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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,569 6,447 8,092
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.01% 22.25% 18.93%
As % of the General category 33.55% 35.11% 32.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,357 4,195 5,411
10th Percentile £355 £350 £356
25th Percentile £437 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £555 £582
Median % change year-on-year -3.15% -4.64% -3.00%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 112 245
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.71 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.57 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -36.58% +39.28% +4.90%
75th Percentile £54.00 £66.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £55.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £37.02 £31.06
% change year-on-year -36.52% +19.20% -29.01%

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 25,541 18,360 24,809
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.70% 63.35% 58.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,612 11,672 15,642
10th Percentile £308 £289 £275
25th Percentile £409 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.37% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +1.75% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,634 780 1,929
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.00 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.31 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.30 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.89% -9.48% -10.82%
75th Percentile £60.72 £56.00 £52.78
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.16 £24.50 £28.50
% change year-on-year +14.92% -14.04% -1.72%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 7,573 £550 -4.35% 4,532
London 0 4,552 £575 -8.00% 2,332
UK excluding London -1 3,436 £500 - 2,911
Work from Home -2 2,404 £533 -9.58% 1,860
North of England +3 1,158 £485 +2.11% 756
South East -2 646 £503 -2.24% 959
North West +5 617 £466 +0.11% 406
Midlands -1 586 £488 -0.51% 405
Yorkshire +1 504 £514 +5.44% 271
Scotland +1 414 £500 +4.06% 161
West Midlands 0 395 £495 -5.71% 230
South West -2 349 £523 -0.48% 311
East of England -1 200 £523 -5.00% 234
East Midlands 0 187 £465 +4.03% 172
Wales +22 92 £450 +20.00% 70
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +28.05% 62
North East -15 38 £488 +4.84% 84
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
1 324 (3.78%) Confluence
2 217 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 54 (0.63%) Apache
5 52 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
6 51 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
7 35 (0.41%) SAS
8 22 (0.26%) CMS
9 20 (0.23%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.16%) Appian
11 14 (0.16%) IIS
12 12 (0.14%) Camunda
12 12 (0.14%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 9 (0.11%) Hyperledger
15 9 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 8 (0.093%) TPMS
Applications
1 513 (5.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (2.66%) Microsoft Office
3 173 (2.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 169 (1.97%) Microsoft Project
5 126 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
7 32 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 8 (0.093%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
10 7 (0.082%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
13 3 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.035%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 387 (4.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.35%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.20%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 64 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
7 61 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
8 57 (0.67%) SAP FI
9 56 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
10 48 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
10 48 (0.56%) SAP CO
11 44 (0.51%) SAP FI/CO
12 37 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
13 33 (0.39%) Aladdin
13 33 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
14 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
15 29 (0.34%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
16 28 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 25 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,300 (15.17%) Azure
2 953 (11.12%) AWS
3 604 (7.05%) Power Platform
4 387 (4.52%) GCP
5 298 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
6 285 (3.33%) SaaS
7 261 (3.05%) Microsoft 365
8 238 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
