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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,423 6,688 8,309
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.29% 21.25% 18.95%
As % of the General category 32.49% 34.29% 32.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,717 4,180 5,643
10th Percentile £350 £356 £358
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £688
90th Percentile £781 £825 £795
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 90 151
10th Percentile £14.95 £18.11 £11.77
25th Percentile £17.41 £22.27 £14.06
Median hourly rate £23.50 £28.25 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.81% +31.40% -14.00%
75th Percentile £40.00 £60.00 £43.00
90th Percentile £66.41 £78.88 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -39.06%

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 22,849 19,503 25,762
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.37% 61.95% 58.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,354 11,626 16,722
10th Percentile £287 £284 £265
25th Percentile £400 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,388 634 1,478
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.00 £15.32
Median hourly rate £22.85 £27.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.91% +5.77% +4.00%
75th Percentile £47.50 £53.75 £55.41
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.30 £26.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -19.62% +6.00% +11.11%

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 29 January 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 29 January 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 29 January 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 6,521 £540 -8.55% 4,641
London -1 3,987 £575 -5.12% 1,569
UK excluding London -2 2,930 £500 - 4,006
Work from Home -1 2,076 £525 -12.50% 2,033
North of England +2 924 £475 -3.06% 783
South East -1 542 £503 -4.29% 1,470
Midlands -3 527 £492 -6.29% 538
North West +3 456 £450 -5.26% 373
Yorkshire 0 419 £500 -2.68% 307
Scotland 0 384 £488 +4.33% 159
West Midlands -4 322 £525 -4.55% 269
South West -5 286 £525 -1.87% 445
East Midlands 0 203 £447 +5.80% 267
East of England 0 172 £525 - 454
Wales +25 84 £400 -14.67% 168
Northern Ireland -1 59 £506 +44.64% 79
North East -7 50 £488 +1.30% 113
Channel Islands +1 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
1 328 (4.42%) Confluence
2 205 (2.76%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 64 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
5 58 (0.78%) Apache
6 55 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.40%) SAS
8 29 (0.39%) CMS
9 23 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.27%) IIS
11 16 (0.22%) Ethereum
11 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 15 (0.20%) Appian
12 15 (0.20%) HCL Notes
13 13 (0.18%) Hyperledger
13 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 13 (0.18%) TPMS
14 12 (0.16%) Camunda
14 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 500 (6.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 295 (3.97%) Microsoft Office
3 205 (2.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 166 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
5 132 (1.78%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 13 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.081%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.067%) Notion
14 5 (0.067%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.027%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.027%) InDesign
16 2 (0.027%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 298 (4.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 125 (1.68%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.29%) Oracle Receivables
4 89 (1.20%) Oracle EBS
5 83 (1.12%) Oracle General Ledger
6 68 (0.92%) SAP FI
7 65 (0.88%) NetSuite
8 63 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
9 57 (0.77%) SAP CO
10 55 (0.74%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 53 (0.71%) Oracle Cash Management
12 52 (0.70%) Oracle Assets
13 51 (0.69%) SAP FI/CO
14 49 (0.66%) Oracle EBS R12
15 47 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
16 46 (0.62%) Oracle Financials
17 39 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 37 (0.50%) Workday HCM
19 29 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
20 27 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,104 (14.87%) Azure
2 888 (11.96%) AWS
3 539 (7.26%) Power Platform
4 340 (4.58%) GCP
5 255 (3.44%) Microsoft 365
6 234 (3.15%) SaaS
7 231 (3.11%) Azure DevOps
8 213 (2.87%) Dynamics 365
