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

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,327 6,704 8,378
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.34% 21.26% 18.92%
As % of the General category 32.50% 34.35% 32.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,674 4,202 5,689
10th Percentile £350 £356 £360
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 91 149
10th Percentile £15.00 £18.20 £11.77
25th Percentile £17.50 £22.27 £14.06
Median hourly rate £23.50 £27.50 £22.28
Median % change year-on-year -14.55% +23.46% -10.90%
75th Percentile £40.00 £60.00 £44.74
90th Percentile £66.83 £78.75 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -41.86%

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 22,544 19,514 26,027
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.51% 61.87% 58.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,190 11,639 16,905
10th Percentile £284 £285 £265
25th Percentile £401 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,381 641 1,469
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £16.45 £20.00 £15.39
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £26.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.36% +3.77% +6.00%
75th Percentile £47.00 £53.75 £55.47
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.56 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.38 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -19.32% +1.92% +16.02%

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 25 January 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 25 January 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 25 January 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 6,445 £540 -9.24% 5,496
London -1 3,932 £575 -5.74% 1,527
UK excluding London -2 2,903 £500 - 4,925
Work from Home -1 2,034 £531 -11.50% 2,228
North of England +1 916 £475 -3.06% 934
South East -1 542 £503 -4.29% 1,722
Midlands -3 515 £492 -6.29% 655
North West +2 447 £450 -5.26% 407
Yorkshire 0 421 £500 -2.91% 391
Scotland 0 382 £500 +7.35% 199
West Midlands -5 316 £525 -4.55% 281
South West -5 289 £525 -1.87% 576
East Midlands 0 197 £438 +4.17% 363
East of England -2 171 £525 - 623
Wales +25 80 £406 -13.33% 233
Northern Ireland -1 57 £500 +42.86% 105
North East -7 49 £481 - 150
Channel Islands +1 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
1 313 (4.27%) Confluence
2 205 (2.80%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.98%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
5 59 (0.81%) Apache
6 57 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.44%) SAS
8 29 (0.40%) CMS
9 23 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.27%) IIS
11 16 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 15 (0.20%) Ethereum
13 14 (0.19%) Appian
14 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
14 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 13 (0.18%) TPMS
15 12 (0.16%) Camunda
15 12 (0.16%) Hyperledger
15 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 498 (6.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 286 (3.90%) Microsoft Office
3 203 (2.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 165 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
5 130 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 35 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.25%) Trello
10 14 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.068%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.055%) Notion
16 2 (0.027%) Camtasia
16 2 (0.027%) Snagit
16 2 (0.027%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 294 (4.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 125 (1.71%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.31%) Oracle Receivables
4 90 (1.23%) Oracle EBS
5 83 (1.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 69 (0.94%) SAP FI
7 66 (0.90%) NetSuite
8 62 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
9 58 (0.79%) SAP CO
10 53 (0.72%) Oracle Cash Management
10 53 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 52 (0.71%) Oracle Assets
11 52 (0.71%) SAP FI/CO
12 49 (0.67%) Oracle EBS R12
13 47 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
14 46 (0.63%) Oracle Financials
15 39 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 38 (0.52%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
18 27 (0.37%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,083 (14.78%) Azure
2 890 (12.15%) AWS
3 541 (7.38%) Power Platform
4 346 (4.72%) GCP
5 253 (3.45%) Microsoft 365
6 228 (3.11%) SaaS
