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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,435 6,495 8,212
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.43% 22.23% 18.69%
As % of the General category 33.14% 35.28% 32.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,361 4,294 5,501
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.48% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 206 109 242
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.45 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +45.45% -15.38%
75th Percentile £42.73 £72.50 £38.12
90th Percentile £76.08 £83.20 £54.57
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -57.95% +75.00% -25.00%

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 25,456 18,409 25,556
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.62% 63.00% 58.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,818 11,792 16,203
10th Percentile £304 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £644 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,587 748 1,887
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.42 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £26.61 £28.88 £26.73
Median % change year-on-year -7.86% +8.02% -23.63%
75th Percentile £59.00 £57.31 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £27.00 £25.28
% change year-on-year -7.41% +6.82% -17.51%

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 11 April 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 11 April 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 11 April 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 7,465 £537 -7.41% 4,228
London 0 4,523 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,343 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -2 2,377 £540 -8.86% 1,715
North of England +3 1,086 £475 - 695
South East -1 661 £503 -7.59% 1,010
North West +6 582 £460 -1.08% 371
Midlands -1 577 £475 -5.00% 423
Yorkshire 0 456 £500 +2.30% 253
Scotland 0 389 £500 +5.26% 161
West Midlands 0 386 £492 -7.73% 251
South West -2 333 £525 +4.90% 302
East of England -2 201 £515 -6.36% 271
East Midlands 0 186 £447 +0.90% 171
Wales +25 105 £413 +6.45% 89
North East -6 48 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 42 £513 +46.43% 58
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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 (3.96%) Confluence
2 215 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.58%) Apache
6 48 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.43%) SAS
8 30 (0.36%) CMS
9 19 (0.23%) CICS
9 19 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.21%) Appian
11 15 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 15 (0.18%) Camunda
12 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) TPMS
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 9 (0.11%) WebLogic
Applications
1 546 (6.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 251 (2.98%) Microsoft Office
3 190 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 176 (2.09%) Microsoft Project
5 129 (1.53%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.18%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.11%) Sketch
10 8 (0.095%) InVision
11 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.059%) Notion
13 4 (0.047%) Photoshop
14 3 (0.036%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
15 2 (0.024%) InDesign
15 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
16 1 (0.012%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 363 (4.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 102 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 87 (1.03%) NetSuite
5 84 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 74 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.79%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
9 58 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
10 53 (0.63%) SAP CO
11 49 (0.58%) SAP FI/CO
12 43 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
13 37 (0.44%) Oracle Cash Management
14 35 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
16 31 (0.37%) Aladdin
16 31 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 30 (0.36%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.33%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,282 (15.20%) Azure
2 974 (11.55%) AWS
3 610 (7.23%) Power Platform
4 388 (4.60%) GCP
5 289 (3.43%) Azure DevOps
6 277 (3.28%) SaaS
7 276 (3.27%) Microsoft 365
8 236 (2.80%) Dynamics 365
9 232 (2.75%) GitHub
10 148 (1.75%) Serverless
11 146 (1.73%) OCI
12 139 (1.65%) Snowflake
13 130 (1.54%) Entra ID
14 119 (1.41%) Amazon S3
15 98 (1.16%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 89 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
