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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,014 7,267 7,633
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.26% 22.23% 20.26%
As % of the General category 32.68% 35.03% 34.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,081 4,736 4,851
10th Percentile £358 £338 £360
25th Percentile £450 £416 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.52% -6.70% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £712
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £508
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.48% -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 133 137
10th Percentile £14.85 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.28 £19.79 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.55 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.98% -13.48% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £57.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £71.25 £78.75 £74.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £33.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -23.79% +25.71%

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 30,644 20,748 21,900
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.86% 63.46% 58.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,940 12,852 13,090
10th Percentile £313 £275 £283
25th Percentile £420 £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 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,583 1,203 1,057
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £29.50 £25.11 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.48% -28.26% +27.27%
75th Percentile £54.45 £47.12 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £70.73
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.27 £35.00
% change year-on-year +41.04% -39.23% +27.27%

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 23 September 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 8,591 £550 - 16,303
London 0 5,204 £590 - 9,865
UK excluding London -1 3,908 £510 +2.00% 8,047
Work from Home -1 2,830 £550 -2.65% 6,539
North of England 0 1,343 £514 +10.42% 1,873
South East -1 739 £500 -2.72% 2,108
North West -1 645 £502 +11.44% 1,051
Yorkshire 0 618 £525 +5.00% 622
Midlands -3 602 £514 +8.21% 1,131
Scotland 0 554 £465 -7.00% 927
West Midlands -2 447 £525 +1.01% 709
South West -5 356 £525 -5.47% 954
East of England +2 209 £549 -3.68% 592
East Midlands -2 152 £500 +19.76% 421
North East -5 73 £500 +13.96% 215
Northern Ireland 0 65 £510 -1.21% 340
Wales +1 62 £525 +20.69% 207
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 14

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
1 323 (3.23%) Confluence
2 259 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 83 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 74 (0.74%) Apache
6 47 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 36 (0.36%) CMS
8 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
8 26 (0.26%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 16 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 10 (0.100%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.090%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.060%) Appian
16 6 (0.060%) JBoss
16 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
17 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 540 (5.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 204 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 142 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
5 86 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 66 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
10 4 (0.040%) Windchill
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 446 (4.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.24%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.04%) NetSuite
3 104 (1.04%) Oracle Receivables
4 91 (0.91%) Oracle ERP
5 78 (0.78%) Oracle General Ledger
6 77 (0.77%) SAP FI
7 73 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
8 67 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
9 53 (0.53%) SAP CO
10 52 (0.52%) Oracle Financials
11 51 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 48 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
13 45 (0.45%) Workday HCM
14 39 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
15 36 (0.36%) Aladdin
16 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
17 33 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
18 28 (0.28%) SAP BRIM
19 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,565 (15.63%) Azure
2 1,093 (10.91%) AWS
3 661 (6.60%) Power Platform
4 563 (5.62%) GCP
5 342 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
6 326 (3.26%) SaaS
7 321 (3.21%) GitHub
8 317 (3.17%) Microsoft 365
