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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,798 7,472 7,818
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.54% 22.82% 19.48%
As % of the General category 33.73% 36.24% 33.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,040 4,916 5,247
10th Percentile £358 £333 £356
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £549 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.14% -4.48% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £725
90th Percentile £788 £801 £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 278 145 207
10th Percentile £16.18 £15.69 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.00 £21.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +25.49%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £42.38
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.29 £38.12
% change year-on-year +61.07% -28.40% +11.49%

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 29,045 20,618 23,003
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.94% 62.96% 57.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,309 12,899 14,508
10th Percentile £313 £280 £287
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 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.67% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,070 1,093 1,536
10th Percentile £14.09 £13.35 £13.66
25th Percentile £18.27 £16.25 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.00 £25.32 £36.33
Median % change year-on-year +30.33% -30.31% +18.97%
75th Percentile £61.18 £51.18 £57.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.13 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.25 £22.14 £37.50
% change year-on-year +50.18% -40.96% +38.89%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 8,554 £550 - 5,094
London 0 5,158 £585 -2.50% 2,891
UK excluding London -1 3,864 £500 +2.04% 2,938
Work from Home -1 2,836 £550 -4.35% 1,939
North of England 0 1,315 £500 +6.38% 774
South East -1 739 £501 -4.52% 908
North West 0 696 £492 +9.33% 403
Midlands 0 632 £500 +11.11% 453
Yorkshire 0 566 £519 +6.96% 273
Scotland 0 487 £475 -4.04% 172
West Midlands +1 486 £515 +8.42% 266
South West -4 386 £525 -4.55% 325
East of England +6 212 £528 -8.26% 200
East Midlands -3 141 £500 +19.05% 187
Wales +3 77 £525 +13.51% 83
Northern Ireland -1 62 £475 +1.06% 73
North East -19 53 £500 +14.29% 106
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 3

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
1 320 (3.27%) Confluence
2 242 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 84 (0.86%) Apache Spark
4 78 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
5 64 (0.65%) Apache
6 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) CMS
8 32 (0.33%) SAS
9 27 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.12%) Camunda
14 11 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 9 (0.092%) Ethereum
16 8 (0.082%) WebLogic
16 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.061%) Appian
18 5 (0.051%) JBoss
18 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 517 (5.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 216 (2.20%) Microsoft Office
3 166 (1.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 161 (1.64%) Microsoft Project
5 106 (1.08%) MS Visio
6 72 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.041%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 445 (4.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.20%) Oracle Payables
3 115 (1.17%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 87 (0.89%) Oracle ERP
6 70 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 69 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
7 69 (0.70%) SAP FI
8 58 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
10 52 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
11 47 (0.48%) SAP CO
12 45 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
13 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
14 35 (0.36%) Unit4 Business World
15 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
16 31 (0.32%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.29%) SAP GRC
18 27 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
18 27 (0.28%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,532 (15.64%) Azure
2 1,109 (11.32%) AWS
3 656 (6.70%) Power Platform
4 523 (5.34%) GCP
5 334 (3.41%) SaaS
6 328 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
7 288 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
8 278 (2.84%) GitHub
9 251 (2.56%) Dynamics 365
10 212 (2.16%) Snowflake
11 199 (2.03%) Entra ID
12 141 (1.44%) Serverless
13 136 (1.39%) OCI
