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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,977 6,593 8,166
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.14% 22.45% 18.71%
As % of the General category 33.64% 35.38% 32.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,586 4,303 5,468
10th Percentile £355 £350 £350
25th Percentile £440 £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 £490 £503
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.49% -4.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 209 125 267
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.79 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.22 £15.17
Median hourly rate £33.50 £38.11 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.10% +41.15% -10.00%
75th Percentile £54.00 £65.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £81.50 £58.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.50 £30.79 £28.00
% change year-on-year +15.30% +9.96% -42.86%

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 26,686 18,634 24,964
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.93% 63.44% 57.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,124 11,755 15,662
10th Percentile £313 £280 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.08% -3.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.21% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,775 862 2,008
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.87 £16.73 £15.50
Median hourly rate £31.25 £27.70 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.82% -7.67% -6.25%
75th Percentile £60.00 £53.95 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £74.88 £67.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £24.34 £28.42
% change year-on-year +25.64% -14.36% +3.35%

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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 7,909 £550 -3.85% 3,809
London 0 4,759 £575 -4.17% 1,942
UK excluding London +1 3,596 £500 +2.04% 2,504
Work from Home -2 2,537 £550 -4.35% 1,702
North of England +2 1,242 £492 +5.81% 645
North West +5 659 £463 +2.78% 349
South East -1 649 £500 -4.31% 860
Midlands -1 613 £500 +7.53% 357
Yorkshire 0 538 £525 +10.53% 228
Scotland 0 447 £500 +4.17% 114
West Midlands +1 433 £505 +0.70% 224
South West -2 367 £525 - 248
East of England +2 191 £513 -10.87% 182
East Midlands -1 175 £468 +7.66% 133
Wales +9 85 £500 +13.96% 76
Northern Ireland -1 51 £513 +22.75% 62
North East -13 46 £500 +13.96% 74
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 319 (3.55%) Confluence
2 215 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.91%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
5 55 (0.61%) Apache
6 51 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.35%) SAS
8 26 (0.29%) CMS
9 20 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.21%) CICS
11 15 (0.17%) IIS
12 13 (0.14%) Appian
13 12 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.13%) Camunda
14 10 (0.11%) Ethereum
14 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.067%) Hyperledger
15 6 (0.067%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.067%) TPMS
Applications
1 501 (5.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (2.36%) Microsoft Office
3 172 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.73%) Microsoft Project
5 119 (1.33%) MS Visio
6 55 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 32 (0.36%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.089%) Sketch
9 7 (0.078%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.067%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.067%) InVision
10 6 (0.067%) Trello
11 4 (0.045%) Notion
11 4 (0.045%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.022%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.022%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
13 1 (0.011%) UXPin
13 1 (0.011%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 405 (4.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 107 (1.19%) NetSuite
3 105 (1.17%) Oracle Payables
4 86 (0.96%) Oracle Receivables
5 83 (0.92%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 71 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
7 58 (0.65%) SAP FI
8 49 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
9 46 (0.51%) SAP CO
10 44 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
10 44 (0.49%) SAP FI/CO
11 42 (0.47%) Oracle General Ledger
12 37 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
13 36 (0.40%) Aladdin
14 32 (0.36%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 26 (0.29%) Unit4 Business World
16 25 (0.28%) SAP ERP
17 24 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
18 22 (0.25%) SAP BRIM
19 21 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,393 (15.52%) Azure
