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

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,489 6,567 8,141
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.31% 22.29% 18.75%
As % of the General category 33.27% 35.26% 32.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,359 4,328 5,426
10th Percentile £352 £350 £356
25th Percentile £428 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £570 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.02% -0.87% -4.17%
75th Percentile £669 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 107 250
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.51 £12.74
25th Percentile £18.12 £22.39 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +45.45% -10.58%
75th Percentile £46.52 £71.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £83.20 £54.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.32 £53.75 £31.47
% change year-on-year -58.48% +70.80% -33.75%

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 25,517 18,626 25,290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.04% 63.21% 58.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,795 11,902 15,982
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £751
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,615 782 1,919
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.42 £18.13 £15.41
Median hourly rate £28.25 £28.30 £28.44
Median % change year-on-year -0.16% -0.51% -18.74%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.38 £26.28 £27.00
% change year-on-year -3.42% -2.67% -14.65%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 7,512 £537 -6.61% 4,156
London 0 4,543 £575 -8.00% 2,066
UK excluding London 0 3,370 £500 - 2,782
Work from Home -2 2,377 £538 -10.42% 1,714
North of England +3 1,120 £475 - 642
South East -1 648 £503 -3.83% 907
North West +6 599 £465 - 350
Midlands -2 581 £475 -5.00% 401
Yorkshire +1 477 £500 - 222
Scotland 0 396 £500 +2.67% 152
West Midlands 0 387 £492 -6.29% 226
South West -2 337 £520 +1.96% 326
East of England -2 198 £525 -4.55% 235
East Midlands 0 189 £450 +0.67% 172
Wales +26 100 £413 +10.00% 74
North East -11 44 £488 +11.94% 81
Northern Ireland -1 42 £513 +36.67% 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
1 330 (3.89%) Confluence
2 216 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
5 52 (0.61%) Apache
5 52 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
6 40 (0.47%) SAS
7 27 (0.32%) CMS
8 20 (0.24%) CICS
9 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.20%) Appian
11 15 (0.18%) Camunda
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) IIS
15 10 (0.12%) TPMS
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 538 (6.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 241 (2.84%) Microsoft Office
3 183 (2.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 172 (2.03%) Microsoft Project
5 126 (1.48%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.42%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.16%) Trello
9 8 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.094%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
11 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.059%) Notion
13 3 (0.035%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 375 (4.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 117 (1.38%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 98 (1.15%) NetSuite
5 85 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 73 (0.86%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.79%) SAP FI
8 62 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.67%) Oracle ERP
10 56 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
11 51 (0.60%) SAP CO
12 47 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
13 41 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
14 35 (0.41%) Oracle Cash Management
15 34 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
16 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
17 32 (0.38%) Aladdin
18 31 (0.37%) SAP ERP
18 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
19 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,282 (15.10%) Azure
2 976 (11.50%) AWS
3 613 (7.22%) Power Platform
4 391 (4.61%) GCP
5 289 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
6 277 (3.26%) SaaS
7 272 (3.20%) Microsoft 365
8 239 (2.82%) Dynamics 365
9 235 (2.77%) GitHub
10 146 (1.72%) Serverless
11 145 (1.71%) OCI
12 143 (1.68%) Snowflake
13 131 (1.54%) Entra ID
14 123 (1.45%) Amazon S3
15 100 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
17 89 (1.05%) OpenShift
18 88 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
