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 24 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,391 6,821 8,170
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.45% 22.71% 18.80%
As % of the General category 33.93% 35.77% 33.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,856 4,449 5,474
10th Percentile £353 £350 £350
25th Percentile £443 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £715
90th Percentile £800 £820 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 234 136 269
10th Percentile £14.87 £17.15 £12.79
25th Percentile £18.82 £24.66 £15.22
Median hourly rate £35.00 £36.51 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.14% +30.39% -6.67%
75th Percentile £54.00 £65.06 £38.12
90th Percentile £87.10 £79.20 £56.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.30 £29.27 £28.00
% change year-on-year +44.52% +4.54% -41.53%

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 27,678 19,070 24,743
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.37% 63.50% 56.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,702 11,999 15,483
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £770
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,877 929 2,004
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.55 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.76 £31.13
Median % change year-on-year +15.27% -10.81% +3.75%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £53.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £67.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £24.34 £30.00
% change year-on-year +29.25% -18.87% +17.19%

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 8,249 £550 - 4,341
London 0 4,942 £575 -4.17% 2,410
UK excluding London +1 3,766 £500 +2.41% 2,702
Work from Home -1 2,712 £550 -4.35% 1,770
North of England +2 1,286 £500 +7.53% 658
South East -1 692 £500 -4.76% 875
North West +4 684 £466 +3.44% 347
Midlands 0 649 £500 +11.11% 411
Yorkshire 0 556 £525 +10.24% 240
West Midlands +1 475 £500 +1.63% 240
Scotland 0 471 £500 +4.38% 159
South West -3 379 £525 - 278
East of England +3 197 £516 -10.22% 203
East Midlands -1 167 £470 +12.57% 170
Wales +7 90 £530 +13.98% 83
Northern Ireland -1 54 £500 +17.65% 91
North East -20 47 £500 +13.96% 83
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 339 (3.61%) Confluence
2 226 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 89 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 69 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
5 58 (0.62%) Apache
6 53 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 32 (0.34%) SAS
8 27 (0.29%) CMS
9 22 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.20%) CICS
11 16 (0.17%) IIS
12 12 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.13%) Camunda
13 11 (0.12%) Appian
13 11 (0.12%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.12%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.064%) Hyperledger
15 6 (0.064%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.053%) Mendix
Applications
1 522 (5.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.36%) Microsoft Office
3 174 (1.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 158 (1.68%) Microsoft Project
5 119 (1.27%) MS Visio
6 65 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.075%) Sketch
9 6 (0.064%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.053%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.053%) Trello
11 4 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
11 4 (0.043%) InVision
11 4 (0.043%) Notion
11 4 (0.043%) Oracle Smart View
11 4 (0.043%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.021%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Final Cut Pro
13 1 (0.011%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 427 (4.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 113 (1.20%) NetSuite
3 110 (1.17%) Oracle Payables
4 88 (0.94%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (0.91%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 74 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
7 63 (0.67%) SAP FI
8 48 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
9 47 (0.50%) SAP CO
10 46 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
11 45 (0.48%) Oracle General Ledger
11 45 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
12 38 (0.40%) Aladdin
13 35 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
14 33 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 29 (0.31%) SAP ERP
16 26 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
16 26 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
17 25 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
18 22 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,483 (15.79%) Azure
2 1,058 (11.27%) AWS
3 631 (6.72%) Power Platform
