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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,836 7,436 7,720
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.32% 22.70% 19.89%
As % of the General category 33.31% 35.72% 34.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,010 4,908 5,059
10th Percentile £362 £325 £360
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £493 £513
% change year-on-year +2.54% -3.90% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 319 140 178
10th Percentile £15.64 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.37 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +34.62%
75th Percentile - £63.38 £44.07
90th Percentile £75.40 £76.38 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £35.00
% change year-on-year +67.72% -25.11% +13.80%

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 29,532 20,815 22,280
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.00% 63.55% 57.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,433 12,939 13,813
10th Percentile £313 £275 £285
25th Percentile £415 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £745 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,275 1,181 1,258
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.46 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.06 £16.17 £16.82
Median hourly rate £31.46 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +25.09% -28.87% +26.38%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.33 £69.65 £70.29
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.96 £22.14 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.37% -36.74% +34.62%

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 27 August 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 27 August 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 27 August 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 8,535 £550 - 14,655
London 0 5,128 £585 -2.50% 9,712
UK excluding London 0 3,898 £505 +2.54% 6,974
Work from Home -1 2,795 £550 -4.35% 6,252
North of England 0 1,342 £500 +6.61% 1,690
South East -2 737 £505 -3.81% 1,676
North West -1 690 £500 +11.11% 992
Midlands -1 625 £500 +11.11% 770
Yorkshire 0 573 £514 +5.44% 478
Scotland 0 518 £470 -3.89% 844
West Midlands +1 466 £500 - 461
South West -5 374 £550 -1.60% 1,009
East of England +6 210 £530 -6.19% 577
East Midlands -2 155 £500 +21.21% 309
North East -5 72 £500 +13.64% 237
Northern Ireland -1 64 £475 -1.30% 336
Wales -1 58 £525 +13.51% 168
Channel Islands +2 4 £500 - 4

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
1 337 (3.43%) Confluence
2 254 (2.58%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 85 (0.86%) Apache Spark
5 74 (0.75%) Apache
6 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.35%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.27%) SAS
9 21 (0.21%) IIS
10 17 (0.17%) Camunda
11 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.092%) CICS
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 7 (0.071%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.061%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 6 (0.061%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 527 (5.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 185 (1.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 156 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 92 (0.94%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 30 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 8 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Sketch
11 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.031%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 437 (4.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 127 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 109 (1.11%) NetSuite
4 105 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 98 (1.00%) Oracle ERP
6 73 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
7 71 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
9 64 (0.65%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 60 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
11 52 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
13 42 (0.43%) Aladdin
13 42 (0.43%) SAP FI/CO
14 37 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
15 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
16 33 (0.34%) SAP GRC
17 32 (0.33%) Workday HCM
18 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
18 26 (0.26%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,547 (15.73%) Azure
2 1,066 (10.84%) AWS
3 666 (6.77%) Power Platform
4 520 (5.29%) GCP
5 352 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
6 324 (3.29%) SaaS
7 307 (3.12%) GitHub
