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

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,437 6,468 8,212
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.44% 22.13% 18.71%
As % of the General category 33.04% 35.16% 32.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,369 4,284 5,493
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £669 £700 £700
90th Percentile £800 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 210 111 238
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.51 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.26 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +45.45% -15.38%
75th Percentile £42.73 £73.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.54 £83.20 £53.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -57.95% +75.00% -25.00%

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 25,537 18,398 25,541
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.82% 62.96% 58.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,887 11,782 16,206
10th Percentile £303 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,600 742 1,874
10th Percentile £13.71 £14.70 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £15.39
Median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £26.70
Median % change year-on-year -11.14% +8.63% -23.73%
75th Percentile £59.00 £57.50 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £27.13 £25.28
% change year-on-year -7.83% +7.32% -17.82%

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 8 April 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 8 April 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 8 April 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 7,460 £537 -6.57% 4,228
London 0 4,524 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,343 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -2 2,376 £540 -8.09% 1,715
North of England +3 1,092 £475 - 695
South East -1 656 £503 -6.73% 1,010
North West +6 581 £460 -1.18% 371
Midlands 0 579 £475 -5.00% 423
Yorkshire 0 462 £500 +2.30% 253
West Midlands 0 388 £492 -8.47% 251
Scotland 0 385 £500 +5.26% 161
South West -4 331 £525 +5.00% 302
East of England -1 202 £513 -6.82% 271
East Midlands 0 186 £449 +0.73% 171
Wales +25 105 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -6 49 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +59.09% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 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
1 337 (3.99%) Confluence
2 214 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 51 (0.60%) Apache
6 49 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
7 34 (0.40%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) CMS
9 19 (0.23%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Appian
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.18%) Camunda
12 14 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 11 (0.13%) TPMS
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 8 (0.095%) WebLogic
Applications
1 550 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 249 (2.95%) Microsoft Office
3 190 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 176 (2.09%) Microsoft Project
5 132 (1.56%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 11 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.095%) InVision
12 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.059%) Notion
14 4 (0.047%) Photoshop
15 3 (0.036%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.024%) Adobe Captivate
16 2 (0.024%) InDesign
16 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
17 1 (0.012%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 359 (4.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.42%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.22%) Oracle Receivables
4 84 (1.00%) NetSuite
5 81 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 74 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.79%) SAP FI
8 65 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.64%) SAP CO
11 53 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
12 50 (0.59%) SAP FI/CO
13 43 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
14 38 (0.45%) Oracle Cash Management
15 35 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
16 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
17 31 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
18 30 (0.36%) Aladdin
19 28 (0.33%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,278 (15.15%) Azure
2 978 (11.59%) AWS
3 607 (7.19%) Power Platform
4 389 (4.61%) GCP
5 287 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
6 274 (3.25%) SaaS
7 273 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
8 243 (2.88%) Dynamics 365
9 232 (2.75%) GitHub
