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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,830 7,568 7,698
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.42% 22.98% 19.77%
As % of the General category 33.47% 36.22% 34.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,049 4,990 5,114
10th Percentile £360 £334 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% -5.22% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £681 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 295 142 195
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £14.70
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.90 £24.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.64 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +48.34% -22.26% +46.62%
75th Percentile £44.48 £63.00 £43.13
90th Percentile £80.75 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.36 £38.12
% change year-on-year +66.80% -30.86% +23.95%

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 29,373 20,896 22,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.45% 57.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,418 13,029 14,038
10th Percentile £313 £278 £290
25th Percentile £415 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £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 2,225 1,136 1,378
10th Percentile £13.92 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.30 £17.08
Median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +31.45%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.00 £58.37
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.08 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +51.72%

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 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 13 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 13 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 8,557 £550 - 14,160
London 0 5,159 £588 -2.08% 9,521
UK excluding London -1 3,880 £505 +1.00% 6,482
Work from Home -1 2,820 £550 -4.35% 6,092
North of England 0 1,335 £500 +6.72% 1,621
South East -1 731 £500 -5.66% 1,519
North West 0 690 £500 +9.65% 984
Midlands 0 634 £500 +11.11% 764
Yorkshire 0 578 £514 +8.21% 454
Scotland 0 502 £470 -6.00% 851
West Midlands +1 479 £525 +5.85% 463
South West -4 380 £531 -3.41% 785
East of England +5 200 £525 -8.70% 491
East Midlands -2 149 £500 +21.21% 301
Wales 0 67 £530 +14.59% 188
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 - 348
North East -15 60 £500 +11.11% 200
Channel Islands +4 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
1 327 (3.33%) Confluence
2 248 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 89 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
4 87 (0.89%) Apache Spark
5 73 (0.74%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.36%) CMS
8 33 (0.34%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 9 (0.092%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 5 (0.051%) JBoss
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 516 (5.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 167 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 156 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 101 (1.03%) MS Visio
6 72 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
7 35 (0.36%) 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
11 4 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.031%) Notion
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 443 (4.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.26%) Oracle Payables
3 112 (1.14%) NetSuite
4 103 (1.05%) Oracle Receivables
5 92 (0.94%) Oracle ERP
6 71 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
7 69 (0.70%) SAP FI
8 65 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 62 (0.63%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 54 (0.55%) Oracle Financials
12 47 (0.48%) SAP CO
13 45 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
14 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.37%) Unit4 Business World
16 35 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
17 30 (0.31%) SAP ERP
17 30 (0.31%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.28%) SAP GRC
19 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,550 (15.77%) Azure
2 1,069 (10.87%) AWS
3 651 (6.62%) Power Platform
4 516 (5.25%) GCP
5 347 (3.53%) Azure DevOps
6 332 (3.38%) SaaS
7 295 (3.00%) Microsoft 365
8 293 (2.98%) GitHub
9 255 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
10 215 (2.19%) Snowflake
11 210 (2.14%) Entra ID
12 146 (1.49%) Serverless
13 140 (1.42%) OCI
14 120 (1.22%) Amazon S3
14 120 (1.22%) Power Automate
15 114 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
16 110 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
