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

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,252 6,347 8,303
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.77% 21.84% 18.75%
As % of the General category 33.15% 34.74% 32.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,235 4,197 5,571
10th Percentile £353 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.96% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £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 213 109 238
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.45 £12.79
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £38.11 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.48% +27.03% -4.39%
75th Percentile £42.75 £70.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £76.48 £79.00 £55.14
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £48.82 £32.12
% change year-on-year -54.93% +52.00% -16.26%

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 24,890 18,270 25,827
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.60% 62.86% 58.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,513 11,733 16,482
10th Percentile £301 £300 £267
25th Percentile £406 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £644 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £496
% change year-on-year - -4.23% -0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,541 694 1,823
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.00 £19.93 £15.27
Median hourly rate £25.12 £29.15 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.83% +12.12% -25.71%
75th Percentile £57.50 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £27.70 £25.00
% change year-on-year -14.89% +10.80% -19.70%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 7,297 £538 -7.33% 4,228
London 0 4,430 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,256 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -2 2,322 £550 -5.58% 1,715
North of England +3 1,066 £475 - 695
South East -2 620 £503 -7.80% 1,010
Midlands 0 581 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +6 568 £450 -3.23% 371
Yorkshire 0 449 £500 +4.71% 253
West Midlands +3 381 £496 -5.52% 251
Scotland 0 370 £488 +2.74% 161
South West -3 325 £525 +2.94% 302
East of England -1 199 £518 -4.83% 271
East Midlands 0 195 £450 +2.68% 171
Wales +27 108 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -3 49 £488 +4.84% 88
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +61.54% 58
Channel Islands - 1 - - 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
1 341 (4.13%) Confluence
2 210 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 79 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.70%) Microsoft Exchange
5 53 (0.64%) Apache
6 51 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.39%) SAS
8 26 (0.32%) CMS
9 18 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.21%) CICS
10 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
11 15 (0.18%) Camunda
11 15 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
13 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.15%) TPMS
15 11 (0.13%) Mendix
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.097%) IIS
Applications
1 526 (6.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 251 (3.04%) Microsoft Office
3 185 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
4 184 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 136 (1.65%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 12 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.097%) InVision
12 6 (0.073%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.061%) Notion
13 5 (0.061%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.048%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.036%) Adobe Captivate
16 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.024%) InDesign
16 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.024%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 337 (4.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.43%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.25%) Oracle Receivables
4 79 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 78 (0.95%) NetSuite
6 72 (0.87%) Oracle EBS
7 66 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
8 65 (0.79%) SAP FI
9 56 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
10 52 (0.63%) SAP CO
11 48 (0.58%) SAP FI/CO
12 45 (0.55%) Oracle Assets
12 45 (0.55%) Oracle ERP
13 40 (0.48%) Oracle Cash Management
14 35 (0.42%) Oracle EBS R12
15 34 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
16 33 (0.40%) Workday HCM
17 32 (0.39%) Aladdin
17 32 (0.39%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 24 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,273 (15.43%) Azure
2 982 (11.90%) AWS
3 587 (7.11%) Power Platform
4 392 (4.75%) GCP