4 465 (4.95%) GCP
5 321 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
6 313 (3.33%) SaaS
7 285 (3.03%) Microsoft 365
8 239 (2.54%) GitHub
9 213 (2.27%) Dynamics 365
10 188 (2.00%) Snowflake
11 173 (1.84%) Entra ID
12 146 (1.55%) Serverless
13 128 (1.36%) OCI
14 121 (1.29%) Amazon S3
15 109 (1.16%) Power Automate
16 105 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
17 92 (0.98%) Microsoft Copilot
18 91 (0.97%) dbt
19 89 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
20 85 (0.91%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 174 (1.85%) Firewall
2 139 (1.48%) Network Security
3 77 (0.82%) DNS
4 76 (0.81%) WAN
5 68 (0.72%) VPN
6 61 (0.65%) TCP/IP
7 43 (0.46%) BGP
8 37 (0.39%) LAN
8 37 (0.39%) SD-WAN
8 37 (0.39%) SSL
9 36 (0.38%) HTTP
10 30 (0.32%) Multicast
10 30 (0.32%) OSPF
11 29 (0.31%) DHCP
12 24 (0.26%) MPLS
13 23 (0.24%) Internet
14 21 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
15 19 (0.20%) VSAN
16 17 (0.18%) VLAN
17 16 (0.17%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 539 (5.74%) Power BI
2 254 (2.70%) SQL Server
3 236 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
4 195 (2.08%) Metadata
5 176 (1.87%) Relational Database
6 175 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
7 150 (1.60%) Tableau
8 143 (1.52%) Data Lake
9 93 (0.99%) NoSQL
10 85 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (0.79%) Big Data
12 73 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 68 (0.72%) BigQuery
13 68 (0.72%) MongoDB
14 57 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
15 48 (0.51%) Power Query
16 46 (0.49%) Delta Lake
16 46 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 44 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
18 39 (0.42%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 687 (7.32%) JIRA
2 234 (2.49%) Git
3 168 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.03%) GitLab
5 58 (0.62%) JUnit
6 47 (0.50%) Cucumber
7 38 (0.40%) Selenium
8 30 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
8 30 (0.32%) Visual Studio
9 28 (0.30%) Postman
10 25 (0.27%) ERwin
10 25 (0.27%) MLflow
11 23 (0.24%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.22%) Maven
13 19 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
14 18 (0.19%) Zephyr
15 16 (0.17%) Hudson
15 16 (0.17%) TeamCity
16 15 (0.16%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,755 (29.34%) Social Skills
2 1,746 (18.59%) Banking
3 1,220 (12.99%) Analytical Skills
4 523 (5.57%) Public Sector
5 459 (4.89%) Legal
6 377 (4.01%) Investment Banking
7 357 (3.80%) Financial Institution
8 333 (3.55%) Front Office
9 298 (3.17%) Organisational Skills
10 297 (3.16%) Retail
11 235 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
12 234 (2.49%) Influencing Skills
13 170 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 167 (1.78%) Manufacturing
15 156 (1.66%) General Ledger
16 152 (1.62%) Local Government
17 145 (1.54%) Billing
18 134 (1.43%) Marketing
19 132 (1.41%) Law
20 130 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,386 (14.76%) Analyst
2 1,017 (10.83%) Senior
3 990 (10.54%) Lead
4 938 (9.99%) Developer
5 874 (9.31%) Architect
6 714 (7.60%) Project Manager
7 706 (7.52%) Business Analyst
8 632 (6.73%) Consultant
9 352 (3.75%) Solutions Architect
10 313 (3.33%) Data Engineer
11 225 (2.40%) Financial Analyst
12 221 (2.35%) Senior Manager
13 196 (2.09%) Accountant
14 195 (2.08%) Data Analyst
14 195 (2.08%) Finance Manager
14 195 (2.08%) Java Developer
15 177 (1.88%) Senior Developer
16 176 (1.87%) Programme Manager
17 175 (1.86%) Software Engineer
18 166 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 287 (3.06%) REST
2 265 (2.82%) .NET
2 265 (2.82%) Kafka
3 264 (2.81%) React
4 206 (2.19%) Oracle Fusion
5 192 (2.04%) Middleware
6 174 (1.85%) Spring
7 166 (1.77%) Spring Boot
8 136 (1.45%) RESTful
9 118 (1.26%) Redux
10 114 (1.21%) PySpark
11 108 (1.15%) Node.js
12 93 (0.99%) AngularJS
13 92 (0.98%) JSON
14 89 (0.95%) OAuth
15 77 (0.82%) XML
16 65 (0.69%) CSS
17 63 (0.67%) OpenID
18 61 (0.65%) GraphQL
19 60 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 421 (4.48%) Onboarding
2 401 (4.27%) Product Ownership
3 391 (4.16%) Cloud Native
4 254 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
5 217 (2.31%) Management Information System
6 208 (2.21%) Data Structures
7 171 (1.82%) Derivative
8 167 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
9 166 (1.77%) Fixed Income
9 166 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 163 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
11 161 (1.71%) Data Centre
12 139 (1.48%) Virtual Team
13 128 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
14 126 (1.34%) Equities
15 115 (1.22%) AI Agents
16 114 (1.21%) Public Cloud
17 102 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
