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 7 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,433 6,471 8,210
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.50% 22.11% 18.71%
As % of the General category 33.10% 35.11% 32.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,364 4,288 5,493
10th Percentile £352 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.61% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £669 £700 £700
90th Percentile £800 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 211 111 238
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.51 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.98 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +45.45% -15.38%
75th Percentile £42.70 £73.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.40 £83.20 £53.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -57.95% +75.00% -25.00%

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 25,480 18,432 25,531
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.88% 62.99% 58.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,862 11,802 16,206
10th Percentile £304 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £643 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,587 738 1,868
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.70 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.23 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £26.53
Median % change year-on-year -11.14% +9.31% -24.20%
75th Percentile £59.25 £57.50 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £27.13 £25.25
% change year-on-year -7.83% +7.43% -18.23%

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 7 April 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 7 April 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 7 April 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 7,458 £538 -7.33% 4,228
London 0 4,521 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,340 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -2 2,373 £550 -6.98% 1,715
North of England +3 1,092 £475 - 695
South East -1 654 £503 -7.37% 1,010
Midlands 0 585 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +5 583 £459 -1.29% 371
Yorkshire 0 460 £500 +2.30% 253
West Midlands 0 395 £492 -6.29% 251
Scotland 0 381 £500 +5.26% 161
South West -4 332 £525 +4.95% 302
East of England -2 201 £513 -6.82% 271
East Midlands 0 185 £449 +1.24% 171
Wales +24 106 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -6 49 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +59.09% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 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
1 338 (4.01%) Confluence
2 212 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 50 (0.59%) Apache
5 50 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.40%) SAS
7 31 (0.37%) CMS
8 19 (0.23%) CICS
9 18 (0.21%) Appian
9 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.18%) Camunda
11 14 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
13 11 (0.13%) TPMS
14 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 8 (0.095%) WebLogic
Applications
1 547 (6.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 245 (2.91%) Microsoft Office
3 187 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 176 (2.09%) Microsoft Project
5 131 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 53 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 11 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.12%) Sketch
11 9 (0.11%) InVision
12 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.059%) Notion
13 5 (0.059%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.047%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe Captivate
15 2 (0.024%) InDesign
15 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.024%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 356 (4.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.22%) Oracle Receivables
4 84 (1.00%) NetSuite
5 81 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 73 (0.87%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.79%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.64%) SAP CO
11 53 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
12 50 (0.59%) SAP FI/CO
13 42 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
14 38 (0.45%) Oracle Cash Management
15 35 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
16 32 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
17 31 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
18 30 (0.36%) Aladdin
19 27 (0.32%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,288 (15.27%) Azure
2 987 (11.70%) AWS
3 607 (7.20%) Power Platform
4 394 (4.67%) GCP
5 290 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
