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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,361 6,792 8,193
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.43% 22.67% 18.78%
As % of the General category 33.94% 35.71% 32.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,841 4,433 5,487
10th Percentile £355 £350 £350
25th Percentile £443 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £690 £714
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £489 £500
% change year-on-year +2.25% -2.20% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 232 135 273
10th Percentile £14.84 £17.02 £12.81
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.66 £15.17
Median hourly rate £35.27 £37.02 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.74% +37.11% -6.86%
75th Percentile £54.00 £65.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £87.70 £79.36 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.30 £30.79 £28.00
% change year-on-year +37.38% +9.96% -41.05%

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 27,583 19,019 24,847
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.32% 63.47% 56.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,651 11,970 15,527
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,865 925 2,025
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.25 £16.55 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.23 £28.00 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.09% -9.68% +3.33%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £52.78
90th Percentile £80.00 £74.50 £67.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.50 £24.34 £30.00
% change year-on-year +29.42% -18.87% +17.19%

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 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 23 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 23 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 8,227 £550 -0.90% 3,813
London 0 4,932 £575 -4.17% 2,027
UK excluding London +1 3,751 £500 +2.25% 2,525
Work from Home -1 2,700 £550 -4.35% 1,566
North of England +2 1,281 £500 +7.53% 612
South East -1 693 £500 -4.76% 869
North West +4 679 £466 +3.44% 322
Midlands 0 644 £500 +11.11% 385
Yorkshire 0 558 £525 +10.53% 220
West Midlands +1 471 £503 +0.60% 218
Scotland 0 468 £500 +4.82% 128
South West -3 378 £525 - 246
East of England +3 196 £520 -9.57% 187
East Midlands -1 166 £469 +10.95% 165
Wales +6 90 £528 +13.44% 74
Northern Ireland -1 53 £500 +17.65% 77
North East -19 45 £500 +13.64% 82
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
1 336 (3.59%) Confluence
2 223 (2.38%) SharePoint
3 89 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 69 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
5 58 (0.62%) Apache
6 53 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
7 32 (0.34%) SAS
8 27 (0.29%) CMS
9 22 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.20%) CICS
11 16 (0.17%) IIS
12 12 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.13%) Camunda
12 12 (0.13%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.12%) Appian
13 11 (0.12%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.064%) Hyperledger
15 6 (0.064%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.053%) Mendix
Applications
1 522 (5.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (2.35%) Microsoft Office
3 175 (1.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 157 (1.68%) Microsoft Project
5 114 (1.22%) MS Visio
6 64 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.096%) Sketch
9 8 (0.085%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.064%) InVision
12 5 (0.053%) Trello
13 4 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
13 4 (0.043%) Notion
13 4 (0.043%) Oracle Smart View
13 4 (0.043%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.021%) Adobe Premiere
14 2 (0.021%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.021%) Final Cut Pro
15 1 (0.011%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 423 (4.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 111 (1.19%) NetSuite
3 110 (1.18%) Oracle Payables
4 88 (0.94%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (0.91%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 74 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
7 62 (0.66%) SAP FI
8 48 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
9 47 (0.50%) SAP CO
10 45 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
10 45 (0.48%) Oracle General Ledger
10 45 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
11 39 (0.42%) Aladdin
12 34 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
12 34 (0.36%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 29 (0.31%) SAP ERP
14 26 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
14 26 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
15 25 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
16 22 (0.24%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,482 (15.83%) Azure
