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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,562 6,484 8,187
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.12% 22.16% 18.80%
As % of the General category 33.26% 35.10% 32.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,388 4,253 5,454
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £429 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £572 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.47% -0.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £700
90th Percentile £800 £830 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 109 245
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.80 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.12 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £36.00 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.82% +33.33% -11.48%
75th Percentile £54.00 £70.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.10 £83.81 £54.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £42.41 £32.12
% change year-on-year -46.94% +32.05% -28.63%

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 25,741 18,474 25,363
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.47% 63.13% 58.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,879 11,799 16,004
10th Percentile £306 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,642 793 1,943
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.69 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -14.29%
75th Percentile £60.56 £56.00 £52.20
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.37 £24.76 £28.42
% change year-on-year +10.54% -12.88% -6.94%

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 1 May 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 1 May 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 1 May 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 7,569 £538 -6.52% 4,205
London 0 4,577 £575 -8.00% 2,170
UK excluding London 0 3,407 £500 - 2,697
Work from Home -2 2,400 £525 -12.50% 1,708
North of England +3 1,129 £478 +0.53% 664
South East -1 649 £503 -2.88% 917
North West +5 609 £463 -0.27% 355
Midlands -1 593 £475 -5.00% 414
Yorkshire +1 480 £503 +0.65% 233
Scotland +1 413 £500 +2.04% 127
West Midlands 0 395 £492 -7.73% 246
South West -2 340 £503 -1.47% 293
East of England -3 196 £525 -4.55% 223
East Midlands 0 194 £463 +3.47% 165
Wales +26 95 £413 +10.00% 60
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +31.25% 53
North East -11 41 £488 +3.72% 87
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 2

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
1 330 (3.85%) Confluence
2 215 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 91 (1.06%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.67%) Apache
5 53 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
6 50 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.43%) SAS
8 24 (0.28%) CMS
9 22 (0.26%) CICS
10 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.18%) Appian
11 15 (0.18%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Camunda
12 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
13 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) TPMS
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 529 (6.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 229 (2.67%) Microsoft Office
3 175 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 175 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
4 129 (1.51%) MS Visio
5 51 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
6 32 (0.37%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.15%) Trello
8 8 (0.093%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.093%) Sketch
9 7 (0.082%) InVision
9 7 (0.082%) Notion
10 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
13 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
13 1 (0.012%) InDesign
13 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 371 (4.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.35%) Oracle Payables
3 101 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 98 (1.14%) NetSuite
5 86 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 68 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
7 65 (0.76%) SAP FI
8 59 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
9 58 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
10 53 (0.62%) SAP CO
11 51 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
12 49 (0.57%) SAP FI/CO
13 41 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
14 34 (0.40%) Oracle Cash Management
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
16 30 (0.35%) Aladdin
16 30 (0.35%) Workday HCM
17 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 29 (0.34%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,286 (15.02%) Azure
2 982 (11.47%) AWS
3 623 (7.28%) Power Platform
4 390 (4.56%) GCP
