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 7 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,044 7,210 7,680
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.29% 21.84% 20.40%
As % of the General category 32.46% 34.53% 34.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,026 4,691 4,815
10th Percentile £360 £334 £356
25th Percentile £450 £417 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £535 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 140 128
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.46 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.03 £17.93 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.71 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.63% -16.02% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £54.34 £55.06
90th Percentile £65.00 £74.13 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +29.41%

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 30,940 20,880 22,031
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.35% 63.24% 58.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,992 12,992 13,020
10th Percentile £313 £275 £280
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 £743 £738 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £486
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.31% -2.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,724 1,232 972
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.51 £14.76
25th Percentile £16.11 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £27.85 £25.08 £33.52
Median % change year-on-year +11.07% -25.19% +21.89%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.74 £21.39 £32.50
% change year-on-year +29.69% -34.18% +25.00%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 8,613 £550 - 18,309
London 0 5,225 £600 +2.39% 11,670
UK excluding London 0 3,894 £510 +2.00% 8,206
Work from Home -1 2,803 £550 - 7,119
North of England 0 1,340 £514 +9.89% 1,901
South East -1 746 £500 -2.82% 2,162
North West -2 642 £507 +12.67% 992
Yorkshire +1 619 £514 +2.80% 683
Midlands -3 615 £525 +10.53% 1,141
Scotland 0 549 £463 -6.57% 984
West Midlands -2 456 £520 +0.97% 696
South West -6 340 £525 -6.67% 796
East of England +3 206 £550 -4.35% 645
East Midlands -2 154 £513 +22.02% 446
North East -6 72 £538 +22.86% 239
Wales +3 65 £525 +20.34% 222
Northern Ireland 0 58 £510 -2.86% 415
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 13

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
1 328 (3.27%) Confluence
2 260 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 95 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
4 83 (0.83%) Apache
5 79 (0.79%) Apache Spark
6 47 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 23 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
8 23 (0.23%) SAS
9 20 (0.20%) IIS
10 17 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 11 (0.11%) CICS
12 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
13 10 (0.100%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.060%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 6 (0.060%) Appian
15 6 (0.060%) JBoss
16 5 (0.050%) WebLogic
Applications
1 529 (5.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 194 (1.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 149 (1.48%) Microsoft Project
5 85 (0.85%) MS Visio
6 68 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.080%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.080%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) Windchill
12 3 (0.030%) 1Password
12 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.030%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 449 (4.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
3 110 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
4 95 (0.95%) NetSuite
5 89 (0.89%) Oracle General Ledger
6 87 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
7 84 (0.84%) SAP FI
8 80 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
9 69 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
10 59 (0.59%) Oracle Financials
11 54 (0.54%) SAP CO
12 52 (0.52%) Workday HCM
13 49 (0.49%) SAP FI/CO
14 47 (0.47%) Oracle Assets
15 46 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
16 41 (0.41%) Aladdin
17 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
18 33 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
19 31 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
20 26 (0.26%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,605 (15.98%) Azure
2 1,110 (11.05%) AWS
3 662 (6.59%) Power Platform
4 568 (5.66%) GCP
5 370 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
6 339 (3.38%) GitHub
7 325 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
