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 30 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,030 7,242 7,648
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.27% 22.06% 20.34%
As % of the General category 32.60% 34.71% 34.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,062 4,723 4,801
10th Percentile £359 £332 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £535 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £701
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 136 129
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.37 £14.50
25th Percentile £19.53 £19.09 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.16 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.12% -14.67% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £54.34 £55.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £75.63 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £31.91
% change year-on-year +83.17% -24.79% +22.74%

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 30,767 20,862 21,960
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.05% 63.53% 58.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,965 12,966 12,972
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £419 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,633 1,214 1,008
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.21
Median hourly rate £29.00 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.31% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £53.75 £46.94 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.01 £21.39 £35.00
% change year-on-year +35.62% -38.89% +29.68%

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 30 September 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 30 September 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 30 September 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 8,607 £550 - 15,462
London 0 5,203 £600 +2.26% 9,567
UK excluding London 0 3,913 £510 +2.00% 7,183
Work from Home -1 2,818 £550 -2.22% 6,385
North of England 0 1,349 £514 +11.08% 1,723
South East -1 746 £500 -2.58% 1,695
North West -2 643 £506 +12.44% 936
Yorkshire 0 628 £519 +3.70% 590
Midlands -2 616 £514 +8.21% 1,005
Scotland 0 547 £463 -7.50% 853
West Midlands -3 461 £518 -0.43% 630
South West -5 350 £525 -4.55% 874
East of England +4 203 £555 -3.48% 509
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +19.05% 375
North East -5 71 £538 +22.51% 209
Northern Ireland 0 65 £510 -1.21% 407
Wales +1 63 £525 +20.69% 181
Channel Islands 0 5 £600 - 19

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 (3.23%) Confluence
2 261 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 90 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
4 81 (0.81%) Apache Spark
5 75 (0.75%) Apache
6 46 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.31%) CMS
8 25 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
9 22 (0.22%) SAS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 17 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 15 (0.15%) Camunda
13 13 (0.13%) CICS
14 10 (0.100%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.090%) Ethereum
16 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 7 (0.070%) Adobe Experience Manager
18 6 (0.060%) Appian
18 6 (0.060%) JBoss
19 5 (0.050%) WebLogic
Applications
1 528 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 195 (1.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 139 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
5 83 (0.83%) MS Visio
6 66 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
10 4 (0.040%) Windchill
11 3 (0.030%) 1Password
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 444 (4.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 126 (1.26%) Oracle Payables
3 112 (1.12%) Oracle Receivables
4 100 (1.00%) NetSuite
5 91 (0.91%) Oracle ERP
6 87 (0.87%) Oracle General Ledger
7 82 (0.82%) SAP FI
8 81 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
9 67 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
10 59 (0.59%) Oracle Financials
11 54 (0.54%) SAP CO
12 50 (0.50%) Workday HCM
13 49 (0.49%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 49 (0.49%) SAP FI/CO
14 45 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
15 39 (0.39%) Aladdin
16 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
16 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
17 30 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
18 25 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,586 (15.81%) Azure
2 1,105 (11.02%) AWS
3 654 (6.52%) Power Platform
4 567 (5.65%) GCP
5 348 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
6 330 (3.29%) GitHub
7 325 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
8 316 (3.15%) SaaS
