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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,988 7,290 7,773
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.20% 22.09% 20.24%
As % of the General category 32.57% 34.83% 34.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,055 4,755 4,914
10th Percentile £359 £338 £360
25th Percentile £450 £417 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £706
90th Percentile £788 £792 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £507
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.38% -3.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 134 135
10th Percentile £14.86 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.22 £19.84 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.11% -13.56% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £57.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £70.75 £78.75 £74.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £31.91
% change year-on-year +74.79% -21.19% +22.74%

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 30,662 20,930 22,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.88% 63.43% 58.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,938 13,003 13,276
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
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 £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,585 1,216 1,061
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £29.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.30% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £54.50 £47.22 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.96 £21.39 £35.00
% change year-on-year +40.07% -38.89% +29.63%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 8,568 £550 - 17,470
London 0 5,194 £592 -1.33% 11,249
UK excluding London 0 3,893 £510 +2.00% 7,962
Work from Home -1 2,815 £550 -3.93% 6,866
North of England 0 1,335 £514 +9.89% 1,847
South East -1 741 £500 -2.72% 2,009
North West -1 640 £503 +11.78% 1,026
Yorkshire 0 616 £525 +5.00% 618
Midlands -3 603 £507 +6.74% 1,112
Scotland 0 553 £463 -6.57% 949
West Midlands -2 452 £518 -0.43% 681
South West -5 354 £525 -4.55% 918
East of England +3 204 £553 -3.91% 586
East Midlands -2 148 £500 +19.05% 429
North East -7 72 £538 +22.51% 216
Northern Ireland 0 65 £510 -1.21% 410
Wales 0 60 £525 +20.69% 205
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 16

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 (3.24%) Confluence
2 257 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 84 (0.84%) Apache Spark
5 76 (0.76%) Apache
6 46 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
8 26 (0.26%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 16 (0.16%) Camunda
10 16 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 14 (0.14%) CICS
12 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.090%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.060%) Appian
15 6 (0.060%) JBoss
15 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
16 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 534 (5.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 199 (1.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 138 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
5 86 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 63 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
10 4 (0.040%) Windchill
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.020%) 1Password
Business Applications
1 443 (4.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.24%) Oracle Payables
3 105 (1.05%) Oracle Receivables
4 103 (1.03%) NetSuite
5 90 (0.90%) Oracle ERP
6 78 (0.78%) Oracle General Ledger
7 77 (0.77%) SAP FI
8 74 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
9 66 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
11 53 (0.53%) SAP CO
12 50 (0.50%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 48 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
14 45 (0.45%) Workday HCM
15 41 (0.41%) Oracle Assets
16 37 (0.37%) Aladdin
17 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
18 33 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
19 28 (0.28%) SAP BRIM
20 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,570 (15.72%) Azure
2 1,099 (11.00%) AWS
3 659 (6.60%) Power Platform
4 564 (5.65%) GCP
5 341 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
6 324 (3.24%) GitHub
7 319 (3.19%) SaaS
8 316 (3.16%) Microsoft 365
9 263 (2.63%) Dynamics 365
10 226 (2.26%) Entra ID
11 224 (2.24%) Snowflake
12 158 (1.58%) Serverless
13 143 (1.43%) OCI
