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

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,867 6,420 8,306
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.05% 21.08% 18.83%
As % of the General category 32.56% 33.91% 31.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,994 4,046 5,667
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £511
% change year-on-year - -2.20% -0.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 99 183
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.40 £22.50 £14.38
Median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.86% +45.83% -5.34%
75th Percentile £41.38 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £69.94 £80.64 £58.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £29.62 £21.43
% change year-on-year -25.71% +38.19% -38.77%

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 24,158 18,931 25,966
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.49% 62.15% 58.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,124 11,563 16,699
10th Percentile £300 £290 £265
25th Percentile £404 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £495
% change year-on-year -0.52% -3.54% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,472 617 1,704
10th Percentile £13.58 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.47 £20.75 £15.23
Median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.33% +15.38% -8.77%
75th Percentile £52.20 £58.27 £51.25
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.00 £65.83
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% +10.00% -2.04%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 6,921 £538 -9.66% 3,367
London 0 4,208 £575 -8.00% 1,566
UK excluding London -1 3,117 £500 - 2,542
Work from Home -1 2,239 £530 -11.67% 1,330
North of England +2 1,011 £475 -0.42% 618
South East -1 564 £500 -4.76% 966
Midlands -2 560 £490 -2.00% 363
North West +4 509 £450 -4.56% 345
Yorkshire 0 455 £500 -2.44% 218
Scotland 0 394 £476 +1.17% 103
West Midlands 0 355 £514 -6.55% 208
South West -5 311 £512 -2.57% 249
East Midlands 0 201 £450 +6.51% 155
East of England -1 188 £529 +0.71% 194
Wales +36 105 £413 +1.54% 63
North East -11 48 £488 +5.41% 65
Northern Ireland -2 45 £538 +65.38% 37
Channel Islands +3 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
1 325 (4.13%) Confluence
2 196 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 78 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 60 (0.76%) Microsoft Exchange
5 48 (0.61%) Apache
6 43 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
7 39 (0.50%) SAS
8 27 (0.34%) CMS
9 21 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.22%) Appian
12 16 (0.20%) Ethereum
13 14 (0.18%) CICS
14 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
14 13 (0.17%) TPMS
15 12 (0.15%) HCL Notes
16 11 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 11 (0.14%) Camunda
17 10 (0.13%) Mendix
18 8 (0.10%) Mattermost
Applications
1 526 (6.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 287 (3.65%) Microsoft Office
3 200 (2.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 181 (2.30%) Microsoft Project
5 141 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Sketch
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
11 8 (0.10%) InVision
12 7 (0.089%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.064%) Notion
13 5 (0.064%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.051%) Adobe Captivate
14 4 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.025%) InDesign
15 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 325 (4.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 117 (1.49%) Oracle Payables
3 98 (1.25%) Oracle Receivables
4 73 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
4 73 (0.93%) SAP FI
5 71 (0.90%) NetSuite
6 69 (0.88%) Oracle General Ledger
7 65 (0.83%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 61 (0.78%) SAP CO
9 58 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
10 55 (0.70%) SAP FI/CO
11 44 (0.56%) Oracle Assets
12 41 (0.52%) Oracle Cash Management
13 40 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
14 39 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
15 38 (0.48%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 36 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
16 36 (0.46%) Workday HCM
17 29 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
18 22 (0.28%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,177 (14.96%) Azure
2 966 (12.28%) AWS
3 549 (6.98%) Power Platform
4 397 (5.05%) GCP
5 274 (3.48%) Microsoft 365
6 262 (3.33%) SaaS
7 236 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
8 229 (2.91%) Dynamics 365
9 204 (2.59%) GitHub
10 155 (1.97%) OCI
