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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,767 7,509 7,774
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.59% 22.88% 19.51%
As % of the General category 33.87% 36.30% 34.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,025 4,958 5,209
10th Percentile £358 £337 £356
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £687 £725
90th Percentile £794 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £492 £503
% change year-on-year +1.57% -2.04% -4.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 279 145 204
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.69 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.00 £22.56
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +27.07%
75th Percentile £54.11 £63.75 £42.31
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.29 £38.12
% change year-on-year +61.07% -28.40% +14.18%

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 28,838 20,685 22,826
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.88% 63.03% 57.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,185 12,965 14,402
10th Percentile £313 £280 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £472 £494
% change year-on-year +5.88% -4.40% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,068 1,090 1,492
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.34 £13.86
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.16 £16.50
Median hourly rate £32.90 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.83% -32.93% +22.79%
75th Percentile £61.18 £51.21 £57.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.02 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +51.31% -41.92% +41.19%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 8,528 £550 - 5,533
London 0 5,142 £585 -2.50% 3,202
UK excluding London -1 3,850 £500 +1.57% 3,134
Work from Home -1 2,825 £550 -4.35% 2,181
North of England 0 1,313 £500 +6.38% 808
South East -2 744 £503 -5.19% 950
North West 0 696 £494 +9.78% 423
Midlands 0 627 £514 +14.22% 448
Yorkshire 0 563 £519 +7.13% 283
Scotland 0 484 £475 -5.00% 207
West Midlands +1 483 £525 +10.53% 274
South West -4 380 £525 -4.55% 365
East of England +6 212 £528 -8.26% 225
East Midlands -2 139 £500 +19.05% 174
Wales +3 75 £525 +13.51% 93
Northern Ireland -1 60 £488 +3.72% 92
North East -18 54 £500 +13.96% 110
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 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
1 313 (3.20%) Confluence
2 242 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 83 (0.85%) Apache Spark
4 78 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
5 64 (0.66%) Apache
6 45 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) CMS
8 32 (0.33%) SAS
9 27 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.12%) Camunda
14 8 (0.082%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.082%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.082%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 5 (0.051%) JBoss
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 517 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 216 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
3 162 (1.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 161 (1.65%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.08%) MS Visio
6 72 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.031%) Notion
12 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
12 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 445 (4.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 116 (1.19%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 88 (0.90%) Oracle ERP
6 70 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 69 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
8 67 (0.69%) SAP FI
9 58 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
12 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
13 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 42 (0.43%) Aladdin
15 35 (0.36%) Unit4 Business World
16 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
17 31 (0.32%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.29%) SAP ERP
19 27 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
19 27 (0.28%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,522 (15.58%) Azure
2 1,097 (11.23%) AWS
3 662 (6.78%) Power Platform
4 521 (5.33%) GCP
5 330 (3.38%) SaaS
6 327 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
7 288 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
8 277 (2.84%) GitHub
9 249 (2.55%) Dynamics 365
10 208 (2.13%) Snowflake
11 201 (2.06%) Entra ID
12 140 (1.43%) Serverless
13 137 (1.40%) OCI
14 123 (1.26%) Amazon S3
