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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,780 7,328 8,202
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.58% 22.65% 19.00%
As % of the General category 33.89% 35.94% 33.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,071 4,823 5,490
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £447 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £719
90th Percentile £800 £814 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 253 145 256
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £13.31
25th Percentile £20.31 £22.90 £17.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £32.50 £30.41
Median % change year-on-year +30.15% +6.86% +0.12%
75th Percentile £54.50 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £87.40 £75.75 £69.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.95 £34.21
% change year-on-year +57.28% -18.30% -10.80%

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 28,861 20,389 24,702
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.84% 63.01% 57.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,315 12,811 15,435
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £471 £488
% change year-on-year +6.15% -3.38% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,989 1,028 1,922
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.36 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.38 £16.30 £15.67
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.75 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +21.50% -16.33% +4.75%
75th Percentile £61.18 £52.75 £53.94
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.84 £31.25
% change year-on-year +42.29% -26.91% +20.42%

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 10 July 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 10 July 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 10 July 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 8,553 £550 - 4,555
London 0 5,122 £575 -4.17% 2,461
UK excluding London +1 3,912 £500 +1.01% 2,743
Work from Home -1 2,848 £550 -4.35% 1,824
North of England 0 1,325 £500 +6.72% 708
South East 0 734 £500 -4.76% 888
North West +3 691 £475 +5.56% 363
Midlands 0 667 £500 +11.11% 439
Yorkshire 0 583 £525 +7.42% 261
Scotland 0 496 £475 -2.86% 137
West Midlands +1 493 £500 +0.81% 238
South West -4 384 £525 -4.55% 263
East of England +5 211 £525 -8.70% 227
East Midlands 0 166 £494 +16.18% 200
Wales +4 85 £525 +13.51% 57
Northern Ireland -1 60 £475 +11.76% 70
North East -18 52 £500 +13.64% 93
Channel Islands - 3 £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
1 340 (3.48%) Confluence
2 232 (2.37%) SharePoint
3 86 (0.88%) Apache Spark
4 75 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
5 61 (0.62%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.35%) SAS
8 30 (0.31%) CMS
9 25 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) CICS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.12%) Camunda
12 12 (0.12%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.072%) Appian
16 6 (0.061%) Hyperledger
17 5 (0.051%) WebLogic
18 4 (0.041%) JBoss
Applications
1 523 (5.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (2.33%) Microsoft Office
3 174 (1.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 154 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 120 (1.23%) MS Visio
6 68 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.051%) Sketch
9 4 (0.041%) Adobe Illustrator
9 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.041%) Notion
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.041%) Photoshop
9 4 (0.041%) Trello
10 2 (0.020%) Adobe Premiere
10 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.020%) Final Cut Pro
10 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 449 (4.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 112 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 99 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
5 79 (0.81%) Oracle ERP
6 78 (0.80%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 67 (0.69%) SAP FI
8 59 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
9 54 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
9 54 (0.55%) Oracle General Ledger
10 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
11 44 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
11 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
12 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
13 33 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
14 29 (0.30%) Workday HCM
15 28 (0.29%) SAP ERP
16 26 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
16 26 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
16 26 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,516 (15.50%) Azure