17 102 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
18 88 (0.94%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 315 (3.35%) Windows
2 274 (2.92%) Linux
3 149 (1.59%) Unix
4 71 (0.76%) Windows Server
5 38 (0.40%) Solaris
6 36 (0.38%) Windows 10
7 35 (0.37%) zOS
8 34 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 34 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 28 (0.30%) Android
10 20 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 19 (0.20%) AIX
12 7 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
12 7 (0.075%) Ubuntu
12 7 (0.075%) VMS
13 5 (0.053%) HPUX
13 5 (0.053%) SUSE
13 5 (0.053%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.043%) MVS
15 3 (0.032%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,005 (21.35%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,899 (20.22%) Agile
3 1,301 (13.85%) Migration
4 1,259 (13.41%) Problem-Solving
5 1,074 (11.44%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,030 (10.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,002 (10.67%) AI
8 996 (10.61%) DevOps
9 986 (10.50%) ERP
10 965 (10.28%) CI/CD
11 914 (9.73%) Analytics
12 818 (8.71%) Decision-Making
13 795 (8.47%) Project Management
14 782 (8.33%) Validation
15 772 (8.22%) Data Modelling
16 760 (8.09%) Roadmaps
17 740 (7.88%) User Acceptance Testing
18 675 (7.19%) Business Intelligence
19 669 (7.12%) Change Management
20 599 (6.38%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,261 (13.43%) SQL
2 1,143 (12.17%) Python
3 634 (6.75%) Java
4 381 (4.06%) C#
5 256 (2.73%) JavaScript
6 255 (2.72%) TypeScript
7 215 (2.29%) PowerShell
8 94 (1.00%) C++
9 87 (0.93%) Bash
10 81 (0.86%) PL/SQL
11 77 (0.82%) Go
12 72 (0.77%) T-SQL
13 56 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 56 (0.60%) Shell Script
14 46 (0.49%) VBA
15 45 (0.48%) Scala
16 33 (0.35%) Bicep
17 32 (0.34%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.33%) Rust
19 29 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 743 (7.91%) Degree
2 697 (7.42%) Security Cleared
3 500 (5.32%) SC Cleared
4 229 (2.44%) ACCA
5 223 (2.37%) PMP
6 207 (2.20%) CIMA
7 195 (2.08%) PMI Certification
8 187 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
9 155 (1.65%) CISSP
10 138 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
11 93 (0.99%) DV Cleared
12 92 (0.98%) CISM
13 90 (0.96%) Master's Degree
14 82 (0.87%) Azure Certification
15 72 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 51 (0.54%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
18 39 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 38 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
20 34 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 578 (6.15%) Data Quality
2 414 (4.41%) QA
3 331 (3.52%) PMO
4 305 (3.25%) GDPR
5 164 (1.75%) NIST
6 130 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 119 (1.27%) IFRS
8 112 (1.19%) SLA
9 107 (1.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 106 (1.13%) GRC
11 89 (0.95%) Accessibility
12 66 (0.70%) GAAP
12 66 (0.70%) ISO 20022
13 65 (0.69%) PCI DSS
14 39 (0.42%) SEPA
15 37 (0.39%) NCSC
16 36 (0.38%) Solvency II
17 34 (0.36%) PSD2
18 31 (0.33%) IFRS 17
19 29 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 278 (2.96%) Docker
2 188 (2.00%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
4 29 (0.31%) vSphere
5 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
6 16 (0.17%) RACF
7 15 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 11 (0.12%) NFS
10 10 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.064%) GPFS
11 6 (0.064%) KVM
12 5 (0.053%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.043%) Firmware
14 3 (0.032%) GridGain
14 3 (0.032%) SRDF
15 2 (0.021%) ACF2
15 2 (0.021%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 421 (4.48%) Kubernetes
2 283 (3.01%) Terraform
3 152 (1.62%) Ansible
4 87 (0.93%) Grafana
5 75 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 65 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.52%) SCCM
8 47 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 26 (0.28%) Control-M
11 18 (0.19%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.19%) vRealize
12 15 (0.16%) Argo
12 15 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (0.15%) Nessus
14 13 (0.14%) OMEGAMON
14 13 (0.14%) Puppet
15 12 (0.13%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,191 (12.68%) Microsoft
2 833 (8.87%) SAP
3 788 (8.39%) Oracle
4 331 (3.52%) ServiceNow
5 286 (3.05%) Databricks
6 212 (2.26%) Salesforce
7 206 (2.19%) Google
8 136 (1.45%) Workday
9 123 (1.31%) IBM
10 118 (1.26%) Cisco
11 114 (1.21%) Splunk
11 114 (1.21%) VMware
12 92 (0.98%) CyberArk
13 84 (0.89%) Ariba
14 72 (0.77%) OpenAI
15 66 (0.70%) Sage
16 62 (0.66%) Citrix
17 55 (0.59%) Informatica
18 53 (0.56%) Bloomberg
19 51 (0.54%) Palo Alto