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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,874 7,516 7,756
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.60% 22.92% 19.52%
As % of the General category 33.84% 36.30% 34.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,092 4,963 5,191
10th Percentile £359 £338 £356
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £494 £505
% change year-on-year +1.27% -2.23% -3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 147 203
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.79 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.13 £22.38
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +31.49%
75th Percentile £52.81 £63.75 £42.38
90th Percentile £84.10 £75.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £38.12
% change year-on-year +60.58% -28.19% +15.72%

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 29,176 20,705 22,755
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.95% 63.13% 57.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,355 12,970 14,349
10th Percentile £313 £280 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,128 1,095 1,482
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.36 £13.86
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.25 £16.50
Median hourly rate £32.81 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.44% -32.93% +22.87%
75th Percentile £60.06 £51.65 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.10 £70.81 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.25 £22.50 £38.06
% change year-on-year +47.78% -40.88% +46.38%

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 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 31 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 31 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 8,617 £550 - 5,750
London 0 5,192 £585 -2.50% 3,392
UK excluding London -1 3,899 £500 +1.27% 3,154
Work from Home -1 2,848 £550 -4.35% 2,176
North of England 0 1,334 £500 +6.38% 787
South East -2 751 £503 -5.19% 966
North West 0 700 £495 +9.45% 419
Midlands 0 638 £514 +14.22% 456
Yorkshire 0 571 £518 +6.95% 271
West Midlands +1 491 £525 +10.53% 276
Scotland 0 491 £475 -5.00% 205
South West -3 383 £525 -4.55% 375
East of England +7 211 £525 -8.70% 235
East Midlands -3 142 £500 +19.05% 180
Wales +2 73 £525 +13.51% 95
Northern Ireland -1 63 £488 +3.72% 91
North East -14 56 £500 +13.64% 107
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 2

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 (3.25%) Confluence
2 244 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 86 (0.87%) Apache Spark
4 80 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
5 65 (0.66%) Apache
6 46 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.13%) Camunda
14 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.081%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.071%) Appian
16 5 (0.051%) JBoss
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 519 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
3 162 (1.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 162 (1.64%) Microsoft Project
4 105 (1.06%) MS Visio
5 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
6 36 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.10%) Trello
8 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.061%) Sketch
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
10 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
10 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 451 (4.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.20%) Oracle Payables
3 116 (1.17%) NetSuite
4 100 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
5 88 (0.89%) Oracle ERP
6 71 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
7 69 (0.70%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 68 (0.69%) SAP FI
9 58 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
12 47 (0.48%) SAP CO
13 45 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
14 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
15 37 (0.37%) Unit4 Business World
16 35 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
17 31 (0.31%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
19 28 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
20 27 (0.27%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,539 (15.59%) Azure
2 1,101 (11.15%) AWS
3 669 (6.78%) Power Platform
4 524 (5.31%) GCP
5 332 (3.36%) SaaS
6 331 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
7 289 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
8 285 (2.89%) GitHub
9 254 (2.57%) Dynamics 365
10 213 (2.16%) Snowflake
11 203 (2.06%) Entra ID
12 142 (1.44%) Serverless
