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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,471 6,563 8,136
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.30% 22.29% 18.73%
As % of the General category 33.25% 35.29% 32.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,346 4,330 5,426
10th Percentile £352 £350 £356
25th Percentile £428 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £570 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.70% -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 202 107 250
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.51 £12.74
25th Percentile £17.83 £22.39 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +45.45% -14.06%
75th Percentile £44.44 £71.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £76.62 £83.20 £54.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £53.75 £31.47
% change year-on-year -58.93% +70.80% -34.78%

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 25,477 18,596 25,290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.15% 58.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,762 11,903 15,985
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 1,614 775 1,917
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £15.40
Median hourly rate £28.00 £28.60 £28.42
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% +0.63% -18.80%
75th Percentile £59.00 £56.00 £51.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.38 £26.50 £26.87
% change year-on-year -4.23% -1.36% -15.08%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 7,492 £536 -6.78% 4,176
London 0 4,531 £575 -8.00% 2,100
UK excluding London 0 3,363 £500 - 2,755
Work from Home -2 2,378 £538 -10.38% 1,772
North of England +3 1,111 £475 - 641
South East -1 647 £503 -3.83% 905
North West +6 597 £465 - 349
Midlands -2 583 £475 -5.00% 395
Yorkshire 0 469 £500 +2.04% 222
Scotland 0 395 £500 +2.67% 144
West Midlands 0 388 £492 -6.29% 225
South West -2 335 £525 +2.94% 321
East of England -2 200 £525 -4.55% 230
East Midlands 0 190 £450 +1.18% 167
Wales +25 101 £413 +10.00% 73
North East -8 45 £488 +11.94% 81
Northern Ireland -1 42 £513 +46.43% 90
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
1 326 (3.85%) Confluence
2 213 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
5 53 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
6 50 (0.59%) Apache
7 39 (0.46%) SAS
8 27 (0.32%) CMS
9 20 (0.24%) CICS
10 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 17 (0.20%) Appian
12 15 (0.18%) Camunda
13 14 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
14 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
15 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
15 11 (0.13%) Mendix
16 10 (0.12%) IIS
16 10 (0.12%) TPMS
17 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 541 (6.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 240 (2.83%) Microsoft Office
3 185 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 171 (2.02%) Microsoft Project
5 127 (1.50%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.42%) 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 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
1 372 (4.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 101 (1.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 100 (1.18%) NetSuite
5 85 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 77 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
7 66 (0.78%) 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%) Aladdin
16 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
17 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
18 30 (0.35%) SAP ERP
19 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,275 (15.05%) Azure
2 970 (11.45%) AWS
3 612 (7.22%) Power Platform
4 382 (4.51%) GCP
5 288 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
6 277 (3.27%) SaaS
7 271 (3.20%) Microsoft 365
8 237 (2.80%) Dynamics 365
9 234 (2.76%) GitHub
10 146 (1.72%) OCI
11 145 (1.71%) Serverless
12 142 (1.68%) Snowflake
13 131 (1.55%) Entra ID
14 124 (1.46%) Amazon S3
15 99 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
17 88 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
18 87 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
18 87 (1.03%) OpenShift
19 76 (0.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.92%) Firewall
2 108 (1.27%) 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 (0.50%) 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 17 (0.20%) VSAN
19 16 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 530 (6.26%) Power BI
2 213 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
3 207 (2.44%) SQL Server
4 169 (2.00%) Metadata
5 163 (1.92%) PostgreSQL
6 148 (1.75%) Tableau
7 127 (1.50%) Relational Database
8 120 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 103 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
10 89 (1.05%) NoSQL
11 77 (0.91%) Big Data
12 64 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.73%) BigQuery
14 57 (0.67%) 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%) Snowflake Schema
18 40 (0.47%) DynamoDB
19 39 (0.46%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 670 (7.91%) JIRA
2 208 (2.46%) Git
3 195 (2.30%) Jenkins
4 117 (1.38%) GitLab
5 58 (0.68%) JUnit
6 55 (0.65%) Cucumber
7 43 (0.51%) Selenium
8 35 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.35%) Postman
10 27 (0.32%) Visual Studio
11 24 (0.28%) Bitbucket
12 23 (0.27%) MLflow
13 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
14 20 (0.24%) REST Assured
15 18 (0.21%) ERwin
15 18 (0.21%) Zephyr
16 17 (0.20%) Maven
16 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 16 (0.19%) Hudson
18 12 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 2,626 (31.00%) Social Skills
2 1,568 (18.51%) Banking
3 1,148 (13.55%) Analytical Skills
4 577 (6.81%) Public Sector
5 322 (3.80%) Financial Institution
6 321 (3.79%) Legal
7 286 (3.38%) Front Office
8 282 (3.33%) Investment Banking
9 242 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
10 236 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
11 232 (2.74%) Retail
12 222 (2.62%) Manufacturing
13 213 (2.51%) Marketing
14 207 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
15 179 (2.11%) Telecoms
16 143 (1.69%) General Ledger
17 125 (1.48%) Local Government