2 1,054 (11.26%) AWS
3 631 (6.74%) Power Platform
4 463 (4.95%) GCP
5 320 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
6 312 (3.33%) SaaS
7 283 (3.02%) Microsoft 365
8 238 (2.54%) GitHub
9 215 (2.30%) Dynamics 365
10 187 (2.00%) Snowflake
11 172 (1.84%) Entra ID
12 146 (1.56%) Serverless
13 127 (1.36%) OCI
14 121 (1.29%) Amazon S3
15 110 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 105 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
17 92 (0.98%) Microsoft Copilot
18 91 (0.97%) dbt
19 88 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
20 85 (0.91%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.85%) Firewall
2 138 (1.47%) Network Security
3 75 (0.80%) DNS
3 75 (0.80%) WAN
4 67 (0.72%) VPN
5 59 (0.63%) TCP/IP
6 42 (0.45%) BGP
7 37 (0.40%) LAN
7 37 (0.40%) SSL
8 36 (0.38%) HTTP
8 36 (0.38%) SD-WAN
9 30 (0.32%) Multicast
10 29 (0.31%) OSPF
11 28 (0.30%) DHCP
12 24 (0.26%) MPLS
13 22 (0.24%) Internet
14 21 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
15 19 (0.20%) VSAN
16 17 (0.18%) VLAN
17 16 (0.17%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 539 (5.76%) Power BI
2 256 (2.73%) SQL Server
3 236 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 196 (2.09%) Metadata
5 176 (1.88%) Relational Database
6 174 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
7 150 (1.60%) Tableau
8 143 (1.53%) Data Lake
9 94 (1.00%) NoSQL
10 85 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (0.79%) Big Data
12 73 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 68 (0.73%) MongoDB
14 66 (0.71%) BigQuery
15 57 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
16 48 (0.51%) Power Query
17 47 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 46 (0.49%) Delta Lake
19 44 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
20 39 (0.42%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 685 (7.32%) JIRA
2 234 (2.50%) Git
3 166 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.04%) GitLab
5 58 (0.62%) JUnit
6 46 (0.49%) Cucumber
7 36 (0.38%) Selenium
8 31 (0.33%) Visual Studio
9 30 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 27 (0.29%) Postman
11 26 (0.28%) MLflow
12 24 (0.26%) ERwin
13 23 (0.25%) SonarQube
14 21 (0.22%) Maven
14 21 (0.22%) REST Assured
15 19 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 19 (0.20%) Zephyr
16 16 (0.17%) Hudson
17 15 (0.16%) Gradle
17 15 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,740 (29.27%) Social Skills
2 1,739 (18.58%) Banking
3 1,206 (12.88%) Analytical Skills
4 523 (5.59%) Public Sector
5 456 (4.87%) Legal
6 371 (3.96%) Investment Banking
7 351 (3.75%) Financial Institution
8 329 (3.51%) Front Office
9 298 (3.18%) Organisational Skills
10 297 (3.17%) Retail
11 234 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
11 234 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
12 171 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 167 (1.78%) Manufacturing
14 153 (1.63%) General Ledger
15 151 (1.61%) Local Government
16 145 (1.55%) Billing
17 135 (1.44%) Marketing
18 133 (1.42%) Law
19 130 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,373 (14.67%) Analyst
2 1,015 (10.84%) Senior
3 987 (10.54%) Lead
4 943 (10.07%) Developer
5 871 (9.30%) Architect
6 712 (7.61%) Project Manager
7 697 (7.45%) Business Analyst
8 628 (6.71%) Consultant
9 352 (3.76%) Solutions Architect
10 313 (3.34%) Data Engineer
11 224 (2.39%) Financial Analyst
12 220 (2.35%) Senior Manager
13 196 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 195 (2.08%) Finance Manager
15 194 (2.07%) Accountant
15 194 (2.07%) Data Analyst
16 177 (1.89%) Senior Developer
17 175 (1.87%) Software Engineer
18 172 (1.84%) Programme Manager
19 166 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 285 (3.04%) REST
2 265 (2.83%) .NET
3 264 (2.82%) Kafka
4 263 (2.81%) React
5 206 (2.20%) Oracle Fusion
6 192 (2.05%) Middleware
7 174 (1.86%) Spring
8 167 (1.78%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.45%) RESTful
10 117 (1.25%) Redux
11 113 (1.21%) PySpark
12 108 (1.15%) Node.js
13 93 (0.99%) AngularJS
14 92 (0.98%) JSON
15 88 (0.94%) OAuth
16 78 (0.83%) XML
17 65 (0.69%) CSS
18 63 (0.67%) OpenID
19 61 (0.65%) GraphQL
20 60 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 421 (4.50%) Onboarding
2 400 (4.27%) Product Ownership
3 391 (4.18%) Cloud Native
4 256 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
5 215 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 210 (2.24%) Data Structures
7 170 (1.82%) Derivative
8 168 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
9 166 (1.77%) Fixed Income
10 164 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 162 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
12 161 (1.72%) Data Centre
13 137 (1.46%) Virtual Team
14 128 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
15 124 (1.32%) Equities
16 115 (1.23%) Public Cloud
17 112 (1.20%) AI Agents
