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

6 months to
8 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,964 6,466 8,349
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.79% 21.51% 18.71%
As % of the General category 32.59% 34.37% 31.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,063 4,159 5,627
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% - -2.54%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £695
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.56% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 195 107 213
10th Percentile £14.50 £17.58 £12.81
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.58 £35.00 £26.66
Median % change year-on-year -32.64% +31.28% +3.70%
75th Percentile £41.00 £65.50 £38.12
90th Percentile £67.72 £81.28 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £36.00 £26.66
% change year-on-year -38.89% +35.03% -23.83%

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 24,434 18,815 26,114
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.65% 62.58% 58.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,295 11,716 16,713
10th Percentile £300 £291 £263
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,496 659 1,809
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.06 £15.33
Median hourly rate £24.00 £29.07 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.44% +14.00% -20.31%
75th Percentile £55.00 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.68 £27.37 £24.87
% change year-on-year -17.13% +10.04% -6.36%

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 8 March 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 8 March 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 8 March 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 7,038 £535 -9.32% 4,140
London 0 4,278 £575 -8.00% 1,937
UK excluding London 0 3,145 £492 -1.56% 2,957
Work from Home -2 2,250 £540 -8.47% 1,688
North of England +4 1,025 £475 -1.04% 715
Midlands -1 584 £475 -5.00% 428
South East -2 575 £500 -5.88% 1,022
North West +4 519 £450 -5.26% 384
Yorkshire 0 459 £513 +2.50% 260
West Midlands 0 381 £500 -7.41% 239
Scotland 0 363 £500 +6.38% 162
South West -3 321 £512 -2.57% 319
East Midlands 0 198 £449 +5.59% 185
East of England -1 184 £515 -6.36% 232
Wales +29 108 £413 +6.45% 90
Northern Ireland -1 48 £525 +61.54% 46
North East -7 47 £488 +3.72% 79
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 (4.07%) Confluence
2 205 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.04%) Apache Spark
4 61 (0.77%) Microsoft Exchange
5 48 (0.60%) Apache
6 44 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
7 29 (0.36%) SAS
8 23 (0.29%) CMS
9 21 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.21%) Appian
10 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
11 16 (0.20%) CICS
11 16 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 14 (0.18%) Hyperledger
13 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.15%) Camunda
14 12 (0.15%) TPMS
15 11 (0.14%) Mendix
16 8 (0.10%) nginx
Applications
1 519 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 277 (3.48%) Microsoft Office
3 195 (2.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 176 (2.21%) Microsoft Project
5 142 (1.78%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.14%) Sketch
11 10 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.10%) InVision
13 6 (0.075%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.063%) Notion
14 5 (0.063%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.050%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 326 (4.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 112 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 95 (1.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 72 (0.90%) Oracle EBS
5 70 (0.88%) NetSuite
6 66 (0.83%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 66 (0.83%) SAP FI
7 65 (0.82%) Oracle General Ledger
8 57 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
9 54 (0.68%) SAP CO
10 49 (0.62%) SAP FI/CO
11 43 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
12 42 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
13 38 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
14 37 (0.46%) Oracle Cash Management
15 36 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
15 36 (0.45%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 33 (0.41%) Workday HCM
17 27 (0.34%) Aladdin
18 25 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,210 (15.19%) Azure
2 976 (12.26%) AWS
3 551 (6.92%) Power Platform
4 400 (5.02%) GCP
5 279 (3.50%) Microsoft 365
6 264 (3.31%) SaaS
7 256 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
8 221 (2.77%) Dynamics 365
