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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,868 7,499 7,714
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.42% 22.85% 19.85%
As % of the General category 33.47% 35.99% 34.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,073 4,930 5,114
10th Percentile £363 £331 £363
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £543 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.38% -5.65% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £717
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £498 £513
% change year-on-year +1.11% -2.93% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 305 143 189
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.93 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -21.95% +44.23%
75th Percentile - £63.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £75.76 £76.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.86 £38.12
% change year-on-year +63.69% -29.55% +18.86%

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 29,481 20,839 22,293
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.04% 63.50% 57.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,497 12,935 13,967
10th Percentile £313 £275 £292
25th Percentile £415 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £746 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,248 1,152 1,327
10th Percentile £13.98 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.25 £16.86
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £38.07
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -33.94% +38.44%
75th Percentile £56.30 £50.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £79.13 £71.48 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.53% -41.92% +52.48%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 8,591 £550 - 10,080
London 0 5,170 £588 -2.08% 6,257
UK excluding London -1 3,900 £503 +1.11% 5,535
Work from Home -1 2,809 £550 -4.35% 4,573
North of England 0 1,345 £500 +6.61% 1,347
South East -1 737 £505 -3.81% 1,401
North West 0 696 £500 +11.11% 787
Midlands 0 632 £500 +11.11% 620
Yorkshire 0 574 £514 +7.31% 389
Scotland 0 502 £475 -5.00% 707
West Midlands +1 477 £507 +1.40% 358
South West -4 381 £540 -3.48% 661
East of England +4 205 £525 -8.70% 455
East Midlands -3 149 £500 +21.21% 262
North East -10 68 £500 +11.11% 193
Northern Ireland -1 67 £475 - 282
Wales -1 62 £525 +13.51% 147
Channel Islands +3 4 £500 - 2

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
1 338 (3.43%) Confluence
2 251 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 93 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 88 (0.89%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.73%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 30 (0.30%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.21%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 7 (0.071%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 522 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 181 (1.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 154 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 99 (1.00%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Sketch
11 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 437 (4.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 127 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.12%) NetSuite
4 105 (1.06%) Oracle Receivables
5 95 (0.96%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
8 65 (0.66%) Oracle General Ledger
8 65 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 57 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
11 45 (0.46%) SAP CO
12 43 (0.44%) SAP FI/CO
13 41 (0.42%) Aladdin
14 36 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
15 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
16 30 (0.30%) SAP GRC
17 29 (0.29%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.28%) SAP ERP
19 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,555 (15.76%) Azure
2 1,084 (10.99%) AWS
3 663 (6.72%) Power Platform
4 525 (5.32%) GCP
5 351 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
6 329 (3.33%) SaaS
7 304 (3.08%) Microsoft 365
8 299 (3.03%) GitHub
9 258 (2.61%) Dynamics 365
10 217 (2.20%) Entra ID
10 217 (2.20%) Snowflake
11 151 (1.53%) Serverless
12 147 (1.49%) OCI
13 123 (1.25%) Power Automate
14 119 (1.21%) Amazon S3
15 118 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
16 113 (1.15%) dbt
17 111 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
18 110 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
