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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,485 6,534 8,197
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.26% 22.12% 18.78%
As % of the General category 33.29% 35.06% 32.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,353 4,295 5,465
10th Percentile £352 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £671 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 108 251
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.32 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.70% +32.34% -8.96%
75th Percentile £49.69 £68.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £83.20 £54.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.20 £48.82 £32.12
% change year-on-year -54.53% +52.00% -32.39%

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 25,486 18,638 25,438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.85% 63.10% 58.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,770 11,909 16,090
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £639 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,614 789 1,927
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.13 £15.41
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.00 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% -1.75% -18.57%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.50
90th Percentile £79.70 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.45 £25.29 £27.50
% change year-on-year +0.64% -8.04% -13.07%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 7,510 £537 -6.61% 3,261
London 0 4,549 £575 -8.00% 1,477
UK excluding London 0 3,368 £500 - 2,496
Work from Home -2 2,374 £525 -12.50% 1,423
North of England +3 1,122 £475 - 558
South East -2 647 £503 -3.83% 881
North West +6 605 £465 - 287
Midlands -2 577 £475 -5.00% 366
Yorkshire +1 475 £500 - 201
Scotland 0 397 £500 +2.25% 113
West Midlands 0 386 £492 -6.29% 208
South West -2 340 £520 +4.00% 285
East of England -2 194 £525 -4.55% 212
East Midlands 0 186 £450 +0.67% 155
Wales +22 100 £413 +10.00% 56
Northern Ireland -1 43 £500 +25.00% 77
North East -10 43 £488 +8.33% 80
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 327 (3.85%) Confluence
2 216 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 85 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 56 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
5 55 (0.65%) Apache
6 54 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
7 40 (0.47%) SAS
8 25 (0.29%) CMS
9 20 (0.24%) CICS
10 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 16 (0.19%) Appian
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Camunda
12 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
13 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) IIS
15 10 (0.12%) TPMS
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 544 (6.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 236 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
3 182 (2.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 173 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
5 125 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 35 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.16%) Trello
9 8 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.094%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
11 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.059%) Notion
13 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 363 (4.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 98 (1.15%) NetSuite
5 84 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 70 (0.82%) Oracle EBS
7 62 (0.73%) SAP FI
8 61 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
9 59 (0.70%) Oracle ERP
10 56 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
11 51 (0.60%) SAP CO
12 47 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
13 41 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
14 34 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle Cash Management
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
16 32 (0.38%) Aladdin
16 32 (0.38%) Workday HCM
17 30 (0.35%) SAP ERP
18 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,281 (15.10%) Azure
2 977 (11.51%) AWS
3 618 (7.28%) Power Platform
4 388 (4.57%) GCP
5 287 (3.38%) Azure DevOps
6 280 (3.30%) SaaS
7 267 (3.15%) Microsoft 365
8 247 (2.91%) Dynamics 365
9 233 (2.75%) GitHub
10 146 (1.72%) Serverless
10 146 (1.72%) Snowflake
11 141 (1.66%) OCI
12 130 (1.53%) Entra ID
13 121 (1.43%) Amazon S3
14 106 (1.25%) Power Automate
15 91 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
16 90 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