5 292 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
6 288 (3.36%) SaaS
7 271 (3.17%) Microsoft 365
8 238 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
9 234 (2.73%) GitHub
10 148 (1.73%) Snowflake
11 146 (1.71%) Serverless
12 136 (1.59%) OCI
13 130 (1.52%) Entra ID
14 118 (1.38%) Amazon S3
15 109 (1.27%) Power Automate
16 92 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
17 91 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
18 86 (1.00%) AWS Lambda
18 86 (1.00%) OpenShift
19 80 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.89%) Firewall
2 113 (1.32%) Network Security
3 77 (0.90%) WAN
4 70 (0.82%) DNS
5 61 (0.71%) VPN
6 48 (0.56%) TCP/IP
7 42 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 40 (0.47%) LAN
9 36 (0.42%) BGP
10 33 (0.39%) HTTP
11 31 (0.36%) OSPF
12 28 (0.33%) SSL
13 27 (0.32%) Multicast
14 24 (0.28%) DHCP
14 24 (0.28%) MPLS
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.25%) Internet
16 17 (0.20%) VSAN
17 16 (0.19%) Skype
17 16 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 537 (6.27%) Power BI
2 216 (2.52%) SQL Server
3 215 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
4 165 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
5 164 (1.92%) Metadata
6 145 (1.69%) Tableau
7 141 (1.65%) Relational Database
8 128 (1.49%) Data Lake
9 89 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
10 87 (1.02%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.92%) Big Data
12 67 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 60 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 58 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.49%) DynamoDB
16 42 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
16 42 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 40 (0.47%) Delta Lake
17 40 (0.47%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 686 (8.01%) JIRA
2 219 (2.56%) Git
3 184 (2.15%) Jenkins
4 115 (1.34%) GitLab
5 54 (0.63%) Cucumber
5 54 (0.63%) JUnit
6 42 (0.49%) Selenium
7 37 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
8 28 (0.33%) Postman
8 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
9 25 (0.29%) MLflow
10 22 (0.26%) Bitbucket
11 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 20 (0.23%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 17 (0.20%) ERwin
13 17 (0.20%) Hudson
13 17 (0.20%) Maven
13 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
14 15 (0.18%) TeamCity
General
1 2,597 (30.33%) Social Skills
2 1,576 (18.41%) Banking
3 1,160 (13.55%) Analytical Skills
4 554 (6.47%) Public Sector
5 350 (4.09%) Legal
6 335 (3.91%) Financial Institution
7 285 (3.33%) Investment Banking
8 282 (3.29%) Front Office
9 240 (2.80%) Retail
10 238 (2.78%) Organisational Skills
11 236 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
12 207 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 203 (2.37%) Manufacturing
14 191 (2.23%) Marketing
15 165 (1.93%) Telecoms
16 141 (1.65%) General Ledger
17 126 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
18 123 (1.44%) Local Government
19 120 (1.40%) Law
20 118 (1.38%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,312 (15.32%) Analyst
2 885 (10.34%) Developer
3 882 (10.30%) Senior
4 854 (9.97%) Lead
5 766 (8.95%) Architect
6 707 (8.26%) Business Analyst
7 683 (7.98%) Project Manager
8 597 (6.97%) Consultant
9 306 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
10 268 (3.13%) Data Engineer
11 212 (2.48%) Financial Analyst
12 202 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.20%) Finance Manager
14 181 (2.11%) Data Analyst
15 171 (2.00%) Programme Manager
16 158 (1.85%) Accountant
17 156 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 139 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
19 137 (1.60%) Senior Analyst
20 129 (1.51%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (3.13%) Kafka
2 257 (3.00%) REST
3 232 (2.71%) .NET
4 200 (2.34%) React
5 174 (2.03%) Middleware
6 152 (1.78%) Spring
7 149 (1.74%) Oracle Fusion
8 142 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 139 (1.62%) RESTful
10 108 (1.26%) Node.js
11 104 (1.21%) PySpark
12 92 (1.07%) AngularJS
13 83 (0.97%) OAuth
14 78 (0.91%) JSON
14 78 (0.91%) XML
15 75 (0.88%) Redux
16 70 (0.82%) HTML
17 68 (0.79%) CSS
18 66 (0.77%) Pandas
19 59 (0.69%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 357 (4.17%) Onboarding
2 332 (3.88%) Product Ownership
3 303 (3.54%) Cloud Native
4 224 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
5 194 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 181 (2.11%) Data Structures
7 167 (1.95%) Derivative
8 166 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
9 144 (1.68%) Data Centre
10 141 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
11 138 (1.61%) Fixed Income
12 137 (1.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 112 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
