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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,931 7,555 7,667
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.53% 22.97% 19.68%
As % of the General category 33.60% 36.25% 34.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,121 4,988 5,124
10th Percentile £360 £333 £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 £688 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +2.02% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 143 194
10th Percentile £16.00 £16.00 £14.65
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.13 £24.05
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +45.22%
75th Percentile £50.00 £63.75 £43.44
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.86 £38.12
% change year-on-year +63.69% -29.55% +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 29,557 20,841 22,339
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.14% 63.36% 57.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,559 13,017 14,072
10th Percentile £313 £278 £290
25th Percentile £413 £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 2,204 1,118 1,390
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.30 £17.02
Median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £59.00 £50.69 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.05 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.23 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +45.55% -41.92% +46.90%

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 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 8 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 8 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 8,653 £550 - 7,818
London 0 5,233 £588 -2.08% 4,785
UK excluding London 0 3,913 £505 +2.02% 3,908
Work from Home -1 2,838 £550 -4.35% 2,979
North of England 0 1,340 £500 +6.61% 1,055
South East -1 745 £505 -4.72% 1,109
North West 0 704 £500 +9.29% 595
Midlands 0 640 £525 +16.67% 544
Yorkshire 0 572 £517 +8.80% 334
Scotland 0 508 £475 -5.00% 301
West Midlands +1 485 £525 +5.00% 331
South West -4 377 £525 -5.47% 440
East of England +6 209 £525 -8.70% 297
East Midlands -2 149 £500 +20.48% 213
Wales +2 68 £530 +14.59% 111
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 - 121
North East -14 57 £500 +11.11% 135
Channel Islands +4 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
1 331 (3.33%) Confluence
2 251 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 88 (0.89%) Apache Spark
4 86 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
5 69 (0.69%) Apache
6 50 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) CICS
11 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
13 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 7 (0.070%) Appian
16 5 (0.050%) JBoss
16 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 539 (5.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.28%) Microsoft Office
3 168 (1.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 163 (1.64%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.06%) MS Visio
6 74 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 35 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.060%) Sketch
11 5 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.050%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.050%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.050%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.030%) Notion
14 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
14 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 454 (4.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.20%) Oracle Payables
3 114 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 92 (0.93%) Oracle ERP
6 71 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.68%) SAP FI
8 67 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 61 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
10 55 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 46 (0.46%) SAP CO
13 45 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 43 (0.43%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.36%) Unit4 Business World
16 35 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
17 32 (0.32%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
19 28 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
19 28 (0.28%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,565 (15.76%) Azure
2 1,081 (10.89%) AWS
3 672 (6.77%) Power Platform
4 518 (5.22%) GCP
5 346 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
6 336 (3.38%) SaaS
7 300 (3.02%) Microsoft 365
8 295 (2.97%) GitHub
9 256 (2.58%) Dynamics 365
10 217 (2.19%) Snowflake
11 209 (2.10%) Entra ID
12 148 (1.49%) OCI
13 147 (1.48%) Serverless
14 125 (1.26%) Amazon S3
