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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,393 6,644 8,511
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.18% 21.15% 18.96%
As % of the General category 32.42% 34.14% 32.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,684 4,138 5,799
10th Percentile £350 £356 £356
25th Percentile £425 £459 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £795
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -1.60% -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 90 159
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.11 £11.77
25th Percentile £17.05 £22.27 £14.06
Median hourly rate £22.85 £28.25 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.12% +31.40% -14.00%
75th Percentile £39.50 £60.00 £43.00
90th Percentile £65.03 £78.88 £60.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -39.53%

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 22,804 19,459 26,421
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.18% 61.95% 58.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,323 11,606 17,132
10th Percentile £286 £282 £266
25th Percentile £400 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £730 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,387 626 1,569
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.62 £13.12
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.12 £15.16
Median hourly rate £22.50 £28.60 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.33% +10.00% +4.00%
75th Percentile £47.00 £53.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.25 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.13 £26.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -20.28% +6.00% +11.11%

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 1 February 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 1 February 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 1 February 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 6,494 £533 -10.50% 4,138
London -1 3,959 £575 -5.74% 2,026
UK excluding London -2 2,922 £492 -1.60% 2,884
Work from Home -1 2,070 £525 -12.50% 1,709
North of England +2 931 £475 -3.06% 672
South East -1 537 £501 -4.52% 1,053
Midlands -3 518 £485 -7.62% 426
North West +3 462 £450 -5.26% 360
Yorkshire 0 420 £500 -2.91% 241
Scotland 0 382 £475 +1.66% 132
West Midlands -5 322 £514 -6.55% 248
South West -7 288 £524 -2.06% 315
East Midlands 0 194 £438 +2.94% 178
East of England 0 172 £525 - 220
Wales +29 86 £413 -12.00% 82
Northern Ireland -1 56 £494 +45.22% 43
North East -7 50 £488 +8.33% 77
Channel Islands +1 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
1 321 (4.34%) Confluence
2 207 (2.80%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 64 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
5 57 (0.77%) Apache
6 53 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.41%) SAS
8 29 (0.39%) CMS
9 21 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.22%) Ethereum
10 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 15 (0.20%) Appian
11 15 (0.20%) HCL Notes
11 15 (0.20%) IIS
12 13 (0.18%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.18%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
13 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 504 (6.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 289 (3.91%) Microsoft Office
3 206 (2.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 167 (2.26%) Microsoft Project
5 132 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 38 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 30 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 13 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.081%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.068%) Notion
14 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.027%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.027%) InDesign
16 2 (0.027%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 292 (3.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.62%) Oracle Payables
3 95 (1.28%) Oracle Receivables
4 84 (1.14%) Oracle EBS
5 76 (1.03%) Oracle General Ledger
6 67 (0.91%) SAP FI
7 64 (0.87%) NetSuite
8 63 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
9 56 (0.76%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 55 (0.74%) SAP CO
11 51 (0.69%) Oracle Cash Management
12 49 (0.66%) Oracle Assets
12 49 (0.66%) SAP FI/CO
13 46 (0.62%) Oracle EBS R12
14 42 (0.57%) Oracle Financials
15 40 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
16 38 (0.51%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 37 (0.50%) Workday HCM
18 30 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
19 26 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,099 (14.87%) Azure
