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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,888 7,280 7,756
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.19% 22.29% 20.20%
As % of the General category 32.66% 35.08% 34.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,010 4,752 4,929
10th Percentile £358 £338 £360
25th Percentile £450 £416 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -6.61% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +1.80% -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 133 145
10th Percentile £14.83 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.87 £19.79 £22.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.55 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.98% -13.48% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £57.50 £54.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £78.75 £72.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £31.91
% change year-on-year +74.79% -21.19% +19.32%

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 30,275 20,755 22,289
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.71% 63.55% 58.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,736 12,845 13,341
10th Percentile £313 £275 £283
25th Percentile £419 £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 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.52% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,554 1,207 1,089
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.70
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.00
Median hourly rate £29.60 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.69% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £54.36 £47.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.25 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.10 £35.00
% change year-on-year +42.18% -39.71% +27.27%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 8,483 £550 - 22,094
London 0 5,146 £590 -0.13% 14,624
UK excluding London -1 3,865 £509 +1.80% 9,776
Work from Home -1 2,796 £550 -2.65% 10,525
North of England 0 1,326 £514 +11.14% 2,261
South East -2 729 £500 -2.44% 2,306
North West -1 644 £500 +11.11% 1,334
Yorkshire 0 602 £520 +4.00% 712
Midlands -3 593 £500 +5.26% 1,262
Scotland 0 549 £466 -5.86% 1,336
West Midlands -2 438 £525 +1.01% 787
South West -5 356 £525 -8.70% 1,144
East of England +3 207 £550 -3.60% 771
East Midlands -3 152 £500 +19.05% 474
North East -8 73 £500 +14.29% 248
Northern Ireland 0 66 £510 -1.21% 547
Wales +1 61 £525 +20.69% 228
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 13

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
1 319 (3.23%) Confluence
2 259 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
4 82 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.73%) Apache
6 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
8 26 (0.26%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 16 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.061%) Appian
15 6 (0.061%) WebLogic
16 5 (0.051%) JBoss
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 535 (5.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 199 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 142 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
5 86 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 66 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.071%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
11 3 (0.030%) Windchill
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 445 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.24%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.04%) NetSuite
3 103 (1.04%) Oracle Receivables
4 91 (0.92%) Oracle ERP
5 77 (0.78%) Oracle General Ledger
6 75 (0.76%) SAP FI
7 73 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
8 67 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
9 52 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
9 52 (0.53%) SAP CO
10 51 (0.52%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 47 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
12 38 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
13 36 (0.36%) Aladdin
13 36 (0.36%) Workday HCM
14 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
15 33 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
16 27 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
17 25 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,536 (15.53%) Azure
2 1,075 (10.87%) AWS
3 657 (6.64%) Power Platform
4 554 (5.60%) GCP
5 336 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
6 328 (3.32%) SaaS
7 318 (3.22%) GitHub
8 310 (3.14%) Microsoft 365
9 267 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
10 225 (2.28%) Entra ID
11 221 (2.24%) Snowflake
12 157 (1.59%) Serverless
