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

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,875 7,500 7,878
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.61% 22.78% 19.50%
As % of the General category 33.84% 36.18% 33.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,082 4,928 5,296
10th Percentile £358 £332 £353
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £549 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.14% -4.48% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £725
90th Percentile £788 £801 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 278 145 209
10th Percentile £16.18 £15.69 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +36.24%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.75 £42.25
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.29 £38.12
% change year-on-year +61.07% -28.40% +15.72%

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 29,185 20,730 23,182
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.99% 62.96% 57.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,402 12,974 14,631
10th Percentile £313 £280 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £633 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.67% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,061 1,089 1,553
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.33 £13.69
25th Percentile £18.27 £16.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.00 £25.15 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +31.21% -30.23% +18.03%
75th Percentile £61.18 £51.25 £57.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.38 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.14 £36.11
% change year-on-year +49.05% -38.68% +38.87%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 8,618 £550 - 5,048
London 0 5,197 £584 -2.67% 2,894
UK excluding London -1 3,895 £500 +2.04% 2,853
Work from Home -1 2,865 £550 -3.08% 1,849
North of England 0 1,326 £500 +6.50% 763
South East -1 739 £501 -4.52% 881
North West +1 701 £492 +9.33% 399
Midlands +1 644 £500 +11.11% 438
Yorkshire 0 571 £518 +6.73% 267
West Midlands +1 495 £509 +7.21% 262
Scotland 0 492 £475 -4.52% 169
South West -4 387 £525 -4.55% 300
East of England +8 212 £530 -7.83% 200
East Midlands -2 144 £500 +19.05% 175
Wales +2 79 £525 +13.51% 79
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +1.06% 68
North East -19 54 £500 +14.29% 105
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 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
1 327 (3.31%) Confluence
2 243 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 85 (0.86%) Apache Spark
4 78 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 64 (0.65%) Apache
6 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.33%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.12%) Camunda
14 9 (0.091%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.081%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.071%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 524 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
3 172 (1.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 163 (1.65%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.09%) MS Visio
6 72 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.041%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 451 (4.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 116 (1.17%) NetSuite
4 102 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 88 (0.89%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 70 (0.71%) SAP FI
8 68 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
9 58 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
9 58 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
10 51 (0.52%) Oracle Financials
11 48 (0.49%) SAP CO
12 46 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
13 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
14 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
15 34 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
16 31 (0.31%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.28%) SAP GRC
18 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
18 27 (0.27%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,547 (15.67%) Azure
2 1,112 (11.26%) AWS
3 659 (6.67%) Power Platform
4 522 (5.29%) GCP
5 335 (3.39%) SaaS
6 333 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
7 289 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
8 280 (2.84%) GitHub
9 256 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
