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

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,747 6,477 8,272
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.03% 21.03% 18.76%
As % of the General category 32.46% 33.88% 31.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,908 4,055 5,621
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £671 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £795
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £509
% change year-on-year - -1.77% -0.97%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 92 171
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.09 £22.50 £14.13
Median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £21.43
Median % change year-on-year -32.86% +63.32% -14.28%
75th Percentile £41.75 £64.06 £38.12
90th Percentile £71.00 £82.88 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year -20.00% +41.03% -43.61%

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 23,869 19,117 25,904
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.63% 62.06% 58.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,927 11,591 16,674
10th Percentile £300 £285 £265
25th Percentile £403 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £476 £500
% change year-on-year -0.21% -4.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,472 605 1,651
10th Percentile £13.64 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.36 £20.12 £15.16
Median hourly rate £23.00 £29.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.69% +11.54% -3.70%
75th Percentile £50.00 £57.50 £52.64
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £25.00
% change year-on-year -18.89% +8.50% -

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 19 February 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 19 February 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 19 February 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 6,811 £535 -8.94% 3,594
London -1 4,139 £575 -5.93% 1,662
UK excluding London -1 3,078 £500 - 2,711
Work from Home -1 2,192 £525 -10.64% 1,510
North of England +2 994 £475 - 632
South East -1 561 £500 -4.31% 1,028
Midlands -3 544 £490 -2.00% 397
North West +4 503 £450 -3.54% 351
Yorkshire 0 443 £513 - 223
Scotland 0 392 £475 +1.06% 119
West Midlands -4 345 £502 -8.82% 229
South West -5 307 £512 -2.48% 274
East Midlands 0 197 £450 +7.14% 167
East of England -1 190 £529 +0.71% 213
Wales +35 100 £413 +1.54% 75
Northern Ireland -1 50 £525 +61.54% 36
North East -7 49 £488 +8.33% 71
Channel Islands +3 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
1 322 (4.16%) Confluence
2 202 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 75 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 64 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
5 50 (0.65%) Apache
6 43 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 33 (0.43%) SAS
8 27 (0.35%) CMS
9 21 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 16 (0.21%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.17%) CICS
12 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.17%) TPMS
13 12 (0.15%) Camunda
13 12 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 10 (0.13%) Mattermost
14 10 (0.13%) Mendix
Applications
1 530 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 288 (3.72%) Microsoft Office
3 203 (2.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 180 (2.32%) Microsoft Project
5 139 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 18 (0.23%) Sketch
9 17 (0.22%) Trello
10 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.10%) InVision
13 7 (0.090%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.065%) Notion
14 5 (0.065%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.026%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.026%) InDesign
16 2 (0.026%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 317 (4.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.50%) Oracle Payables
3 97 (1.25%) Oracle Receivables
4 70 (0.90%) Oracle EBS
4 70 (0.90%) SAP FI
5 69 (0.89%) Oracle General Ledger
6 67 (0.86%) NetSuite
7 63 (0.81%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 60 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
8 60 (0.77%) SAP CO
9 53 (0.68%) SAP FI/CO
10 44 (0.57%) Oracle Assets
11 40 (0.52%) Oracle Cash Management
11 40 (0.52%) Oracle ERP
12 39 (0.50%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 38 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
14 36 (0.46%) Workday HCM
15 35 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
16 29 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
17 24 (0.31%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,165 (15.04%) Azure