2 889 (12.02%) AWS
3 525 (7.10%) Power Platform
4 343 (4.64%) GCP
5 260 (3.52%) Microsoft 365
6 239 (3.23%) SaaS
7 227 (3.07%) Azure DevOps
8 211 (2.85%) Dynamics 365
9 198 (2.68%) GitHub
10 142 (1.92%) Serverless
11 140 (1.89%) OCI
12 127 (1.72%) Snowflake
13 120 (1.62%) Entra ID
14 94 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (1.20%) Amazon S3
16 88 (1.19%) Power Automate
17 74 (1.00%) OpenShift
18 72 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
19 69 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
20 66 (0.89%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 122 (1.65%) Firewall
2 74 (1.00%) Network Security
3 67 (0.91%) WAN
4 42 (0.57%) DNS
5 41 (0.55%) VPN
6 39 (0.53%) LAN
6 39 (0.53%) SD-WAN
7 32 (0.43%) Wireless
8 31 (0.42%) TCP/IP
9 29 (0.39%) Skype
10 27 (0.37%) HTTP
11 22 (0.30%) DHCP
11 22 (0.30%) SSL
12 20 (0.27%) SSH
13 19 (0.26%) Internet
13 19 (0.26%) Kerberos
14 17 (0.23%) BGP
14 17 (0.23%) OSPF
15 13 (0.18%) SNMP
15 13 (0.18%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 456 (6.17%) Power BI
2 197 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
3 191 (2.58%) SQL Server
4 151 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (1.72%) Tableau
6 123 (1.66%) NoSQL
7 117 (1.58%) Relational Database
8 114 (1.54%) Metadata
9 110 (1.49%) Data Lake
10 87 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
11 73 (0.99%) Oracle Database
12 70 (0.95%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.89%) Big Data
14 50 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 42 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.53%) Hadoop
17 36 (0.49%) Power Query
18 35 (0.47%) MySQL
19 34 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
20 31 (0.42%) KDB
Development Applications
1 601 (8.13%) JIRA
2 260 (3.52%) Jenkins
3 212 (2.87%) Git
4 153 (2.07%) GitLab
5 74 (1.00%) JUnit
6 57 (0.77%) Cucumber
7 51 (0.69%) Selenium
8 49 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
9 48 (0.65%) Bitbucket
10 39 (0.53%) Postman
11 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.32%) Gradle
13 22 (0.30%) Maven
14 21 (0.28%) Liquibase
14 21 (0.28%) MLflow
14 21 (0.28%) REST Assured
15 20 (0.27%) Cypress.io
16 18 (0.24%) SonarQube
17 17 (0.23%) JMeter
18 15 (0.20%) ERwin
General
1 2,585 (34.97%) Social Skills
2 1,508 (20.40%) Banking
3 970 (13.12%) Analytical Skills
4 603 (8.16%) Public Sector
5 332 (4.49%) Financial Institution
6 319 (4.31%) Marketing
7 293 (3.96%) Manufacturing
8 276 (3.73%) Telecoms
9 274 (3.71%) Investment Banking
10 267 (3.61%) Legal
11 265 (3.58%) Front Office
12 223 (3.02%) Organisational Skills
13 209 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
14 182 (2.46%) Electronics
15 164 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
16 150 (2.03%) Retail
17 135 (1.83%) General Ledger
18 127 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
19 123 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 111 (1.50%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,187 (16.06%) Analyst
2 835 (11.29%) Developer
3 721 (9.75%) Senior
4 626 (8.47%) Business Analyst
5 593 (8.02%) Architect
6 584 (7.90%) Project Manager
7 564 (7.63%) Consultant
8 563 (7.62%) Lead
9 247 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
10 186 (2.52%) Data Analyst
11 165 (2.23%) Data Engineer
12 161 (2.18%) Financial Analyst
13 157 (2.12%) Programme Manager
14 143 (1.93%) Java Developer
14 143 (1.93%) Senior Developer
15 137 (1.85%) Senior Manager
16 132 (1.79%) Software Engineer
17 112 (1.51%) Finance Manager
18 110 (1.49%) IT Manager
18 110 (1.49%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (3.73%) REST
2 227 (3.07%) Kafka
3 213 (2.88%) .NET
4 163 (2.20%) React
5 158 (2.14%) RESTful
6 155 (2.10%) Oracle Fusion
7 149 (2.02%) Spring
8 123 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 116 (1.57%) Middleware
10 104 (1.41%) AngularJS
11 88 (1.19%) HTML
12 87 (1.18%) Pandas
12 87 (1.18%) XML
13 80 (1.08%) Node.js
14 77 (1.04%) CSS
14 77 (1.04%) NumPy
15 75 (1.01%) PySpark
16 73 (0.99%) OAuth
17 72 (0.97%) JSON
18 69 (0.93%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 323 (4.37%) Onboarding
2 303 (4.10%) Product Ownership
3 222 (3.00%) Cloud Native
4 170 (2.30%) Management Information System
5 168 (2.27%) Derivative
6 162 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
7 153 (2.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 135 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
9 134 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
10 129 (1.74%) Data Centre
11 127 (1.72%) Data Structures
12 122 (1.65%) Equities
13 120 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
14 112 (1.51%) Fixed Income
15 103 (1.39%) Public Cloud
16 93 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
