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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,860 7,447 7,901
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.61% 22.76% 19.48%
As % of the General category 33.85% 36.19% 33.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,079 4,893 5,310
10th Percentile £357 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £725
90th Percentile £788 £804 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 278 145 213
10th Percentile £16.18 £15.69 £14.30
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.00 £20.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +43.85%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £42.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.29 £38.12
% change year-on-year +61.07% -28.40% +17.29%

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 29,132 20,579 23,280
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.99% 62.90% 57.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,376 12,871 14,681
10th Percentile £313 £281 £285
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.67% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,054 1,080 1,579
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.34 £13.52
25th Percentile £18.33 £16.22 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.00 £25.32 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.33% -28.68% +18.14%
75th Percentile £61.18 £51.31 £57.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.27 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £22.50 £35.03
% change year-on-year +48.89% -35.77% +34.86%

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 25 July 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 25 July 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 25 July 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 8,604 £550 - 5,142
London 0 5,190 £583 -2.83% 2,940
UK excluding London 0 3,887 £500 +2.04% 2,891
Work from Home -1 2,861 £550 -3.08% 1,855
North of England 0 1,324 £500 +5.82% 784
South East -1 735 £501 -4.52% 887
North West 0 699 £492 +9.33% 411
Midlands +1 645 £500 +11.11% 442
Yorkshire 0 572 £519 +6.36% 277
West Midlands +1 495 £504 +4.73% 259
Scotland 0 491 £475 -5.00% 165
South West -3 385 £525 -4.55% 299
East of England +8 212 £530 -6.19% 206
East Midlands -2 145 £500 +19.05% 182
Wales +3 79 £525 +13.51% 88
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +1.06% 66
North East -19 53 £500 +14.29% 103
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 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
1 328 (3.33%) Confluence
2 242 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 85 (0.86%) Apache Spark
4 77 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
5 63 (0.64%) Apache
6 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.33%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.12%) Camunda
14 9 (0.091%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.081%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.071%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 522 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 171 (1.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 163 (1.65%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.10%) MS Visio
6 73 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.091%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.041%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 449 (4.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.20%) Oracle Payables
3 116 (1.18%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 88 (0.89%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 70 (0.71%) SAP FI
8 68 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
9 58 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
10 57 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
11 51 (0.52%) Oracle Financials
12 48 (0.49%) SAP CO
13 46 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
14 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
15 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
16 33 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
17 31 (0.31%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.28%) SAP GRC
19 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
19 27 (0.27%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,545 (15.67%) Azure
2 1,109 (11.25%) AWS
3 659 (6.68%) Power Platform
4 521 (5.28%) GCP
5 334 (3.39%) SaaS
6 332 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
7 289 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