17 109 (1.11%) dbt
18 107 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
19 100 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.76%) Firewall
2 150 (1.53%) Network Security
3 94 (0.96%) VPN
4 91 (0.93%) DNS
5 65 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 58 (0.59%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) SSL
8 44 (0.45%) BGP
8 44 (0.45%) DHCP
9 43 (0.44%) LAN
10 39 (0.40%) HTTP
11 30 (0.31%) Multicast
12 28 (0.28%) Internet
12 28 (0.28%) Wireless
13 27 (0.27%) OSPF
14 25 (0.25%) VLAN
15 24 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
16 21 (0.21%) SAN
17 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
18 19 (0.19%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 532 (5.41%) Power BI
2 278 (2.83%) SQL Server
3 259 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
4 199 (2.02%) Metadata
5 174 (1.77%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.49%) PostgreSQL
7 144 (1.46%) Data Lake
8 132 (1.34%) Tableau
9 84 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
10 80 (0.81%) NoSQL
11 75 (0.76%) BigQuery
12 71 (0.72%) MongoDB
12 71 (0.72%) Oracle Database
13 64 (0.65%) Big Data
14 61 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (0.54%) Power Query
16 51 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
18 45 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 43 (0.44%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 669 (6.81%) JIRA
2 283 (2.88%) Git
3 161 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 101 (1.03%) GitLab
5 47 (0.48%) Selenium
6 46 (0.47%) JUnit
7 36 (0.37%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.31%) ERwin
8 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.27%) Maven
9 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.26%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.26%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
11 25 (0.25%) Postman
12 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 22 (0.22%) REST Assured
14 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
15 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,903 (29.53%) Social Skills
2 1,897 (19.30%) Banking
3 1,376 (14.00%) Analytical Skills
4 536 (5.45%) Public Sector
5 533 (5.42%) Legal
6 399 (4.06%) Organisational Skills
7 384 (3.91%) Investment Banking
8 374 (3.80%) Retail
9 360 (3.66%) Financial Institution
10 349 (3.55%) Front Office
11 286 (2.91%) Influencing Skills
12 229 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
13 203 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 181 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 164 (1.67%) Billing
16 162 (1.65%) General Ledger
17 158 (1.61%) Marketing
18 156 (1.59%) Local Government
19 140 (1.42%) Law
20 136 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,418 (14.43%) Analyst
2 1,071 (10.90%) Lead
3 1,050 (10.68%) Senior
4 970 (9.87%) Developer
5 862 (8.77%) Architect
6 727 (7.40%) Business Analyst
7 707 (7.19%) Project Manager
8 697 (7.09%) Consultant
9 321 (3.27%) Solutions Architect
10 316 (3.21%) Data Engineer
11 251 (2.55%) Financial Analyst
12 226 (2.30%) Senior Manager
13 203 (2.07%) Accountant
14 199 (2.02%) Java Developer
15 198 (2.01%) Data Analyst
16 183 (1.86%) Programme Manager
17 182 (1.85%) Senior Developer
18 181 (1.84%) Finance Manager
19 178 (1.81%) IT Manager
20 173 (1.76%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (3.41%) REST
2 276 (2.81%) .NET
3 258 (2.62%) Kafka
4 254 (2.58%) Oracle Fusion
5 250 (2.54%) React
6 183 (1.86%) Middleware
7 178 (1.81%) Spring
8 166 (1.69%) Spring Boot
9 144 (1.46%) PySpark
10 127 (1.29%) RESTful
11 108 (1.10%) Redux
12 101 (1.03%) Node.js
13 96 (0.98%) JSON
14 95 (0.97%) XML
15 92 (0.94%) AngularJS
16 90 (0.92%) OAuth
17 71 (0.72%) SOAP
18 62 (0.63%) Web Services
19 60 (0.61%) HTML
20 57 (0.58%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 492 (5.01%) Onboarding
2 468 (4.76%) Product Ownership
3 425 (4.32%) Cloud Native
4 262 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
5 243 (2.47%) Data Structures
6 221 (2.25%) Management Information System
7 203 (2.07%) Virtual Team
8 188 (1.91%) Derivative
9 182 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
10 172 (1.75%) Distributed Systems
11 159 (1.62%) Fixed Income
12 158 (1.61%) Data Centre
13 157 (1.60%) AI Agents
14 153 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 134 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
16 120 (1.22%) Equities
17 110 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
18 107 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
19 104 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
20 100 (1.02%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 362 (3.68%) Windows
2 299 (3.04%) Linux