6 276 (3.27%) SaaS
7 272 (3.23%) Microsoft 365
8 250 (2.96%) Dynamics 365
9 229 (2.72%) GitHub
10 158 (1.87%) Serverless
11 143 (1.70%) OCI
12 139 (1.65%) Snowflake
13 124 (1.47%) Entra ID
14 119 (1.41%) Amazon S3
15 98 (1.16%) Power Automate
16 93 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
17 88 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
17 88 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
18 87 (1.03%) OpenShift
19 76 (0.90%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 166 (1.97%) Firewall
2 105 (1.25%) Network Security
3 81 (0.96%) WAN
4 67 (0.79%) DNS
5 59 (0.70%) VPN
6 47 (0.56%) LAN
7 45 (0.53%) TCP/IP
8 44 (0.52%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.40%) BGP
10 32 (0.38%) HTTP
11 30 (0.36%) SSL
12 29 (0.34%) Multicast
12 29 (0.34%) OSPF
13 26 (0.31%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.25%) Wireless
16 19 (0.23%) DHCP
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
18 17 (0.20%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 527 (6.25%) Power BI
2 219 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
3 210 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 180 (2.13%) PostgreSQL
5 159 (1.89%) Metadata
6 149 (1.77%) Tableau
7 128 (1.52%) Data Lake
8 124 (1.47%) Relational Database
9 101 (1.20%) NoSQL
9 101 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
10 80 (0.95%) Big Data
11 64 (0.76%) Oracle Database
12 63 (0.75%) BigQuery
13 56 (0.66%) MongoDB
14 47 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.50%) Power Query
17 41 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
18 39 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
18 39 (0.46%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 681 (8.08%) JIRA
2 217 (2.57%) Jenkins
3 215 (2.55%) Git
4 134 (1.59%) GitLab
5 61 (0.72%) JUnit
6 58 (0.69%) Cucumber
7 43 (0.51%) Selenium
7 43 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
8 32 (0.38%) Postman
9 28 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
10 23 (0.27%) MLflow
11 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 19 (0.23%) Maven
13 18 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.20%) ERwin
14 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
16 14 (0.17%) Hudson
17 12 (0.14%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,653 (31.46%) Social Skills
2 1,603 (19.01%) Banking
3 1,118 (13.26%) Analytical Skills
4 628 (7.45%) Public Sector
5 337 (4.00%) Financial Institution
6 324 (3.84%) Legal
7 293 (3.47%) Front Office
8 285 (3.38%) Investment Banking
9 239 (2.83%) Manufacturing
9 239 (2.83%) Marketing
9 239 (2.83%) Organisational Skills
10 237 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
11 217 (2.57%) Retail
11 217 (2.57%) Telecoms
12 201 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
13 137 (1.62%) General Ledger
14 128 (1.52%) Local Government
15 122 (1.45%) Law
15 122 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
16 117 (1.39%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,301 (15.43%) Analyst
2 863 (10.23%) Senior
3 859 (10.19%) Developer
4 803 (9.52%) Lead
5 754 (8.94%) Architect
6 700 (8.30%) Business Analyst
7 672 (7.97%) Project Manager
8 629 (7.46%) Consultant
9 302 (3.58%) Solutions Architect
10 247 (2.93%) Data Engineer
11 199 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
12 195 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.23%) Data Analyst
14 186 (2.21%) Finance Manager
15 170 (2.02%) Programme Manager
16 150 (1.78%) Java Developer
17 146 (1.73%) Accountant
18 138 (1.64%) Delivery Manager
19 135 (1.60%) Senior Developer
20 130 (1.54%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (3.23%) Kafka
2 269 (3.19%) REST
3 210 (2.49%) .NET
4 201 (2.38%) React
5 166 (1.97%) Middleware
6 158 (1.87%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (1.74%) Spring
8 139 (1.65%) RESTful
9 132 (1.57%) Spring Boot
10 118 (1.40%) Node.js
11 100 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 95 (1.13%) PySpark
13 81 (0.96%) OAuth
14 80 (0.95%) XML
15 75 (0.89%) HTML
16 74 (0.88%) JSON
17 73 (0.87%) Redux
18 72 (0.85%) CSS
19 70 (0.83%) Pandas
20 65 (0.77%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 355 (4.21%) Onboarding
2 323 (3.83%) Product Ownership
3 270 (3.20%) Cloud Native
4 215 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
5 188 (2.23%) Management Information System
6 169 (2.00%) Derivative
7 157 (1.86%) Data Structures
8 156 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
9 148 (1.76%) Data Centre
10 147 (1.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 146 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
11 146 (1.73%) Fixed Income
12 120 (1.42%) Equities
13 108 (1.28%) Public Cloud