13 142 (1.44%) OCI
14 131 (1.32%) Amazon S3
15 128 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
16 127 (1.28%) dbt
16 127 (1.28%) Power Automate
17 122 (1.23%) Microsoft Copilot
18 106 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
19 102 (1.03%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 169 (1.71%) Firewall
2 151 (1.53%) Network Security
3 100 (1.01%) VPN
4 83 (0.84%) DNS
5 58 (0.59%) TCP/IP
6 53 (0.54%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) DHCP
8 44 (0.44%) BGP
8 44 (0.44%) SSL
9 33 (0.33%) HTTP
9 33 (0.33%) Multicast
9 33 (0.33%) VLAN
10 30 (0.30%) LAN
10 30 (0.30%) Wireless
11 29 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
12 25 (0.25%) Internet
12 25 (0.25%) SAN
13 24 (0.24%) OSPF
14 18 (0.18%) Broadband
15 17 (0.17%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 527 (5.33%) Power BI
2 279 (2.82%) SQL Server
3 251 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
4 206 (2.08%) Metadata
5 176 (1.78%) Relational Database
6 140 (1.42%) Data Lake
7 135 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
8 122 (1.23%) Tableau
9 84 (0.85%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.84%) BigQuery
11 81 (0.82%) Oracle Database
12 76 (0.77%) MongoDB
13 68 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
14 58 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (0.56%) Power Query
16 52 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 47 (0.48%) Big Data
18 45 (0.46%) Db2
19 44 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
20 43 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 641 (6.48%) JIRA
2 320 (3.24%) Git
3 169 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 108 (1.09%) GitLab
5 64 (0.65%) Selenium
6 47 (0.48%) JUnit
7 36 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 36 (0.36%) Claude Code
8 35 (0.35%) Maven
8 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
9 32 (0.32%) Cucumber
10 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
11 30 (0.30%) Gradle
12 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
13 28 (0.28%) ERwin
14 25 (0.25%) Cypress.io
14 25 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
15 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
15 22 (0.22%) Postman
16 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 3,082 (31.17%) Social Skills
2 2,043 (20.66%) Banking
3 1,399 (14.15%) Analytical Skills
4 541 (5.47%) Legal
5 526 (5.32%) Public Sector
6 448 (4.53%) Organisational Skills
7 388 (3.92%) Investment Banking
8 379 (3.83%) Retail
9 345 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
10 337 (3.41%) Front Office
11 302 (3.05%) Financial Institution
12 213 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
13 212 (2.14%) Manufacturing
14 195 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 175 (1.77%) Marketing
16 172 (1.74%) General Ledger
17 170 (1.72%) Billing
18 154 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
19 148 (1.50%) Local Government
20 140 (1.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,415 (14.31%) Analyst
2 1,083 (10.95%) Senior
3 985 (9.96%) Lead
4 983 (9.94%) Developer
5 875 (8.85%) Architect
6 729 (7.37%) Business Analyst
7 711 (7.19%) Consultant
8 680 (6.88%) Project Manager
9 339 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
10 300 (3.03%) Data Engineer
11 267 (2.70%) Financial Analyst
12 215 (2.17%) Senior Manager
13 210 (2.12%) Java Developer
14 203 (2.05%) Data Analyst
14 203 (2.05%) Senior Developer
15 188 (1.90%) Programme Manager
16 178 (1.80%) IT Manager
17 174 (1.76%) Accountant
18 169 (1.71%) Finance Manager
19 150 (1.52%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 396 (4.00%) Terraform
2 386 (3.90%) REST
3 269 (2.72%) Kafka
4 262 (2.65%) .NET
5 260 (2.63%) Oracle Fusion
6 238 (2.41%) React
7 198 (2.00%) Spring
8 191 (1.93%) Spring Boot
9 189 (1.91%) Middleware
10 143 (1.45%) PySpark
11 141 (1.43%) RESTful
12 108 (1.09%) JSON
13 106 (1.07%) OAuth
13 106 (1.07%) XML
14 95 (0.96%) SOAP
15 84 (0.85%) Web Services
16 83 (0.84%) Redux
17 78 (0.79%) AngularJS
18 76 (0.77%) Node.js
19 73 (0.74%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 516 (5.22%) Onboarding
2 509 (5.15%) Product Ownership
3 455 (4.60%) Cloud Native
4 252 (2.55%) Management Information System
5 249 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
6 233 (2.36%) Data Structures
7 229 (2.32%) Virtual Team
8 209 (2.11%) AI Agents
9 201 (2.03%) Distributed Systems
10 196 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
11 187 (1.89%) Derivative
12 166 (1.68%) Data Centre
13 156 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
14 155 (1.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 132 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
16 125 (1.26%) Fixed Income
