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

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,988 6,403 8,291
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.96% 21.31% 18.73%
As % of the General category 32.68% 34.17% 31.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,073 4,090 5,619
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 105 197
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £12.57
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £14.50
Median hourly rate £23.54 £35.00 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -32.75% +36.13% -
75th Percentile £41.25 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £69.94 £81.92 £57.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £36.00 £25.33
% change year-on-year -38.89% +42.12% -27.63%

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 24,441 18,741 25,985
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.00% 62.38% 58.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,292 11,602 16,667
10th Percentile £300 £287 £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 £624 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £493
% change year-on-year -0.52% -3.05% -1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,490 628 1,748
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.53 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.70 £20.24 £15.33
Median hourly rate £23.83 £30.00 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.58% +17.65% -20.20%
75th Percentile £54.00 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.29 £27.37 £25.00
% change year-on-year -18.55% +9.47% -6.17%

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 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 4 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 4 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 7,042 £537 -8.98% 6,112
London 0 4,286 £575 -8.00% 2,101
UK excluding London 0 3,153 £500 - 4,751
Work from Home -1 2,272 £540 -8.28% 2,477
North of England +3 1,026 £475 -1.81% 1,009
Midlands -1 580 £488 -2.50% 663
South East -1 567 £500 -4.76% 1,487
North West +4 520 £450 -5.26% 483
Yorkshire 0 458 £500 -2.44% 394
Scotland 0 380 £475 - 236
West Midlands 0 373 £500 -7.41% 303
South West -5 320 £512 -2.57% 557
East Midlands 0 202 £450 +5.88% 347
East of England -1 187 £525 -4.55% 617
Wales +35 107 £413 +3.13% 183
Northern Ireland -1 49 £525 +61.54% 103
North East -8 48 £488 +6.56% 144
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
1 322 (4.03%) Confluence
2 205 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 79 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.79%) Microsoft Exchange
5 47 (0.59%) Apache
6 41 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.40%) SAS
8 25 (0.31%) CMS
9 21 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.21%) Appian
11 17 (0.21%) CICS
11 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
12 14 (0.18%) Hyperledger
13 12 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.15%) Camunda
13 12 (0.15%) HCL Notes
13 12 (0.15%) TPMS
14 10 (0.13%) Mendix
15 8 (0.10%) nginx
Applications
1 521 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 283 (3.54%) Microsoft Office
3 197 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 181 (2.27%) Microsoft Project
5 141 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.19%) Trello
9 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 12 (0.15%) Sketch
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.10%) InVision
13 7 (0.088%) 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
1 334 (4.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.44%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 75 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
5 72 (0.90%) NetSuite
6 71 (0.89%) SAP FI
7 68 (0.85%) Oracle General Ledger
8 66 (0.83%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 59 (0.74%) SAP CO
10 57 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.66%) SAP FI/CO
12 45 (0.56%) Oracle Assets
13 44 (0.55%) Oracle ERP
14 40 (0.50%) Oracle Cash Management
14 40 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
15 37 (0.46%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 36 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
17 34 (0.43%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
19 23 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,207 (15.11%) Azure
2 976 (12.22%) AWS
3 544 (6.81%) Power Platform
4 395 (4.94%) GCP
5 280 (3.51%) Microsoft 365
6 264 (3.30%) SaaS
7 251 (3.14%) Azure DevOps
8 218 (2.73%) Dynamics 365
9 205 (2.57%) GitHub
10 153 (1.92%) OCI