7 221 (3.02%) Azure DevOps
8 207 (2.83%) Dynamics 365
9 195 (2.66%) GitHub
10 142 (1.94%) Serverless
11 140 (1.91%) OCI
12 133 (1.82%) Snowflake
13 119 (1.62%) Entra ID
14 97 (1.32%) GitHub Actions
15 88 (1.20%) Amazon S3
15 88 (1.20%) Power Automate
16 73 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
16 73 (1.00%) OpenShift
17 69 (0.94%) Figma
17 69 (0.94%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 115 (1.57%) Firewall
2 72 (0.98%) Network Security
3 64 (0.87%) WAN
4 43 (0.59%) DNS
5 39 (0.53%) SD-WAN
5 39 (0.53%) VPN
6 37 (0.50%) LAN
7 35 (0.48%) TCP/IP
8 32 (0.44%) Wireless
9 29 (0.40%) HTTP
10 27 (0.37%) Skype
11 25 (0.34%) SSL
12 24 (0.33%) SSH
13 23 (0.31%) DHCP
14 17 (0.23%) Internet
15 16 (0.22%) BGP
15 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
15 16 (0.22%) OSPF
16 14 (0.19%) VLAN
17 13 (0.18%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 472 (6.44%) Power BI
2 196 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
3 189 (2.58%) SQL Server
4 149 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
5 124 (1.69%) NoSQL
5 124 (1.69%) Tableau
6 120 (1.64%) Relational Database
7 113 (1.54%) Data Lake
8 108 (1.47%) Metadata
9 86 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
10 73 (1.00%) MongoDB
11 68 (0.93%) Oracle Database
12 67 (0.91%) Big Data
13 51 (0.70%) BigQuery
14 42 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
15 41 (0.56%) Hadoop
16 37 (0.50%) MySQL
17 36 (0.49%) Power Query
17 36 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 34 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 578 (7.89%) JIRA
2 261 (3.56%) Jenkins
3 213 (2.91%) Git
4 155 (2.12%) GitLab
5 79 (1.08%) JUnit
6 58 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 54 (0.74%) Selenium
8 49 (0.67%) Bitbucket
9 47 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
10 37 (0.50%) Postman
11 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 26 (0.35%) Gradle
13 24 (0.33%) Liquibase
14 23 (0.31%) Cypress.io
15 22 (0.30%) Maven
16 21 (0.29%) MLflow
16 21 (0.29%) REST Assured
17 19 (0.26%) JMeter
18 17 (0.23%) SonarQube
19 16 (0.22%) ERwin
General
1 2,563 (34.98%) Social Skills
2 1,501 (20.49%) Banking
3 971 (13.25%) Analytical Skills
4 596 (8.13%) Public Sector
5 334 (4.56%) Financial Institution
6 311 (4.24%) Marketing
7 298 (4.07%) Manufacturing
8 282 (3.85%) Investment Banking
9 278 (3.79%) Telecoms
10 267 (3.64%) Front Office
11 266 (3.63%) Legal
12 212 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
12 212 (2.89%) Organisational Skills
13 186 (2.54%) Electronics
14 165 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
15 145 (1.98%) Retail
16 136 (1.86%) General Ledger
17 132 (1.80%) Presentation Skills
18 125 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 111 (1.51%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,161 (15.85%) Analyst
2 823 (11.23%) Developer
3 710 (9.69%) Senior
4 599 (8.18%) Business Analyst
5 588 (8.03%) Project Manager
6 584 (7.97%) Architect
7 573 (7.82%) Consultant
8 541 (7.38%) Lead
9 238 (3.25%) Solutions Architect
10 185 (2.52%) Data Analyst
11 164 (2.24%) Data Engineer
12 157 (2.14%) Programme Manager
13 156 (2.13%) Financial Analyst
14 143 (1.95%) Java Developer
15 139 (1.90%) Software Engineer
16 138 (1.88%) Senior Developer
17 131 (1.79%) Senior Manager
18 115 (1.57%) IT Manager
19 112 (1.53%) Senior Analyst
20 110 (1.50%) Finance Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 273 (3.73%) REST
2 226 (3.08%) Kafka
3 208 (2.84%) .NET
4 165 (2.25%) React
5 159 (2.17%) Oracle Fusion
6 156 (2.13%) RESTful
7 146 (1.99%) Spring
8 119 (1.62%) Spring Boot
9 110 (1.50%) Middleware
10 107 (1.46%) AngularJS
11 91 (1.24%) Pandas
12 88 (1.20%) XML
13 85 (1.16%) HTML
14 81 (1.11%) Node.js
15 80 (1.09%) NumPy
16 74 (1.01%) CSS
16 74 (1.01%) OAuth
16 74 (1.01%) PySpark
17 71 (0.97%) JSON
18 70 (0.96%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 316 (4.31%) Onboarding
2 295 (4.03%) Product Ownership
3 225 (3.07%) Cloud Native
4 172 (2.35%) Derivative
5 165 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 156 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
7 151 (2.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 133 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
9 132 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
10 131 (1.79%) Data Centre
11 126 (1.72%) Data Structures
12 125 (1.71%) Equities
13 122 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
14 113 (1.54%) Fixed Income
15 112 (1.53%) Public Cloud
16 92 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
