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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,841 7,556 7,683
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.43% 22.95% 19.73%
As % of the General category 33.47% 36.21% 34.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,054 4,988 5,112
10th Percentile £360 £331 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.93% -5.23% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £680 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +2.02% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 299 142 194
10th Percentile £15.94 £16.00 £14.65
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.06 £24.05
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.25 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +45.32% -20.65% +46.62%
75th Percentile £45.38 £63.63 £43.44
90th Percentile £83.40 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +65.89% -30.48% +23.95%

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 29,401 20,865 22,362
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.37% 57.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,435 13,020 14,047
10th Percentile £313 £278 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.94% -1.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,230 1,129 1,377
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.30 £17.00
Median hourly rate £32.11 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +27.68% -34.02% +29.22%
75th Percentile £58.56 £50.00 £58.49
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.03 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +51.72%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 8,562 £550 - 8,591
London 0 5,178 £590 -1.67% 5,253
UK excluding London -1 3,879 £505 +2.02% 4,283
Work from Home -1 2,829 £550 -4.35% 3,376
North of England 0 1,321 £500 +7.12% 1,144
South East -1 742 £505 -4.72% 1,226
North West 0 686 £500 +9.29% 678
Midlands 0 633 £514 +14.22% 589
Yorkshire 0 569 £514 +8.21% 345
Scotland 0 507 £475 -5.00% 329
West Midlands +1 483 £525 +5.00% 359
South West -4 376 £525 -4.55% 509
East of England +5 203 £530 -7.83% 315
East Midlands -3 144 £500 +21.21% 230
Wales +1 68 £530 +14.59% 122
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 - 121
North East -14 59 £500 +11.11% 133
Channel Islands +4 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
1 323 (3.28%) Confluence
2 247 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 87 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
3 87 (0.88%) Apache Spark
4 70 (0.71%) Apache
5 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
6 35 (0.36%) CMS
7 32 (0.33%) SAS
8 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
9 20 (0.20%) IIS
10 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
11 13 (0.13%) Camunda
11 13 (0.13%) CICS
12 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
13 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
14 6 (0.061%) Appian
15 5 (0.051%) JBoss
15 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 525 (5.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 164 (1.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 157 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 100 (1.02%) MS Visio
6 74 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Sketch
11 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 445 (4.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 100 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 92 (0.93%) Oracle ERP
6 71 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
7 70 (0.71%) SAP FI
8 67 (0.68%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 60 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
12 48 (0.49%) SAP CO
13 47 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
14 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.37%) Unit4 Business World
16 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
17 30 (0.30%) SAP ERP
17 30 (0.30%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.28%) SAP GRC
19 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,546 (15.71%) Azure
2 1,075 (10.92%) AWS
3 659 (6.70%) Power Platform
4 514 (5.22%) GCP
5 342 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
6 330 (3.35%) SaaS
7 295 (3.00%) Microsoft 365
8 287 (2.92%) GitHub
9 255 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
10 217 (2.21%) Snowflake
11 200 (2.03%) Entra ID
12 148 (1.50%) Serverless
13 145 (1.47%) OCI
14 125 (1.27%) Amazon S3
15 122 (1.24%) Power Automate
16 111 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
16 111 (1.13%) GitHub Actions
17 108 (1.10%) dbt
