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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,793 6,359 8,372
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.02% 21.05% 18.85%
As % of the General category 32.53% 33.89% 32.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,943 4,001 5,710
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 £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -0.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 95 183
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.40 £22.39 £14.38
Median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.86% +45.83% -4.00%
75th Percentile £41.38 £64.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £69.94 £81.92 £58.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £29.23 £21.43
% change year-on-year -24.73% +36.40% -38.03%

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 23,960 18,763 26,157
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.48% 62.10% 58.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,990 11,449 16,828
10th Percentile £300 £290 £265
25th Percentile £404 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £649 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £500
% change year-on-year -0.52% -4.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,462 613 1,710
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.48 £20.45 £15.29
Median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.33% +15.38% -8.77%
75th Percentile £51.53 £58.27 £51.25
90th Percentile £73.72 £75.00 £65.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% +10.00% -2.59%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 6,856 £538 -9.17% 3,526
London 0 4,160 £575 -7.26% 1,644
UK excluding London 0 3,098 £500 - 2,635
Work from Home -1 2,216 £525 -12.50% 1,410
North of England +2 999 £475 -0.21% 639
South East -1 563 £500 -4.76% 997
Midlands -2 560 £490 -2.00% 377
North West +4 503 £450 -3.23% 363
Yorkshire 0 449 £500 -2.44% 216
Scotland 0 393 £476 +0.21% 114
West Midlands 0 355 £514 -6.55% 214
South West -5 307 £513 -2.38% 257
East Midlands 0 201 £450 +7.14% 163
East of England -1 188 £529 +0.71% 202
Wales +34 103 £413 +1.54% 62
North East -10 48 £488 +5.41% 70
Northern Ireland -2 45 £538 +65.38% 37
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
1 324 (4.16%) Confluence
2 196 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 77 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.73%) Microsoft Exchange
5 48 (0.62%) Apache
6 42 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.49%) 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 (0.15%) HCL Notes
15 11 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 11 (0.14%) Camunda
16 10 (0.13%) Mendix
17 8 (0.10%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 524 (6.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 286 (3.67%) Microsoft Office
3 199 (2.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 180 (2.31%) Microsoft Project
5 139 (1.78%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.21%) Sketch
8 16 (0.21%) Trello
9 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
11 8 (0.10%) InVision
12 7 (0.090%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.064%) Notion
13 5 (0.064%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.051%) Adobe Captivate
14 4 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.026%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.026%) InDesign
15 2 (0.026%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 322 (4.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.48%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.23%) Oracle Receivables
4 73 (0.94%) SAP FI
5 72 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
6 70 (0.90%) NetSuite
7 69 (0.89%) Oracle General Ledger
8 64 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 61 (0.78%) SAP CO
10 58 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
11 55 (0.71%) SAP FI/CO
12 44 (0.56%) Oracle Assets
13 40 (0.51%) Oracle Cash Management
14 39 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
15 38 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
15 38 (0.49%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 36 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
16 36 (0.46%) Workday HCM
17 29 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
18 22 (0.28%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,166 (14.96%) Azure
2 958 (12.29%) AWS
3 547 (7.02%) Power Platform
4 394 (5.06%) GCP
5 269 (3.45%) Microsoft 365
