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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,754 7,404 8,181
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.53% 22.79% 19.19%
As % of the General category 33.84% 36.22% 33.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,045 4,855 5,482
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £423 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £715
90th Percentile £800 £813 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £493 £500
% change year-on-year +1.52% -1.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 261 147 246
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £13.31
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.95 £18.16
Median hourly rate £43.96 £32.31 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.06% -2.09% +1.54%
75th Percentile £54.23 £63.75 £38.12
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% -13.42%

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 28,822 20,440 24,415
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.77% 62.91% 57.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,240 12,804 15,277
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,010 1,052 1,864
10th Percentile £14.02 £13.38 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £33.06 £26.29 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.75% -19.11% +6.42%
75th Percentile £62.00 £51.93 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £71.14 £69.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.25 £22.63 £31.97
% change year-on-year +46.93% -29.21% +22.96%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 8,500 £550 - 4,770
London 0 5,104 £581 -3.19% 2,338
UK excluding London 0 3,881 £500 +1.52% 3,254
Work from Home -1 2,856 £550 -4.35% 2,366
North of England 0 1,301 £500 +6.61% 841
South East 0 731 £500 -4.76% 913
North West +2 682 £488 +8.33% 423
Midlands +1 662 £500 +11.11% 502
Yorkshire 0 566 £525 +7.69% 316
Scotland 0 496 £475 -2.96% 215
West Midlands +1 489 £500 +2.88% 265
South West -4 380 £525 -4.55% 318
East of England +5 208 £530 -7.83% 280
East Midlands -1 165 £500 +17.65% 236
Wales +4 86 £525 +13.51% 100
Northern Ireland -1 64 £475 +5.56% 131
North East -18 54 £500 +13.96% 110
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
1 328 (3.36%) Confluence
2 226 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.84%) Apache Spark
4 75 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
5 61 (0.63%) 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%) CICS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 13 (0.13%) Camunda
12 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
12 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
14 7 (0.072%) Appian
15 5 (0.051%) Hyperledger
15 5 (0.051%) WebLogic
16 4 (0.041%) Tomcat
Applications
1 515 (5.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
3 171 (1.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 110 (1.13%) MS Visio
6 70 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.062%) Sketch
8 6 (0.062%) Trello
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 4 (0.041%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.041%) Notion
10 4 (0.041%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.021%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.021%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.021%) EngageOne
11 2 (0.021%) Final Cut Pro
11 2 (0.021%) InVision
Business Applications
1 456 (4.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.16%) NetSuite
4 99 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
5 82 (0.84%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.74%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 70 (0.72%) SAP FI
8 63 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
9 57 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
10 54 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
11 49 (0.50%) SAP CO
12 48 (0.49%) Oracle Financials
13 47 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
14 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
15 35 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
16 29 (0.30%) Workday HCM
17 27 (0.28%) SAP ERP
17 27 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
18 26 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
19 25 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,513 (15.51%) Azure
2 1,100 (11.28%) AWS
3 645 (6.61%) Power Platform
4 503 (5.16%) GCP
5 327 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
5 327 (3.35%) SaaS
6 276 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
7 274 (2.81%) GitHub
