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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,575 6,494 8,138
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.05% 22.24% 18.92%
As % of the General category 33.53% 35.12% 32.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,353 4,250 5,430
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £431 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £563 £576
Median % change year-on-year -4.44% -2.30% -4.04%
75th Percentile £675 £701 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 112 246
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.93 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £39.06 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -39.00% +44.81% +4.90%
75th Percentile £54.25 £68.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £55.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £48.82 £32.12
% change year-on-year -51.86% +52.00% -26.59%

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 25,574 18,493 24,958
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.84% 63.34% 58.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,623 11,784 15,748
10th Percentile £306 £293 £275
25th Percentile £408 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +1.16% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,650 788 1,935
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.00 £12.76
25th Percentile £17.64 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.82% -11.29%
75th Percentile £61.13 £56.00 £52.89
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.96 £24.62 £28.50
% change year-on-year +13.55% -13.61% -5.00%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 7,589 £548 -4.78% 4,462
London 0 4,567 £575 -8.00% 2,280
UK excluding London -1 3,434 £500 - 2,912
Work from Home -2 2,408 £533 -11.17% 1,832
North of England +3 1,151 £482 +1.39% 749
South East -1 651 £503 -2.88% 956
North West +5 617 £465 - 423
Midlands -1 589 £475 -2.56% 402
Yorkshire +1 498 £514 +3.84% 251
Scotland +1 414 £500 +4.28% 148
West Midlands 0 394 £492 -6.29% 216
South West -2 349 £520 -0.95% 311
East of England -3 199 £525 -4.55% 239
East Midlands 0 191 £463 +3.47% 183
Wales +21 93 £450 +20.00% 81
Northern Ireland -1 41 £525 +28.05% 74
North East -16 37 £488 +4.84% 82
Channel Islands - 2 £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
1 324 (3.78%) Confluence
2 217 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.03%) Apache Spark
4 56 (0.65%) Apache
5 52 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
6 51 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.41%) SAS
8 22 (0.26%) CMS
9 21 (0.24%) CICS
10 20 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
11 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.16%) Appian
11 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
11 14 (0.16%) IIS
12 13 (0.15%) Camunda
13 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 9 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 9 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 519 (6.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (2.66%) Microsoft Office
3 175 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 174 (2.03%) Microsoft Project
5 124 (1.45%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.14%) Trello
9 8 (0.093%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.093%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
10 7 (0.082%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
13 3 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.035%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 386 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 102 (1.19%) NetSuite
4 99 (1.15%) Oracle Receivables
5 86 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 64 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
7 63 (0.73%) Oracle ERP
8 59 (0.69%) SAP FI
9 58 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
10 49 (0.57%) SAP CO
11 45 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
11 45 (0.52%) SAP FI/CO
12 38 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
13 33 (0.38%) Aladdin
13 33 (0.38%) Oracle Cash Management
13 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
14 31 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
15 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 27 (0.31%) Workday HCM
17 25 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,306 (15.23%) Azure
2 963 (11.23%) AWS
3 609 (7.10%) Power Platform
4 386 (4.50%) GCP
5 301 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
6 289 (3.37%) SaaS
7 264 (3.08%) Microsoft 365
8 235 (2.74%) Dynamics 365
