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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,561 6,476 8,181
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.14% 22.16% 18.77%
As % of the General category 33.29% 35.08% 32.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,381 4,250 5,449
10th Percentile £354 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £435 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £570 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.58% -0.87% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £700
90th Percentile £790 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 110 246
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.80 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.12 £22.27 £15.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.70% +37.24% -11.84%
75th Percentile £50.94 £69.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £83.51 £55.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.32 £42.41 £32.12
% change year-on-year -47.38% +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 25,716 18,460 25,387
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.50% 63.17% 58.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,865 11,792 16,033
10th Percentile £305 £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 £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £496
% change year-on-year - -4.23% -0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,644 793 1,939
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.59 £18.00 £15.50
Median hourly rate £29.02 £28.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.64% -6.67% -14.29%
75th Percentile £60.06 £56.00 £51.91
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £28.13
% change year-on-year +2.47% -10.58% -7.91%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 7,569 £538 -6.52% 3,511
London 0 4,575 £575 -8.00% 1,773
UK excluding London 0 3,407 £500 - 2,429
Work from Home -2 2,404 £525 -12.50% 1,468
North of England +2 1,128 £475 - 574
South East -1 649 £503 -2.88% 853
North West +5 608 £463 -0.27% 303
Midlands -1 592 £475 -5.00% 368
Yorkshire +1 479 £500 +1.01% 204
Scotland +1 411 £500 +2.15% 107
West Midlands 0 395 £492 -6.29% 221
South West -2 340 £500 - 259
East of England -3 198 £525 -4.55% 195
East Midlands 0 193 £450 +0.67% 144
Wales +24 96 £413 +10.00% 54
Northern Ireland 0 45 £525 +31.25% 70
North East -10 42 £488 +3.72% 77
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
1 332 (3.88%) Confluence
2 217 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 91 (1.06%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.67%) Apache
5 54 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
6 51 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.43%) SAS
8 24 (0.28%) CMS
9 22 (0.26%) CICS
10 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 16 (0.19%) Appian
12 15 (0.18%) Camunda
12 15 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
14 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
15 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
15 11 (0.13%) Mendix
16 10 (0.12%) TPMS
17 9 (0.11%) WebSphere
Applications
1 535 (6.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 232 (2.71%) Microsoft Office
3 176 (2.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 175 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
5 129 (1.51%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 32 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.16%) Trello
9 8 (0.093%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.093%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
10 7 (0.082%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 370 (4.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.35%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 99 (1.16%) NetSuite
5 85 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 72 (0.84%) Oracle EBS
7 65 (0.76%) SAP FI
8 60 (0.70%) Oracle ERP
9 59 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
10 53 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.62%) SAP CO
11 49 (0.57%) SAP FI/CO
12 41 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
13 35 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
14 34 (0.40%) Oracle Cash Management
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
16 31 (0.36%) Aladdin
