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 29 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,837 6,409 8,060
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.07% 22.29% 18.82%
As % of the General category 33.58% 35.14% 32.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,525 4,185 5,406
10th Percentile £355 £350 £350
25th Percentile £441 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £498 £500
% change year-on-year +0.40% -0.40% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 196 111 255
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.80 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.40 £23.56 £15.08
Median hourly rate £25.38 £41.50 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -38.84% +53.87% -3.61%
75th Percentile £57.62 £65.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £86.50 £82.50 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £50.99 £30.83
% change year-on-year -53.27% +65.40% -36.11%

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 26,317 18,236 24,705
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.80% 63.42% 57.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,939 11,561 15,577
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £760 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,743 807 1,967
10th Percentile £13.76 £13.50 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.79 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.41%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.28 £28.13
% change year-on-year +19.46% -13.69% +2.27%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 29 May 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 7,830 £550 -4.35% 4,643
London 0 4,740 £575 -6.24% 2,619
UK excluding London 0 3,515 £500 +0.40% 2,735
Work from Home -2 2,468 £540 -6.09% 1,920
North of England +3 1,198 £492 +4.90% 700
South East -1 653 £500 -3.61% 826
North West +5 631 £465 - 416
Midlands -1 600 £492 +3.58% 425
Yorkshire +2 529 £519 +9.21% 225
Scotland 0 426 £500 +4.28% 164
West Midlands 0 411 £500 -2.13% 260
South West -2 361 £525 - 311
East of England +3 198 £520 -9.57% 200
East Midlands 0 185 £466 +5.37% 165
Wales +11 85 £475 +18.75% 70
Northern Ireland -1 45 £500 +21.95% 77
North East -17 39 £488 +7.73% 68
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 321 (3.63%) Confluence
2 220 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.93%) Apache Spark
4 61 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
5 55 (0.62%) Apache
6 50 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.35%) SAS
8 24 (0.27%) CMS
9 20 (0.23%) CICS
9 20 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.17%) IIS
11 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.16%) Appian
11 14 (0.16%) Camunda
12 10 (0.11%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 10 (0.11%) Mendix
12 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
14 7 (0.079%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 508 (5.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
3 169 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 167 (1.89%) Microsoft Project
5 127 (1.44%) MS Visio
6 49 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 34 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.10%) Sketch
9 8 (0.091%) Notion
10 7 (0.079%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.079%) InVision
10 7 (0.079%) Trello
11 6 (0.068%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 4 (0.045%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
14 1 (0.011%) UXPin
14 1 (0.011%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 398 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 107 (1.21%) NetSuite
2 107 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 88 (1.00%) Oracle Receivables
4 82 (0.93%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 65 (0.74%) Oracle ERP
6 57 (0.65%) SAP FI
7 53 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
8 48 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
9 46 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
10 45 (0.51%) SAP CO
11 42 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
12 36 (0.41%) Aladdin
13 32 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
14 31 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
14 31 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 26 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
16 25 (0.28%) SAP ERP
17 23 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
17 23 (0.26%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,371 (15.51%) Azure
2 996 (11.27%) AWS
3 607 (6.87%) Power Platform
4 412 (4.66%) GCP
5 303 (3.43%) Azure DevOps
6 291 (3.29%) SaaS
7 275 (3.11%) Microsoft 365
8 236 (2.67%) GitHub
9 232 (2.63%) Dynamics 365
10 172 (1.95%) Snowflake
