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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,689 6,377 8,064
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 17.95% 22.14% 18.93%
As % of the General category 33.53% 35.02% 32.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,441 4,159 5,402
10th Percentile £356 £350 £356
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 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £499 £509
% change year-on-year +0.20% -1.96% -3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 113 254
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £24.22 £15.04
Median hourly rate £24.41 £40.50 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -39.72% +50.17% -10.10%
75th Percentile £54.06 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.47 £55.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £42.92 £30.00
% change year-on-year -44.49% +43.06% -38.78%

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 25,912 18,211 24,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.52% 63.24% 57.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,740 11,575 15,555
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £770
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,696 777 1,954
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.71 £12.76
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.25 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.42 £28.00
% change year-on-year +18.76% -12.79% +1.45%

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 25 May 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 25 May 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 25 May 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 7,699 £550 -4.35% 4,616
London 0 4,654 £575 -8.00% 2,525
UK excluding London 0 3,463 £500 +0.20% 2,783
Work from Home -2 2,407 £540 -6.09% 1,962
North of England +3 1,184 £492 +3.58% 743
South East 0 641 £500 -2.91% 885
North West +5 622 £465 - 423
Midlands 0 585 £492 +3.58% 406
Yorkshire +1 522 £525 +10.53% 251
Scotland 0 413 £500 +5.26% 173
West Midlands 0 397 £500 -4.76% 250
South West -2 354 £525 - 289
East of England +3 203 £516 -10.22% 212
East Midlands 0 184 £466 +5.37% 153
Wales +16 89 £463 +19.35% 50
Northern Ireland -1 46 £525 +28.05% 68
North East -16 41 £488 +4.84% 79
Channel Islands - 3 £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
1 318 (3.66%) Confluence
2 215 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 83 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
5 53 (0.61%) Apache
6 51 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.36%) SAS
8 23 (0.26%) CMS
9 20 (0.23%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Appian
13 13 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 12 (0.14%) Camunda
15 11 (0.13%) Mendix
16 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
16 10 (0.12%) Jupyter
16 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
17 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
18 8 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 503 (5.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (2.54%) Microsoft Office
3 168 (1.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 166 (1.91%) Microsoft Project
5 126 (1.45%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 8 (0.092%) Notion
9 8 (0.092%) Sketch
10 7 (0.081%) InVision
11 6 (0.069%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.069%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) MicroStation
14 1 (0.012%) UXPin
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 392 (4.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 106 (1.22%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
5 87 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 66 (0.76%) Oracle ERP
7 60 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
8 56 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
9 55 (0.63%) SAP FI
10 44 (0.51%) SAP CO
11 40 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
11 40 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
12 38 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
13 36 (0.41%) Aladdin
14 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
15 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
16 29 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 26 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
18 24 (0.28%) SAP ERP
18 24 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,334 (15.35%) Azure
2 967 (11.13%) AWS
3 591 (6.80%) Power Platform
4 384 (4.42%) GCP
5 305 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
6 293 (3.37%) SaaS
7 266 (3.06%) Microsoft 365
8 234 (2.69%) Dynamics 365
9 233 (2.68%) GitHub
10 160 (1.84%) Snowflake
11 151 (1.74%) Entra ID
12 138 (1.59%) Serverless
