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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,732 7,328 8,248
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.54% 22.69% 19.02%
As % of the General category 33.86% 36.01% 33.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,034 4,818 5,534
10th Percentile £357 £350 £350
25th Percentile £448 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £724
90th Percentile £800 £814 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £493 £500
% change year-on-year +1.52% -1.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 144 257
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £13.24
25th Percentile £20.45 £23.35 £16.24
Median hourly rate £42.28 £32.70 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.30% +8.98% -
75th Percentile £54.43 £64.06 £38.12
90th Percentile £87.10 £75.88 £68.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £28.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +54.25% -13.64% -13.95%

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 28,745 20,351 24,809
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.77% 63.01% 57.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,230 12,786 15,526
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £472 £490
% change year-on-year +5.88% -3.62% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,986 1,021 1,931
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.46 £12.81
25th Percentile £18.41 £16.32 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.13 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +19.82% -15.15% +6.57%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.63 £70.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year +41.30% -26.40% +20.42%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 8,511 £550 - 6,187
London 0 5,091 £577 -3.83% 3,325
UK excluding London +1 3,899 £500 +1.52% 3,973
Work from Home -1 2,828 £550 -4.35% 2,265
North of England 0 1,314 £500 +7.53% 866
South East 0 733 £500 -4.76% 974
North West +4 683 £475 +5.56% 466
Midlands +1 667 £500 +11.11% 472
Yorkshire 0 581 £525 +7.42% 290
Scotland 0 494 £475 -2.86% 236
West Midlands +1 493 £500 - 267
South West -4 384 £525 -4.55% 1,029
East of England +6 211 £525 -8.70% 274
East Midlands 0 166 £494 +16.18% 204
Wales +4 86 £525 +13.51% 71
Northern Ireland -1 60 £475 +11.76% 95
North East -16 51 £500 +13.64% 119
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 1

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
1 338 (3.47%) Confluence
2 231 (2.37%) SharePoint
3 86 (0.88%) Apache Spark
4 75 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
5 60 (0.62%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.35%) SAS
8 29 (0.30%) CMS
9 25 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.20%) CICS
10 19 (0.20%) IIS
11 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.12%) Camunda
13 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.072%) Appian
16 6 (0.062%) Hyperledger
17 5 (0.051%) WebLogic
18 4 (0.041%) WordPress
Applications
1 517 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.31%) Microsoft Office
3 171 (1.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 118 (1.21%) MS Visio
6 68 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.051%) Sketch
9 4 (0.041%) Adobe Illustrator
9 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.041%) Notion
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.041%) Photoshop
9 4 (0.041%) Trello
10 2 (0.021%) Adobe Premiere
10 2 (0.021%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.021%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.021%) Final Cut Pro
10 2 (0.021%) InVision
Business Applications
1 447 (4.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.19%) Oracle Payables
3 112 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 97 (1.00%) Oracle Receivables
5 79 (0.81%) Oracle ERP
6 78 (0.80%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 67 (0.69%) SAP FI
8 59 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
9 54 (0.55%) Oracle General Ledger
10 50 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
11 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
12 44 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
12 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
13 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
14 33 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
15 29 (0.30%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.29%) SAP ERP
17 26 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
17 26 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
17 26 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,510 (15.52%) Azure
2 1,101 (11.31%) AWS
3 641 (6.59%) Power Platform
4 501 (5.15%) GCP
5 329 (3.38%) Azure DevOps