11 157 (1.78%) Entra ID
12 141 (1.60%) Serverless
13 123 (1.39%) OCI
14 114 (1.29%) Power Automate
15 110 (1.24%) Amazon S3
16 97 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
17 90 (1.02%) OpenShift
18 85 (0.96%) GitHub Actions
19 82 (0.93%) dbt
20 81 (0.92%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 166 (1.88%) Firewall
2 124 (1.40%) Network Security
3 78 (0.88%) WAN
4 74 (0.84%) DNS
5 63 (0.71%) VPN
6 56 (0.63%) TCP/IP
7 40 (0.45%) BGP
8 38 (0.43%) LAN
8 38 (0.43%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.38%) HTTP
10 32 (0.36%) SSL
11 30 (0.34%) OSPF
12 29 (0.33%) Multicast
13 28 (0.32%) DHCP
14 24 (0.27%) MPLS
15 21 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.24%) VSAN
16 19 (0.22%) VLAN
17 17 (0.19%) Internet
18 14 (0.16%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 513 (5.81%) Power BI
2 230 (2.60%) SQL Server
3 221 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
4 175 (1.98%) Metadata
5 162 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
6 159 (1.80%) Relational Database
7 154 (1.74%) Tableau
8 126 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 92 (1.04%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
11 72 (0.81%) Big Data
12 69 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.70%) BigQuery
13 62 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 52 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
15 46 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
17 41 (0.46%) Delta Lake
17 41 (0.46%) Power Query
18 37 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 677 (7.66%) JIRA
2 206 (2.33%) Git
3 156 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 96 (1.09%) GitLab
5 47 (0.53%) Cucumber
5 47 (0.53%) JUnit
6 39 (0.44%) Selenium
7 31 (0.35%) Postman
7 31 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
8 30 (0.34%) Visual Studio
9 25 (0.28%) MLflow
10 24 (0.27%) SonarQube
11 22 (0.25%) Zephyr
12 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 19 (0.22%) ERwin
13 19 (0.22%) Maven
14 18 (0.20%) Hudson
15 16 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.17%) Bitbucket
17 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,578 (29.17%) Social Skills
2 1,614 (18.26%) Banking
3 1,152 (13.04%) Analytical Skills
4 508 (5.75%) Public Sector
5 383 (4.33%) Legal
6 340 (3.85%) Financial Institution
7 324 (3.67%) Investment Banking
8 287 (3.25%) Front Office
9 276 (3.12%) Retail
10 253 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
11 239 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
12 214 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 172 (1.95%) Manufacturing
14 147 (1.66%) Marketing
15 141 (1.60%) General Ledger
16 136 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 128 (1.45%) Local Government
17 128 (1.45%) Telecoms
18 126 (1.43%) Billing
18 126 (1.43%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,341 (15.17%) Analyst
2 935 (10.58%) Senior
3 910 (10.30%) Lead
4 888 (10.05%) Developer
5 806 (9.12%) Architect
6 719 (8.14%) Business Analyst
7 691 (7.82%) Project Manager
8 590 (6.68%) Consultant
9 334 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
10 292 (3.30%) Data Engineer
11 221 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 213 (2.41%) Senior Manager
13 193 (2.18%) Data Analyst
14 186 (2.10%) Finance Manager
15 176 (1.99%) Accountant
16 174 (1.97%) Programme Manager
17 158 (1.79%) Software Engineer
18 153 (1.73%) Java Developer
19 146 (1.65%) Delivery Manager
20 142 (1.61%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (2.98%) REST
2 253 (2.86%) Kafka
3 246 (2.78%) .NET
4 217 (2.46%) React
5 184 (2.08%) Middleware
6 174 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
7 151 (1.71%) Spring
8 146 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.54%) RESTful
10 104 (1.18%) PySpark
11 103 (1.17%) Node.js
12 97 (1.10%) AngularJS
13 84 (0.95%) OAuth
14 79 (0.89%) Redux
15 78 (0.88%) JSON
16 73 (0.83%) XML
17 66 (0.75%) CSS
18 65 (0.74%) HTML
19 63 (0.71%) OpenID
20 61 (0.69%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 382 (4.32%) Product Ownership
2 381 (4.31%) Onboarding
3 342 (3.87%) Cloud Native
4 245 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
5 200 (2.26%) Management Information System
6 188 (2.13%) Data Structures
7 171 (1.94%) Derivative
8 168 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
9 160 (1.81%) Data Centre
10 138 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
11 134 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 131 (1.48%) Fixed Income
13 104 (1.18%) Public Cloud
14 103 (1.17%) Equities
15 101 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
16 98 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 97 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
