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 23 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,357 6,729 8,252
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.40% 21.24% 18.95%
As % of the General category 32.49% 34.37% 32.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,703 4,227 5,600
10th Percentile £350 £356 £362
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £673 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £501 £505
% change year-on-year -0.10% -0.89% -3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 92 140
10th Percentile £15.00 £18.20 £11.77
25th Percentile £17.50 £22.44 £14.04
Median hourly rate £23.50 £29.00 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.97% +34.88% -14.00%
75th Percentile £40.00 £64.06 £43.82
90th Percentile £66.83 £79.88 £53.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -40.00%

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 22,642 19,580 25,604
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.71% 61.79% 58.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,274 11,685 16,659
10th Percentile £284 £284 £267
25th Percentile £401 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £735 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,391 651 1,404
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £16.41 £20.00 £15.33
Median hourly rate £22.85 £27.50 £26.72
Median % change year-on-year -16.91% +2.92% +6.88%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £56.02
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.28 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -19.72% +1.92% +15.79%

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 23 January 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 23 January 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 23 January 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 6,475 £538 -9.17% 5,778
London -1 3,947 £575 -5.35% 1,486
UK excluding London -2 2,912 £500 -0.10% 5,287
Work from Home -1 2,053 £525 -12.50% 2,282
North of England +1 923 £475 -4.71% 1,015
South East -1 539 £503 -4.29% 1,777
Midlands -3 520 £485 -7.62% 716
North West +2 449 £450 -8.16% 432
Yorkshire 0 426 £500 -2.91% 434
Scotland 0 382 £500 +7.64% 214
West Midlands -5 318 £525 -4.55% 293
South West -5 290 £525 -1.87% 633
East Midlands +1 201 £428 +1.79% 413
East of England -3 173 £529 +0.71% 697
Wales +23 77 £406 -13.33% 257
Northern Ireland -1 57 £500 +48.15% 114
North East -7 49 £481 - 162
Channel Islands +1 1 - -

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
1 315 (4.28%) Confluence
2 205 (2.79%) SharePoint
3 74 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.86%) Apache
5 62 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
6 60 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.43%) SAS
8 29 (0.39%) CMS
9 23 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.29%) IIS
11 16 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 14 (0.19%) Appian
12 14 (0.19%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 13 (0.18%) TPMS
14 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
15 11 (0.15%) Camunda
15 11 (0.15%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 504 (6.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 289 (3.93%) Microsoft Office
3 205 (2.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 163 (2.22%) Microsoft Project
5 132 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 14 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.068%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.054%) Notion
16 3 (0.041%) Camtasia
16 3 (0.041%) Snagit
17 2 (0.027%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 295 (4.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 126 (1.71%) Oracle Payables
3 97 (1.32%) Oracle Receivables
4 92 (1.25%) Oracle EBS
5 85 (1.16%) Oracle General Ledger
6 71 (0.97%) SAP FI
7 67 (0.91%) NetSuite
8 63 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
9 60 (0.82%) SAP CO
10 54 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 54 (0.73%) SAP FI/CO
11 52 (0.71%) Oracle Assets
11 52 (0.71%) Oracle Cash Management
12 50 (0.68%) Oracle EBS R12
13 47 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
13 47 (0.64%) Oracle Financials
14 39 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 39 (0.53%) Workday HCM
15 28 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
16 27 (0.37%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,089 (14.80%) Azure
2 889 (12.08%) AWS
3 545 (7.41%) Power Platform
4 351 (4.77%) GCP
5 250 (3.40%) Microsoft 365
6 227 (3.09%) SaaS
