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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,828 6,418 8,030
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.04% 22.26% 18.73%
As % of the General category 33.47% 35.17% 32.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,502 4,180 5,373
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £440 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £577
Median % change year-on-year - -4.60% -3.92%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £496 £500
% change year-on-year +0.81% -0.80% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 202 116 260
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.80 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.13 £23.89 £15.13
Median hourly rate £28.55 £40.25 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.07% +49.07% +0.58%
75th Percentile £54.17 £65.06 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.48 £57.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £36.00 £29.41
% change year-on-year -16.67% +22.40% -39.04%

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 26,375 18,250 24,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.90% 63.30% 57.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,948 11,525 15,454
10th Percentile £313 £281 £274
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £764
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,760 826 1,977
10th Percentile £13.71 £13.41 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.73 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.54 £27.97 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.19% -7.26% -6.91%
75th Percentile £60.00 £54.75 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £24.34 £28.50
% change year-on-year +23.25% -14.60% +1.53%

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 4 June 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 4 June 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 4 June 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 7,801 £550 -4.35% 5,922
London 0 4,713 £575 -6.12% 3,389
UK excluding London 0 3,526 £500 +0.81% 3,271
Work from Home -2 2,488 £540 -6.09% 2,636
North of England +3 1,210 £492 +5.13% 876
South East -1 645 £500 -4.31% 935
North West +5 638 £465 +3.33% 517
Midlands 0 594 £495 +4.21% 493
Yorkshire +2 530 £519 +7.56% 283
Scotland 0 439 £500 +4.82% 195
West Midlands 0 409 £500 -0.40% 304
South West -2 366 £525 - 364
East of England +2 193 £520 -9.57% 245
East Midlands 0 180 £468 +6.36% 188
Wales +9 83 £483 +18.77% 82
Northern Ireland -1 47 £513 +20.59% 127
North East -16 43 £488 +10.80% 84
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 315 (3.57%) Confluence
2 212 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.93%) Apache Spark
4 62 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
5 54 (0.61%) Apache
6 50 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
7 30 (0.34%) SAS
8 25 (0.28%) CMS
9 19 (0.22%) CICS
10 18 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 13 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 13 (0.15%) Appian
12 13 (0.15%) Camunda
13 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.091%) HCL Notes
15 8 (0.091%) Mendix
16 7 (0.079%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 501 (5.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 215 (2.44%) Microsoft Office
3 166 (1.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 158 (1.79%) Microsoft Project
5 122 (1.38%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.091%) Sketch
9 6 (0.068%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.068%) Adobe XD
9 6 (0.068%) InVision
9 6 (0.068%) Trello
10 4 (0.045%) Notion
10 4 (0.045%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.011%) UXPin
12 1 (0.011%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 390 (4.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 107 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 106 (1.20%) NetSuite
4 86 (0.97%) Oracle Receivables
5 82 (0.93%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 69 (0.78%) Oracle ERP
7 58 (0.66%) SAP FI
8 54 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
9 47 (0.53%) SAP CO
10 45 (0.51%) Oracle General Ledger
11 44 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
12 42 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
13 36 (0.41%) Aladdin
14 32 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
15 31 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 29 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
17 25 (0.28%) SAP ERP
18 24 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
19 23 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
19 23 (0.26%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,381 (15.64%) Azure
2 990 (11.21%) AWS
3 597 (6.76%) Power Platform
4 418 (4.73%) GCP