17 88 (1.04%) OpenShift
18 86 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
19 78 (0.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.91%) Firewall
2 110 (1.30%) Network Security
3 77 (0.91%) WAN
4 67 (0.79%) DNS
5 60 (0.71%) VPN
6 47 (0.55%) TCP/IP
7 42 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 41 (0.48%) LAN
9 34 (0.40%) BGP
10 31 (0.37%) HTTP
11 29 (0.34%) OSPF
11 29 (0.34%) SSL
12 27 (0.32%) Multicast
13 24 (0.28%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 22 (0.26%) DHCP
16 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
18 16 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
18 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 533 (6.28%) Power BI
2 214 (2.52%) SQL Server
3 213 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
4 165 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
5 163 (1.92%) Metadata
6 147 (1.73%) Tableau
7 132 (1.56%) Relational Database
8 123 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 95 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
10 90 (1.06%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.92%) Big Data
12 66 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 59 (0.70%) BigQuery
14 58 (0.68%) MongoDB
15 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
15 44 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 43 (0.51%) Power Query
17 42 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
18 40 (0.47%) Delta Lake
18 40 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 677 (7.98%) JIRA
2 211 (2.49%) Git
3 193 (2.27%) Jenkins
4 115 (1.36%) GitLab
5 58 (0.68%) JUnit
6 55 (0.65%) Cucumber
7 44 (0.52%) Selenium
8 40 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.35%) Postman
10 29 (0.34%) Visual Studio
11 25 (0.29%) MLflow
12 23 (0.27%) Bitbucket
13 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
14 20 (0.24%) REST Assured
15 18 (0.21%) ERwin
15 18 (0.21%) Maven
15 18 (0.21%) Zephyr
16 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 16 (0.19%) Hudson
18 15 (0.18%) TeamCity
General
1 2,618 (30.85%) Social Skills
2 1,568 (18.48%) Banking
3 1,148 (13.53%) Analytical Skills
4 575 (6.78%) Public Sector
5 331 (3.90%) Legal
6 327 (3.85%) Financial Institution
7 285 (3.36%) Front Office
8 283 (3.34%) Investment Banking
9 239 (2.82%) Organisational Skills
10 238 (2.80%) Retail
11 234 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
12 216 (2.55%) Manufacturing
13 210 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
14 208 (2.45%) Marketing
15 178 (2.10%) Telecoms
16 141 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 125 (1.47%) Local Government
17 125 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
18 123 (1.45%) Law
19 109 (1.28%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,285 (15.14%) Analyst
2 866 (10.21%) Developer
3 859 (10.12%) Senior
4 841 (9.91%) Lead
5 765 (9.02%) Architect
6 692 (8.16%) Business Analyst
7 682 (8.04%) Project Manager
8 607 (7.15%) Consultant
9 303 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
10 263 (3.10%) Data Engineer
11 205 (2.42%) Financial Analyst
12 195 (2.30%) Senior Manager
13 191 (2.25%) Finance Manager
14 182 (2.14%) Data Analyst
15 167 (1.97%) Programme Manager
16 157 (1.85%) Accountant
17 154 (1.81%) Java Developer
18 135 (1.59%) Delivery Manager
18 135 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
19 127 (1.50%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (3.13%) Kafka
2 252 (2.97%) REST
3 224 (2.64%) .NET
4 198 (2.33%) React
5 172 (2.03%) Middleware
6 151 (1.78%) Oracle Fusion
7 150 (1.77%) Spring
8 139 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.59%) RESTful
10 110 (1.30%) Node.js
11 97 (1.14%) PySpark
12 96 (1.13%) AngularJS
13 86 (1.01%) OAuth
14 78 (0.92%) XML
15 77 (0.91%) JSON
16 72 (0.85%) HTML
16 72 (0.85%) Redux
17 69 (0.81%) CSS
18 67 (0.79%) Pandas
19 58 (0.68%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 356 (4.20%) Onboarding
2 322 (3.79%) Product Ownership
3 286 (3.37%) Cloud Native
4 234 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
5 198 (2.33%) Management Information System
6 172 (2.03%) Data Structures
7 167 (1.97%) Derivative
8 164 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
9 139 (1.64%) Data Centre
9 139 (1.64%) Fixed Income
10 138 (1.63%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 136 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
12 111 (1.31%) Equities
13 107 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
14 100 (1.18%) Public Cloud
15 97 (1.14%) Virtual Team
16 96 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 82 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
