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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,664 7,205 8,208
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.56% 22.64% 18.97%
As % of the General category 33.96% 35.89% 33.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,999 4,737 5,511
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £447 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £719
90th Percentile £800 £815 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £492 £500
% change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 244 143 255
10th Percentile £14.87 £16.00 £13.23
25th Percentile £19.03 £23.20 £15.87
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +16.07% -6.67%
75th Percentile £57.00 £64.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £87.10 £76.00 £57.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.30 £28.50 £32.12
% change year-on-year +48.42% -11.26% -20.56%

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 28,461 20,078 24,716
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.66% 63.09% 57.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,041 12,609 15,456
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £472 £489
% change year-on-year +5.93% -3.48% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,970 1,003 1,943
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.47 £12.82
25th Percentile £18.05 £16.36 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.21 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +17.60% -14.89% +6.57%
75th Percentile £60.41 £52.08 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.13 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £23.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year +39.13% -26.40% +20.42%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 8,457 £550 - 5,255
London 0 5,071 £575 -4.17% 2,727
UK excluding London +1 3,861 £500 +1.63% 3,153
Work from Home -1 2,803 £550 -4.35% 2,906
North of England +1 1,296 £500 +7.53% 806
South East 0 725 £500 -4.76% 952
North West +4 672 £475 +5.56% 416
Midlands +1 661 £500 +11.11% 474
Yorkshire 0 578 £525 +7.69% 293
Scotland 0 488 £475 -1.61% 179
West Midlands +1 487 £500 - 265
South West -2 386 £525 -4.55% 344
East of England +4 207 £525 -8.70% 250
East Midlands 0 166 £494 +16.18% 208
Wales +7 89 £525 +12.90% 82
Northern Ireland -1 58 £475 +11.76% 110
North East -22 47 £500 +13.64% 103
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 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
1 336 (3.48%) Confluence
2 236 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 87 (0.90%) Apache Spark
4 75 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
5 59 (0.61%) Apache
6 54 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) SAS
8 29 (0.30%) CMS
9 20 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.20%) CICS
11 18 (0.19%) IIS
12 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.12%) Camunda
14 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
14 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.083%) Appian
16 7 (0.072%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.062%) Hyperledger
18 5 (0.052%) WebLogic
19 4 (0.041%) JBoss
Applications
1 522 (5.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.34%) Microsoft Office
3 171 (1.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 153 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 118 (1.22%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.052%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.052%) Sketch
9 4 (0.041%) Adobe Illustrator
9 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.041%) Notion
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.041%) Photoshop
9 4 (0.041%) Trello
10 2 (0.021%) Adobe Premiere
10 2 (0.021%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.021%) Final Cut Pro
10 2 (0.021%) InVision
11 1 (0.010%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 440 (4.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 114 (1.18%) NetSuite
3 110 (1.14%) Oracle Payables
4 91 (0.94%) Oracle Receivables
5 80 (0.83%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 79 (0.82%) Oracle ERP
7 64 (0.66%) SAP FI
8 50 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
9 49 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
9 49 (0.51%) Oracle General Ledger
10 43 (0.44%) SAP CO
11 41 (0.42%) SAP FI/CO
12 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
13 39 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
14 29 (0.30%) Workday HCM
15 28 (0.29%) SAP ERP
16 27 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
17 26 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
18 25 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
18 25 (0.26%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,510 (15.63%) Azure
