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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,480 6,567 8,194
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.27% 22.24% 18.74%
As % of the General category 33.23% 35.20% 32.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,351 4,318 5,469
10th Percentile £352 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £435 £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 199 108 250
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.51 £12.74
25th Percentile £17.98 £22.44 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £39.06 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -39.00% +42.02% -10.58%
75th Percentile £47.27 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £83.20 £54.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.20 £52.50 £31.47
% change year-on-year -57.72% +66.83% -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 25,520 18,658 25,479
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.98% 63.18% 58.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,793 11,922 16,126
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 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,617 785 1,925
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.76
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.13 £15.40
Median hourly rate £28.55 £28.18 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.31% -1.12% -18.57%
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 23 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 23 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 23 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 7,510 £537 -6.61% 3,782
London 0 4,548 £575 -8.00% 1,787
UK excluding London 0 3,360 £500 - 2,731
Work from Home -2 2,378 £538 -10.42% 1,554
North of England +3 1,122 £475 - 608
South East -1 645 £503 -3.83% 915
North West +6 603 £465 - 322
Midlands -2 576 £475 -5.00% 426
Yorkshire +1 477 £500 - 216
Scotland 0 391 £500 +3.09% 132
West Midlands 0 385 £492 -6.29% 229
South West -2 336 £520 +3.90% 330
East of England 0 199 £525 -4.55% 224
East Midlands 0 186 £450 +0.67% 194
Wales +23 100 £413 +10.00% 71
Northern Ireland -1 43 £500 +25.00% 85
North East -10 43 £488 +11.94% 79
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
1 331 (3.90%) Confluence
2 216 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 83 (0.98%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
5 53 (0.63%) Apache
5 53 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
6 40 (0.47%) SAS
7 25 (0.29%) CMS
8 20 (0.24%) CICS
9 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.19%) Appian
11 14 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.17%) Camunda
11 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
12 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 10 (0.12%) IIS
14 10 (0.12%) TPMS
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 542 (6.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 238 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
3 182 (2.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 172 (2.03%) Microsoft Project
5 126 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 35 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.17%) Trello
9 8 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.094%) Sketch
10 7 (0.083%) InVision
11 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.059%) Notion
13 4 (0.047%) 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
2 115 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 98 (1.16%) NetSuite
5 84 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 70 (0.83%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.79%) SAP FI
8 62 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
9 58 (0.68%) 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 34 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle Cash Management
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
16 32 (0.38%) Aladdin
16 32 (0.38%) Workday HCM
17 30 (0.35%) SAP ERP
18 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,286 (15.17%) Azure
2 973 (11.47%) AWS
3 619 (7.30%) Power Platform
4 388 (4.58%) GCP
5 287 (3.38%) Azure DevOps
6 283 (3.34%) SaaS
7 271 (3.20%) Microsoft 365
8 243 (2.87%) Dynamics 365
9 233 (2.75%) GitHub
10 145 (1.71%) Serverless
11 143 (1.69%) OCI
11 143 (1.69%) Snowflake
12 130 (1.53%) Entra ID
13 122 (1.44%) Amazon S3
14 103 (1.21%) Power Automate
15 91 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
15 91 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
16 89 (1.05%) OpenShift
17 86 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
18 78 (0.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.92%) Firewall
2 110 (1.30%) Network Security
3 77 (0.91%) WAN
4 68 (0.80%) DNS
5 60 (0.71%) VPN
6 48 (0.57%) TCP/IP
7 42 (0.50%) LAN
7 42 (0.50%) SD-WAN
8 34 (0.40%) BGP
9 31 (0.37%) HTTP
10 29 (0.34%) OSPF
10 29 (0.34%) SSL
11 27 (0.32%) Multicast
12 24 (0.28%) Internet
13 23 (0.27%) MPLS
14 22 (0.26%) DHCP
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
16 18 (0.21%) Skype
17 16 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
17 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 533 (6.29%) Power BI
2 213 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
3 212 (2.50%) SQL Server
4 169 (1.99%) Metadata
5 165 (1.95%) PostgreSQL
6 146 (1.72%) Tableau
7 129 (1.52%) Relational Database
8 124 (1.46%) Data Lake
9 95 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
10 90 (1.06%) NoSQL
11 76 (0.90%) Big Data
12 66 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 59 (0.70%) BigQuery
13 59 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
14 44 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 43 (0.51%) Power Query
16 42 (0.50%) Snowflake Schema
17 41 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 40 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 680 (8.02%) JIRA
2 210 (2.48%) Git
3 195 (2.30%) 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 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
11 26 (0.31%) 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 14 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,611 (30.79%) Social Skills
2 1,575 (18.57%) Banking
3 1,151 (13.57%) Analytical Skills
4 576 (6.79%) Public Sector
5 328 (3.87%) Legal
