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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,825 7,313 7,628
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.32% 22.63% 20.03%
As % of the General category 33.14% 35.60% 34.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,005 4,796 4,970
10th Percentile £360 £331 £361
25th Percentile £450 £413 £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 £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £492 £513
% change year-on-year +3.66% -4.00% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 324 134 159
10th Percentile £15.07 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.50 £20.36 £23.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +36.13%
75th Percentile - £63.00 £49.38
90th Percentile £75.40 £78.75 £70.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -28.14% +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 29,647 20,544 21,930
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.27% 63.58% 57.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,516 12,745 13,465
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
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 £498
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.62% -0.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,299 1,164 1,171
10th Percentile £13.70 £13.47 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.77 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £30.50 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +21.27% -32.93% +36.36%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.16 £22.04 £38.12
% change year-on-year +41.36% -42.18% +46.90%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 8,488 £550 - 15,780
London 0 5,119 £588 -2.08% 10,506
UK excluding London 0 3,872 £510 +3.66% 7,488
Work from Home -1 2,806 £550 -4.35% 6,960
North of England 0 1,337 £510 +12.15% 1,788
South East -1 737 £500 -4.76% 1,674
North West -1 677 £500 +11.11% 1,085
Midlands -1 609 £520 +11.83% 842
Yorkshire 0 579 £519 +9.03% 483
Scotland 0 525 £465 -6.53% 992
West Midlands +1 453 £525 +5.00% 521
South West -6 362 £550 -2.22% 1,056
East of England +2 206 £550 -1.21% 655
East Midlands -4 153 £500 +20.48% 320
North East -4 74 £500 +14.29% 238
Northern Ireland -1 64 £500 +2.56% 430
Wales -1 60 £525 +13.51% 159
Channel Islands +2 5 £550 - 3

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
1 332 (3.38%) Confluence
2 257 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 82 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 70 (0.71%) Apache
6 46 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.36%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 26 (0.26%) SAS
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) Camunda
12 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.10%) CICS
14 9 (0.092%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.071%) Ethereum
15 7 (0.071%) WebLogic
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 6 (0.061%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 530 (5.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.28%) Microsoft Office
3 193 (1.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 157 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 88 (0.90%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 29 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.061%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.061%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.051%) Sketch
12 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.031%) Notion
13 3 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
14 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 429 (4.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 129 (1.31%) Oracle Payables
3 109 (1.11%) Oracle Receivables
4 108 (1.10%) NetSuite
5 95 (0.97%) Oracle ERP
6 75 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
6 75 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
7 72 (0.73%) SAP FI
8 62 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
8 62 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 54 (0.55%) Oracle Financials
10 49 (0.50%) SAP CO
11 45 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
12 39 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
13 37 (0.38%) Aladdin
14 35 (0.36%) SAP GRC
15 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
16 32 (0.33%) Workday HCM
17 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
17 26 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,549 (15.77%) Azure
