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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,823 7,524 7,714
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.31% 22.81% 19.86%
As % of the General category 33.34% 35.93% 34.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,026 4,959 5,062
10th Percentile £361 £331 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £492 £513
% change year-on-year +1.63% -4.00% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 315 146 178
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.49 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.55 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.91 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.06% -17.40% +34.62%
75th Percentile - £63.00 £44.76
90th Percentile £75.40 £75.63 £70.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £35.00
% change year-on-year +67.72% -25.11% +4.84%

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 29,460 20,938 22,294
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.93% 63.47% 57.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,430 13,030 13,856
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £415 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £749 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,278 1,170 1,270
10th Percentile £13.87 £13.45 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.11 £16.25 £16.67
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -28.87% +27.47%
75th Percentile £56.21 £50.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £70.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.36 £22.14 £35.00
% change year-on-year +46.17% -36.74% +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 24 August 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 24 August 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 24 August 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 - 4,071
London 0 5,143 £586 -2.29% 1,784
UK excluding London 0 3,880 £500 +1.63% 3,107
Work from Home -1 2,793 £550 -4.35% 1,662
North of England 0 1,340 £500 +6.50% 738
South East -3 729 £505 -3.81% 1,043
North West -1 691 £500 +10.01% 387
Midlands 0 624 £500 +11.11% 409
Yorkshire 0 570 £514 +5.98% 243
Scotland 0 508 £475 - 143
West Midlands +1 472 £500 - 252
South West -5 376 £550 -3.30% 451
East of England +4 204 £525 -7.89% 273
East Midlands -4 148 £500 +21.21% 156
North East -6 72 £500 +12.36% 121
Northern Ireland -1 69 £475 -2.56% 46
Wales -1 61 £525 +13.51% 86
Channel Islands +3 4 £500 - 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
1 333 (3.39%) Confluence
2 253 (2.58%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 86 (0.88%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.73%) Apache
6 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.36%) CMS
8 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
8 26 (0.26%) SAS
9 21 (0.21%) IIS
10 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
11 13 (0.13%) Camunda
11 13 (0.13%) CICS
12 9 (0.092%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
13 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
14 6 (0.061%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 6 (0.061%) Appian
15 5 (0.051%) JBoss
15 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 522 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 187 (1.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 153 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 99 (1.01%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 31 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 8 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Sketch
11 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.031%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 433 (4.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 129 (1.31%) Oracle Payables
3 110 (1.12%) NetSuite
4 107 (1.09%) Oracle Receivables
5 97 (0.99%) Oracle ERP
6 73 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
7 71 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 65 (0.66%) SAP FI
9 64 (0.65%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 57 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
11 52 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 44 (0.45%) SAP CO
13 42 (0.43%) Aladdin
14 41 (0.42%) SAP FI/CO
15 37 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
16 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
17 33 (0.34%) SAP GRC
18 30 (0.31%) Workday HCM
19 28 (0.29%) SAP ERP
20 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,546 (15.74%) Azure
2 1,062 (10.81%) AWS
3 661 (6.73%) Power Platform
4 514 (5.23%) GCP
5 357 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
6 327 (3.33%) SaaS
7 303 (3.08%) Microsoft 365
8 301 (3.06%) GitHub
9 262 (2.67%) Dynamics 365
10 219 (2.23%) Snowflake
11 213 (2.17%) Entra ID
12 151 (1.54%) Serverless
