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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,405 6,549 8,221
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.30% 22.35% 18.76%
As % of the General category 33.13% 35.39% 32.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,315 4,317 5,494
10th Percentile £351 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £573 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.38% -0.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 199 108 245
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.26 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £39.06 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.00% +44.65% -16.28%
75th Percentile £43.88 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.67 £83.20 £55.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.20 £52.50 £30.41
% change year-on-year -57.72% +72.63% -32.42%

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 25,372 18,505 25,531
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.25% 63.17% 58.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,742 11,825 16,175
10th Percentile £304 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,589 769 1,908
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £15.39
Median hourly rate £27.50 £28.75 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -21.43%
75th Percentile £59.00 £56.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £26.42 £26.00
% change year-on-year -4.80% +1.61% -16.85%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 7,435 £535 -6.96% 3,978
London 0 4,514 £575 -8.00% 1,983
UK excluding London 0 3,325 £500 - 2,636
Work from Home -2 2,365 £538 -8.82% 1,730
North of England +3 1,082 £475 - 633
South East 0 646 £503 -4.74% 901
North West +5 580 £463 -0.54% 339
Midlands -1 578 £475 -5.00% 374
Yorkshire 0 456 £500 +2.30% 219
Scotland 0 394 £500 +4.38% 132
West Midlands 0 382 £490 -6.67% 219
South West -3 331 £525 +5.00% 292
East of England -2 200 £523 -5.00% 228
East Midlands 0 191 £450 +0.67% 153
Wales +23 103 £413 +10.00% 75
North East -9 46 £488 +6.56% 87
Northern Ireland 0 42 £513 +46.43% 50
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
1 328 (3.90%) Confluence
2 213 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.58%) Apache
5 49 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
6 38 (0.45%) SAS
7 29 (0.35%) CMS
8 19 (0.23%) CICS
8 19 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
9 17 (0.20%) Appian
10 15 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 15 (0.18%) Camunda
11 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 10 (0.12%) TPMS
15 9 (0.11%) IIS
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 544 (6.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 246 (2.93%) Microsoft Office
3 188 (2.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 173 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
5 130 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.43%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.17%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Sketch
10 8 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.095%) InVision
11 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.059%) Notion
13 3 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Captivate
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 361 (4.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.38%) Oracle Payables
3 100 (1.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 94 (1.12%) NetSuite
5 85 (1.01%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 76 (0.90%) Oracle EBS
7 64 (0.76%) SAP FI
8 62 (0.74%) Oracle General Ledger
9 56 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
11 49 (0.58%) SAP CO
12 45 (0.54%) SAP FI/CO
13 41 (0.49%) Oracle Assets
14 36 (0.43%) Oracle Financials
15 35 (0.42%) Oracle Cash Management
16 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
17 32 (0.38%) Aladdin
18 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
19 29 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
19 29 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,270 (15.11%) Azure
2 960 (11.42%) AWS
3 608 (7.23%) Power Platform
4 379 (4.51%) GCP
5 289 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
6 276 (3.28%) SaaS
7 271 (3.22%) Microsoft 365
8 235 (2.80%) GitHub
9 234 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
10 146 (1.74%) OCI
10 146 (1.74%) Serverless
11 138 (1.64%) Snowflake
12 130 (1.55%) Entra ID
13 119 (1.42%) Amazon S3
14 97 (1.15%) Power Automate
15 90 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
16 88 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