2 1,005 (11.20%) AWS
3 609 (6.78%) Power Platform
4 433 (4.82%) GCP
5 300 (3.34%) Azure DevOps
5 300 (3.34%) SaaS
6 278 (3.10%) Microsoft 365
7 232 (2.58%) GitHub
8 217 (2.42%) Dynamics 365
9 177 (1.97%) Snowflake
10 158 (1.76%) Entra ID
11 137 (1.53%) Serverless
12 124 (1.38%) OCI
13 115 (1.28%) Amazon S3
14 111 (1.24%) Power Automate
15 96 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
16 89 (0.99%) OpenShift
17 88 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
18 85 (0.95%) dbt
19 84 (0.94%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 169 (1.88%) Firewall
2 129 (1.44%) Network Security
3 77 (0.86%) WAN
4 76 (0.85%) DNS
5 66 (0.74%) VPN
6 60 (0.67%) TCP/IP
7 40 (0.45%) BGP
8 37 (0.41%) LAN
8 37 (0.41%) SD-WAN
9 35 (0.39%) HTTP
9 35 (0.39%) SSL
10 29 (0.32%) DHCP
10 29 (0.32%) Multicast
11 28 (0.31%) OSPF
12 25 (0.28%) MPLS
13 21 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
14 20 (0.22%) Internet
15 19 (0.21%) VSAN
16 17 (0.19%) VLAN
17 16 (0.18%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 517 (5.76%) Power BI
2 237 (2.64%) SQL Server
3 226 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 174 (1.94%) Metadata
5 166 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
6 162 (1.80%) Relational Database
7 148 (1.65%) Tableau
8 130 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 90 (1.00%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
11 72 (0.80%) Big Data
12 67 (0.75%) Oracle Database
13 64 (0.71%) BigQuery
13 64 (0.71%) MongoDB
14 55 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
15 47 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
17 44 (0.49%) Power Query
18 42 (0.47%) Delta Lake
19 35 (0.39%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 666 (7.42%) JIRA
2 216 (2.41%) Git
3 159 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.08%) GitLab
5 51 (0.57%) JUnit
6 47 (0.52%) Cucumber
7 37 (0.41%) Selenium
8 31 (0.35%) Visual Studio
9 30 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 29 (0.32%) Postman
11 25 (0.28%) MLflow
12 23 (0.26%) SonarQube
13 21 (0.23%) REST Assured
14 20 (0.22%) Zephyr
15 18 (0.20%) ERwin
15 18 (0.20%) Maven
16 16 (0.18%) Hudson
17 15 (0.17%) Oracle Forms
18 14 (0.16%) Bitbucket
18 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,621 (29.20%) Social Skills
2 1,642 (18.29%) Banking
3 1,162 (12.94%) Analytical Skills
4 499 (5.56%) Public Sector
5 421 (4.69%) Legal
6 348 (3.88%) Investment Banking
7 333 (3.71%) Financial Institution
8 305 (3.40%) Front Office
9 285 (3.17%) Retail
10 275 (3.06%) Organisational Skills
11 229 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
12 220 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
13 164 (1.83%) Manufacturing
14 150 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 139 (1.55%) Local Government
16 137 (1.53%) General Ledger
17 136 (1.51%) Law
18 132 (1.47%) Marketing
19 131 (1.46%) Billing
20 124 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,336 (14.88%) Analyst
2 974 (10.85%) Senior
3 939 (10.46%) Lead
4 908 (10.11%) Developer
5 814 (9.07%) Architect
6 706 (7.86%) Business Analyst
6 706 (7.86%) Project Manager
7 588 (6.55%) Consultant
8 342 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
9 295 (3.29%) Data Engineer
10 217 (2.42%) Senior Manager
11 216 (2.41%) Financial Analyst
12 198 (2.21%) Finance Manager
13 183 (2.04%) Data Analyst
14 181 (2.02%) Accountant
15 176 (1.96%) Java Developer
16 169 (1.88%) Programme Manager
17 167 (1.86%) Senior Developer
18 164 (1.83%) Software Engineer
19 150 (1.67%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (3.01%) REST
2 253 (2.82%) Kafka
3 252 (2.81%) .NET
4 234 (2.61%) React
5 192 (2.14%) Oracle Fusion
6 183 (2.04%) Middleware
7 160 (1.78%) Spring
8 155 (1.73%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.51%) RESTful
10 103 (1.15%) PySpark
11 101 (1.13%) Node.js
12 96 (1.07%) Redux
13 95 (1.06%) AngularJS
14 84 (0.94%) OAuth
15 80 (0.89%) JSON
16 75 (0.84%) XML
17 66 (0.74%) CSS
18 62 (0.69%) OpenID
19 61 (0.68%) HTML
20 60 (0.67%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 395 (4.40%) Onboarding
2 380 (4.23%) Product Ownership
3 361 (4.02%) Cloud Native
4 253 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
5 203 (2.26%) Management Information System
6 189 (2.11%) Data Structures
7 168 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
8 165 (1.84%) Derivative
9 158 (1.76%) Data Centre
10 155 (1.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 151 (1.68%) Fixed Income
12 146 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
13 125 (1.39%) Virtual Team
14 116 (1.29%) Equities
15 114 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
16 112 (1.25%) Public Cloud
17 99 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
