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

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,714 6,432 8,377
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.97% 21.07% 18.82%
As % of the General category 32.48% 33.91% 31.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,884 4,033 5,706
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £660 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £511
% change year-on-year - -2.20% -0.97%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 96 181
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.09 £22.44 £14.25
Median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.86% +45.83% -4.00%
75th Percentile £41.25 £64.06 £38.12
90th Percentile £69.94 £81.60 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £29.12 £21.43
% change year-on-year -24.44% +35.86% -36.11%

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 23,752 18,970 26,200
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.42% 62.15% 58.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,841 11,535 16,853
10th Percentile £300 £288 £265
25th Percentile £404 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £648 £650
90th Percentile £735 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £500
% change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,455 616 1,698
10th Percentile £13.65 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.47 £20.49 £15.30
Median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.33% +15.38% -8.77%
75th Percentile £51.53 £57.78 £51.50
90th Percentile £73.63 £75.00 £65.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.44 £25.00
% change year-on-year -19.83% +9.77% -

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 6,782 £535 -9.32% 3,561
London -1 4,113 £575 -6.50% 1,676
UK excluding London -1 3,070 £500 - 2,634
Work from Home -1 2,181 £525 -11.28% 1,540
North of England +2 988 £475 -0.42% 642
South East -1 557 £500 -4.76% 1,005
Midlands -2 556 £490 -2.00% 376
North West +4 496 £450 -3.23% 369
Yorkshire 0 444 £513 - 215
Scotland 0 391 £475 - 113
West Midlands -1 352 £514 -6.55% 213
South West -5 302 £512 -2.57% 250
East Midlands 0 200 £450 +7.14% 163
East of England -1 188 £533 +1.43% 201
Wales +33 103 £413 +1.54% 63
North East -10 49 £488 +5.41% 69
Northern Ireland -2 45 £538 +65.38% 37
Channel Islands +3 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
1 320 (4.15%) Confluence
2 195 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.75%) Microsoft Exchange
5 48 (0.62%) Apache
6 42 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.47%) SAS
8 27 (0.35%) CMS
9 21 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.22%) Appian
12 16 (0.21%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.17%) CICS
13 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
13 13 (0.17%) TPMS
14 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
15 11 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 11 (0.14%) Camunda
16 10 (0.13%) Mendix
17 8 (0.10%) Mattermost
Applications
1 521 (6.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 284 (3.68%) Microsoft Office
3 198 (2.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 179 (2.32%) Microsoft Project
5 139 (1.80%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.22%) Trello
9 16 (0.21%) Sketch
10 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.10%) InVision
13 7 (0.091%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.065%) Notion
14 5 (0.065%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.026%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.026%) InDesign
16 2 (0.026%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 319 (4.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.49%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.24%) Oracle Receivables
4 71 (0.92%) SAP FI
5 70 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
6 69 (0.89%) NetSuite
6 69 (0.89%) Oracle General Ledger
7 63 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 60 (0.78%) SAP CO
9 59 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.70%) SAP FI/CO
11 44 (0.57%) Oracle Assets
12 40 (0.52%) Oracle Cash Management
13 39 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
14 38 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
14 38 (0.49%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 36 (0.47%) Workday HCM
16 35 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
17 29 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
18 22 (0.29%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,155 (14.97%) Azure
2 937 (12.15%) AWS
3 543 (7.04%) Power Platform
4 386 (5.00%) GCP
5 269 (3.49%) Microsoft 365
6 257 (3.33%) SaaS