6 316 (3.25%) SaaS
7 281 (2.89%) Microsoft 365
8 265 (2.72%) GitHub
9 225 (2.31%) Dynamics 365
10 206 (2.12%) Snowflake
11 184 (1.89%) Entra ID
12 145 (1.49%) Serverless
13 128 (1.32%) Amazon S3
14 124 (1.27%) OCI
15 107 (1.10%) Power Automate
16 105 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 100 (1.03%) dbt
17 100 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
18 99 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
19 90 (0.92%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 183 (1.88%) Firewall
2 143 (1.47%) Network Security
3 84 (0.86%) DNS
4 79 (0.81%) VPN
5 64 (0.66%) WAN
6 61 (0.63%) TCP/IP
7 45 (0.46%) BGP
7 45 (0.46%) SSL
8 39 (0.40%) LAN
9 35 (0.36%) DHCP
9 35 (0.36%) HTTP
10 33 (0.34%) Multicast
11 31 (0.32%) OSPF
12 26 (0.27%) Internet
13 24 (0.25%) MPLS
13 24 (0.25%) SD-WAN
14 21 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
15 20 (0.21%) Wireless
16 17 (0.17%) VLAN
16 17 (0.17%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 544 (5.59%) Power BI
2 270 (2.77%) SQL Server
3 252 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
4 208 (2.14%) Metadata
5 183 (1.88%) Relational Database
6 179 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
7 152 (1.56%) Tableau
8 141 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 90 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
10 88 (0.90%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.73%) MongoDB
13 70 (0.72%) Big Data
14 69 (0.71%) BigQuery
15 66 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
16 49 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 48 (0.49%) Power Query
18 47 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
19 44 (0.45%) Delta Lake
20 42 (0.43%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 686 (7.05%) JIRA
2 261 (2.68%) Git
3 180 (1.85%) Jenkins
4 99 (1.02%) GitLab
5 56 (0.58%) JUnit
6 49 (0.50%) Cucumber
7 47 (0.48%) Selenium
8 31 (0.32%) Postman
9 30 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.27%) ERwin
10 26 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
10 26 (0.27%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.26%) Visual Studio
12 23 (0.24%) Maven
12 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
13 20 (0.21%) MLflow
14 19 (0.20%) Zephyr
15 17 (0.17%) Bitbucket
15 17 (0.17%) Hudson
15 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,854 (29.33%) Social Skills
2 1,796 (18.45%) Banking
3 1,310 (13.46%) Analytical Skills
4 555 (5.70%) Public Sector
5 491 (5.05%) Legal
6 380 (3.90%) Investment Banking
7 364 (3.74%) Financial Institution
8 344 (3.53%) Front Office
9 324 (3.33%) Organisational Skills
10 318 (3.27%) Retail
11 256 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
12 240 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
13 186 (1.91%) Manufacturing
14 170 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 163 (1.67%) Local Government
16 161 (1.65%) Billing
17 158 (1.62%) General Ledger
18 146 (1.50%) Marketing
19 135 (1.39%) Law
20 132 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,435 (14.75%) Analyst
2 1,038 (10.67%) Senior
3 1,036 (10.65%) Lead
4 981 (10.08%) Developer
5 894 (9.19%) Architect
6 744 (7.64%) Business Analyst
7 710 (7.30%) Project Manager
8 666 (6.84%) Consultant
9 342 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 324 (3.33%) Data Engineer
11 232 (2.38%) Financial Analyst
12 229 (2.35%) Senior Manager
13 209 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 205 (2.11%) Data Analyst
15 204 (2.10%) Accountant
16 187 (1.92%) Programme Manager
17 186 (1.91%) Finance Manager
18 178 (1.83%) Software Engineer
19 177 (1.82%) Senior Developer
20 176 (1.81%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (3.15%) REST
2 272 (2.79%) React
3 270 (2.77%) .NET
4 265 (2.72%) Kafka
5 210 (2.16%) Oracle Fusion
6 200 (2.06%) Middleware
7 181 (1.86%) Spring
8 169 (1.74%) Spring Boot
9 137 (1.41%) RESTful
10 117 (1.20%) Redux
11 116 (1.19%) PySpark
12 112 (1.15%) Node.js
13 94 (0.97%) JSON
14 93 (0.96%) AngularJS
14 93 (0.96%) OAuth
15 78 (0.80%) XML
16 68 (0.70%) CSS
17 66 (0.68%) HTML
18 65 (0.67%) SOAP
19 64 (0.66%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 454 (4.67%) Onboarding
2 424 (4.36%) Product Ownership
3 416 (4.27%) Cloud Native
4 267 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
5 221 (2.27%) Data Structures
6 218 (2.24%) Management Information System
7 178 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
8 175 (1.80%) Derivative
9 174 (1.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 173 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
11 171 (1.76%) Fixed Income
12 166 (1.71%) Data Centre
13 161 (1.65%) Virtual Team
14 134 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
15 129 (1.33%) AI Agents
16 126 (1.29%) Equities