5 292 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
6 276 (3.34%) Microsoft 365
7 265 (3.21%) SaaS
8 248 (3.01%) Dynamics 365
9 223 (2.70%) GitHub
10 158 (1.91%) Serverless
11 139 (1.68%) OCI
12 133 (1.61%) Snowflake
13 122 (1.48%) Entra ID
14 113 (1.37%) Amazon S3
15 95 (1.15%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
17 87 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
18 85 (1.03%) Azure Data Factory
19 74 (0.90%) OpenShift
20 73 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.96%) Firewall
2 105 (1.27%) Network Security
3 84 (1.02%) WAN
4 66 (0.80%) DNS
5 59 (0.71%) VPN
6 51 (0.62%) LAN
7 45 (0.55%) TCP/IP
8 44 (0.53%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.41%) BGP
10 30 (0.36%) HTTP
11 29 (0.35%) OSPF
12 28 (0.34%) Multicast
13 27 (0.33%) Wireless
14 26 (0.32%) Internet
15 25 (0.30%) SSL
16 23 (0.28%) MPLS
17 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
18 18 (0.22%) DHCP
18 18 (0.22%) Skype
19 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 516 (6.25%) Power BI
2 223 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
3 207 (2.51%) SQL Server
4 181 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
5 146 (1.77%) Metadata
6 145 (1.76%) Tableau
7 123 (1.49%) Data Lake
8 120 (1.45%) Relational Database
9 102 (1.24%) NoSQL
10 97 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (0.91%) Big Data
12 62 (0.75%) BigQuery
12 62 (0.75%) Oracle Database
13 56 (0.68%) MongoDB
14 49 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
15 44 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
16 39 (0.47%) Delta Lake
17 38 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
18 37 (0.45%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 685 (8.30%) JIRA
2 233 (2.82%) Jenkins
3 207 (2.51%) Git
4 148 (1.79%) GitLab
5 62 (0.75%) JUnit
6 60 (0.73%) Cucumber
7 45 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.52%) Selenium
9 33 (0.40%) Postman
10 32 (0.39%) Bitbucket
11 31 (0.38%) Visual Studio
12 23 (0.28%) MLflow
13 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
14 20 (0.24%) Maven
15 19 (0.23%) Gradle
16 17 (0.21%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.19%) ERwin
17 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
18 15 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
18 15 (0.18%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,651 (32.13%) Social Skills
2 1,581 (19.16%) Banking
3 1,092 (13.23%) Analytical Skills
4 635 (7.70%) Public Sector
5 342 (4.14%) Financial Institution
6 316 (3.83%) Legal
7 282 (3.42%) Front Office
8 277 (3.36%) Investment Banking
9 258 (3.13%) Marketing
10 252 (3.05%) Manufacturing
11 244 (2.96%) Organisational Skills
12 241 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
13 234 (2.84%) Telecoms
14 200 (2.42%) Retail
15 183 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
16 136 (1.65%) General Ledger
17 127 (1.54%) Electronics
18 123 (1.49%) Local Government
19 122 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
20 116 (1.41%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,269 (15.38%) Analyst
2 848 (10.28%) Developer
3 846 (10.25%) Senior
4 759 (9.20%) Lead
5 732 (8.87%) Architect
6 677 (8.20%) Business Analyst
7 670 (8.12%) Project Manager
8 613 (7.43%) Consultant
9 289 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
10 228 (2.76%) Data Engineer
11 187 (2.27%) Senior Manager
12 184 (2.23%) Data Analyst
13 181 (2.19%) Financial Analyst
14 180 (2.18%) Programme Manager
15 174 (2.11%) Finance Manager
16 141 (1.71%) Delivery Manager
17 135 (1.64%) Java Developer
18 134 (1.62%) Accountant
19 131 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
20 130 (1.58%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (3.32%) REST
2 264 (3.20%) Kafka
3 208 (2.52%) .NET
4 196 (2.38%) React
5 156 (1.89%) Oracle Fusion
6 153 (1.85%) Middleware
7 139 (1.68%) RESTful
7 139 (1.68%) Spring
8 124 (1.50%) Spring Boot
9 113 (1.37%) Node.js
10 103 (1.25%) AngularJS
11 96 (1.16%) PySpark
12 82 (0.99%) XML
13 79 (0.96%) OAuth
14 77 (0.93%) HTML
14 77 (0.93%) JSON
15 73 (0.88%) CSS
16 69 (0.84%) Pandas
16 69 (0.84%) Redux
17 66 (0.80%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 359 (4.35%) Onboarding
2 315 (3.82%) Product Ownership
3 260 (3.15%) Cloud Native
4 201 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
5 190 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 164 (1.99%) Derivative
7 155 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
8 152 (1.84%) Data Centre
9 151 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
10 149 (1.81%) Data Structures
11 142 (1.72%) Fixed Income
11 142 (1.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 124 (1.50%) Equities
13 108 (1.31%) Public Cloud
14 104 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