19 87 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
20 76 (0.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.92%) Firewall
2 111 (1.31%) Network Security
3 77 (0.91%) WAN
4 68 (0.80%) DNS
5 60 (0.71%) VPN
6 48 (0.57%) TCP/IP
7 43 (0.51%) LAN
8 42 (0.49%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.40%) BGP
10 31 (0.37%) HTTP
11 29 (0.34%) OSPF
11 29 (0.34%) SSL
12 27 (0.32%) Multicast
13 24 (0.28%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 22 (0.26%) DHCP
16 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
18 16 (0.19%) VLAN
18 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 528 (6.22%) Power BI
2 214 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
3 208 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 169 (1.99%) Metadata
5 165 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
6 148 (1.74%) Tableau
7 129 (1.52%) Relational Database
8 123 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 100 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
10 90 (1.06%) NoSQL
11 77 (0.91%) Big Data
12 66 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 61 (0.72%) BigQuery
14 58 (0.68%) MongoDB
15 44 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 43 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
16 43 (0.51%) Power Query
17 41 (0.48%) Delta Lake
17 41 (0.48%) Snowflake Schema
18 40 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 678 (7.99%) JIRA
2 210 (2.47%) Git
3 196 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 117 (1.38%) GitLab
5 58 (0.68%) JUnit
6 55 (0.65%) Cucumber
7 44 (0.52%) Selenium
8 38 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.35%) Postman
10 27 (0.32%) Visual Studio
11 25 (0.29%) MLflow
12 24 (0.28%) Bitbucket
13 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
14 20 (0.24%) REST Assured
15 18 (0.21%) ERwin
15 18 (0.21%) Maven
15 18 (0.21%) Zephyr
16 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 16 (0.19%) Hudson
18 13 (0.15%) TeamCity
General
1 2,628 (30.96%) Social Skills
2 1,579 (18.60%) Banking
3 1,147 (13.51%) Analytical Skills
4 577 (6.80%) Public Sector
5 327 (3.85%) Financial Institution
6 324 (3.82%) Legal
7 288 (3.39%) Front Office
8 284 (3.35%) Investment Banking
9 241 (2.84%) Organisational Skills
10 234 (2.76%) Retail
11 233 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
12 220 (2.59%) Manufacturing
13 213 (2.51%) Marketing
14 210 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
15 180 (2.12%) Telecoms
16 144 (1.70%) General Ledger
17 128 (1.51%) Local Government
18 125 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
19 122 (1.44%) Law
20 110 (1.30%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,292 (15.22%) Analyst
2 864 (10.18%) Senior
3 858 (10.11%) Developer
4 848 (9.99%) Lead
5 764 (9.00%) Architect
6 699 (8.23%) Business Analyst
7 677 (7.98%) Project Manager
8 625 (7.36%) Consultant
9 303 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
10 259 (3.05%) Data Engineer
11 205 (2.41%) Financial Analyst
12 194 (2.29%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.21%) Finance Manager
14 184 (2.17%) Data Analyst
15 166 (1.96%) Programme Manager
16 156 (1.84%) Accountant
17 152 (1.79%) Java Developer
18 138 (1.63%) Senior Analyst
19 135 (1.59%) Delivery Manager
20 125 (1.47%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (3.13%) Kafka
2 250 (2.94%) REST
3 219 (2.58%) .NET
4 200 (2.36%) React
5 173 (2.04%) Middleware
6 159 (1.87%) Oracle Fusion
7 145 (1.71%) Spring
8 134 (1.58%) RESTful
8 134 (1.58%) Spring Boot
9 111 (1.31%) Node.js
10 96 (1.13%) PySpark
11 94 (1.11%) AngularJS
12 85 (1.00%) OAuth
13 78 (0.92%) XML
14 77 (0.91%) JSON
15 72 (0.85%) HTML
15 72 (0.85%) Redux
16 69 (0.81%) CSS
17 66 (0.78%) Pandas
18 58 (0.68%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 356 (4.19%) Onboarding
2 322 (3.79%) Product Ownership
3 285 (3.36%) Cloud Native
4 232 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
5 193 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 168 (1.98%) Data Structures
7 162 (1.91%) Derivative
8 161 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
9 143 (1.68%) Data Centre
10 142 (1.67%) Fixed Income
11 141 (1.66%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 138 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
13 112 (1.32%) Equities
14 106 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
15 103 (1.21%) Public Cloud
16 99 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
17 97 (1.14%) Virtual Team
18 80 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
19 67 (0.79%) Mainframe
