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

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,174 6,672 8,260
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.60% 21.28% 19.26%
As % of the General category 32.61% 34.58% 32.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,581 4,180 5,644
10th Percentile £348 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -0.86%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £799
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -0.70% -2.44% -1.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 92 107
10th Percentile £15.10 £18.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.44 £14.83
Median hourly rate £23.54 £29.00 £26.66
Median % change year-on-year -18.84% +8.78% +6.64%
75th Percentile £39.75 £56.26 £49.00
90th Percentile £68.09 £78.72 £61.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% +10.00% -22.48%

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 22,000 19,293 25,328
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.12% 61.52% 59.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,805 11,478 16,635
10th Percentile £284 £281 £270
25th Percentile £400 £410 £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 £726 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,358 639 1,179
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.46 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.49 £19.28 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.13 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.21% -9.58% +20.00%
75th Percentile £46.00 £52.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.71 £70.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.38 £25.43 £29.00
% change year-on-year -15.93% -12.31% +28.89%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 6,318 £537 -9.37% 4,573
London -1 3,880 £575 -5.74% 1,295
UK excluding London -2 2,804 £497 -0.70% 4,015
Work from Home -2 1,978 £543 -9.58% 1,913
North of England +1 887 £475 -4.34% 776
South East -2 523 £505 -3.81% 1,408
Midlands -4 487 £475 -9.52% 533
North West +1 424 £450 -8.16% 352
Yorkshire 0 419 £500 -2.68% 313
Scotland 0 372 £475 +5.56% 160
West Midlands -6 300 £525 -4.55% 245
South West -3 282 £525 - 480
East Midlands +1 188 £423 +2.05% 284
East of England -2 170 £525 - 503
Wales +20 74 £406 -1.52% 172
Northern Ireland -1 55 £513 +57.69% 75
North East -6 44 £481 +1.32% 122
Channel Islands +2 2 - -

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
1 287 (4.00%) Confluence
2 198 (2.76%) SharePoint
3 67 (0.93%) Apache Spark
4 64 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 59 (0.82%) Apache
6 58 (0.81%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.43%) CMS
8 30 (0.42%) SAS
9 24 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 22 (0.31%) IIS
11 18 (0.25%) HCL Notes
12 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.18%) Appian
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%) CICS
15 11 (0.15%) Ethereum
15 11 (0.15%) JBoss
Applications
1 501 (6.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 281 (3.92%) Microsoft Office
3 204 (2.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 163 (2.27%) Microsoft Project
5 123 (1.71%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 20 (0.28%) Sketch
9 19 (0.26%) Trello
10 14 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 9 (0.13%) InVision
13 6 (0.084%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.070%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.070%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.056%) Notion
16 3 (0.042%) Camtasia
16 3 (0.042%) Snagit
17 2 (0.028%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 279 (3.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.71%) Oracle Payables
3 99 (1.38%) Oracle EBS
4 92 (1.28%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (1.18%) Oracle General Ledger
6 69 (0.96%) NetSuite
6 69 (0.96%) SAP FI
7 61 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
8 58 (0.81%) SAP CO
9 56 (0.78%) Oracle Assets
10 54 (0.75%) Oracle Cash Management
10 54 (0.75%) Oracle EBS R12
11 52 (0.72%) SAP FI/CO
12 51 (0.71%) Oracle Financials
13 49 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
14 45 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
15 37 (0.52%) Workday HCM
16 35 (0.49%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 27 (0.38%) Endur
17 27 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,051 (14.65%) Azure
2 861 (12.00%) AWS
3 544 (7.58%) Power Platform
4 342 (4.77%) GCP
5 235 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
6 216 (3.01%) SaaS
7 208 (2.90%) Dynamics 365
8 207 (2.89%) Azure DevOps
