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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,451 6,486 8,227
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.46% 22.19% 18.69%
As % of the General category 33.11% 35.26% 32.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,375 4,292 5,504
10th Percentile £351 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £700
90th Percentile £800 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 208 110 238
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.48 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.33 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.81% +46.36% -15.38%
75th Percentile £43.31 £73.44 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.81 £83.20 £53.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -57.95% +75.00% -25.00%

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 25,527 18,394 25,598
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.76% 62.94% 58.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,885 11,786 16,238
10th Percentile £304 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £641 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,592 742 1,887
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.70 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £15.39
Median hourly rate £26.28 £29.00 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.40% +7.41% -22.86%
75th Percentile £59.00 £57.50 £50.48
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £27.13 £25.36
% change year-on-year -7.83% +6.96% -17.50%

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 9 April 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 9 April 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 9 April 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 7,473 £535 -7.76% 4,228
London 0 4,523 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,355 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -1 2,388 £540 -8.09% 1,715
North of England +3 1,090 £475 - 695
South East -1 661 £503 -6.73% 1,010
North West +6 583 £460 -1.08% 371
Midlands -1 582 £475 -5.00% 423
Yorkshire 0 459 £500 +2.56% 253
Scotland 0 388 £500 +5.26% 161
West Midlands 0 386 £492 -10.55% 251
South West -2 335 £525 +4.95% 302
East of England -1 200 £514 -6.59% 271
East Midlands 0 191 £450 +1.35% 171
Wales +23 105 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -8 48 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland 0 44 £513 +55.30% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 4

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
1 339 (4.01%) Confluence
2 212 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
5 51 (0.60%) Apache
6 49 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.43%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) CMS
9 19 (0.22%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Appian
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.18%) Camunda
12 14 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 11 (0.13%) TPMS
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 8 (0.095%) WebLogic
Applications
1 547 (6.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 247 (2.92%) Microsoft Office
3 189 (2.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 177 (2.09%) Microsoft Project
5 131 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 10 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.095%) InVision
12 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.059%) Notion
14 4 (0.047%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
16 2 (0.024%) InDesign
16 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
17 1 (0.012%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 364 (4.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 121 (1.43%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.23%) Oracle Receivables
4 84 (0.99%) NetSuite
5 83 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 75 (0.89%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.80%) SAP FI
8 66 (0.78%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.64%) SAP CO
11 53 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
12 50 (0.59%) SAP FI/CO
13 43 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
14 38 (0.45%) Oracle Cash Management
15 35 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
16 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
17 31 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 30 (0.35%) Aladdin
18 30 (0.35%) Workday HCM
19 28 (0.33%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,281 (15.16%) Azure
2 980 (11.60%) AWS
3 608 (7.19%) Power Platform
4 388 (4.59%) GCP
5 288 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
6 273 (3.23%) Microsoft 365
6 273 (3.23%) SaaS
7 240 (2.84%) Dynamics 365
8 234 (2.77%) GitHub
9 148 (1.75%) Serverless
10 145 (1.72%) OCI
11 140 (1.66%) Snowflake
12 128 (1.51%) Entra ID
