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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,027 7,288 7,746
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.26% 22.01% 20.34%
As % of the General category 32.53% 34.68% 34.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,044 4,747 4,865
10th Percentile £360 £333 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £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 349 138 130
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.41 £14.50
25th Percentile £19.03 £18.91 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.71 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.63% -16.02% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £53.95 £55.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £74.88 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £31.91
% change year-on-year +83.17% -24.79% +25.15%

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 30,821 21,014 22,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.14% 63.45% 58.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,970 13,043 13,184
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 £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,665 1,229 1,014
10th Percentile £13.49 £13.51 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £28.26 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.35% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £53.75 £47.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £21.39 £33.93
% change year-on-year +33.24% -36.96% +28.04%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 8,603 £550 - 19,586
London 0 5,205 £600 +2.13% 12,366
UK excluding London 0 3,902 £510 +2.00% 9,101
Work from Home -1 2,812 £550 -0.90% 7,902
North of England 0 1,351 £514 +9.36% 2,146
South East -2 745 £500 -2.72% 2,281
North West -2 642 £503 +11.78% 1,185
Yorkshire 0 630 £517 +3.36% 728
Midlands -3 612 £515 +8.42% 1,194
Scotland 0 544 £463 -7.50% 1,109
West Midlands -2 458 £515 -0.91% 736
South West -6 345 £525 -4.55% 1,072
East of England +3 205 £550 -4.35% 719
East Midlands -2 149 £500 +19.05% 458
North East -6 72 £500 +13.96% 248
Wales -1 63 £525 +20.69% 219
Northern Ireland 0 62 £510 -1.92% 428
Channel Islands 0 5 £600 - 19

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
1 326 (3.25%) Confluence
2 262 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 95 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
4 81 (0.81%) Apache
4 81 (0.81%) Apache Spark
5 46 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
6 30 (0.30%) CMS
7 23 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
8 22 (0.22%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 17 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
14 10 (0.100%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 7 (0.070%) Adobe Experience Manager
17 6 (0.060%) Appian
17 6 (0.060%) JBoss
18 5 (0.050%) WebLogic
Applications
1 523 (5.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 227 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 195 (1.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 144 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
5 85 (0.85%) MS Visio
6 65 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.27%) 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 XD
11 4 (0.040%) Sketch
11 4 (0.040%) Windchill
12 3 (0.030%) 1Password
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 445 (4.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.24%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.11%) Oracle Receivables
4 97 (0.97%) NetSuite
5 91 (0.91%) Oracle ERP
6 88 (0.88%) Oracle General Ledger
7 81 (0.81%) SAP FI
8 80 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
9 67 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
10 58 (0.58%) Oracle Financials
11 53 (0.53%) SAP CO
12 51 (0.51%) Workday HCM
13 48 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
14 46 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
15 45 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
16 40 (0.40%) Aladdin
17 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
17 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
18 30 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
19 25 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,608 (16.04%) Azure
2 1,110 (11.07%) AWS
3 655 (6.53%) Power Platform
4 571 (5.69%) GCP
5 359 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
6 335 (3.34%) GitHub
7 327 (3.26%) Microsoft 365
8 314 (3.13%) SaaS
9 267 (2.66%) Dynamics 365
10 231 (2.30%) Entra ID
