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 18 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,247 6,744 8,274
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.52% 21.24% 19.12%
As % of the General category 32.53% 34.43% 32.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,629 4,227 5,636
10th Percentile £350 £355 £363
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -1.88%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £505 £513
% change year-on-year -0.99% -1.46% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 94 129
10th Percentile £15.00 £18.20 £11.85
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.50 £14.06
Median hourly rate £23.50 £29.00 £22.28
Median % change year-on-year -18.97% +30.19% -10.90%
75th Percentile £40.00 £59.88 £47.50
90th Percentile £65.98 £78.67 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -40.00%

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 22,278 19,589 25,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.00% 61.71% 58.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,011 11,679 16,667
10th Percentile £284 £287 £272
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £727 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,365 659 1,297
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.52 £13.42
25th Percentile £16.48 £20.00 £15.50
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.36% -3.51% +14.00%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £56.49
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.30 £26.50 £26.66
% change year-on-year -19.62% -0.60% +18.49%

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 18 January 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 18 January 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 18 January 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 6,386 £535 -10.08% 5,595
London -1 3,891 £575 -6.12% 1,380
UK excluding London -2 2,867 £500 -0.99% 5,075
Work from Home -1 1,999 £531 -11.50% 2,277
North of England +1 920 £475 -4.26% 960
South East -1 534 £505 -3.81% 1,685
Midlands -3 500 £475 -9.52% 677
North West +1 442 £450 -8.16% 406
Yorkshire 0 431 £500 -2.91% 406
Scotland 0 377 £500 +7.87% 200
West Midlands -7 305 £525 -5.41% 278
South West -4 287 £525 - 631
East Midlands 0 195 £420 - 389
East of England -3 169 £533 +1.43% 694
Wales +21 74 £413 - 244
Northern Ireland -1 54 £513 +57.69% 114
North East -5 47 £481 - 161
Channel Islands +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
1 300 (4.14%) Confluence
2 206 (2.84%) SharePoint
3 69 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
5 62 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
6 60 (0.83%) Apache
7 32 (0.44%) SAS
8 30 (0.41%) CMS
9 23 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.29%) IIS
11 17 (0.23%) HCL Notes
12 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.18%) Appian
13 13 (0.18%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 12 (0.17%) TPMS
14 12 (0.17%) WebSphere
15 11 (0.15%) JBoss
15 11 (0.15%) Mendix
Applications
1 502 (6.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 288 (3.97%) Microsoft Office
3 204 (2.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 163 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
5 133 (1.84%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 20 (0.28%) Sketch
9 18 (0.25%) Trello
10 14 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 9 (0.12%) InVision
13 6 (0.083%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.069%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.069%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.055%) Notion
16 3 (0.041%) Camtasia
16 3 (0.041%) Snagit
17 2 (0.028%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 287 (3.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.70%) Oracle Payables
3 98 (1.35%) Oracle EBS
4 94 (1.30%) Oracle Receivables
5 84 (1.16%) Oracle General Ledger
6 71 (0.98%) SAP FI
7 69 (0.95%) NetSuite
8 61 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
9 60 (0.83%) SAP CO
10 55 (0.76%) Oracle Assets
10 55 (0.76%) Oracle EBS R12
11 54 (0.75%) Oracle Cash Management
11 54 (0.75%) SAP FI/CO
12 52 (0.72%) Oracle Financials
13 50 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 47 (0.65%) Oracle ERP
15 38 (0.52%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 38 (0.52%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
17 27 (0.37%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,066 (14.71%) Azure
2 876 (12.09%) AWS
3 541 (7.47%) Power Platform
4 349 (4.82%) GCP
5 244 (3.37%) Microsoft 365
6 221 (3.05%) SaaS
