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 9 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,997 7,232 7,749
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.34% 21.80% 20.40%
As % of the General category 32.52% 34.45% 34.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,977 4,705 4,861
10th Percentile £363 £334 £356
25th Percentile £450 £416 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £530 £570
Median % change year-on-year +3.77% -7.02% -4.68%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 364 145 129
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.48 £14.90
25th Percentile £19.02 £17.98 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -16.67% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £53.95 £55.00
90th Percentile £67.25 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +29.41%

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 30,744 20,991 22,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.41% 63.29% 58.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,856 13,060 13,158
10th Percentile £313 £275 £280
25th Percentile £420 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £740 £738 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,727 1,245 961
10th Percentile £13.47 £13.51 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.01 £16.17 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -23.08% +18.18%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £21.35 £31.97
% change year-on-year +28.84% -33.23% +21.79%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 8,559 £550 - 19,581
London 0 5,206 £600 +1.57% 13,072
UK excluding London 0 3,855 £510 +2.00% 7,827
Work from Home -1 2,787 £550 - 7,581
North of England 0 1,338 £514 +9.13% 1,856
South East -1 735 £500 -2.72% 1,886
North West -2 640 £512 +13.78% 960
Yorkshire 0 620 £516 +3.18% 667
Midlands -3 603 £525 +10.53% 1,055
Scotland 0 538 £463 -6.00% 1,031
West Midlands -3 449 £507 -1.55% 636
South West -6 335 £538 -2.27% 792
East of England +2 200 £539 -4.69% 633
East Midlands -2 148 £525 +25.00% 420
North East -11 71 £538 +22.51% 244
Wales +2 67 £525 +20.34% 194
Northern Ireland 0 62 £486 -7.38% 434
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 14

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
1 324 (3.24%) Confluence
2 259 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 96 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
4 81 (0.81%) Apache
4 81 (0.81%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
6 34 (0.34%) CMS
7 23 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
8 21 (0.21%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 15 (0.15%) Camunda
11 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.11%) CICS
12 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
13 9 (0.090%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.060%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 6 (0.060%) Appian
15 6 (0.060%) JBoss
16 5 (0.050%) WebLogic
Applications
1 526 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.22%) Microsoft Office
3 190 (1.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 147 (1.47%) Microsoft Project
5 83 (0.83%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 8 (0.080%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.080%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) Windchill
12 3 (0.030%) 1Password
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.030%) Sketch
13 2 (0.020%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 443 (4.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 122 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
3 110 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
4 96 (0.96%) NetSuite
5 88 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
5 88 (0.88%) Oracle General Ledger
6 85 (0.85%) SAP FI
7 79 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
8 73 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
9 59 (0.59%) Oracle Financials
10 56 (0.56%) SAP CO
11 52 (0.52%) Workday HCM
12 51 (0.51%) SAP FI/CO
13 47 (0.47%) Oracle Assets
14 44 (0.44%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
15 42 (0.42%) Aladdin
16 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
17 33 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
18 31 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
19 26 (0.26%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,606 (16.06%) Azure
2 1,097 (10.97%) AWS
3 654 (6.54%) Power Platform
4 563 (5.63%) GCP
5 368 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
6 335 (3.35%) GitHub
7 330 (3.30%) Microsoft 365
8 315 (3.15%) SaaS
