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 21 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,341 6,690 8,253
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.48% 21.25% 19.01%
As % of the General category 32.55% 34.40% 32.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,701 4,194 5,608
10th Percentile £350 £356 £363
25th Percentile £425 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £505 £513
% change year-on-year -0.99% -1.46% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 94 134
10th Percentile £15.00 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.64 £22.50 £14.07
Median hourly rate £23.50 £29.00 £22.57
Median % change year-on-year -18.97% +28.47% -9.71%
75th Percentile £40.00 £63.00 £46.81
90th Percentile £67.25 £79.63 £57.83
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -40.00%

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 22,555 19,450 25,557
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.86% 61.78% 58.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,223 11,594 16,650
10th Percentile £285 £285 £270
25th Percentile £400 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £726 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,379 650 1,375
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.62 £13.32
25th Percentile £16.47 £20.00 £15.41
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.36% - +10.00%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £56.45
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.58 £69.27
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -19.02% +1.92% +15.56%

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 21 January 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 21 January 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 21 January 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 6,466 £535 -9.89% 5,327
London -1 3,935 £575 -5.35% 1,433
UK excluding London -2 2,907 £500 -0.99% 4,786
Work from Home -1 2,033 £537 -10.50% 2,232
North of England +1 927 £475 -4.26% 912
South East -2 537 £503 -4.29% 1,645
Midlands -3 520 £475 -9.52% 625
North West +2 450 £450 -8.16% 396
Yorkshire 0 428 £500 -2.91% 381
Scotland 0 381 £500 +7.01% 196
West Midlands -6 312 £525 -4.55% 262
South West -6 289 £525 -1.87% 569
East Midlands +1 207 £420 -1.18% 353
East of England -2 171 £541 +3.10% 628
Wales +27 75 £413 -12.00% 228
Northern Ireland -1 55 £494 +51.92% 102
North East -5 49 £481 +1.32% 149
Channel Islands +1 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
1 304 (4.14%) Confluence
2 203 (2.77%) SharePoint
3 73 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 62 (0.84%) Apache
4 62 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
5 60 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
6 32 (0.44%) SAS
7 29 (0.40%) CMS
8 23 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
9 21 (0.29%) IIS
10 16 (0.22%) HCL Notes
10 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 14 (0.19%) Appian
12 13 (0.18%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.18%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.15%) Camunda
14 11 (0.15%) JBoss
Applications
1 503 (6.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 290 (3.95%) Microsoft Office
3 205 (2.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 165 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
5 136 (1.85%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.25%) Trello
10 14 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.068%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.054%) Notion
16 3 (0.041%) Camtasia
16 3 (0.041%) Snagit
17 2 (0.027%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 294 (4.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 125 (1.70%) Oracle Payables
3 98 (1.33%) Oracle EBS
4 95 (1.29%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (1.16%) Oracle General Ledger
6 71 (0.97%) SAP FI
7 67 (0.91%) NetSuite
8 63 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
9 60 (0.82%) SAP CO
10 55 (0.75%) Oracle Assets
10 55 (0.75%) Oracle EBS R12
11 54 (0.74%) Oracle Cash Management
11 54 (0.74%) SAP FI/CO
12 52 (0.71%) Oracle Financials
12 52 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 46 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
14 39 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 39 (0.53%) Workday HCM
15 28 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
15 28 (0.38%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,083 (14.75%) Azure
2 883 (12.03%) AWS
3 542 (7.38%) Power Platform
4 351 (4.78%) GCP
5 247 (3.36%) Microsoft 365
