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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,972 6,344 8,364
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.73% 21.52% 18.69%
As % of the General category 32.72% 34.38% 31.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,057 4,132 5,631
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.48% - -2.54%
75th Percentile £669 £700 £697
90th Percentile £789 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £508
% change year-on-year - -1.57% -3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 103 216
10th Percentile £14.38 £17.88 £12.82
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.66 £35.00 £26.86
Median % change year-on-year -32.39% +30.31% +4.47%
75th Percentile £41.13 £68.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £69.55 £82.56 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £36.00 £26.86
% change year-on-year -38.89% +34.03% -23.26%

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 24,368 18,453 26,155
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.26% 62.60% 58.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,231 11,630 16,733
10th Percentile £300 £291 £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 £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,490 644 1,816
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.37
Median hourly rate £24.06 £29.52 £25.90
Median % change year-on-year -18.48% +13.98% -20.32%
75th Percentile £55.94 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.04 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.05% +10.00% -7.63%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 7,053 £538 -8.90% 5,532
London 0 4,272 £575 -8.00% 1,463
UK excluding London 0 3,157 £500 - 4,375
Work from Home -2 2,239 £550 -6.86% 2,268
North of England +4 1,025 £475 -0.42% 972
South East -2 593 £500 -8.05% 1,366
Midlands -1 580 £475 -5.00% 657
North West +6 534 £450 -3.85% 490
Yorkshire 0 445 £500 - 373
West Midlands 0 377 £500 -7.41% 322
Scotland 0 357 £500 +5.82% 219
South West -2 325 £513 -2.38% 498
East Midlands 0 198 £450 +5.88% 323
East of England 0 185 £518 -5.91% 504
Wales +30 105 £413 +6.45% 156
Northern Ireland -1 49 £525 +61.54% 79
North East -9 46 £488 +3.72% 118
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
1 325 (4.08%) Confluence
2 201 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.04%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.73%) Microsoft Exchange
5 48 (0.60%) Apache
6 42 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.38%) SAS
8 23 (0.29%) CMS
9 17 (0.21%) Appian
9 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
10 15 (0.19%) CICS
10 15 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 14 (0.18%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 13 (0.16%) Camunda
12 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 12 (0.15%) TPMS
14 11 (0.14%) Mendix
15 10 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 8 (0.10%) IIS
Applications
1 521 (6.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 269 (3.37%) Microsoft Office
3 191 (2.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 181 (2.27%) Microsoft Project
5 137 (1.72%) MS Visio
6 44 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 12 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.13%) Sketch
11 9 (0.11%) InVision
12 8 (0.10%) Oracle Smart View
13 6 (0.075%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.063%) Notion
14 5 (0.063%) 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
1 334 (4.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 111 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 73 (0.92%) NetSuite
5 70 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
6 69 (0.87%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 66 (0.83%) SAP FI
8 63 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
9 56 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.68%) SAP CO
11 49 (0.61%) SAP FI/CO
12 42 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
13 39 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
14 38 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
15 37 (0.46%) Oracle Cash Management
16 34 (0.43%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 33 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
17 33 (0.41%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.35%) Aladdin
19 24 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,211 (15.19%) Azure
2 969 (12.16%) AWS
3 551 (6.91%) Power Platform
4 389 (4.88%) GCP
5 275 (3.45%) Microsoft 365
6 266 (3.34%) SaaS
7 256 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
8 223 (2.80%) Dynamics 365