9 268 (2.68%) Dynamics 365
10 231 (2.31%) Entra ID
11 221 (2.21%) Snowflake
12 160 (1.60%) Serverless
13 139 (1.39%) GitHub Actions
13 139 (1.39%) OCI
14 128 (1.28%) Power Automate
15 126 (1.26%) Amazon S3
15 126 (1.26%) dbt
16 125 (1.25%) Microsoft Copilot
17 114 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
18 107 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 179 (1.79%) Firewall
2 170 (1.70%) Network Security
3 109 (1.09%) VPN
4 94 (0.94%) DNS
5 65 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 58 (0.58%) WAN
7 52 (0.52%) BGP
8 50 (0.50%) DHCP
9 39 (0.39%) SSL
10 37 (0.37%) Multicast
10 37 (0.37%) VLAN
11 34 (0.34%) LAN
12 33 (0.33%) OSPF
13 31 (0.31%) HTTP
13 31 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
14 30 (0.30%) SAN
15 29 (0.29%) Wireless
16 28 (0.28%) Internet
17 22 (0.22%) SD-WAN
18 19 (0.19%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 516 (5.16%) Power BI
2 291 (2.91%) SQL Server
3 258 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
4 200 (2.00%) Metadata
5 170 (1.70%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.46%) Data Lake
7 132 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
8 128 (1.28%) Tableau
9 87 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 86 (0.86%) Oracle Database
11 81 (0.81%) BigQuery
11 81 (0.81%) MongoDB
12 57 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
13 56 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
14 53 (0.53%) Delta Lake
14 53 (0.53%) Power Query
15 46 (0.46%) Db2
16 45 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
17 44 (0.44%) Big Data
18 42 (0.42%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 660 (6.60%) JIRA
2 351 (3.51%) Git
3 195 (1.95%) Jenkins
4 120 (1.20%) GitLab
5 67 (0.67%) Selenium
6 49 (0.49%) JUnit
7 44 (0.44%) Claude Code
8 40 (0.40%) Maven
9 39 (0.39%) Bitbucket
9 39 (0.39%) Cucumber
10 35 (0.35%) Gradle
11 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
12 32 (0.32%) SonarQube
12 32 (0.32%) Visual Studio
13 29 (0.29%) Cypress.io
13 29 (0.29%) Postman
14 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
15 25 (0.25%) ERwin
16 21 (0.21%) Mockito
16 21 (0.21%) Zephyr
General
1 3,141 (31.42%) Social Skills
2 2,166 (21.67%) Banking
3 1,426 (14.26%) Analytical Skills
4 544 (5.44%) Public Sector
5 534 (5.34%) Legal
6 472 (4.72%) Organisational Skills
7 403 (4.03%) Investment Banking
8 359 (3.59%) Retail
9 348 (3.48%) Influencing Skills
10 342 (3.42%) Front Office
11 308 (3.08%) Financial Institution
12 223 (2.23%) Manufacturing
13 210 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
14 197 (1.97%) Marketing
15 190 (1.90%) Billing
15 190 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 186 (1.86%) General Ledger
17 156 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
18 151 (1.51%) Local Government
19 147 (1.47%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,377 (13.77%) Analyst
2 1,142 (11.42%) Senior
3 995 (9.95%) Developer
4 961 (9.61%) Lead
5 869 (8.69%) Architect
6 733 (7.33%) Consultant
7 703 (7.03%) Business Analyst
8 678 (6.78%) Project Manager
9 348 (3.48%) Solutions Architect
10 289 (2.89%) Data Engineer
11 247 (2.47%) Financial Analyst
12 220 (2.20%) Senior Manager
13 214 (2.14%) Senior Developer
14 205 (2.05%) Java Developer
15 202 (2.02%) Programme Manager
16 199 (1.99%) Data Analyst
17 186 (1.86%) IT Manager
18 174 (1.74%) Accountant
19 164 (1.64%) Finance Manager
20 153 (1.53%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 424 (4.24%) Terraform
2 421 (4.21%) REST
3 284 (2.84%) Kafka
4 274 (2.74%) .NET
5 271 (2.71%) Oracle Fusion
6 247 (2.47%) React
7 197 (1.97%) Spring
8 193 (1.93%) Middleware
9 192 (1.92%) Spring Boot
10 149 (1.49%) PySpark
11 143 (1.43%) RESTful
12 118 (1.18%) JSON
13 112 (1.12%) XML
14 111 (1.11%) OAuth
15 100 (1.00%) SOAP
16 94 (0.94%) Web Services
17 86 (0.86%) Redux
18 85 (0.85%) AngularJS
19 84 (0.84%) HTML
20 74 (0.74%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 539 (5.39%) Onboarding
2 517 (5.17%) Product Ownership
3 485 (4.85%) Cloud Native
4 276 (2.76%) Management Information System
5 251 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
6 234 (2.34%) Data Structures
7 227 (2.27%) Virtual Team
8 225 (2.25%) AI Agents
9 224 (2.24%) Distributed Systems
10 207 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
11 194 (1.94%) Derivative
12 190 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
13 178 (1.78%) Data Centre
14 150 (1.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 136 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
16 132 (1.32%) Fixed Income
