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

6 months to
19 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,118 6,345 8,321
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.73% 21.66% 18.73%
As % of the General category 32.92% 34.54% 32.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,149 4,174 5,594
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.39% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £658 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 209 102 225
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.23 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -35.70% +34.75% -9.84%
75th Percentile £42.38 £73.44 £38.12
90th Percentile £73.08 £82.88 £55.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £52.50 £30.41
% change year-on-year -58.10% +72.63% -13.11%

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 24,662 18,370 25,950
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.90% 62.72% 58.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,398 11,700 16,597
10th Percentile £300 £300 £265
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,518 666 1,800
10th Percentile £13.71 £15.20 £12.82
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.32
Median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £25.75
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +16.50% -24.06%
75th Percentile £57.19 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.40 £75.75 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £27.94 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.68% +11.76% -13.79%

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 19 March 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 19 March 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 19 March 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 7,182 £538 -9.17% 4,356
London 0 4,344 £575 -8.00% 2,076
UK excluding London 0 3,219 £500 - 3,023
Work from Home -2 2,285 £550 -6.78% 1,825
North of England +4 1,046 £475 - 714
South East -2 609 £503 -8.64% 1,038
Midlands -1 587 £475 -5.00% 431
North West +6 550 £455 -3.45% 382
Yorkshire 0 448 £500 +2.56% 254
West Midlands +2 386 £500 -4.76% 259
Scotland 0 364 £475 - 180
South West -3 327 £525 +4.90% 316
East Midlands 0 196 £450 +4.96% 171
East of England 0 194 £520 -5.45% 267
Wales +28 106 £413 +6.45% 91
North East -7 48 £481 +3.49% 93
Northern Ireland -1 46 £525 +61.54% 53
Channel Islands +5 1 - - 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
1 334 (4.11%) Confluence
2 206 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.02%) Apache Spark
4 56 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 51 (0.63%) Apache
6 46 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.39%) SAS
8 25 (0.31%) CMS
9 18 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
11 16 (0.20%) CICS
12 14 (0.17%) Camunda
12 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 14 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.15%) TPMS
15 11 (0.14%) Mendix
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.099%) IIS
Applications
1 526 (6.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 267 (3.29%) Microsoft Office
3 187 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 183 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
5 137 (1.69%) MS Visio
6 46 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.18%) Trello
9 13 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.099%) InVision
12 6 (0.074%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.062%) Notion
13 5 (0.062%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.049%) Adobe Captivate
14 4 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.037%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 330 (4.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.43%) Oracle Payables
3 101 (1.24%) Oracle Receivables
4 77 (0.95%) NetSuite
4 77 (0.95%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 70 (0.86%) Oracle EBS
6 66 (0.81%) SAP FI
7 65 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
8 55 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
9 53 (0.65%) SAP CO
10 49 (0.60%) SAP FI/CO
11 43 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
11 43 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
12 38 (0.47%) Oracle Cash Management
13 36 (0.44%) Oracle EBS R12
14 33 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
15 32 (0.39%) Aladdin
15 32 (0.39%) Workday HCM
16 31 (0.38%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 22 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,239 (15.26%) Azure
2 973 (11.99%) AWS
3 574 (7.07%) Power Platform
4 386 (4.75%) GCP
