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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,667 6,389 8,066
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 17.94% 22.17% 18.99%
As % of the General category 33.52% 35.05% 32.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,429 4,170 5,395
10th Percentile £356 £350 £356
25th Percentile £440 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £578
Median % change year-on-year - -4.84% -3.67%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £505
% change year-on-year - -0.99% -3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 110 250
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.16 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £22.37 £15.04
Median hourly rate £25.00 £40.25 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -37.89% +49.24% +0.47%
75th Percentile £55.75 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.94 £55.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £49.90 £28.50
% change year-on-year -52.25% +75.09% -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 25,854 18,230 24,647
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.50% 63.27% 58.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,737 11,584 15,568
10th Percentile £312 £284 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,672 770 1,925
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.90 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.08 £27.57 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.10% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.82 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.50 £28.13
% change year-on-year +18.37% -12.89% -1.59%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 7,674 £550 -4.35% 4,133
London 0 4,625 £575 -8.00% 2,158
UK excluding London 0 3,464 £500 - 2,758
Work from Home -2 2,404 £538 -7.80% 1,771
North of England +3 1,186 £492 +3.58% 687
South East -1 640 £500 -2.88% 877
North West +5 620 £465 - 383
Midlands 0 586 £492 +3.58% 379
Yorkshire +1 525 £519 +9.21% 238
Scotland 0 412 £500 +5.26% 157
West Midlands 0 396 £500 -4.76% 238
South West -2 354 £525 - 307
East of England +2 203 £516 -6.14% 216
East Midlands 0 186 £468 +5.87% 139
Wales +15 90 £450 +12.50% 59
Northern Ireland -1 46 £525 +28.05% 124
North East -16 42 £488 +4.84% 75
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
1 320 (3.69%) Confluence
2 215 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 84 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 54 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
5 53 (0.61%) Apache
6 52 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
7 32 (0.37%) SAS
8 24 (0.28%) CMS
9 21 (0.24%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Appian
13 12 (0.14%) Camunda
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.12%) Jupyter
15 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
16 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
17 8 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 505 (5.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (2.54%) Microsoft Office
3 169 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 166 (1.92%) Microsoft Project
5 126 (1.45%) MS Visio
6 44 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 8 (0.092%) Notion
9 8 (0.092%) Sketch
10 7 (0.081%) InVision
11 6 (0.069%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.069%) 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
1 392 (4.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 107 (1.23%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.11%) Oracle Receivables
5 86 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 65 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
7 60 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
8 56 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
8 56 (0.65%) SAP FI
9 45 (0.52%) SAP CO
10 41 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
11 40 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
12 38 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
13 35 (0.40%) Aladdin
14 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
15 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
16 29 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 26 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
18 24 (0.28%) SAP ERP
18 24 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,320 (15.23%) Azure
2 964 (11.12%) AWS
3 592 (6.83%) Power Platform
4 384 (4.43%) GCP
5 301 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
6 292 (3.37%) SaaS
7 270 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
8 232 (2.68%) Dynamics 365
9 231 (2.67%) GitHub
10 158 (1.82%) Snowflake