18 88 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
19 86 (1.02%) OpenShift
20 76 (0.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 164 (1.94%) Firewall
2 107 (1.27%) Network Security
3 78 (0.92%) WAN
4 68 (0.81%) DNS
5 59 (0.70%) VPN
6 45 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 44 (0.52%) LAN
8 43 (0.51%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.40%) BGP
10 33 (0.39%) HTTP
11 29 (0.34%) OSPF
11 29 (0.34%) SSL
12 26 (0.31%) Multicast
13 24 (0.28%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 22 (0.26%) Wireless
16 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
17 19 (0.23%) DHCP
18 18 (0.21%) Skype
19 17 (0.20%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 528 (6.26%) Power BI
2 224 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
3 204 (2.42%) SQL Server
4 167 (1.98%) PostgreSQL
5 163 (1.93%) Metadata
6 149 (1.77%) Tableau
7 124 (1.47%) Relational Database
8 122 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 103 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
10 89 (1.06%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.92%) Big Data
12 65 (0.77%) BigQuery
13 62 (0.74%) Oracle Database
14 56 (0.66%) MongoDB
15 45 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
17 43 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
18 41 (0.49%) Power Query
19 40 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
20 39 (0.46%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 674 (7.99%) JIRA
2 215 (2.55%) Git
3 202 (2.39%) Jenkins
4 118 (1.40%) GitLab
5 61 (0.72%) JUnit
6 56 (0.66%) Cucumber
7 42 (0.50%) Selenium
7 42 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
8 31 (0.37%) Postman
9 26 (0.31%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.30%) Visual Studio
11 23 (0.27%) MLflow
12 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
13 19 (0.23%) ERwin
14 18 (0.21%) Maven
15 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
16 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
17 14 (0.17%) Hudson
18 12 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 2,651 (31.43%) Social Skills
2 1,577 (18.70%) Banking
3 1,141 (13.53%) Analytical Skills
4 616 (7.30%) Public Sector
5 328 (3.89%) Legal
6 326 (3.86%) Financial Institution
7 285 (3.38%) Front Office
8 279 (3.31%) Investment Banking
9 242 (2.87%) Organisational Skills
10 239 (2.83%) Manufacturing
11 237 (2.81%) Marketing
12 236 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
13 220 (2.61%) Retail
14 208 (2.47%) Telecoms
15 202 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
16 138 (1.64%) General Ledger
17 128 (1.52%) Local Government
18 123 (1.46%) Law
18 123 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
19 115 (1.36%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,296 (15.36%) Analyst
2 863 (10.23%) Developer
3 856 (10.15%) Senior
4 822 (9.75%) Lead
5 758 (8.99%) Architect
6 702 (8.32%) Business Analyst
7 673 (7.98%) Project Manager
8 629 (7.46%) Consultant
9 296 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 253 (3.00%) Data Engineer
11 198 (2.35%) Financial Analyst
12 191 (2.26%) Senior Manager
13 190 (2.25%) Data Analyst
14 186 (2.21%) Finance Manager
15 168 (1.99%) Programme Manager
16 155 (1.84%) Java Developer
17 150 (1.78%) Accountant
18 138 (1.64%) Delivery Manager
19 130 (1.54%) Senior Developer
20 129 (1.53%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (3.21%) Kafka
2 260 (3.08%) REST
3 215 (2.55%) .NET
4 201 (2.38%) React
5 167 (1.98%) Middleware
6 159 (1.89%) Oracle Fusion
7 148 (1.75%) Spring
8 134 (1.59%) Spring Boot
9 129 (1.53%) RESTful
10 117 (1.39%) Node.js
11 99 (1.17%) AngularJS
12 96 (1.14%) PySpark
13 84 (1.00%) OAuth
14 80 (0.95%) XML
15 76 (0.90%) HTML
15 76 (0.90%) JSON
16 73 (0.87%) CSS
16 73 (0.87%) Redux
17 67 (0.79%) Pandas
18 63 (0.75%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 355 (4.21%) Onboarding
2 316 (3.75%) Product Ownership
3 273 (3.24%) Cloud Native
4 221 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
5 187 (2.22%) Management Information System
6 164 (1.94%) Data Structures
7 161 (1.91%) Derivative
8 157 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
9 149 (1.77%) Data Centre
10 146 (1.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 144 (1.71%) Fixed Income
12 135 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
13 116 (1.38%) Equities
14 101 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
15 99 (1.17%) Public Cloud
15 99 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
16 97 (1.15%) Virtual Team
17 83 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 62 (0.74%) CMDB