3 153 (1.56%) Unix
4 83 (0.84%) Windows Server
5 51 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 44 (0.45%) Apple iOS
7 39 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) zOS
9 34 (0.35%) Solaris
10 33 (0.34%) Android
11 27 (0.27%) Mac OS
12 15 (0.15%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
15 7 (0.071%) VMS
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 5 (0.051%) MVS
18 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2012
19 2 (0.020%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,352 (23.93%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,014 (20.49%) Agile
3 1,341 (13.64%) Migration
4 1,296 (13.18%) Problem-Solving
5 1,171 (11.91%) AI
6 1,166 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,131 (11.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,042 (10.60%) CI/CD
9 1,029 (10.47%) ERP
10 1,012 (10.30%) DevOps
11 996 (10.13%) Analytics
12 900 (9.16%) Decision-Making
13 803 (8.17%) Validation
14 797 (8.11%) Roadmaps
15 778 (7.91%) Data Modelling
16 755 (7.68%) User Acceptance Testing
17 745 (7.58%) Project Management
18 717 (7.29%) Change Management
19 654 (6.65%) Business Intelligence
20 648 (6.59%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,268 (12.90%) SQL
2 1,213 (12.34%) Python
3 640 (6.51%) Java
4 378 (3.85%) C#
5 261 (2.66%) JavaScript
6 249 (2.53%) PowerShell
7 233 (2.37%) TypeScript
8 132 (1.34%) Bash
9 99 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 85 (0.86%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.78%) C++
12 70 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 69 (0.70%) Go
14 66 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 53 (0.54%) Bicep
16 44 (0.45%) VBA
17 38 (0.39%) Apex Code
17 38 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 37 (0.38%) Korn
19 36 (0.37%) Scala
Qualifications
1 762 (7.75%) Security Cleared
2 712 (7.24%) Degree
3 545 (5.54%) SC Cleared
4 241 (2.45%) PMP
5 213 (2.17%) PMI Certification
6 208 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 194 (1.97%) ACCA
8 171 (1.74%) CIMA
9 151 (1.54%) CISSP
10 136 (1.38%) DV Cleared
11 120 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 100 (1.02%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.87%) CISM
14 78 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
15 69 (0.70%) Master's Degree
16 63 (0.64%) AWS Certification
17 51 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 42 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 35 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 630 (6.41%) Data Quality
2 409 (4.16%) QA
3 355 (3.61%) PMO
4 265 (2.70%) GDPR
5 154 (1.57%) NIST
6 122 (1.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 107 (1.09%) GRC
7 107 (1.09%) SLA
8 101 (1.03%) Accessibility
9 100 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 98 (1.00%) IFRS
11 58 (0.59%) GAAP
11 58 (0.59%) ISO 20022
12 43 (0.44%) PCI DSS
13 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
14 34 (0.35%) SEPA
15 29 (0.30%) COBIT
16 28 (0.28%) MiFID
16 28 (0.28%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.27%) EMIR
System Software
1 266 (2.71%) Docker
2 235 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 72 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
5 24 (0.24%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
8 12 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
10 7 (0.071%) IAG
11 5 (0.051%) ACF2
11 5 (0.051%) GPFS
11 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 4 (0.041%) KVM
12 4 (0.041%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.041%) zsh
13 3 (0.031%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 438 (4.46%) Kubernetes
2 346 (3.52%) Terraform
3 159 (1.62%) Ansible
4 87 (0.89%) Grafana
5 77 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
6 70 (0.71%) Prometheus
7 58 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (0.54%) SCCM
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
9 26 (0.26%) Progress Chef
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
12 16 (0.16%) Puppet
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 14 (0.14%) HP ALM
14 13 (0.13%) Istio
15 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.12%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,337 (13.60%) Microsoft
2 862 (8.77%) Oracle
3 840 (8.55%) SAP
4 377 (3.84%) ServiceNow
5 325 (3.31%) Databricks
6 230 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 222 (2.26%) Google
8 164 (1.67%) IBM
9 135 (1.37%) VMware
10 133 (1.35%) Workday
11 112 (1.14%) Cisco
12 106 (1.08%) Splunk
13 91 (0.93%) Ariba
13 91 (0.93%) CyberArk
14 72 (0.73%) OpenAI
15 64 (0.65%) Sage
16 60 (0.61%) Citrix
17 51 (0.52%) Informatica
18 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
19 45 (0.46%) Murex