17 125 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
18 116 (1.16%) Equities
19 114 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
20 113 (1.13%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 388 (3.88%) Windows
2 345 (3.45%) Linux
3 168 (1.68%) Unix
4 102 (1.02%) Windows Server
5 59 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 46 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.41%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 37 (0.37%) Mac OS
10 34 (0.34%) zOS
11 25 (0.25%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.050%) CentOS
14 5 (0.050%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.040%) HPUX
15 4 (0.040%) SUSE
15 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
16 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,835 (28.36%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,074 (20.75%) Agile
3 1,359 (13.59%) AI
3 1,359 (13.59%) Migration
4 1,349 (13.49%) Problem-Solving
5 1,187 (11.87%) CI/CD
6 1,126 (11.26%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,110 (11.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,037 (10.37%) DevOps
9 1,034 (10.34%) Analytics
10 942 (9.42%) ERP
11 941 (9.41%) Decision-Making
12 922 (9.22%) Roadmaps
13 908 (9.08%) Validation
14 772 (7.72%) Project Management
15 766 (7.66%) Data Modelling
16 756 (7.56%) User Acceptance Testing
17 755 (7.55%) Risk Management
18 705 (7.05%) Project Delivery
19 702 (7.02%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,367 (13.67%) SQL
2 1,316 (13.16%) Python
3 657 (6.57%) Java
4 361 (3.61%) C#
5 309 (3.09%) PowerShell
6 273 (2.73%) JavaScript
7 222 (2.22%) TypeScript
8 178 (1.78%) Bash
9 107 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 79 (0.79%) C++
12 73 (0.73%) Go
13 68 (0.68%) T-SQL
14 63 (0.63%) Bicep
15 61 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 54 (0.54%) Korn
17 45 (0.45%) Scala
18 34 (0.34%) Kotlin
19 33 (0.33%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.30%) VBA
Qualifications
1 786 (7.86%) Security Cleared
2 725 (7.25%) Degree
3 565 (5.65%) SC Cleared
4 258 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 257 (2.57%) PMP
6 234 (2.34%) PMI Certification
7 182 (1.82%) ACCA
8 161 (1.61%) CIMA
9 145 (1.45%) DV Cleared
10 138 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 126 (1.26%) CISSP
12 115 (1.15%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.87%) AWS Certification
14 78 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
15 77 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 67 (0.67%) CISM
17 51 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
18 46 (0.46%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 37 (0.37%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 729 (7.29%) Data Quality
2 417 (4.17%) QA
3 357 (3.57%) PMO
4 200 (2.00%) GDPR
5 130 (1.30%) NIST
6 123 (1.23%) GRC
7 118 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 108 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 90 (0.90%) IFRS
9 90 (0.90%) SLA
10 75 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
12 45 (0.45%) PCI DSS
13 41 (0.41%) GAAP
13 41 (0.41%) SEPA
14 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
15 28 (0.28%) COBIT
16 26 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
16 26 (0.26%) MiFID
17 25 (0.25%) NCSC
System Software
1 268 (2.68%) Docker
2 249 (2.49%) Active Directory
3 104 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
5 30 (0.30%) vSphere
6 27 (0.27%) RACF
7 26 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.11%) NFS
12 7 (0.070%) IAG
13 6 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.050%) ACF2
15 4 (0.040%) Firmware
15 4 (0.040%) GPFS
15 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
15 4 (0.040%) zsh
16 2 (0.020%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 510 (5.10%) Kubernetes
2 200 (2.00%) Ansible
3 98 (0.98%) Grafana
4 82 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.62%) SCCM
7 60 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.14%) Istio
14 11 (0.11%) Puppet
15 10 (0.10%) Cisco Prime
15 10 (0.10%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
15 10 (0.10%) Tivoli
16 8 (0.080%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 1,478 (14.78%) Microsoft
2 893 (8.93%) SAP
3 868 (8.68%) Oracle
4 360 (3.60%) ServiceNow
5 352 (3.52%) Databricks
6 245 (2.45%) Salesforce
7 242 (2.42%) Google
8 200 (2.00%) IBM
9 160 (1.60%) VMware
10 159 (1.59%) Workday
11 137 (1.37%) Cisco
12 125 (1.25%) Splunk
13 122 (1.22%) Ariba
14 90 (0.90%) CyberArk
14 90 (0.90%) OpenAI
15 60 (0.60%) Bloomberg
16 56 (0.56%) Citrix
16 56 (0.56%) Murex
16 56 (0.56%) Sage
17 51 (0.51%) Red Hat