6 326 (3.84%) Financial Institution
7 289 (3.41%) Front Office
8 285 (3.36%) Investment Banking
9 239 (2.82%) Organisational Skills
10 234 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
10 234 (2.76%) Retail
11 218 (2.57%) Manufacturing
12 209 (2.46%) Marketing
13 208 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
14 179 (2.11%) Telecoms
15 145 (1.71%) General Ledger
16 127 (1.50%) Local Government
17 125 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
18 122 (1.44%) Law
19 108 (1.27%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,287 (15.18%) Analyst
2 861 (10.15%) Developer
3 859 (10.13%) Senior
4 841 (9.92%) Lead
5 767 (9.04%) Architect
6 695 (8.20%) Business Analyst
7 678 (8.00%) Project Manager
8 619 (7.30%) Consultant
9 303 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
10 260 (3.07%) Data Engineer
11 205 (2.42%) Financial Analyst
12 193 (2.28%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.22%) Finance Manager
14 181 (2.13%) Data Analyst
15 167 (1.97%) Programme Manager
16 157 (1.85%) Accountant
17 154 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 136 (1.60%) Senior Analyst
19 134 (1.58%) Delivery Manager
20 126 (1.49%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (3.11%) Kafka
2 251 (2.96%) REST
3 220 (2.59%) .NET
4 197 (2.32%) React
5 174 (2.05%) Middleware
6 152 (1.79%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (1.72%) Spring
8 135 (1.59%) RESTful
8 135 (1.59%) Spring Boot
9 111 (1.31%) Node.js
10 98 (1.16%) 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 67 (0.79%) Pandas
18 58 (0.68%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 353 (4.16%) Onboarding
2 321 (3.79%) Product Ownership
3 283 (3.34%) Cloud Native
4 232 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
5 198 (2.33%) Management Information System
6 170 (2.00%) Data Structures
7 165 (1.95%) Derivative
8 161 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
9 142 (1.67%) Data Centre
9 142 (1.67%) Fixed Income
10 141 (1.66%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 136 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
12 112 (1.32%) Equities
13 105 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
14 101 (1.19%) Public Cloud
15 97 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
15 97 (1.14%) Virtual Team
16 81 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 67 (0.79%) Mainframe
18 66 (0.78%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 280 (3.30%) Linux
2 279 (3.29%) Windows
3 143 (1.69%) Unix
4 73 (0.86%) Windows Server
5 50 (0.59%) 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 1,759 (20.74%) Agile
2 1,665 (19.63%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,243 (14.66%) Problem-Solving
4 1,158 (13.66%) Migration
5 947 (11.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 927 (10.93%) Continuous Improvement
7 905 (10.67%) DevOps
8 896 (10.57%) ERP
9 850 (10.02%) CI/CD
10 832 (9.81%) Analytics
11 809 (9.54%) Project Management
12 788 (9.29%) AI
13 762 (8.99%) Business Intelligence
14 694 (8.18%) Decision-Making
15 674 (7.95%) Data Modelling
16 663 (7.82%) Roadmaps
17 648 (7.64%) Validation
18 633 (7.46%) User Acceptance Testing
19 601 (7.09%) Change Management
20 576 (6.79%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,189 (14.02%) SQL
2 1,001 (11.80%) Python
3 565 (6.66%) Java
4 321 (3.79%) C#
5 217 (2.56%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.29%) TypeScript
7 169 (1.99%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.24%) C++
9 74 (0.87%) Bash
10 70 (0.83%) PL/SQL
11 68 (0.80%) 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 40 (0.47%) Scala
16 37 (0.44%) R
17 28 (0.33%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.32%) Bicep
19 25 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 755 (8.90%) Degree
2 699 (8.24%) Security Cleared
3 495 (5.84%) SC Cleared
4 208 (2.45%) PMP
5 203 (2.39%) ACCA
6 197 (2.32%) PMI Certification
7 192 (2.26%) CIMA
8 148 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
9 145 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
10 126 (1.49%) Master's Degree
11 124 (1.46%) CISSP
12 82 (0.97%) CISM
12 82 (0.97%) DV Cleared
13 69 (0.81%) Azure Certification
14 62 (0.73%) AWS Certification
15 45 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
16 40 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
17 39 (0.46%) ISTQB
18 34 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
19 30 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 473 (5.58%) Data Quality
2 414 (4.88%) QA
3 333 (3.93%) PMO
4 300 (3.54%) GDPR
5 146 (1.72%) NIST
6 121 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 102 (1.20%) SLA
8 93 (1.10%) IFRS
9 90 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 76 (0.90%) Accessibility
11 71 (0.84%) GRC
11 71 (0.84%) PCI DSS
12 56 (0.66%) ISO 20022
13 50 (0.59%) GAAP
14 38 (0.45%) PSD2
15 36 (0.42%) SEPA
16 34 (0.40%) NCSC
17 27 (0.32%) Basel III
18 25 (0.29%) MiFID
19 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 294 (3.47%) Docker
2 154 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 58 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 24 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.12%) Hyper-V
8 10 (0.12%) NFS
8 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.11%) GPFS
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%) SRDF
12 3 (0.035%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 391 (4.61%) Kubernetes
2 254 (3.00%) Terraform
3 128 (1.51%) Ansible
4 87 (1.03%) Grafana
5 68 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 57 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.60%) SCCM
8 34 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
11 17 (0.20%) vRealize
12 16 (0.19%) Argo
13 15 (0.18%) Progress Chef
14 14 (0.17%) AirWatch
14 14 (0.17%) 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 1,113 (13.13%) Microsoft
2 796 (9.39%) SAP
3 718 (8.47%) Oracle
4 327 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 224 (2.64%) Databricks
6 189 (2.23%) Salesforce
7 174 (2.05%) Google
8 153 (1.80%) Workday
9 126 (1.49%) Cisco
10 113 (1.33%) Splunk
11 108 (1.27%) VMware
12 100 (1.18%) IBM
13 79 (0.93%) Citrix
14 76 (0.90%) Ariba
14 76 (0.90%) Sage
15 74 (0.87%) CyberArk
16 55 (0.65%) Informatica
16 55 (0.65%) OpenAI
17 51 (0.60%) Bloomberg
18 48 (0.57%) Murex