11 222 (2.21%) Snowflake
12 162 (1.62%) Serverless
13 142 (1.42%) OCI
14 136 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
15 132 (1.32%) Power Automate
16 129 (1.29%) Amazon S3
16 129 (1.29%) dbt
17 122 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
18 114 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
19 104 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 175 (1.75%) Firewall
2 162 (1.62%) Network Security
3 105 (1.05%) VPN
4 87 (0.87%) DNS
5 59 (0.59%) TCP/IP
6 54 (0.54%) WAN
7 48 (0.48%) DHCP
8 44 (0.44%) BGP
9 38 (0.38%) SSL
10 34 (0.34%) Multicast
11 32 (0.32%) HTTP
11 32 (0.32%) LAN
12 31 (0.31%) VLAN
13 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.30%) Wireless
14 27 (0.27%) SAN
15 26 (0.26%) OSPF
16 24 (0.24%) Internet
17 18 (0.18%) BIG-IP
17 18 (0.18%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 523 (5.22%) Power BI
2 288 (2.87%) SQL Server
3 257 (2.56%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.02%) Metadata
5 177 (1.77%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.46%) Data Lake
7 139 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
8 124 (1.24%) Tableau
9 90 (0.90%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.83%) BigQuery
11 82 (0.82%) Oracle Database
12 79 (0.79%) MongoDB
13 61 (0.61%) Oracle Reports
14 58 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (0.53%) Delta Lake
15 53 (0.53%) Power Query
16 45 (0.45%) Db2
17 44 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
18 43 (0.43%) Big Data
18 43 (0.43%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 650 (6.48%) JIRA
2 343 (3.42%) Git
3 184 (1.84%) Jenkins
4 117 (1.17%) GitLab
5 66 (0.66%) Selenium
6 51 (0.51%) JUnit
7 41 (0.41%) Claude Code
8 39 (0.39%) Maven
9 38 (0.38%) Bitbucket
10 37 (0.37%) Cucumber
11 36 (0.36%) SonarQube
12 34 (0.34%) Gradle
13 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
14 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.28%) ERwin
16 27 (0.27%) Cypress.io
16 27 (0.27%) Postman
17 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
18 21 (0.21%) Mockito
19 20 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
General
1 3,154 (31.46%) Social Skills
2 2,129 (21.23%) Banking
3 1,422 (14.18%) Analytical Skills
4 543 (5.42%) Public Sector
5 531 (5.30%) Legal
6 467 (4.66%) Organisational Skills
7 401 (4.00%) Investment Banking
8 372 (3.71%) Retail
9 347 (3.46%) Influencing Skills
10 345 (3.44%) Front Office
11 309 (3.08%) Financial Institution
12 227 (2.26%) Manufacturing
13 207 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
14 196 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 189 (1.88%) Marketing
16 186 (1.85%) Billing
17 183 (1.83%) General Ledger
18 162 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
19 151 (1.51%) Local Government
20 145 (1.45%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,391 (13.87%) Analyst
2 1,146 (11.43%) Senior
3 1,004 (10.01%) Developer
4 971 (9.68%) Lead
5 865 (8.63%) Architect
6 739 (7.37%) Consultant
7 720 (7.18%) Business Analyst
8 684 (6.82%) Project Manager
9 344 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
10 299 (2.98%) Data Engineer
11 252 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 223 (2.22%) Senior Manager
13 212 (2.11%) Senior Developer
14 209 (2.08%) Java Developer
15 202 (2.01%) Data Analyst
16 197 (1.96%) Programme Manager
17 181 (1.81%) IT Manager
18 177 (1.77%) Accountant
19 167 (1.67%) Finance Manager
20 156 (1.56%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 420 (4.19%) Terraform
2 416 (4.15%) REST
3 278 (2.77%) Kafka
4 274 (2.73%) .NET
5 270 (2.69%) Oracle Fusion
6 249 (2.48%) React
7 200 (1.99%) Spring
8 196 (1.95%) Middleware
8 196 (1.95%) Spring Boot
9 146 (1.46%) PySpark
10 144 (1.44%) RESTful
11 113 (1.13%) JSON
12 109 (1.09%) OAuth
12 109 (1.09%) XML
13 101 (1.01%) SOAP
14 92 (0.92%) Web Services
15 88 (0.88%) Redux
16 86 (0.86%) AngularJS
17 82 (0.82%) HTML
18 75 (0.75%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 542 (5.41%) Onboarding
2 517 (5.16%) Product Ownership
3 486 (4.85%) Cloud Native
4 269 (2.68%) Management Information System
5 252 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
6 237 (2.36%) Data Structures
7 229 (2.28%) Virtual Team
8 221 (2.20%) AI Agents
9 217 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
10 205 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
11 195 (1.94%) Derivative
12 172 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
13 170 (1.70%) Data Centre
14 151 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 137 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
