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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,795 7,418 8,163
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.59% 22.70% 19.09%
As % of the General category 33.92% 36.01% 33.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,072 4,872 5,470
10th Percentile £358 £350 £350
25th Percentile £448 £424 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £719
90th Percentile £800 £813 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 149 249
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £13.31
25th Percentile £20.45 £22.90 £17.50
Median hourly rate £42.30 £32.50 £32.12
Median % change year-on-year +30.15% +1.20% +4.42%
75th Percentile £56.38 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £87.10 £75.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.40 £34.61
% change year-on-year +60.44% -20.82% -5.64%

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 28,879 20,600 24,454
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.81% 63.03% 57.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,287 12,940 15,286
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £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 +5.93% -3.67% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,012 1,046 1,883
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.36 £12.99
25th Percentile £18.38 £16.33 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.22 £32.90
Median % change year-on-year +19.42% -17.27% +7.71%
75th Percentile £61.50 £53.25 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £71.88 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £23.10 £32.12
% change year-on-year +40.69% -28.07% +23.52%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 8,549 £550 - 5,641
London 0 5,129 £575 -4.17% 3,217
UK excluding London +1 3,906 £500 +1.01% 3,137
Work from Home -1 2,858 £550 -4.35% 2,157
North of England 0 1,315 £500 +7.53% 839
South East 0 732 £500 -4.76% 925
North West +3 692 £475 +5.56% 428
Midlands +1 668 £500 +9.89% 464
Yorkshire 0 574 £525 +7.69% 314
Scotland 0 498 £475 -3.06% 191
West Midlands +1 494 £500 - 259
South West -4 384 £525 -4.55% 362
East of England +5 210 £528 -6.22% 248
East Midlands 0 166 £488 +12.72% 204
Wales +3 85 £525 +13.51% 69
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +11.76% 98
North East -15 50 £500 +13.96% 105
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
1 341 (3.48%) Confluence
2 231 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 85 (0.87%) Apache Spark
4 74 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
5 61 (0.62%) Apache
6 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.35%) SAS
8 30 (0.31%) CMS
9 25 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) CICS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.12%) Camunda
12 12 (0.12%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.071%) Appian
16 6 (0.061%) Hyperledger
17 5 (0.051%) WebLogic
18 4 (0.041%) JBoss
Applications
1 522 (5.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.31%) Microsoft Office
3 174 (1.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 154 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 120 (1.23%) MS Visio
6 68 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.051%) Sketch
8 5 (0.051%) Trello
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
10 2 (0.020%) Adobe Premiere
10 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.020%) Final Cut Pro
10 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 450 (4.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 117 (1.19%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 98 (1.00%) Oracle Receivables
5 81 (0.83%) Oracle ERP
6 77 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
8 61 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
9 54 (0.55%) Oracle General Ledger
10 53 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
11 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
12 45 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
13 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 42 (0.43%) Aladdin
15 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
16 30 (0.31%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.29%) SAP ERP
18 27 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
19 26 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
19 26 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,514 (15.46%) Azure
2 1,111 (11.34%) AWS
3 649 (6.63%) Power Platform
4 505 (5.16%) GCP
5 328 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
