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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,996 7,446 7,736
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.32% 22.56% 20.05%
As % of the General category 32.93% 35.44% 34.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,097 4,861 4,968
10th Percentile £360 £332 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -6.61% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £787 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £495 £513
% change year-on-year +2.37% -3.41% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 136 154
10th Percentile £15.04 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £20.79 £23.70
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.89 £34.25
Median % change year-on-year +47.10% -12.74% +33.22%
75th Percentile - £62.50 £52.88
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.75 £70.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £34.00
% change year-on-year +67.72% -22.91% +21.52%

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 30,354 21,013 22,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.64% 63.65% 57.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,834 13,015 13,481
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,461 1,201 1,144
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.59
25th Percentile £16.38 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -32.93% +36.36%
75th Percentile £53.87 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.50 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.39 £37.50
% change year-on-year +40.25% -42.96% +44.23%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 8,620 £550 - 11,775
London 0 5,220 £585 -0.17% 7,571
UK excluding London 0 3,916 £507 +2.37% 5,581
Work from Home -1 2,847 £550 -2.65% 6,899
North of England 0 1,345 £507 +9.62% 1,271
South East -2 743 £500 -3.38% 1,557
North West -1 673 £500 +11.11% 689
Midlands -1 614 £500 +6.61% 706
Yorkshire 0 590 £514 +5.17% 428
Scotland 0 539 £463 -5.42% 651
West Midlands 0 460 £514 +0.29% 432
South West -7 351 £550 -4.35% 693
East of England +5 222 £555 -0.22% 483
East Midlands -4 151 £500 +19.05% 274
North East -9 75 £488 +11.43% 170
Northern Ireland -1 66 £510 +4.62% 188
Wales 0 61 £525 +13.51% 127
Channel Islands +2 7 £550 - 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
1 334 (3.34%) Confluence
2 262 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 94 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 81 (0.81%) Apache Spark
5 69 (0.69%) Apache
6 48 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 26 (0.26%) SAS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 17 (0.17%) Camunda
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.11%) CICS
14 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 7 (0.070%) Ethereum
17 6 (0.060%) Appian
17 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
18 5 (0.050%) JBoss
18 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 531 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 230 (2.30%) Microsoft Office
3 195 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 149 (1.49%) Microsoft Project
5 87 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.080%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
10 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.040%) Sketch
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
14 1 (0.010%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 439 (4.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 128 (1.28%) Oracle Payables
3 106 (1.06%) Oracle Receivables
4 105 (1.05%) NetSuite
5 94 (0.94%) Oracle ERP
6 77 (0.77%) Oracle EBS
6 77 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
7 73 (0.73%) SAP FI
8 63 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
9 58 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 53 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
11 50 (0.50%) SAP CO
12 45 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
13 38 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
14 37 (0.37%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.36%) Workday HCM
16 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
17 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
18 26 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
18 26 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,578 (15.79%) Azure
2 1,081 (10.81%) AWS
3 681 (6.81%) Power Platform
4 549 (5.49%) GCP
5 355 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
6 331 (3.31%) SaaS
7 327 (3.27%) GitHub
8 317 (3.17%) Microsoft 365
