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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,769 7,411 8,116
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.55% 22.79% 19.23%
As % of the General category 33.82% 36.20% 33.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,043 4,871 5,438
10th Percentile £356 £348 £350
25th Percentile £450 £422 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £719
90th Percentile £800 £813 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £491 £500
% change year-on-year +1.83% -1.80% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 260 147 232
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.79 £13.70
25th Percentile £21.76 £20.93 £18.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £32.31 £34.61
Median % change year-on-year +36.06% -6.63% +6.48%
75th Percentile £54.06 £63.75 £39.19
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.39 £35.00
% change year-on-year +60.51% -21.75% -8.74%

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 28,882 20,470 24,177
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.84% 62.94% 57.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,256 12,838 15,149
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £489
% change year-on-year +6.61% -4.09% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,010 1,053 1,774
10th Percentile £14.09 £13.27 £13.06
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £33.00 £26.21 £33.29
Median % change year-on-year +25.91% -21.26% +8.61%
75th Percentile £62.00 £51.80 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £70.13 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +46.67% -31.82% +24.62%

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 17 July 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 17 July 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 17 July 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 8,509 £550 - 4,175
London 0 5,124 £582 -2.98% 2,203
UK excluding London 0 3,874 £500 +1.83% 2,604
Work from Home -1 2,867 £550 -4.35% 1,628
North of England 0 1,299 £500 +6.61% 678
South East 0 728 £500 -4.76% 814
North West +3 684 £490 +8.89% 351
Midlands +1 654 £500 +11.11% 415
Yorkshire 0 564 £525 +7.69% 249
Scotland 0 497 £475 -2.46% 143
West Midlands 0 490 £500 +4.17% 229
South West -4 382 £525 -4.55% 268
East of England +7 211 £530 -7.83% 189
East Midlands -1 157 £500 +17.65% 184
Wales +3 85 £525 +13.51% 54
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 +5.56% 81
North East -17 52 £500 +14.29% 87
Channel Islands +4 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
1 329 (3.37%) Confluence
2 226 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.83%) Apache Spark
4 76 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
5 60 (0.61%) Apache
6 44 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) SAS
8 32 (0.33%) CMS
9 28 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
13 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.072%) Appian
16 5 (0.051%) Hyperledger
16 5 (0.051%) WebLogic
17 4 (0.041%) WordPress
Applications
1 519 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 172 (1.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.11%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.092%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
11 4 (0.041%) Adobe Illustrator
11 4 (0.041%) Notion
11 4 (0.041%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.020%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
12 2 (0.020%) Final Cut Pro
12 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 447 (4.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
3 114 (1.17%) NetSuite
4 100 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 84 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
6 73 (0.75%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 68 (0.70%) SAP FI
8 62 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
9 57 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
10 55 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
11 49 (0.50%) Oracle Financials
12 47 (0.48%) SAP CO
13 45 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
14 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
15 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
16 30 (0.31%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.29%) Unit4 Business World
18 27 (0.28%) SAP ERP
19 26 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
20 25 (0.26%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,519 (15.55%) Azure
2 1,098 (11.24%) AWS
3 647 (6.62%) Power Platform
4 502 (5.14%) GCP
5 328 (3.36%) Azure DevOps
6 327 (3.35%) SaaS
7 278 (2.85%) Microsoft 365
8 277 (2.84%) GitHub