5 301 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
6 295 (3.34%) SaaS
7 274 (3.10%) Microsoft 365
8 235 (2.66%) GitHub
9 220 (2.49%) Dynamics 365
10 173 (1.96%) Snowflake
11 153 (1.73%) Entra ID
12 138 (1.56%) Serverless
13 124 (1.40%) OCI
14 110 (1.25%) Amazon S3
15 109 (1.23%) Power Automate
16 97 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
17 90 (1.02%) OpenShift
18 88 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
19 83 (0.94%) dbt
20 80 (0.91%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 167 (1.89%) Firewall
2 127 (1.44%) Network Security
3 76 (0.86%) DNS
3 76 (0.86%) WAN
4 65 (0.74%) VPN
5 58 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 41 (0.46%) BGP
7 37 (0.42%) SD-WAN
8 36 (0.41%) LAN
9 33 (0.37%) HTTP
10 31 (0.35%) SSL
11 29 (0.33%) DHCP
11 29 (0.33%) Multicast
11 29 (0.33%) OSPF
12 25 (0.28%) MPLS
13 21 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
13 21 (0.24%) VSAN
14 19 (0.22%) Internet
14 19 (0.22%) VLAN
15 14 (0.16%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 505 (5.72%) Power BI
2 233 (2.64%) SQL Server
3 223 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
4 172 (1.95%) Metadata
5 160 (1.81%) Relational Database
6 159 (1.80%) PostgreSQL
7 146 (1.65%) Tableau
8 126 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 93 (1.05%) NoSQL
10 79 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
11 73 (0.83%) Big Data
12 68 (0.77%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 60 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 54 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
16 48 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 46 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
18 42 (0.48%) Power Query
19 41 (0.46%) Delta Lake
20 35 (0.40%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 666 (7.54%) JIRA
2 212 (2.40%) Git
3 156 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 95 (1.08%) GitLab
5 49 (0.56%) JUnit
6 45 (0.51%) Cucumber
7 36 (0.41%) Selenium
8 30 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
9 29 (0.33%) Postman
10 28 (0.32%) Visual Studio
11 25 (0.28%) MLflow
12 24 (0.27%) SonarQube
13 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
14 18 (0.20%) ERwin
14 18 (0.20%) Maven
15 17 (0.19%) Hudson
16 16 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
17 15 (0.17%) Bitbucket
17 15 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,579 (29.21%) Social Skills
2 1,622 (18.37%) Banking
3 1,158 (13.12%) Analytical Skills
4 501 (5.68%) Public Sector
5 396 (4.49%) Legal
6 335 (3.79%) Investment Banking
7 334 (3.78%) Financial Institution
8 304 (3.44%) Front Office
9 274 (3.10%) Retail
10 266 (3.01%) Organisational Skills
11 231 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
12 218 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
13 165 (1.87%) Manufacturing
14 146 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 141 (1.60%) General Ledger
16 140 (1.59%) Marketing
17 133 (1.51%) Law
18 132 (1.50%) Local Government
19 126 (1.43%) Billing
20 122 (1.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,338 (15.16%) Analyst
2 953 (10.80%) Senior
3 911 (10.32%) Lead
4 884 (10.01%) Developer
5 804 (9.11%) Architect
6 709 (8.03%) Business Analyst
7 690 (7.82%) Project Manager
8 588 (6.66%) Consultant
9 334 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
10 293 (3.32%) Data Engineer
11 216 (2.45%) Financial Analyst
12 214 (2.42%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.13%) Finance Manager
14 187 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 177 (2.00%) Accountant
16 172 (1.95%) Programme Manager
17 163 (1.85%) Java Developer
18 161 (1.82%) Software Engineer
19 158 (1.79%) Senior Developer
20 148 (1.68%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (2.98%) REST
2 247 (2.80%) .NET
2 247 (2.80%) Kafka
3 226 (2.56%) React
4 181 (2.05%) Middleware
5 172 (1.95%) Oracle Fusion
6 153 (1.73%) Spring
7 147 (1.67%) Spring Boot
8 134 (1.52%) RESTful
9 103 (1.17%) PySpark
10 102 (1.16%) Node.js
11 94 (1.06%) AngularJS
12 91 (1.03%) Redux
13 82 (0.93%) OAuth
14 77 (0.87%) JSON
15 74 (0.84%) XML
16 65 (0.74%) CSS
17 63 (0.71%) HTML
18 62 (0.70%) OpenID
19 60 (0.68%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 387 (4.38%) Onboarding
2 373 (4.23%) Product Ownership
3 350 (3.96%) Cloud Native
4 240 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
5 203 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 185 (2.10%) Data Structures
7 167 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
8 165 (1.87%) Derivative
9 158 (1.79%) Data Centre
10 149 (1.69%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 144 (1.63%) Fixed Income
12 138 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
13 113 (1.28%) Equities
14 109 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
14 109 (1.23%) Virtual Team
15 107 (1.21%) Public Cloud
