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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,851 7,516 7,744
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.39% 22.93% 19.90%
As % of the General category 33.42% 36.09% 34.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,044 4,948 5,106
10th Percentile £363 £331 £363
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £541 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.57% -5.83% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £714
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £492 £513
% change year-on-year +2.59% -3.95% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 315 147 185
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.49 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.93 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £36.80
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -20.46% +40.19%
75th Percentile - £62.75 £44.04
90th Percentile £75.40 £75.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.36 £37.81
% change year-on-year +66.80% -30.30% +13.25%

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 29,473 20,824 22,353
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.03% 63.53% 57.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,469 12,952 13,943
10th Percentile £313 £275 £294
25th Percentile £415 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £746 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,258 1,149 1,317
10th Percentile £13.94 £13.33 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.20 £16.30 £16.50
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -31.10% +32.73%
75th Percentile £56.21 £50.50 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.38 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £35.36
% change year-on-year +46.79% -37.39% +41.44%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 - 4,152
London 0 5,160 £590 -1.67% 1,772
UK excluding London 0 3,892 £505 +2.59% 3,154
Work from Home -1 2,818 £550 -4.35% 1,681
North of England 0 1,339 £500 +6.38% 790
South East -3 734 £505 -3.81% 1,083
North West 0 693 £500 +10.01% 410
Midlands 0 627 £500 +11.11% 417
Yorkshire 0 568 £514 +6.20% 265
Scotland 0 509 £475 -2.86% 139
West Midlands +1 476 £500 - 258
South West -5 381 £550 -1.60% 385
East of England +4 204 £525 -8.70% 280
East Midlands -4 147 £500 +21.21% 157
North East -3 71 £500 +12.36% 130
Northern Ireland -1 69 £475 -1.30% 51
Wales -1 60 £525 +13.51% 92
Channel Islands +3 4 £500 - 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
1 338 (3.43%) Confluence
2 251 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
4 86 (0.87%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.73%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.36%) CMS
8 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
8 26 (0.26%) SAS
9 21 (0.21%) 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%) Ethereum
13 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
14 6 (0.061%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 6 (0.061%) Appian
15 5 (0.051%) JBoss
15 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 523 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 185 (1.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 154 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 99 (1.00%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 32 (0.32%) 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
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 435 (4.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 127 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.13%) NetSuite
4 105 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 95 (0.96%) Oracle ERP
6 74 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
8 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
9 65 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
12 45 (0.46%) SAP CO
13 42 (0.43%) Aladdin
13 42 (0.43%) SAP FI/CO
14 36 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
15 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
16 31 (0.31%) SAP GRC
17 30 (0.30%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.28%) SAP ERP
19 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,553 (15.76%) Azure
2 1,075 (10.91%) AWS
3 661 (6.71%) Power Platform
4 521 (5.29%) GCP
5 356 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
6 328 (3.33%) SaaS
7 302 (3.07%) GitHub
7 302 (3.07%) Microsoft 365
8 259 (2.63%) Dynamics 365
9 218 (2.21%) Snowflake
10 215 (2.18%) Entra ID
11 150 (1.52%) Serverless
12 146 (1.48%) OCI
13 121 (1.23%) Power Automate