9 266 (2.66%) Dynamics 365
10 231 (2.31%) Entra ID
11 224 (2.24%) Snowflake
12 158 (1.58%) Serverless
13 143 (1.43%) OCI
14 133 (1.33%) Amazon S3
15 130 (1.30%) GitHub Actions
16 128 (1.28%) dbt
17 127 (1.27%) Power Automate
18 122 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
19 108 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
20 103 (1.03%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 171 (1.71%) Firewall
2 153 (1.53%) Network Security
3 103 (1.03%) VPN
4 85 (0.85%) DNS
5 58 (0.58%) TCP/IP
6 54 (0.54%) WAN
7 50 (0.50%) DHCP
8 45 (0.45%) BGP
9 43 (0.43%) SSL
10 33 (0.33%) Multicast
10 33 (0.33%) VLAN
11 32 (0.32%) HTTP
12 31 (0.31%) Wireless
13 30 (0.30%) LAN
14 29 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
15 25 (0.25%) Internet
15 25 (0.25%) OSPF
15 25 (0.25%) SAN
16 18 (0.18%) Broadband
17 17 (0.17%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 530 (5.29%) Power BI
2 281 (2.81%) SQL Server
3 252 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 208 (2.08%) Metadata
5 177 (1.77%) Relational Database
6 142 (1.42%) Data Lake
7 136 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
8 127 (1.27%) Tableau
9 87 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 84 (0.84%) BigQuery
11 81 (0.81%) Oracle Database
12 76 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 68 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
14 59 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (0.55%) Power Query
16 52 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 47 (0.47%) Big Data
18 46 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
19 45 (0.45%) Db2
20 43 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 645 (6.44%) JIRA
2 324 (3.24%) Git
3 172 (1.72%) Jenkins
4 108 (1.08%) GitLab
5 65 (0.65%) Selenium
6 48 (0.48%) JUnit
7 37 (0.37%) Claude Code
8 36 (0.36%) Bitbucket
8 36 (0.36%) SonarQube
9 35 (0.35%) Maven
10 33 (0.33%) Cucumber
11 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 30 (0.30%) Gradle
13 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
14 28 (0.28%) ERwin
15 25 (0.25%) Cypress.io
15 25 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
16 24 (0.24%) Postman
17 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
18 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 3,122 (31.18%) Social Skills
2 2,083 (20.80%) Banking
3 1,416 (14.14%) Analytical Skills
4 541 (5.40%) Legal
5 538 (5.37%) Public Sector
6 455 (4.54%) Organisational Skills
7 392 (3.91%) Investment Banking
8 380 (3.79%) Retail
9 349 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
10 342 (3.42%) Front Office
11 311 (3.11%) Financial Institution
12 214 (2.14%) Manufacturing
13 212 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
14 197 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 179 (1.79%) Marketing
16 175 (1.75%) General Ledger
17 172 (1.72%) Billing
18 162 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
19 148 (1.48%) Local Government
20 142 (1.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,422 (14.20%) Analyst
2 1,105 (11.03%) Senior
3 996 (9.95%) Developer
4 994 (9.93%) Lead
5 882 (8.81%) Architect
6 732 (7.31%) Business Analyst
7 729 (7.28%) Consultant
8 688 (6.87%) Project Manager
9 339 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
10 302 (3.02%) Data Engineer
11 263 (2.63%) Financial Analyst
12 221 (2.21%) Senior Manager
13 212 (2.12%) Java Developer
14 208 (2.08%) Senior Developer
15 203 (2.03%) Data Analyst
16 192 (1.92%) Programme Manager
17 181 (1.81%) IT Manager
18 177 (1.77%) Accountant
19 170 (1.70%) Finance Manager
20 150 (1.50%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 401 (4.00%) Terraform
2 395 (3.94%) REST
3 273 (2.73%) Kafka
4 267 (2.67%) .NET
5 260 (2.60%) Oracle Fusion
6 242 (2.42%) React
7 200 (2.00%) Spring
8 193 (1.93%) Middleware
8 193 (1.93%) Spring Boot
9 144 (1.44%) PySpark
10 142 (1.42%) RESTful
11 110 (1.10%) JSON
12 108 (1.08%) OAuth
13 107 (1.07%) XML
14 98 (0.98%) SOAP
15 87 (0.87%) Web Services
16 84 (0.84%) Redux
17 79 (0.79%) AngularJS
18 76 (0.76%) Node.js
19 75 (0.75%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 532 (5.31%) Onboarding
2 515 (5.14%) Product Ownership
3 464 (4.63%) Cloud Native
4 256 (2.56%) Management Information System
5 253 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 235 (2.35%) Data Structures
7 232 (2.32%) Virtual Team
8 210 (2.10%) AI Agents
9 207 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
10 201 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
11 192 (1.92%) Derivative
12 170 (1.70%) Data Centre
13 160 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
14 155 (1.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 134 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
16 128 (1.28%) Fixed Income