19 105 (1.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 175 (1.77%) Firewall
2 156 (1.58%) Network Security
3 100 (1.01%) VPN
4 97 (0.98%) DNS
5 66 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 60 (0.61%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 43 (0.44%) BGP
9 43 (0.44%) LAN
10 39 (0.40%) HTTP
11 31 (0.31%) Multicast
11 31 (0.31%) VLAN
12 29 (0.29%) Wireless
13 28 (0.28%) Internet
14 27 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
15 26 (0.26%) OSPF
16 25 (0.25%) SAN
17 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
18 19 (0.19%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 547 (5.54%) Power BI
2 282 (2.86%) SQL Server
3 263 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.06%) Metadata
5 176 (1.78%) Relational Database
6 144 (1.46%) Data Lake
7 141 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
8 131 (1.33%) Tableau
9 85 (0.86%) NoSQL
10 79 (0.80%) BigQuery
11 78 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
12 76 (0.77%) MongoDB
13 71 (0.72%) Oracle Database
14 62 (0.63%) Snowflake Schema
15 60 (0.61%) Big Data
16 54 (0.55%) Power Query
17 52 (0.53%) Delta Lake
18 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
19 47 (0.48%) Data Vault
20 45 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 674 (6.83%) JIRA
2 293 (2.97%) Git
3 166 (1.68%) Jenkins
4 100 (1.01%) GitLab
5 51 (0.52%) Selenium
6 47 (0.48%) JUnit
7 33 (0.33%) Cucumber
8 31 (0.31%) Bitbucket
9 30 (0.30%) ERwin
9 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
10 27 (0.27%) Claude Code
10 27 (0.27%) Maven
10 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 22 (0.22%) Postman
13 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
14 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
15 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,945 (29.84%) Social Skills
2 1,924 (19.50%) Banking
3 1,390 (14.09%) Analytical Skills
4 544 (5.51%) Legal
5 535 (5.42%) Public Sector
6 414 (4.20%) Organisational Skills
7 382 (3.87%) Investment Banking
8 381 (3.86%) Retail
9 354 (3.59%) Financial Institution
10 344 (3.49%) Front Office
11 293 (2.97%) Influencing Skills
12 227 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
13 207 (2.10%) Manufacturing
14 188 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 167 (1.69%) Billing
16 162 (1.64%) General Ledger
17 160 (1.62%) Marketing
18 147 (1.49%) Local Government
19 145 (1.47%) Law
20 143 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,419 (14.38%) Analyst
2 1,059 (10.73%) Senior
3 1,057 (10.71%) Lead
4 965 (9.78%) Developer
5 868 (8.80%) Architect
6 732 (7.42%) Business Analyst
7 706 (7.15%) Consultant
7 706 (7.15%) Project Manager
8 321 (3.25%) Solutions Architect
9 310 (3.14%) Data Engineer
10 249 (2.52%) Financial Analyst
11 230 (2.33%) Senior Manager
12 198 (2.01%) Java Developer
13 193 (1.96%) Accountant
14 192 (1.95%) Data Analyst
15 186 (1.88%) Finance Manager
16 185 (1.87%) Programme Manager
17 182 (1.84%) Senior Developer
18 180 (1.82%) IT Manager
19 163 (1.65%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 346 (3.51%) REST
2 278 (2.82%) .NET
3 261 (2.64%) Oracle Fusion
4 256 (2.59%) Kafka
5 236 (2.39%) React
6 187 (1.90%) Middleware
7 179 (1.81%) Spring
8 169 (1.71%) Spring Boot
9 143 (1.45%) PySpark
10 130 (1.32%) RESTful
11 100 (1.01%) XML
12 97 (0.98%) JSON
13 96 (0.97%) Redux
14 93 (0.94%) OAuth
15 91 (0.92%) AngularJS
16 90 (0.91%) Node.js
17 74 (0.75%) SOAP
18 66 (0.67%) Web Services
19 61 (0.62%) HTML
20 56 (0.57%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 508 (5.15%) Onboarding
2 481 (4.87%) Product Ownership
3 430 (4.36%) Cloud Native
4 257 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
5 237 (2.40%) Data Structures
6 236 (2.39%) Management Information System
7 215 (2.18%) Virtual Team
8 189 (1.92%) Derivative
9 183 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
10 180 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
11 161 (1.63%) Data Centre
12 157 (1.59%) AI Agents
13 151 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 150 (1.52%) Fixed Income
15 135 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
16 120 (1.22%) Equities
17 113 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
18 110 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
19 106 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
20 103 (1.04%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 375 (3.80%) Windows
2 310 (3.14%) Linux
3 159 (1.61%) Unix
4 89 (0.90%) Windows Server
