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 10 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,857 7,618 7,655
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.48% 22.98% 19.73%
As % of the General category 33.56% 36.27% 34.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,061 5,025 5,112
10th Percentile £360 £332 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% -5.22% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £684 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +1.57% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 301 143 194
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £14.65
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.13 £24.05
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +46.62%
75th Percentile £45.75 £63.75 £43.44
90th Percentile £83.25 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.86 £38.12
% change year-on-year +63.69% -29.55% +23.95%

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 29,369 21,001 22,288
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.06% 63.35% 57.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,411 13,107 14,053
10th Percentile £313 £279 £290
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 £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.99% -1.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,226 1,130 1,377
10th Percentile £13.97 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.30 £17.00
Median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £57.99 £50.38 £58.49
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +46.90%

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 10 August 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 10 August 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 10 August 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 8,581 £550 - 7,967
London 0 5,184 £588 -2.08% 4,908
UK excluding London -1 3,892 £503 +1.57% 3,911
Work from Home -1 2,826 £550 -4.35% 3,067
North of England 0 1,329 £500 +6.61% 1,046
South East -1 740 £500 -5.66% 1,124
North West 0 696 £500 +9.29% 591
Midlands 0 634 £515 +14.33% 552
Yorkshire 0 567 £515 +8.42% 333
Scotland 0 507 £475 -5.00% 292
West Midlands +1 485 £525 +5.00% 338
South West -4 376 £525 -4.55% 438
East of England +6 208 £528 -8.26% 298
East Midlands -3 143 £500 +21.21% 214
Wales +1 69 £530 +14.59% 113
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 - 115
North East -14 59 £500 +11.11% 131
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
1 323 (3.28%) Confluence
2 248 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 88 (0.89%) Apache Spark
4 85 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 70 (0.71%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.36%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 5 (0.051%) JBoss
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 531 (5.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 166 (1.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 160 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
5 101 (1.02%) MS Visio
6 75 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
7 35 (0.36%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.061%) Sketch
11 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.030%) Notion
14 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
14 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 449 (4.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 100 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
5 93 (0.94%) Oracle ERP
6 71 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.68%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
8 61 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
9 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
11 45 (0.46%) SAP CO
12 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
13 41 (0.42%) Aladdin
14 36 (0.37%) Unit4 Business World
15 35 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
16 32 (0.32%) Workday HCM
17 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
18 28 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
18 28 (0.28%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,550 (15.72%) Azure
2 1,075 (10.91%) AWS
3 663 (6.73%) Power Platform
4 512 (5.19%) GCP
5 344 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
6 333 (3.38%) SaaS
7 296 (3.00%) Microsoft 365
8 289 (2.93%) GitHub
9 253 (2.57%) Dynamics 365
10 216 (2.19%) Snowflake
11 205 (2.08%) Entra ID
12 147 (1.49%) OCI
12 147 (1.49%) Serverless
13 124 (1.26%) Amazon S3
13 124 (1.26%) Power Automate
14 112 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