6 227 (3.09%) SaaS
7 218 (2.97%) Azure DevOps
8 211 (2.87%) Dynamics 365
9 189 (2.57%) GitHub
10 140 (1.91%) OCI
11 139 (1.89%) Serverless
12 135 (1.84%) Snowflake
13 117 (1.59%) Entra ID
14 98 (1.33%) GitHub Actions
15 87 (1.19%) Amazon S3
15 87 (1.19%) Power Automate
16 73 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
17 71 (0.97%) PowerApps
18 69 (0.94%) Figma
19 67 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 116 (1.58%) Firewall
2 70 (0.95%) Network Security
3 63 (0.86%) WAN
4 41 (0.56%) DNS
4 41 (0.56%) SD-WAN
5 37 (0.50%) VPN
6 34 (0.46%) LAN
7 32 (0.44%) TCP/IP
7 32 (0.44%) Wireless
8 27 (0.37%) HTTP
8 27 (0.37%) Skype
8 27 (0.37%) SSL
9 24 (0.33%) SSH
10 21 (0.29%) DHCP
11 18 (0.25%) BGP
11 18 (0.25%) OSPF
12 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
13 15 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
13 15 (0.20%) Internet
14 14 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 474 (6.46%) Power BI
2 197 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
3 192 (2.62%) SQL Server
4 150 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
5 128 (1.74%) NoSQL
5 128 (1.74%) Tableau
6 123 (1.68%) Relational Database
7 115 (1.57%) Data Lake
8 109 (1.48%) Metadata
9 91 (1.24%) Oracle Reports
10 75 (1.02%) MongoDB
11 70 (0.95%) Big Data
12 69 (0.94%) Oracle Database
13 50 (0.68%) BigQuery
14 45 (0.61%) Hadoop
15 42 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.53%) Power Query
17 37 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
18 36 (0.49%) MySQL
18 36 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 568 (7.74%) JIRA
2 260 (3.54%) Jenkins
3 212 (2.89%) Git
4 151 (2.06%) GitLab
5 76 (1.04%) JUnit
6 59 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 55 (0.75%) Selenium
8 50 (0.68%) Bitbucket
9 47 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
10 35 (0.48%) Postman
11 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 25 (0.34%) Gradle
13 24 (0.33%) Liquibase
14 23 (0.31%) Cypress.io
15 21 (0.29%) Maven
15 21 (0.29%) MLflow
16 20 (0.27%) REST Assured
17 19 (0.26%) JMeter
18 17 (0.23%) SonarQube
19 16 (0.22%) webpack
General
1 2,558 (34.85%) Social Skills
2 1,533 (20.88%) Banking
3 999 (13.61%) Analytical Skills
4 591 (8.05%) Public Sector
5 340 (4.63%) Financial Institution
6 319 (4.35%) Marketing
7 298 (4.06%) Manufacturing
8 289 (3.94%) Investment Banking
9 279 (3.80%) Telecoms
10 269 (3.66%) Front Office
11 268 (3.65%) Legal
12 207 (2.82%) Organisational Skills
13 203 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
14 187 (2.55%) Electronics
15 161 (2.19%) Influencing Skills
16 145 (1.98%) Retail
17 136 (1.85%) General Ledger
18 135 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
19 123 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 109 (1.48%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,171 (15.95%) Analyst
2 819 (11.16%) Developer
3 702 (9.56%) Senior
4 606 (8.26%) Business Analyst
5 594 (8.09%) Project Manager
6 586 (7.98%) Consultant
7 571 (7.78%) Architect
8 532 (7.25%) Lead
9 239 (3.26%) Solutions Architect
10 191 (2.60%) Data Analyst
11 166 (2.26%) Data Engineer
12 157 (2.14%) Financial Analyst
13 151 (2.06%) Programme Manager
14 144 (1.96%) Java Developer
15 139 (1.89%) Senior Developer
15 139 (1.89%) Software Engineer
16 122 (1.66%) Senior Manager
17 113 (1.54%) Oracle Consultant
18 112 (1.53%) IT Manager
19 109 (1.48%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (3.73%) REST
2 227 (3.09%) Kafka
3 211 (2.87%) .NET
4 164 (2.23%) React
5 158 (2.15%) RESTful
6 157 (2.14%) Oracle Fusion
7 148 (2.02%) Spring
8 122 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 110 (1.50%) Middleware
10 101 (1.38%) AngularJS
11 94 (1.28%) Pandas
12 91 (1.24%) XML
13 86 (1.17%) HTML
14 83 (1.13%) NumPy
15 82 (1.12%) Node.js
16 76 (1.04%) CSS
17 75 (1.02%) PySpark
18 73 (0.99%) OAuth
19 71 (0.97%) SOAP
20 68 (0.93%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 322 (4.39%) Onboarding
2 289 (3.94%) Product Ownership
3 216 (2.94%) Cloud Native
4 176 (2.40%) Derivative
5 170 (2.32%) Management Information System
6 155 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
7 151 (2.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 135 (1.84%) Data Centre
9 133 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
10 130 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
11 126 (1.72%) Equities
12 125 (1.70%) Analytical Mindset
12 125 (1.70%) Data Structures
13 119 (1.62%) Fixed Income
14 109 (1.48%) Public Cloud
15 94 (1.28%) Hedge funds
16 91 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