17 30 (0.35%) SAP ERP
17 30 (0.35%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,288 (15.04%) Azure
2 982 (11.47%) AWS
3 624 (7.29%) Power Platform
4 392 (4.58%) GCP
5 290 (3.39%) Azure DevOps
6 288 (3.36%) SaaS
7 267 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
8 239 (2.79%) Dynamics 365
9 232 (2.71%) GitHub
10 149 (1.74%) Snowflake
11 147 (1.72%) Serverless
12 137 (1.60%) OCI
13 129 (1.51%) Entra ID
14 118 (1.38%) Amazon S3
15 109 (1.27%) Power Automate
16 92 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
17 89 (1.04%) GitHub Actions
18 87 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
19 86 (1.00%) OpenShift
20 79 (0.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.90%) Firewall
2 112 (1.31%) Network Security
3 77 (0.90%) WAN
4 69 (0.81%) DNS
5 61 (0.71%) VPN
6 47 (0.55%) 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%) MPLS
15 23 (0.27%) DHCP
16 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
16 21 (0.25%) Internet
17 17 (0.20%) Skype
17 17 (0.20%) VSAN
18 16 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 539 (6.30%) Power BI
2 216 (2.52%) SQL Server
3 213 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
4 164 (1.92%) Metadata
5 163 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
6 149 (1.74%) Tableau
7 140 (1.64%) Relational Database
8 128 (1.50%) Data Lake
9 92 (1.07%) Oracle Reports
10 87 (1.02%) NoSQL
11 80 (0.93%) Big Data
12 67 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 60 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 58 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 48 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.49%) DynamoDB
16 42 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
17 41 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 40 (0.47%) Delta Lake
18 40 (0.47%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 689 (8.05%) JIRA
2 219 (2.56%) Git
3 187 (2.18%) Jenkins
4 113 (1.32%) GitLab
5 54 (0.63%) Cucumber
5 54 (0.63%) JUnit
6 43 (0.50%) Selenium
7 40 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
8 28 (0.33%) Postman
9 27 (0.32%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.29%) MLflow
11 23 (0.27%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.23%) SonarQube
14 19 (0.22%) Zephyr
15 18 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
16 17 (0.20%) ERwin
16 17 (0.20%) Hudson
16 17 (0.20%) Maven
17 15 (0.18%) TeamCity
General
1 2,612 (30.51%) Social Skills
2 1,574 (18.39%) Banking
3 1,161 (13.56%) Analytical Skills
4 559 (6.53%) Public Sector
5 343 (4.01%) Legal
6 332 (3.88%) Financial Institution
7 286 (3.34%) Investment Banking
8 282 (3.29%) Front Office
9 242 (2.83%) Retail
10 238 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
10 238 (2.78%) Organisational Skills
11 208 (2.43%) Manufacturing
12 207 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 196 (2.29%) Marketing
14 169 (1.97%) Telecoms
15 141 (1.65%) General Ledger
16 126 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
17 123 (1.44%) Local Government
18 121 (1.41%) Law
19 119 (1.39%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,312 (15.33%) Analyst
2 881 (10.29%) Senior
3 876 (10.23%) Developer
4 856 (10.00%) Lead
5 767 (8.96%) Architect
6 705 (8.24%) Business Analyst
7 683 (7.98%) Project Manager
8 602 (7.03%) Consultant
9 308 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
10 267 (3.12%) Data Engineer
11 210 (2.45%) Financial Analyst
12 203 (2.37%) Senior Manager
13 190 (2.22%) Finance Manager
14 184 (2.15%) Data Analyst
15 171 (2.00%) Programme Manager
16 158 (1.85%) Accountant
17 155 (1.81%) Java Developer
18 141 (1.65%) Senior Analyst
19 139 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
20 127 (1.48%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (3.12%) Kafka
2 256 (2.99%) REST
3 228 (2.66%) .NET
4 196 (2.29%) React
5 174 (2.03%) Middleware
6 151 (1.76%) Spring
7 150 (1.75%) Oracle Fusion
8 141 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.58%) RESTful
10 108 (1.26%) Node.js
11 102 (1.19%) PySpark
12 92 (1.07%) AngularJS
13 85 (0.99%) OAuth
14 78 (0.91%) XML
15 77 (0.90%) JSON
16 73 (0.85%) Redux
17 71 (0.83%) HTML
18 68 (0.79%) CSS
19 66 (0.77%) Pandas
20 60 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 358 (4.18%) Onboarding
2 330 (3.85%) Product Ownership
3 299 (3.49%) Cloud Native
