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

6 months to
12 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,040 7,164 7,702
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.40% 21.76% 20.39%
As % of the General category 32.55% 34.41% 34.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,995 4,666 4,820
10th Percentile £363 £336 £356
25th Percentile £450 £419 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -8.70% -2.54%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 369 148 125
10th Percentile £14.47 £15.41 £15.09
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.93 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -16.67% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £53.95 £55.00
90th Percentile £67.25 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £30.83
% change year-on-year +83.17% -22.14% +20.88%

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 30,849 20,819 22,157
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.53% 63.22% 58.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,899 12,969 13,086
10th Percentile £313 £275 £280
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £649
90th Percentile £738 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,766 1,249 934
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.51 £14.81
25th Percentile £16.01 £16.17 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £32.14
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -22.22% +8.95%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £30.00
% change year-on-year +28.56% -28.70% +10.77%

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 12 October 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 12 October 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 12 October 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 8,584 £550 +0.92% 16,730
London 0 5,216 £600 +2.39% 10,561
UK excluding London 0 3,876 £510 +2.00% 7,324
Work from Home -1 2,790 £550 - 6,775
North of England 0 1,351 £514 +9.25% 1,774
South East -1 737 £500 -2.58% 1,791
North West -2 648 £502 +11.44% 923
Yorkshire +1 624 £515 +2.90% 640
Midlands -3 604 £525 +10.53% 1,011
Scotland +1 541 £463 -7.50% 878
West Midlands -2 448 £500 -4.28% 588
South West -6 337 £525 -4.55% 713
East of England +3 198 £534 -5.44% 609
East Midlands -2 150 £525 +25.00% 424
North East -6 72 £538 +22.51% 226
Wales +2 69 £525 +16.67% 181
Northern Ireland 0 62 £486 -7.38% 425
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 10

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
1 327 (3.26%) Confluence
2 260 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 97 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
4 83 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 82 (0.82%) Apache
6 52 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 22 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
9 21 (0.21%) SAS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.11%) CICS
13 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
14 9 (0.090%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.060%) Appian
17 5 (0.050%) Adobe Experience Manager
17 5 (0.050%) nginx
17 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 531 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 216 (2.15%) Microsoft Office
3 192 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 147 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
5 86 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.24%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.100%) Trello
9 9 (0.090%) Adobe Illustrator
9 9 (0.090%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) Windchill
12 3 (0.030%) 1Password
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.030%) Sketch
13 2 (0.020%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 446 (4.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.23%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.11%) Oracle Receivables
4 93 (0.93%) NetSuite
5 90 (0.90%) Oracle General Ledger
6 88 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
7 86 (0.86%) SAP FI
8 81 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
9 72 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
10 60 (0.60%) Oracle Financials
11 56 (0.56%) SAP CO
12 52 (0.52%) Workday HCM
13 51 (0.51%) SAP FI/CO
14 49 (0.49%) Oracle Assets
15 44 (0.44%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
16 42 (0.42%) Aladdin
17 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
18 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
19 31 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
20 26 (0.26%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,615 (16.09%) Azure