8 278 (2.82%) GitHub
9 256 (2.60%) Dynamics 365
10 210 (2.13%) Snowflake
11 201 (2.04%) Entra ID
12 139 (1.41%) Serverless
13 136 (1.38%) OCI
14 125 (1.27%) Amazon S3
15 115 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 111 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
17 105 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
18 100 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
19 99 (1.00%) dbt
20 95 (0.96%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 191 (1.94%) Firewall
2 141 (1.43%) Network Security
3 92 (0.93%) DNS
4 90 (0.91%) VPN
5 64 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 54 (0.55%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) BGP
8 48 (0.49%) SSL
9 40 (0.41%) DHCP
10 37 (0.38%) HTTP
10 37 (0.38%) LAN
11 35 (0.35%) Multicast
12 31 (0.31%) OSPF
13 25 (0.25%) Internet
13 25 (0.25%) VLAN
13 25 (0.25%) Wireless
14 21 (0.21%) Cisco ASA
14 21 (0.21%) MPLS
14 21 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
15 19 (0.19%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 546 (5.54%) Power BI
2 277 (2.81%) SQL Server
3 254 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
4 205 (2.08%) Metadata
5 178 (1.81%) Relational Database
6 167 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
7 156 (1.58%) Tableau
8 145 (1.47%) Data Lake
9 87 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
10 83 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 80 (0.81%) Oracle Database
12 72 (0.73%) BigQuery
13 71 (0.72%) MongoDB
14 66 (0.67%) Big Data
15 65 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
16 50 (0.51%) Delta Lake
16 50 (0.51%) Power Query
17 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 47 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 42 (0.43%) Db2
Development Applications
1 679 (6.89%) JIRA
2 266 (2.70%) Git
3 158 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 92 (0.93%) GitLab
5 49 (0.50%) JUnit
6 41 (0.42%) Cucumber
6 41 (0.42%) Selenium
7 30 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 28 (0.28%) ERwin
8 28 (0.28%) Visual Studio
9 25 (0.25%) Postman
10 24 (0.24%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.23%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.23%) SonarQube
11 23 (0.23%) Zephyr
12 22 (0.22%) Maven
13 20 (0.20%) MLflow
14 19 (0.19%) TeamCity
15 18 (0.18%) ER Studio
General
1 2,880 (29.21%) Social Skills
2 1,854 (18.80%) Banking
3 1,355 (13.74%) Analytical Skills
4 560 (5.68%) Public Sector
5 507 (5.14%) Legal
6 370 (3.75%) Investment Banking
7 368 (3.73%) Organisational Skills
8 365 (3.70%) Financial Institution
9 348 (3.53%) Front Office
10 343 (3.48%) Retail
11 265 (2.69%) Influencing Skills
12 232 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
13 190 (1.93%) Manufacturing
14 172 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 161 (1.63%) Billing
15 161 (1.63%) Marketing
16 157 (1.59%) Local Government
17 156 (1.58%) General Ledger
18 138 (1.40%) Law
18 138 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,458 (14.79%) Analyst
2 1,066 (10.81%) Lead
3 1,060 (10.75%) Senior
4 996 (10.10%) Developer
5 879 (8.91%) Architect
6 752 (7.63%) Business Analyst
7 714 (7.24%) Project Manager
8 660 (6.69%) Consultant
9 331 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
10 316 (3.20%) Data Engineer
11 249 (2.53%) Financial Analyst
12 228 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 215 (2.18%) Java Developer
14 209 (2.12%) Accountant
14 209 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 189 (1.92%) Programme Manager
15 189 (1.92%) Senior Developer
16 183 (1.86%) Finance Manager
17 179 (1.82%) Software Engineer
18 175 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 321 (3.26%) REST
2 275 (2.79%) .NET
3 273 (2.77%) React
4 271 (2.75%) Kafka
5 227 (2.30%) Oracle Fusion
6 200 (2.03%) Middleware
7 187 (1.90%) Spring
8 177 (1.80%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.37%) RESTful
10 129 (1.31%) PySpark
11 120 (1.22%) Redux
12 113 (1.15%) Node.js
13 97 (0.98%) JSON
14 92 (0.93%) OAuth
15 91 (0.92%) AngularJS
16 88 (0.89%) XML
17 68 (0.69%) SOAP
18 66 (0.67%) Web Services
19 65 (0.66%) CSS
20 63 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 469 (4.76%) Onboarding
2 450 (4.56%) Product Ownership
3 413 (4.19%) Cloud Native
4 274 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
5 239 (2.42%) Data Structures
6 227 (2.30%) Management Information System
7 186 (1.89%) Virtual Team
8 183 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
