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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,834 7,551 7,703
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.42% 22.94% 19.79%
As % of the General category 33.46% 36.14% 34.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,048 4,972 5,120
10th Percentile £360 £331 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £547 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.59% -4.91% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £723
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +0.25% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 293 143 196
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £14.75
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.93 £23.96
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +46.53% -21.30% +46.62%
75th Percentile - £63.50 £42.81
90th Percentile £76.60 £76.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.36 £38.12
% change year-on-year +66.80% -30.86% +18.86%

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 29,391 20,891 22,351
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.47% 57.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,419 13,009 14,041
10th Percentile £313 £276 £290
25th Percentile £414 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £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 2,230 1,139 1,376
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.24 £16.30 £17.08
Median hourly rate £31.53 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +25.36% -34.02% +38.62%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.63 £58.12
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.32 £38.12
% change year-on-year +45.61% -41.45% +52.48%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 8,564 £550 - 14,293
London 0 5,154 £585 -2.50% 9,639
UK excluding London -1 3,883 £501 +0.25% 6,508
Work from Home -1 2,814 £550 -4.35% 6,149
North of England 0 1,341 £500 +6.50% 1,623
South East -1 732 £500 -5.66% 1,514
North West 0 691 £500 +10.56% 993
Midlands -1 635 £500 +11.11% 752
Yorkshire 0 581 £514 +7.31% 448
Scotland 0 498 £473 -5.50% 864
West Midlands +1 480 £525 +5.00% 452
South West -4 381 £531 -4.34% 794
East of England +5 200 £525 -8.70% 505
East Midlands -2 149 £500 +21.21% 299
Wales -1 65 £528 +14.05% 193
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 +0.53% 351
North East -14 62 £500 +11.11% 199
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 2

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
1 331 (3.37%) Confluence
2 250 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 90 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 89 (0.91%) Apache Spark
5 73 (0.74%) Apache
6 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
7 36 (0.37%) CMS
8 33 (0.34%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.21%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 9 (0.092%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 7 (0.071%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 521 (5.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 175 (1.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 102 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 34 (0.35%) 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
11 4 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.031%) Notion
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 441 (4.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 125 (1.27%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 104 (1.06%) Oracle Receivables
5 93 (0.95%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.69%) SAP FI
8 65 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 63 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 54 (0.55%) Oracle Financials
12 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
13 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.37%) Unit4 Business World
16 35 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
17 30 (0.31%) SAP GRC
18 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
18 29 (0.29%) Workday HCM
19 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,552 (15.78%) Azure
2 1,068 (10.86%) AWS
3 654 (6.65%) Power Platform
4 516 (5.25%) GCP
5 347 (3.53%) Azure DevOps
6 331 (3.37%) SaaS
7 299 (3.04%) Microsoft 365
8 295 (3.00%) GitHub
9 255 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
10 216 (2.20%) Snowflake
11 212 (2.16%) Entra ID
12 149 (1.52%) Serverless
13 145 (1.47%) OCI
14 122 (1.24%) Amazon S3
15 120 (1.22%) Power Automate
16 114 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