13 118 (1.40%) Amazon S3
14 98 (1.16%) Power Automate
15 92 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
16 89 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
17 88 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
17 88 (1.04%) OpenShift
18 76 (0.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 165 (1.95%) Firewall
2 107 (1.27%) Network Security
3 78 (0.92%) WAN
4 68 (0.80%) DNS
5 59 (0.70%) VPN
6 45 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 44 (0.52%) LAN
8 43 (0.51%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.40%) BGP
10 32 (0.38%) HTTP
11 30 (0.35%) SSL
12 29 (0.34%) OSPF
13 26 (0.31%) Internet
13 26 (0.31%) Multicast
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 22 (0.26%) Wireless
16 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
17 19 (0.22%) DHCP
18 18 (0.21%) Skype
19 17 (0.20%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 527 (6.24%) Power BI
2 224 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
3 207 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 171 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
5 162 (1.92%) Metadata
6 152 (1.80%) Tableau
7 125 (1.48%) Data Lake
7 125 (1.48%) Relational Database
8 103 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
9 90 (1.06%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.92%) Big Data
11 65 (0.77%) BigQuery
12 64 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 55 (0.65%) MongoDB
14 45 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
16 41 (0.49%) Power Query
16 41 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
17 40 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
18 39 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 680 (8.05%) JIRA
2 215 (2.54%) Git
3 205 (2.43%) Jenkins
4 119 (1.41%) GitLab
5 62 (0.73%) JUnit
6 56 (0.66%) Cucumber
7 43 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
8 42 (0.50%) Selenium
9 31 (0.37%) Postman
10 27 (0.32%) Bitbucket
11 26 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 23 (0.27%) MLflow
13 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
14 19 (0.22%) ERwin
15 18 (0.21%) Maven
16 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
18 14 (0.17%) Hudson
19 12 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 2,652 (31.38%) Social Skills
2 1,588 (18.79%) Banking
3 1,139 (13.48%) Analytical Skills
4 625 (7.40%) Public Sector
5 331 (3.92%) Financial Institution
6 330 (3.90%) Legal
7 286 (3.38%) Front Office
8 279 (3.30%) Investment Banking
9 241 (2.85%) Manufacturing
10 239 (2.83%) Organisational Skills
11 238 (2.82%) Marketing
12 237 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
13 220 (2.60%) Retail
14 212 (2.51%) Telecoms
15 200 (2.37%) Influencing Skills
16 140 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 129 (1.53%) Local Government
18 122 (1.44%) Law
18 122 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
19 115 (1.36%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,300 (15.38%) Analyst
2 864 (10.22%) Developer
2 864 (10.22%) Senior
3 816 (9.66%) Lead
4 762 (9.02%) Architect
5 705 (8.34%) Business Analyst
6 676 (8.00%) Project Manager
7 633 (7.49%) Consultant
8 304 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
9 252 (2.98%) Data Engineer
10 200 (2.37%) Financial Analyst
11 195 (2.31%) Senior Manager
12 191 (2.26%) Data Analyst
13 186 (2.20%) Finance Manager
14 168 (1.99%) Programme Manager
15 151 (1.79%) Java Developer
16 150 (1.77%) Accountant
17 138 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
18 132 (1.56%) Senior Developer
19 130 (1.54%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (3.21%) Kafka
2 260 (3.08%) REST
3 215 (2.54%) .NET
4 199 (2.35%) React
5 166 (1.96%) Middleware
6 162 (1.92%) Oracle Fusion
7 149 (1.76%) Spring
8 135 (1.60%) Spring Boot
9 130 (1.54%) RESTful
10 118 (1.40%) Node.js
11 100 (1.18%) AngularJS
12 96 (1.14%) PySpark
13 83 (0.98%) OAuth
14 79 (0.93%) XML
15 76 (0.90%) HTML
15 76 (0.90%) JSON
16 73 (0.86%) CSS
16 73 (0.86%) Redux
17 71 (0.84%) Pandas
18 64 (0.76%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 353 (4.18%) Onboarding
2 323 (3.82%) Product Ownership
3 273 (3.23%) Cloud Native
4 220 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
5 188 (2.22%) Management Information System
6 162 (1.92%) Data Structures
6 162 (1.92%) Derivative
7 158 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
8 149 (1.76%) Data Centre
9 147 (1.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 145 (1.72%) Fixed Income
11 134 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
12 118 (1.40%) Equities
13 102 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
14 98 (1.16%) Public Cloud
14 98 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
15 96 (1.14%) Virtual Team
16 83 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
17 64 (0.76%) CMDB
