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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,076 6,459 8,252
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.97% 21.34% 18.74%
As % of the General category 32.73% 34.22% 31.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,119 4,129 5,591
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £462
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 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 105 199
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £12.60
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £14.50
Median hourly rate £23.66 £35.00 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -32.39% +36.13% -
75th Percentile £41.25 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £71.75 £81.92 £57.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £36.00 £26.66
% change year-on-year -38.89% +35.03% -23.83%

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 24,677 18,877 25,854
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.97% 62.37% 58.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,427 11,692 16,585
10th Percentile £300 £288 £263
25th Percentile £405 £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 £477 £493
% change year-on-year -0.47% -3.10% -1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,498 635 1,748
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.46 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.86 £20.15 £15.33
Median hourly rate £23.83 £30.00 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.58% +17.65% -19.28%
75th Percentile £54.75 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £74.67 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.35 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.73% +9.40% -6.09%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 5 March 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 7,123 £537 -8.98% 4,774
London 0 4,338 £575 -8.00% 2,145
UK excluding London 0 3,183 £500 - 3,383
Work from Home -1 2,294 £543 -8.13% 1,982
North of England +3 1,034 £475 -2.56% 813
Midlands -1 585 £483 -3.40% 523
South East -2 575 £500 -5.21% 1,117
North West +4 522 £450 -5.26% 440
Yorkshire 0 464 £500 -2.44% 301
Scotland 0 382 £476 +0.63% 165
West Midlands 0 378 £500 -7.41% 293
South West -4 323 £512 -2.48% 363
East Midlands 0 202 £450 +5.88% 222
East of England -1 190 £523 -5.00% 313
Wales +37 108 £413 +3.13% 98
Northern Ireland -1 49 £525 +61.54% 53
North East -8 48 £488 +6.56% 83
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
1 326 (4.04%) Confluence
2 204 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 80 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.78%) Microsoft Exchange
5 47 (0.58%) Apache
6 44 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.40%) SAS
8 26 (0.32%) CMS
9 21 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.21%) Appian
11 17 (0.21%) CICS
11 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
12 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
13 12 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.15%) Camunda
13 12 (0.15%) HCL Notes
13 12 (0.15%) TPMS
14 10 (0.12%) Mendix
15 8 (0.099%) nginx
Applications
1 524 (6.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 283 (3.50%) Microsoft Office
3 197 (2.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 181 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
5 143 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.19%) Trello
9 14 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 12 (0.15%) Sketch
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.099%) InVision
13 7 (0.087%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.062%) Notion
14 5 (0.062%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.050%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 339 (4.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.44%) Oracle Payables
3 97 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 75 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
5 73 (0.90%) NetSuite
6 71 (0.88%) SAP FI
7 69 (0.85%) Oracle General Ledger
8 67 (0.83%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 60 (0.74%) SAP CO
10 58 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.66%) SAP FI/CO
12 45 (0.56%) Oracle Assets
13 44 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
14 40 (0.50%) Oracle Cash Management
14 40 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
15 37 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
15 37 (0.46%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 34 (0.42%) Workday HCM
17 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
18 23 (0.28%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,223 (15.14%) Azure
2 985 (12.20%) AWS
