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 5 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,860 7,546 7,707
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.54% 22.93% 19.66%
As % of the General category 33.72% 36.29% 34.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,088 4,983 5,149
10th Percentile £359 £338 £359
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £725
90th Percentile £789 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 288 145 193
10th Percentile £16.18 £16.00 £15.04
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.25 £24.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +39.94%
75th Percentile £50.00 £63.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £38.12
% change year-on-year +60.58% -28.19% +17.29%

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 29,244 20,793 22,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.98% 63.19% 57.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,402 12,994 14,143
10th Percentile £313 £278 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,147 1,115 1,399
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £16.19 £16.96
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £60.00 £50.75 £57.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.81 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +48.17% -41.92% +46.62%

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 5 August 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 5 August 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 5 August 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 8,599 £550 - 8,265
London 0 5,209 £588 -2.08% 5,037
UK excluding London -1 3,877 £500 +1.01% 4,175
Work from Home -1 2,837 £550 -4.35% 3,368
North of England 0 1,323 £500 +6.61% 1,137
South East -2 745 £501 -5.42% 1,151
North West 0 697 £500 +10.01% 647
Midlands -1 632 £525 +16.67% 583
Yorkshire 0 562 £517 +8.51% 369
Scotland 0 502 £475 -5.00% 310
West Midlands 0 481 £525 +5.85% 358
South West -4 373 £525 -4.55% 470
East of England +6 207 £525 -7.89% 297
East Midlands -3 145 £500 +20.85% 225
Wales +2 70 £525 +13.51% 115
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +1.06% 176
North East -11 57 £500 +13.64% 130
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 -

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
1 327 (3.32%) Confluence
2 248 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 87 (0.88%) Apache Spark
4 85 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 67 (0.68%) Apache
6 48 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 16 (0.16%) CICS
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.13%) Camunda
14 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
16 7 (0.071%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 530 (5.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 165 (1.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (1.64%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.06%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.061%) Sketch
11 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 449 (4.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 90 (0.91%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
9 60 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
10 56 (0.57%) Oracle Financials
11 45 (0.46%) SAP CO
12 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
13 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
14 37 (0.38%) Unit4 Business World
15 35 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
16 32 (0.32%) Workday HCM
17 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
18 28 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
19 27 (0.27%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,546 (15.68%) Azure
2 1,088 (11.03%) AWS
3 674 (6.84%) Power Platform
4 514 (5.21%) GCP
5 336 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
6 335 (3.40%) SaaS
7 293 (2.97%) Microsoft 365
8 287 (2.91%) GitHub
9 254 (2.58%) Dynamics 365
10 219 (2.22%) Snowflake
11 203 (2.06%) Entra ID
12 145 (1.47%) Serverless
13 143 (1.45%) OCI
14 125 (1.27%) Amazon S3
15 120 (1.22%) Power Automate
16 113 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
17 109 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
18 106 (1.08%) dbt
19 105 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
20 100 (1.01%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 182 (1.85%) Firewall
2 146 (1.48%) Network Security
3 92 (0.93%) VPN
