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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,981 7,411 7,641
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.32% 22.63% 20.05%
As % of the General category 33.06% 35.58% 34.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,089 4,842 4,928
10th Percentile £360 £333 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £495 £513
% change year-on-year +3.03% -3.41% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 323 133 153
10th Percentile £15.04 £15.48 £14.60
25th Percentile £21.38 £21.00 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +36.13%
75th Percentile - £63.25 £53.00
90th Percentile £75.40 £78.75 £70.14
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £35.00
% change year-on-year +71.18% -26.63% +25.09%

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 30,189 20,828 22,001
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.42% 63.61% 57.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,788 12,892 13,343
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
25th Percentile £419 £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 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,378 1,179 1,137
10th Percentile £13.64 £13.50 £14.67
25th Percentile £16.62 £16.17 £17.44
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £38.07
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -33.94% +38.44%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.74 £21.40 £38.12
% change year-on-year +43.68% -43.87% +46.62%

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 9 September 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 9 September 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 9 September 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 8,617 £550 - 15,753
London 0 5,208 £585 -0.43% 10,597
UK excluding London -1 3,919 £510 +3.03% 7,261
Work from Home -1 2,839 £550 -4.35% 9,375
North of England 0 1,349 £506 +10.66% 1,698
South East -1 749 £500 -4.76% 1,669
North West -1 684 £500 +11.11% 1,043
Midlands -2 617 £507 +6.74% 836
Yorkshire 0 583 £519 +6.63% 482
Scotland 0 532 £465 -3.53% 999
West Midlands 0 460 £525 +2.19% 524
South West -7 362 £550 -4.35% 966
East of England +3 211 £550 -1.12% 647
East Midlands -4 154 £500 +19.05% 312
North East -7 75 £500 +14.29% 195
Northern Ireland -1 66 £505 +3.59% 397
Wales +1 59 £525 +23.53% 151
Channel Islands +3 7 £550 - 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
1 335 (3.36%) Confluence
2 259 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 93 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
4 83 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 70 (0.70%) Apache
6 46 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 36 (0.36%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 26 (0.26%) SAS
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) Camunda
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.11%) CICS
14 9 (0.090%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.070%) Ethereum
15 7 (0.070%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 7 (0.070%) WebLogic
16 6 (0.060%) Appian
17 5 (0.050%) JBoss
17 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 536 (5.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 227 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 194 (1.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 157 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 89 (0.89%) MS Visio
6 67 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.080%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
10 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.050%) Sketch
12 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.030%) Notion
13 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
14 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 435 (4.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 129 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 109 (1.09%) Oracle Receivables
4 107 (1.07%) NetSuite
5 93 (0.93%) Oracle ERP
6 76 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
7 75 (0.75%) Oracle General Ledger
8 73 (0.73%) SAP FI
9 62 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
9 62 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 53 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
11 49 (0.49%) SAP CO
12 45 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
13 39 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
14 37 (0.37%) Aladdin
15 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
16 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
16 34 (0.34%) Workday HCM
17 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
