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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,820 7,463 7,712
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.31% 22.80% 19.85%
As % of the General category 33.30% 35.93% 34.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,013 4,914 5,058
10th Percentile £363 £331 £360
25th Percentile £450 £414 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £492 £513
% change year-on-year +2.64% -4.00% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 319 142 178
10th Percentile £15.64 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.45 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.91 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.06% -17.40% +34.62%
75th Percentile - £63.00 £44.76
90th Percentile £75.40 £76.13 £70.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £35.00
% change year-on-year +67.72% -25.11% +13.80%

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 29,490 20,770 22,288
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.97% 63.45% 57.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,431 12,916 13,846
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £415 £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 £738 £749 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,285 1,168 1,267
10th Percentile £13.89 £13.43 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.11 £16.17 £16.70
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -28.87% +28.58%
75th Percentile £56.21 £50.00 £59.98
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £70.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £22.14 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.53% -36.74% +34.74%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 8,525 £550 - 9,487
London 0 5,119 £586 -2.29% 6,136
UK excluding London 0 3,897 £505 +2.64% 4,643
Work from Home -1 2,793 £550 -4.35% 4,431
North of England 0 1,340 £500 +6.61% 1,140
South East -2 736 £505 -3.81% 824
North West -1 695 £500 +11.11% 694
Midlands 0 628 £500 +11.11% 513
Yorkshire 0 566 £514 +5.98% 304
Scotland 0 514 £475 -1.04% 652
West Midlands +1 473 £500 - 321
South West -5 375 £550 -2.22% 841
East of England +5 207 £525 -7.89% 381
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +21.21% 191
North East -6 72 £500 +12.36% 155
Northern Ireland -1 69 £475 -2.56% 268
Wales -1 59 £525 +13.51% 113
Channel Islands +3 4 £500 - 4

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
1 336 (3.42%) Confluence
2 255 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 91 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
4 85 (0.87%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.73%) Apache
6 48 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.36%) CMS
8 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
9 25 (0.25%) SAS
10 21 (0.21%) IIS
11 16 (0.16%) Camunda
12 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.12%) CICS
14 9 (0.092%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
16 6 (0.061%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 528 (5.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.30%) Microsoft Office
3 190 (1.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 153 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 97 (0.99%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 31 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 8 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Sketch
11 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.031%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 437 (4.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 127 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 109 (1.11%) NetSuite
4 105 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 96 (0.98%) Oracle ERP
6 73 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
7 71 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 65 (0.66%) SAP FI
9 63 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 58 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
11 52 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 44 (0.45%) SAP CO
13 41 (0.42%) Aladdin
13 41 (0.42%) SAP FI/CO
14 37 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
15 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
16 33 (0.34%) SAP GRC
17 30 (0.31%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.29%) SAP ERP
19 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,545 (15.73%) Azure
2 1,062 (10.81%) AWS
3 665 (6.77%) Power Platform
4 513 (5.22%) GCP
5 354 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
6 326 (3.32%) SaaS
7 302 (3.08%) Microsoft 365
8 301 (3.07%) GitHub
9 263 (2.68%) Dynamics 365
10 221 (2.25%) Snowflake