5 54 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 45 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.42%) Windows 10
8 35 (0.35%) Solaris
8 35 (0.35%) zOS
9 33 (0.33%) Android
10 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
11 16 (0.16%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
13 8 (0.081%) VMS
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 4 (0.041%) MVS
16 3 (0.030%) CentOS
16 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,428 (24.60%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,035 (20.62%) Agile
3 1,351 (13.69%) Migration
4 1,310 (13.28%) Problem-Solving
5 1,182 (11.98%) AI
6 1,172 (11.88%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,137 (11.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,063 (10.77%) CI/CD
9 1,035 (10.49%) ERP
10 1,020 (10.34%) DevOps
11 1,001 (10.14%) Analytics
12 905 (9.17%) Decision-Making
13 797 (8.08%) Validation
14 794 (8.05%) Roadmaps
15 791 (8.02%) Data Modelling
16 763 (7.73%) User Acceptance Testing
17 748 (7.58%) Project Management
18 729 (7.39%) Change Management
19 672 (6.81%) Business Intelligence
20 661 (6.70%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,283 (13.00%) SQL
2 1,211 (12.27%) Python
3 630 (6.38%) Java
4 380 (3.85%) C#
5 264 (2.68%) PowerShell
6 250 (2.53%) JavaScript
7 220 (2.23%) TypeScript
8 141 (1.43%) Bash
9 104 (1.05%) PL/SQL
10 91 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 76 (0.77%) C++
12 68 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 65 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 61 (0.62%) Go
15 56 (0.57%) Bicep
16 45 (0.46%) VBA
17 39 (0.40%) Scala
18 38 (0.39%) Korn
18 38 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 37 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 781 (7.91%) Security Cleared
2 725 (7.35%) Degree
3 557 (5.64%) SC Cleared
4 246 (2.49%) PMP
5 218 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
6 216 (2.19%) PMI Certification
7 196 (1.99%) ACCA
8 172 (1.74%) CIMA
9 152 (1.54%) CISSP
10 136 (1.38%) DV Cleared
11 125 (1.27%) Computer Science Degree
12 104 (1.05%) Azure Certification
13 88 (0.89%) CISM
14 85 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
15 67 (0.68%) AWS Certification
15 67 (0.68%) Master's Degree
16 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
17 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 46 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 40 (0.41%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 642 (6.51%) Data Quality
2 418 (4.24%) QA
3 362 (3.67%) PMO
4 256 (2.59%) GDPR
5 158 (1.60%) NIST
6 132 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.12%) GRC
7 111 (1.12%) SLA
8 105 (1.06%) Accessibility
9 98 (0.99%) IFRS
10 93 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 57 (0.58%) GAAP
12 56 (0.57%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.47%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.36%) Solvency II
15 33 (0.33%) SEPA
16 29 (0.29%) COBIT
17 27 (0.27%) EMIR
17 27 (0.27%) MiFID
17 27 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 270 (2.74%) Docker
2 240 (2.43%) Active Directory
3 81 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
6 23 (0.23%) vSphere
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.081%) IAG
11 5 (0.051%) ACF2
11 5 (0.051%) GPFS
11 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
11 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.041%) KVM
12 4 (0.041%) zsh
13 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 453 (4.59%) Kubernetes
2 364 (3.69%) Terraform
3 168 (1.70%) Ansible
4 98 (0.99%) Grafana
5 82 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 73 (0.74%) Prometheus
7 59 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 58 (0.59%) SCCM
9 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
10 25 (0.25%) Control-M
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.16%) Argo
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
14 15 (0.15%) Istio
14 15 (0.15%) Puppet
14 15 (0.15%) vRealize
15 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 10 (0.10%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,377 (13.95%) Microsoft
2 879 (8.91%) Oracle
3 842 (8.53%) SAP
4 382 (3.87%) ServiceNow
5 331 (3.35%) Databricks
6 232 (2.35%) Salesforce
7 230 (2.33%) Google
8 164 (1.66%) IBM
9 140 (1.42%) VMware
10 127 (1.29%) Workday
11 115 (1.17%) Cisco
12 111 (1.12%) Splunk
13 91 (0.92%) Ariba
13 91 (0.92%) CyberArk
14 73 (0.74%) OpenAI
15 60 (0.61%) Citrix
15 60 (0.61%) Sage
16 53 (0.54%) Informatica
17 49 (0.50%) Bloomberg
18 45 (0.46%) Adobe