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

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,887 6,482 8,238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.03% 21.12% 18.79%
As % of the General category 32.56% 34.00% 31.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,003 4,085 5,620
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £789
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £509
% change year-on-year - -1.77% -1.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 99 183
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.50 £22.50 £14.38
Median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.86% +45.83% -4.00%
75th Percentile £41.75 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £72.00 £80.64 £58.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £29.62 £21.43
% change year-on-year -25.71% +38.19% -38.77%

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 24,221 19,066 25,802
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.44% 62.13% 58.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,157 11,654 16,607
10th Percentile £300 £290 £265
25th Percentile £404 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £495
% change year-on-year -0.52% -3.54% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,475 619 1,703
10th Percentile £13.59 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.49 £20.63 £15.27
Median hourly rate £23.58 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.42% +15.38% -7.52%
75th Percentile £53.75 £57.94 £51.25
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £65.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.27 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -19.04% +10.00% -

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 6,934 £538 -9.66% 3,444
London 0 4,218 £575 -8.00% 1,609
UK excluding London 0 3,124 £500 - 2,586
Work from Home -1 2,244 £536 -10.67% 1,500
North of England +3 1,014 £475 -0.42% 637
Midlands -2 564 £490 -2.00% 365
South East -1 561 £500 -4.76% 980
North West +4 507 £450 -3.85% 354
Yorkshire 0 460 £500 -2.68% 225
Scotland 0 398 £476 +0.63% 107
West Midlands 0 359 £514 -6.55% 213
South West -5 311 £512 -2.48% 249
East Midlands 0 201 £450 +6.51% 152
East of England -1 187 £525 -2.33% 199
Wales +33 105 £413 +1.54% 59
North East -9 48 £488 +4.84% 69
Northern Ireland -2 45 £538 +65.38% 40
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
1 327 (4.15%) Confluence
2 195 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 80 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 59 (0.75%) Microsoft Exchange
5 48 (0.61%) Apache
6 43 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.46%) SAS
8 28 (0.36%) CMS
9 21 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.22%) Appian
12 16 (0.20%) Ethereum
13 15 (0.19%) CICS
14 13 (0.16%) Hyperledger
14 13 (0.16%) TPMS
15 12 (0.15%) HCL Notes
16 11 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 11 (0.14%) Camunda
17 10 (0.13%) Mendix
18 8 (0.10%) nginx
Applications
1 526 (6.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 287 (3.64%) Microsoft Office
3 201 (2.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 182 (2.31%) Microsoft Project
5 143 (1.81%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.22%) Trello
9 16 (0.20%) Sketch
10 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.10%) InVision
13 7 (0.089%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.063%) Notion
14 5 (0.063%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.051%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 326 (4.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.47%) Oracle Payables
3 97 (1.23%) Oracle Receivables
4 73 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
5 72 (0.91%) SAP FI
6 70 (0.89%) NetSuite
7 69 (0.87%) Oracle General Ledger
8 65 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 60 (0.76%) SAP CO
10 58 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
11 54 (0.68%) SAP FI/CO
12 44 (0.56%) Oracle Assets
13 41 (0.52%) Oracle Cash Management
14 40 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
15 39 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
16 38 (0.48%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 37 (0.47%) Oracle Financials
18 36 (0.46%) Workday HCM
19 28 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
20 23 (0.29%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,183 (15.00%) Azure
2 968 (12.27%) AWS
3 548 (6.95%) Power Platform
4 396 (5.02%) GCP
5 275 (3.49%) Microsoft 365
6 261 (3.31%) SaaS
7 241 (3.06%) Azure DevOps
8 231 (2.93%) Dynamics 365
9 203 (2.57%) GitHub
10 155 (1.97%) OCI
