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

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,388 6,466 8,263
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.57% 22.12% 18.73%
As % of the General category 33.13% 35.12% 32.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,327 4,285 5,526
10th Percentile £351 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.39% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 209 111 240
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.51 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.26 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £26.87
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +48.89% -17.34%
75th Percentile £42.65 £73.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.67 £83.20 £52.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £27.00
% change year-on-year -57.95% +94.44% -36.47%

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 25,320 18,411 25,671
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.07% 62.99% 58.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,770 11,794 16,301
10th Percentile £303 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £643 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,559 729 1,862
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.74 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.23 £18.51 £15.39
Median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £26.37
Median % change year-on-year -11.14% +9.97% -24.66%
75th Percentile £59.25 £57.62 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.55 £27.35 £25.22
% change year-on-year -10.24% +8.47% -21.57%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 7,416 £537 -7.01% 4,228
London 0 4,502 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,309 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -2 2,363 £543 -8.05% 1,715
North of England +3 1,089 £475 - 695
South East -2 645 £503 -7.37% 1,010
Midlands 0 583 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +5 579 £458 -1.61% 371
Yorkshire 0 462 £500 +2.30% 253
West Midlands 0 391 £492 -6.29% 251
Scotland 0 375 £500 +5.26% 161
South West -4 325 £520 +3.95% 302
East of England -3 196 £513 -6.82% 271
East Midlands 0 187 £448 +0.96% 171
Wales +24 106 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -5 48 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +59.09% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 4

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
1 336 (4.01%) Confluence
2 216 (2.58%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 59 (0.70%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.58%) Apache
5 49 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.41%) SAS
7 30 (0.36%) CMS
8 19 (0.23%) CICS
9 18 (0.21%) Appian
9 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.18%) Camunda
11 14 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
13 11 (0.13%) TPMS
14 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 8 (0.095%) WebLogic
Applications
1 545 (6.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 246 (2.93%) Microsoft Office
3 187 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 176 (2.10%) Microsoft Project
5 131 (1.56%) MS Visio
6 53 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 11 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.12%) Sketch
11 9 (0.11%) InVision
12 6 (0.072%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.060%) Notion
13 5 (0.060%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.048%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe Captivate
15 2 (0.024%) InDesign
15 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.024%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 353 (4.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.42%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.23%) Oracle Receivables
4 83 (0.99%) NetSuite
5 80 (0.95%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 72 (0.86%) Oracle EBS
7 69 (0.82%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
10 55 (0.66%) SAP CO
11 52 (0.62%) Oracle ERP
12 51 (0.61%) SAP FI/CO
13 43 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
14 38 (0.45%) Oracle Cash Management
15 35 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
16 32 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
17 31 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
18 30 (0.36%) Aladdin
19 27 (0.32%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,285 (15.32%) Azure
2 982 (11.71%) AWS
3 603 (7.19%) Power Platform
4 399 (4.76%) GCP
5 289 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
6 276 (3.29%) SaaS
7 272 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
8 249 (2.97%) Dynamics 365