9 207 (2.60%) GitHub
10 152 (1.91%) Serverless
11 150 (1.88%) OCI
12 133 (1.67%) Snowflake
13 120 (1.51%) Entra ID
14 105 (1.32%) Amazon S3
15 97 (1.22%) Power Automate
16 86 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 84 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
18 76 (0.95%) OpenShift
19 75 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
19 75 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 157 (1.97%) Firewall
2 95 (1.19%) Network Security
3 77 (0.97%) WAN
4 61 (0.77%) DNS
5 48 (0.60%) LAN
5 48 (0.60%) VPN
6 42 (0.53%) SD-WAN
7 41 (0.51%) TCP/IP
8 34 (0.43%) Wireless
9 29 (0.36%) BGP
10 26 (0.33%) HTTP
10 26 (0.33%) OSPF
11 25 (0.31%) SSL
12 24 (0.30%) Internet
12 24 (0.30%) Multicast
13 22 (0.28%) Skype
14 20 (0.25%) DHCP
14 20 (0.25%) MPLS
15 17 (0.21%) Cisco ASA
16 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 487 (6.12%) Power BI
2 212 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
3 200 (2.51%) SQL Server
4 195 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
5 147 (1.85%) Tableau
6 135 (1.70%) Metadata
7 120 (1.51%) Relational Database
8 119 (1.49%) NoSQL
9 114 (1.43%) Data Lake
10 95 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
11 78 (0.98%) Big Data
12 74 (0.93%) MongoDB
13 62 (0.78%) Oracle Database
14 61 (0.77%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
17 40 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 36 (0.45%) Hadoop
18 36 (0.45%) MySQL
18 36 (0.45%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 651 (8.17%) JIRA
2 241 (3.03%) Jenkins
3 213 (2.67%) Git
4 154 (1.93%) GitLab
5 66 (0.83%) JUnit
6 64 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 45 (0.57%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.54%) Selenium
9 35 (0.44%) Bitbucket
10 34 (0.43%) Postman
11 31 (0.39%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.30%) MLflow
13 23 (0.29%) Gradle
14 21 (0.26%) Maven
15 20 (0.25%) REST Assured
16 17 (0.21%) Liquibase
17 15 (0.19%) ERwin
17 15 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
17 15 (0.19%) SonarQube
17 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,632 (33.05%) Social Skills
2 1,542 (19.36%) Banking
3 1,038 (13.03%) Analytical Skills
4 636 (7.99%) Public Sector
5 353 (4.43%) Financial Institution
6 300 (3.77%) Legal
7 288 (3.62%) Front Office
8 284 (3.57%) Marketing
9 274 (3.44%) Investment Banking
10 264 (3.31%) Manufacturing
11 245 (3.08%) Telecoms
12 242 (3.04%) Organisational Skills
13 228 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
14 181 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
15 176 (2.21%) Retail
16 145 (1.82%) Electronics
17 126 (1.58%) General Ledger
18 123 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
19 115 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 114 (1.43%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,257 (15.78%) Analyst
2 864 (10.85%) Developer
3 821 (10.31%) Senior
4 700 (8.79%) Lead
5 674 (8.46%) Architect
6 670 (8.41%) Business Analyst
7 642 (8.06%) Project Manager
8 581 (7.30%) Consultant
9 282 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
10 197 (2.47%) Data Engineer
11 190 (2.39%) Data Analyst
12 175 (2.20%) Financial Analyst
12 175 (2.20%) Senior Manager
13 172 (2.16%) Programme Manager
14 146 (1.83%) Finance Manager
15 141 (1.77%) Java Developer
16 139 (1.75%) Software Engineer
17 130 (1.63%) Senior Developer
18 128 (1.61%) Delivery Manager
18 128 (1.61%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 275 (3.45%) REST
2 271 (3.40%) Kafka
3 208 (2.61%) .NET
4 206 (2.59%) React
5 158 (1.98%) Oracle Fusion
6 149 (1.87%) Middleware
7 144 (1.81%) RESTful
8 140 (1.76%) Spring
9 119 (1.49%) Spring Boot
10 118 (1.48%) Node.js
11 109 (1.37%) AngularJS
12 90 (1.13%) PySpark
13 84 (1.05%) HTML
14 82 (1.03%) XML
15 79 (0.99%) JSON
16 78 (0.98%) CSS
17 76 (0.95%) Pandas
17 76 (0.95%) SOAP
18 73 (0.92%) OAuth
19 68 (0.85%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 344 (4.32%) Onboarding
2 310 (3.89%) Product Ownership
3 250 (3.14%) Cloud Native
4 195 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
5 174 (2.18%) Derivative
6 173 (2.17%) Management Information System
7 161 (2.02%) Data Centre
8 147 (1.85%) Fixed Income
9 146 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
10 144 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
11 141 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 138 (1.73%) Data Structures
13 126 (1.58%) Equities
14 113 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
15 109 (1.37%) Public Cloud
16 90 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 88 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
18 86 (1.08%) Virtual Team