3 549 (6.80%) Power Platform
4 400 (4.95%) GCP
5 280 (3.47%) Microsoft 365
6 267 (3.31%) SaaS
7 253 (3.13%) Azure DevOps
8 219 (2.71%) Dynamics 365
9 207 (2.56%) GitHub
10 154 (1.91%) OCI
10 154 (1.91%) Serverless
11 129 (1.60%) Snowflake
12 122 (1.51%) Entra ID
13 102 (1.26%) Amazon S3
14 91 (1.13%) Power Automate
15 86 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
16 82 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
17 79 (0.98%) OpenShift
18 78 (0.97%) Azure Data Factory
19 74 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 161 (1.99%) Firewall
2 94 (1.16%) Network Security
3 72 (0.89%) WAN
4 59 (0.73%) DNS
5 47 (0.58%) VPN
6 44 (0.54%) LAN
7 41 (0.51%) TCP/IP
8 40 (0.50%) SD-WAN
9 35 (0.43%) Wireless
10 28 (0.35%) BGP
11 27 (0.33%) HTTP
12 26 (0.32%) SSL
13 25 (0.31%) OSPF
14 24 (0.30%) Skype
15 23 (0.28%) Multicast
16 22 (0.27%) Internet
17 19 (0.24%) DHCP
18 17 (0.21%) MPLS
18 17 (0.21%) SSH
19 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 488 (6.04%) Power BI
2 208 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
3 204 (2.53%) SQL Server
4 195 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
5 142 (1.76%) Tableau
6 136 (1.68%) Metadata
7 124 (1.54%) NoSQL
8 121 (1.50%) Relational Database
9 117 (1.45%) Data Lake
10 95 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
11 80 (0.99%) Big Data
12 76 (0.94%) MongoDB
13 67 (0.83%) Oracle Database
14 59 (0.73%) BigQuery
15 46 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 45 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 40 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 37 (0.46%) MySQL
19 36 (0.45%) Hadoop
19 36 (0.45%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 649 (8.04%) JIRA
2 246 (3.05%) Jenkins
3 219 (2.71%) Git
4 156 (1.93%) GitLab
5 68 (0.84%) JUnit
6 64 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 48 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
8 44 (0.54%) Selenium
9 35 (0.43%) Bitbucket
9 35 (0.43%) Postman
10 31 (0.38%) Visual Studio
11 25 (0.31%) Gradle
12 24 (0.30%) Maven
12 24 (0.30%) MLflow
13 20 (0.25%) REST Assured
14 18 (0.22%) Liquibase
15 16 (0.20%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.20%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.19%) ERwin
16 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,682 (33.21%) Social Skills
2 1,575 (19.50%) Banking
3 1,048 (12.98%) Analytical Skills
4 642 (7.95%) Public Sector
5 355 (4.40%) Financial Institution
6 304 (3.76%) Legal
7 292 (3.62%) Front Office
8 287 (3.55%) Marketing
9 277 (3.43%) Investment Banking
10 270 (3.34%) Manufacturing
11 250 (3.10%) Organisational Skills
12 246 (3.05%) Telecoms
13 229 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
14 184 (2.28%) Influencing Skills
15 176 (2.18%) Retail
16 147 (1.82%) Electronics
17 131 (1.62%) General Ledger
18 129 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
19 124 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 114 (1.41%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,283 (15.89%) Analyst
2 882 (10.92%) Developer
3 822 (10.18%) Senior
4 705 (8.73%) Lead
5 680 (8.42%) Business Analyst
6 672 (8.32%) Architect
7 643 (7.96%) Project Manager
8 597 (7.39%) Consultant
9 281 (3.48%) Solutions Architect
10 196 (2.43%) Data Engineer
11 194 (2.40%) Data Analyst
12 182 (2.25%) Programme Manager
13 178 (2.20%) Financial Analyst
14 167 (2.07%) Senior Manager
15 146 (1.81%) Software Engineer
16 144 (1.78%) Java Developer
17 143 (1.77%) Finance Manager
18 132 (1.63%) Senior Analyst
19 131 (1.62%) Senior Developer
20 125 (1.55%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (3.42%) REST
2 272 (3.37%) Kafka
3 213 (2.64%) .NET
4 211 (2.61%) React
5 164 (2.03%) Oracle Fusion
6 147 (1.82%) Middleware
7 146 (1.81%) RESTful
8 141 (1.75%) Spring
9 120 (1.49%) Node.js
9 120 (1.49%) Spring Boot
10 112 (1.39%) AngularJS
11 90 (1.11%) PySpark
12 89 (1.10%) HTML
13 87 (1.08%) XML
14 83 (1.03%) CSS
15 80 (0.99%) JSON
15 80 (0.99%) Pandas
16 75 (0.93%) SOAP
17 73 (0.90%) OAuth
18 69 (0.85%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 353 (4.37%) Onboarding
2 314 (3.89%) Product Ownership
3 252 (3.12%) Cloud Native
4 197 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
5 176 (2.18%) Derivative
5 176 (2.18%) Management Information System
6 163 (2.02%) Data Centre
7 149 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
8 146 (1.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 145 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
10 144 (1.78%) Fixed Income
11 142 (1.76%) Data Structures
12 126 (1.56%) Equities
13 114 (1.41%) Public Cloud
14 110 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
15 91 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
