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

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,871 7,366 7,603
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.29% 22.65% 20.02%
As % of the General category 33.10% 35.61% 34.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,031 4,822 4,953
10th Percentile £360 £331 £362
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £492 £513
% change year-on-year +3.66% -4.00% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 324 134 156
10th Percentile £15.07 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.50 £20.36 £23.78
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +36.13%
75th Percentile - £63.00 £50.63
90th Percentile £75.40 £78.75 £70.09
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -28.14% +25.09%

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 29,820 20,685 21,873
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.26% 63.59% 57.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,611 12,817 13,410
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
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% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,319 1,170 1,158
10th Percentile £13.70 £13.50 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.76 £16.08 £17.25
Median hourly rate £30.73 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.19% -32.93% +36.36%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £21.47 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.56% -43.69% +46.90%

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 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 5 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 5 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 8,526 £550 - 14,731
London 0 5,147 £585 -2.50% 9,732
UK excluding London 0 3,884 £510 +3.66% 7,155
Work from Home -1 2,812 £550 -4.35% 6,560
North of England 0 1,343 £508 +11.74% 1,714
South East -2 739 £500 -4.76% 1,636
North West -1 680 £500 +11.11% 1,049
Midlands -1 609 £520 +11.83% 811
Yorkshire 0 582 £519 +8.93% 471
Scotland 0 528 £465 -5.49% 962
West Midlands +1 453 £525 +5.00% 515
South West -7 362 £550 -3.30% 998
East of England +2 207 £550 -1.12% 570
East Midlands -4 153 £500 +20.48% 295
North East -5 74 £500 +14.29% 212
Northern Ireland -1 64 £500 +2.56% 416
Wales -1 60 £525 +13.51% 153
Channel Islands +2 5 £550 - 3

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
1 334 (3.38%) Confluence
2 257 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 93 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 82 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 70 (0.71%) Apache
6 46 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 26 (0.26%) SAS
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) Camunda
12 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.11%) CICS
14 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.071%) Ethereum
15 7 (0.071%) WebLogic
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 6 (0.061%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 530 (5.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 193 (1.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 157 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 88 (0.89%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 29 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.061%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.061%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.051%) Sketch
12 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.030%) Notion
13 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
14 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 431 (4.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 129 (1.31%) Oracle Payables
3 109 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
4 108 (1.09%) NetSuite
5 95 (0.96%) Oracle ERP
6 75 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
6 75 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
7 72 (0.73%) SAP FI
8 62 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
8 62 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 54 (0.55%) Oracle Financials
10 49 (0.50%) SAP CO
11 45 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
12 39 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
13 37 (0.37%) Aladdin
14 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
15 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
16 32 (0.32%) Workday HCM
17 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
17 26 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,561 (15.81%) Azure
2 1,066 (10.80%) AWS
