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 17 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,659 6,392 8,394
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.05% 20.98% 18.79%
As % of the General category 32.47% 33.80% 32.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,859 3,976 5,712
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £673 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £797
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £505
% change year-on-year - -0.99% -2.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 90 170
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.11 £11.86
25th Percentile £17.09 £22.50 £14.07
Median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £20.97
Median % change year-on-year -32.86% +66.94% -16.14%
75th Percentile £42.43 £64.69 £38.12
90th Percentile £70.75 £83.20 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year -20.00% +41.03% -43.61%

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 23,589 18,910 26,233
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.66% 62.08% 58.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,768 11,381 16,900
10th Percentile £298 £284 £266
25th Percentile £404 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £644 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £500
% change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,455 595 1,648
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.36 £20.12 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +12.80% -4.78%
75th Percentile £50.00 £57.50 £53.38
90th Percentile £71.80 £75.00 £67.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.73 £27.13 £24.83
% change year-on-year -19.91% +9.26% -0.70%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 17 February 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 6,740 £537 -8.60% 3,642
London -1 4,104 £575 -6.12% 1,686
UK excluding London -1 3,040 £500 - 2,762
Work from Home -1 2,167 £525 -11.09% 1,543
North of England +2 975 £475 - 631
South East -1 556 £503 -3.83% 1,041
Midlands -3 538 £485 -3.00% 408
North West +4 496 £450 -3.85% 352
Yorkshire 0 431 £509 -0.63% 222
Scotland 0 390 £475 +1.99% 130
West Midlands -3 341 £500 -9.09% 232
South West -6 301 £513 -2.38% 281
East Midlands 0 195 £449 +6.85% 174
East of England 0 191 £533 +1.43% 222
Wales +31 97 £413 +1.54% 75
Northern Ireland -2 50 £525 +61.54% 36
North East -6 49 £488 +8.33% 71
Channel Islands +2 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
1 318 (4.15%) Confluence
2 204 (2.66%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.94%) Apache Spark
4 62 (0.81%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.64%) Apache
6 43 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.42%) SAS
8 24 (0.31%) CMS
9 21 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 16 (0.21%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.17%) CICS
12 13 (0.17%) HCL Notes
12 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.17%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.17%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
14 10 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 525 (6.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 291 (3.80%) Microsoft Office
3 202 (2.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 179 (2.34%) Microsoft Project
5 137 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 18 (0.24%) Sketch
9 17 (0.22%) Trello
10 13 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.10%) InVision
13 7 (0.091%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.065%) Notion
14 5 (0.065%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.026%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.026%) InDesign
16 2 (0.026%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 308 (4.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.51%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.25%) Oracle Receivables
4 71 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
4 71 (0.93%) Oracle General Ledger
5 70 (0.91%) SAP FI
6 65 (0.85%) NetSuite
7 62 (0.81%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 60 (0.78%) SAP CO
9 59 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.69%) SAP FI/CO
11 45 (0.59%) Oracle Assets
12 41 (0.54%) Oracle Cash Management
13 39 (0.51%) Oracle EBS R12
13 39 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
14 38 (0.50%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 36 (0.47%) Workday HCM
16 35 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
17 34 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
18 24 (0.31%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,155 (15.08%) Azure
2 937 (12.23%) AWS
3 544 (7.10%) Power Platform
4 388 (5.07%) GCP
5 267 (3.49%) Microsoft 365
6 252 (3.29%) SaaS
7 231 (3.02%) Azure DevOps
8 224 (2.92%) Dynamics 365
9 202 (2.64%) GitHub
10 143 (1.87%) Serverless
11 142 (1.85%) OCI
12 127 (1.66%) Snowflake
13 122 (1.59%) Entra ID
14 94 (1.23%) Amazon S3
15 91 (1.19%) Power Automate
16 90 (1.18%) GitHub Actions
17 76 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 74 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
19 71 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
19 71 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 139 (1.81%) Firewall
2 77 (1.01%) Network Security
3 68 (0.89%) WAN
4 48 (0.63%) DNS
5 44 (0.57%) VPN
6 40 (0.52%) LAN
7 37 (0.48%) SD-WAN
8 34 (0.44%) TCP/IP
9 32 (0.42%) Wireless
10 31 (0.40%) Skype
11 26 (0.34%) SSL
12 23 (0.30%) HTTP
13 21 (0.27%) BGP
13 21 (0.27%) DHCP
14 20 (0.26%) OSPF
15 19 (0.25%) Internet
15 19 (0.25%) Multicast
16 18 (0.24%) SSH
17 16 (0.21%) Kerberos
18 13 (0.17%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 478 (6.24%) Power BI
2 202 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
3 188 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 170 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
5 140 (1.83%) Tableau
6 126 (1.65%) Metadata
7 123 (1.61%) NoSQL
8 119 (1.55%) Relational Database
9 115 (1.50%) Data Lake