7 221 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
8 210 (2.85%) Dynamics 365
9 195 (2.65%) GitHub
10 141 (1.92%) OCI
10 141 (1.92%) Serverless
11 136 (1.85%) Snowflake
12 119 (1.62%) Entra ID
13 97 (1.32%) GitHub Actions
14 87 (1.18%) Power Automate
15 86 (1.17%) Amazon S3
16 73 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
17 71 (0.97%) PowerApps
18 70 (0.95%) OpenShift
19 69 (0.94%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 113 (1.54%) Firewall
2 72 (0.98%) Network Security
3 63 (0.86%) WAN
4 43 (0.58%) DNS
5 39 (0.53%) SD-WAN
5 39 (0.53%) VPN
6 36 (0.49%) LAN
7 34 (0.46%) TCP/IP
8 32 (0.43%) Wireless
9 29 (0.39%) HTTP
10 27 (0.37%) Skype
11 26 (0.35%) SSL
12 24 (0.33%) SSH
13 23 (0.31%) DHCP
14 16 (0.22%) Internet
14 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
15 15 (0.20%) BGP
15 15 (0.20%) OSPF
16 14 (0.19%) VLAN
17 13 (0.18%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 477 (6.48%) Power BI
2 198 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
3 190 (2.58%) SQL Server
4 150 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (1.73%) NoSQL
5 127 (1.73%) Tableau
6 121 (1.64%) Relational Database
7 117 (1.59%) Data Lake
8 111 (1.51%) Metadata
9 87 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
10 73 (0.99%) MongoDB
11 69 (0.94%) Big Data
11 69 (0.94%) Oracle Database
12 52 (0.71%) BigQuery
13 43 (0.58%) Hadoop
14 42 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
15 39 (0.53%) Power Query
16 37 (0.50%) MySQL
17 36 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
17 36 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 579 (7.87%) JIRA
2 261 (3.55%) Jenkins
3 212 (2.88%) Git
4 154 (2.09%) GitLab
5 77 (1.05%) JUnit
6 59 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 55 (0.75%) Selenium
8 50 (0.68%) Bitbucket
9 47 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
10 37 (0.50%) Postman
11 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 25 (0.34%) Gradle
13 24 (0.33%) Liquibase
14 23 (0.31%) Cypress.io
15 21 (0.29%) Maven
15 21 (0.29%) MLflow
15 21 (0.29%) REST Assured
16 19 (0.26%) JMeter
17 18 (0.24%) SonarQube
18 16 (0.22%) ERwin
General
1 2,569 (34.92%) Social Skills
2 1,520 (20.66%) Banking
3 986 (13.40%) Analytical Skills
4 595 (8.09%) Public Sector
5 335 (4.55%) Financial Institution
6 313 (4.25%) Marketing
7 297 (4.04%) Manufacturing
8 287 (3.90%) Investment Banking
9 279 (3.79%) Telecoms
10 271 (3.68%) Front Office
11 268 (3.64%) Legal
12 209 (2.84%) Organisational Skills
13 208 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
14 186 (2.53%) Electronics
15 162 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
16 145 (1.97%) Retail
17 136 (1.85%) General Ledger
18 134 (1.82%) Presentation Skills
19 124 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 111 (1.51%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,170 (15.90%) Analyst
2 831 (11.30%) Developer
3 711 (9.66%) Senior
4 605 (8.22%) Business Analyst
5 592 (8.05%) Project Manager
6 579 (7.87%) Architect
6 579 (7.87%) Consultant
7 540 (7.34%) Lead
8 237 (3.22%) Solutions Architect
9 186 (2.53%) Data Analyst
10 166 (2.26%) Data Engineer
11 161 (2.19%) Financial Analyst
12 152 (2.07%) Programme Manager
13 145 (1.97%) Java Developer
14 140 (1.90%) Software Engineer
15 139 (1.89%) Senior Developer
16 129 (1.75%) Senior Manager
17 116 (1.58%) IT Manager
18 112 (1.52%) Senior Analyst
19 106 (1.44%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 273 (3.71%) REST
2 227 (3.09%) Kafka
3 211 (2.87%) .NET
4 166 (2.26%) React
5 160 (2.17%) RESTful
6 159 (2.16%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (2.00%) Spring
8 120 (1.63%) Spring Boot
9 111 (1.51%) Middleware
10 103 (1.40%) AngularJS
11 94 (1.28%) Pandas
12 90 (1.22%) XML
13 87 (1.18%) HTML
14 83 (1.13%) NumPy
15 82 (1.11%) Node.js
16 76 (1.03%) CSS
17 75 (1.02%) PySpark
18 74 (1.01%) OAuth
19 71 (0.97%) JSON
19 71 (0.97%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 320 (4.35%) Onboarding
2 291 (3.96%) Product Ownership
3 219 (2.98%) Cloud Native
4 176 (2.39%) Derivative
5 168 (2.28%) Management Information System
6 156 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
7 151 (2.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 134 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
9 132 (1.79%) Data Centre
10 130 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
11 127 (1.73%) Equities
12 124 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
12 124 (1.69%) Data Structures
13 117 (1.59%) Fixed Income
14 109 (1.48%) Public Cloud