9 177 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
9 177 (1.80%) Derivative
10 171 (1.73%) Fixed Income
11 169 (1.71%) Data Centre
12 161 (1.63%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 147 (1.49%) AI Agents
14 140 (1.42%) Greenfield Project
15 124 (1.26%) Equities
16 112 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
17 105 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
18 104 (1.05%) Public Cloud
19 99 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 344 (3.49%) Windows
2 292 (2.96%) Linux
3 161 (1.63%) Unix
4 78 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (0.40%) Solaris
7 38 (0.39%) Apple iOS
8 37 (0.38%) zOS
9 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
10 30 (0.30%) Android
11 26 (0.26%) Mac OS
12 20 (0.20%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 9 (0.091%) VMS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 5 (0.051%) MVS
18 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2012
19 2 (0.020%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,219 (22.51%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,012 (20.41%) Agile
3 1,374 (13.94%) Migration
4 1,305 (13.24%) Problem-Solving
5 1,168 (11.85%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,132 (11.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,117 (11.33%) AI
8 1,043 (10.58%) ERP
9 1,016 (10.30%) DevOps
10 1,005 (10.19%) CI/CD
11 994 (10.08%) Analytics
12 901 (9.14%) Decision-Making
13 823 (8.35%) Roadmaps
13 823 (8.35%) Validation
14 790 (8.01%) Data Modelling
15 771 (7.82%) User Acceptance Testing
16 759 (7.70%) Project Management
17 716 (7.26%) Change Management
18 679 (6.89%) Business Intelligence
19 641 (6.50%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,278 (12.96%) SQL
2 1,202 (12.19%) Python
3 661 (6.70%) Java
4 384 (3.89%) C#
5 263 (2.67%) JavaScript
6 257 (2.61%) TypeScript
7 231 (2.34%) PowerShell
8 109 (1.11%) Bash
9 94 (0.95%) PL/SQL
10 80 (0.81%) C++
10 80 (0.81%) Go
11 76 (0.77%) Shell Script
12 73 (0.74%) T-SQL
13 62 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 49 (0.50%) VBA
15 48 (0.49%) Bicep
16 38 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.38%) Scala
18 34 (0.34%) Apex Code
19 28 (0.28%) Korn
Qualifications
1 764 (7.75%) Security Cleared
2 737 (7.47%) Degree
3 548 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 235 (2.38%) PMP
5 213 (2.16%) PMI Certification
6 205 (2.08%) ACCA
7 198 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 182 (1.85%) CIMA
9 154 (1.56%) CISSP
10 126 (1.28%) DV Cleared
11 123 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
12 97 (0.98%) Azure Certification
13 88 (0.89%) CISM
14 80 (0.81%) Master's Degree
15 76 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 62 (0.63%) AWS Certification
17 54 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 39 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 626 (6.35%) Data Quality
2 425 (4.31%) QA
3 362 (3.67%) PMO
4 282 (2.86%) GDPR
5 153 (1.55%) NIST
6 125 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.13%) GRC
8 106 (1.08%) IFRS
8 106 (1.08%) SLA
9 105 (1.06%) Accessibility
10 100 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 64 (0.65%) GAAP
12 61 (0.62%) ISO 20022
13 51 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.37%) SEPA
15 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
16 31 (0.31%) SOC 2
17 29 (0.29%) EMIR
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) COBIT
System Software
1 277 (2.81%) Docker
2 217 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 66 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.26%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 20 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
14 3 (0.030%) SRDF
15 2 (0.020%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 438 (4.44%) Kubernetes
2 332 (3.37%) Terraform
3 161 (1.63%) Ansible
4 96 (0.97%) Grafana
5 78 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 70 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.50%) SCCM
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,294 (13.12%) Microsoft
2 851 (8.63%) Oracle
3 840 (8.52%) SAP
4 355 (3.60%) ServiceNow
5 304 (3.08%) Databricks
6 225 (2.28%) Salesforce
7 215 (2.18%) Google
8 153 (1.55%) IBM
9 137 (1.39%) Workday
10 129 (1.31%) VMware
11 109 (1.11%) Cisco
11 109 (1.11%) Splunk
12 90 (0.91%) Ariba
13 87 (0.88%) CyberArk
14 72 (0.73%) OpenAI
15 66 (0.67%) Sage
16 63 (0.64%) Citrix
17 53 (0.54%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.54%) Informatica
18 45 (0.46%) F5