10 211 (2.14%) Snowflake
11 201 (2.04%) Entra ID
12 140 (1.42%) Serverless
13 137 (1.39%) OCI
14 125 (1.27%) Amazon S3
15 115 (1.16%) Power Automate
16 111 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
17 105 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
18 101 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
19 100 (1.01%) dbt
20 95 (0.96%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 191 (1.93%) Firewall
2 140 (1.42%) Network Security
3 92 (0.93%) DNS
4 90 (0.91%) VPN
5 64 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 54 (0.55%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) BGP
7 49 (0.50%) SSL
8 40 (0.41%) DHCP
9 37 (0.37%) HTTP
9 37 (0.37%) LAN
10 35 (0.35%) Multicast
11 31 (0.31%) OSPF
12 25 (0.25%) Internet
12 25 (0.25%) VLAN
12 25 (0.25%) Wireless
13 21 (0.21%) Cisco ASA
13 21 (0.21%) MPLS
13 21 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
14 19 (0.19%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 546 (5.53%) Power BI
2 277 (2.81%) SQL Server
3 254 (2.57%) Data Warehouse
4 206 (2.09%) Metadata
5 179 (1.81%) Relational Database
6 169 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
7 156 (1.58%) Tableau
8 145 (1.47%) Data Lake
9 88 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
10 83 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 80 (0.81%) Oracle Database
12 72 (0.73%) BigQuery
12 72 (0.73%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.67%) Big Data
14 65 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
15 50 (0.51%) Delta Lake
15 50 (0.51%) Power Query
16 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
17 47 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 42 (0.43%) Db2
Development Applications
1 679 (6.88%) JIRA
2 267 (2.70%) Git
3 159 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 94 (0.95%) GitLab
5 49 (0.50%) JUnit
6 41 (0.42%) Cucumber
6 41 (0.42%) Selenium
7 30 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 28 (0.28%) ERwin
8 28 (0.28%) Visual Studio
9 25 (0.25%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.25%) Postman
10 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
10 24 (0.24%) SonarQube
11 23 (0.23%) Maven
11 23 (0.23%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.23%) Zephyr
12 20 (0.20%) MLflow
13 19 (0.19%) TeamCity
14 18 (0.18%) ER Studio
General
1 2,882 (29.18%) Social Skills
2 1,858 (18.82%) Banking
3 1,360 (13.77%) Analytical Skills
4 561 (5.68%) Public Sector
5 508 (5.14%) Legal
6 370 (3.75%) Investment Banking
6 370 (3.75%) Organisational Skills
7 365 (3.70%) Financial Institution
8 349 (3.53%) Front Office
9 344 (3.48%) Retail
10 266 (2.69%) Influencing Skills
11 233 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
12 191 (1.93%) Manufacturing
13 172 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 163 (1.65%) Billing
15 161 (1.63%) Marketing
16 158 (1.60%) Local Government
17 156 (1.58%) General Ledger
18 139 (1.41%) Law
18 139 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,458 (14.76%) Analyst
2 1,068 (10.82%) Lead
3 1,062 (10.75%) Senior
4 998 (10.11%) Developer
5 882 (8.93%) Architect
6 752 (7.62%) Business Analyst
7 714 (7.23%) Project Manager
8 662 (6.70%) Consultant
9 331 (3.35%) Solutions Architect
10 317 (3.21%) Data Engineer
11 250 (2.53%) Financial Analyst
12 228 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 216 (2.19%) Java Developer
14 208 (2.11%) Accountant
14 208 (2.11%) Data Analyst
15 190 (1.92%) Senior Developer
16 187 (1.89%) Programme Manager
17 185 (1.87%) Finance Manager
18 180 (1.82%) Software Engineer
19 175 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 323 (3.27%) REST
2 275 (2.78%) .NET
3 273 (2.76%) React
4 272 (2.75%) Kafka
5 229 (2.32%) Oracle Fusion
6 200 (2.03%) Middleware
7 188 (1.90%) Spring
8 177 (1.79%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.37%) RESTful
10 129 (1.31%) PySpark
11 120 (1.22%) Redux
12 113 (1.14%) Node.js
13 98 (0.99%) JSON
14 93 (0.94%) OAuth
15 91 (0.92%) AngularJS
16 89 (0.90%) XML
17 69 (0.70%) SOAP
18 67 (0.68%) Web Services
19 65 (0.66%) CSS
20 63 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 470 (4.76%) Onboarding
2 451 (4.57%) Product Ownership
3 415 (4.20%) Cloud Native
4 273 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
5 241 (2.44%) Data Structures
6 227 (2.30%) Management Information System
7 186 (1.88%) Virtual Team
8 184 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
9 177 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
9 177 (1.79%) Derivative
10 171 (1.73%) Fixed Income