17 118 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
18 115 (1.15%) Equities
19 114 (1.14%) Podcast
20 113 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 383 (3.82%) Windows
2 328 (3.28%) Linux
3 168 (1.68%) Unix
4 95 (0.95%) Windows Server
5 59 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 48 (0.48%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.41%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 38 (0.38%) zOS
10 33 (0.33%) Mac OS
10 33 (0.33%) Solaris
11 14 (0.14%) AIX
12 13 (0.13%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 7 (0.070%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.060%) HPUX
15 6 (0.060%) SUSE
16 5 (0.050%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,718 (27.14%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,036 (20.33%) Agile
3 1,344 (13.42%) Migration
4 1,323 (13.21%) Problem-Solving
5 1,314 (13.12%) AI
6 1,151 (11.49%) CI/CD
7 1,144 (11.42%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,139 (11.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,024 (10.23%) Analytics
10 997 (9.96%) DevOps
11 989 (9.88%) ERP
12 933 (9.32%) Decision-Making
13 875 (8.74%) Validation
14 869 (8.68%) Roadmaps
15 784 (7.83%) Project Management
16 779 (7.78%) Data Modelling
17 750 (7.49%) User Acceptance Testing
18 727 (7.26%) Change Management
19 719 (7.18%) Risk Management
20 681 (6.80%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,359 (13.57%) SQL
2 1,267 (12.65%) Python
3 660 (6.59%) Java
4 359 (3.58%) C#
5 284 (2.84%) PowerShell
6 254 (2.54%) JavaScript
7 219 (2.19%) TypeScript
8 153 (1.53%) Bash
9 113 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.77%) C++
12 69 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 68 (0.68%) Go
14 59 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 55 (0.55%) Bicep
16 52 (0.52%) Korn
17 42 (0.42%) Scala
18 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
18 36 (0.36%) VBA
19 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 773 (7.72%) Security Cleared
2 741 (7.40%) Degree
3 548 (5.47%) SC Cleared
4 260 (2.60%) PMP
5 258 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
6 227 (2.27%) PMI Certification
7 194 (1.94%) ACCA
8 170 (1.70%) CIMA
9 142 (1.42%) DV Cleared
10 136 (1.36%) CISSP
11 132 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
12 115 (1.15%) Azure Certification
13 82 (0.82%) AWS Certification
13 82 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
14 79 (0.79%) Master's Degree
15 71 (0.71%) CISM
16 52 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
17 49 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 40 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 39 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 708 (7.07%) Data Quality
2 433 (4.32%) QA
3 358 (3.57%) PMO
4 214 (2.14%) GDPR
5 138 (1.38%) NIST
6 127 (1.27%) GRC
7 121 (1.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.07%) Accessibility
9 96 (0.96%) IFRS
9 96 (0.96%) SLA
10 75 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 66 (0.66%) ISO 20022
12 46 (0.46%) GAAP
13 43 (0.43%) PCI DSS
14 37 (0.37%) SEPA
15 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
16 29 (0.29%) COBIT
16 29 (0.29%) MiFID
17 28 (0.28%) EMIR
18 24 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 269 (2.69%) Docker
2 244 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 95 (0.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) RACF
5 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.25%) vSphere
7 16 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 9 (0.090%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
12 6 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
13 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 491 (4.90%) Kubernetes
2 190 (1.90%) Ansible
3 96 (0.96%) Grafana
4 85 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 67 (0.67%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.64%) SCCM
7 63 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
8 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 25 (0.25%) Control-M
10 20 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 13 (0.13%) FortiGate
12 13 (0.13%) Istio
13 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
14 10 (0.100%) Packer
14 10 (0.100%) Puppet
14 10 (0.100%) Tivoli
15 9 (0.090%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,437 (14.35%) Microsoft
2 880 (8.79%) Oracle
3 877 (8.76%) SAP
4 383 (3.82%) ServiceNow
5 363 (3.62%) Databricks
6 243 (2.43%) Salesforce
7 239 (2.39%) Google
8 199 (1.99%) IBM
9 149 (1.49%) VMware
9 149 (1.49%) Workday
10 126 (1.26%) Cisco
11 118 (1.18%) Splunk
12 107 (1.07%) Ariba
13 92 (0.92%) CyberArk
14 89 (0.89%) OpenAI
15 58 (0.58%) Citrix
16 55 (0.55%) Bloomberg
17 52 (0.52%) Sage
18 49 (0.49%) Informatica
18 49 (0.49%) Murex