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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,596 6,460 8,080
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.02% 22.23% 18.94%
As % of the General category 33.55% 35.11% 32.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,378 4,209 5,402
10th Percentile £354 £350 £355
25th Percentile £436 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £539 £560 £582
Median % change year-on-year -3.84% -3.78% -3.00%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 189 112 246
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.57 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -36.58% +39.28% +4.90%
75th Percentile £54.00 £66.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.60 £83.20 £55.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £37.02 £30.83
% change year-on-year -35.64% +20.10% -29.54%

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 25,625 18,400 24,779
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.73% 63.31% 58.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,671 11,698 15,628
10th Percentile £309 £287 £275
25th Percentile £410 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.88% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.11% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,634 787 1,929
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.00 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.26 £17.34 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.82% -11.29%
75th Percentile £60.72 £56.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.16 £24.59 £28.50
% change year-on-year +14.52% -13.74% -5.00%

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 15 May 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 7,603 £550 -4.35% 4,523
London 0 4,565 £575 -8.00% 2,322
UK excluding London -1 3,450 £500 - 2,910
Work from Home -2 2,403 £525 -10.79% 1,848
North of England +3 1,165 £488 +2.63% 760
South East -1 649 £503 -2.24% 946
North West +5 618 £465 - 412
Midlands -1 587 £488 +0.52% 409
Yorkshire +1 510 £514 +5.44% 267
Scotland +1 414 £500 +4.17% 155
West Midlands 0 396 £495 -5.71% 235
South West -2 352 £523 -0.48% 321
East of England -1 202 £520 -5.45% 230
East Midlands 0 187 £465 +4.55% 171
Wales +23 91 £450 +20.00% 73
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +28.05% 63
North East -14 38 £488 +3.72% 86
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 323 (3.76%) Confluence
2 216 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 54 (0.63%) Apache
5 51 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
5 51 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
6 34 (0.40%) SAS
7 22 (0.26%) CMS
8 20 (0.23%) CICS
9 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 14 (0.16%) Appian
10 14 (0.16%) IIS
11 13 (0.15%) Camunda
12 12 (0.14%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 9 (0.10%) Hyperledger
15 9 (0.10%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 514 (5.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
3 172 (2.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 169 (1.97%) Microsoft Project
5 126 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 8 (0.093%) Sketch
10 7 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.081%) InVision
10 7 (0.081%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
13 3 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.035%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 387 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.35%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.20%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 64 (0.74%) Oracle ERP
7 61 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
8 56 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
8 56 (0.65%) SAP FI
9 48 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
10 47 (0.55%) SAP CO
11 43 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
12 37 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
13 33 (0.38%) Aladdin
13 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
14 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
15 29 (0.34%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
16 28 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 25 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,307 (15.20%) Azure
2 954 (11.10%) AWS
3 607 (7.06%) Power Platform
4 384 (4.47%) GCP
5 300 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
6 288 (3.35%) SaaS
7 263 (3.06%) Microsoft 365
8 239 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
9 229 (2.66%) GitHub
10 152 (1.77%) Snowflake
11 139 (1.62%) Serverless
12 138 (1.61%) Entra ID
13 128 (1.49%) OCI