6 260 (3.34%) SaaS
7 233 (2.99%) Azure DevOps
8 227 (2.91%) Dynamics 365
9 202 (2.59%) GitHub
10 153 (1.96%) OCI
11 146 (1.87%) Serverless
12 127 (1.63%) Snowflake
13 120 (1.54%) Entra ID
14 98 (1.26%) Amazon S3
15 89 (1.14%) Power Automate
16 85 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
17 78 (1.00%) OpenShift
18 75 (0.96%) AWS Lambda
19 73 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
19 73 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 148 (1.90%) Firewall
2 85 (1.09%) Network Security
3 70 (0.90%) WAN
4 48 (0.62%) DNS
5 42 (0.54%) LAN
6 41 (0.53%) VPN
7 39 (0.50%) SD-WAN
8 35 (0.45%) TCP/IP
9 34 (0.44%) Wireless
10 26 (0.33%) Skype
10 26 (0.33%) SSL
11 24 (0.31%) BGP
12 23 (0.30%) OSPF
13 22 (0.28%) HTTP
14 21 (0.27%) Multicast
15 19 (0.24%) DHCP
15 19 (0.24%) Internet
16 18 (0.23%) SSH
17 15 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
18 14 (0.18%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 481 (6.17%) Power BI
2 204 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
3 189 (2.43%) SQL Server
4 178 (2.28%) PostgreSQL
5 142 (1.82%) Tableau
6 129 (1.66%) Metadata
7 119 (1.53%) NoSQL
8 118 (1.51%) Relational Database
9 115 (1.48%) Data Lake
10 91 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (0.96%) Big Data
12 69 (0.89%) MongoDB
13 68 (0.87%) Oracle Database
14 59 (0.76%) BigQuery
15 44 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 36 (0.46%) Hadoop
17 36 (0.46%) MySQL
17 36 (0.46%) Power Query
18 35 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 631 (8.10%) JIRA
2 250 (3.21%) Jenkins
3 210 (2.69%) Git
4 158 (2.03%) GitLab
5 69 (0.89%) JUnit
6 61 (0.78%) Cucumber
7 47 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.55%) Selenium
9 38 (0.49%) Postman
10 36 (0.46%) Bitbucket
11 31 (0.40%) Visual Studio
12 26 (0.33%) 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 2,653 (34.04%) Social Skills
2 1,525 (19.57%) Banking
3 1,015 (13.02%) Analytical Skills
4 623 (7.99%) Public Sector
5 342 (4.39%) Financial Institution
6 295 (3.79%) Marketing
7 280 (3.59%) Legal
8 279 (3.58%) Front Office
9 273 (3.50%) Investment Banking
10 266 (3.41%) Manufacturing
11 249 (3.20%) Telecoms
12 243 (3.12%) Organisational Skills
13 223 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
14 181 (2.32%) Influencing Skills
15 170 (2.18%) Retail
16 152 (1.95%) Electronics
17 132 (1.69%) General Ledger
18 128 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
19 121 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 116 (1.49%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,249 (16.03%) Analyst
2 860 (11.04%) Developer
3 783 (10.05%) Senior
4 673 (8.64%) Business Analyst
5 655 (8.40%) Lead
6 652 (8.37%) Architect
7 606 (7.78%) Project Manager
8 575 (7.38%) Consultant
9 276 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
10 198 (2.54%) Data Analyst
11 187 (2.40%) Data Engineer
12 179 (2.30%) Programme Manager
13 174 (2.23%) Financial Analyst
14 155 (1.99%) Senior Manager
15 147 (1.89%) Software Engineer
16 142 (1.82%) Java Developer
17 137 (1.76%) Senior Developer
18 132 (1.69%) Finance Manager
19 123 (1.58%) Senior Analyst
20 116 (1.49%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (3.52%) REST
2 261 (3.35%) Kafka
3 206 (2.64%) React
4 197 (2.53%) .NET
5 165 (2.12%) Oracle Fusion
6 144 (1.85%) RESTful
7 139 (1.78%) Spring
8 138 (1.77%) Middleware
9 117 (1.50%) Spring Boot
10 111 (1.42%) Node.js
11 105 (1.35%) AngularJS
12 89 (1.14%) PySpark
13 86 (1.10%) HTML
14 85 (1.09%) XML
15 84 (1.08%) Pandas
16 82 (1.05%) CSS
17 74 (0.95%) JSON
18 73 (0.94%) NumPy
19 70 (0.90%) OAuth
20 68 (0.87%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 333 (4.27%) Onboarding
2 307 (3.94%) Product Ownership
3 245 (3.14%) Cloud Native
4 191 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
5 173 (2.22%) Management Information System
6 170 (2.18%) Derivative
7 149 (1.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 147 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
9 142 (1.82%) Data Centre
10 141 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
11 137 (1.76%) Data Structures
12 136 (1.75%) Fixed Income
13 125 (1.60%) Equities
14 111 (1.42%) Public Cloud
15 110 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
16 95 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
17 87 (1.12%) Virtual Team
18 78 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
19 74 (0.95%) Hedge funds
20 64 (0.82%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 331 (4.25%) Linux