4 226 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
5 196 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 179 (2.09%) Data Structures
7 167 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
7 167 (1.95%) Derivative
8 141 (1.65%) Data Centre
9 139 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
9 139 (1.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 138 (1.61%) Fixed Income
11 112 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
12 107 (1.25%) Equities
13 100 (1.17%) Public Cloud
13 100 (1.17%) Virtual Team
14 94 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
15 82 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
16 70 (0.82%) Mainframe
17 68 (0.79%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 280 (3.27%) Windows
2 278 (3.25%) Linux
3 147 (1.72%) Unix
4 72 (0.84%) Windows Server
5 49 (0.57%) Windows 10
6 30 (0.35%) Android
6 30 (0.35%) Apple iOS
7 28 (0.33%) zOS
8 26 (0.30%) Solaris
9 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.23%) Mac OS
11 18 (0.21%) AIX
12 8 (0.093%) VMS
13 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.047%) HPUX
15 4 (0.047%) MVS
15 4 (0.047%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,791 (20.92%) Agile
2 1,694 (19.79%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,247 (14.57%) Problem-Solving
4 1,169 (13.65%) Migration
5 950 (11.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 947 (11.06%) Continuous Improvement
7 918 (10.72%) DevOps
8 899 (10.50%) ERP
9 863 (10.08%) CI/CD
10 837 (9.78%) Analytics
11 810 (9.46%) AI
12 797 (9.31%) Project Management
13 756 (8.83%) Business Intelligence
14 704 (8.22%) Decision-Making
15 684 (7.99%) Data Modelling
16 675 (7.88%) Roadmaps
17 660 (7.71%) Validation
18 648 (7.57%) User Acceptance Testing
19 595 (6.95%) Change Management
20 573 (6.69%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,201 (14.03%) SQL
2 1,017 (11.88%) Python
3 573 (6.69%) Java
4 328 (3.83%) C#
5 215 (2.51%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 166 (1.94%) PowerShell
8 103 (1.20%) C++
9 74 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 72 (0.84%) Bash
11 67 (0.78%) Go
12 61 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 52 (0.61%) Shell Script
14 51 (0.60%) VBA
15 49 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 42 (0.49%) Scala
17 34 (0.40%) R
18 31 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 26 (0.30%) Bicep
19 26 (0.30%) Korn
Qualifications
1 755 (8.82%) Degree
2 695 (8.12%) Security Cleared
3 492 (5.75%) SC Cleared
4 209 (2.44%) ACCA
4 209 (2.44%) PMP
5 198 (2.31%) PMI Certification
6 193 (2.25%) CIMA
7 146 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
8 144 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
9 124 (1.45%) Master's Degree
10 123 (1.44%) CISSP
11 84 (0.98%) CISM
12 80 (0.93%) DV Cleared
13 65 (0.76%) Azure Certification
14 62 (0.72%) AWS Certification
15 47 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
16 40 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
17 38 (0.44%) ISTQB
18 31 (0.36%) CBAP
18 31 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 491 (5.74%) Data Quality
2 423 (4.94%) QA
3 335 (3.91%) PMO
4 311 (3.63%) GDPR
5 149 (1.74%) NIST
6 123 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 103 (1.20%) SLA
8 100 (1.17%) IFRS
8 100 (1.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 79 (0.92%) Accessibility
10 77 (0.90%) GRC
11 73 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 57 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 53 (0.62%) 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
12 4 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.035%) GridGain
13 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 402 (4.70%) Kubernetes
2 256 (2.99%) Terraform
3 125 (1.46%) Ansible
4 88 (1.03%) Grafana
5 69 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.57%) 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 1,108 (12.94%) Microsoft
2 783 (9.15%) SAP
3 714 (8.34%) Oracle
4 315 (3.68%) ServiceNow
5 226 (2.64%) Databricks
6 191 (2.23%) Salesforce
7 176 (2.06%) Google
8 143 (1.67%) Workday
9 121 (1.41%) Cisco
10 114 (1.33%) Splunk
11 108 (1.26%) VMware
12 100 (1.17%) IBM
13 78 (0.91%) Citrix
14 75 (0.88%) Ariba
14 75 (0.88%) CyberArk
14 75 (0.88%) Sage
15 55 (0.64%) Informatica
15 55 (0.64%) OpenAI
16 52 (0.61%) Bloomberg
17 49 (0.57%) Murex