8 235 (2.74%) GitHub
9 151 (1.76%) Snowflake
10 138 (1.61%) Serverless
11 135 (1.57%) Entra ID
12 132 (1.54%) OCI
13 116 (1.35%) Amazon S3
14 110 (1.28%) Power Automate
15 95 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
16 90 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
17 84 (0.98%) OpenShift
18 80 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 75 (0.87%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 157 (1.83%) Firewall
2 113 (1.32%) Network Security
3 75 (0.87%) WAN
4 69 (0.80%) DNS
5 58 (0.68%) VPN
6 51 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 38 (0.44%) BGP
7 38 (0.44%) SD-WAN
8 37 (0.43%) LAN
9 32 (0.37%) HTTP
10 31 (0.36%) OSPF
11 28 (0.33%) Multicast
11 28 (0.33%) SSL
12 25 (0.29%) DHCP
13 24 (0.28%) MPLS
14 21 (0.24%) Internet
15 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 18 (0.21%) VSAN
17 16 (0.19%) VLAN
18 14 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 519 (6.05%) Power BI
2 211 (2.46%) SQL Server
3 206 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
4 167 (1.95%) Metadata
5 164 (1.91%) PostgreSQL
6 151 (1.76%) Relational Database
7 144 (1.68%) Tableau
8 125 (1.46%) Data Lake
9 86 (1.00%) NoSQL
9 86 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
10 78 (0.91%) Big Data
11 67 (0.78%) Oracle Database
12 59 (0.69%) BigQuery
12 59 (0.69%) MongoDB
13 50 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
14 45 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
15 42 (0.49%) Delta Lake
16 41 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 40 (0.47%) Power Query
18 39 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 676 (7.88%) JIRA
2 203 (2.37%) Git
3 177 (2.06%) Jenkins
4 106 (1.24%) GitLab
5 47 (0.55%) JUnit
6 43 (0.50%) Cucumber
7 37 (0.43%) Selenium
8 29 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.29%) Postman
11 23 (0.27%) MLflow
12 21 (0.24%) SonarQube
13 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
14 19 (0.22%) Maven
15 18 (0.21%) Hudson
16 17 (0.20%) ERwin
16 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 15 (0.17%) Bitbucket
18 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,536 (29.57%) Social Skills
2 1,551 (18.09%) Banking
3 1,137 (13.26%) Analytical Skills
4 526 (6.13%) Public Sector
5 357 (4.16%) Legal
6 322 (3.76%) Financial Institution
7 293 (3.42%) Investment Banking
8 271 (3.16%) Front Office
9 255 (2.97%) Retail
10 243 (2.83%) Organisational Skills
11 231 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
12 207 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
13 181 (2.11%) Manufacturing
14 160 (1.87%) Marketing
15 145 (1.69%) General Ledger
16 142 (1.66%) Telecoms
17 127 (1.48%) Local Government
18 124 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
19 120 (1.40%) Law
20 114 (1.33%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,298 (15.14%) Analyst
2 889 (10.37%) Senior
3 870 (10.15%) Lead
4 864 (10.08%) Developer
5 785 (9.15%) Architect
6 694 (8.09%) Business Analyst
7 681 (7.94%) Project Manager
8 591 (6.89%) Consultant
9 320 (3.73%) Solutions Architect
10 279 (3.25%) Data Engineer
11 214 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 204 (2.38%) Senior Manager
13 191 (2.23%) Finance Manager
14 185 (2.16%) Data Analyst
15 184 (2.15%) Programme Manager
16 168 (1.96%) Accountant
17 141 (1.64%) Java Developer
18 139 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
19 138 (1.61%) Software Engineer
20 136 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 261 (3.04%) Kafka
2 245 (2.86%) REST
3 234 (2.73%) .NET
4 203 (2.37%) React
5 184 (2.15%) Middleware
6 157 (1.83%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (1.70%) Spring
8 142 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 132 (1.54%) RESTful
10 103 (1.20%) PySpark
11 102 (1.19%) Node.js
12 91 (1.06%) AngularJS
13 82 (0.96%) OAuth
14 79 (0.92%) Redux
15 78 (0.91%) XML
16 77 (0.90%) JSON
17 70 (0.82%) HTML
18 69 (0.80%) CSS
19 62 (0.72%) Pandas
20 59 (0.69%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 356 (4.15%) Onboarding
2 337 (3.93%) Product Ownership
3 308 (3.59%) Cloud Native
4 219 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
5 200 (2.33%) Management Information System
6 185 (2.16%) Data Structures
7 166 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
7 166 (1.94%) Derivative
8 150 (1.75%) Data Centre
9 141 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
10 137 (1.60%) Fixed Income
11 132 (1.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 109 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
13 103 (1.20%) Virtual Team
14 101 (1.18%) Equities
15 100 (1.17%) Public Cloud