16 100 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
17 92 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
18 87 (0.99%) AI Agents
19 74 (0.84%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 298 (3.38%) Windows
2 268 (3.04%) Linux
3 144 (1.63%) Unix
4 71 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 43 (0.49%) Windows 10
6 37 (0.42%) Solaris
7 32 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 31 (0.35%) Apple iOS
9 28 (0.32%) zOS
10 27 (0.31%) Android
11 18 (0.20%) AIX
11 18 (0.20%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.079%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.068%) Oracle Linux
13 6 (0.068%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.057%) VMS
15 4 (0.045%) HPUX
15 4 (0.045%) MVS
15 4 (0.045%) SUSE
16 3 (0.034%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,804 (20.43%) Agile
2 1,803 (20.42%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,222 (13.84%) Migration
4 1,204 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
5 978 (11.08%) Continuous Improvement
6 959 (10.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 932 (10.56%) DevOps
8 922 (10.44%) ERP
9 897 (10.16%) CI/CD
10 892 (10.10%) AI
11 843 (9.55%) Analytics
12 775 (8.78%) Project Management
13 738 (8.36%) Data Modelling
14 734 (8.31%) Decision-Making
15 719 (8.14%) Validation
16 705 (7.99%) Roadmaps
17 673 (7.62%) User Acceptance Testing
18 666 (7.54%) Business Intelligence
19 623 (7.06%) Change Management
20 571 (6.47%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,212 (13.73%) SQL
2 1,068 (12.10%) Python
3 590 (6.68%) Java
4 358 (4.06%) C#
5 231 (2.62%) JavaScript
6 216 (2.45%) TypeScript
7 187 (2.12%) PowerShell
8 107 (1.21%) C++
9 81 (0.92%) Bash
10 75 (0.85%) Go
11 71 (0.80%) PL/SQL
12 64 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 55 (0.62%) Shell Script
14 52 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 43 (0.49%) Scala
16 39 (0.44%) VBA
17 28 (0.32%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.32%) Bicep
17 28 (0.32%) R
17 28 (0.32%) Rust
Qualifications
1 746 (8.45%) Degree
2 669 (7.58%) Security Cleared
3 480 (5.44%) SC Cleared
4 223 (2.53%) ACCA
5 209 (2.37%) PMP
6 204 (2.31%) CIMA
7 184 (2.08%) PMI Certification
8 157 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
9 140 (1.59%) CISSP
10 133 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
11 90 (1.02%) Master's Degree
12 89 (1.01%) CISM
13 77 (0.87%) DV Cleared
14 72 (0.82%) Azure Certification
15 66 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
16 46 (0.52%) AWS Certification
17 41 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
18 36 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 32 (0.36%) DBS Check
19 32 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 535 (6.06%) Data Quality
2 403 (4.57%) QA
3 308 (3.49%) PMO
4 286 (3.24%) GDPR
5 161 (1.82%) NIST
6 131 (1.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.28%) IFRS
8 108 (1.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 106 (1.20%) SLA
10 100 (1.13%) GRC
11 84 (0.95%) Accessibility
12 67 (0.76%) PCI DSS
13 59 (0.67%) GAAP
13 59 (0.67%) ISO 20022
14 35 (0.40%) NCSC
14 35 (0.40%) SEPA
15 34 (0.39%) PSD2
16 28 (0.32%) IFRS 17
17 27 (0.31%) EMIR
17 27 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 283 (3.21%) Docker
2 164 (1.86%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.34%) vSphere
5 24 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.17%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
10 11 (0.12%) NFS
11 8 (0.091%) RACF
12 7 (0.079%) GPFS
13 6 (0.068%) KVM
14 5 (0.057%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.045%) Firmware
15 4 (0.045%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.045%) SRDF
16 3 (0.034%) GridGain
16 3 (0.034%) HDFS
17 2 (0.023%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 409 (4.63%) Kubernetes
2 261 (2.96%) Terraform
3 133 (1.51%) Ansible
4 91 (1.03%) Grafana
5 75 (0.85%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 42 (0.48%) SCCM
8 38 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.35%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.23%) Control-M
11 18 (0.20%) vRealize
12 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 15 (0.17%) Progress Chef
13 14 (0.16%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 13 (0.15%) Nessus
15 11 (0.12%) CASB
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,121 (12.70%) Microsoft
2 771 (8.73%) SAP
3 730 (8.27%) Oracle
4 302 (3.42%) ServiceNow
5 260 (2.95%) Databricks
6 192 (2.17%) Salesforce
7 189 (2.14%) Google
8 126 (1.43%) Workday
9 121 (1.37%) Cisco
10 114 (1.29%) Splunk
11 108 (1.22%) VMware
12 97 (1.10%) IBM
13 83 (0.94%) CyberArk
14 82 (0.93%) Ariba
15 65 (0.74%) Sage
16 63 (0.71%) Citrix
17 61 (0.69%) OpenAI
18 51 (0.58%) Palo Alto
19 50 (0.57%) IFS
20 47 (0.53%) Bloomberg