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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,881 7,445 7,697
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.33% 22.60% 19.98%
As % of the General category 33.26% 35.59% 34.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,040 4,906 5,033
10th Percentile £360 £331 £360
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £493 £513
% change year-on-year +2.54% -3.90% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 320 136 168
10th Percentile £15.69 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.06 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.11% -18.50% +36.13%
75th Percentile - £58.13 £49.06
90th Percentile £75.40 £76.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -28.14% +16.67%

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 29,707 20,917 22,155
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.12% 63.48% 57.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,543 13,012 13,683
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
25th Percentile £416 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £740 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £496
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.30% -0.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,298 1,175 1,220
10th Percentile £13.79 £13.50 £14.27
25th Percentile £17.00 £16.17 £17.06
Median hourly rate £31.13 £25.15 £37.04
Median % change year-on-year +23.77% -32.10% +34.69%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £70.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.50 £22.05 £37.28
% change year-on-year +42.86% -40.85% +48.38%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 8,567 £550 - 14,791
London 0 5,158 £585 -2.50% 9,902
UK excluding London 0 3,905 £505 +2.54% 7,108
Work from Home -1 2,808 £550 -4.35% 6,496
North of England 0 1,348 £500 +7.99% 1,718
South East -3 739 £505 -3.81% 1,638
North West -1 687 £500 +11.11% 1,035
Midlands -1 622 £500 +8.40% 796
Yorkshire 0 581 £514 +6.20% 482
Scotland 0 525 £470 -2.49% 926
West Midlands +1 465 £514 +2.80% 488
South West -5 371 £550 -0.97% 1,017
East of England +5 209 £530 -7.83% 561
East Midlands -3 153 £500 +20.85% 307
North East -5 73 £500 +13.64% 220
Northern Ireland -1 64 £500 +3.90% 377
Wales -2 57 £525 +18.31% 166
Channel Islands +3 5 £550 - 8

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 (3.43%) Confluence
2 256 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 93 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 84 (0.85%) Apache Spark
5 73 (0.74%) Apache
6 46 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.27%) SAS
9 21 (0.21%) IIS
10 17 (0.17%) Camunda
11 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.091%) CICS
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 7 (0.071%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 6 (0.061%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 5 (0.051%) Adobe Experience Manager
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 530 (5.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 189 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 158 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 92 (0.93%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 30 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 8 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Sketch
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 434 (4.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 128 (1.30%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.12%) NetSuite
4 106 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 98 (0.99%) Oracle ERP
6 75 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
7 72 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
8 68 (0.69%) SAP FI
9 65 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 61 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
11 52 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 47 (0.48%) SAP CO
13 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
14 42 (0.43%) SAP FI/CO
15 38 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
16 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
16 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
17 32 (0.32%) Workday HCM
18 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
18 26 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,558 (15.77%) Azure
2 1,076 (10.89%) AWS
3 681 (6.89%) Power Platform
4 526 (5.32%) GCP
5 354 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
6 328 (3.32%) SaaS
7 310 (3.14%) GitHub
8 308 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
9 268 (2.71%) Dynamics 365
