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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,434 6,680 8,401
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.23% 21.24% 18.93%
As % of the General category 32.40% 34.28% 32.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,717 4,171 5,712
10th Percentile £350 £356 £356
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £673 £700 £688
90th Percentile £777 £825 £797
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -0.70% -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 90 156
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.11 £11.77
25th Percentile £17.09 £22.27 £14.06
Median hourly rate £23.00 £28.25 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.58% +31.40% -14.00%
75th Percentile £40.00 £60.00 £42.75
90th Percentile £65.14 £78.88 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -39.06%

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 22,944 19,489 26,074
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.35% 61.96% 58.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,391 11,615 16,912
10th Percentile £287 £284 £265
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 £735 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £481 £500
% change year-on-year -1.14% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,399 631 1,531
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.62 £13.15
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.00 £15.16
Median hourly rate £22.81 £28.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.54% +7.69% +4.00%
75th Percentile £47.00 £53.75 £55.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.30 £26.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -19.62% +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 30 January 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 30 January 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 30 January 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 6,537 £535 -9.70% 4,252
London -1 3,992 £575 -5.35% 1,567
UK excluding London -2 2,934 £497 -0.70% 3,593
Work from Home -1 2,078 £525 -12.50% 1,729
North of England +2 928 £475 -3.06% 725
South East -1 541 £503 -4.29% 1,334
Midlands -3 530 £490 -6.67% 490
North West +3 460 £450 -5.26% 360
Yorkshire 0 419 £500 -2.68% 274
Scotland 0 383 £500 +7.07% 147
West Midlands -4 327 £515 -6.36% 254
South West -6 290 £525 -1.87% 394
East Midlands 0 201 £447 +5.80% 234
East of England -1 171 £525 - 379
Wales +27 84 £400 -14.67% 139
Northern Ireland -1 56 £494 +45.22% 66
North East -6 50 £488 +2.63% 101
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
1 326 (4.39%) Confluence
2 205 (2.76%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 65 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
5 58 (0.78%) Apache
6 55 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.40%) SAS
8 29 (0.39%) CMS
9 23 (0.31%) 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 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.17%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.17%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
13 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 506 (6.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 290 (3.90%) Microsoft Office
3 208 (2.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 166 (2.23%) Microsoft Project
5 133 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 37 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
7 29 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 13 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.081%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.067%) Notion
14 5 (0.067%) 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
1 297 (4.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 125 (1.68%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.29%) Oracle Receivables
4 89 (1.20%) Oracle EBS
5 83 (1.12%) Oracle General Ledger
6 69 (0.93%) SAP FI
7 65 (0.87%) NetSuite
8 64 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
9 57 (0.77%) SAP CO
10 55 (0.74%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 53 (0.71%) Oracle Cash Management
12 52 (0.70%) Oracle Assets
13 51 (0.69%) SAP FI/CO
14 49 (0.66%) Oracle EBS R12
15 46 (0.62%) Oracle Financials
16 43 (0.58%) Oracle ERP
17 39 (0.52%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 37 (0.50%) Workday HCM
19 29 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
20 27 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,101 (14.81%) Azure
2 890 (11.97%) AWS
3 535 (7.20%) Power Platform
4 342 (4.60%) GCP