8 228 (2.34%) Dynamics 365
9 199 (2.04%) Snowflake
10 189 (1.94%) Entra ID
11 142 (1.46%) Serverless
12 128 (1.31%) OCI
13 126 (1.29%) Amazon S3
14 108 (1.11%) Power Automate
15 105 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
16 99 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
17 98 (1.00%) Microsoft Copilot
18 97 (0.99%) dbt
19 93 (0.95%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 189 (1.94%) Firewall
2 145 (1.49%) Network Security
3 89 (0.91%) DNS
4 83 (0.85%) VPN
5 64 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 59 (0.60%) WAN
7 46 (0.47%) SSL
8 45 (0.46%) BGP
9 39 (0.40%) LAN
10 37 (0.38%) DHCP
10 37 (0.38%) HTTP
11 34 (0.35%) Multicast
12 30 (0.31%) OSPF
13 26 (0.27%) Internet
14 24 (0.25%) MPLS
15 22 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 19 (0.19%) SAN
16 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
16 19 (0.19%) Wireless
17 17 (0.17%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 539 (5.53%) Power BI
2 270 (2.77%) SQL Server
3 248 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.07%) Metadata
5 176 (1.80%) Relational Database
6 172 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
7 151 (1.55%) Tableau
8 143 (1.47%) Data Lake
9 90 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
10 81 (0.83%) NoSQL
11 77 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 68 (0.70%) BigQuery
12 68 (0.70%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.68%) Big Data
14 65 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
15 49 (0.50%) Power Query
16 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
16 48 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 45 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 39 (0.40%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 680 (6.97%) JIRA
2 263 (2.70%) Git
3 170 (1.74%) Jenkins
4 94 (0.96%) GitLab
5 56 (0.57%) JUnit
6 45 (0.46%) Cucumber
7 42 (0.43%) Selenium
8 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.29%) Postman
10 27 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 26 (0.27%) ERwin
12 25 (0.26%) REST Assured
12 25 (0.26%) Visual Studio
13 24 (0.25%) Maven
13 24 (0.25%) SonarQube
14 20 (0.21%) MLflow
15 19 (0.19%) Zephyr
16 18 (0.18%) Bitbucket
17 17 (0.17%) Gradle
17 17 (0.17%) Hudson
General
1 2,858 (29.30%) Social Skills
2 1,796 (18.41%) Banking
3 1,319 (13.52%) Analytical Skills
4 565 (5.79%) Public Sector
5 497 (5.10%) Legal
6 369 (3.78%) Investment Banking
7 363 (3.72%) Financial Institution
8 343 (3.52%) Organisational Skills
9 339 (3.48%) Front Office
10 326 (3.34%) Retail
11 265 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
12 242 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
13 188 (1.93%) Manufacturing
14 166 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 166 (1.70%) Local Government
15 162 (1.66%) Billing
16 156 (1.60%) General Ledger
17 149 (1.53%) Marketing
18 134 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
19 133 (1.36%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,434 (14.70%) Analyst
2 1,054 (10.81%) Senior
3 1,053 (10.80%) Lead
4 989 (10.14%) Developer
5 893 (9.16%) Architect
6 742 (7.61%) Business Analyst
7 716 (7.34%) Project Manager
8 656 (6.73%) Consultant
9 340 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
10 312 (3.20%) Data Engineer
11 240 (2.46%) Financial Analyst
12 237 (2.43%) Senior Manager
13 209 (2.14%) Java Developer
14 206 (2.11%) Accountant
15 201 (2.06%) Data Analyst
16 187 (1.92%) Programme Manager
17 186 (1.91%) Finance Manager
18 182 (1.87%) Senior Developer
19 178 (1.82%) Software Engineer
20 174 (1.78%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (3.23%) REST
2 273 (2.80%) React
3 271 (2.78%) .NET
4 267 (2.74%) Kafka
5 215 (2.20%) Oracle Fusion
6 203 (2.08%) Middleware
7 181 (1.86%) Spring
8 170 (1.74%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.39%) RESTful
10 119 (1.22%) Redux
11 118 (1.21%) PySpark
12 112 (1.15%) Node.js
13 96 (0.98%) AngularJS
13 96 (0.98%) JSON
14 95 (0.97%) OAuth
15 86 (0.88%) XML
16 67 (0.69%) SOAP
17 66 (0.68%) CSS
18 65 (0.67%) HTML
19 64 (0.66%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 459 (4.71%) Onboarding
2 429 (4.40%) Product Ownership
3 411 (4.21%) Cloud Native
4 272 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
5 229 (2.35%) Data Structures
6 217 (2.22%) Management Information System
7 182 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
8 180 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
9 174 (1.78%) Derivative
9 174 (1.78%) Virtual Team
10 170 (1.74%) Fixed Income
11 168 (1.72%) Data Centre