10 222 (2.25%) Snowflake
11 219 (2.22%) Entra ID
12 150 (1.52%) Serverless
13 145 (1.47%) OCI
14 124 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
15 123 (1.24%) Power Automate
16 120 (1.21%) dbt
17 116 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
18 115 (1.16%) Amazon S3
19 114 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
20 105 (1.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 179 (1.81%) Firewall
2 155 (1.57%) Network Security
3 107 (1.08%) VPN
4 96 (0.97%) DNS
5 68 (0.69%) TCP/IP
6 64 (0.65%) WAN
7 50 (0.51%) DHCP
8 45 (0.46%) BGP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 40 (0.40%) LAN
10 39 (0.39%) HTTP
11 34 (0.34%) VLAN
12 33 (0.33%) Multicast
13 31 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
14 30 (0.30%) Internet
15 29 (0.29%) Wireless
16 25 (0.25%) OSPF
17 24 (0.24%) SAN
18 21 (0.21%) SD-WAN
19 16 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 556 (5.63%) Power BI
2 286 (2.89%) SQL Server
3 266 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
4 204 (2.06%) Metadata
5 180 (1.82%) Relational Database
6 145 (1.47%) Data Lake
7 133 (1.35%) Tableau
8 129 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
9 80 (0.81%) NoSQL
10 77 (0.78%) BigQuery
11 75 (0.76%) Oracle Database
12 73 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
13 69 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 60 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.58%) Delta Lake
16 56 (0.57%) Power Query
17 53 (0.54%) Big Data
18 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
19 44 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 671 (6.79%) JIRA
2 293 (2.97%) Git
3 172 (1.74%) Jenkins
4 104 (1.05%) GitLab
5 57 (0.58%) Selenium
6 49 (0.50%) JUnit
7 33 (0.33%) Maven
8 32 (0.32%) Bitbucket
8 32 (0.32%) SonarQube
8 32 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.30%) ERwin
9 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
10 28 (0.28%) Claude Code
10 28 (0.28%) Cucumber
10 28 (0.28%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.25%) Gradle
12 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 22 (0.22%) Postman
14 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
14 21 (0.21%) Zephyr
General
1 3,025 (30.61%) Social Skills
2 1,976 (20.00%) Banking
3 1,389 (14.06%) Analytical Skills
4 547 (5.54%) Legal
5 531 (5.37%) Public Sector
6 428 (4.33%) Organisational Skills
7 393 (3.98%) Investment Banking
8 382 (3.87%) Retail
9 340 (3.44%) Front Office
10 339 (3.43%) Financial Institution
11 310 (3.14%) Influencing Skills
12 225 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
13 204 (2.06%) Manufacturing
14 190 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 172 (1.74%) General Ledger
16 167 (1.69%) Billing
17 161 (1.63%) Marketing
18 151 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
19 147 (1.49%) Local Government
20 143 (1.45%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,429 (14.46%) Analyst
2 1,049 (10.62%) Senior
3 1,039 (10.52%) Lead
4 973 (9.85%) Developer
5 872 (8.83%) Architect
6 744 (7.53%) Business Analyst
7 705 (7.13%) Consultant
8 699 (7.07%) Project Manager
9 328 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
10 308 (3.12%) Data Engineer
11 258 (2.61%) Financial Analyst
12 225 (2.28%) Senior Manager
13 205 (2.07%) Java Developer
14 197 (1.99%) Data Analyst
15 186 (1.88%) Senior Developer
16 183 (1.85%) Accountant
16 183 (1.85%) Programme Manager
17 182 (1.84%) Finance Manager
18 175 (1.77%) IT Manager
19 161 (1.63%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 373 (3.77%) Terraform
2 356 (3.60%) REST
3 272 (2.75%) .NET
4 266 (2.69%) Oracle Fusion
5 249 (2.52%) Kafka
6 236 (2.39%) React
7 187 (1.89%) Spring
8 186 (1.88%) Middleware
9 182 (1.84%) Spring Boot
10 144 (1.46%) PySpark
11 135 (1.37%) RESTful
12 101 (1.02%) XML
13 99 (1.00%) OAuth
14 97 (0.98%) JSON
15 88 (0.89%) Redux
16 82 (0.83%) Node.js
17 81 (0.82%) AngularJS
18 78 (0.79%) SOAP
19 67 (0.68%) Web Services
20 65 (0.66%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 511 (5.17%) Onboarding
2 493 (4.99%) Product Ownership
3 423 (4.28%) Cloud Native
4 251 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
5 240 (2.43%) Data Structures
6 236 (2.39%) Management Information System
7 219 (2.22%) Virtual Team
8 191 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
9 189 (1.91%) Derivative
10 182 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
11 177 (1.79%) AI Agents
12 163 (1.65%) Data Centre
13 156 (1.58%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 136 (1.38%) Fixed Income
15 132 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