13 138 (1.40%) OCI
14 123 (1.25%) Amazon S3
15 121 (1.23%) Power Automate
16 113 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
17 106 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
17 106 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
18 104 (1.05%) dbt
19 101 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 182 (1.84%) Firewall
2 142 (1.44%) Network Security
3 94 (0.95%) VPN
4 93 (0.94%) DNS
5 65 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 53 (0.54%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) SSL
8 46 (0.47%) BGP
9 42 (0.43%) DHCP
10 37 (0.37%) HTTP
11 36 (0.36%) LAN
12 33 (0.33%) Multicast
13 28 (0.28%) OSPF
14 27 (0.27%) Wireless
15 26 (0.26%) VLAN
16 25 (0.25%) Internet
17 22 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
18 20 (0.20%) SAN
19 19 (0.19%) Cisco ASA
20 18 (0.18%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 553 (5.60%) Power BI
2 282 (2.86%) SQL Server
3 257 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.05%) Metadata
5 180 (1.82%) Relational Database
6 166 (1.68%) PostgreSQL
7 151 (1.53%) Tableau
8 141 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 86 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
10 82 (0.83%) NoSQL
11 74 (0.75%) Oracle Database
12 73 (0.74%) BigQuery
12 73 (0.74%) MongoDB
13 68 (0.69%) Big Data
14 66 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (0.56%) Power Query
16 50 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
17 49 (0.50%) Delta Lake
17 49 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 665 (6.73%) JIRA
2 275 (2.79%) Git
3 161 (1.63%) Jenkins
4 96 (0.97%) GitLab
5 47 (0.48%) JUnit
6 40 (0.41%) Selenium
7 39 (0.39%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
9 29 (0.29%) Visual Studio
10 27 (0.27%) REST Assured
10 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 26 (0.26%) Bitbucket
12 24 (0.24%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 23 (0.23%) Maven
13 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 23 (0.23%) Postman
14 22 (0.22%) Claude Code
15 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
16 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,880 (29.17%) Social Skills
2 1,860 (18.84%) Banking
3 1,366 (13.83%) Analytical Skills
4 553 (5.60%) Public Sector
5 520 (5.27%) Legal
6 381 (3.86%) Investment Banking
7 379 (3.84%) Organisational Skills
8 360 (3.65%) Financial Institution
9 354 (3.59%) Retail
10 350 (3.54%) Front Office
11 274 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
12 228 (2.31%) Documentation Skills
13 193 (1.95%) Manufacturing
14 173 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 163 (1.65%) Billing
16 162 (1.64%) Local Government
17 158 (1.60%) Marketing
18 154 (1.56%) General Ledger
19 138 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
20 137 (1.39%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,440 (14.58%) Analyst
2 1,071 (10.85%) Lead
3 1,064 (10.78%) Senior
4 1,001 (10.14%) Developer
5 887 (8.98%) Architect
6 739 (7.48%) Business Analyst
7 708 (7.17%) Project Manager
8 668 (6.77%) Consultant
9 340 (3.44%) Solutions Architect
10 320 (3.24%) Data Engineer
11 246 (2.49%) Financial Analyst
12 225 (2.28%) Senior Manager
13 213 (2.16%) Java Developer
14 210 (2.13%) Accountant
15 203 (2.06%) Data Analyst
16 190 (1.92%) Senior Developer
17 187 (1.89%) Programme Manager
18 183 (1.85%) Finance Manager
19 182 (1.84%) Software Engineer
20 176 (1.78%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (3.29%) REST
2 278 (2.82%) .NET
3 277 (2.81%) React
4 269 (2.72%) Kafka
5 235 (2.38%) Oracle Fusion
6 195 (1.97%) Middleware
7 181 (1.83%) Spring
8 171 (1.73%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.37%) PySpark
10 132 (1.34%) RESTful
11 121 (1.23%) Redux
12 118 (1.20%) Node.js
13 98 (0.99%) JSON
14 96 (0.97%) AngularJS
15 93 (0.94%) OAuth
16 88 (0.89%) XML
17 68 (0.69%) SOAP
17 68 (0.69%) Web Services
18 63 (0.64%) CSS
18 63 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 471 (4.77%) Onboarding
2 454 (4.60%) Product Ownership
3 425 (4.30%) Cloud Native
4 269 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
5 243 (2.46%) Data Structures
6 223 (2.26%) Management Information System
7 197 (2.00%) Virtual Team
8 180 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
9 179 (1.81%) Derivative
10 175 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
11 170 (1.72%) Fixed Income
12 162 (1.64%) Data Centre
13 155 (1.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 150 (1.52%) AI Agents
15 137 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
16 124 (1.26%) Equities
17 109 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 103 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
