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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,985 7,452 7,679
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.32% 22.59% 20.06%
As % of the General category 32.97% 35.50% 34.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,091 4,868 4,949
10th Percentile £360 £333 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £785 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £495 £513
% change year-on-year +2.80% -3.41% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 330 133 156
10th Percentile £15.04 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.31 £21.00 £23.78
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +36.13%
75th Percentile - £63.25 £52.63
90th Percentile £75.40 £78.75 £70.09
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £35.00
% change year-on-year +71.18% -26.63% +25.09%

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 30,281 20,994 22,109
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.57% 63.64% 57.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,811 12,998 13,405
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £419 £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 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,436 1,187 1,144
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.66
25th Percentile £16.46 £16.17 £17.44
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -32.93% +36.36%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £70.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.40 £38.12
% change year-on-year +40.19% -43.86% +46.76%

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 10 September 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 10 September 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 10 September 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 8,617 £550 - 8,099
London 0 5,210 £585 -0.43% 4,882
UK excluding London -1 3,916 £509 +2.80% 4,369
Work from Home -1 2,842 £550 -4.35% 3,350
North of England 0 1,343 £506 +10.00% 1,029
South East -1 747 £500 -4.76% 1,298
North West -1 677 £500 +11.11% 582
Midlands -2 616 £500 +5.26% 572
Yorkshire 0 584 £516 +5.83% 333
Scotland 0 532 £465 -3.53% 400
West Midlands 0 460 £515 +0.15% 352
South West -5 357 £550 -4.35% 596
East of England +6 221 £550 -1.12% 368
East Midlands -3 153 £500 +19.05% 220
North East -6 75 £500 +14.29% 126
Northern Ireland -1 66 £505 +3.59% 102
Wales +2 59 £525 +23.53% 90
Channel Islands +3 7 £550 - 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
1 335 (3.36%) Confluence
2 259 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 82 (0.82%) Apache Spark
5 68 (0.68%) Apache
6 47 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 36 (0.36%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 25 (0.25%) SAS
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 17 (0.17%) Camunda
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.11%) CICS
14 9 (0.090%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.070%) Ethereum
15 7 (0.070%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 7 (0.070%) WebLogic
16 6 (0.060%) Appian
17 5 (0.050%) JBoss
17 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 538 (5.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 229 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
3 193 (1.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 154 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
5 87 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 67 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.080%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
10 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.040%) Sketch
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
14 1 (0.010%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 437 (4.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 129 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 108 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
4 105 (1.05%) NetSuite
5 93 (0.93%) Oracle ERP
6 77 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
7 76 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
8 73 (0.73%) SAP FI
9 62 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
10 60 (0.60%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 53 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 49 (0.49%) SAP CO
13 45 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 39 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
15 37 (0.37%) Aladdin
16 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
16 35 (0.35%) Workday HCM
17 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
18 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