17 64 (0.76%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 295 (3.49%) Linux
2 275 (3.25%) Windows
3 143 (1.69%) Unix
4 66 (0.78%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.62%) Windows 10
6 40 (0.47%) Android
7 31 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 28 (0.33%) Apple iOS
9 23 (0.27%) zOS
10 19 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 16 (0.19%) Solaris
12 15 (0.18%) AIX
13 7 (0.083%) VMS
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.035%) MVS
15 3 (0.035%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.035%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.024%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,761 (20.84%) Agile
2 1,657 (19.61%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,252 (14.81%) Problem-Solving
4 1,127 (13.34%) Migration
5 943 (11.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 909 (10.76%) DevOps
7 906 (10.72%) Continuous Improvement
8 870 (10.29%) ERP
9 838 (9.92%) CI/CD
10 827 (9.79%) Analytics
11 816 (9.66%) Project Management
12 790 (9.35%) Business Intelligence
13 747 (8.84%) AI
14 668 (7.90%) Decision-Making
15 663 (7.85%) Data Modelling
16 650 (7.69%) Roadmaps
17 617 (7.30%) Validation
18 602 (7.12%) Change Management
18 602 (7.12%) User Acceptance Testing
19 587 (6.95%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,185 (14.02%) SQL
2 987 (11.68%) Python
3 563 (6.66%) Java
4 305 (3.61%) C#
5 227 (2.69%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.32%) TypeScript
7 164 (1.94%) PowerShell
8 112 (1.33%) C++
9 71 (0.84%) Bash
10 69 (0.82%) PL/SQL
11 67 (0.79%) Go
12 59 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 55 (0.65%) VBA
14 50 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.54%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.46%) Scala
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 32 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.33%) Bicep
20 26 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 770 (9.11%) Degree
2 722 (8.54%) Security Cleared
3 513 (6.07%) SC Cleared
4 211 (2.50%) PMP
5 203 (2.40%) PMI Certification
6 191 (2.26%) ACCA
7 180 (2.13%) CIMA
8 148 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
9 147 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
10 133 (1.57%) Master's Degree
11 121 (1.43%) CISSP
12 87 (1.03%) DV Cleared
13 82 (0.97%) CISM
14 70 (0.83%) Azure Certification
15 64 (0.76%) AWS Certification
16 45 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
17 37 (0.44%) ISTQB
17 37 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 35 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
19 30 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 465 (5.50%) Data Quality
2 404 (4.78%) QA
3 335 (3.96%) PMO
4 301 (3.56%) GDPR
5 153 (1.81%) NIST
6 130 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 114 (1.35%) SLA
8 100 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 92 (1.09%) IFRS
10 78 (0.92%) Accessibility
11 74 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 72 (0.85%) GRC
13 60 (0.71%) ISO 20022
14 49 (0.58%) GAAP
15 40 (0.47%) PSD2
16 37 (0.44%) SEPA
17 36 (0.43%) NCSC
18 30 (0.35%) MiFID
19 27 (0.32%) Basel III
20 26 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 300 (3.55%) Docker
2 152 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 61 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.40%) vSphere
5 25 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.15%) NFS
8 12 (0.14%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.095%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.071%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.059%) HDFS
13 4 (0.047%) ISA Server
13 4 (0.047%) KVM
13 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.047%) RACF
14 3 (0.035%) ACF2
14 3 (0.035%) Firmware
14 3 (0.035%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 394 (4.66%) Kubernetes
2 256 (3.03%) Terraform
3 129 (1.53%) Ansible
4 85 (1.01%) Grafana
5 67 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 59 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.60%) SCCM
8 36 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Progress Chef
12 17 (0.20%) Argo
13 16 (0.19%) Control-M
14 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.15%) Puppet
16 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.14%) CASB
16 12 (0.14%) HP ALM
17 11 (0.13%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,116 (13.21%) Microsoft
2 817 (9.67%) SAP
3 738 (8.73%) Oracle
4 331 (3.92%) ServiceNow
5 221 (2.62%) Databricks
6 192 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 179 (2.12%) Google
8 146 (1.73%) Cisco
9 144 (1.70%) Workday
10 119 (1.41%) Splunk
11 116 (1.37%) VMware
12 106 (1.25%) IBM
13 77 (0.91%) Ariba
13 77 (0.91%) Citrix
14 74 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 71 (0.84%) Sage
16 55 (0.65%) Informatica
17 54 (0.64%) OpenAI
18 49 (0.58%) Palo Alto
19 48 (0.57%) Bloomberg