3 670 (6.79%) Power Platform
4 531 (5.38%) GCP
5 353 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
6 327 (3.31%) SaaS
7 315 (3.19%) GitHub
8 309 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
9 276 (2.80%) Dynamics 365
10 223 (2.26%) Entra ID
11 218 (2.21%) Snowflake
12 155 (1.57%) Serverless
13 145 (1.47%) OCI
14 124 (1.26%) GitHub Actions
15 122 (1.24%) dbt
16 119 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
16 119 (1.21%) Power Automate
17 116 (1.18%) Amazon S3
18 112 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
19 102 (1.03%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.75%) Firewall
2 151 (1.53%) Network Security
3 102 (1.03%) VPN
4 87 (0.88%) DNS
5 63 (0.64%) TCP/IP
6 58 (0.59%) WAN
7 50 (0.51%) DHCP
8 44 (0.45%) SSL
9 43 (0.44%) BGP
10 36 (0.36%) HTTP
11 35 (0.35%) LAN
12 34 (0.34%) VLAN
13 33 (0.33%) Multicast
14 31 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
15 30 (0.30%) Wireless
16 26 (0.26%) Internet
17 25 (0.25%) SAN
18 23 (0.23%) OSPF
19 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
20 15 (0.15%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 546 (5.53%) Power BI
2 284 (2.88%) SQL Server
3 257 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
4 210 (2.13%) Metadata
5 177 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.48%) Data Lake
7 128 (1.30%) PostgreSQL
8 122 (1.24%) Tableau
9 79 (0.80%) Oracle Database
10 78 (0.79%) NoSQL
11 76 (0.77%) BigQuery
12 75 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
13 70 (0.71%) MongoDB
14 58 (0.59%) Delta Lake
15 56 (0.57%) Power Query
15 56 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
16 49 (0.50%) Big Data
17 46 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
18 45 (0.46%) Db2
19 43 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 665 (6.74%) JIRA
2 299 (3.03%) Git
3 169 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 103 (1.04%) GitLab
5 57 (0.58%) Selenium
6 51 (0.52%) JUnit
7 34 (0.34%) SonarQube
8 33 (0.33%) Maven
9 32 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 32 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 31 (0.31%) Claude Code
11 30 (0.30%) ERwin
11 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
12 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
13 27 (0.27%) Cucumber
14 26 (0.26%) Gradle
15 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
16 22 (0.22%) Cypress.io
16 22 (0.22%) Postman
17 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
General
1 3,053 (30.93%) Social Skills
2 2,009 (20.35%) Banking
3 1,390 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
4 544 (5.51%) Legal
5 520 (5.27%) Public Sector
6 435 (4.41%) Organisational Skills
7 395 (4.00%) Investment Banking
8 382 (3.87%) Retail
9 333 (3.37%) Front Office
10 323 (3.27%) Financial Institution
11 322 (3.26%) Influencing Skills
12 221 (2.24%) Documentation Skills
13 204 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 191 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 174 (1.76%) General Ledger
16 164 (1.66%) Marketing
17 163 (1.65%) Billing
18 156 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
19 150 (1.52%) Local Government
20 141 (1.43%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,430 (14.49%) Analyst
2 1,056 (10.70%) Senior
3 1,007 (10.20%) Lead
4 975 (9.88%) Developer
5 870 (8.81%) Architect
6 742 (7.52%) Business Analyst
7 710 (7.19%) Consultant
8 696 (7.05%) Project Manager
9 330 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
10 306 (3.10%) Data Engineer
11 261 (2.64%) Financial Analyst
12 223 (2.26%) Senior Manager
13 209 (2.12%) Java Developer
14 201 (2.04%) Data Analyst
15 194 (1.97%) Senior Developer
16 189 (1.91%) Programme Manager
17 182 (1.84%) Accountant
18 178 (1.80%) Finance Manager
19 171 (1.73%) IT Manager
20 150 (1.52%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 373 (3.78%) Terraform
2 362 (3.67%) REST
3 267 (2.70%) .NET
4 266 (2.69%) Oracle Fusion
5 251 (2.54%) Kafka
6 230 (2.33%) React
7 191 (1.93%) Spring
8 186 (1.88%) Spring Boot
9 180 (1.82%) Middleware
10 149 (1.51%) PySpark
11 138 (1.40%) RESTful
12 105 (1.06%) XML
13 101 (1.02%) OAuth
14 99 (1.00%) JSON
15 81 (0.82%) Redux
16 80 (0.81%) SOAP
17 76 (0.77%) AngularJS
18 71 (0.72%) Node.js
19 70 (0.71%) Web Services
20 69 (0.70%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 515 (5.22%) Onboarding
2 500 (5.07%) Product Ownership
3 428 (4.34%) Cloud Native
4 249 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
5 248 (2.51%) Management Information System
6 236 (2.39%) Data Structures
7 223 (2.26%) Virtual Team
8 195 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