18 62 (0.74%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 292 (3.46%) Linux
2 272 (3.22%) Windows
3 142 (1.68%) Unix
4 67 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 50 (0.59%) Windows 10
6 37 (0.44%) Android
7 31 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 23 (0.27%) zOS
10 19 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 17 (0.20%) Solaris
12 15 (0.18%) AIX
13 7 (0.083%) VMS
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) MVS
15 3 (0.036%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.024%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,745 (20.69%) Agile
2 1,658 (19.66%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,250 (14.82%) Problem-Solving
4 1,125 (13.34%) Migration
5 943 (11.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 907 (10.75%) DevOps
7 905 (10.73%) Continuous Improvement
8 872 (10.34%) ERP
9 841 (9.97%) CI/CD
10 830 (9.84%) Analytics
11 816 (9.67%) Project Management
12 789 (9.35%) Business Intelligence
13 747 (8.86%) AI
14 668 (7.92%) Data Modelling
15 664 (7.87%) Decision-Making
16 645 (7.65%) Roadmaps
17 620 (7.35%) Validation
18 605 (7.17%) User Acceptance Testing
19 601 (7.13%) Change Management
20 587 (6.96%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,186 (14.06%) SQL
2 986 (11.69%) Python
3 565 (6.70%) Java
4 306 (3.63%) C#
5 226 (2.68%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.35%) TypeScript
7 165 (1.96%) PowerShell
8 111 (1.32%) C++
9 71 (0.84%) Bash
10 69 (0.82%) PL/SQL
11 67 (0.79%) Go
12 59 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 55 (0.65%) VBA
14 50 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 38 (0.45%) Scala
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 31 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.33%) Bicep
20 25 (0.30%) Rust
Qualifications
1 767 (9.09%) Degree
2 716 (8.49%) Security Cleared
3 509 (6.03%) SC Cleared
4 212 (2.51%) PMP
5 203 (2.41%) PMI Certification
6 191 (2.26%) ACCA
7 180 (2.13%) CIMA
8 149 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
9 147 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
10 132 (1.56%) Master's Degree
11 122 (1.45%) CISSP
12 87 (1.03%) DV Cleared
13 83 (0.98%) CISM
14 70 (0.83%) Azure Certification
15 64 (0.76%) AWS Certification
16 45 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
17 37 (0.44%) ISTQB
18 36 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
19 35 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
20 30 (0.36%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (5.52%) Data Quality
2 404 (4.79%) QA
3 335 (3.97%) PMO
4 299 (3.54%) GDPR
5 153 (1.81%) NIST
6 131 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.34%) SLA
8 101 (1.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 91 (1.08%) IFRS
10 77 (0.91%) Accessibility
11 73 (0.87%) PCI DSS
12 70 (0.83%) GRC
13 59 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 49 (0.58%) GAAP
15 39 (0.46%) PSD2
16 36 (0.43%) NCSC
17 35 (0.41%) SEPA
18 30 (0.36%) MiFID
19 27 (0.32%) Basel III
20 26 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 301 (3.57%) Docker
2 152 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 60 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.40%) vSphere
5 25 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
8 13 (0.15%) NFS
9 12 (0.14%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 8 (0.095%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.071%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.059%) HDFS
14 4 (0.047%) ISA Server
14 4 (0.047%) KVM
14 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.047%) RACF
15 3 (0.036%) ACF2
15 3 (0.036%) Firmware
15 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 395 (4.68%) Kubernetes
2 257 (3.05%) Terraform
3 129 (1.53%) Ansible
4 85 (1.01%) Grafana
5 67 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.59%) SCCM
8 36 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) vRealize
11 17 (0.20%) Argo
11 17 (0.20%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.19%) Control-M
13 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.15%) Puppet
13 13 (0.15%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
14 12 (0.14%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.12%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,114 (13.21%) Microsoft
2 820 (9.72%) SAP
3 735 (8.71%) Oracle
4 330 (3.91%) ServiceNow
5 222 (2.63%) Databricks
6 191 (2.26%) Salesforce
7 180 (2.13%) Google
8 146 (1.73%) Workday
9 145 (1.72%) Cisco
10 117 (1.39%) Splunk
11 114 (1.35%) VMware
12 104 (1.23%) IBM
13 78 (0.92%) Ariba
14 77 (0.91%) Citrix
15 74 (0.88%) CyberArk
16 72 (0.85%) Sage
17 55 (0.65%) Informatica
18 53 (0.63%) OpenAI
19 48 (0.57%) Bloomberg
19 48 (0.57%) Palo Alto