18 26 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,575 (15.77%) Azure
2 1,077 (10.79%) AWS
3 675 (6.76%) Power Platform
4 544 (5.45%) GCP
5 349 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
6 329 (3.29%) SaaS
7 325 (3.25%) GitHub
8 312 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
9 279 (2.79%) Dynamics 365
10 221 (2.21%) Entra ID
11 219 (2.19%) Snowflake
12 156 (1.56%) Serverless
13 146 (1.46%) OCI
14 131 (1.31%) GitHub Actions
15 125 (1.25%) dbt
16 119 (1.19%) Power Automate
17 118 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
18 117 (1.17%) Amazon S3
19 116 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
20 101 (1.01%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 174 (1.74%) Firewall
2 153 (1.53%) Network Security
3 102 (1.02%) VPN
4 86 (0.86%) DNS
5 62 (0.62%) TCP/IP
6 58 (0.58%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 44 (0.44%) BGP
9 43 (0.43%) SSL
10 35 (0.35%) HTTP
10 35 (0.35%) LAN
11 34 (0.34%) Multicast
11 34 (0.34%) VLAN
12 31 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.30%) Wireless
14 26 (0.26%) Internet
15 25 (0.25%) SAN
16 24 (0.24%) OSPF
17 18 (0.18%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.16%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 549 (5.50%) Power BI
2 293 (2.93%) SQL Server
3 260 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
4 209 (2.09%) Metadata
5 179 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 144 (1.44%) Data Lake
7 131 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
8 123 (1.23%) Tableau
9 82 (0.82%) Oracle Database
10 79 (0.79%) BigQuery
10 79 (0.79%) NoSQL
11 75 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
12 74 (0.74%) MongoDB
13 58 (0.58%) Delta Lake
14 56 (0.56%) Power Query
14 56 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
15 50 (0.50%) Big Data
16 48 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
17 46 (0.46%) Db2
18 44 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 664 (6.65%) JIRA
2 303 (3.03%) Git
3 171 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 107 (1.07%) GitLab
5 57 (0.57%) Selenium
6 51 (0.51%) JUnit
7 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
8 34 (0.34%) Claude Code
9 33 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 33 (0.33%) Maven
10 32 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
11 30 (0.30%) ERwin
11 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
12 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
13 27 (0.27%) Gradle
14 26 (0.26%) Cucumber
15 23 (0.23%) Cypress.io
16 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
17 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
17 21 (0.21%) Postman
General
1 3,093 (30.98%) Social Skills
2 2,032 (20.35%) Banking
3 1,407 (14.09%) Analytical Skills
4 548 (5.49%) Legal
5 525 (5.26%) Public Sector
6 443 (4.44%) Organisational Skills
7 395 (3.96%) Investment Banking
8 388 (3.89%) Retail
9 336 (3.37%) Front Office
10 329 (3.29%) Influencing Skills
11 324 (3.24%) Financial Institution
12 218 (2.18%) Documentation Skills
13 208 (2.08%) Manufacturing
14 195 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 177 (1.77%) General Ledger
16 171 (1.71%) Marketing
17 165 (1.65%) Billing
18 160 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
19 152 (1.52%) Local Government
20 145 (1.45%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,440 (14.42%) Analyst
2 1,065 (10.67%) Senior
3 1,013 (10.15%) Lead
4 985 (9.86%) Developer
5 883 (8.84%) Architect
6 741 (7.42%) Business Analyst
7 721 (7.22%) Consultant
8 699 (7.00%) Project Manager
9 332 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
10 308 (3.08%) Data Engineer
11 260 (2.60%) Financial Analyst
12 221 (2.21%) Senior Manager
13 211 (2.11%) Java Developer
14 204 (2.04%) Data Analyst
15 197 (1.97%) Senior Developer
16 189 (1.89%) Programme Manager
17 182 (1.82%) Finance Manager
18 179 (1.79%) Accountant
19 178 (1.78%) IT Manager
20 151 (1.51%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 382 (3.83%) Terraform
2 368 (3.69%) REST
3 269 (2.69%) .NET
4 266 (2.66%) Oracle Fusion
5 257 (2.57%) Kafka
6 236 (2.36%) React
7 195 (1.95%) Spring
8 190 (1.90%) Spring Boot
9 179 (1.79%) Middleware
10 149 (1.49%) PySpark
11 140 (1.40%) RESTful
12 106 (1.06%) XML
13 102 (1.02%) OAuth
14 99 (0.99%) JSON
15 84 (0.84%) SOAP
16 83 (0.83%) Redux
17 78 (0.78%) AngularJS
18 75 (0.75%) Node.js
18 75 (0.75%) Web Services
19 70 (0.70%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 519 (5.20%) Onboarding
2 505 (5.06%) Product Ownership
3 444 (4.45%) Cloud Native
4 251 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
5 250 (2.50%) Management Information System
6 237 (2.37%) Data Structures
7 226 (2.26%) Virtual Team