9 189 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
10 184 (1.86%) Derivative
11 178 (1.80%) AI Agents
12 160 (1.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 159 (1.61%) Data Centre
14 133 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
15 131 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
16 125 (1.27%) Fixed Income
17 114 (1.15%) Podcast
18 113 (1.14%) Equities
19 112 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
20 110 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 371 (3.76%) Windows
2 310 (3.14%) Linux
3 164 (1.66%) Unix
4 87 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 56 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.50%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.42%) Windows 10
8 38 (0.38%) Android
9 36 (0.36%) zOS
10 34 (0.34%) Solaris
11 29 (0.29%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 4 (0.041%) CentOS
17 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,556 (25.89%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,023 (20.49%) Agile
3 1,341 (13.59%) Migration
4 1,308 (13.25%) Problem-Solving
5 1,232 (12.48%) AI
6 1,165 (11.80%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,148 (11.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,088 (11.02%) CI/CD
9 1,008 (10.21%) ERP
10 1,005 (10.18%) Analytics
11 991 (10.04%) DevOps
12 910 (9.22%) Decision-Making
13 832 (8.43%) Validation
14 820 (8.31%) Roadmaps
15 776 (7.86%) Data Modelling
16 775 (7.85%) Project Management
17 768 (7.78%) User Acceptance Testing
18 726 (7.35%) Change Management
19 671 (6.80%) Risk Management
20 666 (6.75%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,316 (13.33%) SQL
2 1,220 (12.36%) Python
3 640 (6.48%) Java
4 357 (3.62%) C#
5 275 (2.79%) PowerShell
6 242 (2.45%) JavaScript
7 207 (2.10%) TypeScript
8 144 (1.46%) Bash
9 110 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 95 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 56 (0.57%) Bicep
15 55 (0.56%) Go
16 46 (0.47%) Korn
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 38 (0.38%) Scala
19 37 (0.37%) VBA
20 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 756 (7.66%) Security Cleared
2 726 (7.35%) Degree
3 544 (5.51%) SC Cleared
4 247 (2.50%) PMP
5 244 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
6 221 (2.24%) PMI Certification
7 195 (1.98%) ACCA
8 170 (1.72%) CIMA
9 145 (1.47%) CISSP
10 137 (1.39%) DV Cleared
11 131 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
12 108 (1.09%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
14 84 (0.85%) CISM
15 70 (0.71%) Master's Degree
16 67 (0.68%) AWS Certification
17 52 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 46 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 673 (6.82%) Data Quality
2 429 (4.35%) QA
3 364 (3.69%) PMO
4 233 (2.36%) GDPR
5 139 (1.41%) NIST
6 119 (1.21%) GRC
7 118 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 108 (1.09%) Accessibility
9 96 (0.97%) IFRS
9 96 (0.97%) SLA
10 85 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 64 (0.65%) ISO 20022
12 51 (0.52%) GAAP
13 41 (0.42%) PCI DSS
14 37 (0.37%) Solvency II
15 36 (0.36%) SEPA
16 28 (0.28%) COBIT
16 28 (0.28%) EMIR
16 28 (0.28%) MiFID
17 23 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 265 (2.68%) Docker
2 237 (2.40%) Active Directory
3 84 (0.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.25%) RACF
7 18 (0.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 9 (0.091%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) ACF2
12 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.041%) KVM
14 4 (0.041%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 464 (4.70%) Kubernetes
2 168 (1.70%) Ansible
3 97 (0.98%) Grafana
4 77 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
5 69 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.63%) SCCM
7 57 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Argo
12 13 (0.13%) Istio
13 12 (0.12%) FortiGate
13 12 (0.12%) Puppet
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
15 10 (0.10%) vRealize
16 9 (0.091%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,414 (14.32%) Microsoft
2 885 (8.97%) Oracle
3 838 (8.49%) SAP
4 372 (3.77%) ServiceNow
5 358 (3.63%) Databricks
6 235 (2.38%) Salesforce
7 221 (2.24%) Google
8 178 (1.80%) IBM
9 138 (1.40%) VMware
10 125 (1.27%) Workday
11 119 (1.21%) Cisco
12 115 (1.17%) Splunk
13 98 (0.99%) Ariba
14 87 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 82 (0.83%) OpenAI
16 56 (0.57%) Citrix
17 55 (0.56%) Bloomberg
17 55 (0.56%) Sage
18 52 (0.53%) Informatica
19 47 (0.48%) Red Hat