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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,606 6,509 8,070
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 17.95% 22.15% 18.94%
As % of the General category 33.46% 35.03% 32.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,383 4,242 5,397
10th Percentile £355 £350 £356
25th Percentile £438 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £545 £553 £580
Median % change year-on-year -1.45% -4.66% -3.33%
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 192 113 248
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.88 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.72 £22.27 £15.13
Median hourly rate £23.83 £38.11 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -37.48% +41.31% +0.47%
75th Percentile £54.25 £66.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £37.02 £30.00
% change year-on-year -35.64% +23.40% -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 25,717 18,580 24,689
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.63% 63.23% 57.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,704 11,812 15,578
10th Percentile £310 £285 £275
25th Percentile £410 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.88% -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 1,655 797 1,927
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.96 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.25 £15.41
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.52 £55.93 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.05 £24.50 £28.00
% change year-on-year +14.47% -12.50% -0.57%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 7,611 £550 -4.35% 4,562
London 0 4,577 £575 -8.00% 2,357
UK excluding London 0 3,449 £500 - 2,928
Work from Home -2 2,400 £536 -10.52% 1,952
North of England +3 1,164 £488 +2.63% 751
South East -2 647 £503 -2.39% 954
North West +5 618 £465 - 406
Midlands -1 586 £490 +2.08% 406
Yorkshire +1 507 £515 +6.74% 260
Scotland 0 416 £500 +4.82% 168
West Midlands 0 394 £500 -4.76% 242
South West -2 352 £525 - 318
East of England +1 203 £520 -5.45% 241
East Midlands 0 188 £465 +4.55% 162
Wales +19 91 £450 +16.13% 74
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +28.05% 67
North East -15 40 £488 +3.72% 93
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
2 214 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 54 (0.63%) Apache
5 51 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
5 51 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
6 34 (0.40%) SAS
7 23 (0.27%) CMS
8 20 (0.23%) CICS
9 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.17%) IIS
11 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.16%) Appian
12 12 (0.14%) Camunda
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 10 (0.12%) Ethereum
14 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 9 (0.10%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.10%) WebSphere
16 8 (0.093%) TPMS
Applications
1 512 (5.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
3 170 (1.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 168 (1.95%) Microsoft Project
5 125 (1.45%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.52%) 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
1 390 (4.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.21%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 84 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 65 (0.76%) Oracle ERP
7 61 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
8 56 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
8 56 (0.65%) SAP FI
9 47 (0.55%) SAP CO
10 46 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
11 43 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
12 37 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
13 34 (0.40%) Aladdin
14 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
15 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
16 28 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
16 28 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 28 (0.33%) Workday HCM
17 25 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,316 (15.29%) Azure
2 952 (11.06%) AWS
3 605 (7.03%) Power Platform
4 386 (4.49%) GCP
5 299 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
6 293 (3.40%) SaaS
7 266 (3.09%) Microsoft 365
8 242 (2.81%) Dynamics 365
9 228 (2.65%) GitHub
10 152 (1.77%) Snowflake
11 141 (1.64%) Entra ID
12 135 (1.57%) Serverless
13 127 (1.48%) OCI
14 114 (1.32%) Power Automate
15 112 (1.30%) Amazon S3
16 94 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
17 85 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
17 85 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 78 (0.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 76 (0.88%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 153 (1.78%) Firewall
2 113 (1.31%) Network Security
3 73 (0.85%) WAN
4 71 (0.83%) DNS
5 59 (0.69%) VPN
6 53 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 39 (0.45%) BGP
8 37 (0.43%) SD-WAN
9 36 (0.42%) LAN
10 31 (0.36%) HTTP
11 29 (0.34%) OSPF
11 29 (0.34%) SSL
12 28 (0.33%) Multicast
13 26 (0.30%) DHCP
14 24 (0.28%) MPLS
15 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
15 20 (0.23%) VSAN
16 18 (0.21%) Internet
17 17 (0.20%) VLAN
18 13 (0.15%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 511 (5.94%) Power BI
2 213 (2.48%) SQL Server
3 209 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
4 165 (1.92%) Metadata
5 160 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
6 150 (1.74%) Relational Database
6 150 (1.74%) Tableau
7 123 (1.43%) Data Lake
8 87 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 82 (0.95%) Oracle Reports
10 75 (0.87%) Big Data
11 66 (0.77%) Oracle Database
12 60 (0.70%) BigQuery
13 57 (0.66%) MongoDB
14 48 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
15 43 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 42 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
17 41 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 38 (0.44%) DynamoDB
19 37 (0.43%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 671 (7.80%) JIRA
2 200 (2.32%) Git
3 168 (1.95%) Jenkins
4 100 (1.16%) 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 2,506 (29.12%) Social Skills
2 1,542 (17.92%) Banking
3 1,133 (13.17%) Analytical Skills
4 520 (6.04%) Public Sector
5 364 (4.23%) Legal
6 327 (3.80%) Financial Institution