17 111 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
17 111 (1.13%) dbt
18 108 (1.10%) Microsoft Copilot
19 99 (1.01%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.76%) Firewall
2 150 (1.53%) Network Security
3 98 (1.00%) VPN
4 93 (0.95%) DNS
5 65 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 57 (0.58%) WAN
7 46 (0.47%) SSL
8 45 (0.46%) DHCP
9 43 (0.44%) BGP
9 43 (0.44%) LAN
10 39 (0.40%) HTTP
11 29 (0.29%) Multicast
12 28 (0.28%) Internet
12 28 (0.28%) Wireless
13 27 (0.27%) VLAN
14 26 (0.26%) OSPF
14 26 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
15 22 (0.22%) SAN
16 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
17 19 (0.19%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 536 (5.45%) Power BI
2 281 (2.86%) SQL Server
3 264 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
4 199 (2.02%) Metadata
5 175 (1.78%) Relational Database
6 144 (1.46%) Data Lake
7 143 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
8 133 (1.35%) Tableau
9 84 (0.85%) Oracle Reports
10 81 (0.82%) NoSQL
11 77 (0.78%) BigQuery
12 73 (0.74%) MongoDB
13 71 (0.72%) Oracle Database
14 63 (0.64%) Big Data
15 61 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
16 53 (0.54%) Power Query
17 51 (0.52%) Delta Lake
18 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
19 45 (0.46%) Data Vault
19 45 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 670 (6.81%) JIRA
2 289 (2.94%) Git
3 161 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 101 (1.03%) GitLab
5 47 (0.48%) JUnit
5 47 (0.48%) Selenium
6 35 (0.36%) Cucumber
7 30 (0.31%) ERwin
7 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
8 27 (0.27%) Bitbucket
8 27 (0.27%) Maven
8 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
9 26 (0.26%) Claude Code
9 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
10 25 (0.25%) Postman
11 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 23 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 22 (0.22%) REST Assured
14 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
15 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,910 (29.59%) Social Skills
2 1,905 (19.37%) Banking
3 1,384 (14.07%) Analytical Skills
4 539 (5.48%) Public Sector
5 530 (5.39%) Legal
6 398 (4.05%) Organisational Skills
7 383 (3.89%) Investment Banking
8 373 (3.79%) Retail
9 357 (3.63%) Financial Institution
10 337 (3.43%) Front Office
11 288 (2.93%) Influencing Skills
12 229 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
13 205 (2.08%) Manufacturing
14 185 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 165 (1.68%) Billing
16 163 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 156 (1.59%) Marketing
18 153 (1.56%) Local Government
19 140 (1.42%) Law
20 139 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,423 (14.47%) Analyst
2 1,058 (10.76%) Lead
3 1,055 (10.73%) Senior
4 966 (9.82%) Developer
5 863 (8.78%) Architect
6 732 (7.44%) Business Analyst
7 705 (7.17%) Consultant
8 703 (7.15%) Project Manager
9 321 (3.26%) Solutions Architect
10 317 (3.22%) Data Engineer
11 252 (2.56%) Financial Analyst
12 227 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 201 (2.04%) Accountant
14 198 (2.01%) Java Developer
15 197 (2.00%) Data Analyst
16 183 (1.86%) Finance Manager
17 182 (1.85%) Programme Manager
17 182 (1.85%) Senior Developer
18 181 (1.84%) IT Manager
19 163 (1.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 336 (3.42%) REST
2 277 (2.82%) .NET
3 261 (2.65%) Oracle Fusion
4 253 (2.57%) Kafka
5 239 (2.43%) React
6 185 (1.88%) Middleware
7 178 (1.81%) Spring
8 167 (1.70%) Spring Boot
9 146 (1.48%) PySpark
10 127 (1.29%) RESTful
11 96 (0.98%) JSON
11 96 (0.98%) Redux
12 95 (0.97%) XML
13 90 (0.92%) Node.js
13 90 (0.92%) OAuth
14 89 (0.91%) AngularJS
15 72 (0.73%) SOAP
16 61 (0.62%) Web Services
17 60 (0.61%) HTML
18 57 (0.58%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 495 (5.03%) Onboarding
2 470 (4.78%) Product Ownership
3 424 (4.31%) Cloud Native
4 262 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
5 244 (2.48%) Data Structures
6 224 (2.28%) Management Information System
7 202 (2.05%) Virtual Team
8 185 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
9 184 (1.87%) Derivative
10 173 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
11 157 (1.60%) AI Agents
11 157 (1.60%) Data Centre
12 151 (1.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 148 (1.50%) Fixed Income
14 135 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
15 116 (1.18%) Equities
16 111 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 107 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
18 105 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