4 90 (0.91%) DNS
5 65 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 57 (0.58%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) SSL
8 47 (0.48%) BGP
9 43 (0.44%) DHCP
10 40 (0.41%) LAN
11 37 (0.38%) HTTP
12 34 (0.34%) Multicast
13 29 (0.29%) OSPF
14 27 (0.27%) Wireless
15 26 (0.26%) VLAN
16 25 (0.25%) Internet
17 24 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
18 21 (0.21%) Cisco ASA
18 21 (0.21%) SAN
19 19 (0.19%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 556 (5.64%) Power BI
2 282 (2.86%) SQL Server
3 261 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
4 200 (2.03%) Metadata
5 178 (1.81%) Relational Database
6 154 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
7 151 (1.53%) Tableau
8 143 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 88 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
10 84 (0.85%) NoSQL
11 76 (0.77%) MongoDB
12 74 (0.75%) Oracle Database
13 71 (0.72%) BigQuery
14 67 (0.68%) Big Data
15 65 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.56%) Power Query
17 50 (0.51%) Delta Lake
18 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 49 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 670 (6.80%) JIRA
2 283 (2.87%) Git
3 157 (1.59%) Jenkins
4 97 (0.98%) GitLab
5 46 (0.47%) JUnit
6 39 (0.40%) Selenium
7 36 (0.37%) Cucumber
8 29 (0.29%) ERwin
9 28 (0.28%) Visual Studio
10 27 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 25 (0.25%) Claude Code
12 25 (0.25%) Maven
12 25 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
14 23 (0.23%) Postman
15 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
15 20 (0.20%) TeamCity
General
1 2,897 (29.38%) Social Skills
2 1,879 (19.06%) Banking
3 1,382 (14.02%) Analytical Skills
4 541 (5.49%) Public Sector
5 521 (5.28%) Legal
6 385 (3.90%) Investment Banking
7 383 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
8 364 (3.69%) Retail
9 361 (3.66%) Financial Institution
10 350 (3.55%) Front Office
11 279 (2.83%) Influencing Skills
12 228 (2.31%) Documentation Skills
13 195 (1.98%) Manufacturing
14 177 (1.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 162 (1.64%) Billing
16 161 (1.63%) Marketing
17 158 (1.60%) General Ledger
18 157 (1.59%) Local Government
19 141 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
20 140 (1.42%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,435 (14.55%) Analyst
2 1,071 (10.86%) Lead
3 1,069 (10.84%) Senior
4 988 (10.02%) Developer
5 881 (8.94%) Architect
6 739 (7.49%) Business Analyst
7 708 (7.18%) Project Manager
8 680 (6.90%) Consultant
9 337 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
10 326 (3.31%) Data Engineer
11 247 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 226 (2.29%) Senior Manager
13 209 (2.12%) Accountant
14 205 (2.08%) Java Developer
15 203 (2.06%) Data Analyst
16 190 (1.93%) Senior Developer
17 185 (1.88%) Programme Manager
18 183 (1.86%) Finance Manager
19 180 (1.83%) Software Engineer
20 174 (1.76%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (3.30%) REST
2 277 (2.81%) .NET
3 267 (2.71%) React
4 265 (2.69%) Kafka
5 244 (2.47%) Oracle Fusion
6 192 (1.95%) Middleware
7 176 (1.78%) Spring
8 164 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 139 (1.41%) PySpark
10 129 (1.31%) RESTful
11 119 (1.21%) Redux
12 111 (1.13%) Node.js
13 98 (0.99%) JSON
14 93 (0.94%) AngularJS
15 91 (0.92%) XML
16 89 (0.90%) OAuth
17 67 (0.68%) SOAP
18 63 (0.64%) Web Services
19 62 (0.63%) GraphQL
20 60 (0.61%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 478 (4.85%) Onboarding
2 463 (4.70%) Product Ownership
3 424 (4.30%) Cloud Native
4 267 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
5 246 (2.49%) Data Structures
6 221 (2.24%) Management Information System
7 197 (2.00%) Virtual Team
8 180 (1.83%) Derivative
9 176 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
10 174 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
11 166 (1.68%) Fixed Income
12 157 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 156 (1.58%) Data Centre
14 152 (1.54%) AI Agents
15 134 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
16 118 (1.20%) Equities
17 106 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
18 105 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
19 103 (1.04%) Public Cloud
20 98 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 357 (3.62%) Windows
2 292 (2.96%) Linux
3 151 (1.53%) Unix
4 82 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 47 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 43 (0.44%) Apple iOS