17 117 (1.20%) Public Cloud
18 110 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
18 110 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
19 95 (0.98%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 321 (3.30%) Windows
2 280 (2.88%) Linux
3 160 (1.64%) Unix
4 70 (0.72%) Windows Server
5 39 (0.40%) Solaris
5 39 (0.40%) zOS
6 36 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
7 35 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 29 (0.30%) Android
9 25 (0.26%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.21%) AIX
11 9 (0.092%) VMS
12 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
12 8 (0.082%) Ubuntu
13 6 (0.062%) HPUX
13 6 (0.062%) SUSE
14 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.041%) MVS
16 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,123 (21.81%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,956 (20.10%) Agile
3 1,346 (13.83%) Migration
4 1,296 (13.32%) Problem-Solving
5 1,127 (11.58%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,103 (11.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,068 (10.97%) AI
8 1,027 (10.55%) DevOps
9 1,010 (10.38%) CI/CD
10 1,006 (10.34%) ERP
11 964 (9.91%) Analytics
12 864 (8.88%) Decision-Making
13 813 (8.35%) Validation
14 802 (8.24%) Data Modelling
14 802 (8.24%) Roadmaps
15 780 (8.01%) Project Management
16 771 (7.92%) User Acceptance Testing
17 698 (7.17%) Change Management
18 683 (7.02%) Business Intelligence
19 622 (6.39%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,294 (13.30%) SQL
2 1,185 (12.18%) Python
3 652 (6.70%) Java
4 383 (3.94%) C#
5 267 (2.74%) TypeScript
6 262 (2.69%) JavaScript
7 221 (2.27%) PowerShell
8 96 (0.99%) Bash
9 90 (0.92%) PL/SQL
10 86 (0.88%) C++
11 82 (0.84%) Go
12 74 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 70 (0.72%) Shell Script
14 59 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 51 (0.52%) VBA
16 49 (0.50%) Scala
17 40 (0.41%) Bicep
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
19 31 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 29 (0.30%) R
Qualifications
1 748 (7.69%) Degree
2 740 (7.60%) Security Cleared
3 529 (5.44%) SC Cleared
4 227 (2.33%) PMP
5 210 (2.16%) ACCA
6 203 (2.09%) PMI Certification
7 193 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
8 188 (1.93%) CIMA
9 158 (1.62%) CISSP
10 130 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
11 104 (1.07%) DV Cleared
12 93 (0.96%) CISM
13 91 (0.94%) Azure Certification
14 88 (0.90%) Master's Degree
15 74 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
16 57 (0.59%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 42 (0.43%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 608 (6.25%) Data Quality
2 425 (4.37%) QA
3 343 (3.52%) PMO
4 300 (3.08%) GDPR
5 162 (1.66%) NIST
6 127 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.14%) IFRS
8 109 (1.12%) GRC
8 109 (1.12%) SLA
9 102 (1.05%) Accessibility
10 98 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 66 (0.68%) ISO 20022
12 64 (0.66%) GAAP
13 59 (0.61%) PCI DSS
14 41 (0.42%) SEPA
15 38 (0.39%) Solvency II
16 34 (0.35%) NCSC
17 30 (0.31%) PSD2
17 30 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 28 (0.29%) COBIT
System Software
1 281 (2.89%) Docker
2 200 (2.06%) Active Directory
3 60 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 27 (0.28%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (0.21%) RACF
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 13 (0.13%) NFS
11 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.062%) GPFS
12 6 (0.062%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.041%) IAG
15 3 (0.031%) GridGain
15 3 (0.031%) SRDF
16 2 (0.021%) HDFS
16 2 (0.021%) zsh
Systems Management
1 443 (4.55%) Kubernetes
2 316 (3.25%) Terraform
3 159 (1.63%) Ansible
4 94 (0.97%) Grafana
5 79 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 66 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.52%) SCCM
8 50 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.27%) Control-M
10 21 (0.22%) FortiGate
11 18 (0.18%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) vRealize
12 17 (0.17%) Argo
12 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
13 16 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 16 (0.16%) Jamf Pro
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,236 (12.70%) Microsoft
2 841 (8.64%) SAP
3 820 (8.43%) Oracle
4 350 (3.60%) ServiceNow
5 295 (3.03%) Databricks
6 221 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 216 (2.22%) Google
8 137 (1.41%) Workday
9 134 (1.38%) IBM
10 123 (1.26%) VMware
11 118 (1.21%) Splunk
12 109 (1.12%) Cisco
13 93 (0.96%) CyberArk
14 92 (0.95%) Ariba
15 66 (0.68%) Sage
16 65 (0.67%) Citrix
16 65 (0.67%) OpenAI
17 59 (0.61%) Informatica
18 55 (0.57%) Bloomberg
19 51 (0.52%) Murex