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 7 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,070 6,539 8,419
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.90% 21.34% 18.75%
As % of the General category 32.70% 34.18% 31.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,123 4,194 5,689
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 108 206
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.08 £12.72
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £14.67
Median hourly rate £23.58 £35.00 £26.19
Median % change year-on-year -32.64% +33.66% +1.85%
75th Percentile £41.25 £65.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £68.54 £80.96 £58.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £36.00 £26.66
% change year-on-year -38.89% +35.03% -23.83%

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 24,676 19,133 26,334
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.78% 62.43% 58.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,436 11,870 16,871
10th Percentile £300 £292 £264
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £493
% change year-on-year -0.52% -3.05% -1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,499 657 1,794
10th Percentile £13.68 £15.61 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.90 £20.26 £15.30
Median hourly rate £24.00 £30.00 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +17.65% -19.28%
75th Percentile £55.00 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.68 £27.50 £24.76
% change year-on-year -17.53% +11.07% -7.16%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7,123 £537 -8.60% 4,377
London 0 4,335 £575 -8.00% 1,972
UK excluding London 0 3,180 £500 - 3,169
Work from Home -2 2,287 £540 -8.09% 1,785
North of England +3 1,029 £475 -2.81% 762
Midlands -1 595 £478 -4.50% 468
South East -2 582 £500 -6.54% 1,082
North West +4 518 £450 -5.26% 406
Yorkshire 0 464 £500 -0.99% 281
West Midlands 0 386 £500 -7.41% 261
Scotland 0 373 £476 +1.55% 161
South West -4 322 £512 -2.48% 337
East Midlands 0 204 £450 +5.88% 203
East of England -2 186 £515 -6.36% 267
Wales +34 108 £413 +6.45% 102
Northern Ireland -1 48 £525 +61.54% 50
North East -10 47 £488 +3.72% 83
Channel Islands +3 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
1 331 (4.10%) Confluence
2 206 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.03%) Apache Spark
4 61 (0.76%) Microsoft Exchange
5 48 (0.59%) Apache
6 44 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
7 29 (0.36%) SAS
8 25 (0.31%) CMS
9 21 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.21%) Appian
10 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
11 16 (0.20%) CICS
11 16 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
13 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.15%) Camunda
14 12 (0.15%) TPMS
15 11 (0.14%) Mendix
16 8 (0.099%) nginx
Applications
1 521 (6.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 280 (3.47%) Microsoft Office
3 196 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 178 (2.21%) Microsoft Project
5 144 (1.78%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 14 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 12 (0.15%) Sketch
11 10 (0.12%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.099%) InVision
13 7 (0.087%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.062%) Notion
14 5 (0.062%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.050%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 339 (4.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 114 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 97 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 74 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
5 72 (0.89%) NetSuite
6 69 (0.86%) SAP FI
7 68 (0.84%) Oracle General Ledger
7 68 (0.84%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 58 (0.72%) SAP CO
9 57 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
10 51 (0.63%) SAP FI/CO
11 45 (0.56%) Oracle Assets
11 45 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
12 40 (0.50%) Oracle Cash Management
13 39 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
14 36 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
14 36 (0.45%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 34 (0.42%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.35%) Aladdin
17 25 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,223 (15.15%) Azure
2 985 (12.21%) AWS
3 554 (6.86%) Power Platform
4 405 (5.02%) GCP
5 280 (3.47%) Microsoft 365
6 265 (3.28%) SaaS
7 257 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
8 222 (2.75%) Dynamics 365
9 207 (2.57%) GitHub
10 155 (1.92%) Serverless
11 154 (1.91%) OCI
12 134 (1.66%) Snowflake