7 295 (3.43%) Investment Banking
8 271 (3.15%) Front Office
9 267 (3.10%) Retail
10 242 (2.81%) Organisational Skills
11 237 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
12 208 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 177 (2.06%) Manufacturing
14 158 (1.84%) Marketing
15 145 (1.68%) General Ledger
16 139 (1.62%) Telecoms
17 127 (1.48%) Local Government
18 120 (1.39%) Law
19 118 (1.37%) Billing
20 117 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,316 (15.29%) Analyst
2 903 (10.49%) Senior
3 866 (10.06%) Developer
4 865 (10.05%) Lead
5 787 (9.14%) Architect
6 712 (8.27%) Business Analyst
7 683 (7.94%) Project Manager
8 591 (6.87%) Consultant
9 324 (3.76%) Solutions Architect
10 280 (3.25%) Data Engineer
11 217 (2.52%) Financial Analyst
12 206 (2.39%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.18%) Data Analyst
14 186 (2.16%) Finance Manager
15 178 (2.07%) Programme Manager
16 174 (2.02%) Accountant
17 149 (1.73%) Software Engineer
18 145 (1.68%) Java Developer
19 141 (1.64%) Delivery Manager
20 140 (1.63%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 257 (2.99%) Kafka
2 251 (2.92%) REST
3 236 (2.74%) .NET
4 201 (2.34%) React
5 186 (2.16%) Middleware
6 158 (1.84%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (1.71%) Spring
8 142 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 134 (1.56%) RESTful
10 103 (1.20%) Node.js
10 103 (1.20%) PySpark
11 92 (1.07%) AngularJS
12 79 (0.92%) OAuth
13 78 (0.91%) JSON
13 78 (0.91%) Redux
14 74 (0.86%) XML
15 69 (0.80%) HTML
16 68 (0.79%) CSS
17 62 (0.72%) Pandas
18 59 (0.69%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 367 (4.26%) Onboarding
2 346 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 314 (3.65%) Cloud Native
4 226 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
5 194 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 192 (2.23%) Data Structures
7 168 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
8 167 (1.94%) Derivative
9 150 (1.74%) Data Centre
10 136 (1.58%) Fixed Income
11 135 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
12 130 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 102 (1.19%) Virtual Team
14 101 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
15 98 (1.14%) Public Cloud
16 97 (1.13%) Equities
17 91 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
18 89 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
19 69 (0.80%) AI Agents
20 66 (0.77%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 271 (3.15%) Windows
2 253 (2.94%) Linux
3 134 (1.56%) Unix
4 70 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.49%) 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 6 (0.070%) VMS
12 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.046%) HPUX
14 4 (0.046%) MVS
14 4 (0.046%) SUSE
14 4 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,784 (20.73%) Agile
2 1,722 (20.01%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,201 (13.96%) Problem-Solving
4 1,175 (13.65%) Migration
5 947 (11.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 922 (10.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 914 (10.62%) ERP
8 903 (10.49%) DevOps
9 838 (9.74%) CI/CD
10 829 (9.63%) AI
11 812 (9.44%) Analytics
12 797 (9.26%) Project Management
13 720 (8.37%) Decision-Making
14 698 (8.11%) Data Modelling
15 697 (8.10%) Business Intelligence
16 684 (7.95%) Roadmaps
17 668 (7.76%) Validation
18 660 (7.67%) User Acceptance Testing
19 607 (7.05%) Change Management
20 568 (6.60%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,178 (13.69%) SQL
2 1,013 (11.77%) Python
3 545 (6.33%) Java
4 335 (3.89%) C#
5 216 (2.51%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.31%) TypeScript
7 158 (1.84%) PowerShell
8 107 (1.24%) C++
9 74 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 70 (0.81%) Go
11 65 (0.76%) Bash
12 64 (0.74%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 43 (0.50%) Scala
16 42 (0.49%) VBA
17 33 (0.38%) R
18 26 (0.30%) Apex Code
18 26 (0.30%) Bicep
18 26 (0.30%) Rust
Qualifications
1 729 (8.47%) Degree
2 694 (8.06%) Security Cleared
3 500 (5.81%) SC Cleared
4 213 (2.48%) PMP
5 210 (2.44%) ACCA
6 197 (2.29%) PMI Certification
7 195 (2.27%) CIMA
8 144 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
9 131 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
10 123 (1.43%) CISSP
11 103 (1.20%) Master's Degree
12 84 (0.98%) CISM
13 80 (0.93%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.73%) 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
1 498 (5.79%) Data Quality
2 406 (4.72%) QA
3 320 (3.72%) PMO
4 281 (3.27%) GDPR
5 159 (1.85%) NIST
6 125 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 104 (1.21%) SLA
8 103 (1.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 99 (1.15%) IFRS
10 90 (1.05%) GRC
11 78 (0.91%) Accessibility
12 67 (0.78%) PCI DSS
13 62 (0.72%) ISO 20022
14 52 (0.60%) GAAP
15 38 (0.44%) SEPA
16 37 (0.43%) PSD2
17 36 (0.42%) NCSC
18 28 (0.33%) MiFID
19 26 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
19 26 (0.30%) EMIR
System Software
1 272 (3.16%) Docker
2 148 (1.72%) Active Directory
3 53 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.36%) vSphere
5 27 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 12 (0.14%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.058%) HDFS
10 5 (0.058%) KVM
10 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.046%) Firmware
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%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 388 (4.51%) Kubernetes
2 238 (2.77%) Terraform
3 120 (1.39%) Ansible
4 84 (0.98%) Grafana
5 67 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 42 (0.49%) SCCM
8 37 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.31%) 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
16 11 (0.13%) Nessus
17 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
18 8 (0.093%) Kiali
Vendors
1 1,101 (12.79%) Microsoft
2 779 (9.05%) SAP
3 719 (8.35%) Oracle
4 313 (3.64%) ServiceNow
5 237 (2.75%) Databricks
6 187 (2.17%) Salesforce
7 171 (1.99%) Google
8 134 (1.56%) Workday
9 116 (1.35%) Cisco
10 115 (1.34%) Splunk
11 98 (1.14%) VMware
12 91 (1.06%) IBM
13 77 (0.89%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.86%) Ariba
15 73 (0.85%) Citrix
16 67 (0.78%) Sage
17 57 (0.66%) OpenAI
18 52 (0.60%) Bloomberg
18 52 (0.60%) Informatica
18 52 (0.60%) Palo Alto