7 233 (3.02%) Azure DevOps
8 228 (2.96%) Dynamics 365
9 200 (2.59%) GitHub
10 150 (1.94%) OCI
11 146 (1.89%) Serverless
12 127 (1.65%) Snowflake
13 118 (1.53%) Entra ID
14 97 (1.26%) Amazon S3
15 89 (1.15%) Power Automate
16 85 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
17 76 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 75 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
19 73 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
19 73 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 144 (1.87%) Firewall
2 81 (1.05%) Network Security
3 70 (0.91%) WAN
4 48 (0.62%) DNS
5 42 (0.54%) LAN
6 41 (0.53%) VPN
7 39 (0.51%) SD-WAN
8 35 (0.45%) TCP/IP
9 33 (0.43%) Wireless
10 26 (0.34%) Skype
10 26 (0.34%) SSL
11 24 (0.31%) BGP
12 23 (0.30%) OSPF
13 22 (0.29%) HTTP
14 21 (0.27%) Multicast
15 19 (0.25%) DHCP
15 19 (0.25%) Internet
16 18 (0.23%) SSH
17 15 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
18 14 (0.18%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 477 (6.18%) Power BI
2 201 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
3 186 (2.41%) SQL Server
4 172 (2.23%) PostgreSQL
5 141 (1.83%) Tableau
6 128 (1.66%) Metadata
7 118 (1.53%) NoSQL
7 118 (1.53%) Relational Database
8 115 (1.49%) Data Lake
9 89 (1.15%) Oracle Reports
10 73 (0.95%) Big Data
11 69 (0.89%) MongoDB
12 67 (0.87%) Oracle Database
13 58 (0.75%) BigQuery
14 44 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
15 39 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 36 (0.47%) Hadoop
16 36 (0.47%) MySQL
17 35 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
17 35 (0.45%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 623 (8.08%) JIRA
2 247 (3.20%) Jenkins
3 209 (2.71%) Git
4 158 (2.05%) GitLab
5 69 (0.89%) JUnit
6 61 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 46 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.56%) Selenium
9 37 (0.48%) Postman
10 36 (0.47%) Bitbucket
11 31 (0.40%) Visual Studio
12 26 (0.34%) MLflow
13 24 (0.31%) Gradle
14 23 (0.30%) Liquibase
14 23 (0.30%) Maven
15 20 (0.26%) REST Assured
16 16 (0.21%) SonarQube
17 15 (0.19%) ERwin
17 15 (0.19%) JMeter
18 14 (0.18%) Cypress.io
General
1 2,635 (34.16%) Social Skills
2 1,511 (19.59%) Banking
3 1,007 (13.05%) Analytical Skills
4 617 (8.00%) Public Sector
5 338 (4.38%) Financial Institution
6 295 (3.82%) Marketing
7 273 (3.54%) Legal
8 270 (3.50%) Investment Banking
9 266 (3.45%) Front Office
10 263 (3.41%) Manufacturing
11 248 (3.21%) Telecoms
12 241 (3.12%) Organisational Skills
13 222 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
14 180 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
15 169 (2.19%) Retail
16 152 (1.97%) Electronics
17 133 (1.72%) General Ledger
18 126 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
19 120 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 116 (1.50%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,243 (16.11%) Analyst
2 841 (10.90%) Developer
3 775 (10.05%) Senior
4 669 (8.67%) Business Analyst
5 643 (8.34%) Architect
6 642 (8.32%) Lead
7 601 (7.79%) Project Manager
8 569 (7.38%) Consultant
9 273 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
10 198 (2.57%) Data Analyst
11 186 (2.41%) Data Engineer
12 177 (2.29%) Programme Manager
13 174 (2.26%) Financial Analyst
14 154 (2.00%) Senior Manager
15 140 (1.81%) Java Developer
16 136 (1.76%) Senior Developer
16 136 (1.76%) Software Engineer
17 131 (1.70%) Finance Manager
18 123 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
19 114 (1.48%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 273 (3.54%) REST
2 253 (3.28%) Kafka
3 195 (2.53%) .NET
4 193 (2.50%) React
5 160 (2.07%) Oracle Fusion
6 144 (1.87%) RESTful
7 139 (1.80%) Spring
8 138 (1.79%) Middleware
9 117 (1.52%) Spring Boot
10 102 (1.32%) AngularJS
11 99 (1.28%) Node.js
12 88 (1.14%) PySpark
13 85 (1.10%) HTML
13 85 (1.10%) XML
14 84 (1.09%) Pandas
15 81 (1.05%) CSS
16 74 (0.96%) JSON
17 73 (0.95%) NumPy
18 70 (0.91%) OAuth
19 68 (0.88%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 332 (4.30%) Onboarding
2 301 (3.90%) Product Ownership
3 237 (3.07%) Cloud Native
4 186 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
5 169 (2.19%) Management Information System
6 166 (2.15%) Derivative
7 149 (1.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 146 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
9 141 (1.83%) Data Centre
10 140 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
11 131 (1.70%) Data Structures
12 124 (1.61%) Fixed Income
13 121 (1.57%) Equities
14 111 (1.44%) Public Cloud
15 110 (1.43%) Analytical Mindset
16 93 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