14 116 (1.35%) Amazon S3
15 113 (1.31%) Power Automate
16 93 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 85 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
18 84 (0.98%) OpenShift
19 78 (0.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 75 (0.87%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 152 (1.77%) Firewall
2 112 (1.30%) Network Security
3 73 (0.85%) WAN
4 72 (0.84%) DNS
5 58 (0.67%) VPN
6 53 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 38 (0.44%) BGP
8 37 (0.43%) SD-WAN
9 36 (0.42%) LAN
10 31 (0.36%) HTTP
11 29 (0.34%) OSPF
11 29 (0.34%) SSL
12 27 (0.31%) Multicast
13 26 (0.30%) DHCP
14 24 (0.28%) MPLS
15 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
15 20 (0.23%) VSAN
16 18 (0.21%) Internet
17 15 (0.17%) VLAN
18 13 (0.15%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 515 (5.99%) Power BI
2 213 (2.48%) SQL Server
3 207 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
4 165 (1.92%) Metadata
5 159 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
6 149 (1.73%) Tableau
7 148 (1.72%) Relational Database
8 123 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 86 (1.00%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.97%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (0.90%) Big Data
12 66 (0.77%) Oracle Database
13 60 (0.70%) BigQuery
14 56 (0.65%) MongoDB
15 48 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
16 44 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
17 43 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 41 (0.48%) Delta Lake
19 38 (0.44%) DynamoDB
20 37 (0.43%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 677 (7.88%) JIRA
2 201 (2.34%) Git
3 171 (1.99%) Jenkins
4 103 (1.20%) GitLab
5 45 (0.52%) JUnit
6 43 (0.50%) Cucumber
7 38 (0.44%) Selenium
8 30 (0.35%) Visual Studio
9 28 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 27 (0.31%) Postman
11 23 (0.27%) MLflow
11 23 (0.27%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
12 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 19 (0.22%) Maven
14 17 (0.20%) Hudson
15 16 (0.19%) ERwin
15 16 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
16 14 (0.16%) Bitbucket
16 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,512 (29.22%) Social Skills
2 1,548 (18.01%) Banking
3 1,133 (13.18%) Analytical Skills
4 518 (6.03%) Public Sector
5 360 (4.19%) Legal
6 327 (3.80%) Financial Institution
7 292 (3.40%) Investment Banking
8 271 (3.15%) Front Office
9 263 (3.06%) Retail
10 242 (2.82%) Organisational Skills
11 237 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
12 208 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 179 (2.08%) Manufacturing
14 158 (1.84%) Marketing
15 145 (1.69%) General Ledger
16 141 (1.64%) Telecoms
17 127 (1.48%) Local Government
18 119 (1.38%) Law
19 118 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
20 116 (1.35%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,324 (15.40%) Analyst
2 896 (10.42%) Senior
3 864 (10.05%) Lead
4 861 (10.02%) Developer
5 784 (9.12%) Architect
6 708 (8.24%) Business Analyst
7 680 (7.91%) Project Manager
8 592 (6.89%) Consultant
9 321 (3.73%) Solutions Architect
10 279 (3.25%) Data Engineer
11 215 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 206 (2.40%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.19%) Data Analyst
14 185 (2.15%) Finance Manager
15 183 (2.13%) Programme Manager
16 171 (1.99%) Accountant
17 145 (1.69%) Software Engineer
18 143 (1.66%) Java Developer
19 140 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
19 140 (1.63%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (2.97%) Kafka
2 248 (2.89%) REST
3 236 (2.75%) .NET
4 201 (2.34%) React
5 184 (2.14%) Middleware
6 157 (1.83%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (1.71%) Spring
8 142 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 134 (1.56%) RESTful
10 103 (1.20%) Node.js
10 103 (1.20%) PySpark
11 92 (1.07%) AngularJS
12 80 (0.93%) OAuth
13 78 (0.91%) JSON
13 78 (0.91%) Redux
14 76 (0.88%) XML
15 69 (0.80%) HTML
16 68 (0.79%) CSS
17 62 (0.72%) Pandas
18 59 (0.69%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 359 (4.18%) Onboarding
2 340 (3.96%) Product Ownership
3 312 (3.63%) Cloud Native
4 224 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
5 197 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 186 (2.16%) Data Structures
7 169 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
7 169 (1.97%) Derivative
8 150 (1.74%) Data Centre
9 138 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
10 135 (1.57%) Fixed Income
11 130 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 106 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