17 85 (1.15%) Hedge funds
18 79 (1.07%) Virtual Team
19 76 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
20 73 (0.99%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 337 (4.56%) Linux
2 312 (4.22%) Windows
3 145 (1.96%) Unix
4 67 (0.91%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.87%) Windows Server
6 62 (0.84%) Mac OS
7 59 (0.80%) Android
8 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.14%) zOS
11 7 (0.095%) VMS
12 6 (0.081%) CentOS
13 5 (0.068%) Solaris
13 5 (0.068%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.054%) AIX
14 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.027%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,699 (22.98%) Agile
2 1,388 (18.77%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,198 (16.20%) Problem-Solving
4 862 (11.66%) Migration
5 820 (11.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 810 (10.96%) DevOps
7 780 (10.55%) CI/CD
8 738 (9.98%) Business Intelligence
9 721 (9.75%) Analytics
9 721 (9.75%) Project Management
10 653 (8.83%) ERP
11 640 (8.66%) Continuous Improvement
12 553 (7.48%) AI
13 527 (7.13%) Decision-Making
14 526 (7.11%) Change Management
15 521 (7.05%) Roadmaps
16 515 (6.97%) Risk Management
17 504 (6.82%) Data Modelling
18 490 (6.63%) User Acceptance Testing
19 474 (6.41%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,103 (14.92%) SQL
2 929 (12.57%) Python
3 521 (7.05%) Java
4 306 (4.14%) C#
5 204 (2.76%) JavaScript
5 204 (2.76%) PowerShell
6 154 (2.08%) C++
7 153 (2.07%) TypeScript
8 83 (1.12%) PL/SQL
9 66 (0.89%) Bash
10 65 (0.88%) Go
11 50 (0.68%) Shell Script
11 50 (0.68%) VBA
12 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
12 40 (0.54%) R
13 38 (0.51%) T-SQL
14 33 (0.45%) Groovy
14 33 (0.45%) Rust
15 32 (0.43%) Scala
16 29 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 808 (10.93%) Degree
2 578 (7.82%) Security Cleared
3 432 (5.84%) SC Cleared
4 190 (2.57%) PMI Certification
5 185 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 180 (2.43%) PMP
7 166 (2.25%) Master's Degree
8 145 (1.96%) ACCA
9 134 (1.81%) CIMA
10 116 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
11 90 (1.22%) AWS Certification
12 86 (1.16%) CISSP
13 62 (0.84%) CISM
14 61 (0.83%) DV Cleared
15 58 (0.78%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 39 (0.53%) CBAP
18 33 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
19 31 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
20 29 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (5.11%) QA
2 340 (4.60%) Data Quality
3 279 (3.77%) PMO
4 249 (3.37%) GDPR
5 125 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 121 (1.64%) NIST
7 108 (1.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 94 (1.27%) SLA
9 92 (1.24%) Accessibility
10 74 (1.00%) PCI DSS
11 72 (0.97%) IFRS
12 62 (0.84%) GRC
13 54 (0.73%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.62%) PSD2
15 37 (0.50%) MiFID
15 37 (0.50%) SEPA
16 35 (0.47%) NCSC
17 31 (0.42%) Basel III
18 30 (0.41%) GAAP
19 29 (0.39%) COBIT
System Software
1 335 (4.53%) Docker
2 194 (2.62%) Active Directory
3 53 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
5 23 (0.31%) vSphere
6 12 (0.16%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.12%) GPFS
8 9 (0.12%) NFS
9 8 (0.11%) HDFS
9 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 8 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.068%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.041%) Firmware
12 3 (0.041%) KVM
12 3 (0.041%) RACF
12 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.027%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 387 (5.23%) Kubernetes
2 255 (3.45%) Terraform
3 164 (2.22%) Ansible
4 87 (1.18%) Grafana
5 80 (1.08%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.85%) SCCM
7 59 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
8 37 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.35%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) FortiGate
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.28%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Control-M
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
14 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
14 14 (0.19%) vRealize
15 11 (0.15%) Puppet
16 10 (0.14%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,011 (13.68%) Microsoft
2 789 (10.67%) SAP
3 691 (9.35%) Oracle
4 282 (3.81%) ServiceNow
5 180 (2.43%) Salesforce
6 170 (2.30%) Splunk
7 163 (2.20%) Databricks
8 162 (2.19%) Google
9 150 (2.03%) Cisco
10 138 (1.87%) Workday
11 104 (1.41%) VMware
12 92 (1.24%) IBM
13 72 (0.97%) Citrix
14 71 (0.96%) CyberArk
15 62 (0.84%) Ariba
16 55 (0.74%) HP
17 50 (0.68%) Bloomberg
17 50 (0.68%) Informatica
18 49 (0.66%) Dell
18 49 (0.66%) OpenAI