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 6 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,980 7,167 7,684
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.26% 21.84% 20.40%
As % of the General category 32.46% 34.53% 34.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,989 4,668 4,818
10th Percentile £362 £333 £356
25th Percentile £450 £416 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £534 £575
Median % change year-on-year +3.04% -7.17% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 351 140 128
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.46 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.74 £17.93 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.71 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.63% -16.02% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £54.34 £55.06
90th Percentile £65.00 £74.13 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +26.92%

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 30,750 20,753 22,050
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.27% 63.24% 58.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,875 12,907 13,033
10th Percentile £313 £275 £280
25th Percentile £420 £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 £745 £738 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,704 1,232 980
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.57 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £28.00 £25.08 £33.29
Median % change year-on-year +11.67% -24.67% +21.04%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.39 £32.50
% change year-on-year +30.90% -34.18% +20.89%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 8,561 £550 - 20,175
London 0 5,192 £600 +2.56% 12,476
UK excluding London 0 3,869 £510 +2.00% 9,581
Work from Home -1 2,786 £550 - 8,493
North of England 0 1,335 £514 +10.42% 2,205
South East -1 742 £500 -2.72% 2,427
North West -2 640 £507 +12.67% 1,148
Yorkshire +1 616 £514 +2.80% 780
Midlands -3 612 £525 +10.53% 1,316
Scotland 0 543 £463 -6.00% 1,182
West Midlands -2 455 £520 +0.97% 783
South West -6 336 £538 -4.44% 962
East of England +1 206 £550 -3.51% 828
East Midlands -2 152 £500 +19.05% 533
North East -4 72 £538 +22.86% 291
Wales -1 62 £525 +20.34% 304
Northern Ireland 0 58 £510 -2.86% 422
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 15

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
1 324 (3.25%) Confluence
2 257 (2.58%) SharePoint
3 94 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 82 (0.82%) Apache
5 79 (0.79%) Apache Spark
6 47 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.31%) CMS
8 23 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
8 23 (0.23%) SAS
9 20 (0.20%) IIS
10 16 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 11 (0.11%) CICS
12 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
13 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.060%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 6 (0.060%) Appian
15 6 (0.060%) JBoss
16 5 (0.050%) WebLogic
Applications
1 521 (5.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 192 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 146 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
5 84 (0.84%) MS Visio
6 68 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.080%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.080%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) Windchill
12 3 (0.030%) 1Password
12 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.030%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 447 (4.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.24%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.11%) Oracle Receivables
4 95 (0.95%) NetSuite
5 90 (0.90%) Oracle General Ledger
6 87 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
7 83 (0.83%) SAP FI
8 80 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
9 68 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
10 59 (0.59%) Oracle Financials
11 54 (0.54%) SAP CO
12 51 (0.51%) Workday HCM
13 49 (0.49%) SAP FI/CO
14 47 (0.47%) Oracle Assets
15 46 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
16 40 (0.40%) Aladdin
17 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
18 33 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
19 30 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
20 25 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,594 (15.97%) Azure
2 1,102 (11.04%) AWS
3 657 (6.58%) Power Platform
4 565 (5.66%) GCP
5 363 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
6 338 (3.39%) GitHub
7 323 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
8 311 (3.12%) SaaS
9 261 (2.62%) Dynamics 365
10 231 (2.31%) Entra ID
11 221 (2.21%) Snowflake
12 162 (1.62%) Serverless