9 185 (2.58%) GitHub
10 140 (1.95%) OCI
11 138 (1.92%) Serverless
12 136 (1.90%) Snowflake
13 113 (1.58%) Entra ID
14 102 (1.42%) GitHub Actions
15 87 (1.21%) Power Automate
16 83 (1.16%) Amazon S3
17 78 (1.09%) PowerApps
18 72 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
19 71 (0.99%) Figma
20 64 (0.89%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 116 (1.62%) Firewall
2 63 (0.88%) Network Security
3 55 (0.77%) WAN
4 43 (0.60%) DNS
5 36 (0.50%) VPN
6 34 (0.47%) SD-WAN
7 33 (0.46%) LAN
7 33 (0.46%) TCP/IP
8 31 (0.43%) Wireless
9 29 (0.40%) HTTP
9 29 (0.40%) SSL
10 27 (0.38%) Skype
11 24 (0.33%) SSH
12 21 (0.29%) DHCP
13 17 (0.24%) BGP
13 17 (0.24%) OSPF
14 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
15 15 (0.21%) Cisco IOS
15 15 (0.21%) Internet
16 13 (0.18%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 476 (6.64%) Power BI
2 196 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
3 189 (2.63%) SQL Server
4 157 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (1.77%) Tableau
6 126 (1.76%) NoSQL
7 125 (1.74%) Relational Database
8 118 (1.64%) Data Lake
9 105 (1.46%) Metadata
10 91 (1.27%) Oracle Reports
11 79 (1.10%) MongoDB
12 72 (1.00%) Oracle Database
13 71 (0.99%) Big Data
14 48 (0.67%) BigQuery
15 46 (0.64%) Hadoop
16 43 (0.60%) Power Query
17 40 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
18 39 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
19 37 (0.52%) DB2
19 37 (0.52%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 535 (7.46%) JIRA
2 251 (3.50%) Jenkins
3 206 (2.87%) Git
4 145 (2.02%) GitLab
5 74 (1.03%) JUnit
6 55 (0.77%) Cucumber
7 54 (0.75%) Selenium
8 52 (0.72%) Bitbucket
9 45 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
10 35 (0.49%) Postman
11 32 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 28 (0.39%) Liquibase
13 24 (0.33%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.29%) Gradle
15 20 (0.28%) REST Assured
16 19 (0.26%) MLflow
17 18 (0.25%) JMeter
17 18 (0.25%) Maven
17 18 (0.25%) SonarQube
17 18 (0.25%) webpack
General
1 2,483 (34.61%) Social Skills
2 1,511 (21.06%) Banking
3 971 (13.53%) Analytical Skills
4 574 (8.00%) Public Sector
5 339 (4.73%) Financial Institution
6 325 (4.53%) Marketing
7 310 (4.32%) Manufacturing
8 293 (4.08%) Investment Banking
9 282 (3.93%) Telecoms
10 274 (3.82%) Front Office
11 257 (3.58%) Legal
12 209 (2.91%) Organisational Skills
13 195 (2.72%) Electronics
14 192 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
15 154 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
16 140 (1.95%) Retail
17 133 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
18 122 (1.70%) General Ledger
18 122 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 106 (1.48%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,177 (16.41%) Analyst
2 824 (11.49%) Developer
3 706 (9.84%) Senior
4 589 (8.21%) Business Analyst
5 572 (7.97%) Project Manager
6 567 (7.90%) Consultant
7 531 (7.40%) Architect
8 490 (6.83%) Lead
9 215 (3.00%) Solutions Architect
10 199 (2.77%) Data Analyst
11 160 (2.23%) Financial Analyst
12 155 (2.16%) Data Engineer
13 151 (2.10%) Senior Developer
14 147 (2.05%) Software Engineer
15 146 (2.04%) Programme Manager
16 143 (1.99%) Java Developer
17 117 (1.63%) Senior Manager
18 113 (1.58%) IT Manager
18 113 (1.58%) Oracle Consultant
19 109 (1.52%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (3.74%) REST
2 228 (3.18%) Kafka
3 220 (3.07%) .NET
4 167 (2.33%) React
5 163 (2.27%) RESTful
6 154 (2.15%) Oracle Fusion
7 142 (1.98%) Spring
8 116 (1.62%) Spring Boot
9 99 (1.38%) AngularJS
9 99 (1.38%) Middleware
10 95 (1.32%) Pandas
11 92 (1.28%) HTML
11 92 (1.28%) XML
12 84 (1.17%) NumPy
13 83 (1.16%) Node.js
14 81 (1.13%) CSS
15 76 (1.06%) SOAP
16 74 (1.03%) JSON
17 73 (1.02%) PySpark
18 72 (1.00%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 312 (4.35%) Onboarding
2 281 (3.92%) Product Ownership
3 202 (2.82%) Cloud Native
4 181 (2.52%) Derivative
5 168 (2.34%) Management Information System
6 153 (2.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 149 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
8 134 (1.87%) Equities
9 129 (1.80%) Data Centre
9 129 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
10 125 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
11 124 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
11 124 (1.73%) Data Structures
12 122 (1.70%) Fixed Income
13 103 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
14 98 (1.37%) Public Cloud
15 97 (1.35%) Hedge funds
16 72 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
17 71 (0.99%) Virtual Team
