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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,799 6,342 8,059
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.05% 22.20% 18.89%
As % of the General category 33.60% 35.05% 32.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,507 4,139 5,401
10th Percentile £355 £350 £356
25th Percentile £441 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £509
% change year-on-year +0.05% -1.82% -3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 112 254
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.53 £24.55 £15.04
Median hourly rate £25.38 £42.29 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -39.98% +56.79% -6.97%
75th Percentile £54.23 £65.44 £38.12
90th Percentile £86.20 £82.10 £55.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £49.90 £30.00
% change year-on-year -52.25% +66.33% -38.78%

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 26,189 18,092 24,661
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.74% 63.32% 57.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,889 11,502 15,553
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.29% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £773
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,728 774 1,959
10th Percentile £13.72 £13.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.64 £15.44
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.45 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.29% -8.50% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.63 £24.22 £28.00
% change year-on-year +18.19% -13.50% +1.08%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 7,784 £550 -4.35% 5,361
London 0 4,709 £575 -8.00% 3,029
UK excluding London 0 3,508 £500 +0.05% 3,039
Work from Home -2 2,452 £540 -6.09% 2,316
North of England +3 1,190 £492 +3.58% 824
South East -1 655 £500 -4.31% 886
North West +5 626 £465 - 485
Midlands -1 594 £492 +3.58% 455
Yorkshire +2 526 £525 +9.95% 275
Scotland 0 426 £500 +5.26% 194
West Midlands 0 405 £500 -4.28% 276
South West -2 356 £525 - 343
East of England +5 202 £513 -10.87% 230
East Midlands 0 185 £465 +4.55% 179
Wales +12 89 £475 +22.58% 66
Northern Ireland -1 48 £525 +28.05% 82
North East -16 39 £488 +4.84% 72
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 321 (3.65%) Confluence
2 216 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 84 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
5 54 (0.61%) Apache
6 52 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.35%) SAS
8 23 (0.26%) CMS
9 20 (0.23%) CICS
9 20 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.18%) IIS
11 14 (0.16%) Appian
11 14 (0.16%) Camunda
12 13 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.11%) HCL Notes
13 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.11%) Mendix
13 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
15 7 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 506 (5.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.57%) Microsoft Office
3 170 (1.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 170 (1.93%) Microsoft Project
4 129 (1.47%) MS Visio
5 49 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
6 34 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.091%) Notion
7 8 (0.091%) Sketch
7 8 (0.091%) Trello
8 7 (0.080%) InVision
9 6 (0.068%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.068%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.045%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.011%) UXPin
12 1 (0.011%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 398 (4.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 114 (1.30%) Oracle Payables
3 108 (1.23%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.09%) Oracle Receivables
5 87 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 66 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
7 62 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
8 57 (0.65%) SAP FI
9 54 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
10 45 (0.51%) SAP CO
11 43 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
12 42 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
13 37 (0.42%) Aladdin
13 37 (0.42%) Oracle Assets
14 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
15 31 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 29 (0.33%) Oracle Cash Management
17 25 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
17 25 (0.28%) SAP ERP
18 24 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,359 (15.44%) Azure
2 983 (11.17%) AWS
3 595 (6.76%) Power Platform
4 399 (4.53%) GCP
5 306 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
6 293 (3.33%) SaaS
7 268 (3.05%) Microsoft 365
8 234 (2.66%) GitHub
9 228 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
