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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,661 6,446 8,068
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 17.95% 22.15% 18.97%
As % of the General category 33.52% 35.02% 32.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,422 4,197 5,395
10th Percentile £355 £350 £356
25th Percentile £439 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £545 £550 £582
Median % change year-on-year -0.91% -5.50% -3.00%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 116 250
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.00 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £22.27 £15.04
Median hourly rate £23.83 £36.51 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -34.74% +35.37% +0.47%
75th Percentile £55.75 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.83 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £36.51 £30.00
% change year-on-year -34.74% +21.70% -36.84%

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 25,839 18,404 24,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.55% 63.23% 58.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,748 11,685 15,587
10th Percentile £311 £285 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.35% -1.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +3.16% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,662 799 1,924
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.89 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.40 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.49% -8.67% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.25 £52.78
90th Percentile £79.90 £75.00 £66.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.50 £28.25
% change year-on-year +18.37% -13.27% -2.59%

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 21 May 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 21 May 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 21 May 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 7,670 £550 -4.35% 4,148
London 0 4,621 £575 -8.00% 2,164
UK excluding London 0 3,462 £500 - 2,774
Work from Home -2 2,405 £538 -7.63% 1,775
North of England +3 1,184 £491 +3.37% 677
South East -2 637 £500 -2.91% 881
North West +5 620 £465 - 383
Midlands -1 588 £491 +3.37% 382
Yorkshire +2 523 £517 +8.51% 227
Scotland 0 412 £500 +5.26% 164
West Midlands -1 396 £500 -4.76% 239
South West -2 356 £525 - 305
East of England +3 204 £520 -5.45% 225
East Midlands 0 188 £465 +5.30% 141
Wales +19 89 £450 +12.50% 61
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +28.05% 126
North East -13 42 £488 +3.72% 75
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 318 (3.67%) Confluence
2 216 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.02%) Apache Spark
4 54 (0.62%) Apache
5 53 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
6 51 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.37%) SAS
8 24 (0.28%) CMS
9 21 (0.24%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Appian
13 12 (0.14%) Camunda
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.12%) Jupyter
15 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
16 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
17 8 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 506 (5.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.56%) Microsoft Office
3 168 (1.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 167 (1.93%) Microsoft Project
5 127 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 46 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 8 (0.092%) Sketch
10 7 (0.081%) InVision
10 7 (0.081%) Notion
11 6 (0.069%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.069%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) MicroStation
14 1 (0.012%) UXPin
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 393 (4.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.33%) Oracle Payables
3 105 (1.21%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.11%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 66 (0.76%) Oracle ERP
7 62 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
8 57 (0.66%) SAP FI
9 56 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
10 46 (0.53%) SAP CO
11 43 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
12 42 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
13 38 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
14 35 (0.40%) Aladdin
15 32 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
16 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
17 29 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 26 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
19 24 (0.28%) SAP ERP
19 24 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,324 (15.29%) Azure
2 961 (11.10%) AWS
3 599 (6.92%) Power Platform
4 382 (4.41%) GCP