2 1,058 (10.77%) AWS
3 668 (6.80%) Power Platform
4 525 (5.34%) GCP
5 351 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
6 326 (3.32%) SaaS
7 311 (3.17%) GitHub
8 309 (3.15%) Microsoft 365
9 276 (2.81%) Dynamics 365
10 221 (2.25%) Entra ID
11 217 (2.21%) Snowflake
12 155 (1.58%) Serverless
13 145 (1.48%) OCI
14 123 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
15 121 (1.23%) dbt
16 119 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
17 117 (1.19%) Power Automate
18 116 (1.18%) Amazon S3
19 112 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
20 100 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.76%) Firewall
2 151 (1.54%) Network Security
3 102 (1.04%) VPN
4 86 (0.88%) DNS
5 63 (0.64%) TCP/IP
6 57 (0.58%) WAN
7 50 (0.51%) DHCP
8 44 (0.45%) SSL
9 43 (0.44%) BGP
10 36 (0.37%) HTTP
11 35 (0.36%) LAN
12 34 (0.35%) VLAN
13 33 (0.34%) Multicast
14 31 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
15 30 (0.31%) Wireless
16 26 (0.26%) Internet
17 24 (0.24%) SAN
18 23 (0.23%) OSPF
19 18 (0.18%) SD-WAN
20 15 (0.15%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 544 (5.54%) Power BI
2 281 (2.86%) SQL Server
3 257 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
4 209 (2.13%) Metadata
5 176 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.49%) Data Lake
7 125 (1.27%) PostgreSQL
8 122 (1.24%) Tableau
9 78 (0.79%) NoSQL
9 78 (0.79%) Oracle Database
10 76 (0.77%) BigQuery
11 75 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
12 67 (0.68%) MongoDB
13 58 (0.59%) Delta Lake
14 56 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.55%) Power Query
16 49 (0.50%) Big Data
17 46 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
18 45 (0.46%) Db2
19 43 (0.44%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 662 (6.74%) JIRA
2 294 (2.99%) Git
3 167 (1.70%) Jenkins
4 102 (1.04%) GitLab
5 57 (0.58%) Selenium
6 50 (0.51%) JUnit
7 34 (0.35%) SonarQube
8 32 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 32 (0.33%) Maven
8 32 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.31%) Claude Code
9 30 (0.31%) ERwin
9 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 29 (0.30%) REST Assured
11 27 (0.27%) Cucumber
12 26 (0.26%) Gradle
13 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
14 22 (0.22%) Cypress.io
14 22 (0.22%) Postman
15 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
General
1 3,040 (30.94%) Social Skills
2 1,995 (20.31%) Banking
3 1,385 (14.10%) Analytical Skills
4 541 (5.51%) Legal
5 519 (5.28%) Public Sector
6 429 (4.37%) Organisational Skills
7 394 (4.01%) Investment Banking
8 382 (3.89%) Retail
9 330 (3.36%) Front Office
10 322 (3.28%) Financial Institution
11 319 (3.25%) Influencing Skills
12 221 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
13 204 (2.08%) Manufacturing
14 191 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 173 (1.76%) General Ledger
16 164 (1.67%) Marketing
17 163 (1.66%) Billing
18 155 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
19 149 (1.52%) Local Government
20 141 (1.44%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,418 (14.43%) Analyst
2 1,054 (10.73%) Senior
3 1,005 (10.23%) Lead
4 966 (9.83%) Developer
5 866 (8.81%) Architect
6 737 (7.50%) Business Analyst
7 706 (7.19%) Consultant
8 692 (7.04%) Project Manager
9 329 (3.35%) Solutions Architect
10 305 (3.10%) Data Engineer
11 261 (2.66%) Financial Analyst
12 223 (2.27%) Senior Manager
13 207 (2.11%) Java Developer
14 201 (2.05%) Data Analyst
15 194 (1.97%) Senior Developer
16 188 (1.91%) Programme Manager
17 181 (1.84%) Accountant
18 177 (1.80%) Finance Manager
19 171 (1.74%) IT Manager
20 148 (1.51%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 369 (3.76%) Terraform
2 356 (3.62%) REST
3 267 (2.72%) .NET
4 266 (2.71%) Oracle Fusion
5 248 (2.52%) Kafka
6 228 (2.32%) React
7 189 (1.92%) Spring
8 185 (1.88%) Spring Boot
9 180 (1.83%) Middleware
10 149 (1.52%) PySpark
11 137 (1.39%) RESTful
12 105 (1.07%) XML
13 99 (1.01%) JSON
13 99 (1.01%) OAuth
14 80 (0.81%) SOAP
15 79 (0.80%) Redux
16 76 (0.77%) AngularJS
17 71 (0.72%) Node.js
18 70 (0.71%) Web Services
19 68 (0.69%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 514 (5.23%) Onboarding
2 493 (5.02%) Product Ownership
3 423 (4.31%) Cloud Native
4 248 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
5 247 (2.51%) Management Information System
6 235 (2.39%) Data Structures
7 222 (2.26%) Virtual Team
8 194 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
