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

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,655 6,446 8,071
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.02% 22.13% 18.97%
As % of the General category 33.51% 34.97% 32.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,415 4,200 5,402
10th Percentile £355 £350 £356
25th Percentile £438 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £553 £585
Median % change year-on-year -2.35% -5.47% -2.50%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 111 244
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.80 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.71 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £38.11 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -37.48% +41.31% +4.90%
75th Percentile £54.50 £66.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £55.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £42.92 £30.83
% change year-on-year -44.49% +39.23% -29.54%

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 25,828 18,431 24,707
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.78% 63.27% 58.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,786 11,716 15,592
10th Percentile £310 £286 £275
25th Percentile £410 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.88% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.11% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,651 789 1,917
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.98 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.33 £17.25 £15.46
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -10.72%
75th Percentile £60.68 £55.93 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.09 £24.50 £28.25
% change year-on-year +14.65% -13.27% -2.59%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 May 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 7,653 £550 -4.35% 4,493
London 0 4,600 £575 -8.00% 2,329
UK excluding London 0 3,471 £500 - 2,869
Work from Home -2 2,417 £533 -9.28% 1,896
North of England +3 1,171 £488 +2.63% 740
South East -2 652 £503 -3.13% 937
North West +5 619 £465 - 398
Midlands -1 592 £490 +1.03% 405
Yorkshire +1 513 £514 +5.44% 261
Scotland +1 420 £500 +4.82% 154
West Midlands 0 399 £498 -5.24% 241
South West -2 352 £525 - 313
East of England 0 203 £520 -5.45% 233
East Midlands 0 189 £465 +4.55% 162
Wales +21 91 £450 +20.00% 73
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +28.05% 61
North East -14 40 £488 +3.72% 89
Channel Islands - 2 £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
1 323 (3.73%) Confluence
2 217 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 54 (0.62%) Apache
5 51 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
5 51 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
6 34 (0.39%) SAS
7 23 (0.27%) CMS
8 20 (0.23%) CICS
9 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.17%) IIS
11 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.16%) Appian
12 13 (0.15%) Camunda
13 12 (0.14%) Ethereum
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
16 9 (0.10%) Hyperledger
16 9 (0.10%) Jupyter
16 9 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 517 (5.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 227 (2.62%) Microsoft Office
3 174 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 169 (1.95%) Microsoft Project
5 127 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 8 (0.092%) Sketch
10 7 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.081%) InVision
10 7 (0.081%) Notion
11 6 (0.069%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
13 3 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.035%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 391 (4.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.20%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.11%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 65 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
7 61 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
8 56 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
8 56 (0.65%) SAP FI
9 48 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
10 47 (0.54%) SAP CO
11 43 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
12 37 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
13 35 (0.40%) Aladdin
14 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
15 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
16 29 (0.34%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.32%) Oracle EBS R12
17 28 (0.32%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 25 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,322 (15.27%) Azure
2 961 (11.10%) AWS
3 610 (7.05%) Power Platform
4 387 (4.47%) GCP
5 301 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