14 133 (1.33%) Amazon S3
15 131 (1.31%) GitHub Actions
16 130 (1.30%) Power Automate
17 129 (1.29%) dbt
18 121 (1.21%) Microsoft Copilot
19 109 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
20 105 (1.05%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.73%) Firewall
2 155 (1.55%) Network Security
3 103 (1.03%) VPN
4 84 (0.84%) DNS
5 58 (0.58%) TCP/IP
6 55 (0.55%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.45%) BGP
9 43 (0.43%) SSL
10 32 (0.32%) LAN
10 32 (0.32%) Multicast
10 32 (0.32%) VLAN
11 31 (0.31%) HTTP
11 31 (0.31%) Wireless
12 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
13 26 (0.26%) OSPF
13 26 (0.26%) SAN
14 24 (0.24%) Internet
15 18 (0.18%) Broadband
15 18 (0.18%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 525 (5.26%) Power BI
2 281 (2.81%) SQL Server
3 252 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 207 (2.07%) Metadata
5 178 (1.78%) Relational Database
6 142 (1.42%) Data Lake
7 137 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
8 126 (1.26%) Tableau
9 87 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.83%) BigQuery
11 81 (0.81%) Oracle Database
12 78 (0.78%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
14 59 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.54%) Power Query
16 51 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 47 (0.47%) Big Data
18 46 (0.46%) Db2
19 43 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
19 43 (0.43%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 639 (6.40%) JIRA
2 326 (3.26%) Git
3 173 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 109 (1.09%) GitLab
5 65 (0.65%) Selenium
6 50 (0.50%) JUnit
7 40 (0.40%) Claude Code
8 38 (0.38%) Maven
9 36 (0.36%) Bitbucket
9 36 (0.36%) SonarQube
10 34 (0.34%) Cucumber
11 31 (0.31%) Gradle
11 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 30 (0.30%) REST Assured
13 28 (0.28%) ERwin
14 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
15 25 (0.25%) Cypress.io
16 24 (0.24%) Postman
17 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
18 20 (0.20%) Mockito
General
1 3,116 (31.20%) Social Skills
2 2,099 (21.02%) Banking
3 1,409 (14.11%) Analytical Skills
4 542 (5.43%) Legal
5 537 (5.38%) Public Sector
6 452 (4.53%) Organisational Skills
7 393 (3.93%) Investment Banking
8 376 (3.76%) Retail
9 351 (3.51%) Influencing Skills
10 343 (3.43%) Front Office
11 309 (3.09%) Financial Institution
12 216 (2.16%) Manufacturing
13 210 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
14 194 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 181 (1.81%) Marketing
16 178 (1.78%) Billing
17 177 (1.77%) General Ledger
18 161 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
19 147 (1.47%) Local Government
20 140 (1.40%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,404 (14.06%) Analyst
2 1,122 (11.23%) Senior
3 998 (9.99%) Developer
4 988 (9.89%) Lead
5 868 (8.69%) Architect
6 732 (7.33%) Consultant
7 725 (7.26%) Business Analyst
8 685 (6.86%) Project Manager
9 336 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
10 301 (3.01%) Data Engineer
11 260 (2.60%) Financial Analyst
12 218 (2.18%) Senior Manager
13 215 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 210 (2.10%) Senior Developer
15 204 (2.04%) Data Analyst
16 189 (1.89%) Programme Manager
17 179 (1.79%) IT Manager
18 175 (1.75%) Accountant
19 165 (1.65%) Finance Manager
20 152 (1.52%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 408 (4.08%) Terraform
2 402 (4.02%) REST
3 278 (2.78%) Kafka
4 269 (2.69%) .NET
5 261 (2.61%) Oracle Fusion
6 248 (2.48%) React
7 200 (2.00%) Spring
8 195 (1.95%) Middleware
8 195 (1.95%) Spring Boot
9 146 (1.46%) PySpark
10 145 (1.45%) RESTful
11 113 (1.13%) JSON
12 110 (1.10%) OAuth
13 109 (1.09%) XML
14 99 (0.99%) SOAP
15 90 (0.90%) Web Services
16 88 (0.88%) Redux
17 80 (0.80%) AngularJS
18 77 (0.77%) HTML
18 77 (0.77%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 529 (5.30%) Onboarding
2 513 (5.14%) Product Ownership
3 473 (4.74%) Cloud Native
4 258 (2.58%) Management Information System
5 255 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
6 235 (2.35%) Data Structures
7 228 (2.28%) Virtual Team
8 216 (2.16%) AI Agents
9 214 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
10 202 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
11 192 (1.92%) Derivative
12 170 (1.70%) Data Centre
13 163 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
14 155 (1.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 135 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
16 131 (1.31%) Fixed Income