2 288 (3.70%) Windows
3 148 (1.90%) Unix
4 64 (0.82%) Windows 10
5 58 (0.74%) Android
5 58 (0.74%) Mac OS
6 53 (0.68%) Windows Server
7 28 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 19 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 13 (0.17%) zOS
10 8 (0.10%) AIX
10 8 (0.10%) Solaris
11 7 (0.090%) VMS
12 5 (0.064%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.051%) CentOS
13 4 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.051%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.038%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,746 (22.40%) Agile
2 1,503 (19.29%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,232 (15.81%) Problem-Solving
4 971 (12.46%) Migration
5 853 (10.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 833 (10.69%) DevOps
7 788 (10.11%) CI/CD
8 777 (9.97%) Analytics
9 751 (9.64%) Project Management
10 749 (9.61%) Business Intelligence
11 725 (9.30%) Continuous Improvement
12 709 (9.10%) ERP
13 623 (7.99%) AI
14 590 (7.57%) Roadmaps
15 584 (7.49%) Decision-Making
16 569 (7.30%) Data Modelling
17 561 (7.20%) Change Management
18 535 (6.87%) Risk Management
19 508 (6.52%) Project Delivery
20 506 (6.49%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,129 (14.49%) SQL
2 1,015 (13.02%) Python
3 555 (7.12%) Java
4 291 (3.73%) C#
5 240 (3.08%) JavaScript
6 189 (2.43%) PowerShell
7 188 (2.41%) TypeScript
8 138 (1.77%) C++
9 87 (1.12%) Go
10 76 (0.98%) PL/SQL
11 71 (0.91%) Bash
12 53 (0.68%) VBA
13 44 (0.56%) R
13 44 (0.56%) T-SQL
14 43 (0.55%) Shell Script
15 38 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 38 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 37 (0.47%) Scala
17 31 (0.40%) Rust
18 27 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 816 (10.47%) Degree
2 630 (8.08%) Security Cleared
3 463 (5.94%) SC Cleared
4 183 (2.35%) PMI Certification
5 180 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
6 176 (2.26%) PMP
7 173 (2.22%) Master's Degree
8 158 (2.03%) ACCA
9 148 (1.90%) CIMA
10 124 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 100 (1.28%) CISSP
12 82 (1.05%) AWS Certification
13 70 (0.90%) DV Cleared
14 68 (0.87%) CISM
15 64 (0.82%) Azure Certification
16 43 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
17 36 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
18 35 (0.45%) CBAP
18 35 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
19 33 (0.42%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 385 (4.94%) QA
2 382 (4.90%) Data Quality
3 304 (3.90%) PMO
4 270 (3.46%) GDPR
5 130 (1.67%) NIST
6 128 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 103 (1.32%) SLA
9 86 (1.10%) Accessibility
10 81 (1.04%) IFRS
10 81 (1.04%) PCI DSS
11 68 (0.87%) GRC
12 57 (0.73%) ISO 20022
13 43 (0.55%) PSD2
14 38 (0.49%) GAAP
14 38 (0.49%) MiFID
15 36 (0.46%) NCSC
15 36 (0.46%) SEPA
16 32 (0.41%) COBIT
17 31 (0.40%) Basel III
System Software
1 338 (4.34%) Docker
2 170 (2.18%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.36%) vSphere
6 13 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.12%) GPFS
9 9 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 9 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.090%) HDFS
12 4 (0.051%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.038%) Firmware
13 3 (0.038%) KVM
13 3 (0.038%) RACF
13 3 (0.038%) SRDF
13 3 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.026%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 409 (5.25%) Kubernetes
2 255 (3.27%) Terraform
3 157 (2.01%) Ansible
4 97 (1.24%) Grafana
5 89 (1.14%) Prometheus
6 55 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
6 55 (0.71%) SCCM
7 39 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
8 25 (0.32%) FortiGate
9 22 (0.28%) Progress Chef
10 18 (0.23%) Control-M
11 17 (0.22%) Argo
12 14 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.18%) SCOM
12 14 (0.18%) vRealize
13 13 (0.17%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.17%) HP SiteScope
13 13 (0.17%) Kibana
14 12 (0.15%) ITRS Geneos
15 11 (0.14%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,028 (13.19%) Microsoft
2 794 (10.19%) SAP
3 686 (8.80%) Oracle
4 307 (3.94%) ServiceNow
5 189 (2.43%) Salesforce
6 184 (2.36%) Databricks
7 178 (2.28%) Google
8 158 (2.03%) Cisco
9 155 (1.99%) Splunk
10 145 (1.86%) Workday
11 111 (1.42%) VMware
12 100 (1.28%) IBM
13 74 (0.95%) CyberArk
14 70 (0.90%) Citrix
15 68 (0.87%) Ariba
16 54 (0.69%) HP
17 52 (0.67%) OpenAI
17 52 (0.67%) Sage
18 51 (0.65%) Bloomberg
19 50 (0.64%) Dell