17 87 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
17 87 (1.04%) OpenShift
18 75 (0.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.93%) Firewall
2 107 (1.27%) Network Security
3 76 (0.90%) WAN
4 65 (0.77%) DNS
5 58 (0.69%) VPN
6 45 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 42 (0.50%) LAN
7 42 (0.50%) SD-WAN
8 33 (0.39%) BGP
9 31 (0.37%) HTTP
10 29 (0.35%) SSL
11 28 (0.33%) OSPF
12 27 (0.32%) Multicast
13 24 (0.29%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
16 19 (0.23%) DHCP
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
18 17 (0.20%) VSAN
18 17 (0.20%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 528 (6.28%) Power BI
2 216 (2.57%) Data Warehouse
3 206 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 172 (2.05%) Metadata
5 163 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
6 150 (1.78%) Tableau
7 126 (1.50%) Relational Database
8 118 (1.40%) Data Lake
9 105 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
10 86 (1.02%) NoSQL
11 75 (0.89%) Big Data
12 64 (0.76%) BigQuery
12 64 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 56 (0.67%) MongoDB
14 45 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.50%) Power Query
16 42 (0.50%) Snowflake Schema
17 39 (0.46%) DynamoDB
18 38 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 669 (7.96%) JIRA
2 210 (2.50%) Git
3 200 (2.38%) Jenkins
4 117 (1.39%) GitLab
5 59 (0.70%) JUnit
6 57 (0.68%) Cucumber
7 43 (0.51%) Selenium
8 40 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
9 29 (0.35%) Postman
10 25 (0.30%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.30%) Visual Studio
11 23 (0.27%) MLflow
12 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
13 18 (0.21%) ERwin
13 18 (0.21%) Maven
13 18 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
14 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
15 14 (0.17%) Hudson
16 12 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 2,624 (31.22%) Social Skills
2 1,563 (18.60%) Banking
3 1,137 (13.53%) Analytical Skills
4 594 (7.07%) Public Sector
5 324 (3.85%) Legal
6 322 (3.83%) Financial Institution
7 283 (3.37%) Front Office
8 276 (3.28%) Investment Banking
9 241 (2.87%) Organisational Skills
10 236 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
11 230 (2.74%) Manufacturing
12 227 (2.70%) Marketing
13 226 (2.69%) Retail
14 204 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
15 193 (2.30%) Telecoms
16 139 (1.65%) General Ledger
17 128 (1.52%) Local Government
18 125 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
19 122 (1.45%) Law
20 110 (1.31%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,292 (15.37%) Analyst
2 856 (10.18%) Developer
3 845 (10.05%) Senior
4 834 (9.92%) Lead
5 747 (8.89%) Architect
6 699 (8.32%) Business Analyst
7 668 (7.95%) Project Manager
8 619 (7.36%) Consultant
9 295 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 259 (3.08%) Data Engineer
11 202 (2.40%) Financial Analyst
12 190 (2.26%) Data Analyst
12 190 (2.26%) Senior Manager
13 186 (2.21%) Finance Manager
14 167 (1.99%) Programme Manager
15 153 (1.82%) Java Developer
16 152 (1.81%) Accountant
17 137 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
18 130 (1.55%) Senior Analyst
19 124 (1.48%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (3.15%) Kafka
2 252 (3.00%) REST
3 214 (2.55%) .NET
4 200 (2.38%) React
5 168 (2.00%) Middleware
6 156 (1.86%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (1.75%) Spring
8 135 (1.61%) Spring Boot
9 128 (1.52%) RESTful
10 115 (1.37%) Node.js
11 97 (1.15%) AngularJS
12 95 (1.13%) PySpark
13 84 (1.00%) OAuth
14 79 (0.94%) XML
15 76 (0.90%) JSON
16 74 (0.88%) HTML
17 73 (0.87%) Redux
18 71 (0.84%) CSS
19 67 (0.80%) Pandas
20 59 (0.70%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 349 (4.15%) Onboarding
2 313 (3.72%) Product Ownership
3 273 (3.25%) Cloud Native
4 225 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
5 186 (2.21%) Management Information System
6 163 (1.94%) Data Structures
7 160 (1.90%) Derivative
8 158 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
9 145 (1.73%) Data Centre
10 144 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 141 (1.68%) Fixed Income
12 132 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
13 111 (1.32%) Equities
14 100 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
14 100 (1.19%) Public Cloud
15 99 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
16 95 (1.13%) Virtual Team
17 80 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
18 65 (0.77%) CMDB
19 63 (0.75%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 285 (3.39%) Linux
2 276 (3.28%) Windows
3 139 (1.65%) Unix