17 26 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,576 (15.79%) Azure
2 1,079 (10.81%) AWS
3 676 (6.77%) Power Platform
4 542 (5.43%) GCP
5 352 (3.53%) Azure DevOps
6 332 (3.33%) SaaS
7 318 (3.19%) GitHub
8 311 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
9 280 (2.81%) Dynamics 365
10 223 (2.23%) Entra ID
11 219 (2.19%) Snowflake
12 158 (1.58%) Serverless
13 147 (1.47%) OCI
14 127 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
15 125 (1.25%) dbt
16 119 (1.19%) Power Automate
17 118 (1.18%) Amazon S3
17 118 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
18 114 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
19 102 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 174 (1.74%) Firewall
2 153 (1.53%) Network Security
3 102 (1.02%) VPN
4 87 (0.87%) DNS
5 63 (0.63%) TCP/IP
6 59 (0.59%) WAN
7 50 (0.50%) DHCP
8 44 (0.44%) BGP
8 44 (0.44%) SSL
9 36 (0.36%) HTTP
9 36 (0.36%) LAN
10 34 (0.34%) Multicast
10 34 (0.34%) VLAN
11 31 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
12 30 (0.30%) Wireless
13 26 (0.26%) Internet
14 25 (0.25%) SAN
15 24 (0.24%) OSPF
16 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
17 16 (0.16%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 550 (5.51%) Power BI
2 292 (2.93%) SQL Server
3 258 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
4 210 (2.10%) Metadata
5 179 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 145 (1.45%) Data Lake
7 130 (1.30%) PostgreSQL
8 122 (1.22%) Tableau
9 82 (0.82%) Oracle Database
10 79 (0.79%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.78%) BigQuery
12 76 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
13 72 (0.72%) MongoDB
14 58 (0.58%) Delta Lake
15 56 (0.56%) Power Query
15 56 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
16 50 (0.50%) Big Data
17 46 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
18 45 (0.45%) Db2
19 44 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 665 (6.66%) JIRA
2 302 (3.03%) Git
3 171 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 106 (1.06%) GitLab
5 58 (0.58%) Selenium
6 51 (0.51%) JUnit
7 34 (0.34%) Claude Code
7 34 (0.34%) SonarQube
8 33 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 33 (0.33%) Maven
9 32 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 30 (0.30%) ERwin
10 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
11 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
12 27 (0.27%) Cucumber
13 26 (0.26%) Gradle
14 23 (0.23%) Cypress.io
14 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
15 22 (0.22%) Postman
16 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
General
1 3,088 (30.94%) Social Skills
2 2,038 (20.42%) Banking
3 1,410 (14.13%) Analytical Skills
4 554 (5.55%) Legal
5 527 (5.28%) Public Sector
6 444 (4.45%) Organisational Skills
7 399 (4.00%) Investment Banking
8 387 (3.88%) Retail
9 338 (3.39%) Front Office
10 327 (3.28%) Influencing Skills
11 325 (3.26%) Financial Institution
12 222 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
13 207 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 193 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 174 (1.74%) General Ledger
16 169 (1.69%) Marketing
17 164 (1.64%) Billing
18 159 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
19 151 (1.51%) Local Government
20 143 (1.43%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,443 (14.46%) Analyst
2 1,067 (10.69%) Senior
3 1,017 (10.19%) Lead
4 984 (9.86%) Developer
5 883 (8.85%) Architect
6 745 (7.46%) Business Analyst
7 719 (7.20%) Consultant
8 699 (7.00%) Project Manager
9 333 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
10 309 (3.10%) Data Engineer
11 261 (2.61%) Financial Analyst
12 223 (2.23%) Senior Manager
13 209 (2.09%) Java Developer
14 204 (2.04%) Data Analyst
15 195 (1.95%) Senior Developer
16 191 (1.91%) Programme Manager
17 182 (1.82%) Accountant
18 181 (1.81%) Finance Manager
19 171 (1.71%) IT Manager
20 152 (1.52%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 380 (3.81%) Terraform
2 368 (3.69%) REST
3 272 (2.73%) .NET
4 268 (2.69%) Oracle Fusion
5 253 (2.53%) Kafka
6 232 (2.32%) React
7 194 (1.94%) Spring
8 189 (1.89%) Spring Boot
9 181 (1.81%) Middleware
10 150 (1.50%) PySpark
11 139 (1.39%) RESTful
12 106 (1.06%) XML
13 103 (1.03%) OAuth
14 100 (1.00%) JSON
15 83 (0.83%) SOAP
16 81 (0.81%) Redux
17 79 (0.79%) AngularJS
18 74 (0.74%) Web Services
19 73 (0.73%) Node.js
20 70 (0.70%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 521 (5.22%) Onboarding
2 502 (5.03%) Product Ownership
3 443 (4.44%) Cloud Native
4 255 (2.55%) Management Information System
5 253 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 238 (2.38%) Data Structures
7 225 (2.25%) Virtual Team