17 119 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
18 116 (1.16%) Equities
19 114 (1.14%) Podcast
20 113 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 386 (3.86%) Windows
2 334 (3.34%) Linux
3 172 (1.72%) Unix
4 94 (0.94%) Windows Server
5 61 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.41%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 39 (0.39%) zOS
10 35 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 33 (0.33%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 13 (0.13%) VMS
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 2,725 (27.28%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,028 (20.30%) Agile
3 1,340 (13.42%) Migration
4 1,326 (13.28%) Problem-Solving
5 1,324 (13.26%) AI
6 1,159 (11.60%) CI/CD
7 1,132 (11.33%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,120 (11.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,021 (10.22%) Analytics
10 1,005 (10.06%) DevOps
11 974 (9.75%) ERP
12 925 (9.26%) Decision-Making
13 877 (8.78%) Roadmaps
13 877 (8.78%) Validation
14 780 (7.81%) Project Management
15 777 (7.78%) Data Modelling
16 750 (7.51%) User Acceptance Testing
17 719 (7.20%) Change Management
18 718 (7.19%) Risk Management
19 684 (6.85%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,363 (13.65%) SQL
2 1,285 (12.87%) Python
3 667 (6.68%) Java
4 362 (3.62%) C#
5 284 (2.84%) PowerShell
6 257 (2.57%) JavaScript
7 223 (2.23%) TypeScript
8 161 (1.61%) Bash
9 113 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.77%) C++
12 70 (0.70%) Go
13 68 (0.68%) T-SQL
14 59 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 56 (0.56%) Bicep
16 52 (0.52%) Korn
17 44 (0.44%) Scala
18 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
18 35 (0.35%) VBA
19 34 (0.34%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 768 (7.69%) Security Cleared
2 739 (7.40%) Degree
3 547 (5.48%) SC Cleared
4 261 (2.61%) PMP
5 259 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
6 228 (2.28%) PMI Certification
7 190 (1.90%) ACCA
8 167 (1.67%) CIMA
9 138 (1.38%) DV Cleared
10 135 (1.35%) CISSP
11 134 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
12 115 (1.15%) Azure Certification
13 82 (0.82%) AWS Certification
14 81 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
15 78 (0.78%) Master's Degree
16 70 (0.70%) CISM
17 52 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 49 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 39 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 706 (7.07%) Data Quality
2 428 (4.29%) QA
3 352 (3.52%) PMO
4 213 (2.13%) GDPR
5 134 (1.34%) NIST
6 127 (1.27%) GRC
7 118 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 106 (1.06%) Accessibility
9 98 (0.98%) SLA
10 95 (0.95%) IFRS
11 75 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.46%) GAAP
14 44 (0.44%) PCI DSS
15 38 (0.38%) SEPA
16 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) COBIT
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) EMIR
19 24 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 267 (2.67%) Docker
2 240 (2.40%) Active Directory
3 97 (0.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) RACF
5 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 26 (0.26%) vSphere
7 16 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 9 (0.090%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
13 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 499 (5.00%) Kubernetes
2 190 (1.90%) Ansible
3 95 (0.95%) Grafana
4 84 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
5 67 (0.67%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.63%) SCCM
7 62 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
8 27 (0.27%) Control-M
8 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 21 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
10 19 (0.19%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
12 14 (0.14%) Istio
13 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
14 10 (0.10%) Packer
14 10 (0.10%) Puppet
14 10 (0.10%) Tivoli
15 9 (0.090%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 8 (0.080%) CA Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 1,427 (14.29%) Microsoft
2 877 (8.78%) Oracle
3 874 (8.75%) SAP
4 375 (3.75%) ServiceNow
5 363 (3.63%) Databricks
6 239 (2.39%) Google
7 234 (2.34%) Salesforce
8 202 (2.02%) IBM
9 152 (1.52%) Workday
10 149 (1.49%) VMware
11 128 (1.28%) Cisco
12 117 (1.17%) Splunk
13 107 (1.07%) Ariba
14 91 (0.91%) OpenAI
15 87 (0.87%) CyberArk
16 56 (0.56%) Citrix
17 55 (0.55%) Bloomberg
18 52 (0.52%) Murex
18 52 (0.52%) Red Hat
18 52 (0.52%) Sage