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

6 months to
26 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,499 6,515 8,194
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.19% 22.19% 18.78%
As % of the General category 33.26% 35.11% 32.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,352 4,284 5,463
10th Percentile £352 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £700
90th Percentile £800 £833 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 110 248
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.16 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.44 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £35.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.89% +31.48% -12.21%
75th Percentile £49.06 £67.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £83.20 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £36.00 £30.83
% change year-on-year -38.68% +16.79% -33.35%

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 25,553 18,554 25,401
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.68% 63.19% 58.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,805 11,871 16,066
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £760
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,622 796 1,927
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.13 £15.41
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.17 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.96% -1.18% -18.57%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.75
90th Percentile £79.90 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.50 £25.43 £27.50
% change year-on-year +0.28% -7.53% -9.95%

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 26 April 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 26 April 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 26 April 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 7,524 £537 -6.61% 3,289
London 0 4,547 £575 -8.00% 1,517
UK excluding London 0 3,384 £500 - 2,456
Work from Home -2 2,383 £537 -10.50% 1,617
North of England +3 1,128 £475 - 567
South East -1 649 £503 -3.83% 870
North West +6 610 £465 - 295
Midlands -1 579 £475 -5.00% 361
Yorkshire +1 478 £500 - 202
Scotland 0 399 £500 +2.25% 114
West Midlands 0 386 £492 -6.29% 214
South West -2 342 £510 +2.00% 280
East of England -3 197 £525 -4.55% 199
East Midlands 0 188 £450 +0.67% 144
Wales +24 98 £413 +10.00% 51
Northern Ireland -1 43 £500 +25.00% 70
North East -11 41 £488 +8.33% 80
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 1

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
1 329 (3.87%) Confluence
2 215 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.02%) Apache Spark
4 56 (0.66%) Apache
4 56 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
4 56 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
5 40 (0.47%) SAS
6 24 (0.28%) CMS
7 20 (0.24%) CICS
8 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
9 16 (0.19%) Appian
10 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 14 (0.16%) Camunda
10 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
11 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
12 11 (0.13%) Mendix
13 10 (0.12%) IIS
13 10 (0.12%) TPMS
14 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 542 (6.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 235 (2.77%) Microsoft Office
3 182 (2.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 173 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
5 126 (1.48%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 35 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.16%) Trello
9 8 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.094%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
11 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.059%) Notion
13 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 361 (4.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 114 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 102 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 97 (1.14%) NetSuite
5 84 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 70 (0.82%) Oracle EBS
7 63 (0.74%) SAP FI
8 61 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
9 59 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
10 55 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
11 52 (0.61%) SAP CO
12 48 (0.56%) SAP FI/CO
13 40 (0.47%) Oracle Assets
14 34 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle Cash Management
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
16 32 (0.38%) Aladdin
17 30 (0.35%) SAP ERP
17 30 (0.35%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,281 (15.07%) Azure
2 983 (11.57%) AWS
3 616 (7.25%) Power Platform
4 390 (4.59%) GCP
5 286 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
6 279 (3.28%) SaaS
