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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,124 7,160 7,649
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.43% 21.74% 20.40%
As % of the General category 32.56% 34.40% 34.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,053 4,664 4,790
10th Percentile £363 £335 £356
25th Percentile £450 £418 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £574
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -8.50% -2.75%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.78% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 148 124
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.41 £15.37
25th Percentile £19.03 £17.93 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -16.67% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £53.95 £55.00
90th Percentile £68.25 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £31.91
% change year-on-year +83.17% -24.79% +25.15%

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 31,090 20,816 22,001
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.61% 63.21% 58.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,051 12,970 12,980
10th Percentile £313 £275 £280
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £648
90th Percentile £740 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £477
% change year-on-year +5.26% -0.42% -4.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,784 1,246 924
10th Percentile £13.48 £13.51 £14.81
25th Percentile £16.01 £16.19 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.01 £32.14
Median % change year-on-year +9.98% -22.20% +11.79%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.00 £59.96
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £30.00
% change year-on-year +28.56% -28.70% +11.11%

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 13 October 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 13 October 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 13 October 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 8,652 £550 +0.92% 11,060
London 0 5,258 £600 +2.39% 7,401
UK excluding London 0 3,905 £509 +1.78% 4,396
Work from Home -1 2,804 £550 - 4,642
North of England 0 1,361 £513 +9.20% 1,119
South East -1 743 £500 -2.58% 1,030
North West -2 648 £502 +11.44% 585
Yorkshire +1 634 £514 +2.80% 404
Midlands -3 606 £523 +10.00% 556
Scotland +1 543 £463 -7.50% 555
West Midlands -2 450 £500 -4.76% 341
South West -5 340 £525 -4.55% 420
East of England +2 202 £530 -6.19% 340
East Midlands -2 150 £525 +25.00% 215
North East -9 72 £538 +22.86% 135
Wales +2 71 £525 +16.67% 117
Northern Ireland 0 63 £463 -11.90% 300
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 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
1 335 (3.31%) Confluence
2 262 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 97 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
4 84 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 83 (0.82%) Apache
6 52 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 23 (0.23%) SAS
9 22 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.11%) CICS
13 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
14 9 (0.089%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.079%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.059%) Appian
16 6 (0.059%) WebLogic
17 5 (0.049%) Adobe Experience Manager
17 5 (0.049%) JBoss
Applications
1 534 (5.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (2.17%) Microsoft Office
3 193 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 151 (1.49%) Microsoft Project
5 89 (0.88%) MS Visio
6 70 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.24%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.099%) Trello
9 9 (0.089%) Adobe Illustrator
9 9 (0.089%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.069%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) Windchill
12 3 (0.030%) 1Password
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.030%) Sketch
13 2 (0.020%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 448 (4.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
4 93 (0.92%) NetSuite
5 91 (0.90%) Oracle General Ledger
6 89 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
7 87 (0.86%) SAP FI
8 82 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
9 74 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
10 60 (0.59%) Oracle Financials
11 56 (0.55%) SAP CO
12 53 (0.52%) Workday HCM
13 51 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
14 49 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
15 44 (0.43%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
16 42 (0.41%) Aladdin
17 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
18 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