17 84 (1.09%) Virtual Team
18 78 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
19 74 (0.96%) Hedge funds
20 64 (0.83%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 327 (4.24%) Linux
2 284 (3.68%) Windows
3 145 (1.88%) Unix
4 65 (0.84%) Windows 10
5 58 (0.75%) Android
6 57 (0.74%) Mac OS
7 52 (0.67%) Windows Server
8 28 (0.36%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 13 (0.17%) zOS
11 8 (0.10%) AIX
11 8 (0.10%) Solaris
12 7 (0.091%) VMS
13 5 (0.065%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.052%) CentOS
14 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.039%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,717 (22.26%) Agile
2 1,484 (19.24%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,226 (15.89%) Problem-Solving
4 954 (12.37%) Migration
5 843 (10.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 822 (10.66%) DevOps
7 781 (10.12%) CI/CD
8 768 (9.96%) Analytics
9 748 (9.70%) Project Management
10 741 (9.61%) Business Intelligence
11 721 (9.35%) Continuous Improvement
12 705 (9.14%) ERP
13 615 (7.97%) AI
14 578 (7.49%) Decision-Making
15 575 (7.45%) Roadmaps
16 561 (7.27%) Data Modelling
17 557 (7.22%) Change Management
18 531 (6.88%) Risk Management
19 502 (6.51%) Project Delivery
19 502 (6.51%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,123 (14.56%) SQL
2 997 (12.92%) Python
3 544 (7.05%) Java
4 289 (3.75%) C#
5 226 (2.93%) JavaScript
6 189 (2.45%) PowerShell
7 176 (2.28%) TypeScript
8 138 (1.79%) C++
9 79 (1.02%) Go
10 76 (0.99%) PL/SQL
11 70 (0.91%) Bash
12 52 (0.67%) VBA
13 44 (0.57%) T-SQL
14 43 (0.56%) R
15 40 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 38 (0.49%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.48%) Scala
18 36 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 31 (0.40%) Rust
20 27 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 813 (10.54%) Degree
2 620 (8.04%) Security Cleared
3 457 (5.92%) SC Cleared
4 181 (2.35%) PMI Certification
5 180 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 173 (2.24%) Master's Degree
6 173 (2.24%) PMP
7 160 (2.07%) ACCA
8 150 (1.94%) CIMA
9 123 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
10 93 (1.21%) CISSP
11 80 (1.04%) AWS Certification
12 69 (0.89%) DV Cleared
13 64 (0.83%) CISM
14 63 (0.82%) Azure Certification
15 42 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
16 36 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
17 35 (0.45%) CBAP
17 35 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 32 (0.41%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (4.96%) QA
2 378 (4.90%) Data Quality
3 299 (3.88%) PMO
4 267 (3.46%) GDPR
5 128 (1.66%) NIST
6 127 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 103 (1.34%) SLA
9 86 (1.11%) Accessibility
10 81 (1.05%) IFRS
10 81 (1.05%) PCI DSS
11 68 (0.88%) GRC
12 57 (0.74%) ISO 20022
13 43 (0.56%) PSD2
14 37 (0.48%) GAAP
14 37 (0.48%) MiFID
15 36 (0.47%) NCSC
15 36 (0.47%) SEPA
16 32 (0.41%) COBIT
17 31 (0.40%) Basel III
System Software
1 335 (4.34%) Docker
2 171 (2.22%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.36%) vSphere
6 13 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.12%) GPFS
9 9 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 9 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.091%) HDFS
12 4 (0.052%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.039%) Firmware
13 3 (0.039%) KVM
13 3 (0.039%) RACF
13 3 (0.039%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.026%) ACF2
14 2 (0.026%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 407 (5.28%) Kubernetes
2 255 (3.31%) Terraform
3 154 (2.00%) Ansible
4 97 (1.26%) Grafana
5 89 (1.15%) Prometheus
6 55 (0.71%) SCCM
7 54 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
8 38 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.32%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.26%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.23%) Control-M
12 17 (0.22%) Argo
13 14 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
13 14 (0.18%) SCOM
13 14 (0.18%) vRealize
14 13 (0.17%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.17%) HP SiteScope
14 13 (0.17%) Kibana
15 12 (0.16%) ITRS Geneos
16 11 (0.14%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,020 (13.22%) Microsoft
2 791 (10.25%) SAP
3 676 (8.76%) Oracle
4 301 (3.90%) ServiceNow
5 186 (2.41%) Salesforce
6 183 (2.37%) Databricks
7 175 (2.27%) Google
8 155 (2.01%) Cisco
9 153 (1.98%) Splunk
10 143 (1.85%) Workday
11 109 (1.41%) VMware
12 99 (1.28%) IBM
13 72 (0.93%) CyberArk
14 70 (0.91%) Citrix
15 68 (0.88%) Ariba
16 52 (0.67%) HP
17 51 (0.66%) Bloomberg
17 51 (0.66%) OpenAI
18 50 (0.65%) Sage
19 49 (0.64%) Murex