13 139 (1.39%) OCI
14 136 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
15 130 (1.30%) Power Automate
16 127 (1.27%) Amazon S3
16 127 (1.27%) dbt
17 122 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
18 114 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
19 104 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 176 (1.76%) Firewall
2 166 (1.66%) Network Security
3 106 (1.06%) VPN
4 90 (0.90%) DNS
5 60 (0.60%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.56%) WAN
7 48 (0.48%) DHCP
8 46 (0.46%) BGP
9 38 (0.38%) SSL
10 34 (0.34%) Multicast
11 33 (0.33%) LAN
12 31 (0.31%) HTTP
12 31 (0.31%) VLAN
13 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.30%) Wireless
14 28 (0.28%) SAN
15 27 (0.27%) OSPF
16 25 (0.25%) Internet
17 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
18 19 (0.19%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 522 (5.23%) Power BI
2 289 (2.90%) SQL Server
3 257 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.02%) Metadata
5 173 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 144 (1.44%) Data Lake
7 136 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
8 123 (1.23%) Tableau
9 87 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 84 (0.84%) BigQuery
11 83 (0.83%) Oracle Database
12 82 (0.82%) MongoDB
13 60 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
14 58 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.54%) Delta Lake
16 52 (0.52%) Power Query
17 47 (0.47%) Db2
18 44 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
19 41 (0.41%) Big Data
19 41 (0.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 656 (6.57%) JIRA
2 348 (3.49%) Git
3 189 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 117 (1.17%) GitLab
5 65 (0.65%) Selenium
6 49 (0.49%) JUnit
7 42 (0.42%) Claude Code
8 39 (0.39%) Maven
9 38 (0.38%) Bitbucket
9 38 (0.38%) Cucumber
10 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
11 34 (0.34%) Gradle
12 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
13 32 (0.32%) Visual Studio
14 27 (0.27%) Cypress.io
14 27 (0.27%) ERwin
14 27 (0.27%) Postman
15 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
16 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
16 20 (0.20%) Mockito
General
1 3,122 (31.28%) Social Skills
2 2,139 (21.43%) Banking
3 1,425 (14.28%) Analytical Skills
4 542 (5.43%) Public Sector
5 527 (5.28%) Legal
6 464 (4.65%) Organisational Skills
7 399 (4.00%) Investment Banking
8 365 (3.66%) Retail
9 340 (3.41%) Influencing Skills
10 339 (3.40%) Front Office
11 307 (3.08%) Financial Institution
12 227 (2.27%) Manufacturing
13 209 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
14 195 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 192 (1.92%) Marketing
16 189 (1.89%) Billing
17 184 (1.84%) General Ledger
18 158 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
19 151 (1.51%) Local Government
20 144 (1.44%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,372 (13.75%) Analyst
2 1,142 (11.44%) Senior
3 1,002 (10.04%) Developer
4 962 (9.64%) Lead
5 870 (8.72%) Architect
6 732 (7.33%) Consultant
7 704 (7.05%) Business Analyst
8 674 (6.75%) Project Manager
9 347 (3.48%) Solutions Architect
10 292 (2.93%) Data Engineer
11 249 (2.49%) Financial Analyst
12 221 (2.21%) Senior Manager
13 210 (2.10%) Senior Developer
14 207 (2.07%) Java Developer
15 201 (2.01%) Programme Manager
16 199 (1.99%) Data Analyst
17 181 (1.81%) IT Manager
18 179 (1.79%) Accountant
19 167 (1.67%) Finance Manager
20 155 (1.55%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 423 (4.24%) Terraform
2 415 (4.16%) REST
3 278 (2.79%) Kafka
4 273 (2.74%) .NET
5 272 (2.73%) Oracle Fusion
6 247 (2.47%) React
7 199 (1.99%) Spring
8 196 (1.96%) Middleware
9 194 (1.94%) Spring Boot
10 145 (1.45%) PySpark
11 142 (1.42%) RESTful
12 116 (1.16%) JSON
13 111 (1.11%) XML
14 109 (1.09%) OAuth
15 99 (0.99%) SOAP
16 93 (0.93%) Web Services
17 86 (0.86%) Redux
18 85 (0.85%) AngularJS
19 84 (0.84%) HTML
20 74 (0.74%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 540 (5.41%) Onboarding
2 508 (5.09%) Product Ownership
3 486 (4.87%) Cloud Native
4 271 (2.72%) Management Information System
5 253 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
6 236 (2.36%) Data Structures
7 229 (2.29%) Virtual Team
8 227 (2.27%) AI Agents
9 221 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
10 203 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
11 196 (1.96%) Derivative
12 186 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
13 173 (1.73%) Data Centre
14 148 (1.48%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 136 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
16 131 (1.31%) Fixed Income
17 122 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
18 115 (1.15%) Equities
