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

6 months to
14 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,140 6,680 8,170
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.25% 22.58% 18.70%
As % of the General category 33.80% 35.57% 32.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,698 4,364 5,466
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £440 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £694 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 210 124 268
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.79 £12.79
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.66 £15.17
Median hourly rate £35.00 £40.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +46.36% -1.72%
75th Percentile £54.43 £65.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.30 £81.75 £58.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £32.31 £29.41
% change year-on-year +18.38% +9.85% -39.08%

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 27,038 18,778 24,962
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.98% 63.49% 57.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,351 11,844 15,645
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,797 876 2,009
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.48 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.00 £28.00 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -9.16% -0.17%
75th Percentile £60.61 £54.00 £52.78
90th Percentile £80.02 £75.00 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.16 £24.50 £29.50
% change year-on-year +27.16% -16.95% +8.60%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 8,057 £550 -2.65% 3,829
London 0 4,851 £575 -4.17% 1,929
UK excluding London 0 3,658 £500 +2.04% 2,541
Work from Home -2 2,588 £550 -4.35% 1,679
North of England +2 1,262 £492 +6.32% 672
North West +5 665 £465 +3.33% 360
South East -1 663 £500 -4.53% 848
Midlands 0 627 £500 +8.11% 348
Yorkshire 0 550 £525 +10.53% 243
Scotland 0 455 £500 +3.57% 107
West Midlands +1 448 £514 +2.80% 213
South West -1 372 £525 - 280
East of England +1 193 £513 -8.89% 187
East Midlands -1 174 £468 +8.21% 133
Wales +8 86 £513 +16.81% 72
Northern Ireland -1 52 £513 +20.59% 70
North East -16 48 £500 +13.64% 77
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
1 329 (3.60%) Confluence
2 221 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.90%) Apache Spark
4 64 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
5 55 (0.60%) Apache
6 53 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.34%) SAS
8 26 (0.28%) CMS
9 20 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.21%) CICS
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 13 (0.14%) Appian
13 12 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.13%) Camunda
14 11 (0.12%) Ethereum
15 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.066%) HCL Notes
16 6 (0.066%) Hyperledger
16 6 (0.066%) Mendix
Applications
1 505 (5.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (2.41%) Microsoft Office
3 173 (1.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 156 (1.71%) Microsoft Project
5 120 (1.31%) MS Visio
6 56 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 34 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.088%) Sketch
9 7 (0.077%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.066%) InVision
11 5 (0.055%) Trello
12 4 (0.044%) Notion
12 4 (0.044%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.022%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.022%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
14 1 (0.011%) UXPin
14 1 (0.011%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 409 (4.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 106 (1.16%) NetSuite
2 106 (1.16%) Oracle Payables
3 87 (0.95%) Oracle Receivables
4 83 (0.91%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 71 (0.78%) Oracle ERP
6 58 (0.63%) SAP FI
7 49 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
8 46 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
8 46 (0.50%) SAP CO
9 44 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
10 42 (0.46%) Oracle General Ledger
11 38 (0.42%) Aladdin
12 36 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
13 34 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 26 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
14 26 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
15 25 (0.27%) SAP ERP
16 23 (0.25%) Oracle Cash Management
16 23 (0.25%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,432 (15.67%) Azure
2 1,026 (11.23%) AWS
3 622 (6.81%) Power Platform
4 443 (4.85%) GCP
5 311 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
6 306 (3.35%) SaaS
7 281 (3.07%) Microsoft 365