11 213 (2.17%) Entra ID
12 150 (1.53%) Serverless
13 142 (1.45%) OCI
14 125 (1.27%) Power Automate
15 120 (1.22%) GitHub Actions
16 114 (1.16%) dbt
16 114 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
17 112 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
18 111 (1.13%) Amazon S3
19 108 (1.10%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 174 (1.77%) Firewall
2 147 (1.50%) Network Security
3 103 (1.05%) VPN
4 98 (1.00%) DNS
5 67 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 61 (0.62%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) DHCP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 43 (0.44%) BGP
10 41 (0.42%) HTTP
11 40 (0.41%) LAN
12 33 (0.34%) Multicast
12 33 (0.34%) VLAN
13 30 (0.31%) Internet
14 28 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
14 28 (0.29%) Wireless
15 24 (0.24%) OSPF
16 23 (0.23%) SAN
17 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 544 (5.54%) Power BI
2 283 (2.88%) SQL Server
3 262 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (2.05%) Metadata
5 179 (1.82%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.49%) Data Lake
7 134 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
8 130 (1.32%) Tableau
9 85 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
11 76 (0.77%) BigQuery
12 74 (0.75%) MongoDB
13 72 (0.73%) Oracle Database
14 58 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.58%) Big Data
16 52 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 51 (0.52%) Power Query
18 47 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
19 45 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
20 43 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 671 (6.83%) JIRA
2 287 (2.92%) Git
3 167 (1.70%) Jenkins
4 102 (1.04%) GitLab
5 55 (0.56%) Selenium
6 46 (0.47%) JUnit
7 32 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 31 (0.32%) ERwin
9 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 29 (0.30%) Maven
10 29 (0.30%) SonarQube
10 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
11 28 (0.29%) Cucumber
12 27 (0.27%) Claude Code
12 27 (0.27%) REST Assured
13 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
14 22 (0.22%) ER Studio
14 22 (0.22%) Gradle
14 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
15 21 (0.21%) Postman
General
1 2,983 (30.38%) Social Skills
2 1,941 (19.77%) Banking
3 1,388 (14.13%) Analytical Skills
4 555 (5.65%) Legal
5 523 (5.33%) Public Sector
6 425 (4.33%) Organisational Skills
7 387 (3.94%) Investment Banking
8 382 (3.89%) Retail
9 346 (3.52%) Financial Institution
10 336 (3.42%) Front Office
11 305 (3.11%) Influencing Skills
12 227 (2.31%) Documentation Skills
13 206 (2.10%) Manufacturing
14 190 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 168 (1.71%) Billing
16 167 (1.70%) General Ledger
17 160 (1.63%) Marketing
18 150 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
19 147 (1.50%) Local Government
20 144 (1.47%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,415 (14.41%) Analyst
2 1,050 (10.69%) Senior
3 1,039 (10.58%) Lead
4 964 (9.82%) Developer
5 866 (8.82%) Architect
6 734 (7.47%) Business Analyst
7 704 (7.17%) Consultant
8 699 (7.12%) Project Manager
9 323 (3.29%) Solutions Architect
10 304 (3.10%) Data Engineer
11 256 (2.61%) Financial Analyst
12 229 (2.33%) Senior Manager
13 201 (2.05%) Java Developer
14 192 (1.96%) Data Analyst
15 185 (1.88%) Accountant
15 185 (1.88%) Programme Manager
15 185 (1.88%) Senior Developer
16 182 (1.85%) Finance Manager
17 173 (1.76%) IT Manager
18 156 (1.59%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 362 (3.69%) Terraform
2 351 (3.57%) REST
3 278 (2.83%) .NET
4 264 (2.69%) Oracle Fusion
5 245 (2.49%) Kafka
6 225 (2.29%) React
7 190 (1.93%) Middleware
8 182 (1.85%) Spring
9 176 (1.79%) Spring Boot
10 140 (1.43%) PySpark
11 134 (1.36%) RESTful
12 104 (1.06%) XML
13 100 (1.02%) JSON
14 98 (1.00%) OAuth
15 86 (0.88%) AngularJS
15 86 (0.88%) Redux
16 79 (0.80%) Node.js
17 77 (0.78%) SOAP
18 67 (0.68%) Web Services
19 66 (0.67%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 508 (5.17%) Onboarding
2 486 (4.95%) Product Ownership
3 410 (4.18%) Cloud Native
4 249 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
5 234 (2.38%) Data Structures
6 233 (2.37%) Management Information System
7 219 (2.23%) Virtual Team
8 188 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
9 184 (1.87%) Derivative
10 178 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
11 166 (1.69%) Data Centre
12 165 (1.68%) AI Agents
13 153 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 136 (1.38%) Fixed Income
15 132 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
16 116 (1.18%) Equities
17 115 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