9 203 (2.73%) GitHub
10 142 (1.91%) OCI
11 140 (1.89%) Serverless
12 132 (1.78%) Snowflake
13 119 (1.60%) Entra ID
14 96 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
15 88 (1.19%) Power Automate
16 86 (1.16%) Amazon S3
17 73 (0.98%) OpenShift
18 72 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
19 70 (0.94%) Figma
20 68 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 117 (1.58%) Firewall
2 72 (0.97%) Network Security
3 65 (0.88%) WAN
4 42 (0.57%) DNS
5 40 (0.54%) VPN
6 39 (0.53%) SD-WAN
7 38 (0.51%) LAN
8 34 (0.46%) TCP/IP
9 32 (0.43%) Wireless
10 30 (0.40%) HTTP
11 28 (0.38%) Skype
12 24 (0.32%) SSH
12 24 (0.32%) SSL
13 22 (0.30%) DHCP
14 19 (0.26%) Internet
15 18 (0.24%) Kerberos
16 17 (0.23%) BGP
16 17 (0.23%) OSPF
17 14 (0.19%) VLAN
18 13 (0.18%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 469 (6.32%) Power BI
2 199 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
3 195 (2.63%) SQL Server
4 150 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
5 128 (1.72%) Tableau
6 123 (1.66%) NoSQL
7 118 (1.59%) Relational Database
8 117 (1.58%) Data Lake
9 110 (1.48%) Metadata
10 88 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (1.01%) Oracle Database
12 73 (0.98%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.89%) Big Data
14 51 (0.69%) BigQuery
15 42 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 40 (0.54%) Hadoop
17 37 (0.50%) MySQL
17 37 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 36 (0.48%) Power Query
19 32 (0.43%) DB2
Development Applications
1 605 (8.15%) JIRA
2 263 (3.54%) Jenkins
3 215 (2.90%) Git
4 154 (2.07%) GitLab
5 80 (1.08%) JUnit
6 59 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 53 (0.71%) Selenium
8 50 (0.67%) Bitbucket
8 50 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
9 38 (0.51%) Postman
10 34 (0.46%) Visual Studio
11 26 (0.35%) Gradle
12 23 (0.31%) Maven
13 22 (0.30%) Liquibase
13 22 (0.30%) MLflow
14 21 (0.28%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.28%) REST Assured
15 19 (0.26%) SonarQube
16 17 (0.23%) JMeter
17 16 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,603 (35.07%) Social Skills
2 1,517 (20.44%) Banking
3 976 (13.15%) Analytical Skills
4 600 (8.08%) Public Sector
5 335 (4.51%) Financial Institution
6 316 (4.26%) Marketing
7 295 (3.97%) Manufacturing
8 282 (3.80%) Investment Banking
9 276 (3.72%) Telecoms
10 270 (3.64%) Legal
11 266 (3.58%) Front Office
12 216 (2.91%) Organisational Skills
13 211 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
14 183 (2.47%) Electronics
15 165 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
16 153 (2.06%) Retail
17 137 (1.85%) General Ledger
18 127 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 127 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
19 109 (1.47%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,177 (15.86%) Analyst
2 841 (11.33%) Developer
3 727 (9.79%) Senior
4 618 (8.33%) Business Analyst
5 597 (8.04%) Project Manager
6 589 (7.93%) Architect
7 575 (7.75%) Consultant
8 550 (7.41%) Lead
9 245 (3.30%) Solutions Architect
10 182 (2.45%) Data Analyst
11 164 (2.21%) Data Engineer
12 162 (2.18%) Programme Manager
13 160 (2.16%) Financial Analyst
14 146 (1.97%) Java Developer
15 145 (1.95%) Senior Developer
16 139 (1.87%) Senior Manager
17 134 (1.81%) Software Engineer
18 114 (1.54%) Finance Manager
18 114 (1.54%) IT Manager
19 110 (1.48%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 277 (3.73%) REST
2 228 (3.07%) Kafka
3 212 (2.86%) .NET
4 165 (2.22%) React
5 161 (2.17%) Oracle Fusion
6 159 (2.14%) RESTful
7 151 (2.03%) Spring
8 124 (1.67%) Spring Boot
9 116 (1.56%) Middleware
10 106 (1.43%) AngularJS
11 90 (1.21%) Pandas
11 90 (1.21%) XML
12 87 (1.17%) HTML
13 80 (1.08%) Node.js
13 80 (1.08%) NumPy
14 76 (1.02%) CSS
14 76 (1.02%) PySpark
15 73 (0.98%) OAuth
16 72 (0.97%) JSON
17 69 (0.93%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 320 (4.31%) Onboarding
2 304 (4.10%) Product Ownership
3 221 (2.98%) Cloud Native
4 171 (2.30%) Derivative
5 170 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 163 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
7 153 (2.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 137 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
9 132 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
10 131 (1.76%) Data Structures
11 127 (1.71%) Data Centre
12 125 (1.68%) Equities
13 123 (1.66%) Analytical Mindset
14 113 (1.52%) Fixed Income
15 103 (1.39%) Public Cloud
16 94 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
17 91 (1.23%) Hedge funds
