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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,878 7,523 7,688
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.44% 22.89% 19.84%
As % of the General category 33.51% 36.04% 34.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,070 4,941 5,111
10th Percentile £360 £331 £363
25th Percentile £450 £414 £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 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +0.60% -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 304 142 191
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.90 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -21.95% +42.86%
75th Percentile - £63.63 £43.13
90th Percentile £75.82 £76.13 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +65.89% -30.48% +14.18%

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 29,482 20,875 22,222
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.50% 57.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,469 12,963 13,968
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
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 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,257 1,147 1,334
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.25 £16.88
Median hourly rate £31.56 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +25.47% -34.02% +38.62%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.25 £58.65
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.06 £70.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -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 18 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 18 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 18 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 8,607 £550 - 4,034
London 0 5,176 £585 -2.50% 1,724
UK excluding London -1 3,904 £503 +0.60% 3,163
Work from Home -1 2,814 £550 -4.35% 1,647
North of England 0 1,355 £500 +6.50% 786
South East -2 736 £500 -4.76% 1,081
North West 0 698 £500 +11.11% 414
Midlands 0 634 £500 +11.11% 410
Yorkshire 0 582 £514 +6.20% 265
Scotland 0 496 £475 -5.00% 138
West Midlands +1 477 £514 +2.80% 248
South West -4 385 £540 -4.09% 362
East of England +4 202 £523 -9.13% 253
East Midlands -3 151 £500 +21.21% 162
North East -9 68 £500 +11.11% 120
Northern Ireland -1 67 £475 - 110
Wales -2 63 £525 +13.51% 95
Channel Islands +3 4 £500 - 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
1 333 (3.37%) Confluence
2 252 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 91 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 88 (0.89%) Apache Spark
5 71 (0.72%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 36 (0.36%) CMS
8 31 (0.31%) 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 (5.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 181 (1.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 100 (1.01%) 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 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) 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
1 440 (4.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 128 (1.30%) Oracle Payables
3 112 (1.13%) NetSuite
4 106 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 96 (0.97%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.69%) SAP FI
8 66 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 65 (0.66%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
12 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
13 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 40 (0.40%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
16 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
17 30 (0.30%) SAP GRC
17 30 (0.30%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
19 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,551 (15.70%) Azure
2 1,075 (10.88%) AWS
3 661 (6.69%) Power Platform
4 519 (5.25%) GCP
5 351 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
6 331 (3.35%) SaaS
7 305 (3.09%) Microsoft 365
8 297 (3.01%) GitHub
9 256 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
10 216 (2.19%) Entra ID
11 214 (2.17%) Snowflake
12 149 (1.51%) OCI
13 147 (1.49%) Serverless
14 123 (1.25%) Power Automate
15 118 (1.19%) Amazon S3
16 116 (1.17%) GitHub Actions
17 113 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
18 111 (1.12%) dbt
19 109 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
20 103 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 174 (1.76%) Firewall
2 155 (1.57%) 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 (0.39%) 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
1 543 (5.50%) Power BI
2 284 (2.88%) SQL Server
3 261 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.06%) Metadata
5 177 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 143 (1.45%) Data Lake
7 141 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
8 129 (1.31%) Tableau
9 83 (0.84%) NoSQL
10 80 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (0.78%) BigQuery
12 74 (0.75%) MongoDB
13 71 (0.72%) Oracle Database
14 62 (0.63%) Big Data
14 62 (0.63%) Snowflake Schema
15 52 (0.53%) Power Query
16 50 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
18 47 (0.48%) Data Vault
19 43 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 673 (6.81%) JIRA
2 292 (2.96%) Git
3 164 (1.66%) Jenkins
4 101 (1.02%) GitLab
5 51 (0.52%) Selenium
6 48 (0.49%) JUnit
7 35 (0.35%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 29 (0.29%) Bitbucket
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 23 (0.23%) Postman
14 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
15 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
16 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,929 (29.65%) Social Skills
2 1,927 (19.51%) Banking
3 1,392 (14.09%) Analytical Skills
4 544 (5.51%) Legal
5 538 (5.45%) Public Sector
6 416 (4.21%) Organisational Skills
7 386 (3.91%) Investment Banking
8 376 (3.81%) Retail
9 355 (3.59%) Financial Institution
10 341 (3.45%) Front Office
11 292 (2.96%) Influencing Skills
12 227 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
13 204 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 189 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 166 (1.68%) Billing
16 163 (1.65%) General Ledger
17 160 (1.62%) Marketing
18 150 (1.52%) Local Government
