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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,083 6,511 8,327
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.95% 21.36% 18.76%
As % of the General category 32.73% 34.25% 31.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,121 4,165 5,639
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 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 106 201
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £12.63
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.33 £14.50
Median hourly rate £23.58 £35.00 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -32.64% +36.13% -
75th Percentile £41.25 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £69.87 £81.60 £60.00
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 24,694 19,010 26,047
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.89% 62.36% 58.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,428 11,790 16,707
10th Percentile £300 £290 £265
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £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 1,513 636 1,758
10th Percentile £13.64 £15.48 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.89 £20.17 £15.34
Median hourly rate £24.00 £30.00 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +16.69% -17.06%
75th Percentile £55.00 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £74.94 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.35 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.73% +9.40% -5.59%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 7,135 £537 -8.98% 4,476
London 0 4,351 £575 -8.00% 1,941
UK excluding London 0 3,177 £500 - 3,292
Work from Home -2 2,299 £540 -8.47% 1,855
North of England +3 1,030 £475 -2.56% 789
Midlands -1 590 £480 -4.00% 503
South East -2 576 £500 -6.54% 1,086
North West +4 517 £450 -5.26% 416
Yorkshire 0 465 £500 -1.38% 298
West Midlands +1 382 £500 -7.41% 289
Scotland 0 376 £476 +1.82% 163
South West -4 324 £512 -2.48% 364
East Midlands 0 203 £450 +5.88% 208
East of England -2 187 £515 -6.36% 290
Wales +37 108 £413 +3.13% 100
Northern Ireland -2 48 £525 +61.54% 54
North East -9 48 £488 +6.56% 84
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
1 328 (4.06%) Confluence
2 206 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 80 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.78%) Microsoft Exchange
5 46 (0.57%) Apache
6 44 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.37%) SAS
8 25 (0.31%) CMS
9 21 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.21%) Appian
11 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
12 16 (0.20%) CICS
13 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
14 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
15 12 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 12 (0.15%) Camunda
15 12 (0.15%) TPMS
16 11 (0.14%) Mendix
17 8 (0.099%) nginx
Applications
1 526 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 282 (3.49%) Microsoft Office
3 198 (2.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 180 (2.23%) Microsoft Project
5 145 (1.79%) 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 10 (0.12%) 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 (0.049%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 339 (4.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.44%) Oracle Payables
3 97 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 74 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
5 72 (0.89%) NetSuite
6 69 (0.85%) SAP FI
7 68 (0.84%) Oracle General Ledger
7 68 (0.84%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 58 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
8 58 (0.72%) SAP CO
9 51 (0.63%) SAP FI/CO
10 45 (0.56%) Oracle Assets
10 45 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
11 40 (0.49%) Oracle Cash Management
12 39 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
13 36 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
13 36 (0.45%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 34 (0.42%) Workday HCM
15 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
16 23 (0.28%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,226 (15.17%) Azure
2 979 (12.11%) AWS
3 551 (6.82%) Power Platform
4 401 (4.96%) GCP
5 282 (3.49%) Microsoft 365
6 267 (3.30%) SaaS
7 257 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