11 149 (1.89%) Serverless
12 128 (1.63%) Snowflake
13 123 (1.56%) Entra ID
14 101 (1.28%) Amazon S3
15 90 (1.14%) Power Automate
16 85 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 78 (0.99%) AWS Lambda
17 78 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 74 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
18 74 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 149 (1.89%) Firewall
2 88 (1.12%) Network Security
3 70 (0.89%) WAN
4 49 (0.62%) DNS
5 42 (0.53%) LAN
6 41 (0.52%) VPN
7 39 (0.50%) SD-WAN
8 35 (0.44%) TCP/IP
9 34 (0.43%) Wireless
10 26 (0.33%) Skype
10 26 (0.33%) SSL
11 24 (0.31%) BGP
12 23 (0.29%) OSPF
13 22 (0.28%) HTTP
14 21 (0.27%) Multicast
15 19 (0.24%) DHCP
15 19 (0.24%) Internet
16 18 (0.23%) SSH
17 15 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
18 14 (0.18%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 482 (6.13%) Power BI
2 205 (2.61%) Data Warehouse
3 193 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 181 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
5 142 (1.81%) Tableau
6 132 (1.68%) Metadata
7 120 (1.53%) Relational Database
8 119 (1.51%) NoSQL
9 116 (1.47%) Data Lake
10 92 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
11 76 (0.97%) Big Data
12 70 (0.89%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.88%) Oracle Database
14 60 (0.76%) BigQuery
15 45 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 40 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 36 (0.46%) Hadoop
17 36 (0.46%) MySQL
17 36 (0.46%) Power Query
18 35 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 636 (8.08%) JIRA
2 251 (3.19%) Jenkins
3 217 (2.76%) Git
4 160 (2.03%) GitLab
5 70 (0.89%) JUnit
6 63 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 47 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 44 (0.56%) Selenium
9 39 (0.50%) Postman
10 36 (0.46%) Bitbucket
11 31 (0.39%) Visual Studio
12 26 (0.33%) MLflow
13 24 (0.31%) Gradle
14 23 (0.29%) Liquibase
14 23 (0.29%) Maven
15 20 (0.25%) REST Assured
16 16 (0.20%) SonarQube
16 16 (0.20%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.19%) ERwin
17 15 (0.19%) JMeter
General
1 2,663 (33.85%) Social Skills
2 1,544 (19.63%) Banking
3 1,025 (13.03%) Analytical Skills
4 627 (7.97%) Public Sector
5 348 (4.42%) Financial Institution
6 295 (3.75%) Marketing
7 283 (3.60%) Legal
8 282 (3.58%) Front Office
9 278 (3.53%) Investment Banking
10 268 (3.41%) Manufacturing
11 249 (3.17%) Telecoms
12 244 (3.10%) Organisational Skills
13 225 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
14 182 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
15 171 (2.17%) Retail
16 152 (1.93%) Electronics
17 133 (1.69%) General Ledger
18 129 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
19 121 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 116 (1.47%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,256 (15.97%) Analyst
2 863 (10.97%) Developer
3 795 (10.11%) Senior
4 676 (8.59%) Business Analyst
5 663 (8.43%) Lead
6 655 (8.33%) Architect
7 618 (7.86%) Project Manager
8 583 (7.41%) Consultant
9 277 (3.52%) Solutions Architect
10 199 (2.53%) Data Analyst
11 189 (2.40%) Data Engineer
12 179 (2.28%) Programme Manager
13 174 (2.21%) Financial Analyst
14 157 (2.00%) Senior Manager
15 147 (1.87%) Software Engineer
16 142 (1.81%) Java Developer
17 138 (1.75%) Senior Developer
18 133 (1.69%) Finance Manager
19 124 (1.58%) Senior Analyst
20 117 (1.49%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 277 (3.52%) REST
2 266 (3.38%) Kafka
3 210 (2.67%) React
4 199 (2.53%) .NET
5 165 (2.10%) Oracle Fusion
6 147 (1.87%) RESTful
7 140 (1.78%) Spring
8 138 (1.75%) Middleware
9 118 (1.50%) Spring Boot
10 111 (1.41%) Node.js
11 107 (1.36%) AngularJS
12 91 (1.16%) PySpark
13 88 (1.12%) HTML
14 85 (1.08%) XML
15 84 (1.07%) CSS
15 84 (1.07%) Pandas
16 76 (0.97%) JSON
17 73 (0.93%) NumPy
18 71 (0.90%) OAuth
19 70 (0.89%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 337 (4.28%) Onboarding
2 307 (3.90%) Product Ownership
3 249 (3.17%) Cloud Native
4 191 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
5 175 (2.22%) Management Information System
6 173 (2.20%) Derivative
7 149 (1.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 148 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
9 143 (1.82%) Data Centre
10 142 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
11 140 (1.78%) Data Structures
12 137 (1.74%) Fixed Income
13 126 (1.60%) Equities
14 112 (1.42%) Public Cloud
15 110 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
16 95 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
17 88 (1.12%) Virtual Team
18 81 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
