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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,786 7,457 7,954
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.56% 22.83% 19.36%
As % of the General category 33.85% 36.30% 33.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,033 4,895 5,342
10th Percentile £357 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £719
90th Percentile £788 £809 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £492 £500
% change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 264 149 217
10th Percentile £16.08 £15.90 £14.20
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.00 £20.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -12.86% +28.49%
75th Percentile £55.13 £63.25 £40.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.39 £37.50
% change year-on-year +60.51% -26.97% +13.83%

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 28,911 20,540 23,548
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.83% 62.88% 57.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,215 12,857 14,814
10th Percentile £313 £280 £282
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £634 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,025 1,069 1,632
10th Percentile £14.04 £13.33 £13.50
25th Percentile £18.32 £16.30 £16.25
Median hourly rate £32.81 £26.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.17% -25.71% +14.68%
75th Percentile £61.50 £51.90 £56.31
90th Percentile £81.05 £71.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.63 £35.00
% change year-on-year +45.82% -35.34% +34.62%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 8,535 £550 - 5,556
London 0 5,141 £583 -2.88% 3,254
UK excluding London -1 3,867 £500 +1.63% 2,928
Work from Home -1 2,841 £550 -4.35% 2,119
North of England 0 1,312 £500 +5.26% 814
South East -1 734 £503 -3.13% 878
North West 0 692 £492 +9.33% 428
Midlands +1 645 £500 +11.11% 450
Yorkshire 0 569 £518 +6.18% 288
West Midlands +1 495 £500 +2.67% 260
Scotland 0 489 £475 -3.46% 176
South West -4 382 £525 -4.55% 295
East of England +7 209 £530 -5.78% 213
East Midlands -3 144 £500 +19.05% 188
Wales +4 82 £525 +18.31% 77
Northern Ireland -1 61 £475 +1.06% 67
North East -18 51 £500 +14.29% 104
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 2

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 (3.33%) Confluence
2 240 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.84%) Apache Spark
4 77 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 61 (0.62%) Apache
6 46 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) CMS
8 32 (0.33%) SAS
9 28 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
13 12 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.12%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.10%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.082%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 519 (5.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 171 (1.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 164 (1.68%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.10%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.092%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.041%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 449 (4.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 116 (1.19%) NetSuite
4 100 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 86 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
6 71 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 70 (0.72%) SAP FI
8 66 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
9 57 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
10 56 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
11 49 (0.50%) Oracle Financials
12 48 (0.49%) SAP CO
13 46 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
14 41 (0.42%) Aladdin
15 35 (0.36%) Unit4 Business World
16 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
17 29 (0.30%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.29%) SAP GRC
19 27 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
19 27 (0.28%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,526 (15.59%) Azure
2 1,102 (11.26%) AWS
3 652 (6.66%) Power Platform
4 514 (5.25%) GCP
5 331 (3.38%) SaaS
6 329 (3.36%) Azure DevOps
7 287 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
8 274 (2.80%) GitHub
9 249 (2.54%) Dynamics 365
10 203 (2.07%) Snowflake
11 200 (2.04%) Entra ID
12 139 (1.42%) Serverless
13 132 (1.35%) OCI
14 125 (1.28%) Amazon S3