19 31 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
20 26 (0.26%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,627 (16.07%) Azure
2 1,114 (11.00%) AWS
3 655 (6.47%) Power Platform
4 572 (5.65%) GCP
5 376 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
6 342 (3.38%) GitHub
7 331 (3.27%) Microsoft 365
8 314 (3.10%) SaaS
9 272 (2.69%) Dynamics 365
10 232 (2.29%) Entra ID
11 225 (2.22%) Snowflake
12 164 (1.62%) Serverless
13 143 (1.41%) GitHub Actions
14 140 (1.38%) OCI
15 129 (1.27%) Microsoft Copilot
16 128 (1.26%) Amazon S3
16 128 (1.26%) Power Automate
17 126 (1.24%) dbt
18 116 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
19 107 (1.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 182 (1.80%) Firewall
2 173 (1.71%) Network Security
3 110 (1.09%) VPN
4 98 (0.97%) DNS
5 67 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 59 (0.58%) WAN
7 54 (0.53%) BGP
8 51 (0.50%) DHCP
9 40 (0.40%) SSL
10 39 (0.39%) Multicast
11 38 (0.38%) VLAN
12 34 (0.34%) LAN
12 34 (0.34%) OSPF
12 34 (0.34%) SAN
13 32 (0.32%) HTTP
14 31 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
15 30 (0.30%) Internet
16 29 (0.29%) Wireless
17 23 (0.23%) SD-WAN
18 20 (0.20%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 516 (5.10%) Power BI
2 294 (2.90%) SQL Server
3 262 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.01%) Metadata
5 168 (1.66%) Relational Database
6 150 (1.48%) Data Lake
7 135 (1.33%) PostgreSQL
8 130 (1.28%) Tableau
9 87 (0.86%) NoSQL
9 87 (0.86%) Oracle Database
10 85 (0.84%) BigQuery
11 83 (0.82%) MongoDB
12 59 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
13 57 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
14 54 (0.53%) Delta Lake
14 54 (0.53%) Power Query
15 46 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
15 46 (0.45%) Db2
16 44 (0.43%) Big Data
17 42 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 681 (6.73%) JIRA
2 355 (3.51%) Git
3 199 (1.97%) Jenkins
4 123 (1.21%) GitLab
5 68 (0.67%) Selenium
6 51 (0.50%) JUnit
7 45 (0.44%) Claude Code
8 42 (0.41%) Maven
9 40 (0.40%) Bitbucket
9 40 (0.40%) Cucumber
10 39 (0.39%) Gradle
11 35 (0.35%) REST Assured
12 32 (0.32%) SonarQube
12 32 (0.32%) Visual Studio
13 29 (0.29%) Cypress.io
13 29 (0.29%) Postman
14 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
15 25 (0.25%) ERwin
16 22 (0.22%) Mockito
16 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
General
1 3,187 (31.48%) Social Skills
2 2,198 (21.71%) Banking
3 1,452 (14.34%) Analytical Skills
4 555 (5.48%) Public Sector
5 538 (5.31%) Legal
6 476 (4.70%) Organisational Skills
7 405 (4.00%) Investment Banking
8 363 (3.59%) Retail
9 350 (3.46%) Influencing Skills
10 344 (3.40%) Front Office
11 313 (3.09%) Financial Institution
12 226 (2.23%) Manufacturing
13 212 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
14 200 (1.98%) Marketing
15 195 (1.93%) General Ledger
16 191 (1.89%) Billing
16 191 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 159 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
18 156 (1.54%) Local Government
19 149 (1.47%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,394 (13.77%) Analyst
2 1,153 (11.39%) Senior
3 998 (9.86%) Developer
4 973 (9.61%) Lead
5 887 (8.76%) Architect
6 740 (7.31%) Consultant
7 712 (7.03%) Business Analyst
8 679 (6.71%) Project Manager
9 359 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
10 293 (2.89%) Data Engineer
11 254 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 221 (2.18%) Senior Manager
13 216 (2.13%) Senior Developer
14 206 (2.03%) Programme Manager
15 204 (2.02%) Java Developer
16 202 (2.00%) Data Analyst
17 185 (1.83%) IT Manager
18 183 (1.81%) Accountant
19 165 (1.63%) Finance Manager
20 153 (1.51%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 435 (4.30%) Terraform
2 431 (4.26%) REST
3 286 (2.82%) Kafka
4 277 (2.74%) .NET
5 274 (2.71%) Oracle Fusion
6 246 (2.43%) React
7 201 (1.99%) Spring
8 197 (1.95%) Spring Boot
9 193 (1.91%) Middleware
10 151 (1.49%) PySpark
11 144 (1.42%) RESTful
12 119 (1.18%) JSON
13 114 (1.13%) XML
14 111 (1.10%) OAuth
15 100 (0.99%) SOAP
16 93 (0.92%) Web Services
17 86 (0.85%) AngularJS
17 86 (0.85%) Redux
18 84 (0.83%) HTML
19 76 (0.75%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 540 (5.33%) Onboarding
2 529 (5.23%) Product Ownership
3 494 (4.88%) Cloud Native
4 281 (2.78%) Management Information System
5 262 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
6 240 (2.37%) AI Agents
7 236 (2.33%) Data Structures
8 229 (2.26%) Virtual Team
9 228 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
10 210 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
11 198 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
12 192 (1.90%) Derivative
13 182 (1.80%) Data Centre