14 102 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
15 101 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
16 93 (1.10%) Virtual Team
17 88 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
18 64 (0.76%) Hedge funds
19 63 (0.75%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 305 (3.62%) Linux
2 274 (3.25%) Windows
3 141 (1.67%) Unix
4 66 (0.78%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.62%) Windows 10
6 38 (0.45%) Android
7 31 (0.37%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 20 (0.24%) zOS
10 17 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 13 (0.15%) AIX
12 12 (0.14%) Solaris
13 7 (0.083%) VMS
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.012%) MVS
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,763 (20.91%) Agile
2 1,645 (19.51%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,238 (14.68%) Problem-Solving
4 1,119 (13.27%) Migration
5 942 (11.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 921 (10.92%) DevOps
7 896 (10.62%) Continuous Improvement
8 859 (10.19%) ERP
9 836 (9.91%) CI/CD
10 818 (9.70%) Analytics
11 811 (9.62%) Project Management
12 788 (9.34%) Business Intelligence
13 731 (8.67%) AI
14 667 (7.91%) Decision-Making
15 651 (7.72%) Data Modelling
16 649 (7.70%) Roadmaps
17 611 (7.25%) Validation
18 599 (7.10%) Change Management
19 594 (7.04%) User Acceptance Testing
20 581 (6.89%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,184 (14.04%) SQL
2 1,004 (11.91%) Python
3 558 (6.62%) Java
4 305 (3.62%) C#
5 230 (2.73%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.32%) TypeScript
7 168 (1.99%) PowerShell
8 114 (1.35%) C++
9 78 (0.92%) Go
10 72 (0.85%) Bash
11 68 (0.81%) PL/SQL
12 58 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 56 (0.66%) VBA
14 50 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.46%) Scala
17 36 (0.43%) R
18 31 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 29 (0.34%) Bicep
20 26 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 782 (9.27%) Degree
2 722 (8.56%) Security Cleared
3 513 (6.08%) SC Cleared
4 208 (2.47%) PMP
5 200 (2.37%) PMI Certification
6 192 (2.28%) ACCA
7 179 (2.12%) CIMA
8 158 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
9 149 (1.77%) BPSS Clearance
10 143 (1.70%) Master's Degree
11 119 (1.41%) CISSP
12 86 (1.02%) DV Cleared
13 83 (0.98%) CISM
14 72 (0.85%) Azure Certification
15 63 (0.75%) AWS Certification
16 44 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
17 37 (0.44%) ISTQB
18 35 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
18 35 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
19 29 (0.34%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 460 (5.45%) Data Quality
2 405 (4.80%) QA
3 339 (4.02%) PMO
4 300 (3.56%) GDPR
5 153 (1.81%) NIST
6 132 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 114 (1.35%) SLA
8 99 (1.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 93 (1.10%) IFRS
10 76 (0.90%) Accessibility
10 76 (0.90%) PCI DSS
11 67 (0.79%) GRC
12 60 (0.71%) ISO 20022
13 49 (0.58%) GAAP
14 40 (0.47%) PSD2
15 37 (0.44%) SEPA
16 36 (0.43%) NCSC
17 34 (0.40%) MiFID
18 27 (0.32%) Basel III
19 26 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 309 (3.66%) Docker
2 149 (1.77%) Active Directory
3 60 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.40%) vSphere
5 24 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.15%) NFS
8 12 (0.14%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.095%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.071%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.059%) HDFS
13 4 (0.047%) ISA Server
13 4 (0.047%) KVM
13 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.036%) Firmware
14 3 (0.036%) GridGain
14 3 (0.036%) RACF
14 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 405 (4.80%) Kubernetes
2 262 (3.11%) Terraform
3 136 (1.61%) Ansible
4 95 (1.13%) Grafana
5 77 (0.91%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.59%) SCCM
8 37 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Progress Chef
12 17 (0.20%) Argo
13 15 (0.18%) Control-M
14 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 13 (0.15%) Puppet
16 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.14%) CASB
17 11 (0.13%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,115 (13.22%) Microsoft
2 808 (9.58%) SAP
3 729 (8.64%) Oracle
4 327 (3.88%) ServiceNow
5 220 (2.61%) Databricks
6 195 (2.31%) Salesforce
7 180 (2.13%) Google
8 146 (1.73%) Cisco
9 144 (1.71%) Workday
10 127 (1.51%) Splunk
11 116 (1.38%) VMware
12 104 (1.23%) IBM
13 76 (0.90%) Ariba
13 76 (0.90%) Citrix
14 74 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 71 (0.84%) Sage
16 57 (0.68%) Informatica
17 55 (0.65%) OpenAI
18 53 (0.63%) Bloomberg
19 49 (0.58%) Murex