6 322 (3.29%) SaaS
7 281 (2.87%) Microsoft 365
8 273 (2.79%) GitHub
9 230 (2.35%) Dynamics 365
10 202 (2.06%) Snowflake
11 190 (1.94%) Entra ID
12 146 (1.49%) Serverless
13 130 (1.33%) OCI
14 128 (1.31%) Amazon S3
15 107 (1.09%) Power Automate
16 105 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
17 100 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
17 100 (1.02%) Microsoft Copilot
18 98 (1.00%) dbt
19 93 (0.95%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 189 (1.93%) Firewall
2 147 (1.50%) Network Security
3 87 (0.89%) DNS
4 83 (0.85%) VPN
5 64 (0.65%) WAN
6 63 (0.64%) TCP/IP
7 45 (0.46%) BGP
8 44 (0.45%) SSL
9 40 (0.41%) LAN
10 36 (0.37%) DHCP
11 35 (0.36%) HTTP
12 34 (0.35%) Multicast
13 31 (0.32%) OSPF
14 26 (0.27%) Internet
15 24 (0.25%) MPLS
16 23 (0.23%) SD-WAN
17 22 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
18 20 (0.20%) Wireless
19 18 (0.18%) SAN
19 18 (0.18%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 546 (5.57%) Power BI
2 275 (2.81%) SQL Server
3 250 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
4 207 (2.11%) Metadata
5 184 (1.88%) Relational Database
6 179 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
7 155 (1.58%) Tableau
8 143 (1.46%) Data Lake
9 92 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
10 84 (0.86%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.72%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.70%) Big Data
13 69 (0.70%) BigQuery
14 65 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
15 49 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
16 48 (0.49%) Power Query
17 45 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 41 (0.42%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 693 (7.08%) JIRA
2 262 (2.67%) Git
3 175 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 98 (1.00%) GitLab
5 56 (0.57%) JUnit
6 47 (0.48%) Cucumber
7 44 (0.45%) Selenium
8 30 (0.31%) Postman
9 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.27%) ERwin
10 26 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
11 25 (0.26%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 23 (0.23%) Maven
13 23 (0.23%) SonarQube
14 21 (0.21%) MLflow
15 19 (0.19%) Zephyr
16 18 (0.18%) Bitbucket
17 17 (0.17%) Hudson
17 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,868 (29.28%) Social Skills
2 1,812 (18.50%) Banking
3 1,331 (13.59%) Analytical Skills
4 562 (5.74%) Public Sector
5 492 (5.02%) Legal
6 380 (3.88%) Investment Banking
7 367 (3.75%) Financial Institution
8 344 (3.51%) Front Office
9 331 (3.38%) Organisational Skills
10 326 (3.33%) Retail
11 258 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
12 244 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
13 186 (1.90%) Manufacturing
14 168 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 167 (1.70%) Local Government
16 163 (1.66%) Billing
17 159 (1.62%) General Ledger
18 147 (1.50%) Marketing
19 134 (1.37%) Law
20 132 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,447 (14.77%) Analyst
2 1,049 (10.71%) Lead
3 1,046 (10.68%) Senior
4 991 (10.12%) Developer
5 902 (9.21%) Architect
6 753 (7.69%) Business Analyst
7 711 (7.26%) Project Manager
8 665 (6.79%) Consultant
9 342 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
10 322 (3.29%) Data Engineer
11 238 (2.43%) Financial Analyst
12 231 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 214 (2.18%) Java Developer
14 206 (2.10%) Accountant
15 203 (2.07%) Data Analyst
16 187 (1.91%) Programme Manager
17 185 (1.89%) Finance Manager
18 181 (1.85%) Senior Developer
19 178 (1.82%) Software Engineer
20 176 (1.80%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (3.13%) REST
2 271 (2.77%) React
3 270 (2.76%) Kafka
4 268 (2.74%) .NET
5 211 (2.15%) Oracle Fusion
6 199 (2.03%) Middleware
7 184 (1.88%) Spring
8 171 (1.75%) Spring Boot
9 138 (1.41%) RESTful
10 118 (1.20%) PySpark
11 117 (1.19%) Redux
12 113 (1.15%) Node.js
13 94 (0.96%) AngularJS
13 94 (0.96%) JSON
14 93 (0.95%) OAuth
15 80 (0.82%) XML
16 67 (0.68%) CSS
17 65 (0.66%) HTML
17 65 (0.66%) SOAP
18 64 (0.65%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 461 (4.71%) Onboarding
2 427 (4.36%) Product Ownership
3 416 (4.25%) Cloud Native
4 273 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
5 222 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 220 (2.25%) Data Structures
7 178 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
8 175 (1.79%) Derivative
9 174 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
10 173 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 171 (1.75%) Fixed Income