16 92 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
17 84 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 71 (0.83%) Mainframe
19 69 (0.80%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 269 (3.14%) Windows
2 257 (3.00%) Linux
3 133 (1.55%) Unix
4 69 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 43 (0.50%) Windows 10
6 32 (0.37%) Apple iOS
7 30 (0.35%) Solaris
8 28 (0.33%) zOS
9 26 (0.30%) Android
10 21 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 18 (0.21%) AIX
12 17 (0.20%) Mac OS
13 7 (0.082%) VMS
14 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
15 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
15 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
16 4 (0.047%) HPUX
16 4 (0.047%) MVS
16 4 (0.047%) SUSE
16 4 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,798 (20.97%) Agile
2 1,708 (19.92%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,210 (14.11%) Problem-Solving
4 1,147 (13.38%) Migration
5 950 (11.08%) Continuous Improvement
6 936 (10.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 909 (10.60%) DevOps
8 908 (10.59%) ERP
9 846 (9.87%) CI/CD
10 832 (9.70%) AI
11 811 (9.46%) Analytics
12 798 (9.31%) Project Management
13 722 (8.42%) Decision-Making
14 709 (8.27%) Business Intelligence
15 694 (8.09%) Data Modelling
16 677 (7.90%) Roadmaps
17 662 (7.72%) Validation
18 650 (7.58%) User Acceptance Testing
19 596 (6.95%) Change Management
20 574 (6.69%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,189 (13.87%) SQL
2 1,011 (11.79%) Python
3 549 (6.40%) Java
4 334 (3.90%) C#
5 218 (2.54%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.33%) TypeScript
7 161 (1.88%) PowerShell
8 107 (1.25%) C++
9 77 (0.90%) PL/SQL
10 70 (0.82%) Bash
10 70 (0.82%) Go
11 64 (0.75%) T-SQL
12 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
13 50 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 47 (0.55%) VBA
15 44 (0.51%) Scala
16 32 (0.37%) R
17 26 (0.30%) Bicep
18 25 (0.29%) Apex Code
19 24 (0.28%) Rust
Qualifications
1 732 (8.54%) Degree
2 695 (8.10%) Security Cleared
3 493 (5.75%) SC Cleared
4 213 (2.48%) PMP
5 209 (2.44%) ACCA
6 199 (2.32%) PMI Certification
7 192 (2.24%) CIMA
8 144 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
9 134 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
10 124 (1.45%) CISSP
11 106 (1.24%) Master's Degree
12 85 (0.99%) CISM
13 84 (0.98%) DV Cleared
14 64 (0.75%) Azure Certification
15 54 (0.63%) AWS Certification
16 51 (0.59%) Cisco Certification
17 38 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 33 (0.38%) ISTQB
19 30 (0.35%) CBAP
19 30 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 494 (5.76%) Data Quality
2 408 (4.76%) QA
3 330 (3.85%) PMO
4 287 (3.35%) GDPR
5 156 (1.82%) NIST
6 125 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 103 (1.20%) SLA
8 101 (1.18%) IFRS
8 101 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 89 (1.04%) GRC
10 80 (0.93%) Accessibility
11 66 (0.77%) PCI DSS
12 61 (0.71%) ISO 20022
13 52 (0.61%) GAAP
14 39 (0.45%) SEPA
15 37 (0.43%) PSD2
16 35 (0.41%) NCSC
17 29 (0.34%) MiFID
18 28 (0.33%) EMIR
19 25 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 279 (3.25%) Docker
2 145 (1.69%) Active Directory
3 53 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 25 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.10%) GPFS
11 6 (0.070%) RACF
12 5 (0.058%) HDFS
12 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.047%) ACF2
13 4 (0.047%) Firmware
13 4 (0.047%) KVM
14 3 (0.035%) GridGain
14 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.035%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 394 (4.59%) Kubernetes
2 247 (2.88%) Terraform
3 119 (1.39%) Ansible
4 86 (1.00%) Grafana
5 68 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 46 (0.54%) SCCM
8 37 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 17 (0.20%) Control-M
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
11 16 (0.19%) vRealize
12 14 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
13 13 (0.15%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 9 (0.10%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,094 (12.76%) Microsoft
2 775 (9.04%) SAP
3 715 (8.34%) Oracle
4 306 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 232 (2.71%) Databricks
6 183 (2.13%) Salesforce
7 173 (2.02%) Google
8 132 (1.54%) Workday
9 116 (1.35%) Splunk
10 115 (1.34%) Cisco
11 97 (1.13%) VMware
12 94 (1.10%) IBM
13 75 (0.87%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.86%) Ariba
14 74 (0.86%) Citrix
15 68 (0.79%) Sage
16 56 (0.65%) OpenAI
17 54 (0.63%) Informatica
18 52 (0.61%) IFS
18 52 (0.61%) Palo Alto