9 267 (2.66%) Dynamics 365
10 230 (2.29%) Entra ID
11 219 (2.18%) Snowflake
12 160 (1.60%) Serverless
13 143 (1.43%) OCI
14 135 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
15 132 (1.32%) Power Automate
16 130 (1.30%) Amazon S3
17 128 (1.28%) dbt
18 122 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
19 111 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
20 105 (1.05%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 177 (1.76%) Firewall
2 161 (1.61%) Network Security
3 106 (1.06%) VPN
4 86 (0.86%) DNS
5 57 (0.57%) TCP/IP
6 55 (0.55%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.45%) BGP
9 39 (0.39%) SSL
10 33 (0.33%) Multicast
11 32 (0.32%) LAN
11 32 (0.32%) VLAN
12 30 (0.30%) HTTP
12 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
12 30 (0.30%) Wireless
13 27 (0.27%) OSPF
13 27 (0.27%) SAN
14 24 (0.24%) Internet
15 18 (0.18%) Broadband
15 18 (0.18%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 520 (5.18%) Power BI
2 286 (2.85%) SQL Server
3 255 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
4 204 (2.03%) Metadata
5 174 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 144 (1.44%) Data Lake
7 136 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
8 128 (1.28%) Tableau
9 91 (0.91%) NoSQL
10 82 (0.82%) BigQuery
11 80 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 79 (0.79%) MongoDB
13 65 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
14 58 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
15 56 (0.56%) Power Query
16 53 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 45 (0.45%) Big Data
18 44 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
18 44 (0.44%) Db2
19 43 (0.43%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 642 (6.40%) JIRA
2 334 (3.33%) Git
3 180 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 113 (1.13%) GitLab
5 65 (0.65%) Selenium
6 51 (0.51%) JUnit
7 41 (0.41%) Claude Code
8 38 (0.38%) Maven
9 37 (0.37%) Bitbucket
10 36 (0.36%) SonarQube
11 34 (0.34%) Cucumber
12 33 (0.33%) Gradle
13 31 (0.31%) REST Assured
13 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
14 28 (0.28%) ERwin
15 26 (0.26%) Cypress.io
15 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
16 24 (0.24%) Postman
17 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
18 21 (0.21%) Mockito
General
1 3,141 (31.32%) Social Skills
2 2,112 (21.06%) Banking
3 1,408 (14.04%) Analytical Skills
4 546 (5.44%) Public Sector
5 535 (5.33%) Legal
6 461 (4.60%) Organisational Skills
7 399 (3.98%) Investment Banking
8 373 (3.72%) Retail
9 347 (3.46%) Influencing Skills
10 346 (3.45%) Front Office
11 309 (3.08%) Financial Institution
12 224 (2.23%) Manufacturing
13 208 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
14 195 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 188 (1.87%) Marketing
16 186 (1.85%) Billing
17 179 (1.78%) General Ledger
18 160 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
19 149 (1.49%) Local Government
20 143 (1.43%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,397 (13.93%) Analyst
2 1,136 (11.33%) Senior
3 999 (9.96%) Developer
4 970 (9.67%) Lead
5 861 (8.58%) Architect
6 745 (7.43%) Consultant
7 723 (7.21%) Business Analyst
8 685 (6.83%) Project Manager
9 338 (3.37%) Solutions Architect
10 297 (2.96%) Data Engineer
11 256 (2.55%) Financial Analyst
12 219 (2.18%) Senior Manager
13 214 (2.13%) Senior Developer
14 212 (2.11%) Java Developer
15 203 (2.02%) Data Analyst
16 190 (1.89%) Programme Manager
17 181 (1.80%) Accountant
18 176 (1.75%) IT Manager
19 169 (1.68%) Finance Manager
20 154 (1.54%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 414 (4.13%) Terraform
2 409 (4.08%) REST
3 276 (2.75%) Kafka
4 273 (2.72%) .NET
5 268 (2.67%) Oracle Fusion
6 248 (2.47%) React
7 199 (1.98%) Middleware
7 199 (1.98%) Spring
8 194 (1.93%) Spring Boot
9 147 (1.47%) RESTful
10 144 (1.44%) PySpark
11 112 (1.12%) JSON
12 111 (1.11%) OAuth
13 108 (1.08%) XML
14 99 (0.99%) SOAP
15 90 (0.90%) Web Services
16 88 (0.88%) Redux
17 82 (0.82%) AngularJS
18 80 (0.80%) HTML
19 75 (0.75%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 531 (5.29%) Onboarding
2 521 (5.19%) Product Ownership
3 480 (4.79%) Cloud Native
4 265 (2.64%) Management Information System
5 254 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 236 (2.35%) Data Structures
7 230 (2.29%) Virtual Team
8 219 (2.18%) AI Agents
9 216 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
10 204 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
11 191 (1.90%) Derivative
12 174 (1.73%) Data Centre
13 166 (1.66%) Enterprise Software
14 153 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 135 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
16 134 (1.34%) Fixed Income
17 121 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