19 100 (1.01%) Public Cloud
20 99 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 351 (3.55%) Windows
2 290 (2.94%) Linux
3 156 (1.58%) Unix
4 79 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 45 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 40 (0.41%) Apple iOS
7 38 (0.38%) Solaris
7 38 (0.38%) zOS
8 35 (0.35%) Windows 10
9 31 (0.31%) Android
10 26 (0.26%) Mac OS
11 19 (0.19%) AIX
12 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
13 8 (0.081%) VMS
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 5 (0.051%) MVS
16 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
17 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,261 (22.90%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,019 (20.45%) Agile
3 1,363 (13.80%) Migration
4 1,313 (13.30%) Problem-Solving
5 1,177 (11.92%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,152 (11.67%) AI
7 1,128 (11.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,033 (10.46%) ERP
9 1,027 (10.40%) CI/CD
10 1,003 (10.16%) Analytics
11 1,001 (10.14%) DevOps
12 904 (9.16%) Decision-Making
13 811 (8.21%) Validation
14 802 (8.12%) Roadmaps
15 794 (8.04%) Data Modelling
16 765 (7.75%) User Acceptance Testing
17 752 (7.62%) Project Management
18 706 (7.15%) Change Management
19 683 (6.92%) Business Intelligence
20 640 (6.48%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,273 (12.89%) SQL
2 1,218 (12.34%) Python
3 651 (6.59%) Java
4 387 (3.92%) C#
5 273 (2.76%) JavaScript
6 254 (2.57%) TypeScript
7 232 (2.35%) PowerShell
8 117 (1.18%) Bash
9 95 (0.96%) PL/SQL
10 79 (0.80%) C++
11 78 (0.79%) Go
11 78 (0.79%) Shell Script
12 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 50 (0.51%) Bicep
15 49 (0.50%) VBA
16 41 (0.42%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.37%) Scala
18 34 (0.34%) Apex Code
18 34 (0.34%) Korn
Qualifications
1 768 (7.78%) Security Cleared
2 723 (7.32%) Degree
3 548 (5.55%) SC Cleared
4 237 (2.40%) PMP
5 212 (2.15%) PMI Certification
6 205 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
7 203 (2.06%) ACCA
8 179 (1.81%) CIMA
9 151 (1.53%) CISSP
10 134 (1.36%) DV Cleared
11 121 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 97 (0.98%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.88%) CISM
14 78 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
14 78 (0.79%) Master's Degree
15 61 (0.62%) AWS Certification
16 53 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
17 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 40 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 33 (0.33%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 629 (6.37%) Data Quality
2 428 (4.33%) QA
3 360 (3.65%) PMO
4 276 (2.80%) GDPR
5 156 (1.58%) NIST
6 122 (1.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.11%) GRC
7 110 (1.11%) SLA
8 108 (1.09%) Accessibility
9 103 (1.04%) IFRS
10 99 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 63 (0.64%) GAAP
12 57 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 49 (0.50%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.36%) SEPA
15 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
16 30 (0.30%) COBIT
16 30 (0.30%) MiFID
16 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
17 29 (0.29%) EMIR
System Software
1 270 (2.73%) Docker
2 221 (2.24%) Active Directory
3 66 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.23%) RACF
5 23 (0.23%) vSphere
6 22 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
8 12 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
10 7 (0.071%) IAG
11 5 (0.051%) ACF2
11 5 (0.051%) GPFS
11 5 (0.051%) KVM
11 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.030%) GridGain
12 3 (0.030%) SRDF
12 3 (0.030%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 436 (4.42%) Kubernetes
2 333 (3.37%) Terraform
3 158 (1.60%) Ansible
4 92 (0.93%) Grafana
5 75 (0.76%) Prometheus
6 73 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 50 (0.51%) SCCM
9 25 (0.25%) Control-M
10 22 (0.22%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 15 (0.15%) Puppet
15 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.12%) Istio
17 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,300 (13.17%) Microsoft
2 849 (8.60%) Oracle
3 840 (8.51%) SAP
4 360 (3.65%) ServiceNow
5 313 (3.17%) Databricks
6 224 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 214 (2.17%) Google
8 159 (1.61%) IBM
9 139 (1.41%) Workday
10 126 (1.28%) VMware
11 106 (1.07%) Cisco
12 104 (1.05%) Splunk
13 95 (0.96%) Ariba
14 90 (0.91%) CyberArk
15 75 (0.76%) OpenAI
16 66 (0.67%) Sage
17 61 (0.62%) Citrix
18 52 (0.53%) Informatica
19 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
20 43 (0.44%) Red Hat