18 67 (0.79%) Mainframe
19 66 (0.78%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 280 (3.30%) Linux
2 278 (3.28%) Windows
3 143 (1.69%) Unix
4 73 (0.86%) Windows Server
5 50 (0.59%) Windows 10
6 27 (0.32%) Android
7 26 (0.31%) zOS
8 25 (0.29%) Apple iOS
8 25 (0.29%) Solaris
9 22 (0.26%) Mac OS
9 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 17 (0.20%) AIX
11 8 (0.094%) VMS
12 6 (0.071%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.059%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.047%) HPUX
14 4 (0.047%) MVS
14 4 (0.047%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,763 (20.78%) Agile
2 1,667 (19.65%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,240 (14.61%) Problem-Solving
4 1,164 (13.72%) Migration
5 944 (11.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 935 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
7 908 (10.70%) DevOps
8 903 (10.64%) ERP
9 851 (10.03%) CI/CD
10 830 (9.78%) Analytics
11 812 (9.57%) Project Management
12 790 (9.31%) AI
13 760 (8.96%) Business Intelligence
14 703 (8.29%) Decision-Making
15 677 (7.98%) Data Modelling
16 665 (7.84%) Roadmaps
17 651 (7.67%) Validation
18 630 (7.42%) User Acceptance Testing
19 599 (7.06%) Change Management
20 579 (6.82%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,187 (13.99%) SQL
2 1,002 (11.81%) Python
3 570 (6.72%) Java
4 325 (3.83%) C#
5 216 (2.55%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 168 (1.98%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.24%) C++
9 73 (0.86%) Bash
10 71 (0.84%) PL/SQL
11 68 (0.80%) Go
12 61 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 53 (0.62%) VBA
14 50 (0.59%) Shell Script
15 49 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 42 (0.49%) Scala
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 28 (0.33%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.32%) Bicep
20 25 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 755 (8.90%) Degree
2 698 (8.23%) Security Cleared
3 493 (5.81%) SC Cleared
4 206 (2.43%) PMP
5 202 (2.38%) ACCA
6 195 (2.30%) PMI Certification
7 191 (2.25%) CIMA
8 148 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
9 140 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
10 125 (1.47%) Master's Degree
11 123 (1.45%) CISSP
12 84 (0.99%) DV Cleared
13 82 (0.97%) CISM
14 69 (0.81%) Azure Certification
15 62 (0.73%) AWS Certification
16 44 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
17 41 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 39 (0.46%) ISTQB
19 34 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 30 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 477 (5.62%) Data Quality
2 414 (4.88%) QA
3 333 (3.92%) PMO
4 303 (3.57%) GDPR
5 147 (1.73%) NIST
6 121 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 102 (1.20%) SLA
8 93 (1.10%) IFRS
9 91 (1.07%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 76 (0.90%) Accessibility
11 72 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 71 (0.84%) GRC
13 56 (0.66%) ISO 20022
14 50 (0.59%) GAAP
15 38 (0.45%) PSD2
16 36 (0.42%) SEPA
17 34 (0.40%) NCSC
18 27 (0.32%) Basel III
19 26 (0.31%) MiFID
20 23 (0.27%) EMIR
System Software
1 295 (3.48%) Docker
2 153 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 58 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 24 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.12%) Hyper-V
8 10 (0.12%) NFS
8 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.11%) GPFS
10 5 (0.059%) HDFS
10 5 (0.059%) RACF
11 4 (0.047%) ACF2
11 4 (0.047%) Firmware
11 4 (0.047%) KVM
11 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.035%) SRDF
12 3 (0.035%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 395 (4.66%) Kubernetes
2 254 (2.99%) Terraform
3 128 (1.51%) Ansible
4 87 (1.03%) Grafana
5 68 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.59%) SCCM
8 35 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
11 17 (0.20%) vRealize
12 16 (0.19%) Argo
13 15 (0.18%) Progress Chef
14 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
14 14 (0.16%) Puppet
15 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.14%) CASB
16 12 (0.14%) vCenter Server
17 11 (0.13%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,109 (13.07%) Microsoft
2 780 (9.19%) SAP
3 715 (8.43%) Oracle
4 318 (3.75%) ServiceNow
5 223 (2.63%) Databricks
6 188 (2.22%) Salesforce
7 174 (2.05%) Google
8 149 (1.76%) Workday
9 123 (1.45%) Cisco
10 113 (1.33%) Splunk
11 108 (1.27%) VMware
12 100 (1.18%) IBM
13 79 (0.93%) Citrix
14 76 (0.90%) Ariba
14 76 (0.90%) Sage
15 74 (0.87%) CyberArk
16 55 (0.65%) OpenAI
17 54 (0.64%) Informatica
18 51 (0.60%) Bloomberg
19 48 (0.57%) Murex