6 293 (3.39%) SaaS
7 264 (3.05%) Microsoft 365
8 240 (2.77%) Dynamics 365
9 230 (2.66%) GitHub
10 154 (1.78%) Snowflake
11 141 (1.63%) Entra ID
12 140 (1.62%) Serverless
13 128 (1.48%) OCI
14 116 (1.34%) Amazon S3
15 113 (1.31%) Power Automate
16 95 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
17 86 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
18 85 (0.98%) OpenShift
19 79 (0.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 75 (0.87%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 153 (1.77%) Firewall
2 114 (1.32%) Network Security
3 73 (0.84%) WAN
4 72 (0.83%) DNS
5 59 (0.68%) VPN
6 53 (0.61%) TCP/IP
7 38 (0.44%) BGP
8 37 (0.43%) SD-WAN
9 36 (0.42%) LAN
10 32 (0.37%) HTTP
11 29 (0.34%) OSPF
11 29 (0.34%) SSL
12 27 (0.31%) Multicast
13 26 (0.30%) DHCP
14 24 (0.28%) MPLS
15 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
15 20 (0.23%) VSAN
16 18 (0.21%) Internet
17 15 (0.17%) VLAN
18 13 (0.15%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 517 (5.97%) Power BI
2 213 (2.46%) SQL Server
3 210 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
4 166 (1.92%) Metadata
5 161 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
6 150 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 150 (1.73%) Tableau
7 124 (1.43%) Data Lake
8 87 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 83 (0.96%) Oracle Reports
10 77 (0.89%) Big Data
11 66 (0.76%) Oracle Database
12 60 (0.69%) BigQuery
13 57 (0.66%) MongoDB
14 48 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
15 44 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
16 43 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 41 (0.47%) Delta Lake
18 38 (0.44%) DynamoDB
18 38 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 678 (7.83%) JIRA
2 201 (2.32%) Git
3 172 (1.99%) Jenkins
4 103 (1.19%) GitLab
5 45 (0.52%) JUnit
6 43 (0.50%) Cucumber
7 38 (0.44%) Selenium
8 31 (0.36%) Visual Studio
9 28 (0.32%) Postman
9 28 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 23 (0.27%) MLflow
10 23 (0.27%) SonarQube
11 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
11 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
12 19 (0.22%) Maven
13 17 (0.20%) Hudson
14 16 (0.18%) ERwin
14 16 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
15 14 (0.16%) Bitbucket
15 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,525 (29.17%) Social Skills
2 1,563 (18.06%) Banking
3 1,145 (13.23%) Analytical Skills
4 523 (6.04%) Public Sector
5 364 (4.21%) Legal
6 329 (3.80%) Financial Institution
7 297 (3.43%) Investment Banking
8 273 (3.15%) Front Office
9 266 (3.07%) Retail
10 245 (2.83%) Organisational Skills
11 237 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
12 210 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
13 179 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 160 (1.85%) Marketing
15 145 (1.68%) General Ledger
16 141 (1.63%) Telecoms
17 128 (1.48%) Local Government
18 119 (1.37%) Law
18 119 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
19 118 (1.36%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,328 (15.34%) Analyst
2 901 (10.41%) Senior
3 868 (10.03%) Developer
4 867 (10.02%) Lead
5 789 (9.12%) Architect
6 715 (8.26%) Business Analyst
7 687 (7.94%) Project Manager
8 596 (6.89%) Consultant
9 323 (3.73%) Solutions Architect
10 281 (3.25%) Data Engineer
11 217 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 206 (2.38%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.17%) Data Analyst
14 187 (2.16%) Finance Manager
15 183 (2.11%) Programme Manager
16 172 (1.99%) Accountant
17 147 (1.70%) Software Engineer
18 145 (1.68%) Java Developer
19 141 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
20 140 (1.62%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 258 (2.98%) Kafka
2 253 (2.92%) REST
3 236 (2.73%) .NET
4 202 (2.33%) React
5 186 (2.15%) Middleware
6 158 (1.83%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (1.70%) Spring
8 142 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 134 (1.55%) RESTful
10 104 (1.20%) Node.js
10 104 (1.20%) PySpark
11 92 (1.06%) AngularJS
12 80 (0.92%) OAuth
13 79 (0.91%) JSON
14 78 (0.90%) Redux
15 76 (0.88%) XML
16 69 (0.80%) HTML
17 68 (0.79%) CSS
18 63 (0.73%) Pandas
19 59 (0.68%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 367 (4.24%) Onboarding
2 345 (3.99%) Product Ownership
3 316 (3.65%) Cloud Native
4 226 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
5 197 (2.28%) Management Information System
6 193 (2.23%) Data Structures
7 171 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
8 170 (1.96%) Derivative
9 150 (1.73%) Data Centre
10 139 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
11 137 (1.58%) Fixed Income