19 99 (1.01%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 363 (3.69%) Windows
2 299 (3.04%) Linux
3 150 (1.53%) Unix
4 85 (0.86%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 45 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) zOS
9 34 (0.35%) Android
9 34 (0.35%) Solaris
10 27 (0.27%) Mac OS
11 15 (0.15%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 7 (0.071%) VMS
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 5 (0.051%) MVS
17 3 (0.031%) CentOS
17 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,361 (24.01%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,007 (20.41%) Agile
3 1,348 (13.71%) Migration
4 1,301 (13.23%) Problem-Solving
5 1,174 (11.94%) AI
6 1,165 (11.85%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,134 (11.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,048 (10.66%) CI/CD
9 1,035 (10.52%) ERP
10 1,015 (10.32%) DevOps
11 999 (10.16%) Analytics
12 897 (9.12%) Decision-Making
13 802 (8.16%) Validation
14 794 (8.07%) Roadmaps
15 783 (7.96%) Data Modelling
16 760 (7.73%) User Acceptance Testing
17 744 (7.57%) Project Management
18 711 (7.23%) Change Management
19 660 (6.71%) Business Intelligence
20 650 (6.61%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,280 (13.02%) SQL
2 1,208 (12.28%) Python
3 633 (6.44%) Java
4 377 (3.83%) C#
5 252 (2.56%) PowerShell
6 251 (2.55%) JavaScript
7 224 (2.28%) TypeScript
8 135 (1.37%) Bash
9 102 (1.04%) PL/SQL
10 87 (0.88%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.78%) C++
12 70 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 66 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 61 (0.62%) Go
15 54 (0.55%) Bicep
16 45 (0.46%) VBA
17 38 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 38 (0.39%) Scala
18 37 (0.38%) Apex Code
18 37 (0.38%) Korn
Qualifications
1 772 (7.85%) Security Cleared
2 719 (7.31%) Degree
3 550 (5.59%) SC Cleared
4 242 (2.46%) PMP
5 212 (2.16%) PMI Certification
6 208 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
7 195 (1.98%) ACCA
8 171 (1.74%) CIMA
9 151 (1.54%) CISSP
10 135 (1.37%) DV Cleared
11 121 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 104 (1.06%) Azure Certification
13 88 (0.89%) CISM
14 80 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
15 69 (0.70%) Master's Degree
16 65 (0.66%) AWS Certification
17 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 44 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.37%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 633 (6.44%) Data Quality
2 414 (4.21%) QA
3 359 (3.65%) PMO
4 260 (2.64%) GDPR
5 155 (1.58%) NIST
6 126 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.12%) GRC
8 108 (1.10%) SLA
9 103 (1.05%) Accessibility
10 98 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 97 (0.99%) IFRS
12 58 (0.59%) ISO 20022
13 57 (0.58%) GAAP
14 44 (0.45%) PCI DSS
15 35 (0.36%) SEPA
15 35 (0.36%) Solvency II
16 30 (0.31%) COBIT
17 28 (0.28%) MiFID
17 28 (0.28%) SOC 2
18 27 (0.27%) EMIR
System Software
1 266 (2.70%) Docker
2 235 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 73 (0.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
5 24 (0.24%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 13 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 5 (0.051%) ACF2
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.041%) KVM
13 4 (0.041%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.041%) zsh
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 441 (4.48%) Kubernetes
2 352 (3.58%) Terraform
3 162 (1.65%) Ansible
4 90 (0.92%) Grafana
5 80 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
6 70 (0.71%) Prometheus
7 57 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
8 54 (0.55%) SCCM
9 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
10 26 (0.26%) Control-M
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.16%) Argo
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 16 (0.16%) Puppet
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 14 (0.14%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Istio
15 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 11 (0.11%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,351 (13.74%) Microsoft
2 874 (8.89%) Oracle
3 841 (8.55%) SAP
4 378 (3.84%) ServiceNow
5 328 (3.34%) Databricks
6 228 (2.32%) Salesforce
7 227 (2.31%) Google
8 168 (1.71%) IBM
9 137 (1.39%) VMware
10 130 (1.32%) Workday
11 113 (1.15%) Cisco
12 108 (1.10%) Splunk
13 90 (0.92%) CyberArk
14 88 (0.89%) Ariba
15 72 (0.73%) OpenAI
16 64 (0.65%) Sage
17 60 (0.61%) Citrix
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
20 46 (0.47%) Adobe