2 1,107 (11.32%) AWS
3 647 (6.62%) Power Platform
4 501 (5.12%) GCP
5 329 (3.36%) Azure DevOps
6 321 (3.28%) SaaS
7 283 (2.89%) Microsoft 365
8 267 (2.73%) GitHub
9 230 (2.35%) Dynamics 365
10 206 (2.11%) Snowflake
11 188 (1.92%) Entra ID
12 146 (1.49%) Serverless
13 129 (1.32%) Amazon S3
14 126 (1.29%) OCI
15 108 (1.10%) Power Automate
16 106 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 101 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
18 100 (1.02%) dbt
19 99 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
20 91 (0.93%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 184 (1.88%) Firewall
2 144 (1.47%) Network Security
3 86 (0.88%) DNS
4 80 (0.82%) VPN
5 64 (0.65%) WAN
6 61 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 45 (0.46%) BGP
7 45 (0.46%) SSL
8 40 (0.41%) LAN
9 36 (0.37%) DHCP
10 35 (0.36%) HTTP
11 33 (0.34%) Multicast
12 31 (0.32%) OSPF
13 26 (0.27%) Internet
14 24 (0.25%) MPLS
14 24 (0.25%) SD-WAN
15 21 (0.21%) Cisco ASA
16 20 (0.20%) Wireless
17 18 (0.18%) SAN
17 18 (0.18%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 546 (5.58%) Power BI
2 273 (2.79%) SQL Server
3 254 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
4 208 (2.13%) Metadata
5 186 (1.90%) Relational Database
6 179 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
7 154 (1.57%) Tableau
8 143 (1.46%) Data Lake
9 91 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
10 88 (0.90%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.73%) MongoDB
13 70 (0.72%) Big Data
14 69 (0.71%) BigQuery
15 66 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
16 49 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 48 (0.49%) Power Query
18 47 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
19 44 (0.45%) Delta Lake
20 42 (0.43%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 687 (7.02%) JIRA
2 262 (2.68%) Git
3 178 (1.82%) Jenkins
4 99 (1.01%) GitLab
5 56 (0.57%) JUnit
6 47 (0.48%) Cucumber
7 45 (0.46%) Selenium
8 31 (0.32%) Postman
9 30 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.27%) ERwin
10 26 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
11 25 (0.26%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 23 (0.24%) Maven
13 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
14 20 (0.20%) MLflow
15 19 (0.19%) Zephyr
16 17 (0.17%) Bitbucket
16 17 (0.17%) Hudson
16 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,865 (29.29%) Social Skills
2 1,804 (18.45%) Banking
3 1,324 (13.54%) Analytical Skills
4 556 (5.69%) Public Sector
5 489 (5.00%) Legal
6 381 (3.90%) Investment Banking
7 363 (3.71%) Financial Institution
8 343 (3.51%) Front Office
9 328 (3.35%) Organisational Skills
10 320 (3.27%) Retail
11 257 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
12 244 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
13 187 (1.91%) Manufacturing
14 168 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 166 (1.70%) Local Government
16 162 (1.66%) Billing
17 158 (1.62%) General Ledger
18 149 (1.52%) Marketing
19 133 (1.36%) Law
20 132 (1.35%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,446 (14.79%) Analyst
2 1,043 (10.66%) Senior
3 1,038 (10.61%) Lead
4 988 (10.10%) Developer
5 900 (9.20%) Architect
6 752 (7.69%) Business Analyst
7 712 (7.28%) Project Manager
8 669 (6.84%) Consultant
9 345 (3.53%) Solutions Architect
10 324 (3.31%) Data Engineer
11 237 (2.42%) Financial Analyst
12 231 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 212 (2.17%) Java Developer
14 205 (2.10%) Accountant
14 205 (2.10%) Data Analyst
15 190 (1.94%) Programme Manager
16 187 (1.91%) Finance Manager
17 179 (1.83%) Senior Developer
17 179 (1.83%) Software Engineer
18 177 (1.81%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 306 (3.13%) REST
2 272 (2.78%) React
3 270 (2.76%) .NET
4 268 (2.74%) Kafka
5 211 (2.16%) Oracle Fusion
6 201 (2.06%) Middleware
7 182 (1.86%) Spring
8 170 (1.74%) Spring Boot
9 138 (1.41%) RESTful
10 117 (1.20%) PySpark
10 117 (1.20%) Redux
11 113 (1.16%) Node.js
12 94 (0.96%) AngularJS
12 94 (0.96%) JSON
13 93 (0.95%) OAuth
14 80 (0.82%) XML
15 68 (0.70%) CSS
16 66 (0.67%) HTML
17 65 (0.66%) SOAP
18 64 (0.65%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 458 (4.68%) Onboarding
2 426 (4.36%) Product Ownership
3 416 (4.25%) Cloud Native
4 268 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
5 220 (2.25%) Data Structures
5 220 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 180 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
7 175 (1.79%) Derivative
8 173 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
8 173 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 171 (1.75%) Fixed Income
10 166 (1.70%) Data Centre
11 163 (1.67%) Virtual Team