5 298 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
6 295 (3.41%) SaaS
7 271 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
8 237 (2.74%) Dynamics 365
9 230 (2.66%) GitHub
10 156 (1.80%) Snowflake
11 147 (1.70%) Entra ID
12 137 (1.58%) Serverless
13 125 (1.44%) OCI
14 116 (1.34%) Power Automate
15 114 (1.32%) Amazon S3
16 94 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
17 85 (0.98%) OpenShift
18 84 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
19 79 (0.91%) PowerApps
20 76 (0.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 157 (1.81%) Firewall
2 118 (1.36%) Network Security
3 77 (0.89%) WAN
4 73 (0.84%) DNS
5 60 (0.69%) VPN
6 55 (0.64%) TCP/IP
7 40 (0.46%) LAN
8 39 (0.45%) BGP
9 38 (0.44%) SD-WAN
10 34 (0.39%) HTTP
11 29 (0.33%) OSPF
11 29 (0.33%) SSL
12 28 (0.32%) Multicast
13 27 (0.31%) DHCP
14 24 (0.28%) MPLS
15 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
15 20 (0.23%) VSAN
16 18 (0.21%) Internet
16 18 (0.21%) VLAN
17 12 (0.14%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 504 (5.82%) Power BI
2 214 (2.47%) SQL Server
3 209 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
4 168 (1.94%) Metadata
5 161 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
6 152 (1.75%) Tableau
7 149 (1.72%) Relational Database
8 123 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 89 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 81 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (0.87%) Big Data
12 64 (0.74%) Oracle Database
13 59 (0.68%) BigQuery
13 59 (0.68%) MongoDB
14 46 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
15 45 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
16 44 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 42 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 38 (0.44%) DynamoDB
19 35 (0.40%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 670 (7.74%) JIRA
2 204 (2.36%) Git
3 167 (1.93%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.12%) GitLab
5 46 (0.53%) JUnit
6 45 (0.52%) Cucumber
7 38 (0.44%) Selenium
8 32 (0.37%) Visual Studio
9 29 (0.33%) Postman
10 28 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
11 23 (0.27%) MLflow
12 22 (0.25%) SonarQube
13 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 21 (0.24%) Zephyr
14 18 (0.21%) ERwin
14 18 (0.21%) Hudson
14 18 (0.21%) Maven
15 16 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
16 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
17 13 (0.15%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,525 (29.15%) Social Skills
2 1,560 (18.01%) Banking
3 1,140 (13.16%) Analytical Skills
4 509 (5.88%) Public Sector
5 369 (4.26%) Legal
6 331 (3.82%) Financial Institution
7 303 (3.50%) Investment Banking
8 277 (3.20%) Front Office
9 267 (3.08%) Retail
10 243 (2.81%) Organisational Skills
11 235 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
12 210 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 169 (1.95%) Manufacturing
14 154 (1.78%) Marketing
15 144 (1.66%) General Ledger
16 133 (1.54%) Telecoms
17 127 (1.47%) Local Government
18 121 (1.40%) Law
19 117 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 116 (1.34%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,314 (15.17%) Analyst
2 909 (10.50%) Senior
3 872 (10.07%) Lead
4 868 (10.02%) Developer
5 798 (9.21%) Architect
6 713 (8.23%) Business Analyst
7 685 (7.91%) Project Manager
8 589 (6.80%) Consultant
9 333 (3.84%) Solutions Architect
10 281 (3.24%) Data Engineer
11 214 (2.47%) Financial Analyst
12 203 (2.34%) Senior Manager
13 189 (2.18%) Data Analyst
14 185 (2.14%) Finance Manager
15 175 (2.02%) Accountant
15 175 (2.02%) Programme Manager
16 149 (1.72%) Software Engineer
17 147 (1.70%) Java Developer
18 140 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
18 140 (1.62%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 256 (2.96%) Kafka
2 248 (2.86%) REST
3 233 (2.69%) .NET
4 204 (2.36%) React
5 187 (2.16%) Middleware
6 165 (1.91%) Oracle Fusion
7 150 (1.73%) Spring
8 145 (1.67%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.56%) RESTful
10 105 (1.21%) Node.js
11 104 (1.20%) PySpark
12 95 (1.10%) AngularJS
13 82 (0.95%) OAuth
14 78 (0.90%) Redux
15 76 (0.88%) JSON
16 70 (0.81%) XML
17 68 (0.79%) HTML
18 67 (0.77%) CSS
19 63 (0.73%) Pandas
20 61 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 377 (4.35%) Onboarding
2 356 (4.11%) Product Ownership
3 320 (3.69%) Cloud Native
4 232 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
5 195 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 188 (2.17%) Data Structures
7 169 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
7 169 (1.95%) Derivative
8 151 (1.74%) Data Centre
9 137 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
10 133 (1.54%) Fixed Income
11 131 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 103 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