14 125 (1.26%) Power Automate
15 113 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
16 112 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
17 108 (1.09%) dbt
18 107 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
19 103 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 181 (1.82%) Firewall
2 149 (1.50%) Network Security
3 97 (0.98%) VPN
4 92 (0.93%) DNS
5 67 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 57 (0.57%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) SSL
8 46 (0.46%) BGP
9 45 (0.45%) DHCP
10 40 (0.40%) LAN
11 38 (0.38%) HTTP
12 32 (0.32%) Multicast
13 28 (0.28%) OSPF
13 28 (0.28%) Wireless
14 27 (0.27%) Internet
15 26 (0.26%) VLAN
16 24 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
17 22 (0.22%) SAN
18 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
19 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 552 (5.56%) Power BI
2 283 (2.85%) SQL Server
3 262 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
4 198 (1.99%) Metadata
5 179 (1.80%) Relational Database
6 155 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
7 146 (1.47%) Data Lake
8 145 (1.46%) Tableau
9 88 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
10 84 (0.85%) NoSQL
11 75 (0.76%) MongoDB
12 72 (0.73%) BigQuery
12 72 (0.73%) Oracle Database
13 66 (0.66%) Big Data
14 61 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.54%) Power Query
16 51 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 50 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 47 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 43 (0.43%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 678 (6.83%) JIRA
2 286 (2.88%) Git
3 163 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 102 (1.03%) GitLab
5 46 (0.46%) JUnit
6 45 (0.45%) Selenium
7 37 (0.37%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 29 (0.29%) ERwin
10 27 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.27%) Maven
10 27 (0.27%) SonarQube
10 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 25 (0.25%) Claude Code
12 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.24%) Postman
12 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
14 19 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,930 (29.50%) Social Skills
2 1,908 (19.21%) Banking
3 1,399 (14.09%) Analytical Skills
4 551 (5.55%) Public Sector
5 524 (5.28%) Legal
6 389 (3.92%) Investment Banking
6 389 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
7 374 (3.77%) Retail
8 364 (3.67%) Financial Institution
9 347 (3.49%) Front Office
10 283 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
11 231 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
12 200 (2.01%) Manufacturing
13 180 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 162 (1.63%) Billing
15 160 (1.61%) General Ledger
16 159 (1.60%) Local Government
17 158 (1.59%) Marketing
18 143 (1.44%) Law
19 142 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,444 (14.54%) Analyst
2 1,071 (10.78%) Senior
3 1,069 (10.76%) Lead
4 985 (9.92%) Developer
5 887 (8.93%) Architect
6 742 (7.47%) Business Analyst
7 710 (7.15%) Project Manager
8 693 (6.98%) Consultant
9 337 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
10 321 (3.23%) Data Engineer
11 251 (2.53%) Financial Analyst
12 228 (2.30%) Senior Manager
13 208 (2.09%) Accountant
14 204 (2.05%) Data Analyst
15 202 (2.03%) Java Developer
16 190 (1.91%) Senior Developer
17 186 (1.87%) Programme Manager
18 185 (1.86%) Finance Manager
19 178 (1.79%) IT Manager
20 173 (1.74%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (3.34%) REST
2 277 (2.79%) .NET
3 259 (2.61%) Kafka
4 258 (2.60%) React
5 256 (2.58%) Oracle Fusion
6 193 (1.94%) Middleware
7 175 (1.76%) Spring
8 163 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 138 (1.39%) PySpark
10 128 (1.29%) RESTful
11 110 (1.11%) Redux
12 102 (1.03%) Node.js
13 97 (0.98%) JSON
14 95 (0.96%) XML
15 92 (0.93%) AngularJS
15 92 (0.93%) OAuth
16 68 (0.68%) SOAP
17 64 (0.64%) Web Services
18 62 (0.62%) HTML
19 60 (0.60%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 487 (4.90%) Onboarding
2 470 (4.73%) Product Ownership
3 427 (4.30%) Cloud Native
4 267 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
5 244 (2.46%) Data Structures
6 226 (2.28%) Management Information System
7 195 (1.96%) Virtual Team
8 187 (1.88%) Derivative
9 175 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
10 172 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
11 159 (1.60%) Fixed Income
12 158 (1.59%) Data Centre
13 156 (1.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 152 (1.53%) AI Agents
15 136 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
16 121 (1.22%) Equities
17 110 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