14 153 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 134 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
16 133 (1.31%) Fixed Income
17 124 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
18 116 (1.15%) Equities
19 114 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
20 113 (1.12%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 391 (3.86%) Windows
2 349 (3.45%) Linux
3 169 (1.67%) Unix
4 103 (1.02%) Windows Server
5 61 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.48%) Apple iOS
7 44 (0.43%) Android
8 41 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 38 (0.38%) macOS
10 34 (0.34%) zOS
11 23 (0.23%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.049%) CentOS
14 5 (0.049%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.040%) HPUX
15 4 (0.040%) SUSE
15 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
16 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,897 (28.62%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,105 (20.79%) Agile
3 1,393 (13.76%) AI
4 1,376 (13.59%) Migration
5 1,375 (13.58%) Problem-Solving
6 1,206 (11.91%) CI/CD
7 1,145 (11.31%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,128 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,055 (10.42%) DevOps
10 1,046 (10.33%) Analytics
11 958 (9.46%) Decision-Making
12 950 (9.38%) ERP
13 939 (9.27%) Roadmaps
14 925 (9.14%) Validation
15 776 (7.66%) Data Modelling
16 775 (7.66%) Project Management
17 768 (7.59%) Risk Management
18 760 (7.51%) User Acceptance Testing
19 714 (7.05%) Project Delivery
20 713 (7.04%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,386 (13.69%) SQL
2 1,337 (13.21%) Python
3 665 (6.57%) Java
4 365 (3.61%) C#
5 314 (3.10%) PowerShell
6 276 (2.73%) JavaScript
7 221 (2.18%) TypeScript
8 182 (1.80%) Bash
9 107 (1.06%) PL/SQL
10 96 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.77%) C++
12 75 (0.74%) Go
13 69 (0.68%) T-SQL
14 65 (0.64%) Bicep
15 62 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 53 (0.52%) Korn
17 47 (0.46%) Scala
18 37 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 31 (0.31%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.30%) VBA
Qualifications
1 797 (7.87%) Security Cleared
2 730 (7.21%) Degree
3 571 (5.64%) SC Cleared
4 260 (2.57%) PMP
5 259 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
6 238 (2.35%) PMI Certification
7 186 (1.84%) ACCA
8 166 (1.64%) CIMA
9 149 (1.47%) DV Cleared
10 139 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
11 126 (1.24%) CISSP
12 116 (1.15%) Azure Certification
13 89 (0.88%) AWS Certification
14 78 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
14 78 (0.77%) Master's Degree
15 68 (0.67%) CISM
16 51 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
17 45 (0.44%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 41 (0.40%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 737 (7.28%) Data Quality
2 420 (4.15%) QA
3 365 (3.61%) PMO
4 202 (2.00%) GDPR
5 129 (1.27%) NIST
6 123 (1.21%) GRC
7 118 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 109 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 91 (0.90%) SLA
10 89 (0.88%) IFRS
11 74 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.66%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.43%) PCI DSS
14 42 (0.41%) SEPA
15 40 (0.40%) GAAP
16 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 28 (0.28%) COBIT
19 27 (0.27%) NCSC
20 25 (0.25%) MiFID
System Software
1 279 (2.76%) Docker
2 248 (2.45%) Active Directory
3 107 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
5 31 (0.31%) vSphere
6 27 (0.27%) RACF
6 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 7 (0.069%) IAG
12 6 (0.059%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.049%) ACF2
14 4 (0.040%) Firmware
14 4 (0.040%) GPFS
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 519 (5.13%) Kubernetes
2 205 (2.02%) Ansible
3 99 (0.98%) Grafana
4 84 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.63%) SCCM
7 61 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 22 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.14%) Istio
14 11 (0.11%) Puppet
14 11 (0.11%) Tivoli
15 10 (0.099%) Cisco Prime
15 10 (0.099%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.099%) Packer
16 9 (0.089%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,501 (14.83%) Microsoft
2 902 (8.91%) SAP
3 877 (8.66%) Oracle
4 360 (3.56%) ServiceNow
5 357 (3.53%) Databricks
6 247 (2.44%) Google
6 247 (2.44%) Salesforce
7 204 (2.02%) IBM
8 164 (1.62%) VMware
9 160 (1.58%) Workday
10 137 (1.35%) Cisco
11 129 (1.27%) Splunk
12 122 (1.21%) Ariba
13 91 (0.90%) OpenAI
14 90 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 63 (0.62%) Bloomberg
16 58 (0.57%) Citrix
17 57 (0.56%) Sage
18 56 (0.55%) Murex
19 53 (0.52%) F5