9 203 (2.55%) GitHub
10 152 (1.91%) Serverless
11 141 (1.77%) OCI
12 130 (1.63%) Snowflake
13 121 (1.52%) Entra ID
14 107 (1.34%) Amazon S3
15 95 (1.19%) Power Automate
16 85 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
17 84 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
18 76 (0.95%) OpenShift
19 74 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
19 74 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 157 (1.97%) Firewall
2 95 (1.19%) Network Security
3 80 (1.00%) WAN
4 61 (0.77%) DNS
5 50 (0.63%) LAN
5 50 (0.63%) VPN
6 43 (0.54%) SD-WAN
7 42 (0.53%) TCP/IP
8 34 (0.43%) Wireless
9 30 (0.38%) BGP
10 26 (0.33%) HTTP
10 26 (0.33%) OSPF
10 26 (0.33%) SSL
11 25 (0.31%) Internet
12 24 (0.30%) Multicast
13 20 (0.25%) DHCP
13 20 (0.25%) MPLS
14 18 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
14 18 (0.23%) Skype
15 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 486 (6.10%) Power BI
2 214 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
3 200 (2.51%) SQL Server
4 194 (2.43%) PostgreSQL
5 144 (1.81%) Tableau
6 139 (1.74%) Metadata
7 118 (1.48%) Relational Database
8 113 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 111 (1.39%) NoSQL
10 91 (1.14%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (0.97%) Big Data
12 72 (0.90%) MongoDB
13 63 (0.79%) Oracle Database
14 61 (0.77%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
17 40 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 35 (0.44%) Hadoop
18 35 (0.44%) MySQL
18 35 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 655 (8.22%) JIRA
2 234 (2.94%) Jenkins
3 211 (2.65%) Git
4 148 (1.86%) GitLab
5 65 (0.82%) JUnit
6 63 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 46 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.54%) Selenium
9 34 (0.43%) Bitbucket
10 33 (0.41%) Postman
11 31 (0.39%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.30%) MLflow
13 22 (0.28%) Gradle
14 20 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 19 (0.24%) Maven
16 16 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 15 (0.19%) ERwin
17 15 (0.19%) Liquibase
17 15 (0.19%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,626 (32.94%) Social Skills
2 1,549 (19.43%) Banking
3 1,051 (13.18%) Analytical Skills
4 642 (8.05%) Public Sector
5 347 (4.35%) Financial Institution
6 307 (3.85%) Legal
7 288 (3.61%) Front Office
8 279 (3.50%) Marketing
9 276 (3.46%) Investment Banking
10 268 (3.36%) Manufacturing
11 247 (3.10%) Telecoms
12 246 (3.09%) Organisational Skills
13 232 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
14 181 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
15 180 (2.26%) Retail
16 144 (1.81%) Electronics
17 127 (1.59%) General Ledger
18 124 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
19 117 (1.47%) Billing
20 114 (1.43%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,240 (15.55%) Analyst
2 853 (10.70%) Developer
3 825 (10.35%) Senior
4 709 (8.89%) Lead
5 687 (8.62%) Architect
6 666 (8.35%) Business Analyst
7 644 (8.08%) Project Manager
8 590 (7.40%) Consultant
9 286 (3.59%) Solutions Architect
10 197 (2.47%) Data Engineer
11 190 (2.38%) Data Analyst
12 178 (2.23%) Senior Manager
13 176 (2.21%) Programme Manager
14 173 (2.17%) Financial Analyst
15 153 (1.92%) Finance Manager
16 139 (1.74%) Java Developer
17 133 (1.67%) Delivery Manager
18 131 (1.64%) Senior Developer
19 130 (1.63%) Software Engineer
20 128 (1.61%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (3.37%) REST
2 265 (3.32%) Kafka
3 212 (2.66%) .NET
4 199 (2.50%) React
5 156 (1.96%) Oracle Fusion
6 148 (1.86%) Middleware
7 139 (1.74%) RESTful
8 137 (1.72%) Spring
9 116 (1.46%) Node.js
9 116 (1.46%) Spring Boot
10 107 (1.34%) AngularJS
11 89 (1.12%) PySpark
12 84 (1.05%) XML
13 81 (1.02%) HTML
14 76 (0.95%) CSS
14 76 (0.95%) JSON
14 76 (0.95%) OAuth
15 72 (0.90%) Pandas
16 69 (0.87%) SOAP
17 68 (0.85%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 342 (4.29%) Onboarding
2 301 (3.78%) Product Ownership
3 243 (3.05%) Cloud Native
4 196 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
5 179 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 174 (2.18%) Derivative
7 159 (1.99%) Data Centre
8 146 (1.83%) Fixed Income
9 144 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
10 141 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
10 141 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 138 (1.73%) Data Structures
12 125 (1.57%) Equities
13 108 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
14 105 (1.32%) Public Cloud
15 92 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
16 88 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