14 108 (1.26%) Equities
15 100 (1.17%) Public Cloud
15 100 (1.17%) Virtual Team
16 94 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
17 82 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
18 70 (0.82%) Mainframe
19 68 (0.79%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 280 (3.27%) Windows
2 279 (3.26%) Linux
3 147 (1.72%) Unix
4 71 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 49 (0.57%) Windows 10
6 30 (0.35%) Apple iOS
7 29 (0.34%) Android
8 28 (0.33%) zOS
9 26 (0.30%) Solaris
10 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.25%) Mac OS
12 18 (0.21%) AIX
13 8 (0.093%) VMS
14 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
15 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
15 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2016
15 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
16 4 (0.047%) HPUX
16 4 (0.047%) MVS
16 4 (0.047%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,804 (21.07%) Agile
2 1,692 (19.76%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,240 (14.48%) Problem-Solving
4 1,174 (13.71%) Migration
5 954 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 943 (11.01%) Continuous Improvement
7 920 (10.75%) DevOps
8 897 (10.48%) ERP
9 866 (10.11%) CI/CD
10 833 (9.73%) Analytics
11 809 (9.45%) AI
12 792 (9.25%) Project Management
13 752 (8.78%) Business Intelligence
14 701 (8.19%) Decision-Making
15 682 (7.97%) Data Modelling
16 678 (7.92%) Roadmaps
17 661 (7.72%) Validation
18 648 (7.57%) User Acceptance Testing
19 594 (6.94%) Change Management
20 575 (6.72%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,197 (13.98%) SQL
2 1,021 (11.92%) Python
3 576 (6.73%) Java
4 330 (3.85%) C#
5 216 (2.52%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.31%) TypeScript
7 165 (1.93%) PowerShell
8 104 (1.21%) C++
9 73 (0.85%) Bash
9 73 (0.85%) PL/SQL
10 68 (0.79%) Go
11 61 (0.71%) T-SQL
12 52 (0.61%) Shell Script
12 52 (0.61%) VBA
13 49 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 42 (0.49%) Scala
15 33 (0.39%) R
16 31 (0.36%) Kotlin
17 26 (0.30%) Bicep
17 26 (0.30%) Korn
Qualifications
1 754 (8.81%) Degree
2 698 (8.15%) Security Cleared
3 494 (5.77%) SC Cleared
4 209 (2.44%) PMP
5 206 (2.41%) ACCA
6 198 (2.31%) PMI Certification
7 189 (2.21%) CIMA
8 146 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
9 145 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
10 124 (1.45%) CISSP
11 122 (1.42%) Master's Degree
12 85 (0.99%) CISM
13 82 (0.96%) DV Cleared
14 65 (0.76%) Azure Certification
15 61 (0.71%) AWS Certification
16 48 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
17 41 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 38 (0.44%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) CBAP
20 30 (0.35%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 493 (5.76%) Data Quality
2 424 (4.95%) QA
3 334 (3.90%) PMO
4 310 (3.62%) GDPR
5 151 (1.76%) NIST
6 124 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 101 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 101 (1.18%) SLA
8 99 (1.16%) IFRS
9 79 (0.92%) Accessibility
10 78 (0.91%) GRC
11 73 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 58 (0.68%) ISO 20022
13 52 (0.61%) GAAP
14 37 (0.43%) PSD2
15 36 (0.42%) SEPA
16 34 (0.40%) NCSC
17 28 (0.33%) MiFID
18 27 (0.32%) Basel III
18 27 (0.32%) EMIR
System Software
1 293 (3.42%) Docker
2 149 (1.74%) Active Directory
3 58 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.36%) vSphere
5 25 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.13%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.070%) RACF
11 5 (0.058%) HDFS
11 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.047%) ACF2
12 4 (0.047%) Firmware
12 4 (0.047%) KVM
13 3 (0.035%) GridGain
13 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.035%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 404 (4.72%) Kubernetes
2 255 (2.98%) Terraform
3 124 (1.45%) Ansible
4 89 (1.04%) Grafana
5 69 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.60%) SCCM
8 35 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.32%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.22%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Control-M
12 15 (0.18%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.16%) Progress Chef
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
15 11 (0.13%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,107 (12.93%) Microsoft
2 777 (9.07%) SAP
3 711 (8.30%) Oracle
4 315 (3.68%) ServiceNow
5 227 (2.65%) Databricks
6 188 (2.20%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.04%) Google
8 141 (1.65%) Workday
9 121 (1.41%) Cisco
10 114 (1.33%) Splunk
11 108 (1.26%) VMware
12 98 (1.14%) IBM
13 78 (0.91%) Citrix
14 76 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 75 (0.88%) Ariba
15 75 (0.88%) Sage
16 57 (0.67%) Informatica
17 56 (0.65%) OpenAI
18 52 (0.61%) Bloomberg
19 49 (0.57%) Murex