2 1,089 (11.27%) AWS
3 643 (6.65%) Power Platform
4 493 (5.10%) GCP
5 328 (3.39%) Azure DevOps
6 317 (3.28%) SaaS
7 288 (2.98%) Microsoft 365
8 260 (2.69%) GitHub
9 223 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
10 204 (2.11%) Snowflake
11 182 (1.88%) Entra ID
12 145 (1.50%) Serverless
13 126 (1.30%) Amazon S3
14 123 (1.27%) OCI
15 110 (1.14%) Power Automate
16 106 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
17 100 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
18 98 (1.01%) dbt
18 98 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
19 89 (0.92%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 186 (1.92%) Firewall
2 145 (1.50%) Network Security
3 84 (0.87%) DNS
4 77 (0.80%) VPN
5 68 (0.70%) WAN
6 61 (0.63%) TCP/IP
7 45 (0.47%) BGP
8 44 (0.46%) SSL
9 39 (0.40%) LAN
10 35 (0.36%) DHCP
10 35 (0.36%) HTTP
11 33 (0.34%) Multicast
12 31 (0.32%) OSPF
13 28 (0.29%) SD-WAN
14 26 (0.27%) Internet
15 24 (0.25%) MPLS
16 21 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
17 19 (0.20%) Wireless
18 18 (0.19%) VLAN
19 17 (0.18%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 545 (5.64%) Power BI
2 266 (2.75%) SQL Server
3 252 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
4 207 (2.14%) Metadata
5 182 (1.88%) Relational Database
6 177 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
7 152 (1.57%) Tableau
8 143 (1.48%) Data Lake
9 88 (0.91%) NoSQL
9 88 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
10 77 (0.80%) Oracle Database
11 71 (0.73%) Big Data
12 70 (0.72%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.71%) BigQuery
14 65 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
15 48 (0.50%) Power Query
15 48 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
17 44 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 42 (0.43%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 682 (7.06%) JIRA
2 255 (2.64%) Git
3 179 (1.85%) Jenkins
4 98 (1.01%) GitLab
5 56 (0.58%) JUnit
6 49 (0.51%) Cucumber
7 47 (0.49%) Selenium
8 30 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.29%) Postman
10 26 (0.27%) ERwin
10 26 (0.27%) Visual Studio
11 25 (0.26%) REST Assured
12 23 (0.24%) Maven
12 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
13 22 (0.23%) MLflow
14 19 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
14 19 (0.20%) Zephyr
15 17 (0.18%) Hudson
15 17 (0.18%) TeamCity
16 16 (0.17%) Gradle
General
1 2,827 (29.25%) Social Skills
2 1,771 (18.33%) Banking
3 1,287 (13.32%) Analytical Skills
4 553 (5.72%) Public Sector
5 475 (4.92%) Legal
6 378 (3.91%) Investment Banking
7 363 (3.76%) Financial Institution
8 342 (3.54%) Front Office
9 311 (3.22%) Organisational Skills
9 311 (3.22%) Retail
10 253 (2.62%) Influencing Skills
11 237 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
12 184 (1.90%) Manufacturing
13 167 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 163 (1.69%) Local Government
15 159 (1.65%) Billing
16 156 (1.61%) General Ledger
17 141 (1.46%) Marketing
18 134 (1.39%) Law
19 131 (1.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,422 (14.71%) Analyst
2 1,026 (10.62%) Lead
3 1,022 (10.58%) Senior
4 967 (10.01%) Developer
5 894 (9.25%) Architect
6 735 (7.61%) Business Analyst
7 705 (7.30%) Project Manager
8 661 (6.84%) Consultant
9 348 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
10 321 (3.32%) Data Engineer
11 230 (2.38%) Financial Analyst
12 226 (2.34%) Senior Manager
13 204 (2.11%) Accountant
13 204 (2.11%) Java Developer
14 203 (2.10%) Data Analyst
15 188 (1.95%) Finance Manager
16 187 (1.94%) Programme Manager
17 177 (1.83%) Software Engineer
18 176 (1.82%) IT Manager
19 173 (1.79%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 301 (3.11%) REST
2 269 (2.78%) .NET
3 268 (2.77%) React
4 263 (2.72%) Kafka
5 206 (2.13%) Oracle Fusion
6 202 (2.09%) Middleware
7 179 (1.85%) Spring
8 167 (1.73%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.41%) RESTful
10 117 (1.21%) Redux
11 114 (1.18%) PySpark
12 112 (1.16%) Node.js
13 93 (0.96%) JSON
14 91 (0.94%) AngularJS
15 88 (0.91%) OAuth
16 73 (0.76%) XML
17 65 (0.67%) CSS
17 65 (0.67%) SOAP
18 63 (0.65%) HTML
18 63 (0.65%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 451 (4.67%) Onboarding
2 414 (4.28%) Product Ownership
3 411 (4.25%) Cloud Native
4 266 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
5 217 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 215 (2.22%) Data Structures
7 178 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
8 172 (1.78%) Derivative
9 171 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 170 (1.76%) Fixed Income
11 168 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
12 165 (1.71%) Data Centre
13 149 (1.54%) Virtual Team
14 131 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