15 98 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
16 92 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 89 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
18 65 (0.79%) Hedge funds
19 62 (0.75%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 304 (3.68%) Linux
2 275 (3.33%) Windows
3 139 (1.68%) Unix
4 65 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 55 (0.67%) Windows 10
6 47 (0.57%) Android
7 37 (0.45%) Mac OS
8 25 (0.30%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.22%) zOS
10 16 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.13%) AIX
12 8 (0.097%) Solaris
13 7 (0.085%) VMS
14 5 (0.061%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.061%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.061%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) MVS
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,772 (21.47%) Agile
2 1,606 (19.46%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,236 (14.98%) Problem-Solving
4 1,084 (13.14%) Migration
5 924 (11.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 915 (11.09%) DevOps
7 863 (10.46%) Continuous Improvement
8 822 (9.96%) CI/CD
9 807 (9.78%) ERP
10 803 (9.73%) Analytics
11 794 (9.62%) Project Management
12 792 (9.60%) Business Intelligence
13 698 (8.46%) AI
14 653 (7.91%) Decision-Making
15 636 (7.71%) Data Modelling
15 636 (7.71%) Roadmaps
16 586 (7.10%) Change Management
17 584 (7.08%) Validation
18 578 (7.00%) User Acceptance Testing
19 573 (6.94%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,164 (14.11%) SQL
2 1,011 (12.25%) Python
3 547 (6.63%) Java
4 303 (3.67%) C#
5 231 (2.80%) JavaScript
6 192 (2.33%) TypeScript
7 174 (2.11%) PowerShell
8 116 (1.41%) C++
9 82 (0.99%) Go
10 74 (0.90%) Bash
11 65 (0.79%) PL/SQL
12 57 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 53 (0.64%) VBA
14 47 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 41 (0.50%) Scala
17 38 (0.46%) R
18 31 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.34%) Bicep
20 27 (0.33%) Rust
Qualifications
1 787 (9.54%) Degree
2 712 (8.63%) Security Cleared
3 504 (6.11%) SC Cleared
4 203 (2.46%) PMI Certification
5 199 (2.41%) PMP
6 177 (2.14%) ACCA
7 167 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
8 166 (2.01%) CIMA
9 153 (1.85%) Master's Degree
10 139 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
11 118 (1.43%) CISSP
12 83 (1.01%) CISM
12 83 (1.01%) DV Cleared
13 72 (0.87%) Azure Certification
14 65 (0.79%) AWS Certification
15 43 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
16 36 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
17 35 (0.42%) ISTQB
17 35 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
18 32 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 450 (5.45%) Data Quality
2 413 (5.00%) QA
3 340 (4.12%) PMO
4 289 (3.50%) GDPR
5 146 (1.77%) NIST
6 126 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 110 (1.33%) SLA
8 88 (1.07%) IFRS
9 78 (0.95%) Accessibility
10 75 (0.91%) PCI DSS
11 68 (0.82%) GRC
12 59 (0.71%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.56%) GAAP
14 42 (0.51%) PSD2
15 38 (0.46%) SEPA
16 36 (0.44%) NCSC
17 35 (0.42%) MiFID
18 27 (0.33%) Basel III
18 27 (0.33%) COBIT
System Software
1 315 (3.82%) Docker
2 152 (1.84%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.40%) vSphere
5 24 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
8 12 (0.15%) NFS
9 11 (0.13%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 8 (0.097%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.073%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.061%) HDFS
14 4 (0.048%) Firmware
14 4 (0.048%) ISA Server
15 3 (0.036%) GridGain
15 3 (0.036%) KVM
15 3 (0.036%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.036%) RACF
15 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 403 (4.88%) Kubernetes
2 264 (3.20%) Terraform
3 150 (1.82%) Ansible
4 98 (1.19%) Grafana
5 88 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 52 (0.63%) SCCM
8 39 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.24%) vRealize
11 19 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.19%) Argo
13 14 (0.17%) Control-M
13 14 (0.17%) Puppet
13 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.16%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.15%) CASB
16 11 (0.13%) Kibana
17 10 (0.12%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,085 (13.15%) Microsoft
2 794 (9.62%) SAP
3 692 (8.39%) Oracle
4 313 (3.79%) ServiceNow
5 199 (2.41%) Databricks
6 197 (2.39%) Salesforce
7 178 (2.16%) Google
8 153 (1.85%) Cisco
9 143 (1.73%) Workday
10 132 (1.60%) Splunk
11 111 (1.35%) VMware
12 97 (1.18%) IBM
13 75 (0.91%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.90%) Citrix
15 70 (0.85%) Ariba
16 65 (0.79%) Sage
17 60 (0.73%) Informatica
18 52 (0.63%) Bloomberg
18 52 (0.63%) OpenAI
19 50 (0.61%) Murex