2 1,101 (10.97%) AWS
3 653 (6.50%) Power Platform
4 567 (5.65%) GCP
5 370 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
6 337 (3.36%) GitHub
7 330 (3.29%) Microsoft 365
8 313 (3.12%) SaaS
9 270 (2.69%) Dynamics 365
10 231 (2.30%) Entra ID
11 222 (2.21%) Snowflake
12 161 (1.60%) Serverless
13 141 (1.40%) GitHub Actions
14 139 (1.38%) OCI
15 128 (1.27%) Microsoft Copilot
15 128 (1.27%) Power Automate
16 125 (1.25%) Amazon S3
16 125 (1.25%) dbt
17 114 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
18 107 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 179 (1.78%) Firewall
2 171 (1.70%) Network Security
3 109 (1.09%) VPN
4 96 (0.96%) DNS
5 65 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 58 (0.58%) WAN
7 53 (0.53%) BGP
8 51 (0.51%) DHCP
9 39 (0.39%) Multicast
9 39 (0.39%) SSL
10 37 (0.37%) VLAN
11 34 (0.34%) LAN
11 34 (0.34%) OSPF
12 32 (0.32%) SAN
13 31 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
14 30 (0.30%) HTTP
15 29 (0.29%) Internet
15 29 (0.29%) Wireless
16 22 (0.22%) SD-WAN
17 19 (0.19%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 515 (5.13%) Power BI
2 293 (2.92%) SQL Server
3 258 (2.57%) Data Warehouse
4 199 (1.98%) Metadata
5 168 (1.67%) Relational Database
6 148 (1.47%) Data Lake
7 134 (1.33%) PostgreSQL
8 129 (1.28%) Tableau
9 87 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 85 (0.85%) Oracle Database
11 84 (0.84%) BigQuery
12 82 (0.82%) MongoDB
13 57 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
14 55 (0.55%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.54%) Delta Lake
15 54 (0.54%) Power Query
16 46 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
17 45 (0.45%) Db2
18 44 (0.44%) Big Data
19 41 (0.41%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 663 (6.60%) JIRA
2 352 (3.51%) Git
3 197 (1.96%) Jenkins
4 121 (1.21%) GitLab
5 68 (0.68%) Selenium
6 50 (0.50%) JUnit
7 45 (0.45%) Claude Code
8 41 (0.41%) Maven
9 40 (0.40%) Bitbucket
10 39 (0.39%) Cucumber
11 38 (0.38%) Gradle
12 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
13 32 (0.32%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.32%) Visual Studio
14 29 (0.29%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.29%) Postman
15 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
16 25 (0.25%) ERwin
17 22 (0.22%) Mockito
17 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
General
1 3,150 (31.37%) Social Skills
2 2,182 (21.73%) Banking
3 1,439 (14.33%) Analytical Skills
4 549 (5.47%) Public Sector
5 536 (5.34%) Legal
6 472 (4.70%) Organisational Skills
7 401 (3.99%) Investment Banking
8 361 (3.60%) Retail
9 348 (3.47%) Influencing Skills
10 340 (3.39%) Front Office
11 310 (3.09%) Financial Institution
12 225 (2.24%) Manufacturing
13 210 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
14 198 (1.97%) Marketing
15 192 (1.91%) General Ledger
16 191 (1.90%) Billing
16 191 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 155 (1.54%) Local Government
17 155 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
18 147 (1.46%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,376 (13.71%) Analyst
2 1,146 (11.41%) Senior
3 992 (9.88%) Developer
4 964 (9.60%) Lead
5 877 (8.74%) Architect
6 734 (7.31%) Consultant
7 701 (6.98%) Business Analyst
8 677 (6.74%) Project Manager
9 355 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
10 290 (2.89%) Data Engineer
11 249 (2.48%) Financial Analyst
12 220 (2.19%) Senior Manager
13 216 (2.15%) Senior Developer
14 203 (2.02%) Java Developer
14 203 (2.02%) Programme Manager
15 200 (1.99%) Data Analyst
16 185 (1.84%) IT Manager
17 183 (1.82%) Accountant
18 164 (1.63%) Finance Manager
19 152 (1.51%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 426 (4.24%) REST
2 425 (4.23%) Terraform
3 284 (2.83%) Kafka
4 276 (2.75%) .NET
5 272 (2.71%) Oracle Fusion
6 245 (2.44%) React
7 198 (1.97%) Spring
8 194 (1.93%) Spring Boot
9 193 (1.92%) Middleware
10 150 (1.49%) PySpark
11 144 (1.43%) RESTful
12 117 (1.17%) JSON
13 111 (1.11%) XML
14 110 (1.10%) OAuth
15 100 (1.00%) SOAP
16 93 (0.93%) Web Services
17 86 (0.86%) Redux
18 85 (0.85%) AngularJS
19 84 (0.84%) HTML
20 76 (0.76%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 538 (5.36%) Onboarding
2 523 (5.21%) Product Ownership
3 492 (4.90%) Cloud Native
4 279 (2.78%) Management Information System
5 258 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
6 235 (2.34%) Data Structures
7 233 (2.32%) AI Agents
8 227 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
8 227 (2.26%) Virtual Team
9 207 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
10 195 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
11 191 (1.90%) Derivative
12 179 (1.78%) Data Centre