8 199 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
9 193 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
10 185 (1.85%) AI Agents
10 185 (1.85%) Derivative
11 161 (1.61%) Data Centre
11 161 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 140 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
13 135 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
14 125 (1.25%) Fixed Income
15 114 (1.14%) Podcast
16 113 (1.13%) Equities
17 112 (1.12%) Web Conferencing
18 111 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 374 (3.75%) Windows
2 312 (3.13%) Linux
3 164 (1.64%) Unix
4 87 (0.87%) Windows Server
5 57 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 39 (0.39%) Android
9 36 (0.36%) zOS
10 34 (0.34%) Solaris
11 29 (0.29%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 4 (0.040%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,590 (25.95%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,041 (20.45%) Agile
3 1,358 (13.61%) Migration
4 1,324 (13.27%) Problem-Solving
5 1,253 (12.55%) AI
6 1,192 (11.94%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,167 (11.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,104 (11.06%) CI/CD
9 1,016 (10.18%) ERP
10 1,011 (10.13%) Analytics
11 1,001 (10.03%) DevOps
12 922 (9.24%) Decision-Making
13 845 (8.47%) Validation
14 841 (8.43%) Roadmaps
15 785 (7.86%) Data Modelling
16 781 (7.82%) Project Management
17 774 (7.75%) User Acceptance Testing
18 733 (7.34%) Change Management
19 684 (6.85%) Risk Management
20 669 (6.70%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,339 (13.42%) SQL
2 1,238 (12.40%) Python
3 645 (6.46%) Java
4 360 (3.61%) C#
5 277 (2.78%) PowerShell
6 245 (2.45%) JavaScript
7 210 (2.10%) TypeScript
8 144 (1.44%) Bash
9 113 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 96 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 79 (0.79%) C++
12 75 (0.75%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 59 (0.59%) Go
15 56 (0.56%) Bicep
16 47 (0.47%) Korn
17 39 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.39%) Scala
18 37 (0.37%) VBA
19 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 765 (7.66%) Security Cleared
2 730 (7.31%) Degree
3 549 (5.50%) SC Cleared
4 250 (2.50%) PMP
5 249 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
6 223 (2.23%) PMI Certification
7 197 (1.97%) ACCA
8 171 (1.71%) CIMA
9 146 (1.46%) CISSP
10 137 (1.37%) DV Cleared
11 131 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
12 108 (1.08%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
14 85 (0.85%) CISM
15 71 (0.71%) Master's Degree
16 67 (0.67%) AWS Certification
17 52 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 46 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 39 (0.39%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 683 (6.84%) Data Quality
2 434 (4.35%) QA
3 366 (3.67%) PMO
4 236 (2.36%) GDPR
5 141 (1.41%) NIST
6 120 (1.20%) GRC
7 119 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 108 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 97 (0.97%) IFRS
10 94 (0.94%) SLA
11 85 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 66 (0.66%) ISO 20022
13 51 (0.51%) GAAP
14 41 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.37%) Solvency II
16 36 (0.36%) SEPA
17 29 (0.29%) EMIR
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) COBIT
19 23 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 266 (2.67%) Docker
2 237 (2.37%) Active Directory
3 85 (0.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.25%) RACF
7 18 (0.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 9 (0.090%) IAG
11 6 (0.060%) ACF2
11 6 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.050%) GPFS
12 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) KVM
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 475 (4.76%) Kubernetes
2 169 (1.69%) Ansible
3 98 (0.98%) Grafana
4 77 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
5 69 (0.69%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.62%) SCCM
7 57 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Argo
12 13 (0.13%) Istio
13 12 (0.12%) FortiGate
13 12 (0.12%) Puppet
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
15 10 (0.10%) vRealize
16 9 (0.090%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,430 (14.33%) Microsoft
2 895 (8.97%) Oracle
3 851 (8.53%) SAP
4 374 (3.75%) ServiceNow
5 363 (3.64%) Databricks
6 239 (2.39%) Salesforce
7 226 (2.26%) Google
8 180 (1.80%) IBM
9 139 (1.39%) VMware
10 129 (1.29%) Workday
11 122 (1.22%) Cisco
12 117 (1.17%) Splunk
13 101 (1.01%) Ariba
14 87 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 83 (0.83%) OpenAI
16 57 (0.57%) Citrix
17 55 (0.55%) Bloomberg
18 54 (0.54%) Sage
19 52 (0.52%) Informatica
20 48 (0.48%) Red Hat