11 151 (1.89%) Serverless
12 129 (1.61%) Snowflake
13 120 (1.50%) Entra ID
14 102 (1.28%) Amazon S3
15 90 (1.13%) Power Automate
16 85 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
17 81 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
18 79 (0.99%) OpenShift
19 77 (0.96%) Azure Data Factory
20 74 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 157 (1.97%) Firewall
2 94 (1.18%) Network Security
3 72 (0.90%) WAN
4 55 (0.69%) DNS
5 44 (0.55%) LAN
5 44 (0.55%) VPN
6 40 (0.50%) SD-WAN
7 38 (0.48%) TCP/IP
8 35 (0.44%) Wireless
9 28 (0.35%) BGP
10 26 (0.33%) SSL
11 25 (0.31%) OSPF
12 24 (0.30%) HTTP
12 24 (0.30%) Skype
13 23 (0.29%) Multicast
14 20 (0.25%) Internet
15 19 (0.24%) DHCP
16 17 (0.21%) MPLS
16 17 (0.21%) SSH
17 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 484 (6.06%) Power BI
2 205 (2.57%) Data Warehouse
3 200 (2.50%) SQL Server
4 195 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
5 139 (1.74%) Tableau
6 134 (1.68%) Metadata
7 123 (1.54%) NoSQL
8 119 (1.49%) Relational Database
9 115 (1.44%) Data Lake
10 95 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
11 78 (0.98%) Big Data
12 75 (0.94%) MongoDB
13 67 (0.84%) Oracle Database
14 57 (0.71%) BigQuery
15 45 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
16 44 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 40 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 37 (0.46%) MySQL
19 36 (0.45%) Hadoop
20 35 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 644 (8.06%) JIRA
2 245 (3.07%) Jenkins
3 218 (2.73%) Git
4 155 (1.94%) GitLab
5 68 (0.85%) JUnit
6 63 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 48 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.54%) Selenium
9 35 (0.44%) Bitbucket
9 35 (0.44%) Postman
10 31 (0.39%) Visual Studio
11 24 (0.30%) Gradle
11 24 (0.30%) MLflow
12 23 (0.29%) Maven
13 20 (0.25%) REST Assured
14 18 (0.23%) Liquibase
15 16 (0.20%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.20%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.19%) ERwin
17 14 (0.18%) JMeter
General
1 2,661 (33.31%) Social Skills
2 1,564 (19.58%) Banking
3 1,029 (12.88%) Analytical Skills
4 632 (7.91%) Public Sector
5 354 (4.43%) Financial Institution
6 299 (3.74%) Legal
7 290 (3.63%) Front Office
8 286 (3.58%) Marketing
9 275 (3.44%) Investment Banking
10 267 (3.34%) Manufacturing
11 245 (3.07%) Organisational Skills
12 243 (3.04%) Telecoms
13 225 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
14 181 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
15 171 (2.14%) Retail
16 147 (1.84%) Electronics
17 131 (1.64%) General Ledger
18 127 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
19 122 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 112 (1.40%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,271 (15.91%) Analyst
2 876 (10.97%) Developer
3 816 (10.22%) Senior
4 690 (8.64%) Lead
5 673 (8.43%) Business Analyst
6 668 (8.36%) Architect
7 635 (7.95%) Project Manager
8 593 (7.42%) Consultant
9 280 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 195 (2.44%) Data Engineer
11 193 (2.42%) Data Analyst
12 182 (2.28%) Programme Manager
13 173 (2.17%) Financial Analyst
14 166 (2.08%) Senior Manager
15 147 (1.84%) Software Engineer
16 144 (1.80%) Java Developer
17 140 (1.75%) Finance Manager
18 131 (1.64%) Senior Analyst
18 131 (1.64%) Senior Developer
19 122 (1.53%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (3.43%) REST
2 272 (3.41%) Kafka
3 211 (2.64%) React
4 209 (2.62%) .NET
5 162 (2.03%) Oracle Fusion
6 147 (1.84%) Middleware
7 146 (1.83%) RESTful
8 141 (1.77%) Spring
9 120 (1.50%) Spring Boot
10 119 (1.49%) Node.js
11 111 (1.39%) AngularJS
12 90 (1.13%) PySpark
13 89 (1.11%) HTML
14 87 (1.09%) XML
15 83 (1.04%) CSS
16 80 (1.00%) Pandas
17 79 (0.99%) JSON
18 75 (0.94%) SOAP
19 70 (0.88%) OAuth
20 69 (0.86%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 345 (4.32%) Onboarding
2 308 (3.86%) Product Ownership
3 248 (3.10%) Cloud Native
4 195 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
5 176 (2.20%) Management Information System
6 174 (2.18%) Derivative
7 155 (1.94%) Data Centre
8 148 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
9 145 (1.82%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 144 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
10 144 (1.80%) Fixed Income
11 139 (1.74%) Data Structures
12 126 (1.58%) Equities
13 112 (1.40%) Public Cloud
14 109 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
15 92 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
