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

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,625 6,516 8,363
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.06% 21.04% 18.77%
As % of the General category 32.43% 33.95% 32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,835 4,059 5,702
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £455 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £671 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -1.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 91 168
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £11.84
25th Percentile £17.00 £22.39 £14.06
Median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £20.25
Median % change year-on-year -32.86% +72.84% -19.00%
75th Percentile £41.25 £64.38 £39.22
90th Percentile £69.87 £83.20 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year -20.00% +41.03% -41.86%

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 23,513 19,195 26,121
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.78% 61.98% 58.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,720 11,553 16,876
10th Percentile £291 £284 £265
25th Percentile £402 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £649 £650
90th Percentile £735 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,443 606 1,625
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.12 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.85 £29.00 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -21.21% +14.85% -2.88%
75th Percentile £50.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.00 £67.71
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.80 £27.00 £24.05
% change year-on-year -19.26% +12.27% -1.92%

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 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 13 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 13 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 6,715 £535 -9.01% 3,536
London -1 4,081 £575 -5.74% 1,423
UK excluding London -1 3,032 £500 - 2,651
Work from Home -1 2,143 £525 -11.09% 1,538
North of England +2 971 £475 -0.78% 610
South East -1 566 £500 -4.76% 1,003
Midlands -3 539 £490 -2.00% 395
North West +3 491 £450 -5.26% 334
Yorkshire 0 432 £514 +0.20% 217
Scotland 0 384 £475 +1.33% 127
West Midlands -3 342 £504 -8.41% 242
South West -6 298 £518 -2.77% 270
East Midlands 0 195 £450 +5.88% 150
East of England -2 186 £525 - 212
Wales +29 93 £413 +1.54% 70
Northern Ireland -1 53 £513 +57.69% 33
North East -6 49 £488 +8.33% 71
Channel Islands +2 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
1 323 (4.24%) Confluence
2 205 (2.69%) SharePoint
3 74 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 62 (0.81%) Microsoft Exchange
5 53 (0.70%) Apache
6 51 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
7 29 (0.38%) SAS
8 24 (0.31%) CMS
9 21 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 16 (0.21%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.17%) CICS
12 13 (0.17%) HCL Notes
12 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.17%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.17%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
14 10 (0.13%) Mendix
Applications
1 522 (6.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 295 (3.87%) Microsoft Office
3 205 (2.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 183 (2.40%) Microsoft Project
5 136 (1.78%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 34 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 18 (0.24%) Sketch
8 18 (0.24%) Trello
9 13 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
11 8 (0.10%) InVision
12 7 (0.092%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.066%) Notion
13 5 (0.066%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
14 4 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.026%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.026%) InDesign
15 2 (0.026%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 298 (3.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.52%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.26%) Oracle Receivables
4 71 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
4 71 (0.93%) Oracle General Ledger
5 69 (0.90%) SAP FI
6 65 (0.85%) NetSuite
7 62 (0.81%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 59 (0.77%) SAP CO
9 58 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
10 52 (0.68%) SAP FI/CO
11 45 (0.59%) Oracle Assets
12 41 (0.54%) Oracle Cash Management
13 39 (0.51%) Oracle EBS R12
13 39 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
14 38 (0.50%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 35 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
15 35 (0.46%) Workday HCM
16 31 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