5 277 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
6 276 (3.40%) Microsoft 365
7 256 (3.15%) SaaS
8 238 (2.93%) Dynamics 365
9 217 (2.67%) GitHub
10 157 (1.93%) Serverless
11 136 (1.68%) OCI
12 130 (1.60%) Snowflake
13 117 (1.44%) Entra ID
14 112 (1.38%) Amazon S3
15 96 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 88 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 87 (1.07%) AWS Lambda
18 83 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
19 77 (0.95%) OpenShift
20 76 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 160 (1.97%) Firewall
2 106 (1.31%) Network Security
3 84 (1.03%) WAN
4 62 (0.76%) DNS
5 53 (0.65%) LAN
5 53 (0.65%) VPN
6 45 (0.55%) SD-WAN
7 41 (0.51%) TCP/IP
8 34 (0.42%) Wireless
9 31 (0.38%) BGP
10 27 (0.33%) Internet
10 27 (0.33%) OSPF
11 26 (0.32%) Multicast
12 25 (0.31%) HTTP
12 25 (0.31%) SSL
13 23 (0.28%) MPLS
14 20 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
15 18 (0.22%) DHCP
15 18 (0.22%) Skype
16 16 (0.20%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 506 (6.23%) Power BI
2 221 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
3 198 (2.44%) SQL Server
4 186 (2.29%) PostgreSQL
5 148 (1.82%) Metadata
6 145 (1.79%) Tableau
7 121 (1.49%) Data Lake
8 119 (1.47%) Relational Database
9 102 (1.26%) NoSQL
10 90 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
11 76 (0.94%) Big Data
12 64 (0.79%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.76%) BigQuery
14 61 (0.75%) MongoDB
15 47 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
17 42 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
18 38 (0.47%) Delta Lake
19 37 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
20 36 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 673 (8.29%) JIRA
2 235 (2.89%) Jenkins
3 209 (2.57%) Git
4 149 (1.84%) GitLab
5 65 (0.80%) JUnit
6 62 (0.76%) Cucumber
7 49 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.53%) Selenium
9 34 (0.42%) Bitbucket
9 34 (0.42%) Postman
10 31 (0.38%) Visual Studio
11 24 (0.30%) MLflow
12 22 (0.27%) REST Assured
13 21 (0.26%) Gradle
13 21 (0.26%) Maven
14 17 (0.21%) ERwin
14 17 (0.21%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.18%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.18%) TeamCity
General
1 2,647 (32.61%) Social Skills
2 1,567 (19.30%) Banking
3 1,066 (13.13%) Analytical Skills
4 647 (7.97%) Public Sector
5 344 (4.24%) Financial Institution
6 312 (3.84%) Legal
7 285 (3.51%) Front Office
8 276 (3.40%) Investment Banking
9 272 (3.35%) Marketing
10 266 (3.28%) Manufacturing
11 247 (3.04%) Organisational Skills
12 239 (2.94%) Telecoms
13 235 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
14 186 (2.29%) Retail
15 178 (2.19%) Influencing Skills
16 139 (1.71%) Electronics
17 133 (1.64%) General Ledger
18 127 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
19 119 (1.47%) Local Government
20 117 (1.44%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,246 (15.35%) Analyst
2 842 (10.37%) Developer
3 841 (10.36%) Senior
4 737 (9.08%) Lead
5 702 (8.65%) Architect
6 677 (8.34%) Project Manager
7 665 (8.19%) Business Analyst
8 606 (7.46%) Consultant
9 282 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
10 217 (2.67%) Data Engineer
11 190 (2.34%) Data Analyst
12 180 (2.22%) Senior Manager
13 177 (2.18%) Financial Analyst
13 177 (2.18%) Programme Manager
14 165 (2.03%) Finance Manager
15 138 (1.70%) Delivery Manager
15 138 (1.70%) Java Developer
16 132 (1.63%) Senior Developer
17 130 (1.60%) Senior Analyst
18 128 (1.58%) Accountant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (3.29%) REST
2 266 (3.28%) Kafka
3 203 (2.50%) .NET
4 195 (2.40%) React
5 157 (1.93%) Oracle Fusion
6 148 (1.82%) Middleware
7 140 (1.72%) Spring
8 137 (1.69%) RESTful
9 123 (1.52%) Spring Boot
10 112 (1.38%) Node.js
11 104 (1.28%) AngularJS
12 96 (1.18%) PySpark
13 84 (1.03%) XML
14 78 (0.96%) HTML
15 76 (0.94%) JSON
16 75 (0.92%) OAuth
17 74 (0.91%) CSS
18 71 (0.87%) Pandas
19 69 (0.85%) Redux
20 66 (0.81%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 347 (4.27%) Onboarding
2 313 (3.86%) Product Ownership
3 256 (3.15%) Cloud Native
4 199 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
5 186 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 167 (2.06%) Derivative
7 161 (1.98%) Data Centre
8 149 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
9 146 (1.80%) Fixed Income
10 144 (1.77%) Data Structures
10 144 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
11 139 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 126 (1.55%) Equities
13 107 (1.32%) Public Cloud
14 105 (1.29%) Analytical Mindset
15 96 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