16 89 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 88 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 72 (0.90%) Hedge funds
19 64 (0.80%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 326 (4.08%) Linux
2 293 (3.67%) Windows
3 149 (1.87%) Unix
4 64 (0.80%) Windows 10
5 58 (0.73%) Android
5 58 (0.73%) Windows Server
6 52 (0.65%) Mac OS
7 28 (0.35%) Apple iOS
8 19 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 16 (0.20%) zOS
10 10 (0.13%) AIX
10 10 (0.13%) Solaris
11 7 (0.088%) VMS
12 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.050%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.038%) CentOS
14 3 (0.038%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,758 (22.01%) Agile
2 1,541 (19.29%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,236 (15.47%) Problem-Solving
4 1,010 (12.64%) Migration
5 879 (11.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 867 (10.85%) DevOps
7 807 (10.10%) CI/CD
8 780 (9.76%) Analytics
9 769 (9.63%) Project Management
10 765 (9.58%) Continuous Improvement
11 759 (9.50%) Business Intelligence
12 730 (9.14%) ERP
13 643 (8.05%) AI
14 601 (7.52%) Decision-Making
15 598 (7.49%) Roadmaps
16 577 (7.22%) Data Modelling
17 562 (7.04%) Change Management
18 539 (6.75%) Risk Management
19 534 (6.69%) Validation
20 530 (6.63%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,139 (14.26%) SQL
2 1,017 (12.73%) Python
3 564 (7.06%) Java
4 305 (3.82%) C#
5 248 (3.10%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.54%) TypeScript
7 188 (2.35%) PowerShell
8 130 (1.63%) C++
9 88 (1.10%) Go
10 77 (0.96%) Bash
10 77 (0.96%) PL/SQL
11 52 (0.65%) VBA
12 49 (0.61%) T-SQL
13 42 (0.53%) Shell Script
14 41 (0.51%) R
15 39 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 38 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 38 (0.48%) Scala
17 30 (0.38%) Rust
18 28 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 810 (10.14%) Degree
2 657 (8.22%) Security Cleared
3 476 (5.96%) SC Cleared
4 187 (2.34%) PMP
5 186 (2.33%) PMI Certification
6 172 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 166 (2.08%) Master's Degree
8 165 (2.07%) ACCA
9 155 (1.94%) CIMA
10 130 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
11 103 (1.29%) CISSP
12 78 (0.98%) AWS Certification
13 75 (0.94%) DV Cleared
14 71 (0.89%) CISM
15 68 (0.85%) Azure Certification
16 42 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
17 37 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
18 35 (0.44%) ISTQB
18 35 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
19 30 (0.38%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 402 (5.03%) QA
2 394 (4.93%) Data Quality
3 321 (4.02%) PMO
4 269 (3.37%) GDPR
5 143 (1.79%) NIST
6 132 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.41%) SLA
8 109 (1.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 84 (1.05%) IFRS
10 81 (1.01%) Accessibility
11 78 (0.98%) PCI DSS
12 70 (0.88%) GRC
13 58 (0.73%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.58%) PSD2
15 41 (0.51%) GAAP
16 38 (0.48%) SEPA
17 37 (0.46%) MiFID
17 37 (0.46%) NCSC
18 33 (0.41%) COBIT
19 31 (0.39%) Basel III
System Software
1 338 (4.23%) Docker
2 171 (2.14%) Active Directory
3 62 (0.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 32 (0.40%) 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 8 (0.10%) Hyper-V
9 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
10 7 (0.088%) HDFS
11 4 (0.050%) Firmware
11 4 (0.050%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.038%) KVM
12 3 (0.038%) RACF
12 3 (0.038%) SRDF
12 3 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.025%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 414 (5.18%) Kubernetes
2 254 (3.18%) Terraform
3 156 (1.95%) Ansible
4 96 (1.20%) Grafana
5 88 (1.10%) Prometheus
6 59 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.66%) SCCM
8 39 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.26%) Progress Chef
11 19 (0.24%) vRealize
12 18 (0.23%) Control-M
13 17 (0.21%) Argo
14 14 (0.18%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.16%) Kibana
16 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.15%) ITRS Geneos
17 11 (0.14%) Nessus
17 11 (0.14%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,041 (13.03%) Microsoft
2 810 (10.14%) SAP
3 697 (8.73%) Oracle
4 319 (3.99%) ServiceNow
5 195 (2.44%) Salesforce
6 184 (2.30%) Databricks
7 173 (2.17%) Google
8 164 (2.05%) Cisco
9 148 (1.85%) Splunk
10 146 (1.83%) Workday
11 121 (1.51%) VMware
12 104 (1.30%) IBM
13 77 (0.96%) Citrix
14 73 (0.91%) CyberArk
15 68 (0.85%) Ariba
16 59 (0.74%) Sage
17 57 (0.71%) HP
18 52 (0.65%) Bloomberg
18 52 (0.65%) Dell
19 51 (0.64%) OpenAI