5 256 (3.44%) Microsoft 365
6 239 (3.21%) SaaS
7 230 (3.09%) Azure DevOps
8 215 (2.89%) Dynamics 365
9 202 (2.72%) GitHub
10 142 (1.91%) Serverless
11 141 (1.90%) OCI
12 132 (1.78%) Snowflake
13 119 (1.60%) Entra ID
14 96 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
15 90 (1.21%) Amazon S3
16 88 (1.18%) Power Automate
17 74 (1.00%) OpenShift
18 72 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
19 70 (0.94%) Figma
20 69 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 117 (1.57%) Firewall
2 72 (0.97%) Network Security
3 65 (0.87%) WAN
4 41 (0.55%) DNS
5 39 (0.52%) SD-WAN
5 39 (0.52%) VPN
6 38 (0.51%) LAN
7 32 (0.43%) TCP/IP
7 32 (0.43%) Wireless
8 29 (0.39%) HTTP
9 28 (0.38%) Skype
10 24 (0.32%) SSL
11 22 (0.30%) SSH
12 21 (0.28%) DHCP
13 19 (0.26%) Internet
14 18 (0.24%) Kerberos
15 17 (0.23%) BGP
15 17 (0.23%) OSPF
16 13 (0.17%) Cisco IOS
16 13 (0.17%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 465 (6.26%) Power BI
2 198 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
3 194 (2.61%) SQL Server
4 151 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
5 131 (1.76%) Tableau
6 125 (1.68%) NoSQL
7 119 (1.60%) Relational Database
8 112 (1.51%) Data Lake
8 112 (1.51%) Metadata
9 88 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
10 73 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 73 (0.98%) Oracle Database
11 66 (0.89%) Big Data
12 52 (0.70%) BigQuery
13 42 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
14 39 (0.52%) Hadoop
15 37 (0.50%) MySQL
15 37 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 36 (0.48%) Power Query
17 32 (0.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 604 (8.12%) JIRA
2 261 (3.51%) Jenkins
3 214 (2.88%) Git
4 154 (2.07%) GitLab
5 80 (1.08%) JUnit
6 59 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 52 (0.70%) Selenium
8 50 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
9 48 (0.65%) Bitbucket
10 39 (0.52%) Postman
11 33 (0.44%) Visual Studio
12 26 (0.35%) Gradle
13 23 (0.31%) Maven
14 22 (0.30%) MLflow
15 21 (0.28%) Liquibase
15 21 (0.28%) REST Assured
16 20 (0.27%) Cypress.io
17 19 (0.26%) SonarQube
18 17 (0.23%) JMeter
19 16 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,613 (35.15%) Social Skills
2 1,523 (20.49%) Banking
3 985 (13.25%) Analytical Skills
4 601 (8.08%) Public Sector
5 333 (4.48%) Financial Institution
6 320 (4.30%) Marketing
7 295 (3.97%) Manufacturing
8 282 (3.79%) Investment Banking
9 276 (3.71%) Telecoms
10 268 (3.61%) Front Office
10 268 (3.61%) Legal
11 220 (2.96%) Organisational Skills
12 212 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
13 183 (2.46%) Electronics
14 165 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
15 153 (2.06%) Retail
16 138 (1.86%) General Ledger
17 128 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
18 127 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 110 (1.48%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,181 (15.89%) Analyst
2 840 (11.30%) Developer
3 727 (9.78%) Senior
4 622 (8.37%) Business Analyst
5 590 (7.94%) Architect
6 588 (7.91%) Project Manager
7 574 (7.72%) Consultant
8 558 (7.51%) Lead
9 246 (3.31%) Solutions Architect
10 185 (2.49%) Data Analyst
11 164 (2.21%) Data Engineer
12 161 (2.17%) Financial Analyst
12 161 (2.17%) Programme Manager
13 145 (1.95%) Java Developer
13 145 (1.95%) Senior Developer
14 139 (1.87%) Senior Manager
15 134 (1.80%) Software Engineer
16 113 (1.52%) IT Manager
17 112 (1.51%) Finance Manager
18 109 (1.47%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (3.74%) REST
2 230 (3.09%) Kafka
3 212 (2.85%) .NET
4 166 (2.23%) React
5 159 (2.14%) RESTful
6 157 (2.11%) Oracle Fusion
7 153 (2.06%) Spring
8 125 (1.68%) Spring Boot
9 116 (1.56%) Middleware
10 106 (1.43%) AngularJS
11 91 (1.22%) XML
12 90 (1.21%) Pandas
13 87 (1.17%) HTML
14 80 (1.08%) Node.js
14 80 (1.08%) NumPy
15 76 (1.02%) CSS
16 75 (1.01%) PySpark
17 74 (1.00%) OAuth
18 73 (0.98%) JSON
19 70 (0.94%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 322 (4.33%) Onboarding
2 305 (4.10%) Product Ownership
3 220 (2.96%) Cloud Native
4 174 (2.34%) Management Information System
5 170 (2.29%) Derivative
6 162 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
7 153 (2.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 137 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
9 133 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
10 131 (1.76%) Data Structures
11 126 (1.69%) Data Centre
12 125 (1.68%) Equities
13 123 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
14 113 (1.52%) Fixed Income
15 103 (1.39%) Public Cloud