15 115 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 110 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
17 104 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
18 100 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
19 98 (1.00%) dbt
20 93 (0.95%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 193 (1.97%) Firewall
2 141 (1.44%) Network Security
3 92 (0.94%) DNS
4 89 (0.91%) VPN
5 64 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 55 (0.56%) WAN
7 50 (0.51%) BGP
8 47 (0.48%) SSL
9 40 (0.41%) DHCP
10 38 (0.39%) LAN
11 37 (0.38%) HTTP
11 37 (0.38%) Multicast
12 32 (0.33%) OSPF
13 25 (0.26%) Internet
13 25 (0.26%) VLAN
13 25 (0.26%) Wireless
14 22 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
14 22 (0.22%) MPLS
15 21 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
16 20 (0.20%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 541 (5.53%) Power BI
2 273 (2.79%) SQL Server
3 248 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.07%) Metadata
5 177 (1.81%) Relational Database
6 169 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
7 153 (1.56%) Tableau
8 142 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 88 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
10 83 (0.85%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.73%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.71%) BigQuery
14 65 (0.66%) Big Data
14 65 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
15 50 (0.51%) Power Query
16 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
17 48 (0.49%) Delta Lake
18 46 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 42 (0.43%) Db2
Development Applications
1 675 (6.90%) JIRA
2 264 (2.70%) Git
3 159 (1.62%) Jenkins
4 90 (0.92%) GitLab
5 51 (0.52%) JUnit
6 41 (0.42%) Cucumber
6 41 (0.42%) Selenium
7 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 28 (0.29%) ERwin
9 27 (0.28%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
10 25 (0.26%) Postman
11 23 (0.24%) Bitbucket
11 23 (0.24%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
11 23 (0.24%) Zephyr
12 22 (0.22%) Maven
13 20 (0.20%) MLflow
14 18 (0.18%) ER Studio
15 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,849 (29.11%) Social Skills
2 1,827 (18.67%) Banking
3 1,343 (13.72%) Analytical Skills
4 555 (5.67%) Public Sector
5 495 (5.06%) Legal
6 369 (3.77%) Investment Banking
7 359 (3.67%) Financial Institution
8 356 (3.64%) Organisational Skills
9 343 (3.51%) Front Office
10 338 (3.45%) Retail
11 267 (2.73%) Influencing Skills
12 235 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
13 191 (1.95%) Manufacturing
14 169 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 161 (1.65%) Billing
16 157 (1.60%) Local Government
17 155 (1.58%) General Ledger
17 155 (1.58%) Marketing
18 138 (1.41%) Law
18 138 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,451 (14.83%) Analyst
2 1,056 (10.79%) Lead
3 1,053 (10.76%) Senior
4 989 (10.11%) Developer
5 878 (8.97%) Architect
6 743 (7.59%) Business Analyst
7 707 (7.22%) Project Manager
8 645 (6.59%) Consultant
9 329 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
10 311 (3.18%) Data Engineer
11 244 (2.49%) Financial Analyst
12 227 (2.32%) Senior Manager
13 213 (2.18%) Java Developer
14 208 (2.13%) Accountant
15 207 (2.12%) Data Analyst
16 193 (1.97%) Programme Manager
17 187 (1.91%) Senior Developer
18 182 (1.86%) Finance Manager
19 178 (1.82%) Software Engineer
20 172 (1.76%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 318 (3.25%) REST
2 272 (2.78%) React
3 271 (2.77%) .NET
4 270 (2.76%) Kafka
5 220 (2.25%) Oracle Fusion
6 198 (2.02%) Middleware
7 182 (1.86%) Spring
8 173 (1.77%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.38%) RESTful
10 126 (1.29%) PySpark
11 120 (1.23%) Redux
12 113 (1.15%) Node.js
13 96 (0.98%) JSON
14 93 (0.95%) AngularJS
15 92 (0.94%) OAuth
16 88 (0.90%) XML
17 67 (0.68%) SOAP
18 65 (0.66%) CSS
19 64 (0.65%) Web Services
20 63 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 462 (4.72%) Onboarding
2 443 (4.53%) Product Ownership
3 413 (4.22%) Cloud Native
4 273 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
5 237 (2.42%) Data Structures
6 223 (2.28%) Management Information System
7 181 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
8 180 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
9 177 (1.81%) Virtual Team
10 175 (1.79%) Derivative
11 171 (1.75%) Fixed Income
12 167 (1.71%) Data Centre
13 164 (1.68%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 141 (1.44%) AI Agents