11 152 (1.93%) Serverless
12 128 (1.62%) Snowflake
13 120 (1.52%) Entra ID
14 101 (1.28%) Amazon S3
15 90 (1.14%) Power Automate
16 85 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 80 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
18 77 (0.98%) OpenShift
19 75 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
20 74 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 150 (1.90%) Firewall
2 89 (1.13%) Network Security
3 70 (0.89%) WAN
4 49 (0.62%) DNS
5 42 (0.53%) LAN
6 41 (0.52%) VPN
7 39 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 35 (0.44%) TCP/IP
9 34 (0.43%) Wireless
10 26 (0.33%) SSL
11 25 (0.32%) Skype
12 24 (0.30%) BGP
13 23 (0.29%) OSPF
14 22 (0.28%) HTTP
15 21 (0.27%) Multicast
16 19 (0.24%) DHCP
16 19 (0.24%) Internet
17 18 (0.23%) SSH
18 15 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
19 14 (0.18%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 484 (6.14%) Power BI
2 203 (2.57%) Data Warehouse
3 192 (2.43%) SQL Server
4 181 (2.29%) PostgreSQL
5 141 (1.79%) Tableau
6 132 (1.67%) Metadata
7 121 (1.53%) NoSQL
8 120 (1.52%) Relational Database
9 116 (1.47%) Data Lake
10 91 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
11 78 (0.99%) Big Data
12 69 (0.87%) MongoDB
13 68 (0.86%) Oracle Database
14 60 (0.76%) BigQuery
15 45 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 40 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 36 (0.46%) Hadoop
17 36 (0.46%) MySQL
18 35 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
18 35 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 634 (8.04%) JIRA
2 251 (3.18%) Jenkins
3 217 (2.75%) Git
4 159 (2.02%) GitLab
5 69 (0.87%) JUnit
6 63 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 47 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.55%) Selenium
9 37 (0.47%) Postman
10 36 (0.46%) Bitbucket
11 31 (0.39%) Visual Studio
12 25 (0.32%) MLflow
13 24 (0.30%) Gradle
14 23 (0.29%) Liquibase
15 22 (0.28%) Maven
16 19 (0.24%) REST Assured
17 16 (0.20%) SonarQube
18 15 (0.19%) ERwin
18 15 (0.19%) SpecFlow
19 14 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,669 (33.84%) Social Skills
2 1,548 (19.63%) Banking
3 1,027 (13.02%) Analytical Skills
4 627 (7.95%) Public Sector
5 348 (4.41%) Financial Institution
6 293 (3.71%) Marketing
7 288 (3.65%) Legal
8 282 (3.58%) Front Office
9 276 (3.50%) Investment Banking
10 266 (3.37%) Manufacturing
11 248 (3.14%) Telecoms
12 242 (3.07%) Organisational Skills
13 225 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
14 181 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
15 171 (2.17%) Retail
16 151 (1.91%) Electronics
17 133 (1.69%) General Ledger
18 126 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
19 122 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 118 (1.50%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,260 (15.98%) Analyst
2 862 (10.93%) Developer
3 801 (10.16%) Senior
4 678 (8.60%) Business Analyst
5 667 (8.46%) Lead
6 658 (8.34%) Architect
7 619 (7.85%) Project Manager
8 589 (7.47%) Consultant
9 277 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 198 (2.51%) Data Analyst
11 192 (2.43%) Data Engineer
12 179 (2.27%) Programme Manager
13 176 (2.23%) Financial Analyst
14 160 (2.03%) Senior Manager
15 147 (1.86%) Software Engineer
16 142 (1.80%) Java Developer
17 136 (1.72%) Senior Developer
18 133 (1.69%) Finance Manager
19 125 (1.58%) Senior Analyst
20 118 (1.50%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 279 (3.54%) REST
2 265 (3.36%) Kafka
3 209 (2.65%) React
4 202 (2.56%) .NET
5 165 (2.09%) Oracle Fusion
6 147 (1.86%) RESTful
7 140 (1.78%) Spring
8 139 (1.76%) Middleware
9 118 (1.50%) Spring Boot
10 111 (1.41%) Node.js
11 109 (1.38%) AngularJS
12 93 (1.18%) PySpark
13 90 (1.14%) HTML
14 86 (1.09%) XML
15 85 (1.08%) CSS
16 84 (1.07%) Pandas
17 78 (0.99%) JSON
18 73 (0.93%) NumPy
18 73 (0.93%) OAuth
19 71 (0.90%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 340 (4.31%) Onboarding
2 306 (3.88%) Product Ownership
3 252 (3.20%) Cloud Native
4 190 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
5 177 (2.24%) Management Information System
6 173 (2.19%) Derivative
7 149 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
8 148 (1.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 147 (1.86%) Data Centre
10 141 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
11 140 (1.78%) Data Structures
12 136 (1.72%) Fixed Income
13 126 (1.60%) Equities
14 113 (1.43%) Public Cloud
15 110 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
16 93 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
17 88 (1.12%) Virtual Team
18 81 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