8 199 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
9 193 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
10 188 (1.88%) AI Agents
11 182 (1.82%) Derivative
12 162 (1.62%) Data Centre
13 161 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 140 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
15 135 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
16 126 (1.26%) Fixed Income
17 114 (1.14%) Podcast
18 113 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 113 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
19 112 (1.12%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 377 (3.78%) Windows
2 315 (3.15%) Linux
3 165 (1.65%) Unix
4 88 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 57 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 39 (0.39%) Android
9 36 (0.36%) zOS
10 34 (0.34%) Solaris
11 29 (0.29%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 4 (0.040%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,595 (25.99%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,038 (20.41%) Agile
3 1,353 (13.55%) Migration
4 1,322 (13.24%) Problem-Solving
5 1,258 (12.60%) AI
6 1,188 (11.90%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,162 (11.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,112 (11.14%) CI/CD
9 1,017 (10.19%) Analytics
10 1,005 (10.07%) ERP
11 1,002 (10.04%) DevOps
12 922 (9.23%) Decision-Making
13 846 (8.47%) Roadmaps
14 845 (8.46%) Validation
15 781 (7.82%) Project Management
16 780 (7.81%) Data Modelling
17 769 (7.70%) User Acceptance Testing
18 736 (7.37%) Change Management
19 686 (6.87%) Risk Management
20 668 (6.69%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,341 (13.43%) SQL
2 1,238 (12.40%) Python
3 645 (6.46%) Java
4 358 (3.59%) C#
5 279 (2.79%) PowerShell
6 246 (2.46%) JavaScript
7 213 (2.13%) TypeScript
8 145 (1.45%) Bash
9 113 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.97%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.80%) C++
12 75 (0.75%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 59 (0.59%) Go
15 56 (0.56%) Bicep
16 48 (0.48%) Korn
17 39 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.39%) Scala
18 37 (0.37%) VBA
19 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 768 (7.69%) Security Cleared
2 726 (7.27%) Degree
3 552 (5.53%) SC Cleared
4 254 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
5 252 (2.52%) PMP
6 224 (2.24%) PMI Certification
7 192 (1.92%) ACCA
8 168 (1.68%) CIMA
9 147 (1.47%) CISSP
10 135 (1.35%) DV Cleared
11 130 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
12 108 (1.08%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
14 86 (0.86%) CISM
15 71 (0.71%) Master's Degree
16 67 (0.67%) AWS Certification
17 52 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 46 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 39 (0.39%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 687 (6.88%) Data Quality
2 432 (4.33%) QA
3 362 (3.63%) PMO
4 232 (2.32%) GDPR
5 140 (1.40%) NIST
6 120 (1.20%) GRC
7 118 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.07%) Accessibility
9 94 (0.94%) IFRS
10 92 (0.92%) SLA
11 82 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 66 (0.66%) ISO 20022
13 49 (0.49%) GAAP
14 41 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.37%) Solvency II
16 35 (0.35%) SEPA
17 29 (0.29%) EMIR
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) COBIT
19 22 (0.22%) NCSC
System Software
1 269 (2.69%) Docker
2 236 (2.36%) Active Directory
3 85 (0.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.25%) RACF
7 18 (0.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 9 (0.090%) IAG
11 6 (0.060%) ACF2
11 6 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.050%) GPFS
12 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) KVM
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 479 (4.80%) Kubernetes
2 172 (1.72%) Ansible
3 98 (0.98%) Grafana
4 78 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
5 69 (0.69%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.63%) SCCM
7 55 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Argo
12 13 (0.13%) Istio
13 12 (0.12%) FortiGate
13 12 (0.12%) Puppet
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
15 10 (0.10%) vRealize
16 9 (0.090%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,430 (14.32%) Microsoft
2 894 (8.95%) Oracle
3 855 (8.56%) SAP
4 374 (3.75%) ServiceNow
5 363 (3.64%) Databricks
6 238 (2.38%) Salesforce
7 227 (2.27%) Google
8 182 (1.82%) IBM
9 139 (1.39%) VMware
10 127 (1.27%) Workday
11 122 (1.22%) Cisco
12 117 (1.17%) Splunk
13 102 (1.02%) Ariba
14 86 (0.86%) CyberArk
15 84 (0.84%) OpenAI
16 56 (0.56%) Bloomberg
16 56 (0.56%) Citrix
17 53 (0.53%) Sage
18 52 (0.52%) Informatica
19 48 (0.48%) Murex