10 165 (1.88%) Snowflake
11 157 (1.78%) Entra ID
12 137 (1.56%) Serverless
13 125 (1.42%) OCI
14 112 (1.27%) Power Automate
15 110 (1.25%) Amazon S3
16 98 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
17 89 (1.01%) OpenShift
18 84 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
19 79 (0.90%) PowerApps
20 78 (0.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 159 (1.81%) Firewall
2 119 (1.35%) Network Security
3 78 (0.89%) WAN
4 74 (0.84%) DNS
5 62 (0.70%) VPN
6 55 (0.63%) TCP/IP
7 40 (0.45%) BGP
8 38 (0.43%) LAN
8 38 (0.43%) SD-WAN
9 33 (0.38%) HTTP
10 30 (0.34%) OSPF
10 30 (0.34%) SSL
11 29 (0.33%) Multicast
12 28 (0.32%) DHCP
13 24 (0.27%) MPLS
14 21 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
14 21 (0.24%) VSAN
15 19 (0.22%) VLAN
16 17 (0.19%) Internet
17 14 (0.16%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 503 (5.72%) Power BI
2 228 (2.59%) SQL Server
3 218 (2.48%) Data Warehouse
4 173 (1.97%) Metadata
5 162 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
6 158 (1.80%) Relational Database
7 152 (1.73%) Tableau
8 126 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 91 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (0.84%) Big Data
12 68 (0.77%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.70%) BigQuery
13 62 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 51 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
15 46 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
15 46 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 42 (0.48%) Delta Lake
17 41 (0.47%) Power Query
18 36 (0.41%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 673 (7.65%) JIRA
2 206 (2.34%) Git
3 164 (1.86%) Jenkins
4 98 (1.11%) GitLab
5 47 (0.53%) Cucumber
6 46 (0.52%) JUnit
7 39 (0.44%) Selenium
8 31 (0.35%) Postman
9 30 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
10 29 (0.33%) Visual Studio
11 25 (0.28%) MLflow
12 24 (0.27%) SonarQube
13 22 (0.25%) REST Assured
14 21 (0.24%) Zephyr
15 19 (0.22%) ERwin
15 19 (0.22%) Maven
16 17 (0.19%) Hudson
17 16 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
18 14 (0.16%) Bitbucket
18 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,567 (29.17%) Social Skills
2 1,609 (18.29%) Banking
3 1,151 (13.08%) Analytical Skills
4 507 (5.76%) Public Sector
5 382 (4.34%) Legal
6 341 (3.88%) Financial Institution
7 323 (3.67%) Investment Banking
8 286 (3.25%) Front Office
9 273 (3.10%) Retail
10 249 (2.83%) Organisational Skills
11 234 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
12 216 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
13 172 (1.95%) Manufacturing
14 150 (1.70%) Marketing
15 143 (1.63%) General Ledger
16 131 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 130 (1.48%) Telecoms
18 127 (1.44%) Local Government
19 125 (1.42%) Law
20 124 (1.41%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,333 (15.15%) Analyst
2 932 (10.59%) Senior
3 910 (10.34%) Lead
4 879 (9.99%) Developer
5 804 (9.14%) Architect
6 715 (8.13%) Business Analyst
7 688 (7.82%) Project Manager
8 593 (6.74%) Consultant
9 335 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
10 288 (3.27%) Data Engineer
11 220 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 213 (2.42%) Senior Manager
13 193 (2.19%) Data Analyst
14 184 (2.09%) Finance Manager
15 176 (2.00%) Accountant
16 173 (1.97%) Programme Manager
17 155 (1.76%) Software Engineer
18 153 (1.74%) Java Developer
19 142 (1.61%) Delivery Manager
20 140 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 259 (2.94%) REST
2 251 (2.85%) Kafka
3 244 (2.77%) .NET
4 213 (2.42%) React
5 183 (2.08%) Middleware
6 177 (2.01%) Oracle Fusion
7 151 (1.72%) Spring
8 146 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.55%) RESTful
10 106 (1.20%) PySpark
11 102 (1.16%) Node.js
12 95 (1.08%) AngularJS
13 87 (0.99%) OAuth
14 79 (0.90%) Redux
15 76 (0.86%) JSON
16 72 (0.82%) XML
17 66 (0.75%) CSS
18 65 (0.74%) HTML
19 63 (0.72%) OpenID
20 61 (0.69%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 383 (4.35%) Onboarding
2 378 (4.30%) Product Ownership
3 332 (3.77%) Cloud Native
4 244 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
5 195 (2.22%) Management Information System
6 187 (2.13%) Data Structures
7 171 (1.94%) Derivative
8 167 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
9 160 (1.82%) Data Centre
10 137 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
11 136 (1.55%) Fixed Income
12 134 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 103 (1.17%) Equities
14 102 (1.16%) Public Cloud
15 101 (1.15%) Analytical Mindset
16 96 (1.09%) Virtual Team
17 93 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
18 90 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