9 237 (2.43%) Dynamics 365
10 202 (2.07%) Snowflake
11 191 (1.96%) Entra ID
12 140 (1.43%) Serverless
13 130 (1.33%) OCI
14 125 (1.28%) Amazon S3
15 108 (1.11%) Power Automate
16 105 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
17 100 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
17 100 (1.02%) Microsoft Copilot
18 98 (1.00%) dbt
19 94 (0.96%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 189 (1.93%) Firewall
2 146 (1.49%) Network Security
3 89 (0.91%) DNS
4 83 (0.85%) VPN
5 63 (0.64%) TCP/IP
6 57 (0.58%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) BGP
8 46 (0.47%) SSL
9 39 (0.40%) LAN
10 37 (0.38%) DHCP
10 37 (0.38%) HTTP
11 36 (0.37%) Multicast
12 30 (0.31%) OSPF
13 26 (0.27%) Internet
14 24 (0.25%) MPLS
15 23 (0.24%) Wireless
16 22 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
17 20 (0.20%) VLAN
18 18 (0.18%) SAN
18 18 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 538 (5.51%) Power BI
2 270 (2.76%) SQL Server
3 249 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.07%) Metadata
5 177 (1.81%) Relational Database
6 169 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
7 152 (1.56%) Tableau
8 143 (1.46%) Data Lake
9 90 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
10 82 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 77 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.73%) MongoDB
13 68 (0.70%) BigQuery
14 66 (0.68%) Big Data
15 65 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
16 49 (0.50%) Power Query
17 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
17 48 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 46 (0.47%) Delta Lake
19 41 (0.42%) Db2
Development Applications
1 679 (6.95%) JIRA
2 263 (2.69%) Git
3 169 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 92 (0.94%) GitLab
5 54 (0.55%) JUnit
6 44 (0.45%) Cucumber
7 41 (0.42%) Selenium
8 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.29%) Postman
10 27 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 26 (0.27%) ERwin
11 26 (0.27%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 24 (0.25%) SonarQube
13 22 (0.23%) Maven
14 20 (0.20%) Bitbucket
14 20 (0.20%) MLflow
15 18 (0.18%) Zephyr
16 17 (0.17%) Hudson
16 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,862 (29.30%) Social Skills
2 1,808 (18.51%) Banking
3 1,320 (13.51%) Analytical Skills
4 554 (5.67%) Public Sector
5 494 (5.06%) Legal
6 369 (3.78%) Investment Banking
7 362 (3.71%) Financial Institution
8 346 (3.54%) Organisational Skills
9 341 (3.49%) Front Office
10 328 (3.36%) Retail
11 268 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
12 244 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
13 186 (1.90%) Manufacturing
14 167 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 162 (1.66%) Billing
16 158 (1.62%) Local Government
17 154 (1.58%) General Ledger
18 151 (1.55%) Marketing
19 135 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
20 133 (1.36%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,451 (14.85%) Analyst
2 1,049 (10.74%) Senior
3 1,047 (10.72%) Lead
4 990 (10.13%) Developer
5 889 (9.10%) Architect
6 752 (7.70%) Business Analyst
7 716 (7.33%) Project Manager
8 647 (6.62%) Consultant
9 338 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
10 312 (3.19%) Data Engineer
11 244 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 232 (2.37%) Senior Manager
13 210 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 207 (2.12%) Accountant
15 203 (2.08%) Data Analyst
16 188 (1.92%) Programme Manager
17 186 (1.90%) Finance Manager
18 183 (1.87%) Senior Developer
19 177 (1.81%) Software Engineer
20 176 (1.80%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (3.23%) REST
2 270 (2.76%) .NET
2 270 (2.76%) React
3 268 (2.74%) Kafka
4 216 (2.21%) Oracle Fusion
5 202 (2.07%) Middleware
6 181 (1.85%) Spring
7 170 (1.74%) Spring Boot
8 138 (1.41%) RESTful
9 119 (1.22%) Redux
10 118 (1.21%) PySpark
11 112 (1.15%) Node.js
12 96 (0.98%) JSON
12 96 (0.98%) OAuth
13 94 (0.96%) AngularJS
14 86 (0.88%) XML
15 69 (0.71%) SOAP
16 64 (0.66%) CSS
17 63 (0.64%) HTML
17 63 (0.64%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 460 (4.71%) Onboarding
2 434 (4.44%) Product Ownership
3 410 (4.20%) Cloud Native
4 276 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
5 233 (2.39%) Data Structures
6 221 (2.26%) Management Information System
7 183 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
8 175 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
8 175 (1.79%) Virtual Team
9 173 (1.77%) Derivative
10 170 (1.74%) Fixed Income
11 169 (1.73%) Data Centre
12 167 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 141 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