15 130 (1.35%) AI Agents
16 126 (1.30%) Equities
17 116 (1.20%) Public Cloud
18 109 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
19 108 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
20 94 (0.97%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 325 (3.36%) Windows
2 276 (2.86%) Linux
3 155 (1.60%) Unix
4 73 (0.76%) Windows Server
5 39 (0.40%) Solaris
5 39 (0.40%) zOS
6 36 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
7 35 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 29 (0.30%) Android
9 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.21%) AIX
11 9 (0.093%) VMS
12 8 (0.083%) Oracle Linux
13 7 (0.072%) Ubuntu
14 6 (0.062%) HPUX
14 6 (0.062%) SUSE
15 5 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,089 (21.62%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,942 (20.10%) Agile
3 1,329 (13.75%) Migration
4 1,290 (13.35%) Problem-Solving
5 1,120 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,090 (11.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,063 (11.00%) AI
8 1,020 (10.55%) DevOps
9 1,006 (10.41%) ERP
10 1,004 (10.39%) CI/CD
11 959 (9.92%) Analytics
12 863 (8.93%) Decision-Making
13 805 (8.33%) Validation
14 796 (8.24%) Roadmaps
15 793 (8.21%) Data Modelling
16 775 (8.02%) Project Management
17 761 (7.87%) User Acceptance Testing
18 691 (7.15%) Change Management
19 681 (7.05%) Business Intelligence
20 619 (6.41%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,283 (13.28%) SQL
2 1,181 (12.22%) Python
3 645 (6.67%) Java
4 383 (3.96%) C#
5 262 (2.71%) JavaScript
5 262 (2.71%) TypeScript
6 218 (2.26%) PowerShell
7 93 (0.96%) Bash
8 85 (0.88%) C++
9 83 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 82 (0.85%) Go
11 75 (0.78%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.66%) Shell Script
13 60 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 51 (0.53%) VBA
15 49 (0.51%) Scala
16 39 (0.40%) Bicep
17 35 (0.36%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.32%) Kotlin
19 29 (0.30%) Rust
Qualifications
1 745 (7.71%) Degree
2 737 (7.63%) Security Cleared
3 525 (5.43%) SC Cleared
4 226 (2.34%) PMP
5 217 (2.25%) ACCA
6 203 (2.10%) PMI Certification
7 195 (2.02%) CIMA
8 181 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
9 158 (1.63%) CISSP
10 130 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 106 (1.10%) DV Cleared
12 93 (0.96%) CISM
13 91 (0.94%) Azure Certification
14 86 (0.89%) Master's Degree
15 74 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 56 (0.58%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
18 42 (0.43%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 600 (6.21%) Data Quality
2 424 (4.39%) QA
3 341 (3.53%) PMO
4 301 (3.11%) GDPR
5 161 (1.67%) NIST
6 129 (1.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.17%) IFRS
8 112 (1.16%) SLA
9 108 (1.12%) GRC
10 99 (1.02%) Accessibility
10 99 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 65 (0.67%) GAAP
12 64 (0.66%) ISO 20022
13 60 (0.62%) PCI DSS
14 40 (0.41%) SEPA
15 38 (0.39%) Solvency II
16 37 (0.38%) NCSC
17 30 (0.31%) PSD2
17 30 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 29 (0.30%) COBIT
System Software
1 281 (2.91%) Docker
2 202 (2.09%) Active Directory
3 59 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
5 27 (0.28%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (0.21%) RACF
8 16 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 13 (0.13%) NFS
11 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.062%) GPFS
12 6 (0.062%) KVM
13 5 (0.052%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.052%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.041%) IAG
15 3 (0.031%) GridGain
15 3 (0.031%) SRDF
16 2 (0.021%) ACF2
16 2 (0.021%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 442 (4.57%) Kubernetes
2 309 (3.20%) Terraform
3 158 (1.63%) Ansible
4 93 (0.96%) Grafana
5 78 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 69 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.53%) SCCM
8 48 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.26%) Control-M
10 21 (0.22%) FortiGate
11 18 (0.19%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.19%) vRealize
12 17 (0.18%) Argo
12 17 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
13 16 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 16 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,230 (12.73%) Microsoft
2 837 (8.66%) SAP
3 805 (8.33%) Oracle
4 352 (3.64%) ServiceNow
5 295 (3.05%) Databricks
6 220 (2.28%) Salesforce
7 212 (2.19%) Google
8 140 (1.45%) Workday
9 134 (1.39%) IBM
10 119 (1.23%) VMware
11 118 (1.22%) Splunk
12 114 (1.18%) Cisco
13 93 (0.96%) CyberArk
14 88 (0.91%) Ariba
15 67 (0.69%) Sage
16 65 (0.67%) OpenAI
17 63 (0.65%) Citrix
18 58 (0.60%) Informatica
19 56 (0.58%) Bloomberg
20 52 (0.54%) Murex