13 121 (1.50%) Entra ID
14 105 (1.30%) Amazon S3
15 96 (1.19%) Power Automate
16 87 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 84 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
18 77 (0.95%) OpenShift
19 76 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
20 75 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 161 (2.00%) Firewall
2 98 (1.21%) Network Security
3 77 (0.95%) WAN
4 62 (0.77%) DNS
5 49 (0.61%) VPN
6 48 (0.59%) LAN
7 42 (0.52%) SD-WAN
7 42 (0.52%) TCP/IP
8 34 (0.42%) Wireless
9 30 (0.37%) BGP
10 27 (0.33%) OSPF
11 26 (0.32%) HTTP
11 26 (0.32%) SSL
12 24 (0.30%) Internet
12 24 (0.30%) Multicast
13 22 (0.27%) Skype
14 20 (0.25%) DHCP
14 20 (0.25%) MPLS
15 17 (0.21%) Cisco ASA
16 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 491 (6.08%) Power BI
2 213 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
3 204 (2.53%) SQL Server
4 194 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
5 148 (1.83%) Tableau
6 138 (1.71%) Metadata
7 122 (1.51%) NoSQL
8 121 (1.50%) Relational Database
9 116 (1.44%) Data Lake
10 95 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
11 78 (0.97%) Big Data
12 75 (0.93%) MongoDB
13 65 (0.81%) Oracle Database
14 61 (0.76%) BigQuery
15 50 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
17 40 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 37 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
19 36 (0.45%) Hadoop
19 36 (0.45%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 655 (8.12%) JIRA
2 244 (3.02%) Jenkins
3 213 (2.64%) Git
4 158 (1.96%) GitLab
5 68 (0.84%) JUnit
6 64 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 45 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
8 44 (0.55%) Selenium
9 35 (0.43%) Bitbucket
10 34 (0.42%) Postman
11 31 (0.38%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.30%) Gradle
12 24 (0.30%) MLflow
13 22 (0.27%) Maven
14 20 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 18 (0.22%) Liquibase
16 15 (0.19%) ERwin
16 15 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.19%) SonarQube
16 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,667 (33.05%) Social Skills
2 1,573 (19.49%) Banking
3 1,048 (12.99%) Analytical Skills
4 640 (7.93%) Public Sector
5 361 (4.47%) Financial Institution
6 304 (3.77%) Legal
7 290 (3.59%) Front Office
8 286 (3.54%) Marketing
9 279 (3.46%) Investment Banking
10 268 (3.32%) Manufacturing
11 247 (3.06%) Telecoms
12 245 (3.04%) Organisational Skills
13 232 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
14 186 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
15 178 (2.21%) Retail
16 146 (1.81%) Electronics
17 130 (1.61%) General Ledger
18 127 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
19 117 (1.45%) Billing
20 115 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1,277 (15.82%) Analyst
2 874 (10.83%) Developer
3 825 (10.22%) Senior
4 713 (8.84%) Lead
5 681 (8.44%) Business Analyst
6 680 (8.43%) Architect
7 655 (8.12%) Project Manager
8 594 (7.36%) Consultant
9 282 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
10 198 (2.45%) Data Engineer
11 194 (2.40%) Data Analyst
12 180 (2.23%) Financial Analyst
12 180 (2.23%) Programme Manager
13 174 (2.16%) Senior Manager
14 146 (1.81%) Finance Manager
15 142 (1.76%) Software Engineer
16 141 (1.75%) Java Developer
17 130 (1.61%) Senior Developer
18 129 (1.60%) Senior Analyst
19 128 (1.59%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (3.44%) REST
2 274 (3.40%) Kafka
3 211 (2.61%) .NET
4 210 (2.60%) React
5 162 (2.01%) Oracle Fusion
6 150 (1.86%) Middleware
7 148 (1.83%) RESTful
8 142 (1.76%) Spring
9 120 (1.49%) Node.js
9 120 (1.49%) Spring Boot
10 110 (1.36%) AngularJS
11 90 (1.12%) PySpark
12 88 (1.09%) HTML
13 86 (1.07%) XML
14 82 (1.02%) CSS
15 80 (0.99%) JSON
16 77 (0.95%) Pandas
16 77 (0.95%) SOAP
17 73 (0.90%) OAuth
18 68 (0.84%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 349 (4.32%) Onboarding
2 311 (3.85%) Product Ownership
3 253 (3.14%) Cloud Native
4 197 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
5 177 (2.19%) Derivative
5 177 (2.19%) Management Information System
6 163 (2.02%) Data Centre
7 148 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
8 146 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
8 146 (1.81%) Fixed Income
9 144 (1.78%) Data Structures
10 143 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 126 (1.56%) Equities
12 117 (1.45%) Public Cloud
13 113 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
14 90 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
15 89 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
16 87 (1.08%) Virtual Team
17 71 (0.88%) Hedge funds