9 228 (2.66%) GitHub
10 152 (1.77%) Snowflake
11 138 (1.61%) Serverless
12 137 (1.60%) Entra ID
13 130 (1.52%) OCI
14 116 (1.35%) Amazon S3
15 112 (1.31%) Power Automate
16 93 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
17 85 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
18 84 (0.98%) OpenShift
19 79 (0.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 74 (0.86%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 155 (1.81%) Firewall
2 114 (1.33%) Network Security
3 74 (0.86%) WAN
4 72 (0.84%) DNS
5 58 (0.68%) VPN
6 53 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 39 (0.46%) BGP
8 38 (0.44%) SD-WAN
9 36 (0.42%) LAN
10 31 (0.36%) HTTP
11 30 (0.35%) OSPF
12 29 (0.34%) SSL
13 27 (0.32%) Multicast
14 26 (0.30%) DHCP
15 24 (0.28%) MPLS
16 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 20 (0.23%) Internet
17 19 (0.22%) VSAN
18 16 (0.19%) VLAN
19 13 (0.15%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 514 (6.00%) Power BI
2 211 (2.46%) SQL Server
3 207 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
4 166 (1.94%) Metadata
5 161 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
6 149 (1.74%) Relational Database
7 147 (1.72%) Tableau
8 122 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 85 (0.99%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.97%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (0.90%) Big Data
12 65 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 60 (0.70%) BigQuery
14 59 (0.69%) MongoDB
15 49 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
16 45 (0.53%) Snowflake Schema
17 42 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 41 (0.48%) Delta Lake
19 39 (0.46%) DynamoDB
20 38 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 676 (7.89%) JIRA
2 200 (2.33%) Git
3 172 (2.01%) Jenkins
4 105 (1.23%) GitLab
5 44 (0.51%) JUnit
6 42 (0.49%) Cucumber
7 37 (0.43%) Selenium
8 29 (0.34%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.30%) Postman
11 23 (0.27%) MLflow
12 22 (0.26%) SonarQube
13 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
14 19 (0.22%) Maven
15 18 (0.21%) Hudson
16 17 (0.20%) ERwin
17 16 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
18 14 (0.16%) Bitbucket
18 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,513 (29.33%) Social Skills
2 1,545 (18.03%) Banking
3 1,133 (13.22%) Analytical Skills
4 521 (6.08%) Public Sector
5 357 (4.17%) Legal
6 323 (3.77%) Financial Institution
7 294 (3.43%) Investment Banking
8 270 (3.15%) Front Office
9 259 (3.02%) Retail
10 240 (2.80%) Organisational Skills
11 234 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
12 206 (2.40%) Influencing Skills
13 178 (2.08%) Manufacturing
14 160 (1.87%) Marketing
15 146 (1.70%) General Ledger
16 140 (1.63%) Telecoms
17 127 (1.48%) Local Government
18 121 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
19 118 (1.38%) Law
20 115 (1.34%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,319 (15.39%) Analyst
2 889 (10.37%) Senior
3 863 (10.07%) Lead
4 858 (10.01%) Developer
5 779 (9.09%) Architect
6 707 (8.25%) Business Analyst
7 680 (7.94%) Project Manager
8 591 (6.90%) Consultant
9 318 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
10 277 (3.23%) Data Engineer
11 213 (2.49%) Financial Analyst
12 202 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 185 (2.16%) Data Analyst
13 185 (2.16%) Finance Manager
14 184 (2.15%) Programme Manager
15 169 (1.97%) Accountant
16 142 (1.66%) Java Developer
17 141 (1.65%) Software Engineer
18 140 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
19 139 (1.62%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 257 (3.00%) Kafka
2 245 (2.86%) REST
3 234 (2.73%) .NET
4 202 (2.36%) React
5 182 (2.12%) Middleware
6 156 (1.82%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (1.72%) Spring
8 143 (1.67%) Spring Boot
9 133 (1.55%) RESTful
10 104 (1.21%) PySpark
11 101 (1.18%) Node.js
12 91 (1.06%) AngularJS
13 81 (0.95%) OAuth
14 78 (0.91%) JSON
14 78 (0.91%) Redux
15 75 (0.88%) XML
16 69 (0.81%) HTML
17 68 (0.79%) CSS
18 62 (0.72%) Pandas
19 59 (0.69%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 360 (4.20%) Onboarding
2 337 (3.93%) Product Ownership
3 310 (3.62%) Cloud Native
4 223 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
5 198 (2.31%) Management Information System
6 185 (2.16%) Data Structures
7 170 (1.98%) Derivative
8 168 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
9 152 (1.77%) Data Centre
10 140 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
11 135 (1.58%) Fixed Income
12 131 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 106 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