18 68 (0.95%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 358 (4.99%) Linux
2 328 (4.57%) Windows
3 154 (2.15%) Unix
4 67 (0.93%) Windows 10
5 65 (0.91%) Android
6 63 (0.88%) Mac OS
7 62 (0.86%) Windows Server
8 35 (0.49%) Apple iOS
9 19 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 8 (0.11%) zOS
11 7 (0.098%) CentOS
12 6 (0.084%) VMS
13 4 (0.056%) Solaris
13 4 (0.056%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.042%) AIX
14 3 (0.042%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.042%) 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 1,682 (23.45%) Agile
2 1,286 (17.93%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,178 (16.42%) Problem-Solving
4 814 (11.35%) Migration
5 771 (10.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 760 (10.59%) Business Intelligence
7 759 (10.58%) DevOps
8 737 (10.27%) CI/CD
9 702 (9.79%) Analytics
10 696 (9.70%) Project Management
11 617 (8.60%) ERP
12 596 (8.31%) Continuous Improvement
13 510 (7.11%) Decision-Making
14 500 (6.97%) Risk Management
15 495 (6.90%) Change Management
16 486 (6.77%) AI
17 484 (6.75%) Roadmaps
18 460 (6.41%) Data Modelling
19 446 (6.22%) Project Delivery
20 437 (6.09%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,060 (14.78%) SQL
2 952 (13.27%) Python
3 511 (7.12%) Java
4 320 (4.46%) C#
5 218 (3.04%) JavaScript
6 193 (2.69%) PowerShell
7 156 (2.17%) C++
8 149 (2.08%) TypeScript
9 89 (1.24%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.03%) Go
11 71 (0.99%) Bash
12 57 (0.79%) Shell Script
13 53 (0.74%) VBA
14 44 (0.61%) R
15 42 (0.59%) Kotlin
16 38 (0.53%) Groovy
17 33 (0.46%) Perl
17 33 (0.46%) T-SQL
18 32 (0.45%) Rust
19 30 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 773 (10.78%) Degree
2 539 (7.51%) Security Cleared
3 391 (5.45%) SC Cleared
4 185 (2.58%) PMI Certification
5 183 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
6 169 (2.36%) PMP
7 166 (2.31%) Master's Degree
8 144 (2.01%) ACCA
9 123 (1.71%) CIMA
10 93 (1.30%) AWS Certification
11 91 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
11 91 (1.27%) CISSP
12 62 (0.86%) DV Cleared
13 61 (0.85%) Azure Certification
14 59 (0.82%) CISM
15 46 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
16 36 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
17 35 (0.49%) CBAP
18 29 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 26 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (5.17%) QA
2 323 (4.50%) Data Quality
3 267 (3.72%) PMO
4 251 (3.50%) GDPR
5 120 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 109 (1.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 107 (1.49%) NIST
8 102 (1.42%) Accessibility
9 96 (1.34%) SLA
10 75 (1.05%) PCI DSS
11 70 (0.98%) IFRS
12 48 (0.67%) GRC
13 40 (0.56%) ISO 20022
13 40 (0.56%) PSD2
14 39 (0.54%) MiFID
15 30 (0.42%) Basel III
16 28 (0.39%) GAAP
17 27 (0.38%) COBIT
18 26 (0.36%) NCSC
18 26 (0.36%) SEPA
System Software
1 316 (4.40%) Docker
2 190 (2.65%) Active Directory
3 51 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 18 (0.25%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.13%) HDFS
7 9 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) GPFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
8 8 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.098%) NFS
10 6 (0.084%) Firmware
10 6 (0.084%) VMware NSX
11 5 (0.070%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 4 (0.056%) BitLocker
12 4 (0.056%) ISA Server
12 4 (0.056%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (0.042%) RACF
14 2 (0.028%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 357 (4.98%) Kubernetes
2 269 (3.75%) Terraform
3 181 (2.52%) Ansible
4 88 (1.23%) Grafana
5 76 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.88%) SCCM
7 55 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 33 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.35%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.31%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 18 (0.25%) Argo
13 17 (0.24%) FortiGate
13 17 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
14 16 (0.22%) Kibana
15 15 (0.21%) ITRS Geneos
15 15 (0.21%) vRealize
16 14 (0.20%) Control-M
16 14 (0.20%) Puppet
17 8 (0.11%) CA Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 989 (13.79%) Microsoft
2 777 (10.83%) SAP
3 705 (9.83%) Oracle
4 262 (3.65%) ServiceNow
5 179 (2.50%) Salesforce
6 156 (2.17%) Databricks
6 156 (2.17%) Splunk
7 155 (2.16%) Google
8 138 (1.92%) Workday
9 137 (1.91%) Cisco
10 98 (1.37%) VMware
11 88 (1.23%) IBM
12 73 (1.02%) Citrix
13 61 (0.85%) Ariba
14 57 (0.79%) CyberArk
15 52 (0.72%) Bloomberg
16 50 (0.70%) HP
17 48 (0.67%) Apple
18 47 (0.66%) Adobe
19 45 (0.63%) Murex