14 134 (1.37%) AI Agents
15 124 (1.27%) Equities
16 114 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
17 110 (1.13%) Public Cloud
18 104 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
19 96 (0.98%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 325 (3.33%) Windows
2 283 (2.90%) Linux
3 163 (1.67%) Unix
4 73 (0.75%) Windows Server
5 39 (0.40%) Solaris
6 37 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 37 (0.38%) zOS
7 36 (0.37%) Apple iOS
7 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
8 29 (0.30%) Android
9 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.20%) AIX
11 9 (0.092%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.092%) VMS
12 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
13 6 (0.061%) HPUX
13 6 (0.061%) SUSE
14 5 (0.051%) MVS
14 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
15 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,165 (22.16%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,974 (20.21%) Agile
3 1,359 (13.91%) Migration
4 1,297 (13.28%) Problem-Solving
5 1,154 (11.81%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,127 (11.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,089 (11.15%) AI
8 1,018 (10.42%) ERP
9 1,017 (10.41%) DevOps
10 1,005 (10.29%) CI/CD
11 966 (9.89%) Analytics
12 881 (9.02%) Decision-Making
13 817 (8.36%) Validation
14 807 (8.26%) Roadmaps
15 795 (8.14%) Data Modelling
16 766 (7.84%) User Acceptance Testing
17 764 (7.82%) Project Management
18 706 (7.23%) Change Management
19 673 (6.89%) Business Intelligence
20 634 (6.49%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,272 (13.02%) SQL
2 1,187 (12.15%) Python
3 649 (6.64%) Java
4 385 (3.94%) C#
5 262 (2.68%) TypeScript
6 261 (2.67%) JavaScript
7 225 (2.30%) PowerShell
8 100 (1.02%) Bash
9 94 (0.96%) PL/SQL
10 83 (0.85%) Go
11 82 (0.84%) C++
12 74 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 73 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 61 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 50 (0.51%) VBA
16 44 (0.45%) Scala
17 43 (0.44%) Bicep
18 37 (0.38%) Apex Code
18 37 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.28%) R
Qualifications
1 745 (7.63%) Security Cleared
2 740 (7.57%) Degree
3 535 (5.48%) SC Cleared
4 227 (2.32%) PMP
5 207 (2.12%) ACCA
5 207 (2.12%) PMI Certification
6 195 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
7 185 (1.89%) CIMA
8 157 (1.61%) CISSP
9 129 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
10 112 (1.15%) DV Cleared
11 93 (0.95%) Azure Certification
12 90 (0.92%) CISM
13 83 (0.85%) Master's Degree
14 74 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
15 58 (0.59%) AWS Certification
16 48 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
17 46 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 607 (6.21%) Data Quality
2 421 (4.31%) QA
3 351 (3.59%) PMO
4 288 (2.95%) GDPR
5 166 (1.70%) NIST
6 133 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 109 (1.12%) GRC
8 107 (1.10%) IFRS
9 106 (1.09%) SLA
10 102 (1.04%) Accessibility
11 98 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 66 (0.68%) ISO 20022
13 64 (0.66%) GAAP
14 54 (0.55%) PCI DSS
15 42 (0.43%) SEPA
16 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
17 33 (0.34%) NCSC
18 31 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 29 (0.30%) EMIR
20 28 (0.29%) COBIT
System Software
1 272 (2.78%) Docker
2 208 (2.13%) Active Directory
3 63 (0.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.27%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) RACF
7 20 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) NFS
10 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.061%) IAG
11 6 (0.061%) KVM
12 5 (0.051%) ACF2
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.031%) GridGain
13 3 (0.031%) SRDF
14 2 (0.020%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 437 (4.47%) Kubernetes
2 317 (3.24%) Terraform
3 161 (1.65%) Ansible
4 94 (0.96%) Grafana
5 79 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 69 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 52 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.50%) SCCM
9 26 (0.27%) Control-M
10 19 (0.19%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,249 (12.79%) Microsoft
2 835 (8.55%) SAP
3 833 (8.53%) Oracle
4 347 (3.55%) ServiceNow
5 296 (3.03%) Databricks
6 219 (2.24%) Salesforce
7 211 (2.16%) Google
8 146 (1.49%) IBM
9 136 (1.39%) Workday
10 126 (1.29%) VMware
11 119 (1.22%) Splunk
12 109 (1.12%) Cisco
13 94 (0.96%) CyberArk
14 92 (0.94%) Ariba
15 69 (0.71%) OpenAI
16 68 (0.70%) Sage
17 64 (0.66%) Citrix
18 54 (0.55%) Informatica
19 51 (0.52%) Bloomberg
20 46 (0.47%) F5