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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,447 6,653 8,490
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.22% 21.16% 18.98%
As % of the General category 32.42% 34.17% 32.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,721 4,151 5,777
10th Percentile £350 £356 £356
25th Percentile £425 £459 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £668 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -0.70% -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 90 157
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.11 £11.77
25th Percentile £17.05 £22.27 £14.06
Median hourly rate £22.85 £28.25 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.12% +31.40% -14.00%
75th Percentile £39.50 £60.00 £42.50
90th Percentile £65.03 £78.88 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -39.53%

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 22,967 19,471 26,307
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.28% 61.92% 58.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,411 11,610 17,070
10th Percentile £286 £284 £265
25th Percentile £400 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £731 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.09% -3.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,400 630 1,545
10th Percentile £13.71 £15.62 £13.16
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.00 £15.17
Median hourly rate £22.50 £28.21 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.23% +8.48% +4.00%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £55.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.85 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £26.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -20.75% +6.00% +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 31 January 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 31 January 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 31 January 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 6,541 £535 -10.08% 3,239
London -1 3,991 £575 -5.74% 1,466
UK excluding London -2 2,943 £497 -0.70% 2,589
Work from Home -1 2,087 £525 -12.50% 1,301
North of England +2 933 £475 -3.06% 570
South East -1 541 £503 -4.29% 983
Midlands -3 526 £490 -5.77% 368
North West +3 462 £450 -5.26% 301
Yorkshire 0 422 £500 -2.91% 208
Scotland 0 386 £488 +4.67% 114
West Midlands -4 326 £515 -6.36% 219
South West -7 291 £525 -1.87% 285
East Midlands 0 198 £445 +5.33% 149
East of England -1 172 £525 - 209
Wales +29 87 £413 -12.00% 78
Northern Ireland -1 56 £494 +45.22% 35
North East -8 50 £488 +5.41% 71
Channel Islands +1 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
1 324 (4.35%) Confluence
2 207 (2.78%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 64 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
5 59 (0.79%) Apache
6 55 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.40%) SAS
8 29 (0.39%) CMS
9 21 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.21%) Ethereum
10 16 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 15 (0.20%) Appian
11 15 (0.20%) HCL Notes
11 15 (0.20%) IIS
12 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.17%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.17%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
13 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 508 (6.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 291 (3.91%) Microsoft Office
3 208 (2.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 167 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
5 133 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 38 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 30 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 13 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.081%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.067%) Notion
14 5 (0.067%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.027%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.027%) InDesign
16 2 (0.027%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 294 (3.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 122 (1.64%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.29%) Oracle Receivables
4 85 (1.14%) Oracle EBS
5 78 (1.05%) Oracle General Ledger
6 68 (0.91%) SAP FI
7 65 (0.87%) NetSuite
8 64 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
9 56 (0.75%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 56 (0.75%) SAP CO
10 52 (0.70%) Oracle Cash Management
11 50 (0.67%) SAP FI/CO
12 49 (0.66%) Oracle Assets
13 46 (0.62%) Oracle EBS R12
14 42 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
15 41 (0.55%) Oracle ERP
16 38 (0.51%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 37 (0.50%) Workday HCM
18 30 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