10 153 (1.81%) Serverless
11 143 (1.69%) OCI
12 138 (1.64%) Snowflake
13 126 (1.49%) Entra ID
14 118 (1.40%) Amazon S3
15 101 (1.20%) Power Automate
16 92 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
17 88 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
18 87 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
18 87 (1.03%) OpenShift
19 75 (0.89%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 165 (1.96%) Firewall
2 106 (1.26%) Network Security
3 80 (0.95%) WAN
4 68 (0.81%) DNS
5 59 (0.70%) VPN
6 46 (0.55%) LAN
7 45 (0.53%) TCP/IP
8 43 (0.51%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.40%) BGP
10 32 (0.38%) HTTP
11 30 (0.36%) SSL
12 29 (0.34%) Multicast
12 29 (0.34%) OSPF
13 26 (0.31%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.25%) Wireless
16 19 (0.23%) DHCP
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
18 17 (0.20%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 526 (6.23%) Power BI
2 220 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
3 207 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 176 (2.09%) PostgreSQL
5 160 (1.90%) Metadata
6 149 (1.77%) Tableau
7 127 (1.51%) Data Lake
8 122 (1.45%) Relational Database
9 101 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
10 97 (1.15%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.94%) Big Data
12 64 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.73%) BigQuery
14 55 (0.65%) MongoDB
15 46 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
17 42 (0.50%) Power Query
18 40 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
19 39 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
19 39 (0.46%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 679 (8.05%) JIRA
2 213 (2.52%) Git
3 212 (2.51%) Jenkins
4 127 (1.51%) GitLab
5 60 (0.71%) JUnit
6 57 (0.68%) Cucumber
7 43 (0.51%) Selenium
7 43 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
8 32 (0.38%) Postman
9 28 (0.33%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.32%) Visual Studio
11 23 (0.27%) MLflow
12 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 18 (0.21%) Maven
13 18 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.20%) ERwin
14 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
16 14 (0.17%) Hudson
17 12 (0.14%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,653 (31.44%) Social Skills
2 1,595 (18.90%) Banking
3 1,125 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
4 627 (7.43%) Public Sector
5 334 (3.96%) Financial Institution
6 323 (3.83%) Legal
7 291 (3.45%) Front Office
8 284 (3.37%) Investment Banking
9 239 (2.83%) Manufacturing
9 239 (2.83%) Marketing
9 239 (2.83%) Organisational Skills
10 236 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
11 217 (2.57%) Retail
12 213 (2.52%) Telecoms
13 201 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
14 139 (1.65%) General Ledger
15 128 (1.52%) Local Government
16 123 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
17 122 (1.45%) Law
18 115 (1.36%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,298 (15.38%) Analyst
2 867 (10.28%) Developer
3 864 (10.24%) Senior
4 806 (9.55%) Lead
5 756 (8.96%) Architect
6 702 (8.32%) Business Analyst
7 676 (8.01%) Project Manager
8 630 (7.47%) Consultant
9 301 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
10 247 (2.93%) Data Engineer
11 200 (2.37%) Financial Analyst
12 196 (2.32%) Senior Manager
13 189 (2.24%) Data Analyst
14 186 (2.20%) Finance Manager
15 169 (2.00%) Programme Manager
16 151 (1.79%) Java Developer
17 148 (1.75%) Accountant
18 138 (1.64%) Delivery Manager
19 134 (1.59%) Senior Developer
20 130 (1.54%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (3.20%) Kafka
2 266 (3.15%) REST
3 215 (2.55%) .NET
4 199 (2.36%) React
5 166 (1.97%) Middleware
6 159 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (1.74%) Spring
8 135 (1.60%) RESTful
9 133 (1.58%) Spring Boot
10 118 (1.40%) Node.js
11 99 (1.17%) AngularJS
12 95 (1.13%) PySpark
13 83 (0.98%) OAuth
14 79 (0.94%) XML
15 75 (0.89%) HTML
15 75 (0.89%) JSON
16 73 (0.87%) Redux
17 72 (0.85%) CSS
18 70 (0.83%) Pandas
19 65 (0.77%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 352 (4.17%) Onboarding
2 321 (3.80%) Product Ownership
3 269 (3.19%) Cloud Native
4 216 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
5 188 (2.23%) Management Information System
6 168 (1.99%) Derivative
7 158 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
7 158 (1.87%) Data Structures
8 148 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 147 (1.74%) Data Centre
10 146 (1.73%) Fixed Income
11 142 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
12 119 (1.41%) Equities
13 104 (1.23%) Public Cloud
14 102 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