12 166 (1.70%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 139 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
14 133 (1.36%) AI Agents
15 124 (1.27%) Equities
16 121 (1.24%) Public Cloud
17 115 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
18 104 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
19 96 (0.98%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 326 (3.34%) Windows
2 284 (2.91%) Linux
3 162 (1.66%) Unix
4 73 (0.75%) Windows Server
5 39 (0.40%) Solaris
6 37 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 36 (0.37%) Apple iOS
7 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
7 36 (0.37%) zOS
8 29 (0.30%) Android
9 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
10 20 (0.21%) AIX
11 9 (0.092%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.092%) VMS
12 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
13 6 (0.062%) HPUX
13 6 (0.062%) SUSE
14 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.041%) MVS
16 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,156 (22.10%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,967 (20.17%) Agile
3 1,356 (13.90%) Migration
4 1,299 (13.32%) Problem-Solving
5 1,142 (11.71%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,121 (11.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,082 (11.09%) AI
8 1,018 (10.44%) DevOps
9 1,004 (10.29%) ERP
10 1,003 (10.28%) CI/CD
11 971 (9.95%) Analytics
12 876 (8.98%) Decision-Making
13 815 (8.36%) Validation
14 808 (8.28%) Roadmaps
15 797 (8.17%) Data Modelling
16 769 (7.88%) User Acceptance Testing
17 765 (7.84%) Project Management
18 707 (7.25%) Change Management
19 676 (6.93%) Business Intelligence
20 626 (6.42%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,269 (13.01%) SQL
2 1,182 (12.12%) Python
3 653 (6.69%) Java
4 382 (3.92%) C#
5 263 (2.70%) JavaScript
5 263 (2.70%) TypeScript
6 223 (2.29%) PowerShell
7 100 (1.03%) Bash
8 92 (0.94%) PL/SQL
9 83 (0.85%) Go
10 82 (0.84%) C++
11 74 (0.76%) T-SQL
12 72 (0.74%) Shell Script
13 61 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 49 (0.50%) VBA
15 46 (0.47%) Scala
16 42 (0.43%) Bicep
17 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
17 36 (0.37%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.28%) Rust
Qualifications
1 741 (7.60%) Security Cleared
2 736 (7.55%) Degree
3 530 (5.43%) SC Cleared
4 227 (2.33%) PMP
5 206 (2.11%) ACCA
6 205 (2.10%) PMI Certification
7 199 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
8 184 (1.89%) CIMA
9 157 (1.61%) CISSP
10 128 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 112 (1.15%) DV Cleared
12 93 (0.95%) Azure Certification
13 90 (0.92%) CISM
14 83 (0.85%) Master's Degree
15 74 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
16 59 (0.60%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 46 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 605 (6.20%) Data Quality
2 419 (4.30%) QA
3 346 (3.55%) PMO
4 287 (2.94%) GDPR
5 163 (1.67%) NIST
6 131 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.14%) GRC
8 106 (1.09%) SLA
9 105 (1.08%) IFRS
10 102 (1.05%) Accessibility
11 96 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.69%) ISO 20022
13 63 (0.65%) GAAP
14 54 (0.55%) PCI DSS
15 42 (0.43%) SEPA
16 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
17 34 (0.35%) NCSC
18 30 (0.31%) SOC 2
19 29 (0.30%) EMIR
20 28 (0.29%) COBIT
System Software
1 269 (2.76%) Docker
2 208 (2.13%) Active Directory
3 63 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.27%) vSphere
6 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
7 21 (0.22%) RACF
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 13 (0.13%) NFS
11 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.062%) IAG
12 6 (0.062%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.031%) ACF2
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
14 3 (0.031%) SRDF
15 2 (0.021%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 433 (4.44%) Kubernetes
2 316 (3.24%) Terraform
3 161 (1.65%) Ansible
4 93 (0.95%) Grafana
5 78 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 69 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.52%) 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 1,237 (12.68%) Microsoft
2 844 (8.65%) SAP
3 829 (8.50%) Oracle
4 345 (3.54%) ServiceNow
5 294 (3.01%) Databricks
6 219 (2.25%) Salesforce
7 212 (2.17%) Google
8 141 (1.45%) IBM
9 132 (1.35%) Workday
10 125 (1.28%) VMware
11 121 (1.24%) Splunk
12 108 (1.11%) Cisco
13 94 (0.96%) CyberArk
14 92 (0.94%) Ariba
15 68 (0.70%) OpenAI
15 68 (0.70%) Sage
16 64 (0.66%) Citrix
17 56 (0.57%) Informatica
18 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
19 45 (0.46%) F5