16 95 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
17 90 (1.21%) Hedge funds
18 79 (1.06%) Virtual Team
19 75 (1.01%) Credit Risk
20 74 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 345 (4.64%) Linux
2 313 (4.21%) Windows
3 150 (2.02%) Unix
4 68 (0.91%) Windows 10
5 63 (0.85%) Windows Server
6 61 (0.82%) Android
6 61 (0.82%) Mac OS
7 31 (0.42%) Apple iOS
8 16 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.13%) zOS
10 6 (0.081%) CentOS
10 6 (0.081%) VMS
11 4 (0.054%) Solaris
11 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.040%) AIX
12 3 (0.040%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.040%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
13 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,713 (23.04%) Agile
2 1,400 (18.83%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,213 (16.32%) Problem-Solving
4 872 (11.73%) Migration
5 829 (11.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 814 (10.95%) DevOps
7 786 (10.57%) CI/CD
8 748 (10.06%) Business Intelligence
9 723 (9.73%) Analytics
10 721 (9.70%) Project Management
11 661 (8.89%) ERP
12 644 (8.66%) Continuous Improvement
13 547 (7.36%) AI
14 537 (7.22%) Decision-Making
15 530 (7.13%) Change Management
16 522 (7.02%) Risk Management
17 519 (6.98%) Roadmaps
18 502 (6.75%) Data Modelling
19 490 (6.59%) User Acceptance Testing
20 474 (6.38%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,115 (15.00%) SQL
2 937 (12.60%) Python
3 527 (7.09%) Java
4 309 (4.16%) C#
5 208 (2.80%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.69%) PowerShell
7 156 (2.10%) C++
7 156 (2.10%) TypeScript
8 85 (1.14%) PL/SQL
9 66 (0.89%) Bash
10 65 (0.87%) Go
11 53 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 51 (0.69%) VBA
13 42 (0.56%) R
14 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
15 37 (0.50%) T-SQL
16 34 (0.46%) Rust
17 33 (0.44%) Groovy
17 33 (0.44%) Scala
18 29 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 808 (10.87%) Degree
2 576 (7.75%) Security Cleared
3 431 (5.80%) SC Cleared
4 191 (2.57%) PMI Certification
5 184 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 179 (2.41%) PMP
7 167 (2.25%) Master's Degree
8 147 (1.98%) ACCA
9 135 (1.82%) CIMA
10 116 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
11 90 (1.21%) AWS Certification
12 89 (1.20%) CISSP
13 62 (0.83%) CISM
14 61 (0.82%) DV Cleared
15 58 (0.78%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 39 (0.52%) CBAP
18 33 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
19 31 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
20 29 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (5.14%) QA
2 340 (4.57%) Data Quality
3 285 (3.83%) PMO
4 250 (3.36%) GDPR
5 126 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 122 (1.64%) NIST
7 109 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 97 (1.30%) SLA
9 94 (1.26%) Accessibility
10 74 (1.00%) IFRS
10 74 (1.00%) PCI DSS
11 63 (0.85%) GRC
12 53 (0.71%) ISO 20022
13 45 (0.61%) PSD2
14 37 (0.50%) MiFID
15 36 (0.48%) SEPA
16 35 (0.47%) NCSC
17 31 (0.42%) Basel III
17 31 (0.42%) GAAP
18 29 (0.39%) COBIT
System Software
1 336 (4.52%) Docker
2 194 (2.61%) Active Directory
3 51 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
5 21 (0.28%) vSphere
6 11 (0.15%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) NFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) HDFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
8 8 (0.11%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.067%) Firmware
9 5 (0.067%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.054%) BitLocker
10 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.040%) RACF
11 3 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.027%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 386 (5.19%) Kubernetes
2 256 (3.44%) Terraform
3 170 (2.29%) Ansible
4 87 (1.17%) Grafana
5 80 (1.08%) Prometheus
6 65 (0.87%) SCCM
7 58 (0.78%) 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%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
14 15 (0.20%) Control-M
15 14 (0.19%) vRealize
16 13 (0.17%) ITRS Geneos
17 12 (0.16%) Puppet
18 10 (0.13%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,016 (13.67%) Microsoft
2 799 (10.75%) SAP
3 704 (9.47%) Oracle
4 281 (3.78%) ServiceNow
5 180 (2.42%) Salesforce
6 169 (2.27%) Splunk
7 163 (2.19%) Databricks
8 162 (2.18%) Google
9 150 (2.02%) Cisco
10 140 (1.88%) Workday
11 102 (1.37%) VMware
12 91 (1.22%) IBM
13 71 (0.96%) Citrix
14 70 (0.94%) CyberArk
15 62 (0.83%) Ariba
16 55 (0.74%) HP
17 51 (0.69%) Dell
18 50 (0.67%) Bloomberg
18 50 (0.67%) Informatica
19 49 (0.66%) Murex