13 152 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 134 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
15 131 (1.30%) Fixed Income
16 124 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
17 116 (1.16%) Equities
18 114 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
19 113 (1.13%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 388 (3.86%) Windows
2 346 (3.45%) Linux
3 168 (1.67%) Unix
4 103 (1.03%) Windows Server
5 61 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 48 (0.48%) Apple iOS
7 43 (0.43%) Android
8 41 (0.41%) Windows 10
9 38 (0.38%) macOS
10 34 (0.34%) zOS
11 23 (0.23%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.050%) CentOS
14 5 (0.050%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.040%) HPUX
15 4 (0.040%) SUSE
15 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
16 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,859 (28.48%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,077 (20.69%) Agile
3 1,376 (13.71%) AI
4 1,366 (13.61%) Migration
5 1,358 (13.53%) Problem-Solving
6 1,194 (11.89%) CI/CD
7 1,133 (11.28%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,115 (11.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,038 (10.34%) Analytics
9 1,038 (10.34%) DevOps
10 947 (9.43%) Decision-Making
11 943 (9.39%) ERP
12 928 (9.24%) Roadmaps
13 910 (9.06%) Validation
14 771 (7.68%) Project Management
15 769 (7.66%) Data Modelling
16 755 (7.52%) Risk Management
16 755 (7.52%) User Acceptance Testing
17 708 (7.05%) Project Delivery
18 703 (7.00%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,373 (13.68%) SQL
2 1,323 (13.18%) Python
3 658 (6.55%) Java
4 364 (3.63%) C#
5 311 (3.10%) PowerShell
6 275 (2.74%) JavaScript
7 221 (2.20%) TypeScript
8 178 (1.77%) Bash
9 106 (1.06%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.77%) C++
12 74 (0.74%) Go
13 69 (0.69%) T-SQL
14 64 (0.64%) Bicep
15 62 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 53 (0.53%) Korn
17 47 (0.47%) Scala
18 37 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 31 (0.31%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.30%) VBA
Qualifications
1 789 (7.86%) Security Cleared
2 723 (7.20%) Degree
3 566 (5.64%) SC Cleared
4 257 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 256 (2.55%) PMP
6 234 (2.33%) PMI Certification
7 183 (1.82%) ACCA
8 163 (1.62%) CIMA
9 146 (1.45%) DV Cleared
10 139 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 125 (1.25%) CISSP
12 116 (1.16%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.87%) AWS Certification
14 78 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
14 78 (0.78%) Master's Degree
15 66 (0.66%) CISM
16 51 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
17 44 (0.44%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
19 39 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 732 (7.29%) Data Quality
2 417 (4.15%) QA
3 359 (3.58%) PMO
4 202 (2.01%) GDPR
5 128 (1.27%) NIST
6 123 (1.23%) GRC
7 117 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.07%) Accessibility
9 90 (0.90%) SLA
10 89 (0.89%) IFRS
11 74 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.44%) PCI DSS
14 42 (0.42%) SEPA
15 40 (0.40%) GAAP
16 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
17 28 (0.28%) COBIT
18 27 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 25 (0.25%) MiFID
19 25 (0.25%) NCSC
System Software
1 276 (2.75%) Docker
2 248 (2.47%) Active Directory
3 106 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
5 31 (0.31%) vSphere
6 27 (0.27%) RACF
6 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 7 (0.070%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.050%) ACF2
14 4 (0.040%) Firmware
14 4 (0.040%) GPFS
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 517 (5.15%) Kubernetes
2 202 (2.01%) Ansible
3 98 (0.98%) Grafana
4 84 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.63%) SCCM
7 60 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 22 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.14%) Istio
14 11 (0.11%) Puppet
14 11 (0.11%) Tivoli
15 10 (0.100%) Cisco Prime
15 10 (0.100%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.100%) Packer
16 8 (0.080%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 1,489 (14.83%) Microsoft
2 892 (8.88%) SAP
3 869 (8.66%) Oracle
4 358 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 353 (3.52%) Databricks
6 245 (2.44%) Salesforce
7 244 (2.43%) Google
8 203 (2.02%) IBM
9 162 (1.61%) VMware
10 159 (1.58%) Workday
11 137 (1.36%) Cisco
12 127 (1.26%) Splunk
13 121 (1.21%) Ariba
14 91 (0.91%) OpenAI
15 90 (0.90%) CyberArk
16 62 (0.62%) Bloomberg
17 57 (0.57%) Citrix
18 56 (0.56%) Murex
18 56 (0.56%) Sage
19 52 (0.52%) F5