18 116 (1.16%) Equities
19 114 (1.14%) Podcast
19 114 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 386 (3.85%) Windows
2 343 (3.42%) Linux
3 173 (1.72%) Unix
4 98 (0.98%) Windows Server
5 63 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 50 (0.50%) Apple iOS
7 43 (0.43%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 39 (0.39%) zOS
10 35 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 33 (0.33%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 7 (0.070%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.060%) HPUX
15 6 (0.060%) SUSE
16 5 (0.050%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,768 (27.60%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,053 (20.47%) Agile
3 1,352 (13.48%) Migration
4 1,331 (13.27%) AI
5 1,325 (13.21%) Problem-Solving
6 1,176 (11.72%) CI/CD
7 1,123 (11.20%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,106 (11.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,018 (10.15%) Analytics
10 1,014 (10.11%) DevOps
11 978 (9.75%) ERP
12 924 (9.21%) Decision-Making
13 895 (8.92%) Roadmaps
14 894 (8.91%) Validation
15 782 (7.80%) Project Management
16 769 (7.67%) Data Modelling
17 759 (7.57%) User Acceptance Testing
18 724 (7.22%) Change Management
19 723 (7.21%) Risk Management
20 685 (6.83%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,369 (13.65%) SQL
2 1,294 (12.90%) Python
3 664 (6.62%) Java
4 364 (3.63%) C#
5 293 (2.92%) PowerShell
6 261 (2.60%) JavaScript
7 224 (2.23%) TypeScript
8 166 (1.66%) Bash
9 111 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 93 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 76 (0.76%) C++
12 72 (0.72%) Go
13 70 (0.70%) T-SQL
14 61 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 60 (0.60%) Bicep
16 52 (0.52%) Korn
17 45 (0.45%) Scala
18 36 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 33 (0.33%) Apex Code
20 31 (0.31%) VBA
Qualifications
1 773 (7.71%) Security Cleared
2 737 (7.35%) Degree
3 552 (5.50%) SC Cleared
4 260 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
5 257 (2.56%) PMP
6 227 (2.26%) PMI Certification
7 191 (1.90%) ACCA
8 168 (1.67%) CIMA
9 140 (1.40%) DV Cleared
10 136 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
11 127 (1.27%) CISSP
12 115 (1.15%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.86%) AWS Certification
14 82 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
15 79 (0.79%) Master's Degree
16 64 (0.64%) CISM
17 54 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 39 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 39 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 711 (7.09%) Data Quality
2 433 (4.32%) QA
3 352 (3.51%) PMO
4 206 (2.05%) GDPR
5 132 (1.32%) NIST
6 126 (1.26%) GRC
7 116 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 108 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 95 (0.95%) SLA
10 92 (0.92%) IFRS
11 74 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.46%) GAAP
14 43 (0.43%) PCI DSS
15 40 (0.40%) SEPA
16 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) COBIT
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) EMIR
19 24 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 269 (2.68%) Docker
2 242 (2.41%) Active Directory
3 100 (1.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 29 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
6 28 (0.28%) RACF
7 27 (0.27%) vSphere
8 16 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.11%) NFS
11 8 (0.080%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
12 6 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
13 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
16 2 (0.020%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 504 (5.02%) Kubernetes
2 194 (1.93%) Ansible
3 97 (0.97%) Grafana
4 84 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
5 70 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
7 61 (0.61%) SCCM
8 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.20%) Argo
12 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
13 15 (0.15%) Istio
14 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
15 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 11 (0.11%) Puppet
16 10 (0.100%) Packer
16 10 (0.100%) Tivoli
17 8 (0.080%) ITRS Geneos
17 8 (0.080%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,444 (14.40%) Microsoft
2 885 (8.82%) SAP
3 882 (8.79%) Oracle
4 370 (3.69%) ServiceNow
5 364 (3.63%) Databricks
6 241 (2.40%) Google
7 237 (2.36%) Salesforce
8 205 (2.04%) IBM
9 157 (1.57%) Workday
10 153 (1.53%) VMware
11 132 (1.32%) Cisco
12 119 (1.19%) Splunk
13 112 (1.12%) Ariba
14 93 (0.93%) OpenAI
15 91 (0.91%) CyberArk
16 58 (0.58%) Citrix
17 56 (0.56%) Bloomberg
18 54 (0.54%) Murex
19 53 (0.53%) Red Hat
19 53 (0.53%) Sage