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

6 months to
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,373 6,469 8,210
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.51% 22.12% 18.71%
As % of the General category 33.11% 35.12% 32.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,325 4,286 5,493
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £439 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £669 £700 £700
90th Percentile £800 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 210 111 238
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.51 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.26 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +45.45% -15.38%
75th Percentile £42.73 £73.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.54 £83.20 £53.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -57.95% +75.00% -25.00%

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 25,287 18,421 25,526
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.91% 63.00% 58.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,739 11,798 16,205
10th Percentile £303 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £643 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,575 734 1,865
10th Percentile £13.67 £14.78 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.20 £18.51 £15.39
Median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £26.24
Median % change year-on-year -11.14% +10.52% -25.03%
75th Percentile £59.00 £57.50 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £27.24 £25.22
% change year-on-year -8.21% +8.02% -19.36%

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 6 April 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 6 April 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 6 April 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 7,403 £537 -7.01% 4,228
London 0 4,492 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,309 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -2 2,361 £543 -8.01% 1,715
North of England +3 1,085 £475 - 695
South East -1 647 £503 -7.37% 1,010
Midlands 0 581 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +5 579 £459 -1.29% 371
Yorkshire 0 458 £500 +2.30% 253
West Midlands 0 391 £492 -6.29% 251
Scotland 0 376 £500 +5.26% 161
South West -3 329 £525 +4.95% 302
East of England -2 195 £513 -6.82% 271
East Midlands 0 185 £449 +1.24% 171
Wales +24 106 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -6 48 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +59.09% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 4

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
1 334 (3.99%) Confluence
2 212 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 50 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
6 49 (0.59%) Apache
7 34 (0.41%) SAS
8 30 (0.36%) CMS
9 19 (0.23%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Appian
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.18%) Camunda
12 14 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 11 (0.13%) TPMS
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 8 (0.096%) WebLogic
Applications
1 545 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 245 (2.93%) Microsoft Office
3 187 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 175 (2.09%) Microsoft Project
5 131 (1.56%) MS Visio
6 53 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 11 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.12%) Sketch
11 9 (0.11%) InVision
12 6 (0.072%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.060%) Notion
13 5 (0.060%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.048%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe Captivate
15 2 (0.024%) InDesign
15 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.024%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 354 (4.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.42%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.23%) Oracle Receivables
4 84 (1.00%) NetSuite
5 81 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 73 (0.87%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.80%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.64%) SAP CO
11 53 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
12 50 (0.60%) SAP FI/CO
13 42 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
14 38 (0.45%) Oracle Cash Management
15 35 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
16 32 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
17 31 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
18 30 (0.36%) Aladdin
19 27 (0.32%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,281 (15.30%) Azure
2 973 (11.62%) AWS
3 601 (7.18%) Power Platform
4 392 (4.68%) GCP
5 288 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