18 107 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
19 100 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 177 (1.80%) Firewall
2 150 (1.52%) Network Security
3 96 (0.98%) VPN
4 92 (0.93%) DNS
5 67 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.57%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) SSL
8 46 (0.47%) BGP
9 45 (0.46%) DHCP
10 40 (0.41%) LAN
11 38 (0.39%) HTTP
12 32 (0.33%) Multicast
13 28 (0.28%) OSPF
13 28 (0.28%) Wireless
14 27 (0.27%) Internet
15 26 (0.26%) VLAN
16 24 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
17 21 (0.21%) SAN
18 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
19 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 540 (5.49%) Power BI
2 280 (2.85%) SQL Server
3 261 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
4 196 (1.99%) Metadata
5 176 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 150 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
7 145 (1.47%) Data Lake
8 141 (1.43%) Tableau
9 86 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
10 82 (0.83%) NoSQL
11 73 (0.74%) BigQuery
11 73 (0.74%) MongoDB
12 72 (0.73%) Oracle Database
13 64 (0.65%) Big Data
14 60 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (0.54%) Power Query
16 51 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 47 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 42 (0.43%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 664 (6.75%) JIRA
2 285 (2.90%) Git
3 157 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 101 (1.03%) GitLab
5 45 (0.46%) JUnit
6 44 (0.45%) Selenium
7 35 (0.36%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.27%) Bitbucket
9 27 (0.27%) Maven
9 27 (0.27%) SonarQube
9 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 25 (0.25%) Claude Code
11 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
11 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
12 23 (0.23%) Postman
12 23 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
14 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,897 (29.44%) Social Skills
2 1,891 (19.22%) Banking
3 1,387 (14.09%) Analytical Skills
4 544 (5.53%) Public Sector
5 533 (5.42%) Legal
6 401 (4.07%) Organisational Skills
7 388 (3.94%) Investment Banking
8 372 (3.78%) Retail
9 360 (3.66%) Financial Institution
10 350 (3.56%) Front Office
11 280 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
12 227 (2.31%) Documentation Skills
13 201 (2.04%) Manufacturing
14 180 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 163 (1.66%) Billing
16 162 (1.65%) General Ledger
17 160 (1.63%) Marketing
18 156 (1.59%) Local Government
19 141 (1.43%) Law
20 137 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,425 (14.48%) Analyst
2 1,061 (10.78%) Lead
3 1,057 (10.74%) Senior
4 977 (9.93%) Developer
5 872 (8.86%) Architect
6 733 (7.45%) Business Analyst
7 700 (7.11%) Project Manager
8 693 (7.04%) Consultant
9 331 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
10 317 (3.22%) Data Engineer
11 251 (2.55%) Financial Analyst
12 226 (2.30%) Senior Manager
13 204 (2.07%) Accountant
14 202 (2.05%) Data Analyst
15 201 (2.04%) Java Developer
16 186 (1.89%) Senior Developer
17 182 (1.85%) Finance Manager
18 180 (1.83%) Programme Manager
19 173 (1.76%) IT Manager
19 173 (1.76%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 326 (3.31%) REST
2 278 (2.82%) .NET
3 259 (2.63%) Kafka
4 255 (2.59%) Oracle Fusion
5 253 (2.57%) React
6 187 (1.90%) Middleware
7 176 (1.79%) Spring
8 164 (1.67%) Spring Boot
9 142 (1.44%) PySpark
10 124 (1.26%) RESTful
11 108 (1.10%) Redux
12 100 (1.02%) Node.js
13 96 (0.98%) JSON
14 95 (0.97%) XML
15 91 (0.92%) AngularJS
16 89 (0.90%) OAuth
17 67 (0.68%) SOAP
18 62 (0.63%) HTML
19 60 (0.61%) Web Services
20 59 (0.60%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 485 (4.93%) Onboarding
2 469 (4.77%) Product Ownership
3 425 (4.32%) Cloud Native
4 266 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
5 244 (2.48%) Data Structures
6 225 (2.29%) Management Information System
7 203 (2.06%) Virtual Team
8 189 (1.92%) Derivative
9 174 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
10 171 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
11 162 (1.65%) Fixed Income
12 157 (1.60%) Data Centre
13 156 (1.59%) AI Agents
14 154 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 136 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
16 122 (1.24%) Equities
17 108 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 105 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
19 101 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