7 39 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 37 (0.38%) Solaris
8 37 (0.38%) zOS
9 33 (0.33%) Android
10 26 (0.26%) Mac OS
11 18 (0.18%) AIX
12 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
13 8 (0.081%) VMS
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 5 (0.051%) MVS
16 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
17 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,300 (23.33%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,027 (20.56%) Agile
3 1,354 (13.73%) Migration
4 1,306 (13.25%) Problem-Solving
5 1,165 (11.82%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,151 (11.67%) AI
7 1,137 (11.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,033 (10.48%) ERP
9 1,021 (10.35%) CI/CD
10 1,013 (10.27%) Analytics
11 999 (10.13%) DevOps
12 907 (9.20%) Decision-Making
13 809 (8.20%) Validation
14 801 (8.12%) Data Modelling
15 798 (8.09%) Roadmaps
16 764 (7.75%) User Acceptance Testing
17 744 (7.55%) Project Management
18 711 (7.21%) Change Management
19 688 (6.98%) Business Intelligence
20 643 (6.52%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,287 (13.05%) SQL
2 1,213 (12.30%) Python
3 638 (6.47%) Java
4 384 (3.89%) C#
5 269 (2.73%) JavaScript
6 244 (2.47%) TypeScript
7 236 (2.39%) PowerShell
8 120 (1.22%) Bash
9 98 (0.99%) PL/SQL
10 81 (0.82%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.78%) C++
11 77 (0.78%) Go
12 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 68 (0.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 50 (0.51%) Bicep
15 47 (0.48%) VBA
16 40 (0.41%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.38%) Scala
18 35 (0.35%) Apex Code
19 33 (0.33%) Korn
Qualifications
1 764 (7.75%) Security Cleared
2 729 (7.39%) Degree
3 546 (5.54%) SC Cleared
4 239 (2.42%) PMP
5 212 (2.15%) PMI Certification
6 203 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
7 201 (2.04%) ACCA
8 178 (1.81%) CIMA
9 153 (1.55%) CISSP
10 137 (1.39%) DV Cleared
11 119 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 98 (0.99%) Azure Certification
13 88 (0.89%) CISM
14 79 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
15 76 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 60 (0.61%) AWS Certification
17 54 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
18 46 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 640 (6.49%) Data Quality
2 416 (4.22%) QA
3 361 (3.66%) PMO
4 274 (2.78%) GDPR
5 155 (1.57%) NIST
6 124 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.15%) SLA
8 110 (1.12%) GRC
9 106 (1.08%) Accessibility
10 100 (1.01%) IFRS
10 100 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 61 (0.62%) GAAP
12 59 (0.60%) ISO 20022
13 49 (0.50%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
15 35 (0.35%) SEPA
16 31 (0.31%) COBIT
17 30 (0.30%) MiFID
17 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 29 (0.29%) EMIR
System Software
1 268 (2.72%) Docker
2 227 (2.30%) Active Directory
3 65 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.23%) RACF
6 22 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
6 22 (0.22%) vSphere
7 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
9 11 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 5 (0.051%) ACF2
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.041%) KVM
13 4 (0.041%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.041%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 432 (4.38%) Kubernetes
2 332 (3.37%) Terraform
3 157 (1.59%) Ansible
4 87 (0.88%) Grafana
5 76 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
6 72 (0.73%) Prometheus
7 53 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 52 (0.53%) SCCM
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 24 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.16%) Argo
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 15 (0.15%) Puppet
15 13 (0.13%) CASB
15 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,308 (13.27%) Microsoft
2 855 (8.67%) Oracle
3 835 (8.47%) SAP
4 360 (3.65%) ServiceNow
5 322 (3.27%) Databricks
6 230 (2.33%) Salesforce
7 213 (2.16%) Google
8 160 (1.62%) IBM
9 138 (1.40%) Workday
10 125 (1.27%) VMware
11 109 (1.11%) Cisco
12 105 (1.06%) Splunk
13 93 (0.94%) Ariba
14 89 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 74 (0.75%) OpenAI
16 64 (0.65%) Sage
17 60 (0.61%) Citrix
18 52 (0.53%) Informatica
19 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
20 44 (0.45%) Murex