18 77 (1.04%) Virtual Team
19 74 (1.00%) Credit Risk
20 73 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 349 (4.70%) Linux
2 317 (4.27%) Windows
3 152 (2.05%) Unix
4 68 (0.92%) Windows 10
5 63 (0.85%) Windows Server
6 61 (0.82%) Android
6 61 (0.82%) Mac OS
7 31 (0.42%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.13%) zOS
10 7 (0.094%) CentOS
11 6 (0.081%) VMS
12 4 (0.054%) Solaris
12 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.040%) AIX
13 3 (0.040%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.040%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,712 (23.06%) Agile
2 1,402 (18.89%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,209 (16.29%) Problem-Solving
4 868 (11.69%) Migration
5 827 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 817 (11.01%) DevOps
7 787 (10.60%) CI/CD
8 749 (10.09%) Business Intelligence
9 725 (9.77%) Project Management
10 720 (9.70%) Analytics
11 663 (8.93%) ERP
12 641 (8.64%) Continuous Improvement
13 546 (7.36%) AI
14 537 (7.23%) Decision-Making
15 535 (7.21%) Change Management
16 522 (7.03%) Risk Management
17 513 (6.91%) Roadmaps
18 497 (6.70%) Data Modelling
19 485 (6.53%) User Acceptance Testing
20 482 (6.49%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,107 (14.91%) SQL
2 941 (12.68%) Python
3 528 (7.11%) Java
4 311 (4.19%) C#
5 209 (2.82%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.69%) PowerShell
7 156 (2.10%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.07%) C++
9 87 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 68 (0.92%) Bash
11 66 (0.89%) Go
12 53 (0.71%) Shell Script
13 50 (0.67%) VBA
14 42 (0.57%) R
15 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
16 37 (0.50%) T-SQL
17 34 (0.46%) Groovy
17 34 (0.46%) Rust
18 33 (0.44%) Scala
19 30 (0.40%) Perl
Qualifications
1 811 (10.93%) Degree
2 576 (7.76%) Security Cleared
3 426 (5.74%) SC Cleared
4 191 (2.57%) PMI Certification
5 184 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 180 (2.42%) PMP
7 169 (2.28%) Master's Degree
8 150 (2.02%) ACCA
9 136 (1.83%) CIMA
10 114 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
11 90 (1.21%) AWS Certification
12 89 (1.20%) CISSP
13 63 (0.85%) DV Cleared
14 61 (0.82%) CISM
15 58 (0.78%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 39 (0.53%) CBAP
18 33 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
19 31 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
20 29 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (5.13%) QA
2 335 (4.51%) Data Quality
3 283 (3.81%) PMO
4 250 (3.37%) GDPR
5 126 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 124 (1.67%) NIST
7 110 (1.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 97 (1.31%) SLA
9 94 (1.27%) Accessibility
10 74 (1.00%) IFRS
10 74 (1.00%) PCI DSS
11 61 (0.82%) GRC
12 52 (0.70%) ISO 20022
13 43 (0.58%) PSD2
14 37 (0.50%) MiFID
15 36 (0.48%) SEPA
16 35 (0.47%) NCSC
17 31 (0.42%) Basel III
17 31 (0.42%) GAAP
18 30 (0.40%) COBIT
System Software
1 336 (4.53%) Docker
2 196 (2.64%) Active Directory
3 53 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
5 21 (0.28%) vSphere
6 10 (0.13%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) NFS
7 9 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) HDFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
8 8 (0.11%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.067%) Firmware
9 5 (0.067%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.054%) BitLocker
10 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.040%) RACF
11 3 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 386 (5.20%) Kubernetes
2 258 (3.48%) Terraform
3 172 (2.32%) Ansible
4 87 (1.17%) Grafana
5 80 (1.08%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.86%) SCCM
7 59 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 36 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.35%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.28%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
14 15 (0.20%) Control-M
15 14 (0.19%) vRealize
16 13 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
17 12 (0.16%) Puppet
18 10 (0.13%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,014 (13.66%) Microsoft
2 800 (10.78%) SAP
3 712 (9.59%) Oracle
4 281 (3.79%) ServiceNow
5 181 (2.44%) Salesforce
6 171 (2.30%) Splunk
7 163 (2.20%) Databricks
8 161 (2.17%) Google
9 151 (2.03%) Cisco
10 141 (1.90%) Workday
11 105 (1.41%) VMware
12 93 (1.25%) IBM
13 71 (0.96%) Citrix
13 71 (0.96%) CyberArk
14 62 (0.84%) Ariba
15 54 (0.73%) HP
16 50 (0.67%) Dell
16 50 (0.67%) Informatica
16 50 (0.67%) OpenAI
17 49 (0.66%) Bloomberg