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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,480 6,955 8,191
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.47% 22.73% 18.97%
As % of the General category 33.93% 35.93% 33.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,903 4,557 5,488
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £447 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £721
90th Percentile £800 £820 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 237 139 262
10th Percentile £14.93 £16.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.03 £24.44 £15.54
Median hourly rate £35.00 £34.00 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% +21.43% -7.83%
75th Percentile £54.23 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £88.00 £76.50 £57.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.13 £28.55 £30.83
% change year-on-year +51.07% -7.38% -31.50%

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 27,939 19,359 24,652
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.44% 63.27% 57.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,796 12,166 15,404
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.27% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,916 953 1,974
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.47 £12.79
25th Percentile £18.14 £16.41 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.50 £31.61
Median % change year-on-year +16.36% -12.99% +5.35%
75th Percentile £60.00 £53.50 £53.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.53 £23.55 £30.37
% change year-on-year +33.87% -22.46% +20.88%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 8,305 £550 - 3,602
London 0 4,982 £575 -4.17% 1,897
UK excluding London +1 3,788 £500 +2.04% 2,417
Work from Home -1 2,747 £550 -4.35% 1,399
North of England +2 1,295 £500 +6.84% 581
South East -1 699 £500 -4.76% 860
North West +4 678 £473 +5.06% 311
Midlands 0 649 £500 +11.11% 352
Yorkshire 0 573 £525 +8.19% 200
Scotland 0 480 £495 +3.04% 120
West Midlands +1 478 £500 +1.63% 224
South West -3 378 £525 - 218
East of England +4 194 £520 -9.57% 199
East Midlands 0 164 £475 +13.77% 127
Wales +5 88 £528 +13.44% 59
Northern Ireland -1 55 £475 +11.76% 74
North East -19 45 £500 +13.96% 80
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
1 339 (3.58%) Confluence
2 233 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 89 (0.94%) Apache Spark
4 74 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
5 60 (0.63%) Apache
6 52 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.35%) SAS
8 28 (0.30%) CMS
9 22 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.20%) CICS
11 17 (0.18%) IIS
12 12 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.13%) Camunda
12 12 (0.13%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.12%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.095%) Appian
15 8 (0.084%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.063%) Hyperledger
17 5 (0.053%) WebLogic
18 4 (0.042%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 518 (5.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.36%) Microsoft Office
3 173 (1.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 151 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 118 (1.24%) MS Visio
6 68 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.074%) Sketch
9 6 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.053%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.053%) Trello
11 4 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
11 4 (0.042%) InVision
11 4 (0.042%) Notion
11 4 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
11 4 (0.042%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.021%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Final Cut Pro
13 1 (0.011%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 426 (4.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 111 (1.17%) NetSuite
3 109 (1.15%) Oracle Payables
4 88 (0.93%) Oracle Receivables
5 80 (0.84%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 77 (0.81%) Oracle ERP
7 64 (0.68%) SAP FI
8 49 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
9 48 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
10 46 (0.49%) Oracle General Ledger
11 45 (0.47%) SAP CO
12 43 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
13 39 (0.41%) Aladdin
14 36 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
15 29 (0.31%) SAP ERP
16 28 (0.30%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 27 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
18 26 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
19 25 (0.26%) Unit4 Business World
20 24 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,499 (15.81%) Azure
2 1,067 (11.26%) AWS
3 632 (6.67%) Power Platform
4 478 (5.04%) GCP