11 148 (1.71%) Entra ID
12 139 (1.60%) Serverless
13 124 (1.43%) OCI
14 114 (1.32%) Power Automate
15 113 (1.30%) Amazon S3
16 93 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
17 85 (0.98%) OpenShift
18 81 (0.93%) GitHub Actions
19 77 (0.89%) PowerApps
20 76 (0.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 157 (1.81%) Firewall
2 117 (1.35%) Network Security
3 77 (0.89%) WAN
4 72 (0.83%) DNS
5 60 (0.69%) VPN
6 54 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 39 (0.45%) BGP
7 39 (0.45%) LAN
8 38 (0.44%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.39%) HTTP
10 29 (0.33%) OSPF
11 28 (0.32%) Multicast
11 28 (0.32%) SSL
12 27 (0.31%) DHCP
13 24 (0.28%) MPLS
14 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
14 20 (0.23%) VSAN
15 18 (0.21%) Internet
15 18 (0.21%) VLAN
16 12 (0.14%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 500 (5.77%) Power BI
2 215 (2.48%) SQL Server
3 211 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
4 171 (1.97%) Metadata
5 161 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
6 151 (1.74%) Relational Database
6 151 (1.74%) Tableau
7 123 (1.42%) Data Lake
8 87 (1.00%) NoSQL
9 78 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
10 75 (0.87%) Big Data
11 65 (0.75%) Oracle Database
12 61 (0.70%) MongoDB
13 59 (0.68%) BigQuery
14 48 (0.55%) Snowflake Schema
15 45 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
16 44 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 40 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 38 (0.44%) DynamoDB
19 35 (0.40%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 675 (7.79%) JIRA
2 205 (2.37%) Git
3 163 (1.88%) Jenkins
4 95 (1.10%) GitLab
5 46 (0.53%) Cucumber
5 46 (0.53%) JUnit
6 38 (0.44%) Selenium
7 31 (0.36%) Visual Studio
8 30 (0.35%) Postman
9 28 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 22 (0.25%) MLflow
10 22 (0.25%) SonarQube
11 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
11 21 (0.24%) Zephyr
12 18 (0.21%) Maven
13 17 (0.20%) ERwin
13 17 (0.20%) Hudson
14 16 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
15 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
16 13 (0.15%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,518 (29.05%) Social Skills
2 1,575 (18.17%) Banking
3 1,140 (13.15%) Analytical Skills
4 505 (5.83%) Public Sector
5 371 (4.28%) Legal
6 328 (3.78%) Financial Institution
7 310 (3.58%) Investment Banking
8 276 (3.18%) Front Office
9 268 (3.09%) Retail
10 242 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
11 233 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
12 210 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 171 (1.97%) Manufacturing
14 154 (1.78%) Marketing
15 143 (1.65%) General Ledger
16 133 (1.53%) Telecoms
17 125 (1.44%) Local Government
18 123 (1.42%) Law
19 118 (1.36%) Billing
20 116 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1,316 (15.18%) Analyst
2 916 (10.57%) Senior
3 874 (10.08%) Lead
4 872 (10.06%) Developer
5 797 (9.20%) Architect
6 714 (8.24%) Business Analyst
7 682 (7.87%) Project Manager
8 586 (6.76%) Consultant
9 332 (3.83%) Solutions Architect
10 280 (3.23%) Data Engineer
11 215 (2.48%) Financial Analyst
12 209 (2.41%) Senior Manager
13 190 (2.19%) Data Analyst
14 183 (2.11%) Finance Manager
15 176 (2.03%) Programme Manager
16 174 (2.01%) Accountant
17 153 (1.77%) Software Engineer
18 149 (1.72%) Java Developer
19 140 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
19 140 (1.62%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (2.91%) Kafka
2 248 (2.86%) REST
3 236 (2.72%) .NET
4 207 (2.39%) React
5 185 (2.13%) Middleware
6 164 (1.89%) Oracle Fusion
7 151 (1.74%) Spring
8 146 (1.68%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.56%) RESTful
10 103 (1.19%) Node.js
11 100 (1.15%) PySpark
12 95 (1.10%) AngularJS
13 83 (0.96%) OAuth
14 78 (0.90%) Redux
15 76 (0.88%) JSON
16 70 (0.81%) XML
17 69 (0.80%) HTML
18 68 (0.78%) CSS
19 61 (0.70%) OpenID
19 61 (0.70%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 378 (4.36%) Onboarding
2 360 (4.15%) Product Ownership
3 319 (3.68%) Cloud Native
4 233 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
5 195 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 189 (2.18%) Data Structures
7 169 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
7 169 (1.95%) Derivative
8 152 (1.75%) Data Centre
9 134 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
10 132 (1.52%) Fixed Income
11 131 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 103 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
13 100 (1.15%) Equities
14 99 (1.14%) Public Cloud
15 98 (1.13%) Virtual Team
16 91 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