15 110 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
16 107 (1.09%) dbt
17 106 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
18 103 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 177 (1.80%) Firewall
2 148 (1.50%) Network Security
3 96 (0.97%) VPN
4 92 (0.93%) DNS
5 67 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.57%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) SSL
8 46 (0.47%) BGP
9 45 (0.46%) DHCP
10 40 (0.41%) LAN
11 38 (0.39%) HTTP
12 32 (0.32%) Multicast
13 28 (0.28%) OSPF
13 28 (0.28%) Wireless
14 27 (0.27%) Internet
15 26 (0.26%) VLAN
16 24 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
17 22 (0.22%) SAN
18 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
19 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 544 (5.52%) Power BI
2 281 (2.85%) SQL Server
3 261 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
4 196 (1.99%) Metadata
5 177 (1.80%) Relational Database
6 151 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
7 143 (1.45%) Data Lake
8 142 (1.44%) Tableau
9 87 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
10 82 (0.83%) NoSQL
11 73 (0.74%) BigQuery
11 73 (0.74%) MongoDB
12 72 (0.73%) Oracle Database
13 66 (0.67%) Big Data
14 60 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (0.54%) Power Query
16 51 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 47 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 42 (0.43%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 667 (6.77%) JIRA
2 286 (2.90%) Git
3 159 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 101 (1.02%) GitLab
5 46 (0.47%) JUnit
6 44 (0.45%) Selenium
7 36 (0.37%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 29 (0.29%) ERwin
10 27 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.27%) Maven
10 27 (0.27%) SonarQube
10 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 25 (0.25%) Claude Code
12 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.24%) Postman
12 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
14 19 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,904 (29.46%) Social Skills
2 1,891 (19.18%) Banking
3 1,390 (14.10%) Analytical Skills
4 545 (5.53%) Public Sector
5 531 (5.39%) Legal
6 401 (4.07%) Organisational Skills
7 387 (3.93%) Investment Banking
8 376 (3.81%) Retail
9 360 (3.65%) Financial Institution
10 348 (3.53%) Front Office
11 279 (2.83%) Influencing Skills
12 228 (2.31%) Documentation Skills
13 198 (2.01%) Manufacturing
14 178 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 163 (1.65%) Billing
16 160 (1.62%) General Ledger
16 160 (1.62%) Marketing
17 157 (1.59%) Local Government
18 141 (1.43%) Law
18 141 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,428 (14.49%) Analyst
2 1,064 (10.79%) Lead
2 1,064 (10.79%) Senior
3 982 (9.96%) Developer
4 873 (8.86%) Architect
5 734 (7.45%) Business Analyst
6 704 (7.14%) Project Manager
7 692 (7.02%) Consultant
8 331 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
9 319 (3.24%) Data Engineer
10 250 (2.54%) Financial Analyst
11 226 (2.29%) Senior Manager
12 205 (2.08%) Accountant
13 202 (2.05%) Data Analyst
14 201 (2.04%) Java Developer
15 189 (1.92%) Senior Developer
16 184 (1.87%) Finance Manager
17 179 (1.82%) Programme Manager
18 173 (1.76%) IT Manager
19 172 (1.74%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.33%) REST
2 277 (2.81%) .NET
3 259 (2.63%) Kafka
4 256 (2.60%) Oracle Fusion
5 255 (2.59%) React
6 188 (1.91%) Middleware
7 175 (1.78%) Spring
8 163 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 139 (1.41%) PySpark
10 126 (1.28%) RESTful
11 109 (1.11%) Redux
12 100 (1.01%) Node.js
13 97 (0.98%) JSON
14 95 (0.96%) XML
15 91 (0.92%) AngularJS
16 89 (0.90%) OAuth
17 68 (0.69%) SOAP
18 63 (0.64%) Web Services
19 62 (0.63%) HTML
20 60 (0.61%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 487 (4.94%) Onboarding
2 469 (4.76%) Product Ownership
3 422 (4.28%) Cloud Native
4 265 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
5 243 (2.47%) Data Structures
6 226 (2.29%) Management Information System
7 206 (2.09%) Virtual Team
8 187 (1.90%) Derivative
9 175 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
10 170 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
11 159 (1.61%) Fixed Income
12 156 (1.58%) Data Centre
13 152 (1.54%) AI Agents
13 152 (1.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 137 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
15 121 (1.23%) Equities
16 109 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
17 106 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
18 101 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