15 101 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
16 94 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 84 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
18 64 (0.76%) CMDB
18 64 (0.76%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 298 (3.53%) Linux
2 273 (3.24%) Windows
3 140 (1.66%) Unix
4 65 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.62%) Windows 10
6 39 (0.46%) Android
7 31 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 27 (0.32%) Apple iOS
9 20 (0.24%) zOS
10 17 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 13 (0.15%) AIX
12 12 (0.14%) Solaris
13 7 (0.083%) VMS
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,762 (20.88%) Agile
2 1,652 (19.58%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,245 (14.76%) Problem-Solving
4 1,120 (13.27%) Migration
5 942 (11.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 913 (10.82%) DevOps
7 897 (10.63%) Continuous Improvement
8 862 (10.22%) ERP
9 835 (9.90%) CI/CD
10 820 (9.72%) Analytics
11 813 (9.64%) Project Management
12 786 (9.32%) Business Intelligence
13 739 (8.76%) AI
14 666 (7.89%) Decision-Making
15 652 (7.73%) Data Modelling
16 648 (7.68%) Roadmaps
17 616 (7.30%) Validation
18 597 (7.08%) Change Management
19 595 (7.05%) User Acceptance Testing
20 581 (6.89%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,178 (13.96%) SQL
2 996 (11.81%) Python
3 561 (6.65%) Java
4 310 (3.67%) C#
5 229 (2.71%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.32%) TypeScript
7 167 (1.98%) PowerShell
8 112 (1.33%) C++
9 73 (0.87%) Go
10 71 (0.84%) Bash
11 68 (0.81%) PL/SQL
12 58 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 56 (0.66%) VBA
14 50 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.46%) Scala
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 32 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.33%) Bicep
20 26 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 777 (9.21%) Degree
2 723 (8.57%) Security Cleared
3 514 (6.09%) SC Cleared
4 209 (2.48%) PMP
5 201 (2.38%) PMI Certification
6 191 (2.26%) ACCA
7 180 (2.13%) CIMA
8 154 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
9 149 (1.77%) BPSS Clearance
10 140 (1.66%) Master's Degree
11 117 (1.39%) CISSP
12 87 (1.03%) DV Cleared
13 81 (0.96%) CISM
14 70 (0.83%) Azure Certification
15 63 (0.75%) AWS Certification
16 44 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
17 37 (0.44%) ISTQB
18 36 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
19 35 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
20 30 (0.36%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 459 (5.44%) Data Quality
2 401 (4.75%) QA
3 337 (3.99%) PMO
4 300 (3.56%) GDPR
5 152 (1.80%) NIST
6 130 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.36%) SLA
8 99 (1.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 91 (1.08%) IFRS
10 77 (0.91%) Accessibility
11 74 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 68 (0.81%) GRC
13 60 (0.71%) ISO 20022
14 48 (0.57%) GAAP
15 40 (0.47%) PSD2
16 37 (0.44%) SEPA
17 36 (0.43%) NCSC
18 34 (0.40%) MiFID
19 27 (0.32%) Basel III
20 26 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 303 (3.59%) Docker
2 151 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 60 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.40%) vSphere
5 24 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.15%) NFS
8 12 (0.14%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.095%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.071%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.059%) HDFS
13 4 (0.047%) ISA Server
13 4 (0.047%) KVM
13 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.036%) Firmware
14 3 (0.036%) GridGain
14 3 (0.036%) RACF
14 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 398 (4.72%) Kubernetes
2 261 (3.09%) Terraform
3 133 (1.58%) Ansible
4 90 (1.07%) Grafana
5 72 (0.85%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.59%) SCCM
8 36 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Progress Chef
12 17 (0.20%) Argo
13 15 (0.18%) Control-M
14 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 13 (0.15%) Puppet
16 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.14%) CASB
17 11 (0.13%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,117 (13.24%) Microsoft
2 809 (9.59%) SAP
3 729 (8.64%) Oracle
4 329 (3.90%) ServiceNow
5 218 (2.58%) Databricks
6 191 (2.26%) Salesforce
7 179 (2.12%) Google
8 146 (1.73%) Cisco
9 145 (1.72%) Workday
10 123 (1.46%) Splunk
11 116 (1.37%) VMware
12 105 (1.24%) IBM
13 76 (0.90%) Ariba
13 76 (0.90%) Citrix
14 72 (0.85%) CyberArk
14 72 (0.85%) Sage
15 56 (0.66%) Informatica
16 54 (0.64%) OpenAI
17 51 (0.60%) Bloomberg
18 49 (0.58%) Palo Alto