8 315 (3.14%) SaaS
9 264 (2.63%) Dynamics 365
10 233 (2.32%) Entra ID
11 223 (2.22%) Snowflake
12 163 (1.62%) Serverless
13 139 (1.38%) OCI
14 136 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
15 131 (1.30%) Power Automate
16 128 (1.27%) dbt
17 127 (1.26%) Amazon S3
18 122 (1.21%) Microsoft Copilot
19 115 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
20 106 (1.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 176 (1.75%) Firewall
2 168 (1.67%) Network Security
3 106 (1.06%) VPN
4 90 (0.90%) DNS
5 61 (0.61%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.56%) WAN
7 48 (0.48%) DHCP
8 47 (0.47%) BGP
9 39 (0.39%) SSL
10 35 (0.35%) Multicast
11 33 (0.33%) LAN
12 32 (0.32%) VLAN
13 31 (0.31%) HTTP
14 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
14 30 (0.30%) Wireless
15 28 (0.28%) OSPF
15 28 (0.28%) SAN
16 25 (0.25%) Internet
17 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
18 19 (0.19%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 525 (5.23%) Power BI
2 290 (2.89%) SQL Server
3 261 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.01%) Metadata
5 174 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.45%) Data Lake
7 136 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
8 124 (1.23%) Tableau
9 87 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 84 (0.84%) BigQuery
11 83 (0.83%) Oracle Database
12 81 (0.81%) MongoDB
13 59 (0.59%) Oracle Reports
13 59 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
14 54 (0.54%) Delta Lake
15 53 (0.53%) Power Query
16 47 (0.47%) Db2
17 45 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
18 42 (0.42%) Big Data
19 41 (0.41%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 663 (6.60%) JIRA
2 351 (3.49%) Git
3 190 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 118 (1.17%) GitLab
5 66 (0.66%) Selenium
6 49 (0.49%) JUnit
7 43 (0.43%) Claude Code
8 39 (0.39%) Maven
9 38 (0.38%) Bitbucket
9 38 (0.38%) Cucumber
10 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
11 34 (0.34%) Gradle
12 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
13 32 (0.32%) Visual Studio
14 28 (0.28%) Cypress.io
14 28 (0.28%) Postman
15 27 (0.27%) ERwin
16 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
17 21 (0.21%) Zephyr
18 20 (0.20%) Mockito
General
1 3,143 (31.29%) Social Skills
2 2,157 (21.48%) Banking
3 1,436 (14.30%) Analytical Skills
4 545 (5.43%) Public Sector
5 527 (5.25%) Legal
6 468 (4.66%) Organisational Skills
7 404 (4.02%) Investment Banking
8 366 (3.64%) Retail
9 345 (3.43%) Influencing Skills
10 342 (3.41%) Front Office
11 312 (3.11%) Financial Institution
12 228 (2.27%) Manufacturing
13 210 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
14 195 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 191 (1.90%) Marketing
16 190 (1.89%) Billing
17 185 (1.84%) General Ledger
18 158 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
19 152 (1.51%) Local Government
20 146 (1.45%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,381 (13.75%) Analyst
2 1,150 (11.45%) Senior
3 1,007 (10.03%) Developer
4 967 (9.63%) Lead
5 875 (8.71%) Architect
6 737 (7.34%) Consultant
7 710 (7.07%) Business Analyst
8 682 (6.79%) Project Manager
9 350 (3.48%) Solutions Architect
10 294 (2.93%) Data Engineer
11 251 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 222 (2.21%) Senior Manager
13 211 (2.10%) Senior Developer
14 207 (2.06%) Java Developer
15 203 (2.02%) Programme Manager
16 199 (1.98%) Data Analyst
17 183 (1.82%) IT Manager
18 180 (1.79%) Accountant
19 165 (1.64%) Finance Manager
20 155 (1.54%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 423 (4.21%) Terraform
2 419 (4.17%) REST
3 282 (2.81%) Kafka
4 276 (2.75%) .NET
5 271 (2.70%) Oracle Fusion
6 247 (2.46%) React
7 199 (1.98%) Spring
8 196 (1.95%) Middleware
9 194 (1.93%) Spring Boot
10 147 (1.46%) PySpark
11 142 (1.41%) RESTful
12 116 (1.15%) JSON
13 110 (1.10%) OAuth
13 110 (1.10%) XML
14 100 (1.00%) SOAP
15 93 (0.93%) Web Services
16 86 (0.86%) Redux
17 85 (0.85%) AngularJS
17 85 (0.85%) HTML
18 74 (0.74%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 540 (5.38%) Onboarding
2 513 (5.11%) Product Ownership
3 491 (4.89%) Cloud Native
4 274 (2.73%) Management Information System
5 255 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
6 238 (2.37%) Data Structures
7 229 (2.28%) AI Agents
7 229 (2.28%) Virtual Team
8 221 (2.20%) Distributed Systems
9 206 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
10 196 (1.95%) Derivative
11 189 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
12 174 (1.73%) Data Centre
13 149 (1.48%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 136 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