19 114 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
20 113 (1.13%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 387 (3.88%) Windows
2 349 (3.50%) Linux
3 172 (1.72%) Unix
4 100 (1.00%) Windows Server
5 61 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 43 (0.43%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 37 (0.37%) zOS
10 36 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 29 (0.29%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 12 (0.12%) AIX
14 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
15 7 (0.070%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 5 (0.050%) CentOS
18 4 (0.040%) MVS
18 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,793 (27.99%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,066 (20.70%) Agile
3 1,353 (13.56%) AI
4 1,352 (13.55%) Migration
5 1,342 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
6 1,191 (11.93%) CI/CD
7 1,120 (11.22%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,104 (11.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,030 (10.32%) Analytics
10 1,029 (10.31%) DevOps
11 944 (9.46%) ERP
12 929 (9.31%) Decision-Making
13 904 (9.06%) Validation
14 900 (9.02%) Roadmaps
15 776 (7.78%) Project Management
16 765 (7.67%) Data Modelling
17 758 (7.60%) User Acceptance Testing
18 743 (7.44%) Risk Management
19 708 (7.09%) Change Management
20 697 (6.98%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,370 (13.73%) SQL
2 1,304 (13.07%) Python
3 659 (6.60%) Java
4 365 (3.66%) C#
5 300 (3.01%) PowerShell
6 267 (2.68%) JavaScript
7 221 (2.21%) TypeScript
8 177 (1.77%) Bash
9 108 (1.08%) PL/SQL
10 96 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.78%) C++
12 72 (0.72%) Go
13 69 (0.69%) T-SQL
14 61 (0.61%) Bicep
15 60 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 53 (0.53%) Korn
17 45 (0.45%) Scala
18 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
19 33 (0.33%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.30%) VBA
Qualifications
1 774 (7.76%) Security Cleared
2 725 (7.26%) Degree
3 554 (5.55%) SC Cleared
4 257 (2.58%) PMP
5 253 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
6 232 (2.32%) PMI Certification
7 184 (1.84%) ACCA
8 162 (1.62%) CIMA
9 143 (1.43%) DV Cleared
10 139 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
11 126 (1.26%) CISSP
12 113 (1.13%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.87%) AWS Certification
14 79 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
15 77 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 64 (0.64%) CISM
17 53 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 36 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 717 (7.18%) Data Quality
2 422 (4.23%) QA
3 353 (3.54%) PMO
4 197 (1.97%) GDPR
5 129 (1.29%) NIST
6 127 (1.27%) GRC
7 113 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 108 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 93 (0.93%) SLA
10 91 (0.91%) IFRS
11 73 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.44%) GAAP
14 43 (0.43%) PCI DSS
15 40 (0.40%) SEPA
16 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 28 (0.28%) COBIT
18 27 (0.27%) MiFID
19 25 (0.25%) EMIR
19 25 (0.25%) NCSC
System Software
1 269 (2.70%) Docker
2 246 (2.46%) Active Directory
3 103 (1.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 29 (0.29%) vSphere
6 28 (0.28%) RACF
7 26 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.17%) Hyper-V
9 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.11%) NFS
11 8 (0.080%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
12 6 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
16 2 (0.020%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 509 (5.10%) Kubernetes
2 199 (1.99%) Ansible
3 99 (0.99%) Grafana
4 84 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.62%) SCCM
7 58 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
8 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
11 19 (0.19%) Argo
12 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
13 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
14 14 (0.14%) Istio
15 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 11 (0.11%) Puppet
16 10 (0.10%) Packer
16 10 (0.10%) Tivoli
17 8 (0.080%) Kustomize
17 8 (0.080%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,454 (14.57%) Microsoft
2 893 (8.95%) SAP
3 866 (8.68%) Oracle
4 361 (3.62%) ServiceNow
5 357 (3.58%) Databricks
6 242 (2.42%) Google
7 235 (2.35%) Salesforce
8 201 (2.01%) IBM
9 157 (1.57%) VMware
9 157 (1.57%) Workday
10 133 (1.33%) Cisco
11 120 (1.20%) Ariba
12 119 (1.19%) Splunk
13 91 (0.91%) OpenAI
14 90 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 58 (0.58%) Bloomberg
16 57 (0.57%) Citrix
17 56 (0.56%) Sage
18 55 (0.55%) Murex
19 54 (0.54%) Red Hat