8 234 (2.56%) GitHub
9 220 (2.41%) Dynamics 365
10 180 (1.97%) Snowflake
11 162 (1.77%) Entra ID
12 143 (1.56%) Serverless
13 124 (1.36%) OCI
14 117 (1.28%) Amazon S3
15 112 (1.23%) Power Automate
16 100 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
17 91 (1.00%) OpenShift
18 90 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
19 89 (0.97%) Microsoft Copilot
20 86 (0.94%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 170 (1.86%) Firewall
2 131 (1.43%) Network Security
3 77 (0.84%) WAN
4 76 (0.83%) DNS
5 66 (0.72%) VPN
6 61 (0.67%) TCP/IP
7 40 (0.44%) BGP
8 37 (0.40%) LAN
8 37 (0.40%) SD-WAN
9 36 (0.39%) HTTP
10 35 (0.38%) SSL
11 30 (0.33%) Multicast
12 29 (0.32%) DHCP
13 28 (0.31%) OSPF
14 24 (0.26%) MPLS
15 21 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 19 (0.21%) Internet
16 19 (0.21%) VSAN
17 17 (0.19%) VLAN
18 16 (0.18%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 528 (5.78%) Power BI
2 243 (2.66%) SQL Server
3 230 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 179 (1.96%) Metadata
5 172 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
6 166 (1.82%) Relational Database
7 149 (1.63%) Tableau
8 138 (1.51%) Data Lake
9 92 (1.01%) NoSQL
10 82 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
11 72 (0.79%) Big Data
12 67 (0.73%) MongoDB
12 67 (0.73%) Oracle Database
13 63 (0.69%) BigQuery
14 55 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
15 48 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.49%) Power Query
17 44 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
18 43 (0.47%) Delta Lake
19 36 (0.39%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 684 (7.48%) JIRA
2 226 (2.47%) Git
3 167 (1.83%) Jenkins
4 101 (1.11%) GitLab
5 53 (0.58%) JUnit
6 49 (0.54%) Cucumber
7 38 (0.42%) Selenium
8 31 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
8 31 (0.34%) Visual Studio
9 29 (0.32%) Postman
10 27 (0.30%) MLflow
11 23 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 22 (0.24%) SonarQube
13 19 (0.21%) Maven
13 19 (0.21%) Zephyr
14 18 (0.20%) ERwin
15 16 (0.18%) Hudson
15 16 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.16%) TeamCity
17 14 (0.15%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,658 (29.08%) Social Skills
2 1,682 (18.40%) Banking
3 1,180 (12.91%) Analytical Skills
4 508 (5.56%) Public Sector
5 423 (4.63%) Legal
6 359 (3.93%) Investment Banking
7 342 (3.74%) Financial Institution
8 316 (3.46%) Front Office
9 289 (3.16%) Retail
10 277 (3.03%) Organisational Skills
11 233 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
12 220 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
13 163 (1.78%) Manufacturing
14 159 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 143 (1.56%) General Ledger
16 141 (1.54%) Local Government
17 139 (1.52%) Law
18 133 (1.46%) Billing
19 131 (1.43%) Marketing
20 128 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,362 (14.90%) Analyst
2 996 (10.90%) Senior
3 956 (10.46%) Lead
4 927 (10.14%) Developer
5 838 (9.17%) Architect
6 711 (7.78%) Business Analyst
7 710 (7.77%) Project Manager
8 599 (6.55%) Consultant
9 350 (3.83%) Solutions Architect
10 300 (3.28%) Data Engineer
11 223 (2.44%) Financial Analyst
12 218 (2.39%) Senior Manager
13 197 (2.16%) Finance Manager
14 190 (2.08%) Java Developer
15 189 (2.07%) Data Analyst
16 184 (2.01%) Accountant
17 176 (1.93%) Senior Developer
18 172 (1.88%) Programme Manager
19 170 (1.86%) Software Engineer
20 157 (1.72%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 277 (3.03%) REST
2 258 (2.82%) Kafka
3 257 (2.81%) .NET
4 253 (2.77%) React
5 194 (2.12%) Oracle Fusion
6 186 (2.04%) Middleware
7 167 (1.83%) Spring
8 161 (1.76%) Spring Boot
9 139 (1.52%) RESTful
10 110 (1.20%) Redux
11 106 (1.16%) PySpark
12 102 (1.12%) Node.js
13 95 (1.04%) AngularJS
14 87 (0.95%) OAuth
15 85 (0.93%) JSON
16 77 (0.84%) XML
17 66 (0.72%) CSS
18 63 (0.69%) OpenID
19 61 (0.67%) HTML
20 60 (0.66%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 407 (4.45%) Onboarding
2 386 (4.22%) Product Ownership
3 368 (4.03%) Cloud Native
4 259 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
5 209 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 199 (2.18%) Data Structures
7 168 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
7 168 (1.84%) Derivative
8 163 (1.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 162 (1.77%) Fixed Income
10 157 (1.72%) Data Centre
11 151 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
12 125 (1.37%) Equities
13 124 (1.36%) Virtual Team
14 122 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
15 112 (1.23%) Public Cloud
16 100 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
17 99 (1.08%) AI Agents
18 95 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