19 74 (0.94%) Hedge funds
20 65 (0.82%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 332 (4.21%) Linux
2 287 (3.64%) Windows
3 149 (1.89%) Unix
4 63 (0.80%) Windows 10
5 57 (0.72%) Android
6 56 (0.71%) Mac OS
7 55 (0.70%) Windows Server
8 27 (0.34%) Apple iOS
9 19 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 14 (0.18%) zOS
11 9 (0.11%) AIX
11 9 (0.11%) Solaris
12 7 (0.089%) VMS
13 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.051%) CentOS
14 4 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.051%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.038%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,754 (22.24%) Agile
2 1,516 (19.22%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,241 (15.73%) Problem-Solving
4 985 (12.49%) Migration
5 860 (10.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 852 (10.80%) DevOps
7 805 (10.21%) CI/CD
8 783 (9.93%) Analytics
9 759 (9.62%) Project Management
10 756 (9.59%) Business Intelligence
11 735 (9.32%) Continuous Improvement
12 720 (9.13%) ERP
13 639 (8.10%) AI
14 600 (7.61%) Decision-Making
15 597 (7.57%) Roadmaps
16 574 (7.28%) Data Modelling
17 565 (7.16%) Change Management
18 542 (6.87%) Risk Management
19 515 (6.53%) Project Delivery
19 515 (6.53%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,135 (14.39%) SQL
2 1,026 (13.01%) Python
3 561 (7.11%) Java
4 302 (3.83%) C#
5 244 (3.09%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.46%) TypeScript
7 190 (2.41%) PowerShell
8 138 (1.75%) C++
9 87 (1.10%) Go
10 77 (0.98%) PL/SQL
11 72 (0.91%) Bash
12 52 (0.66%) VBA
13 47 (0.60%) T-SQL
14 44 (0.56%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.55%) R
16 38 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 38 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.47%) Scala
18 32 (0.41%) Rust
19 27 (0.34%) Korn
Qualifications
1 815 (10.33%) Degree
2 641 (8.13%) Security Cleared
3 471 (5.97%) SC Cleared
4 183 (2.32%) PMI Certification
5 180 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 178 (2.26%) PMP
7 171 (2.17%) Master's Degree
8 163 (2.07%) ACCA
9 153 (1.94%) CIMA
10 125 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
11 100 (1.27%) CISSP
12 82 (1.04%) AWS Certification
13 71 (0.90%) DV Cleared
14 68 (0.86%) CISM
15 64 (0.81%) Azure Certification
16 42 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
17 37 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
18 35 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
19 34 (0.43%) CBAP
19 34 (0.43%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 393 (4.98%) QA
2 390 (4.94%) Data Quality
3 309 (3.92%) PMO
4 268 (3.40%) GDPR
5 135 (1.71%) NIST
6 128 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 114 (1.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 105 (1.33%) SLA
9 85 (1.08%) Accessibility
10 83 (1.05%) IFRS
11 78 (0.99%) PCI DSS
12 70 (0.89%) GRC
13 57 (0.72%) ISO 20022
14 44 (0.56%) PSD2
15 40 (0.51%) GAAP
16 38 (0.48%) MiFID
17 37 (0.47%) NCSC
17 37 (0.47%) SEPA
18 34 (0.43%) COBIT
19 31 (0.39%) Basel III
System Software
1 340 (4.31%) Docker
2 169 (2.14%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.36%) vSphere
6 13 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.11%) GPFS
9 9 (0.11%) NFS
10 8 (0.10%) Hyper-V
10 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.089%) HDFS
12 4 (0.051%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.038%) Firmware
13 3 (0.038%) KVM
13 3 (0.038%) RACF
13 3 (0.038%) SRDF
13 3 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.025%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 411 (5.21%) Kubernetes
2 257 (3.26%) Terraform
3 157 (1.99%) Ansible
4 99 (1.26%) Grafana
5 91 (1.15%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 55 (0.70%) SCCM
8 40 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.32%) FortiGate
10 22 (0.28%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.23%) Control-M
12 17 (0.22%) Argo
13 14 (0.18%) vRealize
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.16%) Kibana
15 12 (0.15%) ITRS Geneos
15 12 (0.15%) Jamf Pro
15 12 (0.15%) SCOM
16 11 (0.14%) HP SiteScope
16 11 (0.14%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,039 (13.17%) Microsoft
2 799 (10.13%) SAP
3 691 (8.76%) Oracle
4 307 (3.89%) ServiceNow
5 192 (2.43%) Salesforce
6 187 (2.37%) Databricks
7 180 (2.28%) Google
8 160 (2.03%) Cisco
9 153 (1.94%) Splunk
10 147 (1.86%) Workday
11 112 (1.42%) VMware
12 99 (1.26%) IBM
13 74 (0.94%) CyberArk
14 73 (0.93%) Citrix
15 66 (0.84%) Ariba
16 54 (0.68%) HP
16 54 (0.68%) OpenAI
16 54 (0.68%) Sage
17 52 (0.66%) Dell
18 51 (0.65%) Bloomberg