17 90 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
18 72 (0.83%) AI Agents
19 65 (0.75%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 270 (3.12%) Windows
2 253 (2.92%) Linux
3 137 (1.58%) Unix
4 70 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 40 (0.46%) Windows 10
6 34 (0.39%) Solaris
7 30 (0.35%) Apple iOS
8 28 (0.32%) Android
9 26 (0.30%) zOS
10 20 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 18 (0.21%) Mac OS
12 17 (0.20%) AIX
13 7 (0.081%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.069%) VMS
14 6 (0.069%) Windows Server 2019
15 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
16 4 (0.046%) HPUX
16 4 (0.046%) MVS
16 4 (0.046%) SUSE
17 3 (0.035%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,789 (20.64%) Agile
2 1,736 (20.03%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,190 (13.73%) Problem-Solving
4 1,188 (13.71%) Migration
5 958 (11.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 935 (10.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 914 (10.55%) ERP
8 911 (10.51%) DevOps
9 855 (9.87%) CI/CD
10 844 (9.74%) AI
11 815 (9.40%) Analytics
12 783 (9.03%) Project Management
13 724 (8.35%) Decision-Making
14 715 (8.25%) Data Modelling
15 688 (7.94%) Roadmaps
16 678 (7.82%) Business Intelligence
16 678 (7.82%) Validation
17 666 (7.68%) User Acceptance Testing
18 617 (7.12%) Change Management
19 569 (6.57%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,165 (13.44%) SQL
2 1,018 (11.75%) Python
3 561 (6.47%) Java
4 338 (3.90%) C#
5 216 (2.49%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.32%) TypeScript
7 161 (1.86%) PowerShell
8 106 (1.22%) C++
9 72 (0.83%) Go
10 69 (0.80%) PL/SQL
11 66 (0.76%) Bash
12 61 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.51%) Scala
16 40 (0.46%) VBA
17 29 (0.33%) R
18 28 (0.32%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.31%) Bicep
19 27 (0.31%) Rust
Qualifications
1 734 (8.47%) Degree
2 687 (7.93%) Security Cleared
3 489 (5.64%) SC Cleared
4 215 (2.48%) ACCA
5 204 (2.35%) PMP
6 197 (2.27%) CIMA
7 185 (2.13%) PMI Certification
8 140 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
9 129 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
10 124 (1.43%) CISSP
11 99 (1.14%) Master's Degree
12 84 (0.97%) CISM
13 81 (0.93%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.73%) Azure Certification
15 57 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
16 45 (0.52%) AWS Certification
17 38 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 33 (0.38%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
20 30 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 508 (5.86%) Data Quality
2 405 (4.67%) QA
3 312 (3.60%) PMO
4 280 (3.23%) GDPR
5 161 (1.86%) NIST
6 125 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 109 (1.26%) SLA
8 108 (1.25%) IFRS
9 107 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 92 (1.06%) GRC
11 84 (0.97%) Accessibility
12 66 (0.76%) PCI DSS
13 60 (0.69%) ISO 20022
14 58 (0.67%) GAAP
15 38 (0.44%) NCSC
16 37 (0.43%) SEPA
17 35 (0.40%) PSD2
18 27 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
18 27 (0.31%) MiFID
19 26 (0.30%) EMIR
System Software
1 271 (3.13%) Docker
2 153 (1.77%) Active Directory
3 52 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 28 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.16%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.14%) NFS
10 8 (0.092%) GPFS
11 6 (0.069%) KVM
12 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.046%) Firmware
13 4 (0.046%) HDFS
13 4 (0.046%) RACF
14 3 (0.035%) GridGain
14 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.035%) SRDF
15 2 (0.023%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 391 (4.51%) Kubernetes
2 251 (2.90%) Terraform
3 125 (1.44%) Ansible
4 87 (1.00%) Grafana
5 70 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 61 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 43 (0.50%) SCCM
8 37 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.35%) 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
12 15 (0.17%) Puppet
13 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 12 (0.14%) Nessus
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
17 8 (0.092%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,100 (12.69%) Microsoft
2 778 (8.98%) SAP
3 712 (8.22%) Oracle
4 316 (3.65%) ServiceNow
5 237 (2.73%) Databricks
6 191 (2.20%) Salesforce
7 170 (1.96%) Google
8 130 (1.50%) Workday
9 117 (1.35%) Cisco
10 114 (1.32%) Splunk
11 104 (1.20%) VMware
12 91 (1.05%) IBM
13 80 (0.92%) CyberArk
14 71 (0.82%) Ariba
15 68 (0.78%) Citrix
16 66 (0.76%) Sage
17 58 (0.67%) OpenAI
18 51 (0.59%) IFS
18 51 (0.59%) Palo Alto
19 50 (0.58%) Informatica