) MLflow
11 22 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
12 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 19 (0.22%) Maven
14 17 (0.20%) Hudson
15 16 (0.19%) ERwin
15 16 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
16 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
17 13 (0.15%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,504 (29.09%) Social Skills
2 1,550 (18.00%) Banking
3 1,135 (13.18%) Analytical Skills
4 516 (5.99%) Public Sector
5 360 (4.18%) Legal
6 330 (3.83%) Financial Institution
7 298 (3.46%) Investment Banking
8 273 (3.17%) Front Office
9 264 (3.07%) Retail
10 237 (2.75%) Organisational Skills
11 236 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
12 207 (2.40%) Influencing Skills
13 172 (2.00%) Manufacturing
14 157 (1.82%) Marketing
15 145 (1.68%) General Ledger
16 138 (1.60%) Telecoms
17 126 (1.46%) Local Government
18 119 (1.38%) Law
19 117 (1.36%) Billing
20 115 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,315 (15.27%) Analyst
2 904 (10.50%) Senior
3 867 (10.07%) Lead
4 866 (10.06%) Developer
5 792 (9.20%) Architect
6 716 (8.32%) Business Analyst
7 680 (7.90%) Project Manager
8 588 (6.83%) Consultant
9 328 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
10 280 (3.25%) Data Engineer
11 216 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 203 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 189 (2.20%) Data Analyst
14 185 (2.15%) Finance Manager
15 176 (2.04%) Programme Manager
16 174 (2.02%) Accountant
17 148 (1.72%) Software Engineer
18 145 (1.68%) Java Developer
19 140 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
19 140 (1.63%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 256 (2.97%) Kafka
2 246 (2.86%) REST
3 237 (2.75%) .NET
4 202 (2.35%) React
5 186 (2.16%) Middleware
6 157 (1.82%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (1.70%) Spring
8 141 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 134 (1.56%) RESTful
10 103 (1.20%) Node.js
10 103 (1.20%) PySpark
11 95 (1.10%) AngularJS
12 79 (0.92%) OAuth
13 78 (0.91%) Redux
14 77 (0.89%) JSON
15 70 (0.81%) XML
16 68 (0.79%) HTML
17 67 (0.78%) CSS
18 63 (0.73%) Pandas
19 60 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 370 (4.30%) Onboarding
2 351 (4.08%) Product Ownership
3 316 (3.67%) Cloud Native
4 226 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
5 195 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 191 (2.22%) Data Structures
7 169 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
7 169 (1.96%) Derivative
8 151 (1.75%) Data Centre
9 136 (1.58%) Fixed Income
10 135 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
11 130 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 100 (1.16%) Equities
13 99 (1.15%) Analytical Mindset
13 99 (1.15%) Virtual Team
14 98 (1.14%) Public Cloud
15 91 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
16 89 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
17 69 (0.80%) AI Agents
18 67 (0.78%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 272 (3.16%) Windows
2 252 (2.93%) Linux
3 135 (1.57%) Unix
4 71 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 41 (0.48%) Windows 10
6 31 (0.36%) Solaris
7 28 (0.33%) Apple iOS
8 26 (0.30%) Android
9 25 (0.29%) zOS
10 21 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 17 (0.20%) AIX
11 17 (0.20%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.081%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.070%) VMS
13 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.046%) HPUX
15 4 (0.046%) MVS
15 4 (0.046%) SUSE
15 4 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,782 (20.70%) Agile
2 1,722 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,193 (13.86%) Problem-Solving
4 1,174 (13.64%) Migration
5 944 (10.97%) Continuous Improvement
6 919 (10.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 911 (10.58%) ERP
8 902 (10.48%) DevOps
9 838 (9.73%) CI/CD
10 834 (9.69%) AI
11 817 (9.49%) Analytics
12 788 (9.15%) Project Management
13 715 (8.31%) Decision-Making
14 702 (8.15%) Data Modelling
15 684 (7.95%) Business Intelligence
15 684 (7.95%) Roadmaps
16 664 (7.71%) Validation
17 660 (7.67%) User Acceptance Testing
18 607 (7.05%) Change Management
19 563 (6.54%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,172 (13.61%) SQL
2 1,016 (11.80%) Python
3 548 (6.37%) Java
4 336 (3.90%) C#
5 216 (2.51%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.31%) TypeScript
7 158 (1.84%) PowerShell
8 108 (1.25%) C++
9 74 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 70 (0.81%) Go
11 66 (0.77%) Bash
12 63 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 43 (0.50%) Scala
16 41 (0.48%) VBA
17 32 (0.37%) R
18 26 (0.30%) Apex Code
18 26 (0.30%) Kotlin
18 26 (0.30%) Rust
Qualifications
1 733 (8.51%) Degree
2 690 (8.01%) Security Cleared
3 494 (5.74%) SC Cleared
4 210 (2.44%) PMP
5 208 (2.42%) ACCA
6 195 (2.27%) PMI Certification
7 193 (2.24%) CIMA
8 145 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
9 129 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
10 124 (1.44%) CISSP
11 103 (1.20%) Master's Degree
12 84 (0.98%) CISM
13 81 (0.94%) DV Cleared
14 64 (0.74%) Azure Certification
15 55 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
16 48 (0.56%) AWS Certification
17 38 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 33 (0.38%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) CBAP
20 29 (0.34%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 501 (5.82%) Data Quality
2 399 (4.63%) QA
3 316 (3.67%) PMO
4 280 (3.25%) GDPR
5 160 (1.86%) NIST
6 126 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 105 (1.22%) SLA
8 102 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 99 (1.15%) IFRS
10 90 (1.05%) GRC
11 79 (0.92%) Accessibility
12 68 (0.79%) PCI DSS
13 61 (0.71%) ISO 20022
14 52 (0.60%) GAAP
15 37 (0.43%) SEPA
16 36 (0.42%) NCSC
17 35 (0.41%) PSD2
18 27 (0.31%) EMIR
18 27 (0.31%) MiFID
19 26 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 272 (3.16%) Docker
2 151 (1.75%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.36%) vSphere
5 28 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
6 18 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.15%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 12 (0.14%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) GPFS
10 5 (0.058%) KVM
10 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.046%) Firmware
11 4 (0.046%) HDFS
11 4 (0.046%) RACF
12 3 (0.035%) GridGain
12 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.035%) SRDF
13 2 (0.023%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 389 (4.52%) Kubernetes
2 238 (2.76%) Terraform
3 121 (1.41%) Ansible
4 84 (0.98%) Grafana
5 67 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 43 (0.50%) SCCM
8 37 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) vRealize
11 17 (0.20%) Control-M
12 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 15 (0.17%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 12 (0.14%) Nessus
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
17 8 (0.093%) Kiali
Vendors
1 1,102 (12.80%) Microsoft
2 776 (9.01%) SAP
3 713 (8.28%) Oracle
4 315 (3.66%) ServiceNow
5 237 (2.75%) Databricks
6 187 (2.17%) Salesforce
7 170 (1.97%) Google
8 130 (1.51%) Workday
9 118 (1.37%) Cisco
10 117 (1.36%) Splunk
11 103 (1.20%) VMware
12 93 (1.08%) IBM
13 77 (0.89%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.86%) Ariba
14 74 (0.86%) Citrix
15 66 (0.77%) Sage
16 57 (0.66%) OpenAI
17 52 (0.60%) IFS
17 52 (0.60%) Palo Alto
18 50 (0.58%) Bloomberg