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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,842 7,416 7,694
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.31% 22.67% 19.84%
As % of the General category 33.26% 35.67% 34.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,010 4,895 5,044
10th Percentile £360 £325 £363
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £715
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £492 £513
% change year-on-year +2.64% -4.00% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 319 136 173
10th Percentile £15.64 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.06 £23.66
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.11% -18.50% +34.62%
75th Percentile - £58.13 £44.04
90th Percentile £75.40 £75.63 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £35.00
% change year-on-year +71.18% -26.63% +13.80%

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 29,589 20,788 22,240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.04% 63.55% 57.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,455 12,930 13,776
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
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 £741 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,293 1,169 1,250
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.50 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.00 £16.25 £16.67
Median hourly rate £31.16 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.88% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.90 £69.65 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.96 £22.14 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.37% -36.74% +34.62%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 8,536 £550 - 14,186
London 0 5,136 £585 -2.50% 9,513
UK excluding London 0 3,891 £505 +2.64% 6,639
Work from Home -1 2,798 £550 -4.35% 6,144
North of England 0 1,340 £500 +8.05% 1,600
South East -1 738 £505 -3.81% 1,579
North West -1 684 £500 +11.11% 958
Midlands -1 620 £500 +8.70% 734
Yorkshire 0 577 £516 +8.61% 439
Scotland 0 520 £470 -3.89% 814
West Midlands +1 464 £507 +1.40% 435
South West -4 372 £550 -1.60% 977
East of England +5 210 £530 -5.99% 550
East Midlands -3 152 £500 +21.21% 299
North East -6 72 £500 +13.64% 219
Northern Ireland -1 64 £475 -1.30% 326
Wales -2 57 £525 +13.51% 154
Channel Islands +2 4 £500 - 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
1 337 (3.42%) Confluence
2 255 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 93 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 84 (0.85%) Apache Spark
5 74 (0.75%) Apache
6 46 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (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
1 529 (5.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 186 (1.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 157 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 91 (0.92%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) 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 (0.041%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.041%) 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
1 433 (4.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 128 (1.30%) Oracle Payables
3 110 (1.12%) NetSuite
4 106 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
5 99 (1.01%) 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 59 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
12 47 (0.48%) SAP CO
13 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
14 42 (0.43%) SAP FI/CO
15 38 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
16 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
17 33 (0.34%) SAP GRC
18 32 (0.33%) Workday HCM
19 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
19 26 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,551 (15.76%) Azure
2 1,075 (10.92%) AWS
3 673 (6.84%) Power Platform
4 525 (5.33%) GCP
5 353 (3.59%) Azure DevOps
6 326 (3.31%) SaaS
7 309 (3.14%) GitHub
8 306 (3.11%) Microsoft 365
9 264 (2.68%) Dynamics 365
10 220 (2.24%) Snowflake
11 217 (2.20%) Entra ID
12 149 (1.51%) Serverless
13 145 (1.47%) OCI
14 123 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
14 123 (1.25%) Power Automate
15 120 (1.22%) dbt
16 117 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
17 115 (1.17%) Amazon S3
18 114 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
19 105 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 176 (1.79%) Firewall
2 153 (1.55%) Network Security
3 106 (1.08%) VPN
4 96 (0.98%) DNS
5 68 (0.69%) TCP/IP
6 63 (0.64%) WAN
7 50 (0.51%) DHCP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 44 (0.45%) BGP
10 40 (0.41%) LAN
11 39 (0.40%) HTTP
12 34 (0.35%) VLAN
13 33 (0.34%) Multicast
14 31 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
15 30 (0.30%) Internet
16 29 (0.29%) Wireless
17 24 (0.24%) OSPF
17 24 (0.24%) SAN
18 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
19 16 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 549 (5.58%) Power BI
2 285 (2.90%) SQL Server
3 263 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
4 204 (2.07%) Metadata
5 178 (1.81%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.48%) Data Lake
7 132 (1.34%) Tableau
8 128 (1.30%) PostgreSQL
9 80 (0.81%) NoSQL
10 77 (0.78%) BigQuery
11 75 (0.76%) Oracle Database
12 74 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
13 69 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 59 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.58%) Delta Lake
16 56 (0.57%) Power Query
17 53 (0.54%) Big Data
18 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
19 44 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 668 (6.79%) JIRA
2 294 (2.99%) Git
3 170 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 104 (1.06%) GitLab
5 55 (0.56%) Selenium
6 49 (0.50%) JUnit
7 32 (0.33%) Bitbucket
7 32 (0.33%) Maven
8 31 (0.31%) SonarQube
8 31 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.30%) ERwin
9 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
10 28 (0.28%) Claude Code
10 28 (0.28%) REST Assured
11 27 (0.27%) Cucumber
12 25 (0.25%) Gradle
13 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
14 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
14 21 (0.21%) Postman
14 21 (0.21%) Zephyr
General
1 3,003 (30.51%) Social Skills