2 941 (12.15%) AWS
3 547 (7.06%) Power Platform
4 388 (5.01%) GCP
5 272 (3.51%) Microsoft 365
6 255 (3.29%) SaaS
7 234 (3.02%) Azure DevOps
8 228 (2.94%) Dynamics 365
9 202 (2.61%) GitHub
10 145 (1.87%) OCI
10 145 (1.87%) Serverless
11 127 (1.64%) Snowflake
12 121 (1.56%) Entra ID
13 97 (1.25%) Amazon S3
14 91 (1.17%) Power Automate
15 88 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
16 76 (0.98%) AWS Lambda
17 75 (0.97%) OpenShift
18 72 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
19 71 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 142 (1.83%) Firewall
2 76 (0.98%) Network Security
3 68 (0.88%) WAN
4 49 (0.63%) DNS
5 44 (0.57%) VPN
6 40 (0.52%) LAN
7 37 (0.48%) SD-WAN
8 35 (0.45%) TCP/IP
9 32 (0.41%) Wireless
10 28 (0.36%) Skype
11 26 (0.34%) SSL
12 23 (0.30%) HTTP
13 21 (0.27%) BGP
13 21 (0.27%) DHCP
14 20 (0.26%) Multicast
14 20 (0.26%) OSPF
15 19 (0.25%) Internet
16 18 (0.23%) SSH
17 15 (0.19%) Kerberos
18 13 (0.17%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 480 (6.20%) Power BI
2 202 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
3 191 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 171 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
5 141 (1.82%) Tableau
6 126 (1.63%) Metadata
7 121 (1.56%) NoSQL
8 120 (1.55%) Relational Database
9 115 (1.48%) Data Lake
10 89 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
11 72 (0.93%) Big Data
12 69 (0.89%) MongoDB
12 69 (0.89%) Oracle Database
13 56 (0.72%) BigQuery
14 44 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
15 39 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 36 (0.46%) Hadoop
17 35 (0.45%) MySQL
18 34 (0.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
19 33 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 619 (7.99%) JIRA
2 251 (3.24%) Jenkins
3 208 (2.68%) Git
4 156 (2.01%) GitLab
5 69 (0.89%) JUnit
6 59 (0.76%) Cucumber
7 46 (0.59%) Selenium
7 46 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
8 38 (0.49%) Bitbucket
8 38 (0.49%) Postman
9 32 (0.41%) Visual Studio
10 26 (0.34%) MLflow
11 24 (0.31%) Gradle
12 22 (0.28%) Liquibase
12 22 (0.28%) Maven
13 21 (0.27%) REST Assured
14 16 (0.21%) JMeter
14 16 (0.21%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.19%) Cypress.io
15 15 (0.19%) ERwin
General
1 2,665 (34.40%) Social Skills
2 1,532 (19.78%) Banking
3 1,020 (13.17%) Analytical Skills
4 630 (8.13%) Public Sector
5 339 (4.38%) Financial Institution
6 303 (3.91%) Marketing
7 282 (3.64%) Investment Banking
8 279 (3.60%) Front Office
9 274 (3.54%) Legal
10 270 (3.49%) Manufacturing
11 260 (3.36%) Telecoms
12 236 (3.05%) Organisational Skills
13 225 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
14 177 (2.28%) Influencing Skills
15 165 (2.13%) Retail
16 162 (2.09%) Electronics
17 133 (1.72%) General Ledger
18 128 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
19 120 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 115 (1.48%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,246 (16.08%) Analyst
2 864 (11.15%) Developer
3 778 (10.04%) Senior
4 675 (8.71%) Business Analyst
5 647 (8.35%) Architect
6 626 (8.08%) Lead
7 602 (7.77%) Project Manager
8 564 (7.28%) Consultant
9 273 (3.52%) Solutions Architect
10 196 (2.53%) Data Analyst
11 185 (2.39%) Data Engineer
12 175 (2.26%) Programme Manager
13 172 (2.22%) Financial Analyst
14 149 (1.92%) Java Developer
14 149 (1.92%) Senior Manager
15 143 (1.85%) Software Engineer
16 142 (1.83%) Senior Developer
17 128 (1.65%) Finance Manager
18 121 (1.56%) Senior Analyst
19 116 (1.50%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (3.56%) REST
2 254 (3.28%) Kafka
3 201 (2.59%) .NET
4 194 (2.50%) React
5 159 (2.05%) Oracle Fusion
6 150 (1.94%) RESTful
7 145 (1.87%) Spring
8 135 (1.74%) Middleware
9 120 (1.55%) Spring Boot
10 103 (1.33%) AngularJS
11 98 (1.27%) Node.js
12 88 (1.14%) XML
13 87 (1.12%) Pandas
14 85 (1.10%) HTML
15 84 (1.08%) PySpark
16 80 (1.03%) CSS
17 77 (0.99%) NumPy
18 76 (0.98%) JSON
19 72 (0.93%) OAuth
20 69 (0.89%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 331 (4.27%) Onboarding
2 306 (3.95%) Product Ownership
3 225 (2.90%) Cloud Native
4 183 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
5 176 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 171 (2.21%) Derivative
7 158 (2.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 144 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
9 142 (1.83%) Data Centre
10 140 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
11 133 (1.72%) Data Structures
12 126 (1.63%) Equities
12 126 (1.63%) Fixed Income
13 109 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