19 77 (0.84%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 310 (3.39%) Windows
2 275 (3.01%) Linux
3 151 (1.65%) Unix
4 70 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 38 (0.42%) Solaris
5 38 (0.42%) Windows 10
6 32 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 31 (0.34%) Apple iOS
7 31 (0.34%) zOS
8 27 (0.30%) Android
9 19 (0.21%) AIX
10 18 (0.20%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.077%) Oracle Linux
11 7 (0.077%) VMS
12 6 (0.066%) Ubuntu
12 6 (0.066%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.055%) HPUX
13 5 (0.055%) SUSE
13 5 (0.055%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.044%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,910 (20.90%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,855 (20.30%) Agile
3 1,270 (13.89%) Migration
4 1,223 (13.38%) Problem-Solving
5 1,027 (11.24%) Continuous Improvement
6 993 (10.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 967 (10.58%) DevOps
8 965 (10.56%) ERP
9 959 (10.49%) AI
10 927 (10.14%) CI/CD
11 880 (9.63%) Analytics
12 787 (8.61%) Project Management
13 778 (8.51%) Decision-Making
14 758 (8.29%) Data Modelling
15 748 (8.18%) Validation
16 741 (8.11%) Roadmaps
17 714 (7.81%) User Acceptance Testing
18 671 (7.34%) Business Intelligence
19 653 (7.14%) Change Management
20 589 (6.44%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,235 (13.51%) SQL
2 1,108 (12.12%) Python
3 631 (6.90%) Java
4 384 (4.20%) C#
5 253 (2.77%) JavaScript
6 240 (2.63%) TypeScript
7 200 (2.19%) PowerShell
8 103 (1.13%) C++
9 84 (0.92%) Bash
10 79 (0.86%) PL/SQL
11 75 (0.82%) Go
12 69 (0.75%) T-SQL
13 57 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 56 (0.61%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.47%) Scala
16 40 (0.44%) VBA
17 31 (0.34%) Apex Code
18 30 (0.33%) Rust
19 29 (0.32%) Bicep
19 29 (0.32%) R
Qualifications
1 744 (8.14%) Degree
2 680 (7.44%) Security Cleared
3 485 (5.31%) SC Cleared
4 230 (2.52%) ACCA
5 219 (2.40%) PMP
6 207 (2.26%) CIMA
7 195 (2.13%) PMI Certification
8 167 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
9 145 (1.59%) CISSP
10 134 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
11 91 (1.00%) CISM
12 88 (0.96%) Master's Degree
13 84 (0.92%) DV Cleared
14 78 (0.85%) Azure Certification
15 68 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
16 48 (0.53%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
18 37 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 35 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
20 32 (0.35%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 558 (6.11%) Data Quality
2 419 (4.58%) QA
3 320 (3.50%) PMO
4 301 (3.29%) GDPR
5 165 (1.81%) NIST
6 132 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 116 (1.27%) IFRS
8 109 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 108 (1.18%) GRC
10 105 (1.15%) SLA
11 88 (0.96%) Accessibility
12 67 (0.73%) PCI DSS
13 63 (0.69%) ISO 20022
14 62 (0.68%) GAAP
15 37 (0.40%) SEPA
16 34 (0.37%) PSD2
17 33 (0.36%) NCSC
18 32 (0.35%) Solvency II
19 30 (0.33%) IFRS 17
20 29 (0.32%) SOC 2
System Software
1 279 (3.05%) Docker
2 177 (1.94%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.32%) vSphere
5 27 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
7 15 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.13%) RACF
10 11 (0.12%) Hyper-V
11 10 (0.11%) NFS
12 6 (0.066%) GPFS
12 6 (0.066%) KVM
13 5 (0.055%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.055%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.044%) Firmware
15 3 (0.033%) GridGain
15 3 (0.033%) HDFS
15 3 (0.033%) SRDF
16 2 (0.022%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 412 (4.51%) Kubernetes
2 269 (2.94%) Terraform
3 147 (1.61%) Ansible
4 94 (1.03%) Grafana
5 78 (0.85%) Prometheus
6 65 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.54%) SCCM
8 43 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 24 (0.26%) Control-M
11 18 (0.20%) vRealize
12 17 (0.19%) Progress Chef
13 16 (0.18%) Argo
14 14 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 14 (0.15%) Nessus
15 13 (0.14%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.14%) HP ALM
15 13 (0.14%) Puppet
16 11 (0.12%) CASB
17 9 (0.098%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,160 (12.69%) Microsoft
2 796 (8.71%) SAP
3 758 (8.29%) Oracle
4 312 (3.41%) ServiceNow
5 269 (2.94%) Databricks
6 211 (2.31%) Salesforce
7 203 (2.22%) Google
8 125 (1.37%) Workday
9 118 (1.29%) Cisco
10 115 (1.26%) Splunk
11 110 (1.20%) VMware
12 104 (1.14%) IBM
13 91 (1.00%) CyberArk
14 82 (0.90%) Ariba
15 67 (0.73%) Sage
16 65 (0.71%) OpenAI
17 63 (0.69%) Citrix
18 52 (0.57%) Palo Alto
19 50 (0.55%) Bloomberg
20 49 (0.54%) IFS