19 74 (0.94%) Hedge funds
20 65 (0.83%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 332 (4.22%) Linux
2 291 (3.70%) Windows
3 148 (1.88%) Unix
4 64 (0.81%) Windows 10
5 58 (0.74%) Android
5 58 (0.74%) Mac OS
6 55 (0.70%) Windows Server
7 28 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 19 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 14 (0.18%) zOS
10 8 (0.10%) AIX
10 8 (0.10%) Solaris
11 7 (0.089%) VMS
12 5 (0.064%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.051%) CentOS
13 4 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.051%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.038%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,761 (22.38%) Agile
2 1,512 (19.22%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,242 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
4 985 (12.52%) Migration
5 861 (10.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 841 (10.69%) DevOps
7 795 (10.11%) CI/CD
8 782 (9.94%) Analytics
9 760 (9.66%) Project Management
10 754 (9.58%) Business Intelligence
11 732 (9.30%) Continuous Improvement
12 718 (9.13%) ERP
13 632 (8.03%) AI
14 596 (7.58%) Roadmaps
15 594 (7.55%) Decision-Making
16 573 (7.28%) Data Modelling
17 566 (7.19%) Change Management
18 541 (6.88%) Risk Management
19 515 (6.55%) Project Delivery
20 513 (6.52%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,138 (14.47%) SQL
2 1,026 (13.04%) Python
3 562 (7.14%) Java
4 299 (3.80%) C#
5 242 (3.08%) JavaScript
6 193 (2.45%) TypeScript
7 191 (2.43%) PowerShell
8 138 (1.75%) C++
9 87 (1.11%) Go
10 78 (0.99%) PL/SQL
11 71 (0.90%) Bash
12 53 (0.67%) VBA
13 46 (0.58%) T-SQL
14 44 (0.56%) R
14 44 (0.56%) Shell Script
15 38 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 38 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 37 (0.47%) Scala
17 32 (0.41%) Rust
18 27 (0.34%) Perl
Qualifications
1 821 (10.44%) Degree
2 634 (8.06%) Security Cleared
3 466 (5.92%) SC Cleared
4 186 (2.36%) PMI Certification
5 182 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
6 181 (2.30%) PMP
7 173 (2.20%) Master's Degree
8 161 (2.05%) ACCA
9 151 (1.92%) CIMA
10 124 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
11 101 (1.28%) CISSP
12 82 (1.04%) AWS Certification
13 71 (0.90%) DV Cleared
14 68 (0.86%) CISM
15 64 (0.81%) Azure Certification
16 43 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
17 37 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
18 35 (0.44%) CBAP
18 35 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
19 33 (0.42%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (4.94%) QA
2 385 (4.89%) Data Quality
3 308 (3.92%) PMO
4 271 (3.44%) GDPR
5 131 (1.67%) NIST
6 128 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 116 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 105 (1.33%) SLA
9 87 (1.11%) Accessibility
10 82 (1.04%) IFRS
11 81 (1.03%) PCI DSS
12 68 (0.86%) GRC
13 57 (0.72%) ISO 20022
14 43 (0.55%) PSD2
15 38 (0.48%) GAAP
15 38 (0.48%) MiFID
16 36 (0.46%) NCSC
16 36 (0.46%) SEPA
17 33 (0.42%) COBIT
18 31 (0.39%) Basel III
System Software
1 341 (4.33%) Docker
2 174 (2.21%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.36%) vSphere
6 13 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.11%) GPFS
9 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
9 9 (0.11%) NFS
10 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.089%) HDFS
12 4 (0.051%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.038%) Firmware
13 3 (0.038%) KVM
13 3 (0.038%) RACF
13 3 (0.038%) SRDF
13 3 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.025%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 411 (5.22%) Kubernetes
2 258 (3.28%) Terraform
3 157 (2.00%) Ansible
4 98 (1.25%) Grafana
5 90 (1.14%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 55 (0.70%) SCCM
8 40 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.32%) FortiGate
10 22 (0.28%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.23%) Control-M
12 17 (0.22%) Argo
13 14 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
13 14 (0.18%) SCOM
13 14 (0.18%) vRealize
14 13 (0.17%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.17%) HP SiteScope
14 13 (0.17%) Kibana
15 12 (0.15%) ITRS Geneos
16 11 (0.14%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,039 (13.21%) Microsoft
2 797 (10.13%) SAP
3 692 (8.80%) Oracle
4 310 (3.94%) ServiceNow
5 192 (2.44%) Salesforce
6 187 (2.38%) Databricks
7 181 (2.30%) Google
8 159 (2.02%) Cisco
9 155 (1.97%) Splunk
10 145 (1.84%) Workday
11 112 (1.42%) VMware
12 100 (1.27%) IBM
13 74 (0.94%) CyberArk
14 73 (0.93%) Citrix
15 68 (0.86%) Ariba
16 54 (0.69%) HP
17 53 (0.67%) OpenAI
17 53 (0.67%) Sage
18 51 (0.65%) Bloomberg
19 50 (0.64%) Dell