15 115 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 107 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
17 105 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
18 103 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
19 101 (1.03%) dbt
20 96 (0.98%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 187 (1.91%) Firewall
2 141 (1.44%) Network Security
3 92 (0.94%) DNS
3 92 (0.94%) VPN
4 63 (0.65%) TCP/IP
5 53 (0.54%) WAN
6 48 (0.49%) SSL
7 47 (0.48%) BGP
8 41 (0.42%) DHCP
9 36 (0.37%) LAN
10 35 (0.36%) HTTP
11 34 (0.35%) Multicast
12 29 (0.30%) OSPF
13 25 (0.26%) VLAN
13 25 (0.26%) Wireless
14 24 (0.25%) Internet
15 21 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
16 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
17 19 (0.19%) MPLS
17 19 (0.19%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 549 (5.62%) Power BI
2 277 (2.84%) SQL Server
3 252 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (2.06%) Metadata
5 180 (1.84%) Relational Database
6 168 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
7 149 (1.53%) Tableau
8 140 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 85 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
10 80 (0.82%) NoSQL
11 74 (0.76%) Oracle Database
12 73 (0.75%) MongoDB
13 71 (0.73%) BigQuery
14 66 (0.68%) Big Data
14 66 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
15 52 (0.53%) Power Query
16 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
17 48 (0.49%) Delta Lake
18 47 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 43 (0.44%) Db2
Development Applications
1 654 (6.70%) JIRA
2 268 (2.74%) Git
3 157 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 94 (0.96%) GitLab
5 47 (0.48%) JUnit
6 39 (0.40%) Cucumber
6 39 (0.40%) Selenium
7 28 (0.29%) ERwin
7 28 (0.29%) Visual Studio
8 27 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
9 26 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.25%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.25%) Zephyr
11 23 (0.24%) Maven
11 23 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.24%) Postman
11 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
12 19 (0.19%) MLflow
12 19 (0.19%) TeamCity
13 18 (0.18%) Claude Code
General
1 2,824 (28.91%) Social Skills
2 1,834 (18.78%) Banking
3 1,342 (13.74%) Analytical Skills
4 551 (5.64%) Public Sector
5 502 (5.14%) Legal
6 371 (3.80%) Investment Banking
7 366 (3.75%) Organisational Skills
8 357 (3.66%) Financial Institution
9 348 (3.56%) Front Office
10 344 (3.52%) Retail
11 269 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
12 230 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
13 188 (1.92%) Manufacturing
14 171 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 163 (1.67%) Billing
16 160 (1.64%) Local Government
17 155 (1.59%) Marketing
18 154 (1.58%) General Ledger
19 136 (1.39%) Law
19 136 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,438 (14.72%) Analyst
2 1,062 (10.87%) Lead
3 1,051 (10.76%) Senior
4 987 (10.11%) Developer
5 876 (8.97%) Architect
6 738 (7.56%) Business Analyst
7 707 (7.24%) Project Manager
8 658 (6.74%) Consultant
9 333 (3.41%) Solutions Architect
10 316 (3.24%) Data Engineer
11 247 (2.53%) Financial Analyst
12 222 (2.27%) Senior Manager
13 211 (2.16%) Java Developer
14 207 (2.12%) Accountant
15 204 (2.09%) Data Analyst
16 186 (1.90%) Programme Manager
16 186 (1.90%) Senior Developer
17 182 (1.86%) Finance Manager
17 182 (1.86%) Software Engineer
18 175 (1.79%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 321 (3.29%) REST
2 276 (2.83%) .NET
2 276 (2.83%) React
3 269 (2.75%) Kafka
4 232 (2.38%) Oracle Fusion
5 194 (1.99%) Middleware
6 179 (1.83%) Spring
7 169 (1.73%) Spring Boot
8 131 (1.34%) PySpark
9 128 (1.31%) RESTful
10 121 (1.24%) Redux
11 116 (1.19%) Node.js
12 97 (0.99%) JSON
13 93 (0.95%) AngularJS
13 93 (0.95%) OAuth
14 87 (0.89%) XML
15 68 (0.70%) SOAP
16 66 (0.68%) Web Services
17 63 (0.65%) CSS
17 63 (0.65%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 469 (4.80%) Onboarding
2 444 (4.55%) Product Ownership
3 419 (4.29%) Cloud Native
4 267 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
5 238 (2.44%) Data Structures
6 220 (2.25%) Management Information System
7 187 (1.91%) Virtual Team
8 181 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
9 179 (1.83%) Derivative
10 175 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
11 170 (1.74%) Fixed Income
12 166 (1.70%) Data Centre
13 157 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 144 (1.47%) AI Agents
15 137 (1.40%) Greenfield Project
16 125 (1.28%) Equities
17 111 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
18 102 (1.04%) Public Cloud
19 101 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