17 87 (1.09%) Virtual Team
18 71 (0.89%) Hedge funds
19 62 (0.78%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 303 (3.80%) Linux
2 282 (3.54%) Windows
3 137 (1.72%) Unix
4 64 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 59 (0.74%) Windows 10
6 56 (0.70%) Android
7 49 (0.61%) Mac OS
8 25 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 16 (0.20%) zOS
10 11 (0.14%) AIX
11 8 (0.10%) Solaris
12 7 (0.088%) VMS
13 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.038%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.013%) CentOS
15 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,737 (21.79%) Agile
2 1,563 (19.61%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,230 (15.43%) Problem-Solving
4 1,017 (12.76%) Migration
5 877 (11.00%) DevOps
6 876 (10.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 803 (10.07%) CI/CD
8 773 (9.70%) Analytics
8 773 (9.70%) Continuous Improvement
9 772 (9.68%) Project Management
10 762 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
11 744 (9.33%) ERP
12 650 (8.15%) AI
13 605 (7.59%) Decision-Making
14 603 (7.56%) Roadmaps
15 599 (7.51%) Data Modelling
16 555 (6.96%) Project Delivery
17 553 (6.94%) Validation
18 549 (6.89%) Change Management
19 532 (6.67%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,130 (14.17%) SQL
2 1,012 (12.69%) Python
3 555 (6.96%) Java
4 304 (3.81%) C#
5 239 (3.00%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.46%) TypeScript
7 171 (2.15%) PowerShell
8 119 (1.49%) C++
9 81 (1.02%) Go
10 73 (0.92%) Bash
11 67 (0.84%) PL/SQL
12 52 (0.65%) VBA
13 50 (0.63%) T-SQL
14 42 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 41 (0.51%) Scala
16 38 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 38 (0.48%) R
16 38 (0.48%) Shell Script
17 29 (0.36%) Rust
18 26 (0.33%) Korn
Qualifications
1 797 (10.00%) Degree
2 676 (8.48%) Security Cleared
3 482 (6.05%) SC Cleared
4 191 (2.40%) PMI Certification
5 188 (2.36%) PMP
6 171 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 168 (2.11%) ACCA
8 160 (2.01%) Master's Degree
9 158 (1.98%) CIMA
10 129 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
11 103 (1.29%) CISSP
12 77 (0.97%) DV Cleared
13 73 (0.92%) AWS Certification
14 71 (0.89%) CISM
15 69 (0.87%) Azure Certification
16 37 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
16 37 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
17 36 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (0.43%) ISTQB
19 32 (0.40%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 403 (5.06%) QA
2 399 (5.01%) Data Quality
3 322 (4.04%) PMO
4 285 (3.58%) GDPR
5 141 (1.77%) NIST
6 128 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 114 (1.43%) SLA
8 113 (1.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 85 (1.07%) IFRS
10 79 (0.99%) PCI DSS
11 78 (0.98%) Accessibility
12 70 (0.88%) GRC
13 56 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 44 (0.55%) GAAP
14 44 (0.55%) PSD2
15 38 (0.48%) SEPA
16 36 (0.45%) MiFID
16 36 (0.45%) NCSC
17 30 (0.38%) COBIT
18 29 (0.36%) Basel III
System Software
1 322 (4.04%) Docker
2 157 (1.97%) Active Directory
3 57 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 26 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.14%) GPFS
8 11 (0.14%) NFS
9 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.075%) HDFS
13 4 (0.050%) Firmware
13 4 (0.050%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.038%) KVM
14 3 (0.038%) RACF
14 3 (0.038%) SRDF
14 3 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
15 2 (0.025%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 405 (5.08%) Kubernetes
2 252 (3.16%) Terraform
3 154 (1.93%) Ansible
4 95 (1.19%) Grafana
5 86 (1.08%) Prometheus
6 61 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
7 52 (0.65%) SCCM
8 41 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) vRealize
11 18 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.20%) Argo
12 16 (0.20%) Control-M
13 14 (0.18%) AirWatch
13 14 (0.18%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 12 (0.15%) Kibana
15 11 (0.14%) Nessus
15 11 (0.14%) Puppet
16 10 (0.13%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,030 (12.92%) Microsoft
2 807 (10.12%) SAP
3 676 (8.48%) Oracle
4 308 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 193 (2.42%) Salesforce
6 188 (2.36%) Databricks
7 174 (2.18%) Google
8 159 (1.99%) Cisco
9 142 (1.78%) Workday
10 127 (1.59%) Splunk
11 116 (1.46%) VMware
12 95 (1.19%) IBM
13 75 (0.94%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.93%) Citrix
15 70 (0.88%) Ariba
16 61 (0.77%) Sage
17 55 (0.69%) HP
18 52 (0.65%) Informatica
18 52 (0.65%) Murex
19 51 (0.64%) Bloomberg