14 126 (1.29%) Amazon S3
15 113 (1.15%) Power Automate
16 106 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 103 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
18 102 (1.04%) dbt
19 101 (1.03%) GitHub Actions
20 94 (0.96%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 188 (1.92%) Firewall
2 141 (1.44%) Network Security
3 93 (0.95%) DNS
4 88 (0.90%) VPN
5 64 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 53 (0.54%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) SSL
8 47 (0.48%) BGP
9 41 (0.42%) DHCP
10 38 (0.39%) HTTP
11 36 (0.37%) LAN
12 34 (0.35%) Multicast
13 29 (0.30%) OSPF
14 25 (0.26%) VLAN
14 25 (0.26%) Wireless
15 24 (0.24%) Internet
16 22 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
17 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
18 19 (0.19%) MPLS
18 19 (0.19%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 544 (5.55%) Power BI
2 276 (2.82%) SQL Server
3 254 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
4 205 (2.09%) Metadata
5 180 (1.84%) Relational Database
6 168 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
7 154 (1.57%) Tableau
8 141 (1.44%) Data Lake
9 86 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
10 84 (0.86%) NoSQL
11 74 (0.76%) MongoDB
11 74 (0.76%) Oracle Database
12 72 (0.73%) BigQuery
13 66 (0.67%) Big Data
13 66 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
14 49 (0.50%) Delta Lake
14 49 (0.50%) Power Query
15 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
15 48 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 43 (0.44%) Db2
Development Applications
1 670 (6.84%) JIRA
2 267 (2.73%) Git
3 157 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 94 (0.96%) GitLab
5 49 (0.50%) JUnit
6 40 (0.41%) Selenium
7 39 (0.40%) Cucumber
8 28 (0.29%) ERwin
9 27 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
9 27 (0.28%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.26%) Bitbucket
11 24 (0.24%) Postman
11 24 (0.24%) SonarQube
12 23 (0.23%) Maven
12 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 23 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 22 (0.22%) REST Assured
14 19 (0.19%) MLflow
14 19 (0.19%) TeamCity
15 18 (0.18%) Claude Code
General
1 2,844 (29.03%) Social Skills
2 1,850 (18.88%) Banking
3 1,348 (13.76%) Analytical Skills
4 553 (5.64%) Public Sector
5 502 (5.12%) Legal
6 370 (3.78%) Investment Banking
7 367 (3.75%) Organisational Skills
8 359 (3.66%) Financial Institution
9 351 (3.58%) Front Office
10 341 (3.48%) Retail
11 267 (2.73%) Influencing Skills
12 231 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
13 190 (1.94%) Manufacturing
14 171 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 164 (1.67%) Billing
16 160 (1.63%) Marketing
17 158 (1.61%) Local Government
18 155 (1.58%) General Ledger
19 140 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
20 139 (1.42%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,440 (14.70%) Analyst
2 1,068 (10.90%) Lead
3 1,052 (10.74%) Senior
4 989 (10.09%) Developer
5 878 (8.96%) Architect
6 736 (7.51%) Business Analyst
7 710 (7.25%) Project Manager
8 657 (6.71%) Consultant
9 329 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
10 317 (3.24%) Data Engineer
11 249 (2.54%) Financial Analyst
12 223 (2.28%) Senior Manager
13 213 (2.17%) Java Developer
14 210 (2.14%) Data Analyst
15 206 (2.10%) Accountant
16 187 (1.91%) Programme Manager
17 185 (1.89%) Senior Developer
18 183 (1.87%) Software Engineer
19 182 (1.86%) Finance Manager
20 176 (1.80%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 323 (3.30%) REST
2 276 (2.82%) .NET
3 274 (2.80%) React
4 271 (2.77%) Kafka
5 230 (2.35%) Oracle Fusion
6 195 (1.99%) Middleware
7 184 (1.88%) Spring
8 173 (1.77%) Spring Boot
9 131 (1.34%) RESTful
10 130 (1.33%) PySpark
11 120 (1.22%) Redux
12 113 (1.15%) Node.js
13 97 (0.99%) JSON
14 94 (0.96%) OAuth
15 92 (0.94%) AngularJS
16 87 (0.89%) XML
17 69 (0.70%) SOAP
18 66 (0.67%) Web Services
19 63 (0.64%) CSS
19 63 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 470 (4.80%) Onboarding
2 447 (4.56%) Product Ownership
3 415 (4.24%) Cloud Native
4 269 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
5 237 (2.42%) Data Structures
6 225 (2.30%) Management Information System
7 188 (1.92%) Virtual Team
8 183 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
9 178 (1.82%) Derivative
10 177 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
11 170 (1.74%) Fixed Income
12 168 (1.71%) Data Centre
13 158 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 145 (1.48%) AI Agents
15 138 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
16 124 (1.27%) Equities