14 104 (1.21%) Virtual Team
15 100 (1.17%) Equities
16 99 (1.16%) Public Cloud
17 92 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
18 86 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
19 69 (0.81%) AI Agents
20 66 (0.77%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 267 (3.12%) Windows
2 254 (2.96%) Linux
3 133 (1.55%) Unix
4 68 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.49%) Windows 10
6 31 (0.36%) Solaris
7 28 (0.33%) Apple iOS
8 27 (0.32%) Android
9 25 (0.29%) zOS
10 21 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 18 (0.21%) Mac OS
12 16 (0.19%) AIX
13 6 (0.070%) VMS
13 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.047%) HPUX
15 4 (0.047%) MVS
15 4 (0.047%) SUSE
15 4 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,784 (20.82%) Agile
2 1,714 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,201 (14.02%) Problem-Solving
4 1,158 (13.51%) Migration
5 944 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
6 932 (10.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 911 (10.63%) ERP
8 899 (10.49%) DevOps
9 839 (9.79%) CI/CD
10 824 (9.62%) AI
11 810 (9.45%) Analytics
12 802 (9.36%) Project Management
13 726 (8.47%) Decision-Making
14 702 (8.19%) Business Intelligence
15 692 (8.08%) Data Modelling
16 678 (7.91%) Roadmaps
17 661 (7.71%) Validation
18 656 (7.66%) User Acceptance Testing
19 600 (7.00%) Change Management
20 565 (6.59%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,180 (13.77%) SQL
2 1,008 (11.76%) Python
3 546 (6.37%) Java
4 336 (3.92%) C#
5 216 (2.52%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.31%) TypeScript
7 159 (1.86%) PowerShell
8 109 (1.27%) C++
9 74 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 71 (0.83%) Bash
11 69 (0.81%) Go
12 65 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.60%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 45 (0.53%) VBA
16 42 (0.49%) Scala
17 34 (0.40%) R
18 26 (0.30%) Bicep
19 24 (0.28%) Apex Code
19 24 (0.28%) Rust
Qualifications
1 729 (8.51%) Degree
2 694 (8.10%) Security Cleared
3 493 (5.75%) SC Cleared
4 212 (2.47%) PMP
5 209 (2.44%) ACCA
6 198 (2.31%) PMI Certification
7 192 (2.24%) CIMA
8 145 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
9 133 (1.55%) Computer Science Degree
10 125 (1.46%) CISSP
11 106 (1.24%) Master's Degree
12 85 (0.99%) CISM
13 84 (0.98%) DV Cleared
14 62 (0.72%) Azure Certification
15 55 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
16 51 (0.60%) AWS Certification
17 37 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
18 33 (0.39%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) CBAP
19 31 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 493 (5.75%) Data Quality
2 410 (4.78%) QA
3 329 (3.84%) PMO
4 281 (3.28%) GDPR
5 159 (1.86%) NIST
6 126 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 104 (1.21%) SLA
8 100 (1.17%) IFRS
9 98 (1.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 90 (1.05%) GRC
11 78 (0.91%) Accessibility
12 66 (0.77%) PCI DSS
13 61 (0.71%) ISO 20022
14 52 (0.61%) GAAP
15 38 (0.44%) SEPA
16 37 (0.43%) PSD2
17 35 (0.41%) NCSC
18 30 (0.35%) EMIR
19 29 (0.34%) MiFID
20 26 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 277 (3.23%) Docker
2 146 (1.70%) Active Directory
3 52 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 26 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.11%) GPFS
11 5 (0.058%) HDFS
11 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.047%) Firmware
12 4 (0.047%) KVM
12 4 (0.047%) RACF
13 3 (0.035%) GridGain
13 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.035%) SRDF
14 2 (0.023%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 391 (4.56%) Kubernetes
2 242 (2.82%) Terraform
3 118 (1.38%) Ansible
4 85 (0.99%) Grafana
5 67 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 59 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 43 (0.50%) SCCM
8 37 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.30%) FortiGate
10 17 (0.20%) Control-M
11 16 (0.19%) vRealize
12 15 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 15 (0.18%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 9 (0.11%) vCenter Server
17 8 (0.093%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,094 (12.77%) Microsoft
2 777 (9.07%) SAP
3 713 (8.32%) Oracle
4 307 (3.58%) ServiceNow
5 234 (2.73%) Databricks
6 183 (2.14%) Salesforce
7 171 (2.00%) Google
8 136 (1.59%) Workday
9 118 (1.38%) Cisco
10 114 (1.33%) Splunk
11 96 (1.12%) VMware
12 90 (1.05%) IBM
13 77 (0.90%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.86%) Ariba
15 71 (0.83%) Citrix
16 67 (0.78%) Sage
17 56 (0.65%) OpenAI
18 54 (0.63%) Palo Alto
19 52 (0.61%) IFS
19 52 (0.61%) Informatica