15 140 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
16 124 (1.27%) Equities
17 113 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
18 108 (1.10%) Public Cloud
19 105 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
20 98 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 337 (3.44%) Windows
2 288 (2.94%) Linux
3 160 (1.63%) Unix
4 76 (0.78%) Windows Server
5 41 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (0.40%) Solaris
7 37 (0.38%) Apple iOS
7 37 (0.38%) zOS
8 35 (0.36%) Windows 10
9 30 (0.31%) Android
10 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
11 20 (0.20%) AIX
12 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.092%) VMS
14 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 5 (0.051%) MVS
16 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
17 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,189 (22.37%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,984 (20.27%) Agile
3 1,362 (13.92%) Migration
4 1,295 (13.23%) Problem-Solving
5 1,156 (11.81%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,124 (11.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,103 (11.27%) AI
8 1,021 (10.43%) ERP
9 1,014 (10.36%) DevOps
10 998 (10.20%) CI/CD
11 983 (10.04%) Analytics
12 889 (9.08%) Decision-Making
13 820 (8.38%) Validation
14 817 (8.35%) Roadmaps
15 784 (8.01%) Data Modelling
16 761 (7.78%) User Acceptance Testing
17 754 (7.70%) Project Management
18 710 (7.26%) Change Management
19 675 (6.90%) Business Intelligence
20 630 (6.44%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,269 (12.97%) SQL
2 1,191 (12.17%) Python
3 656 (6.70%) Java
4 381 (3.89%) C#
5 264 (2.70%) JavaScript
6 257 (2.63%) TypeScript
7 228 (2.33%) PowerShell
8 107 (1.09%) Bash
9 93 (0.95%) PL/SQL
10 82 (0.84%) Go
11 78 (0.80%) C++
12 76 (0.78%) Shell Script
13 73 (0.75%) T-SQL
14 62 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 49 (0.50%) VBA
16 47 (0.48%) Bicep
17 38 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 37 (0.38%) Scala
19 33 (0.34%) Apex Code
20 28 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 753 (7.69%) Security Cleared
2 734 (7.50%) Degree
3 539 (5.51%) SC Cleared
4 228 (2.33%) PMP
5 207 (2.12%) PMI Certification
6 202 (2.06%) ACCA
7 187 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
8 180 (1.84%) CIMA
9 154 (1.57%) CISSP
10 123 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
11 121 (1.24%) DV Cleared
12 97 (0.99%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.88%) CISM
14 80 (0.82%) Master's Degree
15 75 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 62 (0.63%) AWS Certification
17 51 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 617 (6.30%) Data Quality
2 422 (4.31%) QA
3 361 (3.69%) PMO
4 282 (2.88%) GDPR
5 155 (1.58%) NIST
6 127 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.12%) GRC
8 106 (1.08%) IFRS
8 106 (1.08%) SLA
9 105 (1.07%) Accessibility
10 100 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 63 (0.64%) GAAP
12 62 (0.63%) ISO 20022
13 51 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 37 (0.38%) SEPA
15 35 (0.36%) Solvency II
16 31 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 29 (0.30%) EMIR
17 29 (0.30%) MiFID
18 27 (0.28%) COBIT
System Software
1 271 (2.77%) Docker
2 215 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 65 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 27 (0.28%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) RACF
7 21 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (0.13%) NFS
9 13 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.072%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
14 3 (0.031%) SRDF
15 2 (0.020%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 436 (4.46%) Kubernetes
2 329 (3.36%) Terraform
3 159 (1.62%) Ansible
4 96 (0.98%) Grafana
5 79 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 71 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.50%) SCCM
9 27 (0.28%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,279 (13.07%) Microsoft
2 841 (8.59%) Oracle
3 840 (8.58%) SAP
4 347 (3.55%) ServiceNow
5 298 (3.05%) Databricks
6 220 (2.25%) Salesforce
7 213 (2.18%) Google
8 152 (1.55%) IBM
9 136 (1.39%) Workday
10 127 (1.30%) VMware
11 112 (1.14%) Splunk
12 109 (1.11%) Cisco
13 92 (0.94%) Ariba
14 87 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 69 (0.71%) OpenAI
16 67 (0.68%) Sage
17 64 (0.65%) Citrix
18 54 (0.55%) Informatica
19 51 (0.52%) Bloomberg
20 48 (0.49%) F5