13 125 (1.44%) OCI
14 115 (1.32%) Power Automate
15 112 (1.29%) Amazon S3
16 96 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
17 86 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 82 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
19 78 (0.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 78 (0.90%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 158 (1.82%) Firewall
2 117 (1.35%) Network Security
3 78 (0.90%) WAN
4 71 (0.82%) DNS
5 60 (0.69%) VPN
6 54 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 40 (0.46%) BGP
8 39 (0.45%) LAN
9 38 (0.44%) SD-WAN
10 34 (0.39%) HTTP
11 30 (0.35%) OSPF
12 29 (0.33%) Multicast
13 28 (0.32%) SSL
14 26 (0.30%) DHCP
15 24 (0.28%) MPLS
16 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 20 (0.23%) VSAN
17 19 (0.22%) VLAN
18 17 (0.20%) Internet
19 12 (0.14%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 498 (5.73%) Power BI
2 217 (2.50%) SQL Server
3 216 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
4 173 (1.99%) Metadata
5 161 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
6 153 (1.76%) Relational Database
7 151 (1.74%) Tableau
8 124 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 88 (1.01%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (0.85%) Big Data
12 66 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.71%) MongoDB
14 59 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
16 45 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
17 44 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 41 (0.47%) Delta Lake
19 38 (0.44%) Power Query
20 37 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 673 (7.75%) JIRA
2 206 (2.37%) Git
3 164 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.12%) GitLab
5 46 (0.53%) Cucumber
5 46 (0.53%) JUnit
6 38 (0.44%) Selenium
7 31 (0.36%) Visual Studio
8 30 (0.35%) Postman
9 28 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 23 (0.26%) MLflow
11 22 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 18 (0.21%) ERwin
13 18 (0.21%) Maven
14 17 (0.20%) Hudson
14 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
16 13 (0.15%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,527 (29.08%) Social Skills
2 1,592 (18.32%) Banking
3 1,141 (13.13%) Analytical Skills
4 506 (5.82%) Public Sector
5 372 (4.28%) Legal
6 328 (3.77%) Financial Institution
7 316 (3.64%) Investment Banking
8 280 (3.22%) Front Office
9 270 (3.11%) Retail
10 242 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
11 229 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
12 211 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
13 171 (1.97%) Manufacturing
14 151 (1.74%) Marketing
15 141 (1.62%) General Ledger
16 131 (1.51%) Telecoms
17 125 (1.44%) Local Government
18 123 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 122 (1.40%) Law
20 119 (1.37%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,321 (15.20%) Analyst
2 922 (10.61%) Senior
3 879 (10.12%) Lead
4 875 (10.07%) Developer
5 800 (9.21%) Architect
6 713 (8.21%) Business Analyst
7 681 (7.84%) Project Manager
8 589 (6.78%) Consultant
9 334 (3.84%) Solutions Architect
10 284 (3.27%) Data Engineer
11 218 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 213 (2.45%) Senior Manager
13 196 (2.26%) Data Analyst
14 182 (2.09%) Finance Manager
15 175 (2.01%) Programme Manager
16 173 (1.99%) Accountant
17 153 (1.76%) Software Engineer
18 150 (1.73%) Java Developer
19 141 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
20 137 (1.58%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (2.91%) Kafka
2 252 (2.90%) REST
3 239 (2.75%) .NET
4 210 (2.42%) React
5 186 (2.14%) Middleware
6 168 (1.93%) Oracle Fusion
7 151 (1.74%) Spring
8 146 (1.68%) Spring Boot
9 134 (1.54%) RESTful
10 103 (1.19%) Node.js
10 103 (1.19%) PySpark
11 93 (1.07%) AngularJS
12 84 (0.97%) OAuth
13 78 (0.90%) JSON
13 78 (0.90%) Redux
14 70 (0.81%) XML
15 67 (0.77%) CSS
15 67 (0.77%) HTML
16 61 (0.70%) OpenID
16 61 (0.70%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 379 (4.36%) Onboarding
2 362 (4.17%) Product Ownership
3 322 (3.71%) Cloud Native
4 236 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
5 195 (2.24%) Management Information System
6 186 (2.14%) Data Structures
7 169 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
7 169 (1.94%) Derivative
8 155 (1.78%) Data Centre
9 136 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
10 133 (1.53%) Fixed Income
11 131 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 103 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
13 102 (1.17%) Equities
14 99 (1.14%) Public Cloud
15 95 (1.09%) Virtual Team
16 90 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
16 90 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
17 73 (0.84%) AI Agents