8 222 (2.75%) Dynamics 365
9 209 (2.59%) GitHub
10 156 (1.93%) Serverless
11 153 (1.89%) OCI
12 130 (1.61%) Snowflake
13 120 (1.48%) Entra ID
14 104 (1.29%) Amazon S3
15 96 (1.19%) Power Automate
16 87 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 83 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
18 78 (0.96%) OpenShift
19 77 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
20 75 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 159 (1.97%) 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 (0.49%) 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
19 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
19 16 (0.20%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 489 (6.05%) Power BI
2 211 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
3 207 (2.56%) SQL Server
4 194 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
5 143 (1.77%) Tableau
6 137 (1.69%) Metadata
7 123 (1.52%) NoSQL
8 120 (1.48%) Relational Database
9 116 (1.44%) Data Lake
10 95 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
11 79 (0.98%) Big Data
12 76 (0.94%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.82%) Oracle Database
14 59 (0.73%) BigQuery
15 48 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
17 41 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
18 36 (0.45%) MySQL
18 36 (0.45%) Power Query
18 36 (0.45%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 654 (8.09%) JIRA
2 247 (3.06%) Jenkins
3 217 (2.68%) Git
4 158 (1.95%) GitLab
5 68 (0.84%) JUnit
6 64 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 47 (0.58%) 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%) MLflow
13 23 (0.28%) Maven
14 20 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 18 (0.22%) Liquibase
16 16 (0.20%) SonarQube
16 16 (0.20%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.19%) ERwin
17 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,679 (33.14%) Social Skills
2 1,573 (19.46%) Banking
3 1,047 (12.95%) Analytical Skills
4 643 (7.95%) Public Sector
5 357 (4.42%) Financial Institution
6 307 (3.80%) Legal
7 289 (3.58%) Front Office
8 287 (3.55%) Marketing
9 277 (3.43%) Investment Banking
10 269 (3.33%) Manufacturing
11 249 (3.08%) Organisational Skills
12 246 (3.04%) Telecoms
13 231 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
14 186 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
15 178 (2.20%) Retail
16 147 (1.82%) Electronics
17 130 (1.61%) General Ledger
18 129 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
19 122 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 114 (1.41%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,287 (15.92%) Analyst
2 882 (10.91%) Developer
3 830 (10.27%) Senior
4 711 (8.80%) Lead
5 685 (8.47%) Business Analyst
6 673 (8.33%) Architect
7 647 (8.00%) Project Manager
8 597 (7.39%) Consultant
9 281 (3.48%) Solutions Architect
10 194 (2.40%) Data Analyst
10 194 (2.40%) Data Engineer
11 182 (2.25%) Programme Manager
12 180 (2.23%) Financial Analyst
13 172 (2.13%) Senior Manager
14 144 (1.78%) Finance Manager
15 143 (1.77%) Java Developer
16 141 (1.74%) Software Engineer
17 133 (1.65%) Senior Analyst
18 131 (1.62%) Senior Developer
19 125 (1.55%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 279 (3.45%) REST
2 274 (3.39%) Kafka
3 214 (2.65%) .NET
4 211 (2.61%) React
5 166 (2.05%) Oracle Fusion
6 148 (1.83%) RESTful
7 147 (1.82%) Middleware
8 141 (1.74%) Spring
9 120 (1.48%) Spring Boot
10 119 (1.47%) Node.js
11 111 (1.37%) AngularJS
12 90 (1.11%) HTML
13 89 (1.10%) PySpark
14 87 (1.08%) XML
15 83 (1.03%) CSS
16 80 (0.99%) JSON
17 78 (0.96%) Pandas
18 76 (0.94%) SOAP
19 72 (0.89%) OAuth
20 68 (0.84%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 350 (4.33%) Onboarding
2 313 (3.87%) Product Ownership
3 252 (3.12%) Cloud Native
4 198 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
5 178 (2.20%) Management Information System
6 175 (2.17%) Derivative
7 163 (2.02%) Data Centre
8 150 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
9 147 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
10 144 (1.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 143 (1.77%) Data Structures
11 143 (1.77%) Fixed Income
12 124 (1.53%) Equities
13 114 (1.41%) Public Cloud
14 111 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
15 90 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