15 94 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
16 93 (1.26%) Hedge funds
17 74 (1.01%) Credit Risk
18 73 (0.99%) Virtual Team
19 71 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 350 (4.76%) Linux
2 319 (4.34%) Windows
3 152 (2.07%) Unix
4 68 (0.92%) Windows 10
5 63 (0.86%) Android
5 63 (0.86%) Windows Server
6 62 (0.84%) Mac OS
7 33 (0.45%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.14%) zOS
10 7 (0.095%) CentOS
11 6 (0.082%) VMS
12 4 (0.054%) Solaris
12 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.041%) AIX
13 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.041%) Windows Server 2019
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
14 2 (0.027%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,709 (23.23%) Agile
2 1,368 (18.59%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,198 (16.28%) Problem-Solving
4 840 (11.42%) Migration
5 801 (10.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 799 (10.86%) DevOps
7 779 (10.59%) CI/CD
8 753 (10.24%) Business Intelligence
9 721 (9.80%) Project Management
10 714 (9.71%) Analytics
11 646 (8.78%) ERP
12 629 (8.55%) Continuous Improvement
13 528 (7.18%) AI
13 528 (7.18%) Decision-Making
14 524 (7.12%) Change Management
15 517 (7.03%) Risk Management
16 502 (6.82%) Roadmaps
17 488 (6.63%) Data Modelling
18 479 (6.51%) Project Delivery
19 467 (6.35%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,094 (14.87%) SQL
2 950 (12.91%) Python
3 515 (7.00%) Java
4 311 (4.23%) C#
5 216 (2.94%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.70%) PowerShell
7 156 (2.12%) C++
8 153 (2.08%) TypeScript
9 88 (1.20%) PL/SQL
10 71 (0.97%) Bash
11 69 (0.94%) Go
12 53 (0.72%) Shell Script
13 52 (0.71%) VBA
14 42 (0.57%) R
15 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
16 34 (0.46%) Groovy
17 33 (0.45%) T-SQL
18 32 (0.43%) Perl
18 32 (0.43%) Rust
18 32 (0.43%) Scala
Qualifications
1 794 (10.79%) Degree
2 565 (7.68%) Security Cleared
3 414 (5.63%) SC Cleared
4 190 (2.58%) PMI Certification
5 183 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 178 (2.42%) PMP
7 168 (2.28%) Master's Degree
8 150 (2.04%) ACCA
9 133 (1.81%) CIMA
10 111 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
11 95 (1.29%) CISSP
12 93 (1.26%) AWS Certification
13 65 (0.88%) CISM
14 64 (0.87%) DV Cleared
15 61 (0.83%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 39 (0.53%) CBAP
18 33 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
19 28 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
20 27 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (5.18%) QA
2 330 (4.49%) Data Quality
3 272 (3.70%) PMO
4 255 (3.47%) GDPR
5 127 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 121 (1.64%) NIST
7 111 (1.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 97 (1.32%) SLA
9 96 (1.30%) Accessibility
10 79 (1.07%) PCI DSS
11 75 (1.02%) IFRS
12 58 (0.79%) GRC
13 48 (0.65%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.63%) PSD2
15 38 (0.52%) MiFID
16 33 (0.45%) NCSC
16 33 (0.45%) SEPA
17 32 (0.43%) Basel III
18 30 (0.41%) GAAP
19 28 (0.38%) COBIT
System Software
1 334 (4.54%) Docker
2 191 (2.60%) Active Directory
3 50 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (0.26%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) HDFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) NFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
8 8 (0.11%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.068%) Firmware
9 5 (0.068%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.054%) BitLocker
10 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.041%) RACF
11 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 377 (5.12%) Kubernetes
2 260 (3.53%) Terraform
3 175 (2.38%) Ansible
4 86 (1.17%) Grafana
5 78 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.87%) SCCM
7 56 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
8 36 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 13 (0.18%) Control-M
14 13 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
14 13 (0.18%) Puppet
15 10 (0.14%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,011 (13.74%) Microsoft
2 794 (10.79%) SAP
3 706 (9.60%) Oracle
4 273 (3.71%) ServiceNow
5 177 (2.41%) Salesforce
6 166 (2.26%) Splunk
7 159 (2.16%) Databricks
8 157 (2.13%) Google
9 146 (1.98%) Cisco
10 145 (1.97%) Workday
11 100 (1.36%) VMware
12 93 (1.26%) IBM
13 69 (0.94%) Citrix
14 67 (0.91%) CyberArk
15 63 (0.86%) Ariba
16 55 (0.75%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.72%) HP
18 48 (0.65%) Murex
18 48 (0.65%) OpenAI
19 47 (0.64%) Informatica