7 265 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
8 246 (2.89%) Dynamics 365
9 236 (2.78%) GitHub
10 147 (1.73%) Snowflake
11 145 (1.71%) Serverless
12 139 (1.64%) OCI
13 129 (1.52%) Entra ID
14 121 (1.42%) Amazon S3
15 107 (1.26%) Power Automate
16 92 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 90 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
18 88 (1.04%) OpenShift
19 86 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
20 78 (0.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.92%) Firewall
2 110 (1.29%) Network Security
3 77 (0.91%) WAN
4 68 (0.80%) DNS
5 61 (0.72%) VPN
6 47 (0.55%) TCP/IP
7 42 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 41 (0.48%) LAN
9 34 (0.40%) BGP
10 31 (0.36%) HTTP
11 29 (0.34%) OSPF
11 29 (0.34%) SSL
12 27 (0.32%) Multicast
13 24 (0.28%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 22 (0.26%) DHCP
16 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
18 17 (0.20%) VSAN
19 16 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 532 (6.26%) Power BI
2 215 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
3 212 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 166 (1.95%) PostgreSQL
5 164 (1.93%) Metadata
6 147 (1.73%) Tableau
7 135 (1.59%) Relational Database
8 123 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 94 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
10 90 (1.06%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.93%) Big Data
12 66 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 59 (0.69%) BigQuery
13 59 (0.69%) MongoDB
14 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
15 43 (0.51%) Power Query
16 42 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
16 42 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 40 (0.47%) Delta Lake
17 40 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 683 (8.04%) JIRA
2 212 (2.49%) Git
3 193 (2.27%) Jenkins
4 114 (1.34%) GitLab
5 58 (0.68%) JUnit
6 55 (0.65%) Cucumber
7 44 (0.52%) Selenium
8 40 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.35%) Postman
10 29 (0.34%) Visual Studio
11 25 (0.29%) Bitbucket
11 25 (0.29%) MLflow
12 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
13 20 (0.24%) REST Assured
14 18 (0.21%) ERwin
14 18 (0.21%) Maven
14 18 (0.21%) Zephyr
15 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
16 16 (0.19%) Hudson
17 15 (0.18%) TeamCity
General
1 2,613 (30.74%) Social Skills
2 1,571 (18.48%) Banking
3 1,153 (13.57%) Analytical Skills
4 571 (6.72%) Public Sector
5 332 (3.91%) Legal
6 326 (3.84%) Financial Institution
7 284 (3.34%) Investment Banking
8 283 (3.33%) Front Office
9 239 (2.81%) Organisational Skills
10 238 (2.80%) Retail
11 233 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
12 213 (2.51%) Manufacturing
13 211 (2.48%) Influencing Skills
14 204 (2.40%) Marketing
15 175 (2.06%) Telecoms
16 141 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 125 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
18 124 (1.46%) Local Government
19 121 (1.42%) Law
20 117 (1.38%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,293 (15.21%) Analyst
2 871 (10.25%) Developer
3 862 (10.14%) Senior
4 845 (9.94%) Lead
5 769 (9.05%) Architect
6 695 (8.18%) Business Analyst
7 680 (8.00%) Project Manager
8 606 (7.13%) Consultant
9 307 (3.61%) Solutions Architect
10 262 (3.08%) Data Engineer
11 205 (2.41%) Financial Analyst
12 196 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 191 (2.25%) Finance Manager
14 183 (2.15%) Data Analyst
15 166 (1.95%) Programme Manager
16 157 (1.85%) Accountant
16 157 (1.85%) Java Developer
17 137 (1.61%) Senior Analyst
18 136 (1.60%) Delivery Manager
19 128 (1.51%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (3.15%) Kafka
2 249 (2.93%) REST
3 222 (2.61%) .NET
4 198 (2.33%) React
5 172 (2.02%) Middleware
6 152 (1.79%) Spring
7 150 (1.76%) Oracle Fusion
8 141 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 133 (1.56%) RESTful
10 109 (1.28%) Node.js
11 97 (1.14%) PySpark
12 96 (1.13%) AngularJS
13 84 (0.99%) OAuth
14 76 (0.89%) XML
15 75 (0.88%) JSON
16 73 (0.86%) HTML
17 72 (0.85%) Redux
18 69 (0.81%) CSS
19 66 (0.78%) Pandas
20 58 (0.68%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 355 (4.18%) Onboarding
2 323 (3.80%) Product Ownership
3 287 (3.38%) Cloud Native
4 229 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
5 197 (2.32%) Management Information System
6 172 (2.02%) Data Structures
7 167 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
7 167 (1.96%) Derivative
8 139 (1.64%) Data Centre
8 139 (1.64%) Fixed Income
9 137 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 136 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
11 110 (1.29%) Equities
12 107 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
13 99 (1.16%) Public Cloud