11 169 (1.71%) Data Centre
12 162 (1.64%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 147 (1.49%) AI Agents
14 141 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
15 125 (1.27%) Equities
16 112 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 105 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
18 104 (1.05%) Public Cloud
19 99 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 344 (3.48%) Windows
2 292 (2.96%) Linux
3 161 (1.63%) Unix
4 78 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (0.39%) Solaris
7 38 (0.38%) Apple iOS
8 37 (0.37%) zOS
9 36 (0.36%) Windows 10
10 30 (0.30%) Android
11 26 (0.26%) Mac OS
12 20 (0.20%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 9 (0.091%) VMS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 5 (0.051%) MVS
18 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2012
19 2 (0.020%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,221 (22.49%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,014 (20.39%) Agile
3 1,372 (13.89%) Migration
4 1,310 (13.27%) Problem-Solving
5 1,171 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,135 (11.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,120 (11.34%) AI
8 1,044 (10.57%) ERP
9 1,017 (10.30%) DevOps
10 1,008 (10.21%) CI/CD
11 995 (10.08%) Analytics
12 901 (9.12%) Decision-Making
13 823 (8.33%) Roadmaps
14 822 (8.32%) Validation
15 790 (8.00%) Data Modelling
16 774 (7.84%) User Acceptance Testing
17 758 (7.68%) Project Management
18 715 (7.24%) Change Management
19 680 (6.89%) Business Intelligence
20 641 (6.49%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,277 (12.93%) SQL
2 1,204 (12.19%) Python
3 665 (6.73%) Java
4 384 (3.89%) C#
5 263 (2.66%) JavaScript
6 257 (2.60%) TypeScript
7 231 (2.34%) PowerShell
8 109 (1.10%) Bash
9 94 (0.95%) PL/SQL
10 80 (0.81%) C++
10 80 (0.81%) Go
11 76 (0.77%) Shell Script
12 73 (0.74%) T-SQL
13 62 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 49 (0.50%) VBA
15 48 (0.49%) Bicep
16 39 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.37%) Scala
18 34 (0.34%) Apex Code
19 28 (0.28%) Korn
Qualifications
1 770 (7.80%) Security Cleared
2 733 (7.42%) Degree
3 549 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 235 (2.38%) PMP
5 213 (2.16%) PMI Certification
6 205 (2.08%) ACCA
7 198 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 182 (1.84%) CIMA
9 153 (1.55%) CISSP
10 131 (1.33%) DV Cleared
11 122 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 97 (0.98%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.88%) CISM
14 80 (0.81%) Master's Degree
15 76 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 62 (0.63%) AWS Certification
17 54 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 39 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 626 (6.34%) Data Quality
2 426 (4.31%) QA
3 365 (3.70%) PMO
4 282 (2.86%) GDPR
5 152 (1.54%) NIST
6 125 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.12%) GRC
8 106 (1.07%) IFRS
8 106 (1.07%) SLA
9 105 (1.06%) Accessibility
10 100 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 64 (0.65%) GAAP
12 61 (0.62%) ISO 20022
13 51 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 37 (0.37%) SEPA
15 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
16 31 (0.31%) SOC 2
17 30 (0.30%) MiFID
18 29 (0.29%) EMIR
19 28 (0.28%) COBIT
System Software
1 280 (2.84%) Docker
2 217 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 66 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.26%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 20 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
14 3 (0.030%) SRDF
15 2 (0.020%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 441 (4.47%) Kubernetes
2 334 (3.38%) Terraform
3 161 (1.63%) Ansible
4 96 (0.97%) Grafana
5 79 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 70 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.50%) SCCM
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) Argo
11 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,296 (13.12%) Microsoft
2 853 (8.64%) Oracle
3 843 (8.54%) SAP
4 356 (3.61%) ServiceNow
5 304 (3.08%) Databricks
6 224 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 213 (2.16%) Google
8 153 (1.55%) IBM
9 137 (1.39%) Workday
10 129 (1.31%) VMware
11 109 (1.10%) Cisco
11 109 (1.10%) Splunk
12 90 (0.91%) Ariba
13 87 (0.88%) CyberArk
14 72 (0.73%) OpenAI
15 67 (0.68%) Sage
16 63 (0.64%) Citrix
17 53 (0.54%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.54%) Informatica
18 45 (0.46%) F5