17 75 (1.02%) Virtual Team
18 74 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
19 72 (0.98%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 346 (4.71%) Linux
2 319 (4.35%) Windows
3 150 (2.04%) Unix
4 67 (0.91%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.87%) Android
6 62 (0.84%) Mac OS
6 62 (0.84%) Windows Server
7 34 (0.46%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.14%) zOS
10 7 (0.095%) CentOS
11 6 (0.082%) VMS
12 4 (0.054%) Solaris
12 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.041%) AIX
13 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.041%) Windows Server 2019
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
14 2 (0.027%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,701 (23.17%) Agile
2 1,354 (18.44%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,201 (16.36%) Problem-Solving
4 834 (11.36%) Migration
5 796 (10.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 790 (10.76%) DevOps
7 771 (10.50%) CI/CD
8 754 (10.27%) Business Intelligence
9 718 (9.78%) Analytics
9 718 (9.78%) Project Management
10 645 (8.79%) ERP
11 618 (8.42%) Continuous Improvement
12 528 (7.19%) Decision-Making
13 522 (7.11%) Change Management
14 520 (7.08%) AI
14 520 (7.08%) Risk Management
15 498 (6.78%) Roadmaps
16 481 (6.55%) Data Modelling
17 471 (6.42%) Project Delivery
18 469 (6.39%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,088 (14.82%) SQL
2 950 (12.94%) Python
3 513 (6.99%) Java
4 310 (4.22%) C#
5 211 (2.87%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.67%) PowerShell
7 152 (2.07%) C++
8 148 (2.02%) TypeScript
9 86 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 70 (0.95%) Bash
11 69 (0.94%) Go
12 53 (0.72%) Shell Script
13 52 (0.71%) VBA
14 45 (0.61%) R
15 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
16 37 (0.50%) Groovy
17 33 (0.45%) T-SQL
18 32 (0.44%) Perl
18 32 (0.44%) Rust
19 31 (0.42%) Scala
Qualifications
1 787 (10.72%) Degree
2 554 (7.55%) Security Cleared
3 402 (5.48%) SC Cleared
4 190 (2.59%) PMI Certification
5 184 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
6 178 (2.42%) PMP
7 167 (2.27%) Master's Degree
8 153 (2.08%) ACCA
9 134 (1.83%) CIMA
10 110 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
11 94 (1.28%) CISSP
12 92 (1.25%) AWS Certification
13 64 (0.87%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.86%) CISM
15 61 (0.83%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 35 (0.48%) CBAP
18 34 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
19 27 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 27 (0.37%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (5.15%) QA
2 333 (4.54%) Data Quality
3 272 (3.71%) PMO
4 257 (3.50%) GDPR
5 122 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 115 (1.57%) NIST
7 111 (1.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 98 (1.33%) Accessibility
9 96 (1.31%) SLA
10 76 (1.04%) IFRS
10 76 (1.04%) PCI DSS
11 58 (0.79%) GRC
12 49 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.60%) PSD2
14 39 (0.53%) MiFID
15 33 (0.45%) SEPA
16 32 (0.44%) Basel III
17 29 (0.40%) GAAP
17 29 (0.40%) NCSC
18 27 (0.37%) COBIT
System Software
1 332 (4.52%) Docker
2 190 (2.59%) Active Directory
3 50 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (0.26%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) HDFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) NFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 6 (0.082%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.068%) Firmware
10 5 (0.068%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.054%) BitLocker
11 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.041%) RACF
12 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 373 (5.08%) Kubernetes
2 264 (3.60%) Terraform
3 176 (2.40%) Ansible
4 87 (1.19%) Grafana
5 78 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.86%) SCCM
7 56 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
8 35 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
15 13 (0.18%) Control-M
15 13 (0.18%) Puppet
16 9 (0.12%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,018 (13.87%) Microsoft
2 796 (10.84%) SAP
3 712 (9.70%) Oracle
4 270 (3.68%) ServiceNow
5 178 (2.42%) Salesforce
6 161 (2.19%) Databricks
7 160 (2.18%) Splunk
8 157 (2.14%) Google
9 146 (1.99%) Cisco
10 145 (1.98%) Workday
11 96 (1.31%) VMware
12 90 (1.23%) IBM
13 70 (0.95%) Citrix
14 63 (0.86%) Ariba
15 62 (0.84%) CyberArk
16 56 (0.76%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.72%) HP
18 49 (0.67%) Murex
19 48 (0.65%) OpenAI
20 47 (0.64%) Apple