18 97 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
19 93 (1.04%) AI Agents
20 76 (0.85%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 304 (3.39%) Windows
2 269 (3.00%) Linux
3 146 (1.63%) Unix
4 69 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 38 (0.42%) Windows 10
6 37 (0.41%) Solaris
7 31 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 31 (0.35%) zOS
8 30 (0.33%) Apple iOS
9 26 (0.29%) Android
10 19 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 18 (0.20%) AIX
12 7 (0.078%) VMS
12 7 (0.078%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
13 6 (0.067%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.045%) HPUX
14 4 (0.045%) MVS
14 4 (0.045%) SUSE
14 4 (0.045%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,850 (20.61%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,816 (20.23%) Agile
3 1,234 (13.75%) Migration
4 1,199 (13.36%) Problem-Solving
5 997 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
6 978 (10.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 953 (10.62%) ERP
8 936 (10.43%) DevOps
9 925 (10.30%) AI
10 904 (10.07%) CI/CD
11 864 (9.62%) Analytics
12 779 (8.68%) Project Management
13 753 (8.39%) Decision-Making
14 743 (8.28%) Data Modelling
15 729 (8.12%) Validation
16 722 (8.04%) Roadmaps
17 698 (7.78%) User Acceptance Testing
18 664 (7.40%) Business Intelligence
19 636 (7.08%) Change Management
20 577 (6.43%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,209 (13.47%) SQL
2 1,085 (12.09%) Python
3 612 (6.82%) Java
4 372 (4.14%) C#
5 240 (2.67%) JavaScript
6 224 (2.50%) TypeScript
7 193 (2.15%) PowerShell
8 104 (1.16%) C++
9 83 (0.92%) Bash
10 76 (0.85%) Go
11 73 (0.81%) PL/SQL
12 67 (0.75%) T-SQL
13 57 (0.63%) Shell Script
14 55 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.49%) Scala
16 39 (0.43%) VBA
17 29 (0.32%) Apex Code
17 29 (0.32%) R
18 28 (0.31%) Bicep
18 28 (0.31%) Rust
Qualifications
1 737 (8.21%) Degree
2 671 (7.47%) Security Cleared
3 481 (5.36%) SC Cleared
4 228 (2.54%) ACCA
5 213 (2.37%) PMP
6 206 (2.29%) CIMA
7 189 (2.11%) PMI Certification
8 164 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
9 143 (1.59%) CISSP
10 134 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
11 90 (1.00%) CISM
12 85 (0.95%) Master's Degree
13 80 (0.89%) DV Cleared
14 74 (0.82%) Azure Certification
15 68 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
16 47 (0.52%) AWS Certification
17 43 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 37 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 33 (0.37%) ISTQB
20 32 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 547 (6.09%) Data Quality
2 413 (4.60%) QA
3 317 (3.53%) PMO
4 290 (3.23%) GDPR
5 163 (1.82%) NIST
6 131 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.26%) IFRS
8 108 (1.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 103 (1.15%) SLA
10 101 (1.13%) GRC
11 86 (0.96%) Accessibility
12 65 (0.72%) PCI DSS
13 62 (0.69%) ISO 20022
14 60 (0.67%) GAAP
15 37 (0.41%) SEPA
16 34 (0.38%) NCSC
16 34 (0.38%) PSD2
17 29 (0.32%) IFRS 17
18 28 (0.31%) SOC 2
19 27 (0.30%) Solvency II
System Software
1 276 (3.07%) Docker
2 170 (1.89%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.32%) vSphere
5 26 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
7 15 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.16%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.13%) RACF
10 11 (0.12%) Hyper-V
11 10 (0.11%) NFS
12 6 (0.067%) GPFS
12 6 (0.067%) KVM
13 5 (0.056%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.045%) Firmware
14 4 (0.045%) Oracle RAC
15 3 (0.033%) GridGain
15 3 (0.033%) HDFS
15 3 (0.033%) SRDF
16 2 (0.022%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 407 (4.53%) Kubernetes
2 262 (2.92%) Terraform
3 141 (1.57%) Ansible
4 93 (1.04%) Grafana
5 77 (0.86%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.55%) SCCM
8 42 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.35%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.23%) Control-M
11 17 (0.19%) vRealize
12 16 (0.18%) Argo
13 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 15 (0.17%) Progress Chef
14 14 (0.16%) Nessus
15 13 (0.14%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.14%) HP ALM
15 13 (0.14%) Puppet
16 11 (0.12%) CASB
17 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,132 (12.61%) Microsoft
2 786 (8.76%) SAP
3 742 (8.27%) Oracle
4 300 (3.34%) ServiceNow
5 262 (2.92%) Databricks
6 205 (2.28%) Salesforce
7 196 (2.18%) Google
8 126 (1.40%) Workday
9 117 (1.30%) Cisco
10 114 (1.27%) Splunk
11 107 (1.19%) VMware
12 102 (1.14%) IBM
13 88 (0.98%) CyberArk
14 83 (0.92%) Ariba
15 67 (0.75%) Sage
16 63 (0.70%) Citrix
17 61 (0.68%) OpenAI
18 51 (0.57%) Palo Alto
19 49 (0.55%) Bloomberg
20 48 (0.53%) IFS