19 78 (0.89%) AI Agents
20 68 (0.77%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 279 (3.17%) Windows
2 261 (2.97%) Linux
3 139 (1.58%) Unix
4 72 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.48%) Windows 10
6 36 (0.41%) Solaris
7 31 (0.35%) Apple iOS
8 28 (0.32%) zOS
9 27 (0.31%) Android
10 24 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 18 (0.20%) AIX
11 18 (0.20%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.080%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.068%) Oracle Linux
13 6 (0.068%) VMS
13 6 (0.068%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.045%) HPUX
14 4 (0.045%) MVS
14 4 (0.045%) SUSE
15 3 (0.034%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,809 (20.56%) Agile
2 1,763 (20.04%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,212 (13.77%) Problem-Solving
4 1,208 (13.73%) Migration
5 979 (11.13%) Continuous Improvement
6 949 (10.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 928 (10.55%) ERP
8 925 (10.51%) DevOps
9 885 (10.06%) CI/CD
10 877 (9.97%) AI
11 841 (9.56%) Analytics
12 788 (8.96%) Project Management
13 728 (8.27%) Data Modelling
14 726 (8.25%) Decision-Making
15 707 (8.04%) Validation
16 706 (8.02%) Roadmaps
17 680 (7.73%) User Acceptance Testing
18 677 (7.69%) Business Intelligence
19 620 (7.05%) Change Management
20 571 (6.49%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,193 (13.56%) SQL
2 1,047 (11.90%) Python
3 571 (6.49%) Java
4 343 (3.90%) C#
5 219 (2.49%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.31%) TypeScript
7 173 (1.97%) PowerShell
8 107 (1.22%) C++
9 76 (0.86%) Go
10 70 (0.80%) Bash
11 69 (0.78%) PL/SQL
12 63 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 54 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 51 (0.58%) Shell Script
15 45 (0.51%) Scala
16 41 (0.47%) VBA
17 30 (0.34%) R
18 29 (0.33%) Apex Code
18 29 (0.33%) Bicep
19 28 (0.32%) Rust
Qualifications
1 743 (8.44%) Degree
2 681 (7.74%) Security Cleared
3 486 (5.52%) SC Cleared
4 224 (2.55%) ACCA
5 208 (2.36%) PMP
6 205 (2.33%) CIMA
7 186 (2.11%) PMI Certification
8 143 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 128 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
10 127 (1.44%) CISSP
11 95 (1.08%) Master's Degree
12 85 (0.97%) CISM
13 76 (0.86%) DV Cleared
14 67 (0.76%) Azure Certification
15 60 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
16 44 (0.50%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 31 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 31 (0.35%) ISTQB
18 31 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 528 (6.00%) Data Quality
2 409 (4.65%) QA
3 314 (3.57%) PMO
4 284 (3.23%) GDPR
5 162 (1.84%) NIST
6 130 (1.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.31%) IFRS
8 110 (1.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 106 (1.20%) SLA
10 97 (1.10%) GRC
11 87 (0.99%) Accessibility
12 68 (0.77%) PCI DSS
13 61 (0.69%) GAAP
14 59 (0.67%) ISO 20022
15 38 (0.43%) NCSC
16 35 (0.40%) SEPA
17 34 (0.39%) PSD2
18 28 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
19 27 (0.31%) IFRS 17
19 27 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 274 (3.11%) Docker
2 163 (1.85%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
5 29 (0.33%) vSphere
6 23 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.17%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
10 11 (0.13%) NFS
11 7 (0.080%) GPFS
11 7 (0.080%) RACF
12 6 (0.068%) KVM
13 5 (0.057%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.045%) Firmware
14 4 (0.045%) HDFS
14 4 (0.045%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.045%) SRDF
15 3 (0.034%) GridGain
16 2 (0.023%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 401 (4.56%) Kubernetes
2 259 (2.94%) Terraform
3 131 (1.49%) Ansible
4 89 (1.01%) Grafana
5 72 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 61 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 42 (0.48%) SCCM
8 39 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.20%) Control-M
11 17 (0.19%) vRealize
12 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 15 (0.17%) Argo
12 15 (0.17%) Puppet
13 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
14 12 (0.14%) Nessus
15 9 (0.10%) NetBackup
15 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,120 (12.73%) Microsoft
2 793 (9.01%) SAP
3 741 (8.42%) Oracle
4 314 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 246 (2.80%) Databricks
6 197 (2.24%) Salesforce
7 175 (1.99%) Google
8 131 (1.49%) Workday
9 120 (1.36%) Cisco
10 116 (1.32%) Splunk
11 108 (1.23%) VMware
12 97 (1.10%) IBM
13 82 (0.93%) CyberArk
14 80 (0.91%) Ariba
15 69 (0.78%) Citrix
16 66 (0.75%) Sage
17 62 (0.70%) OpenAI
18 53 (0.60%) Palo Alto
19 51 (0.58%) IFS
20 50 (0.57%) Informatica