12 131 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 106 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
14 102 (1.18%) Virtual Team
15 101 (1.17%) Equities
16 98 (1.13%) Public Cloud
17 92 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
18 90 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
19 71 (0.82%) AI Agents
20 66 (0.76%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 273 (3.15%) Windows
2 258 (2.98%) Linux
3 136 (1.57%) Unix
4 70 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.49%) Windows 10
6 31 (0.36%) Solaris
7 29 (0.34%) Apple iOS
8 27 (0.31%) Android
9 25 (0.29%) zOS
10 21 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 18 (0.21%) Mac OS
12 17 (0.20%) AIX
13 6 (0.069%) VMS
13 6 (0.069%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.046%) HPUX
15 4 (0.046%) MVS
15 4 (0.046%) SUSE
15 4 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,804 (20.84%) Agile
2 1,734 (20.03%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,214 (14.03%) Problem-Solving
4 1,176 (13.59%) Migration
5 957 (11.06%) Continuous Improvement
6 938 (10.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 914 (10.56%) ERP
8 910 (10.51%) DevOps
9 845 (9.76%) CI/CD
10 839 (9.69%) AI
11 821 (9.49%) Analytics
12 806 (9.31%) Project Management
13 727 (8.40%) Decision-Making
14 702 (8.11%) Business Intelligence
14 702 (8.11%) Data Modelling
15 687 (7.94%) Roadmaps
16 667 (7.71%) Validation
17 665 (7.68%) User Acceptance Testing
18 609 (7.04%) Change Management
19 570 (6.59%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,188 (13.73%) SQL
2 1,026 (11.85%) Python
3 552 (6.38%) Java
4 339 (3.92%) C#
5 217 (2.51%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.32%) TypeScript
7 160 (1.85%) PowerShell
8 109 (1.26%) C++
9 74 (0.85%) PL/SQL
10 71 (0.82%) Go
11 70 (0.81%) Bash
12 64 (0.74%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.51%) VBA
16 43 (0.50%) Scala
17 34 (0.39%) R
18 26 (0.30%) Bicep
18 26 (0.30%) Rust
19 25 (0.29%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 739 (8.54%) Degree
2 699 (8.08%) Security Cleared
3 503 (5.81%) SC Cleared
4 216 (2.50%) PMP
5 211 (2.44%) ACCA
6 201 (2.32%) PMI Certification
7 194 (2.24%) CIMA
8 144 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
9 136 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
10 123 (1.42%) CISSP
11 106 (1.22%) Master's Degree
12 84 (0.97%) CISM
13 83 (0.96%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.73%) Azure Certification
15 55 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
16 51 (0.59%) AWS Certification
17 37 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
18 33 (0.38%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) CBAP
19 31 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 499 (5.77%) Data Quality
2 409 (4.73%) QA
3 325 (3.76%) PMO
4 282 (3.26%) GDPR
5 159 (1.84%) NIST
6 126 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 104 (1.20%) SLA
8 102 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 101 (1.17%) IFRS
10 90 (1.04%) GRC
11 79 (0.91%) Accessibility
12 67 (0.77%) PCI DSS
13 62 (0.72%) ISO 20022
14 52 (0.60%) GAAP
15 39 (0.45%) SEPA
16 37 (0.43%) PSD2
17 36 (0.42%) NCSC
18 28 (0.32%) EMIR
18 28 (0.32%) MiFID
19 26 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 278 (3.21%) Docker
2 148 (1.71%) Active Directory
3 53 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.36%) vSphere
5 27 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 11 (0.13%) NFS
10 10 (0.12%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 5 (0.058%) HDFS
11 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.046%) Firmware
12 4 (0.046%) KVM
12 4 (0.046%) RACF
13 3 (0.035%) GridGain
13 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.035%) SRDF
14 2 (0.023%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 394 (4.55%) Kubernetes
2 242 (2.80%) Terraform
3 120 (1.39%) Ansible
4 85 (0.98%) Grafana
5 67 (0.77%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 43 (0.50%) SCCM
8 37 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.31%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) vRealize
11 17 (0.20%) Control-M
12 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 15 (0.17%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
17 8 (0.092%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,104 (12.76%) Microsoft
2 782 (9.04%) SAP
3 721 (8.33%) Oracle
4 314 (3.63%) ServiceNow
5 240 (2.77%) Databricks
6 184 (2.13%) Salesforce
7 172 (1.99%) Google
8 136 (1.57%) Workday
9 115 (1.33%) Cisco
9 115 (1.33%) Splunk
10 98 (1.13%) VMware
11 91 (1.05%) IBM
12 77 (0.89%) CyberArk
13 75 (0.87%) Ariba
14 73 (0.84%) Citrix
15 67 (0.77%) Sage
16 57 (0.66%) OpenAI
17 52 (0.60%) Bloomberg
17 52 (0.60%) Informatica
17 52 (0.60%) Palo Alto