8 304 (3.09%) Microsoft 365
9 265 (2.69%) Dynamics 365
10 219 (2.23%) Snowflake
11 218 (2.22%) Entra ID
12 148 (1.50%) Serverless
13 143 (1.45%) OCI
14 123 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
14 123 (1.25%) Power Automate
15 117 (1.19%) dbt
16 115 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
17 113 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
18 112 (1.14%) Amazon S3
19 105 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 175 (1.78%) Firewall
2 150 (1.53%) Network Security
3 104 (1.06%) VPN
4 97 (0.99%) DNS
5 67 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 63 (0.64%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) DHCP
8 45 (0.46%) BGP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 41 (0.42%) LAN
10 40 (0.41%) HTTP
11 34 (0.35%) Multicast
12 33 (0.34%) VLAN
13 31 (0.32%) Internet
14 30 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
15 29 (0.29%) Wireless
16 24 (0.24%) OSPF
16 24 (0.24%) SAN
17 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 543 (5.52%) Power BI
2 284 (2.89%) SQL Server
3 264 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.05%) Metadata
5 180 (1.83%) Relational Database
6 147 (1.49%) Data Lake
7 133 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
8 131 (1.33%) Tableau
9 82 (0.83%) NoSQL
10 76 (0.77%) BigQuery
11 75 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
12 74 (0.75%) Oracle Database
13 71 (0.72%) MongoDB
14 59 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.55%) Big Data
16 53 (0.54%) Delta Lake
17 51 (0.52%) Power Query
18 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
19 44 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 670 (6.81%) JIRA
2 288 (2.93%) Git
3 168 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 102 (1.04%) GitLab
5 55 (0.56%) Selenium
6 48 (0.49%) JUnit
7 32 (0.33%) Bitbucket
7 32 (0.33%) Maven
8 30 (0.31%) ERwin
8 30 (0.31%) SonarQube
8 30 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
8 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
9 28 (0.28%) Claude Code
9 28 (0.28%) REST Assured
10 27 (0.27%) Cucumber
11 24 (0.24%) Gradle
12 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
14 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
14 21 (0.21%) Postman
General
1 2,992 (30.42%) Social Skills
2 1,959 (19.92%) Banking
3 1,381 (14.04%) Analytical Skills
4 546 (5.55%) Legal
5 529 (5.38%) Public Sector
6 424 (4.31%) Organisational Skills
7 392 (3.99%) Investment Banking
8 382 (3.88%) Retail
9 341 (3.47%) Financial Institution
10 338 (3.44%) Front Office
11 305 (3.10%) Influencing Skills
12 225 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
13 206 (2.09%) Manufacturing
14 190 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 168 (1.71%) General Ledger
16 166 (1.69%) Billing
17 161 (1.64%) Marketing
18 148 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
19 144 (1.46%) Local Government
20 142 (1.44%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,415 (14.39%) Analyst
2 1,047 (10.64%) Senior
3 1,037 (10.54%) Lead
4 972 (9.88%) Developer
5 867 (8.81%) Architect
6 738 (7.50%) Business Analyst
7 699 (7.11%) Consultant
8 693 (7.05%) Project Manager
9 325 (3.30%) Solutions Architect
10 305 (3.10%) Data Engineer
11 260 (2.64%) Financial Analyst
12 227 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 206 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 194 (1.97%) Data Analyst
15 187 (1.90%) Senior Developer
16 184 (1.87%) Accountant
16 184 (1.87%) Programme Manager
17 180 (1.83%) Finance Manager
18 174 (1.77%) IT Manager
19 161 (1.64%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 368 (3.74%) Terraform
2 355 (3.61%) REST
3 272 (2.77%) .NET
4 266 (2.70%) Oracle Fusion
5 249 (2.53%) Kafka
6 232 (2.36%) React
7 187 (1.90%) Middleware
8 186 (1.89%) Spring
9 180 (1.83%) Spring Boot
10 140 (1.42%) PySpark
11 134 (1.36%) RESTful
12 103 (1.05%) XML
13 99 (1.01%) JSON
13 99 (1.01%) OAuth
14 87 (0.88%) Redux
15 81 (0.82%) AngularJS
15 81 (0.82%) Node.js
16 79 (0.80%) SOAP
17 66 (0.67%) Web Services
18 62 (0.63%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 511 (5.20%) Onboarding
2 486 (4.94%) Product Ownership
3 418 (4.25%) Cloud Native
4 252 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
5 236 (2.40%) Data Structures
6 232 (2.36%) Management Information System
7 219 (2.23%) Virtual Team
8 192 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
9 188 (1.91%) Derivative
10 181 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
11 170 (1.73%) AI Agents
12 164 (1.67%) Data Centre
13 156 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 137 (1.39%) Fixed Income
15 131 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