18 91 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
19 81 (0.92%) AI Agents
20 69 (0.78%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 285 (3.23%) Windows
2 266 (3.01%) Linux
3 138 (1.56%) Unix
4 71 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.48%) Windows 10
6 37 (0.42%) Solaris
7 30 (0.34%) Apple iOS
8 29 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 29 (0.33%) zOS
9 27 (0.31%) Android
10 18 (0.20%) AIX
11 17 (0.19%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.079%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.068%) Oracle Linux
13 6 (0.068%) VMS
13 6 (0.068%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.045%) HPUX
14 4 (0.045%) MVS
14 4 (0.045%) SUSE
14 4 (0.045%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,824 (20.64%) Agile
2 1,770 (20.03%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,219 (13.79%) Migration
4 1,212 (13.72%) Problem-Solving
5 982 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
6 959 (10.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 926 (10.48%) DevOps
8 925 (10.47%) ERP
9 889 (10.06%) CI/CD
10 883 (9.99%) AI
11 847 (9.58%) Analytics
12 784 (8.87%) Project Management
13 740 (8.37%) Data Modelling
14 737 (8.34%) Decision-Making
15 713 (8.07%) Roadmaps
16 710 (8.03%) Validation
17 681 (7.71%) User Acceptance Testing
18 680 (7.69%) Business Intelligence
19 621 (7.03%) Change Management
20 573 (6.48%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,206 (13.65%) SQL
2 1,063 (12.03%) Python
3 583 (6.60%) Java
4 345 (3.90%) C#
5 221 (2.50%) JavaScript
6 205 (2.32%) TypeScript
7 179 (2.03%) PowerShell
8 107 (1.21%) C++
9 77 (0.87%) Bash
10 76 (0.86%) Go
11 69 (0.78%) PL/SQL
12 63 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 53 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 52 (0.59%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.49%) Scala
16 41 (0.46%) VBA
17 29 (0.33%) Apex Code
17 29 (0.33%) R
18 28 (0.32%) Bicep
18 28 (0.32%) Rust
Qualifications
1 745 (8.43%) Degree
2 679 (7.68%) Security Cleared
3 485 (5.49%) SC Cleared
4 222 (2.51%) ACCA
5 207 (2.34%) PMP
6 203 (2.30%) CIMA
7 183 (2.07%) PMI Certification
8 143 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
9 135 (1.53%) CISSP
10 129 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
11 95 (1.08%) Master's Degree
12 86 (0.97%) CISM
13 78 (0.88%) DV Cleared
14 70 (0.79%) Azure Certification
15 61 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
16 49 (0.55%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 32 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 32 (0.36%) DBS Check
18 32 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 533 (6.03%) Data Quality
2 410 (4.64%) QA
3 311 (3.52%) PMO
4 282 (3.19%) GDPR
5 162 (1.83%) NIST
6 129 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.27%) IFRS
8 107 (1.21%) SLA
9 106 (1.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 99 (1.12%) GRC
11 86 (0.97%) Accessibility
12 64 (0.72%) PCI DSS
13 59 (0.67%) ISO 20022
14 58 (0.66%) GAAP
15 38 (0.43%) NCSC
16 35 (0.40%) SEPA
17 34 (0.38%) PSD2
18 29 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
19 28 (0.32%) IFRS 17
20 27 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 282 (3.19%) Docker
2 163 (1.84%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
4 30 (0.34%) vSphere
5 23 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.17%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 11 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.091%) RACF
11 7 (0.079%) GPFS
12 6 (0.068%) KVM
13 5 (0.057%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.045%) Firmware
14 4 (0.045%) HDFS
14 4 (0.045%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.045%) SRDF
15 3 (0.034%) GridGain
16 2 (0.023%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 408 (4.62%) Kubernetes
2 262 (2.96%) Terraform
3 128 (1.45%) Ansible
4 90 (1.02%) Grafana
5 73 (0.83%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 41 (0.46%) SCCM
8 39 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.20%) Control-M
11 17 (0.19%) vRealize
12 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (0.16%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 13 (0.15%) Nessus
14 13 (0.15%) Progress Chef
15 11 (0.12%) CASB
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,129 (12.78%) Microsoft
2 790 (8.94%) SAP
3 725 (8.20%) Oracle
4 304 (3.44%) ServiceNow
5 252 (2.85%) Databricks
6 193 (2.18%) Salesforce
7 184 (2.08%) Google
8 131 (1.48%) Workday
9 119 (1.35%) Cisco
10 114 (1.29%) Splunk
11 108 (1.22%) VMware
12 98 (1.11%) IBM
13 83 (0.94%) Ariba
14 82 (0.93%) CyberArk
15 69 (0.78%) Citrix
16 66 (0.75%) Sage
17 62 (0.70%) OpenAI
18 54 (0.61%) Palo Alto
19 51 (0.58%) IFS
20 50 (0.57%) Informatica