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

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,734 6,475 8,388
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.97% 21.06% 18.79%
As % of the General category 32.44% 33.90% 31.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,898 4,068 5,714
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £661 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £793
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -0.97%
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 95 178
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.09 £22.39 £14.23
Median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £23.31
Median % change year-on-year -32.86% +50.15% -6.76%
75th Percentile £41.25 £64.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £70.00 £81.92 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £29.00 £21.43
% change year-on-year -24.14% +35.32% -36.11%

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 23,838 19,103 26,256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.47% 62.14% 58.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,896 11,619 16,893
10th Percentile £300 £285 £265
25th Percentile £404 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £645 £650
90th Percentile £735 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,464 616 1,696
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.48 £20.49 £15.29
Median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.33% +15.38% -6.19%
75th Percentile £51.53 £57.78 £52.50
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.00 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.35 £25.00
% change year-on-year -19.56% +9.40% -

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 22 February 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 22 February 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 22 February 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 6,800 £534 -9.11% 3,504
London -1 4,117 £575 -6.12% 1,627
UK excluding London -1 3,084 £500 - 2,631
Work from Home -1 2,183 £525 -11.02% 1,459
North of England +2 994 £475 -0.21% 638
South East -1 560 £500 -4.76% 995
Midlands -2 556 £490 -2.00% 379
North West +4 502 £450 -3.23% 367
Yorkshire 0 444 £513 - 211
Scotland 0 393 £475 - 112
West Midlands -1 352 £514 -6.55% 218
South West -5 305 £512 -2.57% 254
East Midlands 0 200 £450 +7.14% 161
East of England -1 188 £533 +1.43% 207
Wales +34 103 £413 +1.54% 65
North East -10 49 £488 +5.41% 74
Northern Ireland -2 45 £538 +65.38% 38
Channel Islands +3 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
1 319 (4.12%) Confluence
2 196 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 60 (0.78%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.63%) Apache
6 42 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.47%) SAS
8 27 (0.35%) CMS
9 21 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.22%) Appian
12 16 (0.21%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.17%) CICS
13 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
13 13 (0.17%) TPMS
14 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
15 11 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 11 (0.14%) Camunda
16 10 (0.13%) Mendix
17 9 (0.12%) IIS
Applications
1 523 (6.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 285 (3.69%) Microsoft Office
3 200 (2.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 179 (2.31%) Microsoft Project
5 139 (1.80%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.50%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.22%) Trello
9 16 (0.21%) Sketch
10 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.10%) InVision
13 7 (0.091%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.065%) Notion
14 5 (0.065%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.026%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.026%) InDesign
16 2 (0.026%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 320 (4.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.49%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.24%) Oracle Receivables
4 71 (0.92%) SAP FI
5 70 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
6 69 (0.89%) NetSuite
6 69 (0.89%) Oracle General Ledger
7 63 (0.81%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 60 (0.78%) SAP CO
9 59 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.70%) SAP FI/CO
11 44 (0.57%) Oracle Assets
12 40 (0.52%) Oracle Cash Management
13 39 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
14 38 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
14 38 (0.49%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 36 (0.47%) Workday HCM
16 35 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
17 28 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