16 133 (1.33%) Fixed Income
17 122 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
18 119 (1.19%) Equities
19 114 (1.14%) Podcast
19 114 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 383 (3.82%) Windows
2 343 (3.42%) Linux
3 173 (1.73%) Unix
4 99 (0.99%) Windows Server
5 62 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 50 (0.50%) 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 31 (0.31%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 7 (0.070%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.060%) HPUX
15 6 (0.060%) SUSE
16 5 (0.050%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,789 (27.81%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,074 (20.68%) Agile
3 1,348 (13.44%) Migration
4 1,341 (13.37%) Problem-Solving
5 1,339 (13.35%) AI
6 1,191 (11.88%) CI/CD
7 1,133 (11.30%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,111 (11.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,030 (10.27%) Analytics
9 1,030 (10.27%) DevOps
10 962 (9.59%) ERP
11 936 (9.33%) Decision-Making
12 901 (8.99%) Roadmaps
13 896 (8.94%) Validation
14 784 (7.82%) Project Management
15 768 (7.66%) Data Modelling
16 761 (7.59%) User Acceptance Testing
17 738 (7.36%) Risk Management
18 713 (7.11%) Change Management
19 693 (6.91%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,371 (13.67%) SQL
2 1,303 (12.99%) Python
3 662 (6.60%) Java
4 365 (3.64%) C#
5 295 (2.94%) PowerShell
6 266 (2.65%) JavaScript
7 224 (2.23%) TypeScript
8 169 (1.69%) Bash
9 107 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.78%) C++
12 72 (0.72%) Go
13 69 (0.69%) T-SQL
14 60 (0.60%) Bicep
14 60 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 53 (0.53%) Korn
16 46 (0.46%) Scala
17 36 (0.36%) Kotlin
18 34 (0.34%) Apex Code
19 31 (0.31%) VBA
Qualifications
1 773 (7.71%) Security Cleared
2 735 (7.33%) Degree
3 553 (5.52%) SC Cleared
4 262 (2.61%) PMP
5 260 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
6 235 (2.34%) PMI Certification
7 186 (1.85%) ACCA
8 163 (1.63%) CIMA
9 142 (1.42%) DV Cleared
10 136 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
11 126 (1.26%) CISSP
12 115 (1.15%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.86%) AWS Certification
14 81 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
15 79 (0.79%) Master's Degree
16 64 (0.64%) CISM
17 54 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
18 49 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 38 (0.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 714 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 427 (4.26%) QA
3 354 (3.53%) PMO
4 200 (1.99%) GDPR
5 128 (1.28%) GRC
5 128 (1.28%) NIST
6 112 (1.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 109 (1.09%) Accessibility
8 92 (0.92%) SLA
9 91 (0.91%) IFRS
10 74 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
12 45 (0.45%) GAAP
13 42 (0.42%) PCI DSS
14 40 (0.40%) SEPA
15 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
16 29 (0.29%) COBIT
16 29 (0.29%) MiFID
17 27 (0.27%) EMIR
18 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 271 (2.70%) Docker
2 243 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 101 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) RACF
5 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (0.28%) vSphere
6 17 (0.17%) Hyper-V
7 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 11 (0.11%) NFS
10 8 (0.080%) IAG
11 6 (0.060%) ACF2
11 6 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
11 6 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.050%) GPFS
13 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) KVM
15 2 (0.020%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 506 (5.05%) Kubernetes
2 196 (1.95%) Ansible
3 97 (0.97%) Grafana
4 85 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.62%) SCCM
7 61 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.20%) Argo
12 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
13 15 (0.15%) Istio
14 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
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 1,460 (14.56%) Microsoft
2 890 (8.88%) SAP
3 874 (8.72%) Oracle
4 368 (3.67%) ServiceNow
5 362 (3.61%) Databricks
6 240 (2.39%) Google
7 233 (2.32%) Salesforce
8 205 (2.04%) IBM
9 158 (1.58%) Workday
10 153 (1.53%) VMware
11 133 (1.33%) Cisco
12 118 (1.18%) Ariba
12 118 (1.18%) Splunk
13 92 (0.92%) OpenAI
14 89 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 56 (0.56%) Bloomberg
15 56 (0.56%) Citrix
16 54 (0.54%) Murex
16 54 (0.54%) Sage
17 52 (0.52%) Red Hat