13 101 (1.17%) Equities
14 99 (1.14%) Virtual Team
15 98 (1.13%) Public Cloud
16 90 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
16 90 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
17 72 (0.83%) AI Agents
18 65 (0.75%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 270 (3.12%) Windows
2 252 (2.91%) Linux
3 136 (1.57%) Unix
4 71 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 40 (0.46%) Windows 10
6 33 (0.38%) Solaris
7 29 (0.33%) Apple iOS
8 28 (0.32%) Android
9 26 (0.30%) zOS
10 20 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 17 (0.20%) AIX
11 17 (0.20%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.081%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.069%) VMS
13 6 (0.069%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.046%) MVS
15 4 (0.046%) SUSE
15 4 (0.046%) Ubuntu
15 4 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,787 (20.63%) Agile
2 1,736 (20.04%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,194 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
4 1,186 (13.69%) Migration
5 958 (11.06%) Continuous Improvement
6 929 (10.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 920 (10.62%) ERP
8 906 (10.46%) DevOps
9 854 (9.86%) CI/CD
10 842 (9.72%) AI
11 812 (9.38%) Analytics
12 788 (9.10%) Project Management
13 719 (8.30%) Decision-Making
14 711 (8.21%) Data Modelling
15 687 (7.93%) Roadmaps
16 681 (7.86%) Business Intelligence
17 677 (7.82%) Validation
18 667 (7.70%) User Acceptance Testing
19 618 (7.14%) Change Management
20 572 (6.60%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,162 (13.42%) SQL
2 1,013 (11.70%) Python
3 556 (6.42%) Java
4 337 (3.89%) C#
5 217 (2.51%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.31%) TypeScript
7 160 (1.85%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.21%) C++
9 71 (0.82%) Go
10 69 (0.80%) PL/SQL
11 66 (0.76%) Bash
12 61 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 50 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 50 (0.58%) Shell Script
14 45 (0.52%) Scala
15 40 (0.46%) VBA
16 30 (0.35%) R
17 28 (0.32%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.31%) Apex Code
19 26 (0.30%) Rust
Qualifications
1 733 (8.46%) Degree
2 689 (7.96%) Security Cleared
3 492 (5.68%) SC Cleared
4 215 (2.48%) ACCA
5 207 (2.39%) PMP
6 197 (2.27%) CIMA
7 189 (2.18%) PMI Certification
8 141 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 128 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
10 123 (1.42%) CISSP
11 99 (1.14%) Master's Degree
12 84 (0.97%) CISM
13 81 (0.94%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.73%) Azure Certification
15 57 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
16 46 (0.53%) AWS Certification
17 38 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 34 (0.39%) ISTQB
19 30 (0.35%) CBAP
19 30 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 507 (5.85%) Data Quality
2 402 (4.64%) QA
3 313 (3.61%) PMO
4 279 (3.22%) GDPR
5 161 (1.86%) NIST
6 125 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 108 (1.25%) SLA
8 107 (1.24%) IFRS
8 107 (1.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 91 (1.05%) GRC
10 83 (0.96%) Accessibility
11 66 (0.76%) PCI DSS
12 60 (0.69%) ISO 20022
13 59 (0.68%) GAAP
14 38 (0.44%) NCSC
15 37 (0.43%) SEPA
16 35 (0.40%) PSD2
17 27 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
17 27 (0.31%) MiFID
18 26 (0.30%) EMIR
System Software
1 274 (3.16%) Docker
2 154 (1.78%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 29 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.16%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.14%) NFS
10 8 (0.092%) GPFS
11 6 (0.069%) KVM
12 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.046%) Firmware
13 4 (0.046%) HDFS
13 4 (0.046%) RACF
14 3 (0.035%) GridGain
14 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.035%) SRDF
15 2 (0.023%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 394 (4.55%) Kubernetes
2 244 (2.82%) Terraform
3 123 (1.42%) Ansible
4 87 (1.00%) Grafana
5 70 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 44 (0.51%) SCCM
8 37 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.35%) FortiGate
10 17 (0.20%) Control-M
10 17 (0.20%) vRealize
11 16 (0.18%) Argo
12 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 12 (0.14%) Nessus
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
17 8 (0.092%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,108 (12.79%) Microsoft
2 775 (8.95%) SAP
3 715 (8.26%) Oracle
4 315 (3.64%) ServiceNow
5 240 (2.77%) Databricks
6 191 (2.21%) Salesforce
7 170 (1.96%) Google
8 130 (1.50%) Workday
9 116 (1.34%) Cisco
10 114 (1.32%) Splunk
11 105 (1.21%) VMware
12 90 (1.04%) IBM
13 81 (0.94%) CyberArk
14 70 (0.81%) Ariba
15 69 (0.80%) Citrix
16 66 (0.76%) Sage
17 57 (0.66%) OpenAI
18 52 (0.60%) IFS
19 51 (0.59%) Informatica
19 51 (0.59%) Palo Alto