14 118 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
15 115 (1.17%) Amazon S3
16 113 (1.15%) dbt
17 111 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
18 109 (1.11%) Microsoft Copilot
19 106 (1.08%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 174 (1.77%) Firewall
2 153 (1.55%) Network Security
3 100 (1.02%) VPN
4 96 (0.97%) DNS
5 66 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 61 (0.62%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 43 (0.44%) BGP
10 40 (0.41%) LAN
11 39 (0.40%) HTTP
12 33 (0.33%) Multicast
12 33 (0.33%) VLAN
13 29 (0.29%) Internet
13 29 (0.29%) Wireless
14 28 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
15 25 (0.25%) SAN
16 24 (0.24%) OSPF
17 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.16%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 543 (5.51%) Power BI
2 285 (2.89%) SQL Server
3 263 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (2.04%) Metadata
5 178 (1.81%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.48%) Data Lake
7 140 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
8 131 (1.33%) Tableau
9 84 (0.85%) NoSQL
10 81 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
11 78 (0.79%) BigQuery
12 74 (0.75%) Oracle Database
13 73 (0.74%) MongoDB
14 59 (0.60%) Big Data
14 59 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (0.54%) Power Query
16 51 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
18 45 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
18 45 (0.46%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 675 (6.85%) JIRA
2 292 (2.96%) Git
3 166 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 99 (1.00%) GitLab
5 56 (0.57%) Selenium
6 44 (0.45%) JUnit
7 32 (0.32%) Bitbucket
8 30 (0.30%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.27%) Claude Code
9 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.26%) Maven
10 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
11 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
11 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 23 (0.23%) Postman
12 23 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
13 20 (0.20%) TeamCity
General
1 2,960 (30.05%) Social Skills
2 1,930 (19.59%) Banking
3 1,388 (14.09%) Analytical Skills
4 559 (5.67%) Legal
5 526 (5.34%) Public Sector
6 419 (4.25%) Organisational Skills
7 384 (3.90%) Investment Banking
8 382 (3.88%) Retail
9 349 (3.54%) Financial Institution
10 347 (3.52%) Front Office
11 297 (3.01%) Influencing Skills
12 227 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
13 206 (2.09%) Manufacturing
14 188 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 168 (1.71%) Billing
16 163 (1.65%) General Ledger
17 157 (1.59%) Marketing
18 146 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
19 145 (1.47%) Law
19 145 (1.47%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,401 (14.22%) Analyst
2 1,057 (10.73%) Senior
3 1,053 (10.69%) Lead
4 971 (9.86%) Developer
5 867 (8.80%) Architect
6 727 (7.38%) Business Analyst
7 708 (7.19%) Consultant
8 707 (7.18%) Project Manager
9 323 (3.28%) Solutions Architect
10 307 (3.12%) Data Engineer
11 247 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 230 (2.33%) Senior Manager
13 199 (2.02%) Java Developer
14 190 (1.93%) Accountant
15 189 (1.92%) Data Analyst
16 184 (1.87%) Finance Manager
16 184 (1.87%) Programme Manager
17 183 (1.86%) Senior Developer
18 178 (1.81%) IT Manager
19 163 (1.65%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 362 (3.67%) Terraform
2 351 (3.56%) REST
3 280 (2.84%) .NET
4 266 (2.70%) Oracle Fusion
5 254 (2.58%) Kafka
6 235 (2.39%) React
7 189 (1.92%) Middleware
8 180 (1.83%) Spring
9 170 (1.73%) Spring Boot
10 143 (1.45%) PySpark
11 134 (1.36%) RESTful
12 102 (1.04%) XML
13 99 (1.00%) JSON
14 97 (0.98%) Redux
15 95 (0.96%) OAuth
16 90 (0.91%) AngularJS
17 88 (0.89%) Node.js
18 77 (0.78%) SOAP
19 66 (0.67%) Web Services
20 64 (0.65%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 504 (5.12%) Onboarding
2 482 (4.89%) Product Ownership
3 417 (4.23%) Cloud Native
4 252 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
5 236 (2.40%) Management Information System
6 234 (2.38%) Data Structures
7 224 (2.27%) Virtual Team
8 190 (1.93%) Derivative
9 185 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
10 178 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
11 166 (1.69%) Data Centre
12 159 (1.61%) AI Agents
13 153 (1.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 150 (1.52%) Fixed Income
15 134 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
16 120 (1.22%) Equities
17 114 (1.16%) Podcast
18 113 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