13 102 (1.19%) Virtual Team
14 100 (1.16%) Equities
15 98 (1.14%) Public Cloud
16 92 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
17 89 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
18 71 (0.83%) AI Agents
19 66 (0.77%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 271 (3.15%) Windows
2 257 (2.99%) Linux
3 134 (1.56%) Unix
4 70 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.49%) Windows 10
6 31 (0.36%) Solaris
7 28 (0.33%) Apple iOS
8 26 (0.30%) Android
9 25 (0.29%) zOS
10 21 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 18 (0.21%) Mac OS
12 17 (0.20%) AIX
13 6 (0.070%) VMS
13 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.047%) HPUX
15 4 (0.047%) MVS
15 4 (0.047%) SUSE
15 4 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,793 (20.86%) Agile
2 1,722 (20.03%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,205 (14.02%) Problem-Solving
4 1,166 (13.56%) Migration
5 947 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
6 931 (10.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 909 (10.57%) ERP
8 906 (10.54%) DevOps
9 842 (9.80%) CI/CD
10 829 (9.64%) AI
11 812 (9.45%) Analytics
12 801 (9.32%) Project Management
13 723 (8.41%) Decision-Making
14 701 (8.15%) Business Intelligence
15 694 (8.07%) Data Modelling
16 680 (7.91%) Roadmaps
17 661 (7.69%) Validation
18 660 (7.68%) User Acceptance Testing
19 606 (7.05%) Change Management
20 566 (6.58%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,182 (13.75%) SQL
2 1,012 (11.77%) Python
3 547 (6.36%) Java
4 337 (3.92%) C#
5 217 (2.52%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.28%) TypeScript
7 159 (1.85%) PowerShell
8 108 (1.26%) C++
9 75 (0.87%) PL/SQL
10 71 (0.83%) Go
11 70 (0.81%) Bash
12 65 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 49 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.51%) VBA
16 43 (0.50%) Scala
17 34 (0.40%) R
18 26 (0.30%) Bicep
19 25 (0.29%) Rust
20 24 (0.28%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 734 (8.54%) Degree
2 692 (8.05%) Security Cleared
3 497 (5.78%) SC Cleared
4 213 (2.48%) PMP
5 210 (2.44%) ACCA
6 199 (2.32%) PMI Certification
7 193 (2.25%) CIMA
8 143 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
9 135 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
10 122 (1.42%) CISSP
11 105 (1.22%) Master's Degree
12 83 (0.97%) CISM
13 81 (0.94%) DV Cleared
14 61 (0.71%) Azure Certification
15 55 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
16 50 (0.58%) AWS Certification
17 37 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
18 33 (0.38%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) CBAP
19 31 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 494 (5.75%) Data Quality
2 408 (4.75%) QA
3 325 (3.78%) PMO
4 281 (3.27%) GDPR
5 158 (1.84%) NIST
6 124 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 104 (1.21%) SLA
8 101 (1.17%) IFRS
9 100 (1.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 89 (1.04%) GRC
11 78 (0.91%) Accessibility
12 66 (0.77%) PCI DSS
13 61 (0.71%) ISO 20022
14 52 (0.60%) GAAP
15 38 (0.44%) SEPA
16 37 (0.43%) PSD2
17 35 (0.41%) NCSC
18 29 (0.34%) EMIR
19 28 (0.33%) MiFID
20 26 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 278 (3.23%) Docker
2 146 (1.70%) Active Directory
3 53 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.36%) vSphere
5 27 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 11 (0.13%) NFS
10 10 (0.12%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 5 (0.058%) HDFS
11 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.047%) Firmware
12 4 (0.047%) KVM
12 4 (0.047%) RACF
13 3 (0.035%) GridGain
13 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.035%) SRDF
14 2 (0.023%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 393 (4.57%) Kubernetes
2 240 (2.79%) Terraform
3 120 (1.40%) Ansible
4 85 (0.99%) Grafana
5 67 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 43 (0.50%) SCCM
8 37 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.30%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) vRealize
11 17 (0.20%) Control-M
12 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 15 (0.17%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
17 8 (0.093%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,097 (12.76%) Microsoft
2 775 (9.02%) SAP
3 718 (8.35%) Oracle
4 311 (3.62%) ServiceNow
5 238 (2.77%) Databricks
6 183 (2.13%) Salesforce
7 171 (1.99%) Google
8 135 (1.57%) Workday
9 115 (1.34%) Cisco
10 114 (1.33%) Splunk
11 98 (1.14%) VMware
12 91 (1.06%) IBM
13 76 (0.88%) CyberArk
14 75 (0.87%) Ariba
15 72 (0.84%) Citrix
16 67 (0.78%) Sage
17 57 (0.66%) OpenAI
18 52 (0.60%) Bloomberg
18 52 (0.60%) Informatica
18 52 (0.60%) Palo Alto