18 22 (0.28%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,161 (15.01%) Azure
2 945 (12.22%) AWS
3 542 (7.01%) Power Platform
4 391 (5.06%) GCP
5 270 (3.49%) Microsoft 365
6 256 (3.31%) SaaS
7 232 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
8 229 (2.96%) Dynamics 365
9 200 (2.59%) GitHub
10 150 (1.94%) OCI
11 146 (1.89%) Serverless
12 127 (1.64%) Snowflake
13 118 (1.53%) Entra ID
14 98 (1.27%) Amazon S3
15 90 (1.16%) Power Automate
16 85 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
17 76 (0.98%) OpenShift
18 75 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
19 73 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
19 73 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 144 (1.86%) Firewall
2 81 (1.05%) Network Security
3 71 (0.92%) WAN
4 49 (0.63%) DNS
5 43 (0.56%) LAN
5 43 (0.56%) VPN
6 39 (0.50%) SD-WAN
7 35 (0.45%) TCP/IP
8 33 (0.43%) Wireless
9 26 (0.34%) Skype
9 26 (0.34%) SSL
10 24 (0.31%) BGP
11 23 (0.30%) OSPF
12 22 (0.28%) HTTP
13 21 (0.27%) Multicast
14 20 (0.26%) DHCP
15 19 (0.25%) Internet
16 18 (0.23%) SSH
17 15 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
17 15 (0.19%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 476 (6.15%) Power BI
2 203 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
3 185 (2.39%) SQL Server
4 172 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
5 139 (1.80%) Tableau
6 130 (1.68%) Metadata
7 118 (1.53%) NoSQL
7 118 (1.53%) Relational Database
8 115 (1.49%) Data Lake
9 89 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
10 73 (0.94%) Big Data
11 69 (0.89%) MongoDB
12 68 (0.88%) Oracle Database
13 58 (0.75%) BigQuery
14 44 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
15 39 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 36 (0.47%) Hadoop
16 36 (0.47%) MySQL
17 35 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
18 34 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 621 (8.03%) JIRA
2 251 (3.25%) Jenkins
3 211 (2.73%) Git
4 159 (2.06%) GitLab
5 69 (0.89%) JUnit
6 61 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 46 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.56%) Selenium
9 37 (0.48%) Postman
10 36 (0.47%) Bitbucket
11 32 (0.41%) Visual Studio
12 26 (0.34%) MLflow
13 24 (0.31%) Gradle
14 23 (0.30%) Liquibase
14 23 (0.30%) Maven
15 20 (0.26%) REST Assured
16 16 (0.21%) SonarQube
17 15 (0.19%) ERwin
17 15 (0.19%) JMeter
18 14 (0.18%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,643 (34.17%) Social Skills
2 1,515 (19.59%) Banking
3 1,010 (13.06%) Analytical Skills
4 625 (8.08%) Public Sector
5 340 (4.40%) Financial Institution
6 300 (3.88%) Marketing
7 273 (3.53%) Legal
8 272 (3.52%) Investment Banking
9 267 (3.45%) Manufacturing
10 266 (3.44%) Front Office
11 252 (3.26%) Telecoms
12 241 (3.12%) Organisational Skills
13 222 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
14 180 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
15 170 (2.20%) Retail
16 156 (2.02%) Electronics
17 133 (1.72%) General Ledger
18 128 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
19 119 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 116 (1.50%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,244 (16.08%) Analyst
2 846 (10.94%) Developer
3 772 (9.98%) Senior
4 669 (8.65%) Business Analyst
5 647 (8.37%) Lead
6 646 (8.35%) Architect
7 605 (7.82%) Project Manager
8 570 (7.37%) Consultant
9 274 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
10 197 (2.55%) Data Analyst
11 187 (2.42%) Data Engineer
12 177 (2.29%) Programme Manager
13 174 (2.25%) Financial Analyst
14 154 (1.99%) Senior Manager
15 141 (1.82%) Java Developer
16 136 (1.76%) Senior Developer
16 136 (1.76%) Software Engineer
17 131 (1.69%) Finance Manager
18 122 (1.58%) Senior Analyst
19 115 (1.49%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (3.54%) REST
2 254 (3.28%) Kafka
3 197 (2.55%) .NET
4 193 (2.50%) React
5 160 (2.07%) Oracle Fusion
6 146 (1.89%) RESTful
7 140 (1.81%) Spring
8 138 (1.78%) Middleware
9 117 (1.51%) Spring Boot
10 102 (1.32%) AngularJS
11 99 (1.28%) Node.js
12 88 (1.14%) PySpark
13 87 (1.12%) XML
14 85 (1.10%) HTML
15 83 (1.07%) Pandas
16 81 (1.05%) CSS
17 75 (0.97%) JSON
18 73 (0.94%) NumPy
19 72 (0.93%) OAuth
20 68 (0.88%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 333 (4.31%) Onboarding
2 301 (3.89%) Product Ownership
3 237 (3.06%) Cloud Native
4 186 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
5 170 (2.20%) Management Information System
6 166 (2.15%) Derivative
7 149 (1.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 146 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
9 142 (1.84%) Data Centre
10 140 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
11 132 (1.71%) Data Structures
12 123 (1.59%) Fixed Income