6 276 (3.30%) SaaS
7 272 (3.25%) Microsoft 365
8 249 (2.97%) Dynamics 365
9 226 (2.70%) GitHub
10 154 (1.84%) Serverless
11 142 (1.70%) OCI
12 136 (1.62%) Snowflake
13 124 (1.48%) Entra ID
14 115 (1.37%) Amazon S3
15 98 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
17 88 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
18 86 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
19 85 (1.02%) OpenShift
20 75 (0.90%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 165 (1.97%) Firewall
2 105 (1.25%) Network Security
3 81 (0.97%) WAN
4 67 (0.80%) DNS
5 57 (0.68%) VPN
6 47 (0.56%) LAN
7 45 (0.54%) TCP/IP
8 44 (0.53%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.41%) BGP
10 32 (0.38%) HTTP
11 30 (0.36%) SSL
12 29 (0.35%) Multicast
12 29 (0.35%) OSPF
13 26 (0.31%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.25%) Wireless
16 19 (0.23%) DHCP
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
18 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 523 (6.25%) Power BI
2 217 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
3 207 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 177 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
5 157 (1.88%) Metadata
6 148 (1.77%) Tableau
7 126 (1.50%) Data Lake
8 122 (1.46%) Relational Database
9 101 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
10 100 (1.19%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.94%) Big Data
12 63 (0.75%) Oracle Database
13 61 (0.73%) BigQuery
14 56 (0.67%) MongoDB
15 46 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
17 42 (0.50%) Power Query
18 41 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
19 39 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
19 39 (0.47%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 676 (8.07%) JIRA
2 216 (2.58%) Jenkins
3 212 (2.53%) Git
4 134 (1.60%) GitLab
5 61 (0.73%) JUnit
6 58 (0.69%) Cucumber
7 43 (0.51%) Selenium
7 43 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
8 32 (0.38%) Postman
9 28 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
10 23 (0.27%) MLflow
11 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 19 (0.23%) Maven
13 18 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.20%) ERwin
14 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
16 14 (0.17%) Hudson
17 12 (0.14%) Gradle
General
1 2,648 (31.63%) Social Skills
2 1,590 (18.99%) Banking
3 1,111 (13.27%) Analytical Skills
4 625 (7.46%) Public Sector
5 332 (3.97%) Financial Institution
6 323 (3.86%) Legal
7 290 (3.46%) Front Office
8 282 (3.37%) Investment Banking
9 239 (2.85%) Organisational Skills
10 236 (2.82%) Manufacturing
10 236 (2.82%) Marketing
11 234 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
12 217 (2.59%) Telecoms
13 214 (2.56%) Retail
14 200 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
15 137 (1.64%) General Ledger
16 128 (1.53%) Local Government
17 122 (1.46%) Law
17 122 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
18 116 (1.39%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,292 (15.43%) Analyst
2 854 (10.20%) Senior
3 849 (10.14%) Developer
4 798 (9.53%) Lead
5 748 (8.93%) Architect
6 695 (8.30%) Business Analyst
7 670 (8.00%) Project Manager
8 627 (7.49%) Consultant
9 299 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
10 241 (2.88%) Data Engineer
11 195 (2.33%) Financial Analyst
12 193 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.25%) Data Analyst
14 186 (2.22%) Finance Manager
15 167 (1.99%) Programme Manager
16 147 (1.76%) Java Developer
17 144 (1.72%) Accountant
18 138 (1.65%) Delivery Manager
19 134 (1.60%) Senior Developer
20 129 (1.54%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (3.22%) Kafka
2 268 (3.20%) REST
3 208 (2.48%) .NET
4 197 (2.35%) React
5 162 (1.93%) Middleware
6 158 (1.89%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (1.74%) Spring
8 138 (1.65%) RESTful
9 131 (1.56%) Spring Boot
10 117 (1.40%) Node.js
11 100 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 95 (1.13%) PySpark
13 81 (0.97%) OAuth
14 80 (0.96%) XML
15 74 (0.88%) HTML
15 74 (0.88%) JSON
16 73 (0.87%) Redux
17 71 (0.85%) CSS
18 69 (0.82%) Pandas
19 65 (0.78%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 352 (4.20%) Onboarding
2 319 (3.81%) Product Ownership
3 264 (3.15%) Cloud Native
4 211 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
5 186 (2.22%) Management Information System
6 168 (2.01%) Derivative
7 156 (1.86%) Data Structures
8 154 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
9 148 (1.77%) Data Centre
10 147 (1.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 146 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
11 146 (1.74%) Fixed Income
12 120 (1.43%) Equities
13 107 (1.28%) Public Cloud
14 102 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