17 113 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
18 104 (1.06%) Public Cloud
19 102 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
20 98 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 349 (3.56%) Windows
2 287 (2.93%) Linux
3 156 (1.59%) Unix
4 79 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (0.40%) Apple iOS
6 39 (0.40%) Solaris
7 37 (0.38%) Windows 10
7 37 (0.38%) zOS
8 30 (0.31%) Android
9 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.20%) AIX
11 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
12 9 (0.092%) VMS
13 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 5 (0.051%) MVS
16 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2012
17 2 (0.020%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,209 (22.55%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,002 (20.43%) Agile
3 1,363 (13.91%) Migration
4 1,289 (13.16%) Problem-Solving
5 1,156 (11.80%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,116 (11.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,112 (11.35%) AI
8 1,027 (10.48%) ERP
9 1,002 (10.23%) CI/CD
10 998 (10.19%) DevOps
11 984 (10.04%) Analytics
12 891 (9.09%) Decision-Making
13 813 (8.30%) Validation
14 810 (8.27%) Roadmaps
15 782 (7.98%) Data Modelling
16 759 (7.75%) Project Management
16 759 (7.75%) User Acceptance Testing
17 708 (7.23%) Change Management
18 673 (6.87%) Business Intelligence
19 638 (6.51%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,268 (12.94%) SQL
2 1,204 (12.29%) Python
3 654 (6.67%) Java
4 381 (3.89%) C#
5 265 (2.70%) JavaScript
6 253 (2.58%) TypeScript
7 235 (2.40%) PowerShell
8 111 (1.13%) Bash
9 92 (0.94%) PL/SQL
10 80 (0.82%) Go
11 78 (0.80%) C++
12 76 (0.78%) Shell Script
13 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
14 61 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 50 (0.51%) Bicep
16 49 (0.50%) VBA
17 40 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 37 (0.38%) Scala
19 34 (0.35%) Apex Code
20 28 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 765 (7.81%) Security Cleared
2 720 (7.35%) Degree
3 545 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 236 (2.41%) PMP
5 212 (2.16%) PMI Certification
6 199 (2.03%) ACCA
7 196 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
8 176 (1.80%) CIMA
9 153 (1.56%) CISSP
10 134 (1.37%) DV Cleared
11 119 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 96 (0.98%) Azure Certification
13 88 (0.90%) CISM
14 79 (0.81%) Master's Degree
15 75 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 61 (0.62%) AWS Certification
17 53 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 33 (0.34%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 625 (6.38%) Data Quality
2 421 (4.30%) QA
3 361 (3.68%) PMO
4 280 (2.86%) GDPR
5 145 (1.48%) NIST
6 121 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 108 (1.10%) GRC
8 106 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 105 (1.07%) SLA
10 103 (1.05%) IFRS
11 99 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 63 (0.64%) GAAP
12 63 (0.64%) ISO 20022
13 50 (0.51%) PCI DSS
14 39 (0.40%) SEPA
15 34 (0.35%) Solvency II
16 30 (0.31%) MiFID
16 30 (0.31%) SOC 2
17 29 (0.30%) EMIR
17 29 (0.30%) PSD2
System Software
1 274 (2.80%) Docker
2 218 (2.22%) Active Directory
3 68 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.27%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 20 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (0.13%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 12 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
14 3 (0.031%) SRDF
14 3 (0.031%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 439 (4.48%) Kubernetes
2 333 (3.40%) Terraform
3 158 (1.61%) Ansible
4 92 (0.94%) Grafana
5 75 (0.77%) Prometheus
6 72 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 50 (0.51%) SCCM
9 26 (0.27%) Control-M
10 20 (0.20%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
12 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 14 (0.14%) HP ALM
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.12%) Istio
17 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,283 (13.09%) Microsoft
2 844 (8.61%) Oracle
3 833 (8.50%) SAP
4 350 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 301 (3.07%) Databricks
6 222 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 210 (2.14%) Google
8 153 (1.56%) IBM
9 136 (1.39%) Workday
10 129 (1.32%) VMware
11 108 (1.10%) Cisco
12 105 (1.07%) Splunk
13 90 (0.92%) Ariba
14 86 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 70 (0.71%) OpenAI
16 65 (0.66%) Sage
17 60 (0.61%) Citrix
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 52 (0.53%) Bloomberg
20 44 (0.45%) F5