5 324 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
6 313 (3.30%) SaaS
7 288 (3.04%) Microsoft 365
8 245 (2.58%) GitHub
9 218 (2.30%) Dynamics 365
10 198 (2.09%) Snowflake
11 177 (1.87%) Entra ID
12 145 (1.53%) Serverless
13 124 (1.31%) Amazon S3
13 124 (1.31%) OCI
14 108 (1.14%) Power Automate
15 106 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
16 101 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
17 97 (1.02%) dbt
18 89 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
19 84 (0.89%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 180 (1.90%) Firewall
2 146 (1.54%) Network Security
3 79 (0.83%) DNS
4 75 (0.79%) WAN
5 71 (0.75%) VPN
6 61 (0.64%) TCP/IP
7 44 (0.46%) BGP
8 38 (0.40%) LAN
9 37 (0.39%) SSL
10 35 (0.37%) HTTP
10 35 (0.37%) SD-WAN
11 32 (0.34%) Multicast
12 31 (0.33%) OSPF
13 30 (0.32%) DHCP
14 25 (0.26%) Internet
15 24 (0.25%) MPLS
16 21 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
17 19 (0.20%) VSAN
18 17 (0.18%) VLAN
19 16 (0.17%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 535 (5.64%) Power BI
2 262 (2.76%) SQL Server
3 245 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.13%) Metadata
5 179 (1.89%) Relational Database
6 177 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
7 150 (1.58%) Tableau
8 145 (1.53%) Data Lake
9 92 (0.97%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 73 (0.77%) Big Data
13 69 (0.73%) BigQuery
13 69 (0.73%) MongoDB
14 62 (0.65%) Snowflake Schema
15 50 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 47 (0.50%) Power Query
17 45 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
17 45 (0.47%) Delta Lake
18 41 (0.43%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 684 (7.22%) JIRA
2 246 (2.59%) Git
3 171 (1.80%) Jenkins
4 96 (1.01%) GitLab
5 56 (0.59%) JUnit
6 46 (0.49%) Cucumber
7 42 (0.44%) Selenium
8 30 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
9 29 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 28 (0.30%) Postman
11 25 (0.26%) ERwin
11 25 (0.26%) MLflow
12 24 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
14 21 (0.22%) Maven
15 19 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 19 (0.20%) Zephyr
16 17 (0.18%) Hudson
16 17 (0.18%) TeamCity
17 15 (0.16%) Gradle
General
1 2,774 (29.26%) Social Skills
2 1,752 (18.48%) Banking
3 1,247 (13.15%) Analytical Skills
4 534 (5.63%) Public Sector
5 466 (4.92%) Legal
6 377 (3.98%) Investment Banking
7 361 (3.81%) Financial Institution
8 341 (3.60%) Front Office
9 304 (3.21%) Retail
10 303 (3.20%) Organisational Skills
11 241 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
12 233 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
13 177 (1.87%) Manufacturing
14 172 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 155 (1.64%) General Ledger
16 154 (1.62%) Local Government
17 150 (1.58%) Billing
18 137 (1.45%) Marketing
19 132 (1.39%) Law
20 129 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,391 (14.67%) Analyst
2 1,017 (10.73%) Senior
3 1,000 (10.55%) Lead
4 958 (10.11%) Developer
5 888 (9.37%) Architect
6 714 (7.53%) Business Analyst
7 710 (7.49%) Project Manager
8 641 (6.76%) Consultant
9 352 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
10 315 (3.32%) Data Engineer
11 225 (2.37%) Financial Analyst
12 222 (2.34%) Senior Manager
13 199 (2.10%) Data Analyst
14 196 (2.07%) Accountant
15 195 (2.06%) Java Developer
16 189 (1.99%) Finance Manager
17 181 (1.91%) Programme Manager
18 174 (1.84%) Senior Developer
18 174 (1.84%) Software Engineer
19 168 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 293 (3.09%) REST
2 272 (2.87%) .NET
3 263 (2.77%) Kafka
4 262 (2.76%) React
5 200 (2.11%) Oracle Fusion
6 192 (2.03%) Middleware
7 177 (1.87%) Spring
8 167 (1.76%) Spring Boot
9 132 (1.39%) RESTful
10 117 (1.23%) Redux
11 114 (1.20%) PySpark
12 108 (1.14%) Node.js
13 93 (0.98%) JSON
14 92 (0.97%) AngularJS
15 86 (0.91%) OAuth
16 78 (0.82%) XML
17 65 (0.69%) CSS
18 63 (0.66%) OpenID
19 62 (0.65%) GraphQL
20 60 (0.63%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 433 (4.57%) Onboarding
2 406 (4.28%) Product Ownership
3 398 (4.20%) Cloud Native
4 260 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
5 218 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 213 (2.25%) Data Structures
7 169 (1.78%) Fixed Income
8 168 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
9 167 (1.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 166 (1.75%) Derivative
11 165 (1.74%) Data Centre
12 164 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
13 143 (1.51%) Virtual Team
14 130 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
15 125 (1.32%) AI Agents
16 124 (1.31%) Equities
17 116 (1.22%) Public Cloud
18 103 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
19 102 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