16 121 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
17 118 (1.19%) Equities
18 114 (1.15%) Podcast
19 112 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
20 110 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 375 (3.80%) Windows
2 309 (3.13%) Linux
3 162 (1.64%) Unix
4 89 (0.90%) Windows Server
5 54 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 47 (0.48%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.43%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.36%) Android
9 34 (0.34%) Solaris
10 32 (0.32%) zOS
11 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
12 15 (0.15%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 4 (0.040%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
18 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,513 (25.43%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,042 (20.67%) Agile
3 1,329 (13.45%) Migration
4 1,306 (13.22%) Problem-Solving
5 1,210 (12.25%) AI
6 1,173 (11.87%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,156 (11.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,074 (10.87%) CI/CD
9 1,027 (10.39%) ERP
10 1,009 (10.21%) Analytics
11 1,005 (10.17%) DevOps
12 904 (9.15%) Decision-Making
13 821 (8.31%) Validation
14 815 (8.25%) Roadmaps
15 777 (7.86%) Data Modelling
16 771 (7.80%) Project Management
17 770 (7.79%) User Acceptance Testing
18 734 (7.43%) Change Management
19 679 (6.87%) Business Intelligence
20 666 (6.74%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,308 (13.24%) SQL
2 1,217 (12.32%) Python
3 639 (6.47%) Java
4 360 (3.64%) C#
5 272 (2.75%) PowerShell
6 248 (2.51%) JavaScript
7 214 (2.17%) TypeScript
8 143 (1.45%) Bash
9 106 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 91 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 69 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 66 (0.67%) T-SQL
14 59 (0.60%) Bicep
14 59 (0.60%) Go
15 42 (0.43%) Korn
16 41 (0.41%) VBA
17 39 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 38 (0.38%) Scala
19 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 782 (7.91%) Security Cleared
2 735 (7.44%) Degree
3 562 (5.69%) SC Cleared
4 247 (2.50%) PMP
5 235 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
6 223 (2.26%) PMI Certification
7 198 (2.00%) ACCA
8 173 (1.75%) CIMA
9 141 (1.43%) CISSP
10 139 (1.41%) DV Cleared
11 134 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
12 109 (1.10%) Azure Certification
13 85 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
14 83 (0.84%) CISM
15 70 (0.71%) Master's Degree
16 66 (0.67%) AWS Certification
17 55 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 44 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.37%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 657 (6.65%) Data Quality
2 425 (4.30%) QA
3 360 (3.64%) PMO
4 245 (2.48%) GDPR
5 146 (1.48%) NIST
6 126 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 118 (1.19%) GRC
8 108 (1.09%) Accessibility
9 104 (1.05%) SLA
10 96 (0.97%) IFRS
11 89 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 52 (0.53%) GAAP
14 46 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.37%) Solvency II
16 32 (0.32%) SEPA
17 28 (0.28%) COBIT
17 28 (0.28%) EMIR
18 27 (0.27%) MiFID
19 23 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 263 (2.66%) Docker
2 240 (2.43%) Active Directory
3 83 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.24%) RACF
7 22 (0.22%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.081%) IAG
11 6 (0.061%) ACF2
11 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) KVM
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 463 (4.69%) Kubernetes
2 174 (1.76%) Ansible
3 101 (1.02%) Grafana
4 80 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (0.74%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.61%) SCCM
7 56 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 25 (0.25%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) Argo
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.14%) Istio
12 14 (0.14%) Puppet
12 14 (0.14%) vRealize
13 13 (0.13%) FortiGate
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
14 11 (0.11%) Packer
15 9 (0.091%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,408 (14.25%) Microsoft
2 887 (8.98%) Oracle
3 844 (8.54%) SAP
4 376 (3.81%) ServiceNow
5 347 (3.51%) Databricks
6 236 (2.39%) Salesforce
7 221 (2.24%) Google
8 174 (1.76%) IBM
9 139 (1.41%) VMware
10 130 (1.32%) Workday
11 121 (1.22%) Cisco
12 117 (1.18%) Splunk
13 97 (0.98%) Ariba
14 88 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 79 (0.80%) OpenAI
16 58 (0.59%) Sage
17 56 (0.57%) Bloomberg
17 56 (0.57%) Citrix
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 47 (0.48%) Adobe