7 213 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
8 208 (2.87%) Dynamics 365
9 186 (2.57%) GitHub
10 139 (1.92%) OCI
10 139 (1.92%) Serverless
11 136 (1.88%) Snowflake
12 115 (1.59%) Entra ID
13 99 (1.37%) GitHub Actions
14 87 (1.20%) Power Automate
15 85 (1.17%) Amazon S3
16 74 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
17 73 (1.01%) PowerApps
18 69 (0.95%) Figma
19 66 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 117 (1.61%) Firewall
2 66 (0.91%) Network Security
3 62 (0.86%) WAN
4 41 (0.57%) DNS
5 40 (0.55%) SD-WAN
6 37 (0.51%) VPN
7 34 (0.47%) LAN
8 33 (0.46%) TCP/IP
9 32 (0.44%) Wireless
10 27 (0.37%) HTTP
10 27 (0.37%) Skype
11 26 (0.36%) SSL
12 23 (0.32%) SSH
13 21 (0.29%) DHCP
14 18 (0.25%) BGP
14 18 (0.25%) OSPF
15 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
16 15 (0.21%) Cisco IOS
16 15 (0.21%) Internet
17 14 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 475 (6.55%) Power BI
2 197 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
3 190 (2.62%) SQL Server
4 152 (2.10%) PostgreSQL
5 128 (1.77%) NoSQL
6 125 (1.72%) Tableau
7 123 (1.70%) Relational Database
8 114 (1.57%) Data Lake
9 108 (1.49%) Metadata
10 90 (1.24%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (1.06%) MongoDB
12 70 (0.97%) Big Data
12 70 (0.97%) Oracle Database
13 50 (0.69%) BigQuery
14 45 (0.62%) Hadoop
15 41 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.54%) Power Query
17 38 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
18 36 (0.50%) MySQL
19 35 (0.48%) DB2
Development Applications
1 558 (7.70%) JIRA
2 254 (3.50%) Jenkins
3 209 (2.88%) Git
4 148 (2.04%) GitLab
5 76 (1.05%) JUnit
6 56 (0.77%) Cucumber
7 55 (0.76%) Selenium
8 50 (0.69%) Bitbucket
9 46 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
10 35 (0.48%) Postman
11 32 (0.44%) Visual Studio
12 25 (0.34%) Liquibase
13 24 (0.33%) Gradle
14 23 (0.32%) Cypress.io
15 20 (0.28%) Maven
15 20 (0.28%) MLflow
15 20 (0.28%) REST Assured
16 19 (0.26%) JMeter
17 17 (0.23%) SonarQube
18 16 (0.22%) webpack
General
1 2,517 (34.73%) Social Skills
2 1,508 (20.81%) Banking
3 992 (13.69%) Analytical Skills
4 581 (8.02%) Public Sector
5 336 (4.64%) Financial Institution
6 320 (4.42%) Marketing
7 301 (4.15%) Manufacturing
8 293 (4.04%) Investment Banking
9 276 (3.81%) Telecoms
10 272 (3.75%) Front Office
11 270 (3.73%) Legal
12 211 (2.91%) Organisational Skills
13 195 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
14 188 (2.59%) Electronics
15 155 (2.14%) Influencing Skills
16 141 (1.95%) Retail
17 132 (1.82%) General Ledger
18 131 (1.81%) Presentation Skills
19 124 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 107 (1.48%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,161 (16.02%) Analyst
2 817 (11.27%) Developer
3 705 (9.73%) Senior
4 593 (8.18%) Business Analyst
5 584 (8.06%) Consultant
6 577 (7.96%) Project Manager
7 558 (7.70%) Architect
8 519 (7.16%) Lead
9 228 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
10 192 (2.65%) Data Analyst
11 165 (2.28%) Data Engineer
12 158 (2.18%) Financial Analyst
13 147 (2.03%) Programme Manager
14 145 (2.00%) Java Developer
15 142 (1.96%) Software Engineer
16 141 (1.95%) Senior Developer
17 123 (1.70%) Senior Manager
18 112 (1.55%) IT Manager
18 112 (1.55%) Oracle Consultant
19 107 (1.48%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (3.73%) REST
2 229 (3.16%) Kafka
3 212 (2.93%) .NET
4 165 (2.28%) React
5 158 (2.18%) RESTful
6 156 (2.15%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (2.01%) Spring
8 119 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 101 (1.39%) Middleware
10 100 (1.38%) AngularJS
11 95 (1.31%) Pandas
12 91 (1.26%) XML
13 87 (1.20%) HTML
14 84 (1.16%) NumPy
15 83 (1.15%) Node.js
16 77 (1.06%) CSS
17 75 (1.03%) PySpark
18 73 (1.01%) SOAP
19 70 (0.97%) OAuth
20 68 (0.94%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 318 (4.39%) Onboarding
2 288 (3.97%) Product Ownership
3 213 (2.94%) Cloud Native
4 177 (2.44%) Derivative
5 169 (2.33%) Management Information System
6 151 (2.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 149 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (1.82%) Data Centre
9 131 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
10 129 (1.78%) Equities
11 126 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
12 125 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
13 123 (1.70%) Data Structures
14 121 (1.67%) Fixed Income
15 106 (1.46%) Public Cloud
16 94 (1.30%) Hedge funds
17 91 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
18 73 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