16 90 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
16 90 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 72 (0.89%) Hedge funds
18 65 (0.80%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 327 (4.05%) Linux
2 299 (3.70%) Windows
3 148 (1.83%) Unix
4 64 (0.79%) Windows 10
5 63 (0.78%) Windows Server
6 58 (0.72%) Android
7 52 (0.64%) Mac OS
8 28 (0.35%) Apple iOS
9 19 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 16 (0.20%) zOS
11 10 (0.12%) AIX
11 10 (0.12%) Solaris
12 7 (0.087%) VMS
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.050%) Windows Server 2012
15 3 (0.037%) CentOS
15 3 (0.037%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.012%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,775 (21.98%) Agile
2 1,561 (19.33%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,254 (15.53%) Problem-Solving
4 1,018 (12.61%) Migration
5 886 (10.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 879 (10.88%) DevOps
7 813 (10.07%) CI/CD
8 793 (9.82%) Analytics
9 774 (9.58%) Project Management
10 770 (9.53%) Continuous Improvement
11 764 (9.46%) Business Intelligence
12 745 (9.22%) ERP
13 650 (8.05%) AI
14 608 (7.53%) Roadmaps
15 607 (7.52%) Decision-Making
16 584 (7.23%) Data Modelling
17 571 (7.07%) Change Management
18 543 (6.72%) Project Delivery
19 541 (6.70%) Risk Management
19 541 (6.70%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,157 (14.33%) SQL
2 1,027 (12.72%) Python
3 563 (6.97%) Java
4 308 (3.81%) C#
5 248 (3.07%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.51%) TypeScript
7 188 (2.33%) PowerShell
8 130 (1.61%) C++
9 88 (1.09%) Go
10 80 (0.99%) Bash
11 77 (0.95%) PL/SQL
12 53 (0.66%) VBA
13 51 (0.63%) T-SQL
14 42 (0.52%) Shell Script
15 41 (0.51%) R
16 40 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 38 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 38 (0.47%) Scala
18 30 (0.37%) Rust
19 28 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 815 (10.09%) Degree
2 669 (8.28%) Security Cleared
3 482 (5.97%) SC Cleared
4 188 (2.33%) PMP
5 187 (2.32%) PMI Certification
6 173 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
7 166 (2.06%) ACCA
7 166 (2.06%) Master's Degree
8 156 (1.93%) CIMA
9 131 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
10 103 (1.28%) CISSP
11 78 (0.97%) AWS Certification
12 75 (0.93%) DV Cleared
13 71 (0.88%) CISM
14 70 (0.87%) Azure Certification
15 41 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
16 39 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
17 37 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
18 35 (0.43%) ISTQB
19 30 (0.37%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 409 (5.06%) QA
2 397 (4.92%) Data Quality
3 323 (4.00%) PMO
4 276 (3.42%) GDPR
5 143 (1.77%) NIST
6 136 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.40%) SLA
8 109 (1.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 84 (1.04%) IFRS
10 83 (1.03%) Accessibility
11 79 (0.98%) PCI DSS
12 70 (0.87%) GRC
13 58 (0.72%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.57%) PSD2
15 42 (0.52%) GAAP
16 38 (0.47%) NCSC
16 38 (0.47%) SEPA
17 37 (0.46%) MiFID
18 33 (0.41%) COBIT
19 31 (0.38%) Basel III
System Software
1 339 (4.20%) Docker
2 176 (2.18%) Active Directory
3 62 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 32 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.14%) GPFS
7 11 (0.14%) NFS
8 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 8 (0.099%) Hyper-V
9 8 (0.099%) Virtual Servers
10 7 (0.087%) HDFS
11 4 (0.050%) Firmware
11 4 (0.050%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.037%) KVM
12 3 (0.037%) RACF
12 3 (0.037%) SRDF
12 3 (0.037%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.025%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 419 (5.19%) Kubernetes
2 255 (3.16%) Terraform
3 158 (1.96%) Ansible
4 98 (1.21%) Grafana
5 89 (1.10%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.66%) SCCM
8 42 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.26%) Progress Chef
11 19 (0.24%) vRealize
12 18 (0.22%) Control-M
13 17 (0.21%) Argo
14 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.16%) Kibana
16 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.15%) ITRS Geneos
17 11 (0.14%) Nessus
18 10 (0.12%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,050 (13.00%) Microsoft
2 816 (10.10%) SAP
3 701 (8.68%) Oracle
4 319 (3.95%) ServiceNow
5 197 (2.44%) Salesforce
6 188 (2.33%) Databricks
7 176 (2.18%) Google
8 164 (2.03%) Cisco
9 149 (1.84%) Workday
10 147 (1.82%) Splunk
11 121 (1.50%) VMware
12 104 (1.29%) IBM
13 77 (0.95%) Citrix
14 73 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 69 (0.85%) Ariba
16 60 (0.74%) Sage
17 57 (0.71%) HP
18 54 (0.67%) Dell
19 52 (0.64%) Bloomberg
19 52 (0.64%) OpenAI