2 1,962 (19.93%) Banking
3 1,380 (14.02%) Analytical Skills
4 544 (5.53%) Legal
5 528 (5.36%) Public Sector
6 425 (4.32%) Organisational Skills
7 393 (3.99%) Investment Banking
8 380 (3.86%) Retail
9 340 (3.45%) Front Office
10 339 (3.44%) Financial Institution
11 306 (3.11%) Influencing Skills
12 225 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
13 204 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 188 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 170 (1.73%) General Ledger
16 167 (1.70%) Billing
17 160 (1.63%) Marketing
18 148 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
19 146 (1.48%) Local Government
20 143 (1.45%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,421 (14.44%) Analyst
2 1,047 (10.64%) Senior
3 1,034 (10.51%) Lead
4 973 (9.89%) Developer
5 870 (8.84%) Architect
6 740 (7.52%) Business Analyst
7 701 (7.12%) Consultant
8 690 (7.01%) Project Manager
9 326 (3.31%) Solutions Architect
10 308 (3.13%) Data Engineer
11 260 (2.64%) Financial Analyst
12 225 (2.29%) Senior Manager
13 207 (2.10%) Java Developer
14 197 (2.00%) Data Analyst
15 188 (1.91%) Senior Developer
16 184 (1.87%) Accountant
17 183 (1.86%) Programme Manager
18 180 (1.83%) Finance Manager
19 174 (1.77%) IT Manager
20 161 (1.64%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 372 (3.78%) Terraform
2 354 (3.60%) REST
3 271 (2.75%) .NET
4 267 (2.71%) Oracle Fusion
5 249 (2.53%) Kafka
6 234 (2.38%) React
7 188 (1.91%) Spring
8 184 (1.87%) Middleware
9 183 (1.86%) Spring Boot
10 144 (1.46%) PySpark
11 135 (1.37%) RESTful
12 101 (1.03%) XML
13 98 (1.00%) OAuth
14 97 (0.99%) JSON
15 88 (0.89%) Redux
16 81 (0.82%) Node.js
17 80 (0.81%) AngularJS
18 78 (0.79%) SOAP
19 66 (0.67%) Web Services
20 63 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 508 (5.16%) Onboarding
2 488 (4.96%) Product Ownership
3 422 (4.29%) Cloud Native
4 251 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
5 238 (2.42%) Data Structures
6 233 (2.37%) Management Information System
7 220 (2.24%) Virtual Team
8 191 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
9 189 (1.92%) Derivative
10 181 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
11 174 (1.77%) AI Agents
12 162 (1.65%) Data Centre
13 156 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 137 (1.39%) Fixed Income
15 131 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
16 120 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
17 118 (1.20%) Equities
18 114 (1.16%) Podcast
19 112 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
20 109 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 375 (3.81%) Windows
2 307 (3.12%) Linux
3 162 (1.65%) Unix
4 89 (0.90%) Windows Server
5 54 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 45 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.43%) Windows 10
8 34 (0.35%) Android
8 34 (0.35%) Solaris
9 32 (0.33%) zOS
10 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
11 15 (0.15%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.091%) VMS
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 4 (0.041%) CentOS
16 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,489 (25.29%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,027 (20.60%) Agile
3 1,321 (13.42%) Migration
4 1,299 (13.20%) Problem-Solving
5 1,200 (12.19%) AI
6 1,163 (11.82%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,147 (11.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,069 (10.86%) CI/CD
9 1,024 (10.40%) ERP
10 1,008 (10.24%) Analytics
11 1,000 (10.16%) DevOps
12 896 (9.10%) Decision-Making
13 818 (8.31%) Validation
14 810 (8.23%) Roadmaps
15 775 (7.87%) Data Modelling
16 769 (7.81%) User Acceptance Testing
17 763 (7.75%) Project Management
18 729 (7.41%) Change Management
19 673 (6.84%) Business Intelligence
20 663 (6.74%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,304 (13.25%) SQL
2 1,209 (12.28%) Python
3 638 (6.48%) Java
4 361 (3.67%) C#
5 267 (2.71%) PowerShell
6 246 (2.50%) JavaScript
7 212 (2.15%) TypeScript
8 142 (1.44%) Bash
9 106 (1.08%) PL/SQL
10 90 (0.91%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 66 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 66 (0.67%) T-SQL
13 59 (0.60%) Go
14 58 (0.59%) Bicep
15 42 (0.43%) Korn
16 41 (0.42%) VBA
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.40%) Scala
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 777 (7.89%) Security Cleared
2 731 (7.43%) Degree
3 556 (5.65%) SC Cleared
4 243 (2.47%) PMP
5 235 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
6 219 (2.23%) PMI Certification
7 197 (2.00%) ACCA
8 172 (1.75%) CIMA
9 140 (1.42%) CISSP
10 139 (1.41%) DV Cleared
11 134 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
12 109 (1.11%) Azure Certification
13 84 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
14 82 (0.83%) CISM
15 70 (0.71%) Master's Degree
16 66 (0.67%) AWS Certification
17 55 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 44 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.38%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 654 (6.64%) Data Quality
2 420 (4.27%) QA
3 360 (3.66%) PMO
4 243 (2.47%) GDPR
5 144 (1.46%) NIST
6 124 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.17%) GRC
8 108 (1.10%) Accessibility
9 103 (1.05%) SLA
10 96 (0.98%) IFRS
11 88 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 52 (0.53%) GAAP
14 46 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.38%) Solvency II
16 32 (0.33%) SEPA
17 28 (0.28%) EMIR
18 27 (0.27%) COBIT
18 27 (0.27%) MiFID
19 23 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 262 (2.66%) Docker
2 240 (2.44%) 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 (0.041%) KVM
13 4 (0.041%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 461 (4.68%) Kubernetes
2 172 (1.75%) Ansible
3 100 (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 1,398 (14.20%) Microsoft
2 891 (9.05%) Oracle
3 840 (8.53%) SAP
4 372 (3.78%) ServiceNow
5 345 (3.51%) Databricks
6 234 (2.38%) Salesforce
7 219 (2.23%) Google
8 174 (1.77%) IBM
9 139 (1.41%) VMware
10 128 (1.30%) Workday
11 119 (1.21%) Cisco
12 115 (1.17%) Splunk
13 97 (0.99%) Ariba
14 88 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 79 (0.80%) OpenAI
16 57 (0.58%) Sage
17 56 (0.57%) Bloomberg
17 56 (0.57%) Citrix
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 47 (0.48%) Adobe