17 24 (0.31%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,140 (14.95%) Azure
2 931 (12.21%) AWS
3 549 (7.20%) Power Platform
4 379 (4.97%) GCP
5 268 (3.51%) Microsoft 365
6 247 (3.24%) SaaS
7 229 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
8 222 (2.91%) Dynamics 365
9 205 (2.69%) GitHub
10 146 (1.91%) Serverless
11 142 (1.86%) OCI
12 131 (1.72%) Snowflake
13 126 (1.65%) Entra ID
14 93 (1.22%) Amazon S3
15 91 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
16 90 (1.18%) Power Automate
17 76 (1.00%) OpenShift
18 73 (0.96%) AWS CloudFormation
18 73 (0.96%) AWS Lambda
19 68 (0.89%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 134 (1.76%) Firewall
2 76 (1.00%) Network Security
3 68 (0.89%) WAN
4 48 (0.63%) DNS
5 44 (0.58%) VPN
6 40 (0.52%) LAN
7 37 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 32 (0.42%) TCP/IP
8 32 (0.42%) Wireless
9 30 (0.39%) Skype
10 23 (0.30%) HTTP
10 23 (0.30%) SSL
11 22 (0.29%) DHCP
12 20 (0.26%) BGP
12 20 (0.26%) Internet
13 19 (0.25%) OSPF
14 18 (0.24%) Multicast
14 18 (0.24%) SSH
15 16 (0.21%) Kerberos
16 13 (0.17%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 482 (6.32%) Power BI
2 197 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
3 191 (2.50%) SQL Server
4 166 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
5 141 (1.85%) Tableau
6 126 (1.65%) NoSQL
7 122 (1.60%) Metadata
8 121 (1.59%) Relational Database
9 117 (1.53%) Data Lake
10 83 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
11 72 (0.94%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.93%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.90%) Big Data
14 57 (0.75%) BigQuery
15 45 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
16 38 (0.50%) Hadoop
17 37 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 35 (0.46%) MySQL
19 33 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
19 33 (0.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 614 (8.05%) JIRA
2 258 (3.38%) Jenkins
3 212 (2.78%) Git
4 154 (2.02%) GitLab
5 70 (0.92%) JUnit
6 59 (0.77%) Cucumber
7 48 (0.63%) Selenium
8 47 (0.62%) Sonatype Nexus
9 41 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 36 (0.47%) Postman
11 32 (0.42%) Visual Studio
12 26 (0.34%) MLflow
13 25 (0.33%) REST Assured
14 24 (0.31%) Gradle
15 22 (0.29%) Liquibase
15 22 (0.29%) Maven
16 17 (0.22%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.21%) Cypress.io
17 16 (0.21%) JMeter
18 15 (0.20%) ERwin
General
1 2,644 (34.68%) Social Skills
2 1,519 (19.92%) Banking
3 1,005 (13.18%) Analytical Skills
4 628 (8.24%) Public Sector
5 334 (4.38%) Financial Institution
6 310 (4.07%) Marketing
7 276 (3.62%) Investment Banking
7 276 (3.62%) Manufacturing
8 271 (3.55%) Front Office
9 266 (3.49%) Legal
10 263 (3.45%) Telecoms
11 230 (3.02%) Organisational Skills
12 214 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
13 172 (2.26%) Influencing Skills
14 170 (2.23%) Electronics
15 159 (2.09%) Retail
16 132 (1.73%) General Ledger
17 127 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
18 119 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 117 (1.53%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,229 (16.12%) Analyst
2 847 (11.11%) Developer
3 762 (9.99%) Senior
4 660 (8.66%) Business Analyst
5 633 (8.30%) Architect
6 597 (7.83%) Lead
7 590 (7.74%) Project Manager
8 552 (7.24%) Consultant
9 268 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 191 (2.50%) Data Analyst
11 181 (2.37%) Data Engineer
12 178 (2.33%) Programme Manager
13 168 (2.20%) Financial Analyst
14 146 (1.91%) Java Developer
14 146 (1.91%) Senior Manager
15 143 (1.88%) Senior Developer
16 138 (1.81%) Software Engineer
17 126 (1.65%) Finance Manager
18 114 (1.50%) Senior Analyst
19 112 (1.47%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 283 (3.71%) REST
2 245 (3.21%) Kafka
3 206 (2.70%) .NET
4 182 (2.39%) React
5 157 (2.06%) RESTful
6 151 (1.98%) Oracle Fusion
7 149 (1.95%) Spring
8 129 (1.69%) Middleware
9 126 (1.65%) Spring Boot
10 104 (1.36%) AngularJS
11 92 (1.21%) Node.js
12 90 (1.18%) XML
13 88 (1.15%) HTML
13 88 (1.15%) Pandas
14 78 (1.02%) CSS
14 78 (1.02%) NumPy
15 77 (1.01%) PySpark
16 76 (1.00%) JSON
17 72 (0.94%) OAuth
17 72 (0.94%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 325 (4.26%) Onboarding
2 309 (4.05%) Product Ownership
3 232 (3.04%) Cloud Native
4 174 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
4 174 (2.28%) Management Information System
5 172 (2.26%) Derivative
6 157 (2.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 149 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
8 139 (1.82%) Data Centre
9 137 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
10 127 (1.67%) Data Structures
11 123 (1.61%) Equities
12 121 (1.59%) Fixed Income
13 111 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
14 108 (1.42%) Public Cloud