19 144 (1.46%) Law
20 143 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,421 (14.39%) Analyst
2 1,059 (10.72%) Senior
3 1,058 (10.71%) Lead
4 965 (9.77%) Developer
5 866 (8.77%) Architect
6 733 (7.42%) Business Analyst
7 708 (7.17%) Consultant
8 704 (7.13%) Project Manager
9 321 (3.25%) Solutions Architect
10 308 (3.12%) Data Engineer
11 251 (2.54%) Financial Analyst
12 231 (2.34%) Senior Manager
13 197 (1.99%) Java Developer
14 194 (1.96%) Accountant
15 192 (1.94%) Data Analyst
16 186 (1.88%) Programme Manager
17 185 (1.87%) Finance Manager
18 182 (1.84%) IT Manager
19 181 (1.83%) Senior Developer
20 164 (1.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 344 (3.48%) REST
2 280 (2.83%) .NET
3 262 (2.65%) Oracle Fusion
4 256 (2.59%) Kafka
5 238 (2.41%) React
6 185 (1.87%) Middleware
7 179 (1.81%) Spring
8 168 (1.70%) Spring Boot
9 141 (1.43%) PySpark
10 128 (1.30%) RESTful
11 99 (1.00%) XML
12 97 (0.98%) JSON
13 96 (0.97%) Redux
14 91 (0.92%) OAuth
15 90 (0.91%) AngularJS
15 90 (0.91%) Node.js
16 75 (0.76%) SOAP
17 66 (0.67%) Web Services
18 61 (0.62%) HTML
19 57 (0.58%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 509 (5.15%) Onboarding
2 477 (4.83%) Product Ownership
3 427 (4.32%) Cloud Native
4 259 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
5 241 (2.44%) Data Structures
6 235 (2.38%) Management Information System
7 214 (2.17%) Virtual Team
8 186 (1.88%) Derivative
9 185 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
10 176 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
11 161 (1.63%) Data Centre
12 159 (1.61%) AI Agents
13 153 (1.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 148 (1.50%) Fixed Income
15 136 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
16 119 (1.20%) Equities
17 111 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
18 110 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
19 109 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
20 103 (1.04%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 375 (3.80%) Windows
2 308 (3.12%) Linux
3 157 (1.59%) 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 34 (0.34%) Android
10 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
11 16 (0.16%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 7 (0.071%) VMS
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 5 (0.051%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) CentOS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,401 (24.31%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,032 (20.57%) Agile
3 1,353 (13.70%) Migration
4 1,312 (13.28%) Problem-Solving
5 1,183 (11.98%) AI
6 1,169 (11.83%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,143 (11.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,062 (10.75%) CI/CD
9 1,039 (10.52%) ERP
10 1,019 (10.32%) DevOps
11 999 (10.11%) Analytics
12 902 (9.13%) Decision-Making
13 804 (8.14%) Validation
14 795 (8.05%) Roadmaps
15 785 (7.95%) Data Modelling
16 763 (7.72%) User Acceptance Testing
17 749 (7.58%) Project Management
18 721 (7.30%) Change Management
19 670 (6.78%) Business Intelligence
20 658 (6.66%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,278 (12.94%) SQL
2 1,211 (12.26%) Python
3 633 (6.41%) Java
4 382 (3.87%) C#
5 263 (2.66%) PowerShell
6 250 (2.53%) JavaScript
7 223 (2.26%) TypeScript
8 139 (1.41%) Bash
9 103 (1.04%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.89%) Shell Script
11 76 (0.77%) C++
12 69 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 65 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 62 (0.63%) Go
15 55 (0.56%) Bicep
16 45 (0.46%) VBA
17 39 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.39%) Scala
18 38 (0.38%) Korn
19 37 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 785 (7.95%) Security Cleared
2 721 (7.30%) Degree
3 562 (5.69%) SC Cleared
4 244 (2.47%) PMP
5 219 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
6 215 (2.18%) PMI Certification
7 198 (2.00%) ACCA
8 174 (1.76%) CIMA
9 150 (1.52%) CISSP
10 134 (1.36%) DV Cleared
11 123 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
12 104 (1.05%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.87%) CISM
14 83 (0.84%) 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 45 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 40 (0.40%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 636 (6.44%) Data Quality
2 419 (4.24%) QA
3 363 (3.67%) PMO
4 257 (2.60%) GDPR
5 156 (1.58%) NIST
6 132 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.12%) GRC
8 110 (1.11%) SLA
9 106 (1.07%) Accessibility
10 99 (1.00%) IFRS
11 93 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.58%) GAAP
12 57 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 45 (0.46%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.36%) Solvency II
15 34 (0.34%) SEPA
16 28 (0.28%) COBIT
16 28 (0.28%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.27%) EMIR
17 27 (0.27%) MiFID
System Software
1 268 (2.71%) Docker
2 239 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 81 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.25%) vSphere
7 23 (0.23%) RACF
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 8 (0.081%) IAG
12 5 (0.051%) ACF2
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) KVM
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 451 (4.57%) Kubernetes
2 362 (3.66%) Terraform
3 167 (1.69%) Ansible
4 96 (0.97%) Grafana
5 82 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 74 (0.75%) Prometheus
7 58 (0.59%) SCCM
8 57 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
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
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 15 (0.15%) Istio
14 15 (0.15%) Puppet
15 14 (0.14%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 11 (0.11%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,378 (13.95%) Microsoft
2 879 (8.90%) Oracle
3 846 (8.56%) SAP
4 380 (3.85%) ServiceNow
5 325 (3.29%) Databricks
6 229 (2.32%) Google
7 227 (2.30%) Salesforce
8 166 (1.68%) IBM
9 144 (1.46%) VMware
10 129 (1.31%) Workday
11 115 (1.16%) Cisco
12 111 (1.12%) Splunk
13 92 (0.93%) Ariba
14 89 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 73 (0.74%) OpenAI
16 62 (0.63%) Sage
17 59 (0.60%) Citrix
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 49 (0.50%) Bloomberg
20 45 (0.46%) Adobe