20 65 (0.77%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 281 (3.31%) Linux
2 278 (3.27%) Windows
3 142 (1.67%) Unix
4 73 (0.86%) Windows Server
5 49 (0.58%) Windows 10
6 29 (0.34%) Android
7 26 (0.31%) zOS
8 25 (0.29%) Apple iOS
8 25 (0.29%) Solaris
9 24 (0.28%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 17 (0.20%) AIX
12 8 (0.094%) VMS
13 6 (0.071%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.059%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.047%) HPUX
15 4 (0.047%) MVS
15 4 (0.047%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,758 (20.71%) Agile
2 1,669 (19.66%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,243 (14.64%) Problem-Solving
4 1,160 (13.66%) Migration
5 948 (11.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 933 (10.99%) Continuous Improvement
7 906 (10.67%) DevOps
8 899 (10.59%) ERP
9 852 (10.04%) CI/CD
10 830 (9.78%) Analytics
11 812 (9.57%) Project Management
12 787 (9.27%) AI
13 762 (8.98%) Business Intelligence
14 694 (8.18%) Decision-Making
15 675 (7.95%) Data Modelling
16 660 (7.77%) Roadmaps
17 643 (7.57%) Validation
18 631 (7.43%) User Acceptance Testing
19 606 (7.14%) Change Management
20 579 (6.82%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,187 (13.98%) SQL
2 1,000 (11.78%) Python
3 562 (6.62%) Java
4 318 (3.75%) C#
5 219 (2.58%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 168 (1.98%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.24%) C++
9 74 (0.87%) Bash
10 71 (0.84%) PL/SQL
11 69 (0.81%) Go
12 61 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 54 (0.64%) VBA
14 49 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 49 (0.58%) Shell Script
15 39 (0.46%) Scala
16 37 (0.44%) R
17 28 (0.33%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.32%) Bicep
19 25 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 756 (8.91%) Degree
2 698 (8.22%) Security Cleared
3 495 (5.83%) SC Cleared
4 206 (2.43%) PMP
5 203 (2.39%) ACCA
6 197 (2.32%) PMI Certification
7 192 (2.26%) CIMA
8 148 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
9 145 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
10 126 (1.48%) CISSP
11 125 (1.47%) Master's Degree
12 82 (0.97%) CISM
12 82 (0.97%) DV Cleared
13 70 (0.82%) Azure Certification
14 64 (0.75%) AWS Certification
15 47 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
16 39 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
17 38 (0.45%) ISTQB
18 36 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
19 30 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 473 (5.57%) Data Quality
2 411 (4.84%) QA
3 337 (3.97%) PMO
4 303 (3.57%) GDPR
5 150 (1.77%) NIST
6 125 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 106 (1.25%) SLA
8 93 (1.10%) IFRS
9 92 (1.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 76 (0.90%) Accessibility
11 73 (0.86%) PCI DSS
12 72 (0.85%) GRC
13 58 (0.68%) ISO 20022
14 50 (0.59%) GAAP
15 40 (0.47%) PSD2
16 36 (0.42%) SEPA
17 34 (0.40%) NCSC
18 27 (0.32%) Basel III
19 25 (0.29%) MiFID
20 23 (0.27%) COBIT
System Software
1 293 (3.45%) Docker
2 153 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 60 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.38%) vSphere
5 24 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.14%) NFS
8 11 (0.13%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.059%) HDFS
10 5 (0.059%) RACF
11 4 (0.047%) ACF2
11 4 (0.047%) Firmware
11 4 (0.047%) KVM
11 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.035%) GridGain
12 3 (0.035%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 391 (4.61%) Kubernetes
2 254 (2.99%) Terraform
3 128 (1.51%) Ansible
4 87 (1.02%) Grafana
5 68 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 52 (0.61%) SCCM
8 35 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.22%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Control-M
12 17 (0.20%) Argo
13 15 (0.18%) Progress Chef
14 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
14 14 (0.16%) Puppet
15 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.14%) CASB
16 12 (0.14%) vCenter Server
17 11 (0.13%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,105 (13.02%) Microsoft
2 805 (9.48%) SAP
3 732 (8.62%) Oracle
4 334 (3.93%) ServiceNow
5 223 (2.63%) Databricks
6 189 (2.23%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.06%) Google
8 150 (1.77%) Workday
9 128 (1.51%) Cisco
10 113 (1.33%) Splunk
11 110 (1.30%) VMware
12 103 (1.21%) IBM
13 79 (0.93%) Citrix
14 77 (0.91%) Ariba
15 76 (0.90%) Sage
16 74 (0.87%) CyberArk
17 55 (0.65%) Informatica
17 55 (0.65%) OpenAI
18 50 (0.59%) Bloomberg
19 48 (0.57%) Murex