9 186 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
10 183 (1.86%) Derivative
11 177 (1.80%) AI Agents
12 160 (1.63%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 159 (1.62%) Data Centre
14 131 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
14 131 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
15 125 (1.27%) Fixed Income
16 114 (1.16%) Podcast
17 113 (1.15%) Equities
18 112 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
19 109 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 368 (3.75%) Windows
2 306 (3.11%) Linux
3 164 (1.67%) Unix
4 86 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 55 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.50%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 38 (0.39%) Android
9 35 (0.36%) zOS
10 34 (0.35%) Solaris
11 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 4 (0.041%) CentOS
17 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,543 (25.88%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,010 (20.46%) Agile
3 1,336 (13.60%) Migration
4 1,303 (13.26%) Problem-Solving
5 1,227 (12.49%) AI
6 1,162 (11.83%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,145 (11.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,078 (10.97%) CI/CD
9 1,007 (10.25%) ERP
10 1,004 (10.22%) Analytics
11 981 (9.98%) DevOps
12 907 (9.23%) Decision-Making
13 830 (8.45%) Validation
14 816 (8.31%) Roadmaps
15 772 (7.86%) Project Management
16 771 (7.85%) Data Modelling
17 766 (7.80%) User Acceptance Testing
18 724 (7.37%) Change Management
19 666 (6.78%) Risk Management
20 664 (6.76%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,307 (13.30%) SQL
2 1,212 (12.34%) Python
3 634 (6.45%) Java
4 357 (3.63%) C#
5 272 (2.77%) PowerShell
6 240 (2.44%) JavaScript
7 205 (2.09%) TypeScript
8 141 (1.44%) Bash
9 110 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 93 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 56 (0.57%) Bicep
15 54 (0.55%) Go
16 44 (0.45%) Korn
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 38 (0.39%) Scala
19 37 (0.38%) VBA
20 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 754 (7.67%) Security Cleared
2 723 (7.36%) Degree
3 543 (5.53%) SC Cleared
4 247 (2.51%) PMP
5 242 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 221 (2.25%) PMI Certification
7 195 (1.98%) ACCA
8 170 (1.73%) CIMA
9 145 (1.48%) CISSP
10 137 (1.39%) DV Cleared
11 129 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
12 107 (1.09%) Azure Certification
13 85 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
14 84 (0.85%) CISM
15 70 (0.71%) Master's Degree
16 67 (0.68%) AWS Certification
17 52 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 46 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 672 (6.84%) Data Quality
2 425 (4.33%) QA
3 363 (3.69%) PMO
4 233 (2.37%) GDPR
5 139 (1.41%) NIST
6 119 (1.21%) GRC
7 118 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 108 (1.10%) Accessibility
9 96 (0.98%) IFRS
9 96 (0.98%) SLA
10 85 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 62 (0.63%) ISO 20022
12 51 (0.52%) GAAP
13 41 (0.42%) PCI DSS
14 37 (0.38%) Solvency II
15 36 (0.37%) SEPA
16 28 (0.28%) COBIT
16 28 (0.28%) EMIR
16 28 (0.28%) MiFID
17 23 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 260 (2.65%) Docker
2 236 (2.40%) Active Directory
3 83 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.24%) RACF
7 18 (0.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 11 (0.11%) NFS
11 9 (0.092%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) ACF2
12 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.041%) GPFS
14 4 (0.041%) KVM
14 4 (0.041%) zsh
15 3 (0.031%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 458 (4.66%) Kubernetes
2 167 (1.70%) Ansible
3 97 (0.99%) Grafana
4 77 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
5 69 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.61%) SCCM
7 56 (0.57%) 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 (0.092%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,411 (14.36%) Microsoft
2 883 (8.99%) Oracle
3 836 (8.51%) SAP
4 372 (3.79%) ServiceNow
5 355 (3.61%) Databricks
6 234 (2.38%) Salesforce
7 219 (2.23%) Google
8 176 (1.79%) IBM
9 137 (1.39%) VMware
10 125 (1.27%) Workday
11 118 (1.20%) Cisco
12 114 (1.16%) Splunk
13 98 (1.00%) Ariba
14 87 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 82 (0.83%) OpenAI
16 56 (0.57%) Citrix
17 55 (0.56%) Bloomberg
17 55 (0.56%) Sage
18 51 (0.52%) Informatica
19 47 (0.48%) Red Hat