14 98 (1.15%) Virtual Team
15 96 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
16 82 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 67 (0.79%) Mainframe
18 66 (0.78%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 280 (3.29%) Linux
2 278 (3.27%) Windows
3 145 (1.71%) Unix
4 73 (0.86%) Windows Server
5 50 (0.59%) Windows 10
6 26 (0.31%) Android
6 26 (0.31%) Solaris
6 26 (0.31%) zOS
7 25 (0.29%) Apple iOS
8 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.25%) Mac OS
10 18 (0.21%) AIX
11 8 (0.094%) VMS
12 6 (0.071%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.059%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.047%) HPUX
14 4 (0.047%) MVS
14 4 (0.047%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,770 (20.83%) Agile
2 1,671 (19.66%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,234 (14.52%) Problem-Solving
4 1,162 (13.67%) Migration
5 947 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 937 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
7 907 (10.67%) DevOps
8 903 (10.62%) ERP
9 857 (10.08%) CI/CD
10 834 (9.81%) Analytics
11 809 (9.52%) Project Management
12 794 (9.34%) AI
13 758 (8.92%) Business Intelligence
14 705 (8.30%) Decision-Making
15 679 (7.99%) Data Modelling
16 665 (7.82%) Roadmaps
17 650 (7.65%) Validation
18 632 (7.44%) User Acceptance Testing
19 600 (7.06%) Change Management
20 576 (6.78%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,186 (13.95%) SQL
2 1,003 (11.80%) Python
3 574 (6.75%) Java
4 323 (3.80%) C#
5 216 (2.54%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.29%) TypeScript
7 167 (1.96%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.24%) C++
9 73 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 72 (0.85%) Bash
11 67 (0.79%) Go
12 61 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 52 (0.61%) VBA
14 51 (0.60%) Shell Script
15 49 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 42 (0.49%) Scala
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 31 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.32%) Bicep
20 25 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 756 (8.90%) Degree
2 696 (8.19%) Security Cleared
3 490 (5.77%) SC Cleared
4 209 (2.46%) PMP
5 204 (2.40%) ACCA
6 198 (2.33%) PMI Certification
7 193 (2.27%) CIMA
8 146 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
9 144 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
10 125 (1.47%) Master's Degree
11 122 (1.44%) CISSP
12 82 (0.96%) CISM
13 81 (0.95%) DV Cleared
14 68 (0.80%) Azure Certification
15 61 (0.72%) AWS Certification
16 44 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
17 41 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 40 (0.47%) ISTQB
19 34 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 30 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 479 (5.64%) Data Quality
2 417 (4.91%) QA
3 333 (3.92%) PMO
4 305 (3.59%) GDPR
5 147 (1.73%) NIST
6 121 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 102 (1.20%) SLA
8 93 (1.09%) IFRS
9 91 (1.07%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 76 (0.89%) Accessibility
11 71 (0.84%) GRC
11 71 (0.84%) PCI DSS
12 57 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 49 (0.58%) GAAP
14 38 (0.45%) PSD2
15 36 (0.42%) SEPA
16 34 (0.40%) NCSC
17 27 (0.32%) Basel III
18 26 (0.31%) MiFID
19 24 (0.28%) EMIR
System Software
1 294 (3.46%) Docker
2 151 (1.78%) Active Directory
3 58 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.36%) vSphere
5 24 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.13%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.059%) HDFS
10 5 (0.059%) RACF
11 4 (0.047%) ACF2
11 4 (0.047%) Firmware
11 4 (0.047%) KVM
11 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.035%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 396 (4.66%) Kubernetes
2 253 (2.98%) Terraform
3 126 (1.48%) Ansible
4 87 (1.02%) Grafana
5 68 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.58%) SCCM
8 35 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
10 18 (0.21%) vRealize
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
12 15 (0.18%) Progress Chef
13 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.14%) CASB
16 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 11 (0.13%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,108 (13.04%) Microsoft
2 782 (9.20%) SAP
3 716 (8.42%) Oracle
4 318 (3.74%) ServiceNow
5 222 (2.61%) Databricks
6 191 (2.25%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.06%) Google
8 146 (1.72%) Workday
9 120 (1.41%) Cisco
10 113 (1.33%) Splunk
11 108 (1.27%) VMware
12 102 (1.20%) IBM
13 79 (0.93%) Citrix
14 76 (0.89%) Ariba
15 74 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 74 (0.87%) Sage
16 54 (0.64%) Informatica
16 54 (0.64%) OpenAI
17 50 (0.59%) Bloomberg
18 48 (0.56%) Murex