20 100 (1.02%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 358 (3.64%) Windows
2 295 (3.00%) Linux
3 152 (1.54%) Unix
4 81 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 48 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 43 (0.44%) Apple iOS
7 39 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) zOS
9 34 (0.35%) Solaris
10 33 (0.34%) Android
11 27 (0.27%) Mac OS
12 15 (0.15%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 8 (0.081%) VMS
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 5 (0.051%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.020%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,335 (23.73%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,018 (20.51%) Agile
3 1,342 (13.64%) Migration
4 1,306 (13.27%) Problem-Solving
5 1,169 (11.88%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,164 (11.83%) AI
7 1,128 (11.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,035 (10.52%) CI/CD
9 1,030 (10.47%) ERP
10 1,010 (10.26%) DevOps
11 993 (10.09%) Analytics
12 910 (9.25%) Decision-Making
13 808 (8.21%) Validation
14 789 (8.02%) Data Modelling
15 785 (7.98%) Roadmaps
16 761 (7.73%) User Acceptance Testing
17 735 (7.47%) Project Management
18 714 (7.26%) Change Management
19 662 (6.73%) Business Intelligence
20 642 (6.52%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,279 (13.00%) SQL
2 1,207 (12.27%) Python
3 634 (6.44%) Java
4 385 (3.91%) C#
5 260 (2.64%) JavaScript
6 244 (2.48%) PowerShell
7 230 (2.34%) TypeScript
8 128 (1.30%) Bash
9 99 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 82 (0.83%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 69 (0.70%) Go
14 67 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 53 (0.54%) Bicep
16 45 (0.46%) VBA
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 35 (0.36%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.36%) Korn
18 35 (0.36%) Scala
Qualifications
1 764 (7.76%) Security Cleared
2 716 (7.28%) Degree
3 547 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 239 (2.43%) PMP
5 211 (2.14%) PMI Certification
6 208 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 198 (2.01%) ACCA
8 175 (1.78%) CIMA
9 155 (1.58%) CISSP
10 136 (1.38%) DV Cleared
11 120 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 100 (1.02%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.88%) CISM
14 80 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
15 71 (0.72%) Master's Degree
16 62 (0.63%) AWS Certification
17 52 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
18 46 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 42 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 35 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 637 (6.47%) Data Quality
2 411 (4.18%) QA
3 359 (3.65%) PMO
4 269 (2.73%) GDPR
5 155 (1.58%) NIST
6 126 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.14%) GRC
7 112 (1.14%) SLA
8 101 (1.03%) Accessibility
8 101 (1.03%) IFRS
9 100 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 61 (0.62%) ISO 20022
11 60 (0.61%) GAAP
12 46 (0.47%) PCI DSS
13 36 (0.37%) SEPA
13 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
14 32 (0.33%) COBIT
15 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
16 29 (0.29%) MiFID
17 28 (0.28%) EMIR
System Software
1 266 (2.70%) Docker
2 229 (2.33%) Active Directory
3 68 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
5 24 (0.24%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
9 11 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 5 (0.051%) ACF2
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.041%) KVM
13 4 (0.041%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.041%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 434 (4.41%) Kubernetes
2 341 (3.47%) Terraform
3 157 (1.60%) Ansible
4 86 (0.87%) Grafana
5 76 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
6 70 (0.71%) Prometheus
7 55 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (0.54%) SCCM
9 25 (0.25%) Control-M
9 25 (0.25%) Progress Chef
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) Puppet
14 13 (0.13%) CASB
14 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,322 (13.43%) Microsoft
2 860 (8.74%) Oracle
3 838 (8.52%) SAP
4 370 (3.76%) ServiceNow
5 325 (3.30%) Databricks
6 232 (2.36%) Salesforce
7 217 (2.21%) Google
8 157 (1.60%) IBM
9 135 (1.37%) Workday
10 129 (1.31%) VMware
11 108 (1.10%) Cisco
12 104 (1.06%) Splunk
13 93 (0.95%) Ariba
14 88 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 71 (0.72%) OpenAI
16 64 (0.65%) Sage
17 60 (0.61%) Citrix
18 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
18 50 (0.51%) Informatica
19 45 (0.46%) Murex