17 116 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
18 114 (1.15%) Podcast
19 113 (1.14%) Equities
19 113 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 377 (3.81%) Windows
2 318 (3.22%) Linux
3 166 (1.68%) Unix
4 91 (0.92%) Windows Server
5 58 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 48 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.40%) Android
7 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 38 (0.38%) zOS
9 33 (0.33%) Solaris
10 31 (0.31%) Mac OS
11 14 (0.14%) AIX
12 12 (0.12%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 7 (0.071%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 4 (0.040%) CentOS
16 4 (0.040%) MVS
16 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,674 (27.04%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,009 (20.32%) Agile
3 1,334 (13.49%) Migration
4 1,305 (13.20%) Problem-Solving
5 1,289 (13.04%) AI
6 1,132 (11.45%) CI/CD
7 1,129 (11.42%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,128 (11.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,011 (10.22%) Analytics
10 989 (10.00%) ERP
11 983 (9.94%) DevOps
12 918 (9.28%) Decision-Making
13 862 (8.72%) Validation
14 850 (8.60%) Roadmaps
15 771 (7.80%) Project Management
16 769 (7.78%) Data Modelling
17 748 (7.56%) User Acceptance Testing
18 726 (7.34%) Change Management
19 703 (7.11%) Risk Management
20 664 (6.72%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,342 (13.57%) SQL
2 1,251 (12.65%) Python
3 655 (6.62%) Java
4 352 (3.56%) C#
5 277 (2.80%) PowerShell
6 248 (2.51%) JavaScript
7 216 (2.18%) TypeScript
8 151 (1.53%) Bash
9 111 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 92 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 68 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.68%) Go
14 59 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 54 (0.55%) Bicep
16 51 (0.52%) Korn
17 42 (0.42%) Scala
18 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
18 36 (0.36%) VBA
19 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 761 (7.70%) Security Cleared
2 734 (7.42%) Degree
3 540 (5.46%) SC Cleared
4 253 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 252 (2.55%) PMP
6 221 (2.24%) PMI Certification
7 193 (1.95%) ACCA
8 169 (1.71%) CIMA
9 142 (1.44%) DV Cleared
10 132 (1.33%) CISSP
11 131 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
12 113 (1.14%) Azure Certification
13 81 (0.82%) AWS Certification
14 80 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
15 76 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 70 (0.71%) CISM
17 51 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 39 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.37%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 693 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 427 (4.32%) QA
3 350 (3.54%) PMO
4 213 (2.15%) GDPR
5 136 (1.38%) NIST
6 125 (1.26%) GRC
7 117 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 97 (0.98%) IFRS
10 95 (0.96%) SLA
11 76 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 66 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 47 (0.48%) GAAP
14 43 (0.43%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.37%) SEPA
16 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) COBIT
18 28 (0.28%) EMIR
19 24 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 267 (2.70%) Docker
2 241 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 90 (0.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) RACF
6 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
7 22 (0.22%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 9 (0.091%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) ACF2
12 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 487 (4.93%) Kubernetes
2 185 (1.87%) Ansible
3 96 (0.97%) Grafana
4 80 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
5 67 (0.68%) Prometheus
6 61 (0.62%) SCCM
6 61 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
7 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
8 25 (0.25%) Control-M
9 19 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
10 18 (0.18%) Argo
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
12 13 (0.13%) Istio
13 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
14 10 (0.10%) Packer
14 10 (0.10%) Puppet
15 9 (0.091%) vRealize
16 8 (0.081%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,417 (14.33%) Microsoft
2 872 (8.82%) Oracle
3 869 (8.79%) SAP
4 374 (3.78%) ServiceNow
5 359 (3.63%) Databricks
6 239 (2.42%) Google
7 238 (2.41%) Salesforce
8 194 (1.96%) IBM
9 143 (1.45%) VMware
10 138 (1.40%) Workday
11 125 (1.26%) Cisco
12 118 (1.19%) Splunk
13 105 (1.06%) Ariba
14 90 (0.91%) CyberArk
15 89 (0.90%) OpenAI
16 56 (0.57%) Citrix
17 53 (0.54%) Bloomberg
18 51 (0.52%) Sage
19 49 (0.50%) Informatica
19 49 (0.50%) Murex