18 65 (0.75%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 267 (3.07%) Windows
2 256 (2.95%) Linux
3 137 (1.58%) Unix
4 71 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 40 (0.46%) Windows 10
6 35 (0.40%) Solaris
7 31 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 28 (0.32%) Android
9 25 (0.29%) zOS
10 22 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 17 (0.20%) AIX
11 17 (0.20%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.081%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.069%) VMS
13 6 (0.069%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.046%) HPUX
15 4 (0.046%) MVS
15 4 (0.046%) SUSE
16 3 (0.035%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,789 (20.59%) Agile
2 1,741 (20.04%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,198 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
4 1,186 (13.65%) Migration
5 960 (11.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 934 (10.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 919 (10.58%) DevOps
7 919 (10.58%) ERP
8 865 (9.96%) CI/CD
9 852 (9.81%) AI
10 826 (9.51%) Analytics
11 781 (8.99%) Project Management
12 722 (8.31%) Data Modelling
12 722 (8.31%) Decision-Making
13 692 (7.96%) Roadmaps
14 686 (7.90%) Validation
15 673 (7.75%) Business Intelligence
16 670 (7.71%) User Acceptance Testing
17 619 (7.12%) Change Management
18 564 (6.49%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,172 (13.49%) SQL
2 1,028 (11.83%) Python
3 565 (6.50%) Java
4 339 (3.90%) C#
5 218 (2.51%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.32%) TypeScript
7 166 (1.91%) PowerShell
8 107 (1.23%) C++
9 72 (0.83%) Go
10 69 (0.79%) PL/SQL
11 67 (0.77%) Bash
12 62 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 45 (0.52%) Scala
15 41 (0.47%) VBA
16 29 (0.33%) Kotlin
16 29 (0.33%) R
17 28 (0.32%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.32%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 727 (8.37%) Degree
2 683 (7.86%) Security Cleared
3 485 (5.58%) SC Cleared
4 217 (2.50%) ACCA
5 203 (2.34%) PMP
6 199 (2.29%) CIMA
7 183 (2.11%) PMI Certification
8 142 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 128 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
10 124 (1.43%) CISSP
11 96 (1.10%) Master's Degree
12 83 (0.96%) CISM
13 77 (0.89%) DV Cleared
14 64 (0.74%) Azure Certification
15 57 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
16 44 (0.51%) AWS Certification
17 39 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 32 (0.37%) ISTQB
19 30 (0.35%) CBAP
19 30 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 514 (5.92%) Data Quality
2 406 (4.67%) QA
3 311 (3.58%) PMO
4 281 (3.23%) GDPR
5 159 (1.83%) NIST
6 126 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 108 (1.24%) SLA
8 107 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 105 (1.21%) IFRS
10 91 (1.05%) GRC
11 85 (0.98%) Accessibility
12 66 (0.76%) PCI DSS
13 60 (0.69%) ISO 20022
14 58 (0.67%) GAAP
15 38 (0.44%) NCSC
16 37 (0.43%) SEPA
17 35 (0.40%) PSD2
18 27 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
18 27 (0.31%) MiFID
19 26 (0.30%) EMIR
System Software
1 272 (3.13%) Docker
2 153 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 52 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 28 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.16%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.14%) NFS
10 8 (0.092%) GPFS
11 6 (0.069%) KVM
12 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.046%) Firmware
13 4 (0.046%) HDFS
13 4 (0.046%) RACF
14 3 (0.035%) GridGain
14 3 (0.035%) SRDF
15 2 (0.023%) Ceph
15 2 (0.023%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 392 (4.51%) Kubernetes
2 253 (2.91%) Terraform
3 127 (1.46%) Ansible
4 88 (1.01%) Grafana
5 71 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 42 (0.48%) SCCM
8 37 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.35%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
10 18 (0.21%) vRealize
11 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 15 (0.17%) Argo
11 15 (0.17%) Puppet
12 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
12 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
13 12 (0.14%) CASB
13 12 (0.14%) Nessus
14 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
15 8 (0.092%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,104 (12.71%) Microsoft
2 780 (8.98%) SAP
3 721 (8.30%) Oracle
4 315 (3.63%) ServiceNow
5 240 (2.76%) Databricks
6 192 (2.21%) Salesforce
7 169 (1.94%) Google
8 130 (1.50%) Workday
9 118 (1.36%) Cisco
10 114 (1.31%) Splunk
11 104 (1.20%) VMware
12 94 (1.08%) IBM
13 80 (0.92%) CyberArk
14 73 (0.84%) Ariba
15 67 (0.77%) Citrix
16 65 (0.75%) Sage
17 59 (0.68%) OpenAI
18 51 (0.59%) IFS
18 51 (0.59%) Palo Alto
19 49 (0.56%) Informatica