13 120 (1.55%) Equities
14 111 (1.44%) Analytical Mindset
14 111 (1.44%) Public Cloud
15 93 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
16 84 (1.09%) Virtual Team
17 78 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
18 74 (0.96%) Hedge funds
19 64 (0.83%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 329 (4.25%) Linux
2 289 (3.74%) Windows
3 145 (1.87%) Unix
4 65 (0.84%) Windows 10
5 58 (0.75%) Android
5 58 (0.75%) Mac OS
6 55 (0.71%) Windows Server
7 28 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 13 (0.17%) zOS
10 8 (0.10%) AIX
10 8 (0.10%) Solaris
11 7 (0.091%) VMS
12 5 (0.065%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.052%) CentOS
13 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.039%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,722 (22.27%) Agile
2 1,489 (19.25%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,229 (15.89%) Problem-Solving
4 960 (12.41%) Migration
5 849 (10.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 822 (10.63%) DevOps
7 785 (10.15%) CI/CD
8 768 (9.93%) Analytics
9 750 (9.70%) Project Management
10 745 (9.63%) Business Intelligence
11 723 (9.35%) Continuous Improvement
12 707 (9.14%) ERP
13 617 (7.98%) AI
14 579 (7.49%) Decision-Making
15 576 (7.45%) Roadmaps
16 564 (7.29%) Data Modelling
17 560 (7.24%) Change Management
18 532 (6.88%) Risk Management
19 505 (6.53%) Project Delivery
20 502 (6.49%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,123 (14.52%) SQL
2 998 (12.90%) Python
3 547 (7.07%) Java
4 290 (3.75%) C#
5 226 (2.92%) JavaScript
6 190 (2.46%) PowerShell
7 176 (2.28%) TypeScript
8 139 (1.80%) C++
9 79 (1.02%) Go
10 77 (1.00%) PL/SQL
11 71 (0.92%) Bash
12 51 (0.66%) VBA
13 44 (0.57%) T-SQL
14 43 (0.56%) R
15 41 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 38 (0.49%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.48%) Scala
18 36 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 31 (0.40%) Rust
20 27 (0.35%) Korn
Qualifications
1 815 (10.54%) Degree
2 623 (8.06%) Security Cleared
3 460 (5.95%) SC Cleared
4 182 (2.35%) PMI Certification
5 180 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 174 (2.25%) PMP
7 173 (2.24%) Master's Degree
8 161 (2.08%) ACCA
9 151 (1.95%) CIMA
10 125 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
11 93 (1.20%) CISSP
12 81 (1.05%) AWS Certification
13 69 (0.89%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.81%) Azure Certification
14 63 (0.81%) CISM
15 43 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
16 36 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
17 35 (0.45%) CBAP
17 35 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 32 (0.41%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (4.95%) QA
2 380 (4.91%) Data Quality
3 300 (3.88%) PMO
4 267 (3.45%) GDPR
5 127 (1.64%) NIST
6 126 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 103 (1.33%) SLA
9 86 (1.11%) Accessibility
10 81 (1.05%) IFRS
10 81 (1.05%) PCI DSS
11 68 (0.88%) GRC
12 57 (0.74%) ISO 20022
13 43 (0.56%) PSD2
14 37 (0.48%) GAAP
14 37 (0.48%) MiFID
15 36 (0.47%) NCSC
15 36 (0.47%) SEPA
16 32 (0.41%) COBIT
17 31 (0.40%) Basel III
System Software
1 336 (4.34%) Docker
2 175 (2.26%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.36%) vSphere
6 13 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.12%) GPFS
9 9 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.091%) HDFS
12 4 (0.052%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.039%) Firmware
13 3 (0.039%) KVM
13 3 (0.039%) RACF
13 3 (0.039%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.026%) ACF2
14 2 (0.026%) Tivoli Directory Server
Systems Management
1 408 (5.28%) Kubernetes
2 256 (3.31%) Terraform
3 156 (2.02%) Ansible
4 97 (1.25%) Grafana
5 89 (1.15%) Prometheus
6 55 (0.71%) SCCM
7 54 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
8 38 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.32%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.26%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.23%) Control-M
12 17 (0.22%) Argo
13 15 (0.19%) vRealize
14 14 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
14 14 (0.18%) SCOM
15 13 (0.17%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.17%) HP SiteScope
15 13 (0.17%) Kibana
16 12 (0.16%) ITRS Geneos
17 11 (0.14%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,027 (13.28%) Microsoft
2 797 (10.31%) SAP
3 678 (8.77%) Oracle
4 302 (3.90%) ServiceNow
5 187 (2.42%) Salesforce
6 183 (2.37%) Databricks
7 176 (2.28%) Google
8 155 (2.00%) Cisco
8 155 (2.00%) Splunk
9 143 (1.85%) Workday
10 110 (1.42%) VMware
11 100 (1.29%) IBM
12 74 (0.96%) CyberArk
13 71 (0.92%) Citrix
14 68 (0.88%) Ariba
15 52 (0.67%) HP
16 51 (0.66%) Bloomberg
16 51 (0.66%) OpenAI
16 51 (0.66%) Sage
17 49 (0.63%) Murex