9 278 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
10 221 (2.21%) Entra ID
11 220 (2.20%) Snowflake
12 158 (1.58%) Serverless
13 146 (1.46%) OCI
14 133 (1.33%) GitHub Actions
15 127 (1.27%) dbt
16 124 (1.24%) Power Automate
17 121 (1.21%) Microsoft Copilot
18 119 (1.19%) Amazon S3
18 119 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
19 105 (1.05%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 171 (1.71%) Firewall
2 153 (1.53%) Network Security
3 103 (1.03%) VPN
4 86 (0.86%) DNS
5 62 (0.62%) TCP/IP
6 57 (0.57%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.45%) BGP
9 44 (0.44%) SSL
10 36 (0.36%) HTTP
11 34 (0.34%) Multicast
11 34 (0.34%) VLAN
12 33 (0.33%) LAN
13 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.30%) Wireless
14 26 (0.26%) OSPF
15 25 (0.25%) Internet
15 25 (0.25%) SAN
16 18 (0.18%) SD-WAN
17 17 (0.17%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 549 (5.49%) Power BI
2 290 (2.90%) SQL Server
3 257 (2.57%) Data Warehouse
4 206 (2.06%) Metadata
5 179 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.46%) Data Lake
7 135 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
8 121 (1.21%) Tableau
9 83 (0.83%) NoSQL
10 81 (0.81%) Oracle Database
11 80 (0.80%) BigQuery
12 77 (0.77%) MongoDB
13 76 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 59 (0.59%) Delta Lake
15 56 (0.56%) Power Query
15 56 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
16 51 (0.51%) Big Data
17 48 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
18 46 (0.46%) Db2
19 44 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 666 (6.66%) JIRA
2 309 (3.09%) Git
3 173 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 105 (1.05%) GitLab
5 57 (0.57%) Selenium
6 51 (0.51%) JUnit
7 37 (0.37%) SonarQube
8 36 (0.36%) Maven
9 34 (0.34%) Claude Code
10 33 (0.33%) Bitbucket
11 31 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 30 (0.30%) ERwin
13 29 (0.29%) Gradle
13 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.27%) Cucumber
15 23 (0.23%) Cypress.io
16 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
17 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
18 20 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 3,103 (31.04%) Social Skills
2 2,040 (20.41%) Banking
3 1,403 (14.04%) Analytical Skills
4 542 (5.42%) Legal
5 532 (5.32%) Public Sector
6 445 (4.45%) Organisational Skills
7 394 (3.94%) Investment Banking
8 386 (3.86%) Retail
9 342 (3.42%) Front Office
10 336 (3.36%) Influencing Skills
11 321 (3.21%) Financial Institution
12 218 (2.18%) Documentation Skills
13 205 (2.05%) Manufacturing
14 197 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 177 (1.77%) General Ledger
16 171 (1.71%) Marketing
17 164 (1.64%) Billing
18 162 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
19 151 (1.51%) Local Government
20 143 (1.43%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,446 (14.47%) Analyst
2 1,082 (10.82%) Senior
3 1,013 (10.13%) Lead
4 988 (9.88%) Developer
5 887 (8.87%) Architect
6 741 (7.41%) Business Analyst
7 719 (7.19%) Consultant
8 693 (6.93%) Project Manager
9 334 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
10 308 (3.08%) Data Engineer
11 264 (2.64%) Financial Analyst
12 220 (2.20%) Senior Manager
13 213 (2.13%) Java Developer
14 203 (2.03%) Data Analyst
15 200 (2.00%) Senior Developer
16 190 (1.90%) Programme Manager
17 178 (1.78%) Accountant
17 178 (1.78%) IT Manager
18 177 (1.77%) Finance Manager
19 154 (1.54%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 389 (3.89%) Terraform
2 382 (3.82%) REST
3 269 (2.69%) .NET
4 266 (2.66%) Kafka
5 263 (2.63%) Oracle Fusion
6 237 (2.37%) React
7 197 (1.97%) Spring
8 193 (1.93%) Spring Boot
9 183 (1.83%) Middleware
10 148 (1.48%) PySpark
11 141 (1.41%) RESTful
12 104 (1.04%) OAuth
13 103 (1.03%) JSON
13 103 (1.03%) XML
14 88 (0.88%) SOAP
15 83 (0.83%) Redux
16 78 (0.78%) AngularJS
17 77 (0.77%) Node.js
18 76 (0.76%) Web Services
19 70 (0.70%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 516 (5.16%) Onboarding
2 513 (5.13%) Product Ownership
3 452 (4.52%) Cloud Native
4 253 (2.53%) Management Information System
5 251 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
6 237 (2.37%) Data Structures
7 226 (2.26%) Virtual Team
8 201 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
9 199 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
10 196 (1.96%) AI Agents
11 184 (1.84%) Derivative
12 161 (1.61%) Data Centre
13 160 (1.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 147 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