17 91 (1.24%) Hedge funds
18 74 (1.01%) Virtual Team
19 73 (1.00%) Credit Risk
20 72 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 347 (4.74%) Linux
2 318 (4.34%) Windows
3 149 (2.03%) Unix
4 68 (0.93%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.87%) Windows Server
6 62 (0.85%) Android
6 62 (0.85%) Mac OS
7 32 (0.44%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.14%) zOS
10 7 (0.096%) CentOS
11 6 (0.082%) VMS
12 4 (0.055%) Solaris
12 4 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.055%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.041%) AIX
13 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.041%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,702 (23.23%) Agile
2 1,362 (18.59%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,190 (16.24%) Problem-Solving
4 845 (11.53%) Migration
5 807 (11.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 797 (10.88%) DevOps
7 779 (10.63%) CI/CD
8 747 (10.20%) Business Intelligence
9 720 (9.83%) Project Management
10 710 (9.69%) Analytics
11 643 (8.78%) ERP
12 625 (8.53%) Continuous Improvement
13 534 (7.29%) AI
14 526 (7.18%) Decision-Making
15 516 (7.04%) Change Management
16 515 (7.03%) Risk Management
17 506 (6.91%) Roadmaps
18 490 (6.69%) Data Modelling
19 480 (6.55%) Project Delivery
20 467 (6.37%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,087 (14.84%) SQL
2 942 (12.86%) Python
3 515 (7.03%) Java
4 307 (4.19%) C#
5 213 (2.91%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.70%) PowerShell
7 154 (2.10%) C++
8 153 (2.09%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.16%) PL/SQL
10 70 (0.96%) Bash
11 69 (0.94%) Go
12 53 (0.72%) Shell Script
13 50 (0.68%) VBA
14 42 (0.57%) R
15 40 (0.55%) Kotlin
16 34 (0.46%) Groovy
17 33 (0.45%) T-SQL
18 32 (0.44%) Rust
19 31 (0.42%) Perl
19 31 (0.42%) Scala
Qualifications
1 790 (10.78%) Degree
2 566 (7.72%) Security Cleared
3 417 (5.69%) SC Cleared
4 190 (2.59%) PMI Certification
5 179 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 178 (2.43%) PMP
7 168 (2.29%) Master's Degree
8 149 (2.03%) ACCA
9 133 (1.82%) CIMA
10 109 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
11 94 (1.28%) CISSP
12 92 (1.26%) AWS Certification
13 64 (0.87%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.86%) CISM
15 60 (0.82%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 39 (0.53%) CBAP
18 33 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
19 29 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
20 27 (0.37%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (5.19%) QA
2 328 (4.48%) Data Quality
3 272 (3.71%) PMO
4 253 (3.45%) GDPR
5 129 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 123 (1.68%) NIST
7 112 (1.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 97 (1.32%) SLA
9 94 (1.28%) Accessibility
10 79 (1.08%) PCI DSS
11 74 (1.01%) IFRS
12 57 (0.78%) GRC
13 49 (0.67%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.63%) PSD2
15 38 (0.52%) MiFID
16 36 (0.49%) NCSC
17 34 (0.46%) SEPA
18 32 (0.44%) Basel III
19 30 (0.41%) GAAP
20 27 (0.37%) COBIT
System Software
1 332 (4.53%) Docker
2 193 (2.63%) Active Directory
3 52 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
5 20 (0.27%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) NFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) HDFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
8 8 (0.11%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.068%) Firmware
9 5 (0.068%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.055%) BitLocker
10 4 (0.055%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.041%) RACF
11 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 379 (5.17%) Kubernetes
2 259 (3.53%) Terraform
3 174 (2.37%) Ansible
4 86 (1.17%) Grafana
5 79 (1.08%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.87%) SCCM
7 58 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 36 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 13 (0.18%) Control-M
14 13 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
14 13 (0.18%) Puppet
15 10 (0.14%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,005 (13.72%) Microsoft
2 793 (10.82%) SAP
3 700 (9.55%) Oracle
4 272 (3.71%) ServiceNow
5 174 (2.37%) Salesforce
6 169 (2.31%) Splunk
7 157 (2.14%) Databricks
7 157 (2.14%) Google
8 147 (2.01%) Cisco
9 144 (1.97%) Workday
10 102 (1.39%) VMware
11 93 (1.27%) IBM
12 70 (0.96%) Citrix
12 70 (0.96%) CyberArk
13 63 (0.86%) Ariba
14 53 (0.72%) HP
15 50 (0.68%) Bloomberg
16 49 (0.67%) Informatica
17 48 (0.66%) OpenAI
18 47 (0.64%) Dell