19 27 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,107 (14.87%) Azure
2 896 (12.03%) AWS
3 532 (7.14%) Power Platform
4 347 (4.66%) GCP
5 260 (3.49%) Microsoft 365
6 240 (3.22%) SaaS
7 229 (3.08%) Azure DevOps
8 213 (2.86%) Dynamics 365
9 200 (2.69%) GitHub
10 142 (1.91%) Serverless
11 141 (1.89%) OCI
12 131 (1.76%) Snowflake
13 120 (1.61%) Entra ID
14 96 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (1.20%) Amazon S3
16 88 (1.18%) Power Automate
17 74 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 73 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
19 69 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
20 67 (0.90%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 123 (1.65%) Firewall
2 74 (0.99%) Network Security
3 67 (0.90%) WAN
4 42 (0.56%) DNS
5 40 (0.54%) VPN
6 39 (0.52%) LAN
6 39 (0.52%) SD-WAN
7 33 (0.44%) TCP/IP
8 32 (0.43%) Wireless
9 29 (0.39%) HTTP
9 29 (0.39%) Skype
10 24 (0.32%) SSL
11 22 (0.30%) DHCP
11 22 (0.30%) SSH
12 19 (0.26%) Internet
12 19 (0.26%) Kerberos
13 18 (0.24%) BGP
13 18 (0.24%) OSPF
14 13 (0.17%) Cisco IOS
14 13 (0.17%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 462 (6.20%) Power BI
2 200 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
3 193 (2.59%) SQL Server
4 152 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
5 131 (1.76%) Tableau
6 125 (1.68%) NoSQL
7 122 (1.64%) Relational Database
8 114 (1.53%) Metadata
9 113 (1.52%) Data Lake
10 87 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (0.99%) MongoDB
12 72 (0.97%) Oracle Database
13 66 (0.89%) Big Data
14 51 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 42 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.52%) Hadoop
17 37 (0.50%) MySQL
18 36 (0.48%) Power Query
18 36 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 32 (0.43%) DB2
Development Applications
1 603 (8.10%) JIRA
2 261 (3.50%) Jenkins
3 213 (2.86%) Git
4 154 (2.07%) GitLab
5 79 (1.06%) JUnit
6 58 (0.78%) Cucumber
7 52 (0.70%) Selenium
8 49 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
9 48 (0.64%) Bitbucket
10 39 (0.52%) Postman
11 33 (0.44%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.32%) Gradle
13 22 (0.30%) Maven
14 21 (0.28%) Liquibase
14 21 (0.28%) MLflow
14 21 (0.28%) REST Assured
15 20 (0.27%) Cypress.io
16 19 (0.26%) SonarQube
17 17 (0.23%) JMeter
18 15 (0.20%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,605 (34.98%) Social Skills
2 1,518 (20.38%) Banking
3 982 (13.19%) Analytical Skills
4 607 (8.15%) Public Sector
5 334 (4.49%) Financial Institution
6 321 (4.31%) Marketing
7 294 (3.95%) Manufacturing
8 282 (3.79%) Investment Banking
9 277 (3.72%) Telecoms
10 269 (3.61%) Front Office
11 268 (3.60%) Legal
12 223 (2.99%) Organisational Skills
13 212 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
14 183 (2.46%) Electronics
15 166 (2.23%) Influencing Skills
16 151 (2.03%) Retail
17 135 (1.81%) General Ledger
18 129 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
19 126 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 111 (1.49%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,189 (15.97%) Analyst
2 837 (11.24%) Developer
3 732 (9.83%) Senior
4 628 (8.43%) Business Analyst
5 595 (7.99%) Architect
6 588 (7.90%) Project Manager
7 570 (7.65%) Consultant
8 563 (7.56%) Lead
9 247 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
10 187 (2.51%) Data Analyst
11 166 (2.23%) Data Engineer
12 162 (2.18%) Financial Analyst
13 159 (2.14%) Programme Manager
14 146 (1.96%) Java Developer
14 146 (1.96%) Senior Developer
15 139 (1.87%) Senior Manager
16 134 (1.80%) Software Engineer
17 112 (1.50%) Finance Manager
17 112 (1.50%) IT Manager
18 111 (1.49%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (3.73%) REST
2 232 (3.12%) Kafka
3 212 (2.85%) .NET
4 165 (2.22%) React
5 158 (2.12%) RESTful
6 155 (2.08%) Oracle Fusion
7 153 (2.05%) Spring
8 125 (1.68%) Spring Boot
9 116 (1.56%) Middleware
10 106 (1.42%) AngularJS
11 90 (1.21%) Pandas
12 89 (1.20%) XML
13 87 (1.17%) HTML
14 80 (1.07%) Node.js
14 80 (1.07%) NumPy
15 76 (1.02%) CSS
16 75 (1.01%) PySpark
17 73 (0.98%) OAuth
18 72 (0.97%) JSON
19 70 (0.94%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 322 (4.32%) Onboarding
2 305 (4.10%) Product Ownership
3 222 (2.98%) Cloud Native
4 171 (2.30%) Derivative
4 171 (2.30%) Management Information System
5 162 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
6 155 (2.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 135 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
7 135 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
8 130 (1.75%) Data Centre
9 129 (1.73%) Data Structures
10 126 (1.69%) Equities
11 123 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
12 114 (1.53%) Fixed Income
13 105 (1.41%) Public Cloud
14 94 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
15 89 (1.20%) Hedge funds