18 101 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
19 99 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
20 86 (0.92%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 314 (3.35%) Windows
2 273 (2.92%) Linux
3 148 (1.58%) Unix
4 72 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 38 (0.41%) Solaris
6 35 (0.37%) Windows 10
6 35 (0.37%) zOS
7 34 (0.36%) Apple iOS
7 34 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 28 (0.30%) Android
9 20 (0.21%) Mac OS
10 19 (0.20%) AIX
11 7 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
11 7 (0.075%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.075%) VMS
12 5 (0.053%) HPUX
12 5 (0.053%) SUSE
12 5 (0.053%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.043%) MVS
14 3 (0.032%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,988 (21.24%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,888 (20.17%) Agile
3 1,293 (13.81%) Migration
4 1,251 (13.36%) Problem-Solving
5 1,065 (11.38%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,022 (10.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 997 (10.65%) AI
8 990 (10.58%) DevOps
9 980 (10.47%) ERP
10 963 (10.29%) CI/CD
11 915 (9.77%) Analytics
12 816 (8.72%) Decision-Making
13 791 (8.45%) Project Management
14 776 (8.29%) Validation
15 771 (8.24%) Data Modelling
16 760 (8.12%) Roadmaps
17 731 (7.81%) User Acceptance Testing
18 677 (7.23%) Business Intelligence
19 667 (7.13%) Change Management
20 595 (6.36%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,258 (13.44%) SQL
2 1,142 (12.20%) Python
3 633 (6.76%) Java
4 382 (4.08%) C#
5 256 (2.73%) JavaScript
6 254 (2.71%) TypeScript
7 212 (2.26%) PowerShell
8 95 (1.01%) C++
9 86 (0.92%) Bash
10 82 (0.88%) PL/SQL
11 76 (0.81%) Go
12 73 (0.78%) T-SQL
13 57 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 56 (0.60%) Shell Script
15 46 (0.49%) VBA
16 45 (0.48%) Scala
17 32 (0.34%) Apex Code
17 32 (0.34%) Bicep
18 31 (0.33%) Rust
19 29 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 740 (7.91%) Degree
2 693 (7.40%) Security Cleared
3 497 (5.31%) SC Cleared
4 229 (2.45%) ACCA
5 219 (2.34%) PMP
6 207 (2.21%) CIMA
7 192 (2.05%) PMI Certification
8 186 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
9 154 (1.65%) CISSP
10 138 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
11 92 (0.98%) CISM
11 92 (0.98%) DV Cleared
12 90 (0.96%) Master's Degree
13 81 (0.87%) Azure Certification
14 71 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
15 50 (0.53%) AWS Certification
16 47 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
17 39 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 37 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 34 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 577 (6.16%) Data Quality
2 413 (4.41%) QA
3 332 (3.55%) PMO
4 304 (3.25%) GDPR
5 164 (1.75%) NIST
6 130 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 117 (1.25%) IFRS
8 113 (1.21%) SLA
9 106 (1.13%) GRC
9 106 (1.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 93 (0.99%) Accessibility
11 65 (0.69%) GAAP
12 64 (0.68%) PCI DSS
13 63 (0.67%) ISO 20022
14 38 (0.41%) SEPA
15 36 (0.38%) NCSC
15 36 (0.38%) Solvency II
16 35 (0.37%) PSD2
17 31 (0.33%) IFRS 17
18 29 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 279 (2.98%) Docker
2 186 (1.99%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
4 29 (0.31%) vSphere
5 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
6 16 (0.17%) RACF
7 15 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 11 (0.12%) NFS
10 10 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.064%) GPFS
11 6 (0.064%) KVM
12 5 (0.053%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.043%) Firmware
14 3 (0.032%) GridGain
14 3 (0.032%) SRDF
15 2 (0.021%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.021%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 420 (4.49%) Kubernetes
2 281 (3.00%) Terraform
3 150 (1.60%) Ansible
4 86 (0.92%) Grafana
5 74 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 65 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.52%) SCCM
8 46 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.32%) FortiGate
10 26 (0.28%) Control-M
11 18 (0.19%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.19%) vRealize
12 15 (0.16%) Argo
12 15 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (0.15%) Nessus
14 13 (0.14%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.14%) OMEGAMON
14 13 (0.14%) Puppet
15 12 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,187 (12.68%) Microsoft
2 828 (8.85%) SAP
3 783 (8.36%) Oracle
4 326 (3.48%) ServiceNow
5 285 (3.04%) Databricks
6 212 (2.26%) Salesforce
7 204 (2.18%) Google
8 134 (1.43%) Workday
9 122 (1.30%) IBM
10 118 (1.26%) Cisco
11 112 (1.20%) Splunk
11 112 (1.20%) VMware
12 93 (0.99%) CyberArk
13 84 (0.90%) Ariba
14 71 (0.76%) OpenAI
15 66 (0.71%) Sage
16 64 (0.68%) Citrix
17 55 (0.59%) Informatica
18 53 (0.57%) Bloomberg
19 51 (0.54%) Palo Alto