16 89 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
17 88 (1.09%) Virtual Team
18 71 (0.88%) Hedge funds
19 65 (0.80%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 321 (3.97%) Linux
2 297 (3.67%) Windows
3 142 (1.76%) Unix
4 64 (0.79%) Windows 10
4 64 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 58 (0.72%) Android
6 52 (0.64%) Mac OS
7 28 (0.35%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 16 (0.20%) zOS
10 10 (0.12%) AIX
11 9 (0.11%) Solaris
12 7 (0.087%) VMS
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.049%) Windows Server 2012
15 3 (0.037%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.025%) CentOS
17 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
17 1 (0.012%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,777 (21.98%) Agile
2 1,563 (19.34%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,246 (15.42%) Problem-Solving
4 1,015 (12.56%) Migration
5 887 (10.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 885 (10.95%) DevOps
7 815 (10.08%) CI/CD
8 789 (9.76%) Analytics
9 781 (9.66%) Project Management
10 775 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
11 771 (9.54%) Business Intelligence
12 748 (9.25%) ERP
13 653 (8.08%) AI
14 611 (7.56%) Decision-Making
15 605 (7.48%) Roadmaps
16 590 (7.30%) Data Modelling
17 575 (7.11%) Change Management
18 546 (6.75%) Validation
19 545 (6.74%) Project Delivery
20 540 (6.68%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,160 (14.35%) SQL
2 1,022 (12.64%) Python
3 558 (6.90%) Java
4 311 (3.85%) C#
5 249 (3.08%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.50%) TypeScript
7 190 (2.35%) PowerShell
8 128 (1.58%) C++
9 87 (1.08%) Go
10 80 (0.99%) Bash
11 76 (0.94%) PL/SQL
12 54 (0.67%) VBA
13 51 (0.63%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 39 (0.48%) Scala
16 38 (0.47%) Kotlin
16 38 (0.47%) R
16 38 (0.47%) Shell Script
17 30 (0.37%) Rust
18 28 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 817 (10.11%) Degree
2 672 (8.31%) Security Cleared
3 484 (5.99%) SC Cleared
4 190 (2.35%) PMP
5 189 (2.34%) PMI Certification
6 173 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
7 166 (2.05%) Master's Degree
8 165 (2.04%) ACCA
9 155 (1.92%) CIMA
10 131 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
11 104 (1.29%) CISSP
12 79 (0.98%) AWS Certification
13 75 (0.93%) DV Cleared
14 72 (0.89%) CISM
15 70 (0.87%) Azure Certification
16 40 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
16 40 (0.49%) 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
2 400 (4.95%) Data Quality
3 322 (3.98%) PMO
4 281 (3.48%) GDPR
5 147 (1.82%) NIST
6 138 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 114 (1.41%) SLA
8 111 (1.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 84 (1.04%) Accessibility
9 84 (1.04%) IFRS
10 80 (0.99%) PCI DSS
11 72 (0.89%) GRC
12 58 (0.72%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.57%) PSD2
14 42 (0.52%) GAAP
15 38 (0.47%) NCSC
15 38 (0.47%) SEPA
16 37 (0.46%) MiFID
17 33 (0.41%) COBIT
18 31 (0.38%) Basel III
System Software
1 337 (4.17%) Docker
2 174 (2.15%) Active Directory
3 60 (0.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 31 (0.38%) 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 (0.049%) Firmware
11 4 (0.049%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.037%) RACF
12 3 (0.037%) SRDF
12 3 (0.037%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.025%) BitLocker
13 2 (0.025%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 420 (5.20%) Kubernetes
2 258 (3.19%) Terraform
3 157 (1.94%) Ansible
4 99 (1.22%) Grafana
5 90 (1.11%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
7 54 (0.67%) SCCM
8 41 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) Progress Chef
10 19 (0.24%) vRealize
11 18 (0.22%) Control-M
12 17 (0.21%) Argo
13 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.16%) Kibana
15 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
16 11 (0.14%) ITRS Geneos
16 11 (0.14%) Nessus
17 10 (0.12%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,052 (13.01%) Microsoft
2 816 (10.10%) SAP
3 702 (8.68%) Oracle
4 319 (3.95%) ServiceNow
5 198 (2.45%) Salesforce
6 189 (2.34%) Databricks
7 179 (2.21%) Google
8 164 (2.03%) Cisco
9 150 (1.86%) Workday
10 148 (1.83%) Splunk
11 120 (1.48%) VMware
12 102 (1.26%) IBM
13 76 (0.94%) Citrix
14 74 (0.92%) 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%) Informatica