19 71 (0.89%) Hedge funds
20 62 (0.78%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 318 (3.99%) Linux
2 287 (3.60%) Windows
3 141 (1.77%) Unix
4 64 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 62 (0.78%) Windows 10
6 57 (0.72%) Android
7 51 (0.64%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.33%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 16 (0.20%) zOS
11 11 (0.14%) AIX
12 9 (0.11%) Solaris
13 7 (0.088%) VMS
14 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.050%) Windows Server 2012
16 3 (0.038%) Ubuntu
17 2 (0.025%) CentOS
18 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
18 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,749 (21.96%) Agile
2 1,549 (19.45%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,229 (15.43%) Problem-Solving
4 1,007 (12.64%) Migration
5 886 (11.13%) DevOps
6 871 (10.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 811 (10.18%) CI/CD
8 777 (9.76%) Analytics
9 774 (9.72%) Project Management
10 764 (9.59%) Business Intelligence
10 764 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
11 733 (9.20%) ERP
12 649 (8.15%) AI
13 605 (7.60%) Roadmaps
14 597 (7.50%) Decision-Making
15 586 (7.36%) Data Modelling
16 560 (7.03%) Change Management
17 550 (6.91%) Project Delivery
18 543 (6.82%) Validation
19 531 (6.67%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,146 (14.39%) SQL
2 1,019 (12.80%) Python
3 555 (6.97%) Java
4 304 (3.82%) C#
5 247 (3.10%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.52%) TypeScript
7 186 (2.34%) PowerShell
8 126 (1.58%) C++
9 84 (1.05%) Go
10 77 (0.97%) Bash
11 73 (0.92%) PL/SQL
12 53 (0.67%) VBA
13 48 (0.60%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 40 (0.50%) Scala
16 38 (0.48%) R
16 38 (0.48%) Shell Script
17 37 (0.46%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.36%) Rust
19 27 (0.34%) Perl
Qualifications
1 803 (10.08%) Degree
2 666 (8.36%) Security Cleared
3 478 (6.00%) SC Cleared
4 190 (2.39%) PMI Certification
4 190 (2.39%) PMP
5 171 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
6 164 (2.06%) Master's Degree
7 163 (2.05%) ACCA
8 153 (1.92%) CIMA
9 128 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
10 103 (1.29%) CISSP
11 76 (0.95%) AWS Certification
12 74 (0.93%) DV Cleared
13 71 (0.89%) CISM
14 68 (0.85%) Azure Certification
15 39 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
15 39 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
16 37 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
17 34 (0.43%) ISTQB
18 30 (0.38%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 403 (5.06%) QA
2 397 (4.98%) Data Quality
3 315 (3.96%) PMO
4 282 (3.54%) GDPR
5 142 (1.78%) NIST
6 131 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 113 (1.42%) SLA
8 83 (1.04%) IFRS
9 81 (1.02%) PCI DSS
10 78 (0.98%) Accessibility
11 70 (0.88%) GRC
12 57 (0.72%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.58%) PSD2
14 42 (0.53%) GAAP
15 38 (0.48%) SEPA
16 37 (0.46%) NCSC
17 36 (0.45%) MiFID
18 30 (0.38%) COBIT
19 29 (0.36%) Basel III
System Software
1 334 (4.19%) Docker
2 166 (2.08%) Active Directory
3 61 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 29 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.14%) GPFS
7 11 (0.14%) NFS
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
10 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.088%) HDFS
12 4 (0.050%) Firmware
12 4 (0.050%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.038%) RACF
13 3 (0.038%) SRDF
13 3 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.025%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.025%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 417 (5.24%) Kubernetes
2 255 (3.20%) Terraform
3 155 (1.95%) Ansible
4 97 (1.22%) Grafana
5 88 (1.10%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.67%) SCCM
8 39 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) vRealize
11 18 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.20%) Argo
12 16 (0.20%) Control-M
13 14 (0.18%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.16%) Kibana
15 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
16 11 (0.14%) ITRS Geneos
16 11 (0.14%) Nessus
16 11 (0.14%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,032 (12.96%) Microsoft
2 799 (10.03%) SAP
3 683 (8.58%) Oracle
4 312 (3.92%) ServiceNow
5 193 (2.42%) Salesforce
6 186 (2.34%) Databricks
7 178 (2.24%) Google
8 164 (2.06%) Cisco
9 144 (1.81%) Workday
10 139 (1.75%) Splunk
11 121 (1.52%) VMware
12 96 (1.21%) IBM
13 76 (0.95%) Citrix
14 73 (0.92%) CyberArk
15 69 (0.87%) Ariba
16 59 (0.74%) Sage
17 56 (0.70%) HP
18 52 (0.65%) Dell
18 52 (0.65%) Informatica
18 52 (0.65%) OpenAI