18 114 (1.16%) Podcast
19 112 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
20 110 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 370 (3.77%) Windows
2 302 (3.08%) Linux
3 157 (1.60%) Unix
4 87 (0.89%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 46 (0.47%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.43%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) Solaris
9 35 (0.36%) Android
10 34 (0.35%) zOS
11 28 (0.29%) Mac OS
12 17 (0.17%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 9 (0.092%) VMS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 4 (0.041%) CentOS
17 4 (0.041%) MVS
18 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,463 (25.08%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,019 (20.56%) Agile
3 1,322 (13.46%) Migration
4 1,298 (13.22%) Problem-Solving
5 1,186 (12.08%) AI
6 1,166 (11.87%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,140 (11.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,061 (10.80%) CI/CD
9 1,029 (10.48%) ERP
10 1,006 (10.24%) DevOps
11 992 (10.10%) Analytics
12 894 (9.10%) Decision-Making
13 805 (8.20%) Validation
14 797 (8.12%) Roadmaps
15 775 (7.89%) Data Modelling
16 769 (7.83%) User Acceptance Testing
17 752 (7.66%) Project Management
18 724 (7.37%) Change Management
19 667 (6.79%) Business Intelligence
20 662 (6.74%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,290 (13.14%) SQL
2 1,187 (12.09%) Python
3 621 (6.32%) Java
4 371 (3.78%) C#
5 261 (2.66%) PowerShell
6 243 (2.47%) JavaScript
7 208 (2.12%) TypeScript
8 140 (1.43%) Bash
9 104 (1.06%) PL/SQL
10 87 (0.89%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 67 (0.68%) T-SQL
13 62 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 57 (0.58%) Bicep
15 55 (0.56%) Go
16 41 (0.42%) Korn
16 41 (0.42%) VBA
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.40%) Scala
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 778 (7.92%) Security Cleared
2 727 (7.40%) Degree
3 558 (5.68%) SC Cleared
4 243 (2.47%) PMP
5 231 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
6 216 (2.20%) PMI Certification
7 197 (2.01%) ACCA
8 173 (1.76%) CIMA
9 139 (1.42%) CISSP
10 136 (1.38%) DV Cleared
11 129 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
12 106 (1.08%) Azure Certification
13 83 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
14 82 (0.84%) CISM
15 69 (0.70%) Master's Degree
16 64 (0.65%) AWS Certification
17 51 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 46 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 43 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 38 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 651 (6.63%) Data Quality
2 424 (4.32%) QA
3 360 (3.67%) PMO
4 243 (2.47%) GDPR
5 150 (1.53%) NIST
6 128 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 118 (1.20%) GRC
8 108 (1.10%) Accessibility
9 105 (1.07%) SLA
10 98 (1.00%) IFRS
11 90 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 55 (0.56%) GAAP
14 45 (0.46%) PCI DSS
15 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
16 33 (0.34%) SEPA
17 28 (0.29%) COBIT
17 28 (0.29%) EMIR
17 28 (0.29%) MiFID
18 25 (0.25%) SOC 2
System Software
1 260 (2.65%) Docker
2 238 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 80 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.24%) RACF
7 23 (0.23%) vSphere
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 8 (0.081%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.041%) KVM
14 4 (0.041%) zsh
15 3 (0.031%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 445 (4.53%) Kubernetes
2 167 (1.70%) Ansible
3 98 (1.00%) Grafana
4 79 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
5 71 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.61%) SCCM
7 56 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 25 (0.25%) Control-M
8 25 (0.25%) Progress Chef
9 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
10 17 (0.17%) Argo
10 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 15 (0.15%) vRealize
12 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
12 14 (0.14%) Istio
12 14 (0.14%) Puppet
13 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
16 9 (0.092%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,388 (14.13%) Microsoft
2 878 (8.94%) Oracle
3 846 (8.62%) SAP
4 370 (3.77%) ServiceNow
5 335 (3.41%) Databricks
6 230 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 218 (2.22%) Google
8 174 (1.77%) IBM
9 139 (1.42%) VMware
10 128 (1.30%) Workday
11 115 (1.17%) Cisco
12 110 (1.12%) Splunk
13 97 (0.99%) Ariba
14 88 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 76 (0.77%) OpenAI
16 58 (0.59%) Citrix
16 58 (0.59%) Sage
17 54 (0.55%) Bloomberg
17 54 (0.55%) Informatica
18 46 (0.47%) Adobe