9 226 (2.69%) GitHub
10 158 (1.88%) Serverless
11 142 (1.69%) OCI
12 136 (1.62%) Snowflake
13 124 (1.48%) Entra ID
14 116 (1.38%) Amazon S3
15 98 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 88 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
18 86 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
19 85 (1.01%) OpenShift
20 75 (0.89%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 166 (1.98%) Firewall
2 105 (1.25%) Network Security
3 81 (0.97%) WAN
4 67 (0.80%) DNS
5 58 (0.69%) VPN
6 47 (0.56%) LAN
7 45 (0.54%) TCP/IP
8 44 (0.52%) SD-WAN
9 35 (0.42%) BGP
10 32 (0.38%) HTTP
11 30 (0.36%) OSPF
11 30 (0.36%) SSL
12 29 (0.35%) Multicast
13 26 (0.31%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.25%) Wireless
16 19 (0.23%) DHCP
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
18 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 525 (6.26%) Power BI
2 218 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
3 209 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 182 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
5 159 (1.90%) Metadata
6 147 (1.75%) Tableau
7 126 (1.50%) Data Lake
8 121 (1.44%) Relational Database
9 104 (1.24%) NoSQL
10 102 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
11 80 (0.95%) Big Data
12 64 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.74%) BigQuery
14 55 (0.66%) MongoDB
15 47 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
17 42 (0.50%) Power Query
18 41 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
19 39 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
19 39 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 679 (8.09%) JIRA
2 221 (2.63%) Jenkins
3 211 (2.52%) Git
4 139 (1.66%) GitLab
5 61 (0.73%) JUnit
6 58 (0.69%) Cucumber
7 43 (0.51%) Selenium
7 43 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
8 32 (0.38%) Postman
9 28 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
10 23 (0.27%) MLflow
11 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 19 (0.23%) Maven
13 18 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.20%) ERwin
14 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
16 14 (0.17%) Hudson
17 13 (0.15%) Liquibase
General
1 2,661 (31.72%) Social Skills
2 1,600 (19.07%) Banking
3 1,118 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
4 626 (7.46%) Public Sector
5 339 (4.04%) Financial Institution
6 324 (3.86%) Legal
7 287 (3.42%) Front Office
8 282 (3.36%) Investment Banking
9 241 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
10 239 (2.85%) Manufacturing
10 239 (2.85%) Organisational Skills
11 238 (2.84%) Marketing
12 217 (2.59%) Telecoms
13 214 (2.55%) Retail
14 197 (2.35%) Influencing Skills
15 137 (1.63%) General Ledger
16 128 (1.53%) Local Government
17 123 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
18 122 (1.45%) Law
19 117 (1.39%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,300 (15.50%) Analyst
2 858 (10.23%) Senior
3 850 (10.13%) Developer
4 797 (9.50%) Lead
5 747 (8.91%) Architect
6 700 (8.35%) Business Analyst
7 672 (8.01%) Project Manager
8 627 (7.47%) Consultant
9 298 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
10 242 (2.89%) Data Engineer
11 196 (2.34%) Financial Analyst
12 194 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.24%) Data Analyst
14 182 (2.17%) Finance Manager
15 166 (1.98%) Programme Manager
16 145 (1.73%) Java Developer
17 144 (1.72%) Accountant
18 139 (1.66%) Delivery Manager
19 134 (1.60%) Senior Developer
20 129 (1.54%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (3.27%) REST
2 270 (3.22%) Kafka
3 207 (2.47%) .NET
4 197 (2.35%) React
5 161 (1.92%) Middleware
6 157 (1.87%) Oracle Fusion
7 145 (1.73%) Spring
8 142 (1.69%) RESTful
9 130 (1.55%) Spring Boot
10 117 (1.39%) Node.js
11 100 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 95 (1.13%) PySpark
13 82 (0.98%) XML
14 81 (0.97%) OAuth
15 75 (0.89%) JSON
16 74 (0.88%) HTML
17 72 (0.86%) Redux
18 71 (0.85%) CSS
19 69 (0.82%) Pandas
20 66 (0.79%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 352 (4.20%) Onboarding
2 319 (3.80%) Product Ownership
3 268 (3.20%) Cloud Native
4 211 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
5 186 (2.22%) Management Information System
6 168 (2.00%) Derivative
7 157 (1.87%) Data Structures
8 154 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
9 151 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
10 148 (1.76%) Data Centre
11 146 (1.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 145 (1.73%) Fixed Income
13 120 (1.43%) Equities
14 111 (1.32%) Public Cloud
15 101 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
16 100 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
17 93 (1.11%) Virtual Team
18 87 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