15 100 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
16 93 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 88 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
18 63 (0.75%) CMDB
18 63 (0.75%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 298 (3.56%) Linux
2 273 (3.26%) Windows
3 137 (1.64%) Unix
4 66 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.62%) Windows 10
6 38 (0.45%) Android
7 31 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 20 (0.24%) zOS
10 17 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 13 (0.16%) AIX
12 12 (0.14%) Solaris
13 7 (0.084%) VMS
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) MVS
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,753 (20.94%) Agile
2 1,639 (19.57%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,233 (14.73%) Problem-Solving
4 1,115 (13.32%) Migration
5 940 (11.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 913 (10.90%) DevOps
7 892 (10.65%) Continuous Improvement
8 855 (10.21%) ERP
9 825 (9.85%) CI/CD
10 813 (9.71%) Analytics
11 807 (9.64%) Project Management
12 783 (9.35%) Business Intelligence
13 723 (8.63%) AI
14 664 (7.93%) Decision-Making
15 646 (7.72%) Roadmaps
16 645 (7.70%) Data Modelling
17 606 (7.24%) Validation
18 595 (7.11%) Change Management
19 589 (7.03%) User Acceptance Testing
20 576 (6.88%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,174 (14.02%) SQL
2 992 (11.85%) Python
3 553 (6.60%) Java
4 302 (3.61%) C#
5 228 (2.72%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.32%) TypeScript
7 168 (2.01%) PowerShell
8 114 (1.36%) C++
9 78 (0.93%) Go
10 71 (0.85%) Bash
11 67 (0.80%) PL/SQL
12 58 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 56 (0.67%) VBA
14 50 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.47%) Scala
17 36 (0.43%) R
18 31 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 29 (0.35%) Bicep
20 26 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 780 (9.32%) Degree
2 719 (8.59%) Security Cleared
3 511 (6.10%) SC Cleared
4 206 (2.46%) PMP
5 199 (2.38%) PMI Certification
6 189 (2.26%) ACCA
7 176 (2.10%) CIMA
8 158 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
9 149 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
10 143 (1.71%) Master's Degree
11 119 (1.42%) CISSP
12 86 (1.03%) DV Cleared
13 83 (0.99%) CISM
14 72 (0.86%) Azure Certification
15 62 (0.74%) AWS Certification
16 44 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
17 37 (0.44%) ISTQB
18 35 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
18 35 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
19 29 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 456 (5.45%) Data Quality
2 401 (4.79%) QA
3 339 (4.05%) PMO
4 299 (3.57%) GDPR
5 152 (1.82%) NIST
6 132 (1.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.35%) SLA
8 99 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 92 (1.10%) IFRS
10 76 (0.91%) Accessibility
10 76 (0.91%) PCI DSS
11 67 (0.80%) GRC
12 59 (0.70%) ISO 20022
13 48 (0.57%) GAAP
14 40 (0.48%) PSD2
15 37 (0.44%) SEPA
16 36 (0.43%) NCSC
17 34 (0.41%) MiFID
18 27 (0.32%) Basel III
19 26 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 308 (3.68%) Docker
2 149 (1.78%) Active Directory
3 58 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.39%) vSphere
5 24 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) NFS
9 11 (0.13%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 8 (0.096%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.060%) HDFS
14 4 (0.048%) ISA Server
14 4 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.036%) Firmware
15 3 (0.036%) GridGain
15 3 (0.036%) KVM
15 3 (0.036%) RACF
15 3 (0.036%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 404 (4.83%) Kubernetes
2 259 (3.09%) Terraform
3 133 (1.59%) Ansible
4 94 (1.12%) Grafana
5 77 (0.92%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.60%) SCCM
8 37 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.24%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.19%) Argo
13 15 (0.18%) Control-M
14 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.16%) Puppet
16 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.14%) CASB
16 12 (0.14%) HP ALM
17 11 (0.13%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,111 (13.27%) Microsoft
2 805 (9.61%) SAP
3 724 (8.65%) Oracle
4 325 (3.88%) ServiceNow
5 215 (2.57%) Databricks
6 194 (2.32%) Salesforce
7 178 (2.13%) Google
8 145 (1.73%) Cisco
9 144 (1.72%) Workday
10 127 (1.52%) Splunk
11 114 (1.36%) VMware
12 103 (1.23%) IBM
13 76 (0.91%) Ariba
13 76 (0.91%) Citrix
14 74 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 71 (0.85%) Sage
16 56 (0.67%) Informatica
17 53 (0.63%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.63%) OpenAI
18 49 (0.59%) Murex