13 144 (1.47%) OCI
14 123 (1.25%) Power Automate
15 120 (1.22%) GitHub Actions
16 114 (1.16%) Amazon S3
17 113 (1.15%) dbt
18 112 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
18 112 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
19 107 (1.09%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 172 (1.75%) Firewall
2 149 (1.52%) Network Security
3 100 (1.02%) VPN
4 98 (1.00%) DNS
5 66 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 61 (0.62%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 43 (0.44%) BGP
10 40 (0.41%) HTTP
10 40 (0.41%) LAN
11 33 (0.34%) Multicast
11 33 (0.34%) VLAN
12 30 (0.31%) Internet
13 28 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
13 28 (0.29%) Wireless
14 24 (0.24%) OSPF
15 23 (0.23%) SAN
16 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
17 16 (0.16%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 542 (5.52%) Power BI
2 284 (2.89%) SQL Server
3 262 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (2.05%) Metadata
5 180 (1.83%) Relational Database
6 145 (1.48%) Data Lake
7 136 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
8 129 (1.31%) Tableau
9 85 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 79 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (0.78%) BigQuery
12 75 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 73 (0.74%) Oracle Database
14 58 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.58%) Big Data
16 51 (0.52%) Power Query
17 50 (0.51%) Delta Lake
18 47 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
19 45 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
20 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 669 (6.81%) JIRA
2 291 (2.96%) Git
3 164 (1.67%) Jenkins
4 99 (1.01%) GitLab
5 56 (0.57%) Selenium
6 44 (0.45%) JUnit
7 32 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 30 (0.31%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.31%) ERwin
8 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.27%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.26%) Maven
10 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
10 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
11 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
11 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 22 (0.22%) Postman
12 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
13 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
14 20 (0.20%) TeamCity
General
1 2,959 (30.12%) Social Skills
2 1,937 (19.72%) Banking
3 1,393 (14.18%) Analytical Skills
4 555 (5.65%) Legal
5 523 (5.32%) Public Sector
6 418 (4.26%) Organisational Skills
7 389 (3.96%) Investment Banking
8 381 (3.88%) Retail
9 349 (3.55%) Financial Institution
10 337 (3.43%) Front Office
11 303 (3.08%) Influencing Skills
12 229 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
13 204 (2.08%) Manufacturing
14 187 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 168 (1.71%) Billing
15 168 (1.71%) General Ledger
16 158 (1.61%) Marketing
17 146 (1.49%) Local Government
17 146 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
18 145 (1.48%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,410 (14.35%) Analyst
2 1,049 (10.68%) Senior
3 1,044 (10.63%) Lead
4 959 (9.76%) Developer
5 866 (8.82%) Architect
6 731 (7.44%) Business Analyst
7 708 (7.21%) Project Manager
8 703 (7.16%) Consultant
9 321 (3.27%) Solutions Architect
10 304 (3.09%) Data Engineer
11 252 (2.57%) Financial Analyst
12 230 (2.34%) Senior Manager
13 197 (2.01%) Java Developer
14 191 (1.94%) Data Analyst
15 186 (1.89%) Accountant
16 184 (1.87%) Senior Developer
17 183 (1.86%) Finance Manager
18 182 (1.85%) Programme Manager
19 175 (1.78%) IT Manager
20 154 (1.57%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 362 (3.69%) Terraform
2 353 (3.59%) REST
3 280 (2.85%) .NET
4 264 (2.69%) Oracle Fusion
5 246 (2.50%) Kafka
6 224 (2.28%) React
7 190 (1.93%) Middleware
8 180 (1.83%) Spring
9 170 (1.73%) Spring Boot
10 141 (1.44%) PySpark
11 137 (1.39%) RESTful
12 104 (1.06%) XML
13 100 (1.02%) JSON
14 97 (0.99%) OAuth
15 88 (0.90%) AngularJS
16 85 (0.87%) Redux
17 79 (0.80%) SOAP
18 78 (0.79%) Node.js
19 68 (0.69%) Web Services
20 64 (0.65%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 506 (5.15%) Onboarding
2 483 (4.92%) Product Ownership
3 413 (4.20%) Cloud Native
4 248 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
5 232 (2.36%) Management Information System
6 231 (2.35%) Data Structures
7 220 (2.24%) Virtual Team
8 186 (1.89%) Derivative
9 184 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
10 178 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
11 166 (1.69%) Data Centre
12 161 (1.64%) AI Agents
13 153 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 137 (1.39%) Fixed Income
15 132 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
16 116 (1.18%) Equities
17 114 (1.16%) Podcast