4 68 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 50 (0.59%) Windows 10
6 33 (0.39%) Android
7 27 (0.32%) Mac OS
8 25 (0.30%) zOS
9 24 (0.29%) Apple iOS
10 20 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.24%) Solaris
11 16 (0.19%) AIX
12 7 (0.083%) VMS
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.048%) MVS
14 4 (0.048%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.036%) SUSE
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,727 (20.55%) Agile
2 1,649 (19.62%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,245 (14.81%) Problem-Solving
4 1,137 (13.53%) Migration
5 938 (11.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 907 (10.79%) Continuous Improvement
7 898 (10.68%) DevOps
8 873 (10.39%) ERP
9 838 (9.97%) CI/CD
10 819 (9.74%) Analytics
11 809 (9.63%) Project Management
12 775 (9.22%) Business Intelligence
13 755 (8.98%) AI
14 673 (8.01%) Decision-Making
15 668 (7.95%) Data Modelling
16 644 (7.66%) Roadmaps
17 626 (7.45%) Validation
18 613 (7.29%) User Acceptance Testing
19 602 (7.16%) Change Management
20 579 (6.89%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,188 (14.13%) SQL
2 981 (11.67%) Python
3 562 (6.69%) Java
4 311 (3.70%) C#
5 224 (2.67%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.32%) TypeScript
7 164 (1.95%) PowerShell
8 108 (1.28%) C++
9 71 (0.84%) Bash
10 70 (0.83%) PL/SQL
11 68 (0.81%) Go
12 61 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 54 (0.64%) VBA
14 50 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 45 (0.54%) Shell Script
16 38 (0.45%) Scala
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 29 (0.35%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.32%) Bicep
20 26 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 751 (8.94%) Degree
2 703 (8.36%) Security Cleared
3 499 (5.94%) SC Cleared
4 209 (2.49%) PMP
5 200 (2.38%) PMI Certification
6 197 (2.34%) ACCA
7 187 (2.22%) CIMA
8 147 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
9 143 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
10 125 (1.49%) Master's Degree
11 121 (1.44%) CISSP
12 85 (1.01%) DV Cleared
13 80 (0.95%) CISM
14 69 (0.82%) Azure Certification
15 64 (0.76%) AWS Certification
16 44 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
17 38 (0.45%) ISTQB
18 36 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
19 34 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 30 (0.36%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 469 (5.58%) Data Quality
2 407 (4.84%) QA
3 336 (4.00%) PMO
4 300 (3.57%) GDPR
5 146 (1.74%) NIST
6 123 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.31%) SLA
8 93 (1.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 92 (1.09%) IFRS
10 77 (0.92%) Accessibility
11 72 (0.86%) PCI DSS
12 69 (0.82%) GRC
13 59 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 50 (0.59%) GAAP
15 39 (0.46%) PSD2
16 35 (0.42%) SEPA
17 34 (0.40%) NCSC
18 27 (0.32%) Basel III
18 27 (0.32%) MiFID
19 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 298 (3.55%) Docker
2 151 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 60 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.40%) vSphere
5 25 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.15%) NFS
8 12 (0.14%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.095%) Hyper-V
11 5 (0.059%) HDFS
11 5 (0.059%) RACF
11 5 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.048%) ACF2
12 4 (0.048%) ISA Server
12 4 (0.048%) KVM
12 4 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
13 3 (0.036%) Firmware
13 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 393 (4.68%) Kubernetes
2 253 (3.01%) Terraform
3 130 (1.55%) Ansible
4 86 (1.02%) Grafana
5 68 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 59 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.59%) SCCM
8 35 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Control-M
12 17 (0.20%) Argo
13 16 (0.19%) Progress Chef
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 13 (0.15%) Puppet
14 13 (0.15%) vCenter Server
15 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.14%) CASB
16 11 (0.13%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,109 (13.19%) Microsoft
2 800 (9.52%) SAP
3 734 (8.73%) Oracle
4 330 (3.93%) ServiceNow
5 220 (2.62%) Databricks
6 191 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.08%) Google
8 146 (1.74%) Workday
9 138 (1.64%) Cisco
10 113 (1.34%) VMware
11 112 (1.33%) Splunk
12 106 (1.26%) IBM
13 79 (0.94%) Citrix
14 78 (0.93%) Ariba
15 73 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 73 (0.87%) Sage
16 55 (0.65%) Informatica
17 54 (0.64%) OpenAI
18 48 (0.57%) Bloomberg
18 48 (0.57%) Murex