15 134 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
16 125 (1.25%) Fixed Income
17 114 (1.14%) Podcast
18 113 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 113 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
19 111 (1.11%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 381 (3.81%) Windows
2 316 (3.16%) Linux
3 166 (1.66%) Unix
4 88 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 57 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.42%) Windows 10
8 39 (0.39%) Android
9 36 (0.36%) zOS
10 34 (0.34%) Solaris
11 30 (0.30%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 4 (0.040%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,621 (26.22%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,039 (20.40%) Agile
3 1,352 (13.53%) Migration
4 1,319 (13.20%) Problem-Solving
5 1,285 (12.86%) AI
6 1,176 (11.76%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,156 (11.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,127 (11.27%) CI/CD
9 1,023 (10.23%) Analytics
10 1,013 (10.13%) DevOps
11 996 (9.96%) ERP
12 926 (9.26%) Decision-Making
13 857 (8.57%) Validation
14 848 (8.48%) Roadmaps
15 779 (7.79%) Data Modelling
16 776 (7.76%) Project Management
17 768 (7.68%) User Acceptance Testing
18 737 (7.37%) Change Management
19 698 (6.98%) Risk Management
20 665 (6.65%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,344 (13.45%) SQL
2 1,253 (12.54%) Python
3 656 (6.56%) Java
4 361 (3.61%) C#
5 287 (2.87%) PowerShell
6 249 (2.49%) JavaScript
7 215 (2.15%) TypeScript
8 151 (1.51%) Bash
9 113 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.97%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.80%) C++
12 71 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 65 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 61 (0.61%) Go
15 57 (0.57%) Bicep
16 49 (0.49%) Korn
17 41 (0.41%) Scala
18 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
18 36 (0.36%) Kotlin
18 36 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 778 (7.78%) Security Cleared
2 733 (7.33%) Degree
3 561 (5.61%) SC Cleared
4 259 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
5 251 (2.51%) PMP
6 221 (2.21%) PMI Certification
7 194 (1.94%) ACCA
8 169 (1.69%) CIMA
9 144 (1.44%) CISSP
10 137 (1.37%) DV Cleared
11 133 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
12 112 (1.12%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
14 83 (0.83%) CISM
15 73 (0.73%) Master's Degree
16 67 (0.67%) AWS Certification
17 52 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 44 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.37%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 690 (6.90%) Data Quality
2 435 (4.35%) QA
3 358 (3.58%) PMO
4 229 (2.29%) GDPR
5 137 (1.37%) NIST
6 121 (1.21%) GRC
7 118 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.07%) Accessibility
9 95 (0.95%) IFRS
10 92 (0.92%) SLA
11 81 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 49 (0.49%) GAAP
14 42 (0.42%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.37%) SEPA
16 36 (0.36%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) COBIT
18 28 (0.28%) EMIR
19 23 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 276 (2.76%) Docker
2 238 (2.38%) Active Directory
3 87 (0.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.25%) RACF
7 18 (0.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 9 (0.090%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
12 6 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
13 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) GridGain
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 488 (4.88%) Kubernetes
2 177 (1.77%) Ansible
3 99 (0.99%) Grafana
4 78 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
5 69 (0.69%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.64%) SCCM
7 58 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
8 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 19 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 13 (0.13%) Istio
12 13 (0.13%) Puppet
13 12 (0.12%) FortiGate
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
15 10 (0.10%) vRealize
16 9 (0.090%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,438 (14.39%) Microsoft
2 895 (8.95%) Oracle
3 863 (8.63%) SAP
4 375 (3.75%) ServiceNow
5 365 (3.65%) Databricks
6 236 (2.36%) Salesforce
7 231 (2.31%) Google
8 183 (1.83%) IBM
9 141 (1.41%) VMware
10 132 (1.32%) Workday
11 124 (1.24%) Cisco
12 118 (1.18%) Splunk
13 101 (1.01%) Ariba
14 87 (0.87%) OpenAI
15 86 (0.86%) CyberArk
16 58 (0.58%) Citrix
17 56 (0.56%) Bloomberg
18 52 (0.52%) Informatica
19 51 (0.51%) Murex
19 51 (0.51%) Sage