18 64 (0.79%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 320 (3.97%) Linux
2 295 (3.66%) Windows
3 141 (1.75%) Unix
4 64 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 62 (0.77%) Windows 10
6 57 (0.71%) Android
7 51 (0.63%) Mac OS
8 27 (0.33%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 16 (0.20%) zOS
11 11 (0.14%) AIX
12 9 (0.11%) Solaris
13 7 (0.087%) VMS
14 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.050%) Windows Server 2012
16 3 (0.037%) Ubuntu
17 2 (0.025%) CentOS
18 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
18 1 (0.012%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,773 (21.97%) Agile
2 1,562 (19.36%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,242 (15.39%) Problem-Solving
4 1,018 (12.61%) Migration
5 894 (11.08%) DevOps
6 883 (10.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 821 (10.17%) CI/CD
8 786 (9.74%) Analytics
9 782 (9.69%) Project Management
10 774 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
11 773 (9.58%) Business Intelligence
12 749 (9.28%) ERP
13 654 (8.10%) AI
14 609 (7.55%) Roadmaps
15 607 (7.52%) Decision-Making
16 591 (7.32%) Data Modelling
17 574 (7.11%) Change Management
18 551 (6.83%) Project Delivery
19 545 (6.75%) Validation
20 536 (6.64%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,159 (14.36%) SQL
2 1,027 (12.73%) Python
3 560 (6.94%) Java
4 308 (3.82%) C#
5 248 (3.07%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.52%) TypeScript
7 189 (2.34%) PowerShell
8 126 (1.56%) C++
9 86 (1.07%) Go
10 79 (0.98%) Bash
11 77 (0.95%) PL/SQL
12 54 (0.67%) VBA
13 51 (0.63%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 39 (0.48%) Scala
16 38 (0.47%) R
16 38 (0.47%) Shell Script
17 37 (0.46%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.36%) Rust
19 27 (0.33%) Perl
Qualifications
1 809 (10.02%) Degree
2 675 (8.36%) Security Cleared
3 487 (6.03%) SC Cleared
4 190 (2.35%) PMI Certification
4 190 (2.35%) PMP
5 173 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 165 (2.04%) Master's Degree
7 164 (2.03%) ACCA
8 154 (1.91%) CIMA
9 129 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
10 103 (1.28%) CISSP
11 79 (0.98%) AWS Certification
12 75 (0.93%) DV Cleared
13 71 (0.88%) CISM
14 70 (0.87%) Azure Certification
15 40 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
16 39 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
17 37 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
18 34 (0.42%) ISTQB
19 30 (0.37%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 407 (5.04%) QA
2 400 (4.96%) Data Quality
3 317 (3.93%) PMO
4 283 (3.51%) GDPR
5 146 (1.81%) NIST
6 136 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.43%) SLA
8 114 (1.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 84 (1.04%) IFRS
10 82 (1.02%) Accessibility
10 82 (1.02%) PCI DSS
11 70 (0.87%) GRC
12 58 (0.72%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.57%) PSD2
14 42 (0.52%) GAAP
15 38 (0.47%) NCSC
15 38 (0.47%) SEPA
16 37 (0.46%) MiFID
17 33 (0.41%) COBIT
18 30 (0.37%) Basel III
System Software
1 338 (4.19%) Docker
2 167 (2.07%) Active Directory
3 61 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 29 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.14%) GPFS
7 11 (0.14%) NFS
8 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
10 8 (0.099%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.087%) HDFS
12 4 (0.050%) Firmware
12 4 (0.050%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.037%) RACF
13 3 (0.037%) SRDF
13 3 (0.037%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.025%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.025%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 422 (5.23%) Kubernetes
2 260 (3.22%) Terraform
3 159 (1.97%) Ansible
4 99 (1.23%) Grafana
5 90 (1.12%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
7 54 (0.67%) SCCM
8 40 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) vRealize
11 18 (0.22%) Argo
11 18 (0.22%) Control-M
11 18 (0.22%) Progress Chef
12 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
13 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.16%) Kibana
14 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 11 (0.14%) ITRS Geneos
15 11 (0.14%) Nessus
15 11 (0.14%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,046 (12.96%) Microsoft
2 816 (10.11%) SAP
3 697 (8.64%) Oracle
4 317 (3.93%) ServiceNow
5 195 (2.42%) Salesforce
6 189 (2.34%) Databricks
7 182 (2.26%) Google
8 165 (2.04%) Cisco
9 150 (1.86%) Workday
10 143 (1.77%) Splunk
11 121 (1.50%) VMware
12 101 (1.25%) IBM
13 76 (0.94%) Citrix
14 74 (0.92%) CyberArk
15 70 (0.87%) Ariba
16 59 (0.73%) Sage
17 58 (0.72%) HP
18 54 (0.67%) Dell
19 52 (0.64%) Bloomberg
19 52 (0.64%) Informatica