14 107 (1.38%) Public Cloud
15 97 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
16 82 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
17 81 (1.05%) Virtual Team
18 80 (1.03%) Hedge funds
19 68 (0.88%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 334 (4.31%) Linux
2 296 (3.82%) Windows
3 146 (1.88%) Unix
4 66 (0.85%) Windows 10
5 61 (0.79%) Mac OS
6 60 (0.77%) Android
7 56 (0.72%) Windows Server
8 31 (0.40%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 13 (0.17%) zOS
11 9 (0.12%) Solaris
12 8 (0.10%) AIX
13 7 (0.090%) VMS
14 5 (0.065%) CentOS
14 5 (0.065%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2016
16 3 (0.039%) Ubuntu
17 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
17 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,730 (22.33%) Agile
2 1,470 (18.98%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,241 (16.02%) Problem-Solving
4 947 (12.22%) Migration
5 854 (11.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 814 (10.51%) DevOps
7 785 (10.13%) CI/CD
8 760 (9.81%) Analytics
9 758 (9.78%) Business Intelligence
10 755 (9.75%) Project Management
11 712 (9.19%) Continuous Improvement
12 702 (9.06%) ERP
13 615 (7.94%) AI
14 575 (7.42%) Decision-Making
15 574 (7.41%) Roadmaps
16 559 (7.22%) Change Management
17 554 (7.15%) Data Modelling
18 535 (6.91%) Risk Management
19 503 (6.49%) Validation
20 497 (6.42%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,125 (14.52%) SQL
2 1,008 (13.01%) Python
3 552 (7.13%) Java
4 300 (3.87%) C#
5 230 (2.97%) JavaScript
6 192 (2.48%) PowerShell
7 181 (2.34%) TypeScript
8 148 (1.91%) C++
9 80 (1.03%) Go
10 78 (1.01%) PL/SQL
11 69 (0.89%) Bash
12 51 (0.66%) VBA
13 44 (0.57%) Shell Script
13 44 (0.57%) T-SQL
14 43 (0.56%) R
15 40 (0.52%) Kotlin
16 36 (0.46%) Scala
17 34 (0.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 32 (0.41%) Rust
19 27 (0.35%) Korn
Qualifications
1 820 (10.58%) Degree
2 615 (7.94%) Security Cleared
3 454 (5.86%) SC Cleared
4 187 (2.41%) PMI Certification
5 181 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
6 178 (2.30%) PMP
7 174 (2.25%) Master's Degree
8 160 (2.07%) ACCA
9 151 (1.95%) CIMA
10 123 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 89 (1.15%) CISSP
12 83 (1.07%) AWS Certification
13 70 (0.90%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.81%) Azure Certification
15 62 (0.80%) CISM
16 41 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
17 36 (0.46%) CBAP
17 36 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
17 36 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
18 31 (0.40%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 391 (5.05%) QA
2 380 (4.91%) Data Quality
3 302 (3.90%) PMO
4 264 (3.41%) GDPR
5 126 (1.63%) NIST
6 125 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 98 (1.27%) SLA
9 88 (1.14%) Accessibility
10 80 (1.03%) IFRS
10 80 (1.03%) PCI DSS
11 68 (0.88%) GRC
12 58 (0.75%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.57%) PSD2
14 39 (0.50%) MiFID
15 37 (0.48%) SEPA
16 35 (0.45%) GAAP
17 34 (0.44%) NCSC
18 31 (0.40%) Basel III
18 31 (0.40%) COBIT
System Software
1 336 (4.34%) Docker
2 185 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.36%) vSphere
6 13 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.12%) GPFS
9 9 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.090%) HDFS
12 4 (0.052%) ISA Server
12 4 (0.052%) KVM
13 3 (0.039%) Firmware
13 3 (0.039%) RACF
13 3 (0.039%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.026%) ACF2
14 2 (0.026%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 401 (5.18%) Kubernetes
2 251 (3.24%) Terraform
3 159 (2.05%) Ansible
4 96 (1.24%) Grafana
5 88 (1.14%) Prometheus
6 55 (0.71%) SCCM
7 54 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
8 37 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 22 (0.28%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.26%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.23%) Control-M
12 17 (0.22%) Argo
13 16 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.21%) SCOM
14 15 (0.19%) HP SiteScope
14 15 (0.19%) vRealize
15 14 (0.18%) Kibana
16 13 (0.17%) AirWatch
17 12 (0.15%) ITRS Geneos
18 11 (0.14%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,036 (13.37%) Microsoft
2 804 (10.38%) SAP
3 680 (8.78%) Oracle
4 303 (3.91%) ServiceNow
5 185 (2.39%) Salesforce
6 179 (2.31%) Databricks
7 172 (2.22%) Google
8 155 (2.00%) Splunk
9 151 (1.95%) Cisco
10 140 (1.81%) Workday
11 111 (1.43%) VMware
12 99 (1.28%) IBM
13 75 (0.97%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.96%) Citrix
15 68 (0.88%) Ariba
16 55 (0.71%) OpenAI
17 53 (0.68%) HP
18 51 (0.66%) Bloomberg
19 50 (0.65%) Murex
20 49 (0.63%) Sage