19 112 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
20 111 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 375 (3.81%) Windows
2 304 (3.09%) Linux
3 158 (1.60%) Unix
4 89 (0.90%) Windows Server
5 54 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 46 (0.47%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.42%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) Solaris
9 35 (0.36%) Android
9 35 (0.36%) zOS
10 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
11 17 (0.17%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.091%) VMS
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) CentOS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,438 (24.75%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,025 (20.56%) Agile
3 1,335 (13.55%) Migration
4 1,298 (13.18%) Problem-Solving
5 1,184 (12.02%) AI
6 1,167 (11.85%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,137 (11.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,059 (10.75%) CI/CD
9 1,025 (10.41%) ERP
10 1,014 (10.29%) DevOps
11 993 (10.08%) Analytics
12 899 (9.13%) Decision-Making
13 800 (8.12%) Roadmaps
14 797 (8.09%) Validation
15 778 (7.90%) Data Modelling
16 768 (7.80%) User Acceptance Testing
17 755 (7.66%) Project Management
18 724 (7.35%) Change Management
19 671 (6.81%) Business Intelligence
20 662 (6.72%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,287 (13.06%) SQL
2 1,207 (12.25%) Python
3 627 (6.36%) Java
4 381 (3.87%) C#
5 263 (2.67%) PowerShell
6 254 (2.58%) JavaScript
7 222 (2.25%) TypeScript
8 140 (1.42%) Bash
9 105 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 90 (0.91%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.78%) C++
12 69 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 63 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 61 (0.62%) Go
15 57 (0.58%) Bicep
16 43 (0.44%) VBA
17 39 (0.40%) Korn
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.40%) Scala
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 780 (7.92%) Security Cleared
2 724 (7.35%) Degree
3 560 (5.68%) SC Cleared
4 246 (2.50%) PMP
5 229 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
6 216 (2.19%) PMI Certification
7 195 (1.98%) ACCA
8 171 (1.74%) CIMA
9 146 (1.48%) CISSP
10 137 (1.39%) DV Cleared
11 126 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
12 106 (1.08%) Azure Certification
13 85 (0.86%) CISM
14 84 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
15 68 (0.69%) Master's Degree
16 66 (0.67%) AWS Certification
17 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 44 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 39 (0.40%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 643 (6.53%) Data Quality
2 422 (4.28%) QA
3 364 (3.70%) PMO
4 246 (2.50%) GDPR
5 153 (1.55%) NIST
6 128 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.15%) GRC
8 107 (1.09%) SLA
9 106 (1.08%) Accessibility
10 97 (0.98%) IFRS
11 91 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 56 (0.57%) ISO 20022
13 55 (0.56%) GAAP
14 45 (0.46%) PCI DSS
15 35 (0.36%) Solvency II
16 33 (0.33%) SEPA
17 28 (0.28%) COBIT
17 28 (0.28%) EMIR
17 28 (0.28%) MiFID
18 26 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 264 (2.68%) Docker
2 240 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 81 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
6 23 (0.23%) vSphere
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.081%) IAG
11 5 (0.051%) ACF2
11 5 (0.051%) GPFS
11 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
11 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.041%) KVM
12 4 (0.041%) zsh
13 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 445 (4.52%) Kubernetes
2 169 (1.72%) Ansible
3 98 (0.99%) Grafana
4 82 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
7 57 (0.58%) SCCM
8 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 25 (0.25%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
13 15 (0.15%) Puppet
13 15 (0.15%) vRealize
14 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
14 14 (0.14%) Istio
15 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 10 (0.10%) Packer
18 9 (0.091%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,375 (13.96%) Microsoft
2 885 (8.98%) Oracle
3 837 (8.50%) SAP
4 375 (3.81%) ServiceNow
5 332 (3.37%) Databricks
6 228 (2.31%) Salesforce
7 224 (2.27%) Google
8 167 (1.70%) IBM
9 140 (1.42%) VMware
10 126 (1.28%) Workday
11 117 (1.19%) Cisco
12 108 (1.10%) Splunk
13 92 (0.93%) Ariba
14 90 (0.91%) CyberArk
15 74 (0.75%) OpenAI
16 60 (0.61%) Citrix
17 59 (0.60%) Sage
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 52 (0.53%) Bloomberg
20 46 (0.47%) Adobe