18 101 (1.02%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 357 (3.62%) Windows
2 292 (2.96%) Linux
3 151 (1.53%) Unix
4 81 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 47 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 43 (0.44%) Apple iOS
7 39 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) zOS
9 34 (0.34%) Solaris
10 33 (0.33%) Android
11 27 (0.27%) Mac OS
12 15 (0.15%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 8 (0.081%) VMS
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 5 (0.051%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.020%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,322 (23.56%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,030 (20.59%) Agile
3 1,346 (13.66%) Migration
4 1,309 (13.28%) Problem-Solving
5 1,169 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,157 (11.74%) AI
7 1,128 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,035 (10.50%) CI/CD
9 1,031 (10.46%) ERP
10 1,012 (10.27%) DevOps
11 998 (10.12%) Analytics
12 904 (9.17%) Decision-Making
13 807 (8.19%) Validation
14 795 (8.07%) Data Modelling
15 785 (7.96%) Roadmaps
16 757 (7.68%) User Acceptance Testing
17 741 (7.52%) Project Management
18 710 (7.20%) Change Management
19 669 (6.79%) Business Intelligence
20 642 (6.51%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,275 (12.93%) SQL
2 1,203 (12.20%) Python
3 631 (6.40%) Java
4 384 (3.90%) C#
5 262 (2.66%) JavaScript
6 242 (2.46%) PowerShell
7 231 (2.34%) TypeScript
8 125 (1.27%) Bash
9 100 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 82 (0.83%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.78%) C++
12 71 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 68 (0.69%) Go
14 66 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 51 (0.52%) Bicep
16 45 (0.46%) VBA
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 36 (0.37%) Scala
19 35 (0.36%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.36%) Korn
Qualifications
1 767 (7.78%) Security Cleared
2 725 (7.36%) Degree
3 549 (5.57%) SC Cleared
4 240 (2.43%) PMP
5 214 (2.17%) PMI Certification
6 210 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 201 (2.04%) ACCA
8 178 (1.81%) CIMA
9 152 (1.54%) CISSP
10 137 (1.39%) DV Cleared
11 120 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 99 (1.00%) Azure Certification
13 84 (0.85%) CISM
14 78 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
15 72 (0.73%) Master's Degree
16 60 (0.61%) AWS Certification
17 52 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
18 46 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 638 (6.47%) Data Quality
2 408 (4.14%) QA
3 360 (3.65%) PMO
4 270 (2.74%) GDPR
5 154 (1.56%) NIST
6 126 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 114 (1.16%) SLA
8 113 (1.15%) GRC
9 102 (1.03%) Accessibility
10 101 (1.02%) IFRS
11 100 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 61 (0.62%) ISO 20022
13 60 (0.61%) GAAP
14 45 (0.46%) PCI DSS
15 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
16 35 (0.36%) SEPA
17 31 (0.31%) COBIT
18 30 (0.30%) MiFID
18 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
19 29 (0.29%) EMIR
System Software
1 268 (2.72%) Docker
2 232 (2.35%) Active Directory
3 67 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
6 23 (0.23%) vSphere
7 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
9 11 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 5 (0.051%) ACF2
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.041%) KVM
13 4 (0.041%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.041%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 434 (4.40%) Kubernetes
2 337 (3.42%) Terraform
3 158 (1.60%) Ansible
4 87 (0.88%) Grafana
5 77 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
6 71 (0.72%) Prometheus
7 55 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (0.54%) SCCM
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 24 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.16%) Argo
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 16 (0.16%) Puppet
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 13 (0.13%) CASB
14 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,325 (13.44%) Microsoft
2 863 (8.76%) Oracle
3 839 (8.51%) SAP
4 368 (3.73%) ServiceNow
5 323 (3.28%) Databricks
6 232 (2.35%) Salesforce
7 214 (2.17%) Google
8 158 (1.60%) IBM
9 137 (1.39%) Workday
10 128 (1.30%) VMware
11 108 (1.10%) Cisco
12 104 (1.06%) Splunk
13 93 (0.94%) Ariba
14 89 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 72 (0.73%) OpenAI
16 64 (0.65%) Sage
17 60 (0.61%) Citrix
18 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
18 50 (0.51%) Informatica
19 45 (0.46%) Murex