16 119 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
17 117 (1.19%) Equities
18 114 (1.16%) Podcast
19 112 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
20 110 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 377 (3.83%) Windows
2 306 (3.11%) Linux
3 163 (1.66%) Unix
4 89 (0.90%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 46 (0.47%) Apple iOS
7 43 (0.44%) Windows 10
8 35 (0.36%) Android
9 34 (0.35%) Solaris
10 32 (0.33%) zOS
11 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
12 15 (0.15%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 9 (0.092%) VMS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 4 (0.041%) CentOS
17 4 (0.041%) MVS
18 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,484 (25.25%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,020 (20.54%) Agile
3 1,326 (13.48%) Migration
4 1,303 (13.25%) Problem-Solving
5 1,191 (12.11%) AI
6 1,167 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,148 (11.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,061 (10.79%) CI/CD
9 1,022 (10.39%) ERP
10 1,003 (10.20%) Analytics
11 1,000 (10.17%) DevOps
12 894 (9.09%) Decision-Making
13 812 (8.26%) Validation
14 807 (8.20%) Roadmaps
15 776 (7.89%) Data Modelling
16 763 (7.76%) User Acceptance Testing
17 760 (7.73%) Project Management
18 730 (7.42%) Change Management
19 667 (6.78%) Business Intelligence
20 663 (6.74%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,289 (13.10%) SQL
2 1,199 (12.19%) Python
3 635 (6.46%) Java
4 365 (3.71%) C#
5 266 (2.70%) PowerShell
6 245 (2.49%) JavaScript
7 212 (2.16%) TypeScript
8 140 (1.42%) Bash
9 105 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.90%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 65 (0.66%) T-SQL
13 62 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 58 (0.59%) Bicep
14 58 (0.59%) Go
15 41 (0.42%) Korn
15 41 (0.42%) VBA
16 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
16 39 (0.40%) Scala
17 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 774 (7.87%) Security Cleared
2 730 (7.42%) Degree
3 554 (5.63%) SC Cleared
4 243 (2.47%) PMP
5 237 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
6 219 (2.23%) PMI Certification
7 197 (2.00%) ACCA
8 172 (1.75%) CIMA
9 138 (1.40%) CISSP
10 137 (1.39%) DV Cleared
11 132 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
12 109 (1.11%) Azure Certification
13 84 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
14 81 (0.82%) CISM
15 70 (0.71%) Master's Degree
16 64 (0.65%) AWS Certification
17 53 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 44 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.38%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 650 (6.61%) Data Quality
2 420 (4.27%) QA
3 362 (3.68%) PMO
4 244 (2.48%) GDPR
5 145 (1.47%) NIST
6 127 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 116 (1.18%) GRC
8 109 (1.11%) Accessibility
9 105 (1.07%) SLA
10 96 (0.98%) IFRS
11 89 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 56 (0.57%) ISO 20022
13 52 (0.53%) GAAP
14 46 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
16 31 (0.32%) SEPA
17 28 (0.28%) EMIR
17 28 (0.28%) MiFID
18 27 (0.27%) COBIT
19 23 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 262 (2.66%) Docker
2 241 (2.45%) Active Directory
3 80 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.24%) RACF
7 22 (0.22%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 11 (0.11%) NFS
11 8 (0.081%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) ACF2
12 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.041%) GPFS
14 4 (0.041%) KVM
14 4 (0.041%) zsh
15 3 (0.031%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 456 (4.64%) Kubernetes
2 171 (1.74%) Ansible
3 99 (1.01%) Grafana
4 81 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.61%) SCCM
7 56 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 25 (0.25%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Argo
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
12 14 (0.14%) Istio
12 14 (0.14%) Puppet
12 14 (0.14%) vRealize
13 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
13 11 (0.11%) Packer
14 9 (0.092%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,391 (14.14%) Microsoft
2 887 (9.02%) Oracle
3 845 (8.59%) SAP
4 374 (3.80%) ServiceNow
5 341 (3.47%) Databricks
6 232 (2.36%) Salesforce
7 217 (2.21%) Google
8 174 (1.77%) IBM
9 137 (1.39%) VMware
10 128 (1.30%) Workday
11 117 (1.19%) Cisco
12 114 (1.16%) Splunk
13 100 (1.02%) Ariba
14 89 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 76 (0.77%) OpenAI
16 59 (0.60%) Citrix
17 58 (0.59%) Sage
18 54 (0.55%) Bloomberg
19 52 (0.53%) Informatica
20 47 (0.48%) Adobe