18 106 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
19 103 (1.04%) Public Cloud
20 101 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 361 (3.64%) Windows
2 299 (3.01%) Linux
3 153 (1.54%) Unix
4 83 (0.84%) Windows Server
5 49 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 44 (0.44%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 37 (0.37%) zOS
9 36 (0.36%) Solaris
10 33 (0.33%) Android
11 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
12 17 (0.17%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 8 (0.081%) VMS
15 6 (0.060%) HPUX
15 6 (0.060%) SUSE
16 5 (0.050%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.020%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,341 (23.57%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,040 (20.54%) Agile
3 1,365 (13.74%) Migration
4 1,318 (13.27%) Problem-Solving
5 1,182 (11.90%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,164 (11.72%) AI
7 1,141 (11.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,038 (10.45%) ERP
9 1,037 (10.44%) CI/CD
10 1,016 (10.23%) DevOps
11 1,010 (10.17%) Analytics
12 915 (9.21%) Decision-Making
13 810 (8.16%) Validation
14 804 (8.10%) Data Modelling
15 799 (8.05%) Roadmaps
16 766 (7.71%) User Acceptance Testing
17 748 (7.53%) Project Management
18 716 (7.21%) Change Management
19 679 (6.84%) Business Intelligence
20 649 (6.54%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,290 (12.99%) SQL
2 1,220 (12.28%) Python
3 635 (6.39%) Java
4 386 (3.89%) C#
5 266 (2.68%) JavaScript
6 242 (2.44%) PowerShell
7 233 (2.35%) TypeScript
8 125 (1.26%) Bash
9 100 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 82 (0.83%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.78%) C++
12 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 69 (0.69%) Go
14 68 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 51 (0.51%) Bicep
16 47 (0.47%) VBA
17 40 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 37 (0.37%) Scala
19 35 (0.35%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.35%) Korn
Qualifications
1 778 (7.83%) Security Cleared
2 736 (7.41%) Degree
3 557 (5.61%) SC Cleared
4 242 (2.44%) PMP
5 215 (2.16%) PMI Certification
6 204 (2.05%) ACCA
6 204 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 181 (1.82%) CIMA
8 155 (1.56%) CISSP
9 141 (1.42%) DV Cleared
10 122 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
11 99 (1.00%) Azure Certification
12 87 (0.88%) CISM
13 78 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
14 72 (0.73%) Master's Degree
15 60 (0.60%) AWS Certification
16 53 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
17 47 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 40 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 641 (6.45%) Data Quality
2 412 (4.15%) QA
3 366 (3.69%) PMO
4 274 (2.76%) GDPR
5 156 (1.57%) NIST
6 127 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.16%) SLA
8 112 (1.13%) GRC
9 103 (1.04%) Accessibility
9 103 (1.04%) IFRS
10 100 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 62 (0.62%) ISO 20022
12 61 (0.61%) GAAP
13 50 (0.50%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.36%) SEPA
14 36 (0.36%) Solvency II
15 31 (0.31%) COBIT
16 30 (0.30%) MiFID
16 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
17 29 (0.29%) EMIR
System Software
1 272 (2.74%) Docker
2 235 (2.37%) Active Directory
3 67 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
6 23 (0.23%) vSphere
7 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
9 11 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.070%) IAG
12 5 (0.050%) ACF2
12 5 (0.050%) GPFS
12 5 (0.050%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.040%) KVM
13 4 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 438 (4.41%) Kubernetes
2 339 (3.41%) Terraform
3 159 (1.60%) Ansible
4 88 (0.89%) Grafana
5 78 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
6 72 (0.73%) Prometheus
7 55 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (0.53%) SCCM
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 24 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
12 16 (0.16%) Puppet
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 13 (0.13%) CASB
13 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
14 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,337 (13.46%) Microsoft
2 864 (8.70%) Oracle
3 843 (8.49%) SAP
4 368 (3.71%) ServiceNow
5 326 (3.28%) Databricks
6 230 (2.32%) Salesforce
7 219 (2.21%) Google
8 161 (1.62%) IBM
9 138 (1.39%) Workday
10 130 (1.31%) VMware
11 109 (1.10%) Cisco
12 105 (1.06%) Splunk
13 93 (0.94%) Ariba
14 89 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 75 (0.76%) OpenAI
16 64 (0.64%) Sage
17 61 (0.61%) Citrix
18 50 (0.50%) Bloomberg
18 50 (0.50%) Informatica
19 46 (0.46%) Murex