16 79 (1.06%) Virtual Team
17 76 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
18 74 (0.99%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 347 (4.66%) Linux
2 316 (4.24%) Windows
3 150 (2.01%) Unix
4 69 (0.93%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.86%) Windows Server
6 61 (0.82%) Mac OS
7 59 (0.79%) Android
8 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.13%) zOS
11 7 (0.094%) VMS
12 6 (0.081%) CentOS
13 5 (0.067%) Solaris
13 5 (0.067%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.054%) AIX
14 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.040%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
16 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,714 (23.02%) Agile
2 1,397 (18.76%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,209 (16.23%) Problem-Solving
4 868 (11.66%) Migration
5 827 (11.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 817 (10.97%) DevOps
7 786 (10.55%) CI/CD
8 743 (9.98%) Business Intelligence
9 726 (9.75%) Project Management
10 725 (9.74%) Analytics
11 659 (8.85%) ERP
12 644 (8.65%) Continuous Improvement
13 554 (7.44%) AI
14 537 (7.21%) Decision-Making
15 533 (7.16%) Change Management
16 527 (7.08%) Roadmaps
17 520 (6.98%) Risk Management
18 505 (6.78%) Data Modelling
19 491 (6.59%) User Acceptance Testing
20 478 (6.42%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,115 (14.97%) SQL
2 942 (12.65%) Python
3 530 (7.12%) Java
4 308 (4.14%) C#
5 207 (2.78%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.74%) PowerShell
7 156 (2.09%) C++
8 154 (2.07%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 66 (0.89%) Bash
10 66 (0.89%) Go
11 53 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 50 (0.67%) VBA
13 42 (0.56%) R
14 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
15 38 (0.51%) T-SQL
16 34 (0.46%) Rust
17 33 (0.44%) Groovy
18 32 (0.43%) Scala
19 29 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 808 (10.85%) Degree
2 580 (7.79%) Security Cleared
3 434 (5.83%) SC Cleared
4 192 (2.58%) PMI Certification
5 185 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 181 (2.43%) PMP
7 166 (2.23%) Master's Degree
8 147 (1.97%) ACCA
9 135 (1.81%) CIMA
10 116 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
11 90 (1.21%) AWS Certification
12 86 (1.15%) CISSP
13 62 (0.83%) CISM
14 61 (0.82%) DV Cleared
15 59 (0.79%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
17 39 (0.52%) CBAP
18 34 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
19 31 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
20 29 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (5.13%) QA
2 344 (4.62%) Data Quality
3 281 (3.77%) PMO
4 250 (3.36%) GDPR
5 125 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 121 (1.62%) NIST
7 109 (1.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 97 (1.30%) SLA
9 92 (1.24%) Accessibility
10 74 (0.99%) PCI DSS
11 72 (0.97%) IFRS
12 63 (0.85%) GRC
13 54 (0.73%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.62%) PSD2
15 37 (0.50%) MiFID
15 37 (0.50%) SEPA
16 35 (0.47%) NCSC
17 31 (0.42%) Basel III
18 30 (0.40%) GAAP
19 29 (0.39%) COBIT
System Software
1 337 (4.53%) Docker
2 196 (2.63%) Active Directory
3 53 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
5 23 (0.31%) vSphere
6 12 (0.16%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.12%) GPFS
8 9 (0.12%) NFS
9 8 (0.11%) HDFS
9 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 8 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.067%) Firmware
10 5 (0.067%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.054%) BitLocker
11 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.040%) KVM
12 3 (0.040%) RACF
12 3 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 389 (5.22%) Kubernetes
2 258 (3.46%) Terraform
3 170 (2.28%) Ansible
4 88 (1.18%) Grafana
5 81 (1.09%) Prometheus
6 66 (0.89%) SCCM
7 59 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 37 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.35%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) FortiGate
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.28%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.21%) Control-M
13 16 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.21%) Kibana
14 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
14 14 (0.19%) vRealize
15 12 (0.16%) Puppet
16 10 (0.13%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,020 (13.70%) Microsoft
2 796 (10.69%) SAP
3 697 (9.36%) Oracle
4 282 (3.79%) ServiceNow
5 180 (2.42%) Salesforce
6 170 (2.28%) Splunk
7 164 (2.20%) Databricks
8 162 (2.18%) Google
9 152 (2.04%) Cisco
10 139 (1.87%) Workday
11 104 (1.40%) VMware
12 92 (1.24%) IBM
13 72 (0.97%) Citrix
14 70 (0.94%) CyberArk
15 62 (0.83%) Ariba
16 55 (0.74%) HP
17 51 (0.68%) Dell
17 51 (0.68%) Informatica
18 50 (0.67%) Bloomberg
19 49 (0.66%) OpenAI