16 90 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
17 89 (1.10%) Virtual Team
18 68 (0.84%) Hedge funds
19 62 (0.76%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 309 (3.81%) Linux
2 270 (3.33%) Windows
3 142 (1.75%) Unix
4 64 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 56 (0.69%) Windows 10
6 53 (0.65%) Android
7 43 (0.53%) Mac OS
8 24 (0.30%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.21%) zOS
10 16 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.14%) AIX
12 8 (0.099%) Solaris
13 7 (0.086%) VMS
14 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.037%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) MVS
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,758 (21.66%) Agile
2 1,579 (19.45%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,225 (15.09%) Problem-Solving
4 1,054 (12.98%) Migration
5 904 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 898 (11.06%) DevOps
7 816 (10.05%) Continuous Improvement
8 807 (9.94%) CI/CD
9 796 (9.81%) Project Management
10 786 (9.68%) Analytics
10 786 (9.68%) Business Intelligence
11 766 (9.44%) ERP
12 661 (8.14%) AI
13 625 (7.70%) Decision-Making
14 624 (7.69%) Roadmaps
15 622 (7.66%) Data Modelling
16 573 (7.06%) Project Delivery
17 566 (6.97%) Validation
18 564 (6.95%) Change Management
19 549 (6.76%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,154 (14.22%) SQL
2 1,011 (12.45%) Python
3 550 (6.78%) Java
4 295 (3.63%) C#
5 233 (2.87%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.39%) TypeScript
7 164 (2.02%) PowerShell
8 114 (1.40%) C++
9 80 (0.99%) Go
10 69 (0.85%) Bash
11 63 (0.78%) PL/SQL
12 54 (0.67%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.63%) VBA
14 46 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 43 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 41 (0.51%) Scala
17 37 (0.46%) R
18 35 (0.43%) Kotlin
19 29 (0.36%) Rust
20 27 (0.33%) Korn
Qualifications
1 788 (9.71%) Degree
2 699 (8.61%) Security Cleared
3 497 (6.12%) SC Cleared
4 199 (2.45%) PMI Certification
5 196 (2.41%) PMP
6 171 (2.11%) ACCA
7 165 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
8 161 (1.98%) CIMA
9 156 (1.92%) Master's Degree
10 136 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
11 115 (1.42%) CISSP
12 82 (1.01%) CISM
13 80 (0.99%) DV Cleared
14 67 (0.83%) Azure Certification
15 65 (0.80%) AWS Certification
16 40 (0.49%) Cisco Certification
17 36 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (0.42%) ISTQB
18 34 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
19 33 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (5.38%) Data Quality
2 409 (5.04%) QA
3 334 (4.11%) PMO
4 290 (3.57%) GDPR
5 139 (1.71%) NIST
6 121 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 110 (1.36%) SLA
9 85 (1.05%) IFRS
10 79 (0.97%) Accessibility
11 76 (0.94%) PCI DSS
12 67 (0.83%) GRC
13 57 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 45 (0.55%) GAAP
15 43 (0.53%) PSD2
16 37 (0.46%) MiFID
16 37 (0.46%) SEPA
17 36 (0.44%) NCSC
18 28 (0.34%) Basel III
18 28 (0.34%) COBIT
System Software
1 313 (3.86%) Docker
2 149 (1.84%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 25 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
6 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.14%) GPFS
8 11 (0.14%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 8 (0.099%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.062%) HDFS
13 4 (0.049%) Firmware
13 4 (0.049%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.037%) GridGain
14 3 (0.037%) KVM
14 3 (0.037%) RACF
14 3 (0.037%) SRDF
14 3 (0.037%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 398 (4.90%) Kubernetes
2 253 (3.12%) Terraform
3 149 (1.84%) Ansible
4 93 (1.15%) Grafana
5 84 (1.03%) Prometheus
6 55 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 48 (0.59%) SCCM
8 40 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.23%) vRealize
11 17 (0.21%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.20%) Argo
13 14 (0.17%) Control-M
13 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
16 11 (0.14%) CASB
16 11 (0.14%) Kibana
16 11 (0.14%) Puppet
17 10 (0.12%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,058 (13.03%) Microsoft
2 797 (9.82%) SAP
3 678 (8.35%) Oracle
4 301 (3.71%) ServiceNow
5 193 (2.38%) Databricks
6 192 (2.37%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.16%) Google
8 156 (1.92%) Cisco
9 139 (1.71%) Workday
10 127 (1.56%) Splunk
11 111 (1.37%) VMware
12 95 (1.17%) IBM
13 71 (0.87%) Citrix
13 71 (0.87%) CyberArk
14 70 (0.86%) Ariba
15 63 (0.78%) Sage
16 57 (0.70%) Informatica
17 53 (0.65%) HP
18 52 (0.64%) Murex
19 51 (0.63%) OpenAI
4,923 Finance jobs Nationwide