18 73 (1.01%) Virtual Team
19 71 (0.98%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 348 (4.80%) Linux
2 320 (4.42%) Windows
3 149 (2.06%) Unix
4 66 (0.91%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.88%) Android
6 63 (0.87%) Mac OS
7 61 (0.84%) Windows Server
8 34 (0.47%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.14%) zOS
11 7 (0.097%) CentOS
12 6 (0.083%) VMS
13 4 (0.055%) Solaris
13 4 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.041%) AIX
14 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.041%) Windows Server 2019
15 2 (0.028%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.028%) Windows 8
15 2 (0.028%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,684 (23.24%) Agile
2 1,317 (18.17%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,188 (16.39%) Problem-Solving
4 819 (11.30%) Migration
5 776 (10.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 772 (10.65%) DevOps
7 755 (10.42%) CI/CD
8 753 (10.39%) Business Intelligence
9 709 (9.78%) Project Management
10 708 (9.77%) Analytics
11 624 (8.61%) ERP
12 604 (8.33%) Continuous Improvement
13 520 (7.18%) Decision-Making
14 517 (7.13%) Risk Management
15 506 (6.98%) Change Management
16 504 (6.95%) AI
17 489 (6.75%) Roadmaps
18 467 (6.44%) Data Modelling
19 461 (6.36%) Project Delivery
20 454 (6.26%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,074 (14.82%) SQL
2 947 (13.07%) Python
3 508 (7.01%) Java
4 309 (4.26%) C#
5 215 (2.97%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.68%) PowerShell
7 154 (2.13%) C++
8 150 (2.07%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 70 (0.97%) Go
11 69 (0.95%) Bash
12 56 (0.77%) Shell Script
13 52 (0.72%) VBA
14 45 (0.62%) R
15 41 (0.57%) Kotlin
16 37 (0.51%) Groovy
17 33 (0.46%) Rust
17 33 (0.46%) T-SQL
18 32 (0.44%) Perl
19 29 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 778 (10.74%) Degree
2 544 (7.51%) Security Cleared
3 392 (5.41%) SC Cleared
4 185 (2.55%) PMI Certification
5 177 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 173 (2.39%) PMP
7 166 (2.29%) Master's Degree
8 148 (2.04%) ACCA
9 129 (1.78%) CIMA
10 103 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
11 92 (1.27%) AWS Certification
11 92 (1.27%) CISSP
12 65 (0.90%) DV Cleared
13 62 (0.86%) Azure Certification
14 61 (0.84%) CISM
15 45 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
16 35 (0.48%) CBAP
16 35 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
17 27 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 27 (0.37%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 374 (5.16%) QA
2 329 (4.54%) Data Quality
3 272 (3.75%) PMO
4 251 (3.46%) GDPR
5 119 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 111 (1.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 108 (1.49%) NIST
8 100 (1.38%) Accessibility
9 96 (1.32%) SLA
10 75 (1.03%) IFRS
10 75 (1.03%) PCI DSS
11 54 (0.75%) GRC
12 44 (0.61%) ISO 20022
12 44 (0.61%) PSD2
13 39 (0.54%) MiFID
14 32 (0.44%) Basel III
15 28 (0.39%) GAAP
15 28 (0.39%) SEPA
16 27 (0.37%) COBIT
16 27 (0.37%) NCSC
System Software
1 328 (4.53%) Docker
2 190 (2.62%) Active Directory
3 51 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (0.26%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) HDFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) NFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 6 (0.083%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.069%) Firmware
10 5 (0.069%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.055%) BitLocker
11 4 (0.055%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.041%) RACF
12 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.028%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 366 (5.05%) Kubernetes
2 267 (3.68%) Terraform
3 176 (2.43%) Ansible
4 85 (1.17%) Grafana
5 76 (1.05%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.87%) SCCM
7 56 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 34 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 14 (0.19%) Control-M
14 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
14 14 (0.19%) Puppet
15 9 (0.12%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,005 (13.87%) Microsoft
2 784 (10.82%) SAP
3 704 (9.71%) Oracle
4 265 (3.66%) ServiceNow
5 177 (2.44%) Salesforce
6 159 (2.19%) Databricks
7 155 (2.14%) Google
8 154 (2.13%) Splunk
9 145 (2.00%) Cisco
9 145 (2.00%) Workday
10 98 (1.35%) VMware
11 88 (1.21%) IBM
12 71 (0.98%) Citrix
13 62 (0.86%) Ariba
14 58 (0.80%) CyberArk
15 55 (0.76%) Bloomberg
16 53 (0.73%) HP
17 49 (0.68%) Murex
18 47 (0.65%) Apple
19 46 (0.63%) Informatica