12 165 (1.68%) Virtual Team
13 164 (1.67%) Data Centre
14 137 (1.40%) Greenfield Project
15 130 (1.33%) AI Agents
16 125 (1.28%) Equities
17 117 (1.19%) Public Cloud
18 111 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
19 110 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
20 96 (0.98%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 323 (3.30%) Windows
2 282 (2.88%) Linux
3 162 (1.65%) Unix
4 73 (0.75%) Windows Server
5 39 (0.40%) Solaris
5 39 (0.40%) zOS
6 36 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 35 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 34 (0.35%) Windows 10
9 29 (0.30%) Android
10 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
11 20 (0.20%) AIX
12 9 (0.092%) Ubuntu
12 9 (0.092%) VMS
13 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,128 (21.73%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,972 (20.13%) Agile
3 1,355 (13.83%) Migration
4 1,311 (13.38%) Problem-Solving
5 1,138 (11.62%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,116 (11.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,078 (11.01%) AI
8 1,025 (10.46%) DevOps
9 1,011 (10.32%) CI/CD
10 1,010 (10.31%) ERP
11 969 (9.89%) Analytics
12 868 (8.86%) Decision-Making
13 820 (8.37%) Validation
14 807 (8.24%) Roadmaps
15 803 (8.20%) Data Modelling
16 773 (7.89%) Project Management
16 773 (7.89%) User Acceptance Testing
17 707 (7.22%) Change Management
18 685 (6.99%) Business Intelligence
19 628 (6.41%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,292 (13.19%) SQL
2 1,182 (12.07%) Python
3 655 (6.69%) Java
4 381 (3.89%) C#
5 266 (2.72%) TypeScript
6 261 (2.66%) JavaScript
7 220 (2.25%) PowerShell
8 98 (1.00%) Bash
9 92 (0.94%) PL/SQL
10 83 (0.85%) C++
11 82 (0.84%) Go
12 75 (0.77%) T-SQL
13 70 (0.71%) Shell Script
14 59 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 51 (0.52%) VBA
16 48 (0.49%) Scala
17 40 (0.41%) Bicep
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
19 33 (0.34%) Kotlin
20 29 (0.30%) R
Qualifications
1 751 (7.67%) Degree
2 745 (7.61%) Security Cleared
3 533 (5.44%) SC Cleared
4 227 (2.32%) PMP
5 212 (2.16%) ACCA
6 204 (2.08%) PMI Certification
7 194 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
8 191 (1.95%) CIMA
9 161 (1.64%) CISSP
10 131 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
11 108 (1.10%) DV Cleared
12 94 (0.96%) CISM
13 93 (0.95%) Azure Certification
14 89 (0.91%) Master's Degree
15 74 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
16 60 (0.61%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 45 (0.46%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 605 (6.18%) Data Quality
2 427 (4.36%) QA
3 345 (3.52%) PMO
4 293 (2.99%) GDPR
5 163 (1.66%) NIST
6 128 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.13%) GRC
7 111 (1.13%) SLA
8 110 (1.12%) IFRS
9 102 (1.04%) Accessibility
10 98 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 68 (0.69%) ISO 20022
12 62 (0.63%) GAAP
13 56 (0.57%) PCI DSS
14 43 (0.44%) SEPA
15 37 (0.38%) Solvency II
16 34 (0.35%) NCSC
17 31 (0.32%) PSD2
18 30 (0.31%) SOC 2
19 29 (0.30%) EMIR
System Software
1 281 (2.87%) Docker
2 205 (2.09%) Active Directory
3 62 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
5 27 (0.28%) vSphere
6 22 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 21 (0.21%) RACF
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 13 (0.13%) NFS
11 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.061%) GPFS
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.041%) IAG
15 3 (0.031%) ACF2
15 3 (0.031%) GridGain
15 3 (0.031%) SRDF
16 2 (0.020%) Squid
Systems Management
1 444 (4.53%) Kubernetes
2 318 (3.25%) Terraform
3 158 (1.61%) Ansible
4 95 (0.97%) Grafana
5 80 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 68 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 52 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.50%) SCCM
9 27 (0.28%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) FortiGate
11 19 (0.19%) Progress Chef
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) vRealize
13 16 (0.16%) Argo
13 16 (0.16%) HP ALM
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 1,254 (12.80%) Microsoft
2 845 (8.63%) SAP
3 831 (8.48%) Oracle
4 346 (3.53%) ServiceNow
5 298 (3.04%) Databricks
6 219 (2.24%) Salesforce
7 215 (2.19%) Google
8 138 (1.41%) IBM
8 138 (1.41%) Workday
9 125 (1.28%) VMware
10 120 (1.23%) Splunk
11 111 (1.13%) Cisco
12 96 (0.98%) CyberArk
13 92 (0.94%) Ariba
14 66 (0.67%) OpenAI
14 66 (0.67%) Sage
15 65 (0.66%) Citrix
16 58 (0.59%) Informatica
17 55 (0.56%) Bloomberg
18 49 (0.50%) Murex