15 95 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
16 84 (1.10%) Virtual Team
17 81 (1.06%) Hedge funds
18 80 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
19 68 (0.89%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 337 (4.42%) Linux
2 301 (3.95%) Windows
3 148 (1.94%) Unix
4 68 (0.89%) Windows 10
5 62 (0.81%) Mac OS
6 59 (0.77%) Android
6 59 (0.77%) Windows Server
7 30 (0.39%) Apple iOS
8 18 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (0.16%) zOS
10 9 (0.12%) Solaris
11 8 (0.10%) AIX
12 7 (0.092%) VMS
13 5 (0.066%) CentOS
13 5 (0.066%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.039%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,724 (22.61%) Agile
2 1,436 (18.83%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,238 (16.24%) Problem-Solving
4 916 (12.01%) Migration
5 841 (11.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 807 (10.58%) DevOps
7 788 (10.33%) CI/CD
8 761 (9.98%) Business Intelligence
9 751 (9.85%) Analytics
10 745 (9.77%) Project Management
11 688 (9.02%) Continuous Improvement
12 681 (8.93%) ERP
13 601 (7.88%) AI
14 563 (7.38%) Roadmaps
15 562 (7.37%) Decision-Making
16 551 (7.23%) Change Management
17 545 (7.15%) Data Modelling
18 520 (6.82%) Risk Management
19 499 (6.54%) User Acceptance Testing
20 491 (6.44%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,140 (14.95%) SQL
2 991 (13.00%) Python
3 539 (7.07%) Java
4 304 (3.99%) C#
5 219 (2.87%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.66%) PowerShell
7 170 (2.23%) TypeScript
8 151 (1.98%) C++
9 80 (1.05%) PL/SQL
10 71 (0.93%) Go
11 67 (0.88%) Bash
12 52 (0.68%) VBA
13 45 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 42 (0.55%) Kotlin
14 42 (0.55%) R
15 40 (0.52%) T-SQL
16 35 (0.46%) Scala
17 33 (0.43%) Rust
18 31 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 27 (0.35%) Korn
Qualifications
1 826 (10.83%) Degree
2 606 (7.95%) Security Cleared
3 450 (5.90%) SC Cleared
4 188 (2.47%) PMI Certification
5 183 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
6 181 (2.37%) PMP
7 173 (2.27%) Master's Degree
8 156 (2.05%) ACCA
9 145 (1.90%) CIMA
10 119 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
11 86 (1.13%) CISSP
12 83 (1.09%) AWS Certification
13 66 (0.87%) DV Cleared
14 62 (0.81%) CISM
15 60 (0.79%) Azure Certification
16 44 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
17 36 (0.47%) CBAP
18 34 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
19 33 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
20 32 (0.42%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 394 (5.17%) QA
2 370 (4.85%) Data Quality
3 298 (3.91%) PMO
4 256 (3.36%) GDPR
5 126 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 125 (1.64%) NIST
7 107 (1.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 99 (1.30%) SLA
9 90 (1.18%) Accessibility
10 79 (1.04%) IFRS
10 79 (1.04%) PCI DSS
11 66 (0.87%) GRC
12 57 (0.75%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.58%) PSD2
14 39 (0.51%) MiFID
15 38 (0.50%) SEPA
16 34 (0.45%) GAAP
16 34 (0.45%) NCSC
17 31 (0.41%) Basel III
18 29 (0.38%) COBIT
System Software
1 338 (4.43%) Docker
2 194 (2.54%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
5 26 (0.34%) vSphere
6 13 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
9 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.12%) GPFS
10 9 (0.12%) NFS
11 8 (0.10%) HDFS
11 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.052%) ISA Server
12 4 (0.052%) KVM
13 3 (0.039%) Firmware
13 3 (0.039%) RACF
13 3 (0.039%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (0.039%) Tivoli Directory Server
14 2 (0.026%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 402 (5.27%) Kubernetes
2 250 (3.28%) Terraform
3 159 (2.09%) Ansible
4 94 (1.23%) Grafana
5 87 (1.14%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.76%) SCCM
7 55 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
8 35 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
9 22 (0.29%) FortiGate
9 22 (0.29%) SCOM
10 21 (0.28%) HP SiteScope
10 21 (0.28%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.24%) Argo
12 17 (0.22%) Control-M
12 17 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.20%) Kibana
14 14 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
14 14 (0.18%) vRealize
15 12 (0.16%) AirWatch
16 10 (0.13%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,043 (13.68%) Microsoft
2 792 (10.39%) SAP
3 675 (8.85%) Oracle
4 292 (3.83%) ServiceNow
5 181 (2.37%) Salesforce
6 172 (2.26%) Google
7 171 (2.24%) Databricks
8 158 (2.07%) Splunk
9 152 (1.99%) Cisco
10 137 (1.80%) Workday
11 108 (1.42%) VMware
12 94 (1.23%) IBM
13 73 (0.96%) Citrix
14 71 (0.93%) CyberArk
15 62 (0.81%) Ariba
16 53 (0.70%) OpenAI
17 52 (0.68%) HP
18 50 (0.66%) Bloomberg
18 50 (0.66%) Murex
19 48 (0.63%) Apple