20 88 (0.93%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 322 (3.40%) Windows
2 274 (2.89%) Linux
3 152 (1.60%) Unix
4 72 (0.76%) Windows Server
5 38 (0.40%) Solaris
6 37 (0.39%) Windows 10
7 35 (0.37%) zOS
8 34 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 34 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 29 (0.31%) Android
10 22 (0.23%) Mac OS
11 19 (0.20%) AIX
12 8 (0.084%) VMS
13 7 (0.074%) Oracle Linux
13 7 (0.074%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.053%) HPUX
14 5 (0.053%) SUSE
14 5 (0.053%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.042%) MVS
16 3 (0.032%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,037 (21.49%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,909 (20.14%) Agile
3 1,309 (13.81%) Migration
4 1,270 (13.40%) Problem-Solving
5 1,091 (11.51%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,050 (11.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,034 (10.91%) AI
8 1,003 (10.58%) DevOps
9 980 (10.34%) CI/CD
9 980 (10.34%) ERP
10 937 (9.88%) Analytics
11 835 (8.81%) Decision-Making
12 791 (8.34%) Validation
13 785 (8.28%) Project Management
14 777 (8.20%) Data Modelling
15 774 (8.16%) Roadmaps
16 737 (7.77%) User Acceptance Testing
17 674 (7.11%) Change Management
18 670 (7.07%) Business Intelligence
19 611 (6.45%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,274 (13.44%) SQL
2 1,158 (12.22%) Python
3 631 (6.66%) Java
4 385 (4.06%) C#
5 258 (2.72%) JavaScript
6 256 (2.70%) TypeScript
7 216 (2.28%) PowerShell
8 92 (0.97%) Bash
9 91 (0.96%) C++
10 81 (0.85%) PL/SQL
11 79 (0.83%) Go
12 73 (0.77%) T-SQL
13 60 (0.63%) Shell Script
14 57 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 48 (0.51%) Scala
16 47 (0.50%) VBA
17 35 (0.37%) Bicep
18 34 (0.36%) Apex Code
19 31 (0.33%) Rust
20 29 (0.31%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 743 (7.84%) Degree
2 709 (7.48%) Security Cleared
3 508 (5.36%) SC Cleared
4 222 (2.34%) ACCA
4 222 (2.34%) PMP
5 200 (2.11%) CIMA
6 198 (2.09%) PMI Certification
7 182 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
8 156 (1.65%) CISSP
9 136 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
10 96 (1.01%) DV Cleared
11 92 (0.97%) CISM
12 87 (0.92%) Azure Certification
12 87 (0.92%) Master's Degree
13 73 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
14 53 (0.56%) AWS Certification
15 47 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
16 41 (0.43%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 38 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 34 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 590 (6.22%) Data Quality
2 415 (4.38%) QA
3 328 (3.46%) PMO
4 304 (3.21%) GDPR
5 163 (1.72%) NIST
6 128 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.21%) IFRS
8 112 (1.18%) SLA
9 107 (1.13%) GRC
10 102 (1.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 94 (0.99%) Accessibility
12 65 (0.69%) GAAP
13 64 (0.68%) ISO 20022
14 62 (0.65%) PCI DSS
15 39 (0.41%) SEPA
16 36 (0.38%) NCSC
16 36 (0.38%) Solvency II
17 33 (0.35%) PSD2
18 30 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 29 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 281 (2.96%) Docker
2 192 (2.03%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 29 (0.31%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
7 16 (0.17%) RACF
8 15 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.13%) NFS
11 10 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.063%) GPFS
12 6 (0.063%) KVM
13 5 (0.053%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.032%) Firmware
14 3 (0.032%) GridGain
14 3 (0.032%) IAG
14 3 (0.032%) SRDF
15 2 (0.021%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 432 (4.56%) Kubernetes
2 294 (3.10%) Terraform
3 153 (1.61%) Ansible
4 87 (0.92%) Grafana
5 73 (0.77%) Prometheus
6 68 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.54%) SCCM
8 47 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (0.31%) FortiGate
10 25 (0.26%) Control-M
11 18 (0.19%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.19%) vRealize
12 16 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 15 (0.16%) Argo
14 14 (0.15%) Nessus
15 13 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (0.14%) Jamf Pro
15 13 (0.14%) OMEGAMON
15 13 (0.14%) Puppet
16 12 (0.13%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,209 (12.75%) Microsoft
2 829 (8.74%) SAP
3 786 (8.29%) Oracle
4 341 (3.60%) ServiceNow
5 291 (3.07%) Databricks
6 215 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 209 (2.20%) Google
8 135 (1.42%) Workday
9 126 (1.33%) IBM
10 120 (1.27%) Cisco
11 114 (1.20%) VMware
12 113 (1.19%) Splunk
13 93 (0.98%) CyberArk
14 87 (0.92%) Ariba
15 68 (0.72%) OpenAI
16 66 (0.70%) Sage
17 63 (0.66%) Citrix
18 57 (0.60%) Informatica
19 55 (0.58%) Bloomberg
20 50 (0.53%) Palo Alto