19 64 (0.76%) Hedge funds
20 63 (0.75%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 302 (3.60%) Linux
2 271 (3.23%) Windows
3 138 (1.65%) Unix
4 66 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.62%) Windows 10
6 38 (0.45%) Android
7 31 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 20 (0.24%) zOS
10 17 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 13 (0.15%) AIX
12 12 (0.14%) Solaris
13 7 (0.083%) VMS
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.012%) MVS
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,764 (21.03%) Agile
2 1,645 (19.61%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,239 (14.77%) Problem-Solving
4 1,119 (13.34%) Migration
5 952 (11.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 920 (10.97%) DevOps
7 894 (10.66%) Continuous Improvement
8 856 (10.21%) ERP
9 833 (9.93%) CI/CD
10 816 (9.73%) Analytics
11 811 (9.67%) Project Management
12 788 (9.39%) Business Intelligence
13 719 (8.57%) AI
14 661 (7.88%) Decision-Making
15 648 (7.73%) Data Modelling
16 645 (7.69%) Roadmaps
17 607 (7.24%) Validation
18 600 (7.15%) Change Management
19 592 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
20 576 (6.87%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,177 (14.03%) SQL
2 1,001 (11.93%) Python
3 555 (6.62%) Java
4 302 (3.60%) C#
5 227 (2.71%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.31%) TypeScript
7 169 (2.01%) PowerShell
8 114 (1.36%) C++
9 83 (0.99%) Go
10 71 (0.85%) Bash
11 70 (0.83%) PL/SQL
12 58 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 56 (0.67%) VBA
14 49 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 40 (0.48%) Scala
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 30 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 29 (0.35%) Bicep
20 26 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 786 (9.37%) Degree
2 719 (8.57%) Security Cleared
3 510 (6.08%) SC Cleared
4 207 (2.47%) PMP
5 201 (2.40%) PMI Certification
6 190 (2.27%) ACCA
7 178 (2.12%) CIMA
8 164 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
9 150 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
10 149 (1.78%) Master's Degree
11 120 (1.43%) CISSP
12 86 (1.03%) DV Cleared
13 84 (1.00%) CISM
14 71 (0.85%) Azure Certification
15 62 (0.74%) AWS Certification
16 44 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
17 37 (0.44%) ISTQB
18 36 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
19 35 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
20 29 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (5.46%) Data Quality
2 404 (4.82%) QA
3 342 (4.08%) PMO
4 300 (3.58%) GDPR
5 152 (1.81%) NIST
6 132 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.34%) SLA
8 101 (1.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 92 (1.10%) IFRS
10 77 (0.92%) PCI DSS
11 76 (0.91%) Accessibility
12 69 (0.82%) GRC
13 59 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 48 (0.57%) GAAP
15 40 (0.48%) PSD2
16 37 (0.44%) SEPA
17 36 (0.43%) NCSC
18 35 (0.42%) MiFID
19 27 (0.32%) Basel III
20 26 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 312 (3.72%) Docker
2 150 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 58 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.39%) vSphere
5 24 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) NFS
9 11 (0.13%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 8 (0.095%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.060%) HDFS
14 4 (0.048%) ISA Server
14 4 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.036%) Firmware
15 3 (0.036%) GridGain
15 3 (0.036%) KVM
15 3 (0.036%) RACF
15 3 (0.036%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 409 (4.88%) Kubernetes
2 264 (3.15%) Terraform
3 137 (1.63%) Ansible
4 98 (1.17%) Grafana
5 81 (0.97%) Prometheus
6 57 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.58%) SCCM
8 38 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.24%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.19%) Argo
12 16 (0.19%) Control-M
13 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.15%) Puppet
15 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 12 (0.14%) HP ALM
16 11 (0.13%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,112 (13.26%) Microsoft
2 807 (9.62%) SAP
3 723 (8.62%) Oracle
4 327 (3.90%) ServiceNow
5 215 (2.56%) Databricks
6 194 (2.31%) Salesforce
7 180 (2.15%) Google
8 146 (1.74%) Cisco
9 142 (1.69%) Workday
10 131 (1.56%) Splunk
11 114 (1.36%) VMware
12 105 (1.25%) IBM
13 76 (0.91%) Ariba
13 76 (0.91%) Citrix
14 74 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 71 (0.85%) Sage
16 58 (0.69%) Informatica
17 53 (0.63%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.63%) OpenAI
18 49 (0.58%) Murex