12 134 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
13 129 (1.32%) AI Agents
14 126 (1.29%) Equities
15 117 (1.20%) Public Cloud
16 111 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
16 111 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 95 (0.97%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 323 (3.30%) Windows
2 282 (2.88%) Linux
3 162 (1.66%) Unix
4 71 (0.73%) Windows Server
5 39 (0.40%) Solaris
5 39 (0.40%) zOS
6 37 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
8 35 (0.36%) Apple iOS
9 29 (0.30%) Android
10 25 (0.26%) Mac OS
11 20 (0.20%) AIX
12 9 (0.092%) VMS
13 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
13 8 (0.082%) Ubuntu
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,135 (21.83%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,967 (20.11%) Agile
3 1,352 (13.82%) Migration
4 1,308 (13.37%) Problem-Solving
5 1,134 (11.60%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,110 (11.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,077 (11.01%) AI
8 1,028 (10.51%) DevOps
9 1,014 (10.37%) CI/CD
10 1,008 (10.31%) ERP
11 973 (9.95%) Analytics
12 871 (8.91%) Decision-Making
13 821 (8.39%) Validation
14 810 (8.28%) Roadmaps
15 805 (8.23%) Data Modelling
16 777 (7.94%) User Acceptance Testing
17 776 (7.93%) Project Management
18 701 (7.17%) Change Management
19 685 (7.00%) Business Intelligence
20 629 (6.43%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,297 (13.26%) SQL
2 1,188 (12.15%) Python
3 654 (6.69%) Java
4 383 (3.92%) C#
5 267 (2.73%) TypeScript
6 263 (2.69%) JavaScript
7 222 (2.27%) PowerShell
8 96 (0.98%) Bash
9 91 (0.93%) PL/SQL
10 86 (0.88%) C++
11 82 (0.84%) Go
12 74 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 71 (0.73%) Shell Script
14 59 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 51 (0.52%) VBA
16 49 (0.50%) Scala
17 40 (0.41%) Bicep
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
19 31 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 29 (0.30%) R
Qualifications
1 753 (7.70%) Degree
2 739 (7.56%) Security Cleared
3 530 (5.42%) SC Cleared
4 227 (2.32%) PMP
5 211 (2.16%) ACCA
6 207 (2.12%) PMI Certification
7 193 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
8 190 (1.94%) CIMA
9 159 (1.63%) CISSP
10 132 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 104 (1.06%) DV Cleared
12 94 (0.96%) CISM
13 93 (0.95%) Azure Certification
14 90 (0.92%) Master's Degree
15 74 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
16 59 (0.60%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 45 (0.46%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 608 (6.22%) Data Quality
2 424 (4.34%) QA
3 344 (3.52%) PMO
4 301 (3.08%) GDPR
5 162 (1.66%) NIST
6 127 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.15%) SLA
8 111 (1.13%) GRC
8 111 (1.13%) IFRS
9 102 (1.04%) Accessibility
10 98 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 68 (0.70%) ISO 20022
12 63 (0.64%) GAAP
13 58 (0.59%) PCI DSS
14 43 (0.44%) SEPA
15 38 (0.39%) Solvency II
16 34 (0.35%) NCSC
17 31 (0.32%) PSD2
18 30 (0.31%) SOC 2
19 29 (0.30%) MiFID
System Software
1 283 (2.89%) Docker
2 202 (2.07%) Active Directory
3 61 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 27 (0.28%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (0.20%) RACF
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 13 (0.13%) NFS
11 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.061%) GPFS
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.041%) IAG
15 3 (0.031%) GridGain
15 3 (0.031%) SRDF
16 2 (0.020%) ACF2
16 2 (0.020%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 446 (4.56%) Kubernetes
2 319 (3.26%) Terraform
3 159 (1.63%) Ansible
4 95 (0.97%) Grafana
5 80 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 67 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 52 (0.53%) SCCM
8 51 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.27%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) FortiGate
11 19 (0.19%) Progress Chef
12 17 (0.17%) Argo
12 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) vRealize
13 16 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 16 (0.16%) Jamf Pro
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
14 14 (0.14%) Puppet
15 13 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,252 (12.80%) Microsoft
2 845 (8.64%) SAP
3 825 (8.44%) Oracle
4 349 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 297 (3.04%) Databricks
6 221 (2.26%) Salesforce
7 215 (2.20%) Google
8 137 (1.40%) Workday
9 136 (1.39%) IBM
10 123 (1.26%) VMware
11 119 (1.22%) Splunk
12 109 (1.11%) Cisco
13 95 (0.97%) CyberArk
14 93 (0.95%) Ariba
15 66 (0.67%) OpenAI
15 66 (0.67%) Sage
16 65 (0.66%) Citrix
17 59 (0.60%) Informatica
18 54 (0.55%) Bloomberg
19 50 (0.51%) Murex