15 132 (1.31%) Fixed Income
16 122 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
17 115 (1.14%) Equities
18 114 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
19 113 (1.13%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 387 (3.85%) Windows
2 351 (3.49%) Linux
3 173 (1.72%) Unix
4 101 (1.01%) Windows Server
5 61 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 43 (0.43%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 37 (0.37%) zOS
10 36 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 29 (0.29%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 12 (0.12%) AIX
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 2,814 (28.02%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,085 (20.76%) Agile
3 1,368 (13.62%) AI
4 1,359 (13.53%) Migration
5 1,351 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
6 1,197 (11.92%) CI/CD
7 1,127 (11.22%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,113 (11.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,041 (10.36%) Analytics
9 1,041 (10.36%) DevOps
10 943 (9.39%) ERP
11 940 (9.36%) Decision-Making
12 913 (9.09%) Validation
13 910 (9.06%) Roadmaps
14 784 (7.81%) Project Management
15 771 (7.68%) Data Modelling
16 763 (7.60%) User Acceptance Testing
17 753 (7.50%) Risk Management
18 712 (7.09%) Change Management
19 705 (7.02%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,381 (13.75%) SQL
2 1,317 (13.11%) Python
3 662 (6.59%) Java
4 369 (3.67%) C#
5 302 (3.01%) PowerShell
6 269 (2.68%) JavaScript
7 221 (2.20%) TypeScript
8 177 (1.76%) Bash
9 108 (1.08%) PL/SQL
10 96 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 79 (0.79%) C++
12 73 (0.73%) Go
13 69 (0.69%) T-SQL
14 61 (0.61%) Bicep
14 61 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 53 (0.53%) Korn
16 45 (0.45%) Scala
17 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
18 33 (0.33%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.30%) VBA
Qualifications
1 784 (7.81%) Security Cleared
2 733 (7.30%) Degree
3 562 (5.60%) SC Cleared
4 261 (2.60%) PMP
5 256 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
6 236 (2.35%) PMI Certification
7 185 (1.84%) ACCA
8 164 (1.63%) CIMA
9 143 (1.42%) DV Cleared
10 139 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 129 (1.28%) CISSP
12 113 (1.13%) Azure Certification
13 88 (0.88%) AWS Certification
14 79 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
15 78 (0.78%) Master's Degree
16 67 (0.67%) CISM
17 53 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 37 (0.37%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 725 (7.22%) Data Quality
2 424 (4.22%) QA
3 353 (3.51%) PMO
4 200 (1.99%) GDPR
5 132 (1.31%) NIST
6 128 (1.27%) GRC
7 116 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 108 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 92 (0.92%) SLA
10 91 (0.91%) IFRS
11 74 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 68 (0.68%) ISO 20022
13 45 (0.45%) PCI DSS
14 44 (0.44%) GAAP
15 41 (0.41%) SEPA
16 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 28 (0.28%) COBIT
18 27 (0.27%) MiFID
19 25 (0.25%) EMIR
19 25 (0.25%) NCSC
System Software
1 270 (2.69%) Docker
2 248 (2.47%) Active Directory
3 104 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 29 (0.29%) vSphere
6 28 (0.28%) RACF
7 26 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.17%) Hyper-V
9 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.11%) NFS
11 8 (0.080%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
12 6 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
16 2 (0.020%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 511 (5.09%) Kubernetes
2 199 (1.98%) Ansible
3 99 (0.99%) Grafana
4 83 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 61 (0.61%) SCCM
7 59 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
8 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
11 19 (0.19%) Argo
12 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
13 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
14 14 (0.14%) Istio
15 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 11 (0.11%) Puppet
16 10 (0.100%) Packer
16 10 (0.100%) Tivoli
17 8 (0.080%) Kustomize
17 8 (0.080%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,462 (14.56%) Microsoft
2 897 (8.93%) SAP
3 867 (8.63%) Oracle
4 362 (3.60%) ServiceNow
5 358 (3.56%) Databricks
6 242 (2.41%) Google
7 235 (2.34%) Salesforce
8 201 (2.00%) IBM
9 159 (1.58%) VMware
10 158 (1.57%) Workday
11 134 (1.33%) Cisco
12 120 (1.19%) Ariba
12 120 (1.19%) Splunk
13 91 (0.91%) OpenAI
14 90 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 58 (0.58%) Bloomberg
16 57 (0.57%) Citrix
17 56 (0.56%) Sage
18 55 (0.55%) Murex
19 54 (0.54%) Red Hat