17 125 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
18 121 (1.43%) Law
19 111 (1.31%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,296 (15.30%) Analyst
2 858 (10.13%) Senior
3 855 (10.09%) Developer
4 848 (10.01%) Lead
5 757 (8.94%) Architect
6 698 (8.24%) Business Analyst
7 672 (7.93%) Project Manager
8 629 (7.43%) Consultant
9 298 (3.52%) Solutions Architect
10 260 (3.07%) Data Engineer
11 205 (2.42%) Financial Analyst
12 192 (2.27%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.22%) Finance Manager
14 186 (2.20%) Data Analyst
15 166 (1.96%) Programme Manager
16 156 (1.84%) Accountant
17 151 (1.78%) Java Developer
18 136 (1.61%) Senior Analyst
19 135 (1.59%) Delivery Manager
20 125 (1.48%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (3.12%) Kafka
2 250 (2.95%) REST
3 216 (2.55%) .NET
4 199 (2.35%) React
5 170 (2.01%) Middleware
6 158 (1.87%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (1.72%) Spring
8 135 (1.59%) Spring Boot
9 133 (1.57%) RESTful
10 111 (1.31%) Node.js
11 96 (1.13%) PySpark
12 94 (1.11%) AngularJS
13 85 (1.00%) OAuth
14 78 (0.92%) XML
15 76 (0.90%) JSON
16 72 (0.85%) HTML
16 72 (0.85%) Redux
17 69 (0.81%) CSS
18 65 (0.77%) Pandas
19 57 (0.67%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 354 (4.18%) Onboarding
2 317 (3.74%) Product Ownership
3 277 (3.27%) Cloud Native
4 230 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
5 188 (2.22%) Management Information System
6 165 (1.95%) Data Structures
7 161 (1.90%) Derivative
8 157 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
9 143 (1.69%) Fixed Income
10 142 (1.68%) Data Centre
10 142 (1.68%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 135 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
12 112 (1.32%) Equities
13 104 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
14 103 (1.22%) Public Cloud
15 98 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
16 97 (1.15%) Virtual Team
17 80 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
18 67 (0.79%) Mainframe
19 65 (0.77%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 282 (3.33%) Linux
2 279 (3.29%) Windows
3 140 (1.65%) 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 (0.30%) Apple iOS
8 25 (0.30%) Solaris
9 24 (0.28%) Mac OS
10 21 (0.25%) 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 1,745 (20.60%) Agile
2 1,655 (19.54%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,240 (14.64%) Problem-Solving
4 1,148 (13.55%) Migration
5 950 (11.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 929 (10.97%) Continuous Improvement
7 899 (10.61%) DevOps
8 898 (10.60%) ERP
9 841 (9.93%) CI/CD
10 825 (9.74%) Analytics
11 810 (9.56%) Project Management
12 784 (9.26%) AI
13 764 (9.02%) Business Intelligence
14 693 (8.18%) Decision-Making
15 673 (7.94%) Data Modelling
16 657 (7.76%) Roadmaps
17 640 (7.56%) Validation
18 629 (7.43%) User Acceptance Testing
19 605 (7.14%) Change Management
20 578 (6.82%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,186 (14.00%) SQL
2 996 (11.76%) Python
3 560 (6.61%) Java
4 315 (3.72%) C#
5 220 (2.60%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 168 (1.98%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.24%) C++
9 73 (0.86%) Bash
10 70 (0.83%) PL/SQL
11 68 (0.80%) Go
12 61 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 54 (0.64%) VBA
14 50 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 47 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 38 (0.45%) Scala
17 36 (0.42%) R
18 28 (0.33%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.32%) Bicep
20 24 (0.28%) Korn
Qualifications
1 757 (8.94%) Degree
2 697 (8.23%) Security Cleared
3 495 (5.84%) SC Cleared
4 206 (2.43%) PMP
5 204 (2.41%) ACCA
6 197 (2.33%) PMI Certification
7 193 (2.28%) CIMA
8 147 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
9 145 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
10 125 (1.48%) Master's Degree
11 124 (1.46%) CISSP
12 82 (0.97%) DV Cleared
13 81 (0.96%) CISM
14 71 (0.84%) Azure Certification
15 61 (0.72%) AWS Certification
16 46 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
17 39 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
18 37 (0.44%) ISTQB
19 36 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
20 30 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 472 (5.57%) Data Quality
2 410 (4.84%) QA
3 337 (3.98%) PMO
4 302 (3.57%) GDPR
5 149 (1.76%) NIST
6 125 (1.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 109 (1.29%) SLA
8 93 (1.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 92 (1.09%) IFRS
10 77 (0.91%) Accessibility
11 72 (0.85%) GRC
11 72 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 58 (0.68%) ISO 20022
13 50 (0.59%) GAAP
14 39 (0.46%) PSD2
15 36 (0.42%) SEPA
16 34 (0.40%) NCSC
17 27 (0.32%) Basel III
18 25 (0.30%) MiFID
19 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 294 (3.47%) Docker
2 153 (1.81%) Active Directory
3 62 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.40%) vSphere
5 25 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
7 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
8 13 (0.15%) NFS
9 12 (0.14%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 5 (0.059%) HDFS
11 5 (0.059%) RACF
12 4 (0.047%) ACF2
12 4 (0.047%) Firmware
12 4 (0.047%) KVM
12 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.035%) GridGain
13 3 (0.035%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 388 (4.58%) Kubernetes
2 251 (2.96%) Terraform
3 126 (1.49%) Ansible
4 87 (1.03%) 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 21 (0.25%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Control-M
12 17 (0.20%) Argo
13 15 (0.18%) Progress Chef
14 14 (0.17%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 13 (0.15%) Puppet
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 1,107 (13.07%) Microsoft
2 804 (9.49%) SAP
3 738 (8.71%) Oracle
4 335 (3.95%) ServiceNow
5 221 (2.61%) Databricks
6 189 (2.23%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.07%) Google
8 147 (1.74%) Workday
9 131 (1.55%) Cisco
10 112 (1.32%) Splunk
10 112 (1.32%) VMware
11 105 (1.24%) IBM
12 80 (0.94%) Citrix
13 79 (0.93%) Ariba
14 74 (0.87%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.87%) Sage
15 55 (0.65%) Informatica
15 55 (0.65%) OpenAI
16 50 (0.59%) Bloomberg
17 48 (0.57%) Murex