20 98 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 350 (3.58%) Windows
2 286 (2.93%) Linux
3 155 (1.59%) Unix
4 80 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 44 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (0.40%) Apple iOS
6 39 (0.40%) Solaris
7 37 (0.38%) zOS
8 35 (0.36%) Windows 10
9 30 (0.31%) Android
10 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
11 20 (0.20%) AIX
12 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.092%) VMS
14 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 5 (0.051%) MVS
17 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.020%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,209 (22.62%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,985 (20.32%) Agile
3 1,354 (13.86%) Migration
4 1,288 (13.19%) Problem-Solving
5 1,159 (11.87%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,121 (11.48%) AI
7 1,117 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,026 (10.50%) ERP
9 1,006 (10.30%) CI/CD
10 991 (10.15%) DevOps
11 986 (10.10%) Analytics
12 892 (9.13%) Decision-Making
13 811 (8.30%) Validation
14 803 (8.22%) Roadmaps
15 780 (7.99%) Data Modelling
16 759 (7.77%) User Acceptance Testing
17 752 (7.70%) Project Management
18 703 (7.20%) Change Management
19 675 (6.91%) Business Intelligence
20 639 (6.54%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,256 (12.86%) SQL
2 1,205 (12.34%) Python
3 647 (6.62%) Java
4 382 (3.91%) C#
5 268 (2.74%) JavaScript
6 252 (2.58%) TypeScript
7 232 (2.38%) PowerShell
8 113 (1.16%) Bash
9 93 (0.95%) PL/SQL
10 80 (0.82%) Go
11 77 (0.79%) C++
12 76 (0.78%) Shell Script
13 70 (0.72%) T-SQL
14 65 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 49 (0.50%) Bicep
16 48 (0.49%) VBA
17 40 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 36 (0.37%) Scala
19 34 (0.35%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.31%) Korn
Qualifications
1 761 (7.79%) Security Cleared
2 715 (7.32%) Degree
3 541 (5.54%) SC Cleared
4 238 (2.44%) PMP
5 212 (2.17%) PMI Certification
6 201 (2.06%) ACCA
7 193 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
8 178 (1.82%) CIMA
9 150 (1.54%) CISSP
10 134 (1.37%) DV Cleared
11 116 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
12 96 (0.98%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.88%) CISM
14 78 (0.80%) Master's Degree
15 76 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
16 60 (0.61%) AWS Certification
17 54 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
18 49 (0.50%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 39 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 33 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 620 (6.35%) Data Quality
2 423 (4.33%) QA
3 358 (3.67%) PMO
4 275 (2.82%) GDPR
5 150 (1.54%) NIST
6 120 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 108 (1.11%) SLA
8 106 (1.09%) GRC
9 105 (1.08%) Accessibility
10 101 (1.03%) IFRS
11 99 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 63 (0.65%) GAAP
13 58 (0.59%) ISO 20022
14 50 (0.51%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.38%) SEPA
16 34 (0.35%) Solvency II
17 30 (0.31%) COBIT
17 30 (0.31%) MiFID
17 30 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 29 (0.30%) EMIR
System Software
1 270 (2.76%) Docker
2 218 (2.23%) Active Directory
3 67 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (0.26%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) RACF
7 21 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
9 12 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.072%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
14 3 (0.031%) SRDF
14 3 (0.031%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 435 (4.45%) Kubernetes
2 331 (3.39%) Terraform
3 157 (1.61%) Ansible
4 92 (0.94%) Grafana
5 75 (0.77%) Prometheus
6 72 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 52 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.50%) SCCM
9 26 (0.27%) Control-M
10 21 (0.22%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 14 (0.14%) Puppet
15 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
15 13 (0.13%) Istio
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,285 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 843 (8.63%) Oracle
3 830 (8.50%) SAP
4 354 (3.62%) ServiceNow
5 302 (3.09%) Databricks
6 222 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 211 (2.16%) Google
8 154 (1.58%) IBM
9 138 (1.41%) Workday
10 127 (1.30%) VMware
11 107 (1.10%) Cisco
12 104 (1.06%) Splunk
13 93 (0.95%) Ariba
14 87 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 72 (0.74%) OpenAI
16 65 (0.67%) Sage
17 60 (0.61%) Citrix
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
20 44 (0.45%) F5