18 113 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
19 112 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
20 111 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 370 (3.77%) Windows
2 300 (3.05%) Linux
3 156 (1.59%) Unix
4 89 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 51 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 46 (0.47%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) Solaris
9 35 (0.36%) Android
9 35 (0.36%) zOS
10 27 (0.27%) Mac OS
11 17 (0.17%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.092%) VMS
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 3 (0.031%) CentOS
17 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,445 (24.89%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,013 (20.49%) Agile
3 1,326 (13.50%) Migration
4 1,298 (13.21%) Problem-Solving
5 1,185 (12.06%) AI
6 1,164 (11.85%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,137 (11.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,059 (10.78%) CI/CD
9 1,029 (10.48%) ERP
10 1,006 (10.24%) DevOps
11 987 (10.05%) Analytics
12 895 (9.11%) Decision-Making
13 802 (8.16%) Validation
14 793 (8.07%) Roadmaps
15 773 (7.87%) Data Modelling
16 769 (7.83%) User Acceptance Testing
17 755 (7.69%) Project Management
18 723 (7.36%) Change Management
19 669 (6.81%) Business Intelligence
20 660 (6.72%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,288 (13.11%) SQL
2 1,189 (12.10%) Python
3 619 (6.30%) Java
4 380 (3.87%) C#
5 262 (2.67%) PowerShell
6 241 (2.45%) JavaScript
7 212 (2.16%) TypeScript
8 138 (1.40%) Bash
9 106 (1.08%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.90%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 69 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 62 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 57 (0.58%) Bicep
15 55 (0.56%) Go
16 41 (0.42%) VBA
17 40 (0.41%) Korn
18 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 39 (0.40%) Scala
19 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 778 (7.92%) Security Cleared
2 726 (7.39%) Degree
3 558 (5.68%) SC Cleared
4 244 (2.48%) PMP
5 230 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
6 215 (2.19%) PMI Certification
7 199 (2.03%) ACCA
8 175 (1.78%) CIMA
9 140 (1.43%) CISSP
10 137 (1.39%) DV Cleared
11 128 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
12 106 (1.08%) Azure Certification
13 83 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
14 82 (0.83%) CISM
15 69 (0.70%) Master's Degree
16 64 (0.65%) AWS Certification
17 51 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 43 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 38 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 644 (6.56%) Data Quality
2 425 (4.33%) QA
3 361 (3.68%) PMO
4 243 (2.47%) GDPR
5 151 (1.54%) NIST
6 128 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 117 (1.19%) GRC
8 107 (1.09%) Accessibility
9 106 (1.08%) SLA
10 99 (1.01%) IFRS
11 90 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 56 (0.57%) ISO 20022
13 55 (0.56%) GAAP
14 45 (0.46%) PCI DSS
15 35 (0.36%) Solvency II
16 33 (0.34%) SEPA
17 29 (0.30%) COBIT
18 28 (0.29%) EMIR
19 27 (0.27%) MiFID
20 25 (0.25%) SOC 2
System Software
1 262 (2.67%) Docker
2 240 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 79 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
6 23 (0.23%) vSphere
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.081%) IAG
11 5 (0.051%) ACF2
11 5 (0.051%) GPFS
11 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
11 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.041%) KVM
12 4 (0.041%) zsh
13 3 (0.031%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 445 (4.53%) Kubernetes
2 166 (1.69%) Ansible
3 99 (1.01%) Grafana
4 81 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.59%) SCCM
7 57 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
8 25 (0.25%) Control-M
8 25 (0.25%) Progress Chef
9 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
10 17 (0.17%) Argo
10 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 15 (0.15%) vRealize
12 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
12 14 (0.14%) Istio
13 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
13 13 (0.13%) Puppet
14 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
16 9 (0.092%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,380 (14.05%) Microsoft
2 882 (8.98%) Oracle
3 838 (8.53%) SAP
4 369 (3.76%) ServiceNow
5 334 (3.40%) Databricks
6 230 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 220 (2.24%) Google
8 168 (1.71%) IBM
9 139 (1.42%) VMware
10 126 (1.28%) Workday
11 115 (1.17%) Cisco
12 108 (1.10%) Splunk
13 92 (0.94%) Ariba
14 88 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 76 (0.77%) OpenAI
16 61 (0.62%) Citrix
17 58 (0.59%) Sage
18 53 (0.54%) Bloomberg
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 46 (0.47%) Adobe