10 85 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
11 71 (0.93%) Oracle Database
12 69 (0.90%) Big Data
13 68 (0.89%) MongoDB
14 57 (0.74%) BigQuery
15 44 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 38 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 35 (0.46%) Hadoop
17 35 (0.46%) MySQL
18 34 (0.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
19 33 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 610 (7.96%) JIRA
2 250 (3.26%) Jenkins
3 207 (2.70%) Git
4 153 (2.00%) GitLab
5 69 (0.90%) JUnit
6 57 (0.74%) Cucumber
7 47 (0.61%) Sonatype Nexus
8 46 (0.60%) Selenium
9 38 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 36 (0.47%) Postman
11 32 (0.42%) Visual Studio
12 26 (0.34%) MLflow
13 24 (0.31%) Gradle
14 22 (0.29%) Liquibase
14 22 (0.29%) Maven
15 21 (0.27%) REST Assured
16 16 (0.21%) Cypress.io
16 16 (0.21%) JMeter
16 16 (0.21%) SonarQube
17 15 (0.20%) ERwin
General
1 2,651 (34.61%) Social Skills
2 1,519 (19.83%) Banking
3 1,007 (13.15%) Analytical Skills
4 622 (8.12%) Public Sector
5 334 (4.36%) Financial Institution
6 303 (3.96%) Marketing
7 279 (3.64%) Front Office
8 276 (3.60%) Investment Banking
9 271 (3.54%) Legal
10 269 (3.51%) Manufacturing
11 259 (3.38%) Telecoms
12 234 (3.06%) Organisational Skills
13 218 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
14 172 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
15 162 (2.12%) Electronics
16 160 (2.09%) Retail
17 131 (1.71%) General Ledger
18 127 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
19 117 (1.53%) Billing
19 117 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1,240 (16.19%) Analyst
2 857 (11.19%) Developer
3 762 (9.95%) Senior
4 667 (8.71%) Business Analyst
5 638 (8.33%) Architect
6 619 (8.08%) Lead
7 592 (7.73%) Project Manager
8 557 (7.27%) Consultant
9 271 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
10 195 (2.55%) Data Analyst
11 181 (2.36%) Data Engineer
12 175 (2.28%) Programme Manager
13 171 (2.23%) Financial Analyst
14 148 (1.93%) Java Developer
15 147 (1.92%) Senior Manager
16 143 (1.87%) Software Engineer
17 140 (1.83%) Senior Developer
18 125 (1.63%) Finance Manager
19 116 (1.51%) Senior Analyst
20 113 (1.48%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 277 (3.62%) REST
2 252 (3.29%) Kafka
3 199 (2.60%) .NET
4 191 (2.49%) React
5 155 (2.02%) Oracle Fusion
6 150 (1.96%) RESTful
7 147 (1.92%) Spring
8 133 (1.74%) Middleware
9 123 (1.61%) Spring Boot
10 103 (1.34%) AngularJS
11 100 (1.31%) Node.js
12 88 (1.15%) Pandas
12 88 (1.15%) XML
13 84 (1.10%) HTML
14 82 (1.07%) PySpark
15 78 (1.02%) CSS
15 78 (1.02%) NumPy
16 75 (0.98%) JSON
17 73 (0.95%) OAuth
18 68 (0.89%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 326 (4.26%) Onboarding
2 306 (4.00%) Product Ownership
3 225 (2.94%) Cloud Native
4 178 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
5 173 (2.26%) Management Information System
6 171 (2.23%) Derivative
7 156 (2.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 144 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
9 140 (1.83%) Data Centre
10 139 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
11 128 (1.67%) Data Structures
12 127 (1.66%) Fixed Income
13 126 (1.65%) Equities
14 108 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
15 107 (1.40%) Public Cloud
16 96 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
17 82 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
18 81 (1.06%) Virtual Team
19 79 (1.03%) Hedge funds
20 68 (0.89%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 338 (4.41%) Linux
2 298 (3.89%) Windows
3 148 (1.93%) Unix
4 66 (0.86%) Windows 10
5 61 (0.80%) Mac OS
6 60 (0.78%) Android
7 57 (0.74%) Windows Server
8 31 (0.40%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 12 (0.16%) zOS
11 9 (0.12%) Solaris
12 8 (0.10%) AIX
13 7 (0.091%) VMS
14 5 (0.065%) CentOS
14 5 (0.065%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2016
16 3 (0.039%) Ubuntu
17 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,714 (22.38%) Agile
2 1,456 (19.01%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,235 (16.12%) Problem-Solving
4 924 (12.06%) Migration
5 844 (11.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 803 (10.48%) DevOps
7 781 (10.20%) CI/CD
8 754 (9.84%) Business Intelligence
9 753 (9.83%) Analytics
10 746 (9.74%) Project Management
11 700 (9.14%) Continuous Improvement
12 684 (8.93%) ERP
13 602 (7.86%) AI
14 569 (7.43%) Decision-Making
15 567 (7.40%) Roadmaps
16 554 (7.23%) Change Management
17 546 (7.13%) Data Modelling
18 526 (6.87%) Risk Management
19 498 (6.50%) User Acceptance Testing
20 495 (6.46%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,130 (14.75%) SQL
2 999 (13.04%) Python
3 548 (7.15%) Java
4 298 (3.89%) C#
5 228 (2.98%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.59%) PowerShell
7 180 (2.35%) TypeScript
8 149 (1.95%) C++
9 80 (1.04%) PL/SQL
10 79 (1.03%) Go
11 68 (0.89%) Bash
12 52 (0.68%) VBA
13 45 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 42 (0.55%) R
14 42 (0.55%) T-SQL
15 41 (0.54%) Kotlin
16 36 (0.47%) Scala
17 33 (0.43%) Rust
18 32 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 27 (0.35%) Korn
Qualifications
1 822 (10.73%) Degree
2 604 (7.89%) Security Cleared
3 446 (5.82%) SC Cleared
4 190 (2.48%) PMI Certification
5 181 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 179 (2.34%) PMP
7 174 (2.27%) Master's Degree
8 157 (2.05%) ACCA
9 148 (1.93%) CIMA
10 122 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 87 (1.14%) CISSP
12 84 (1.10%) AWS Certification
13 70 (0.91%) DV Cleared
14 62 (0.81%) Azure Certification
15 61 (0.80%) CISM
16 44 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
17 36 (0.47%) CBAP
17 36 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
18 35 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
19 32 (0.42%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 390 (5.09%) QA
2 378 (4.94%) Data Quality
3 296 (3.86%) PMO
4 260 (3.39%) GDPR
5 125 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 124 (1.62%) NIST
7 111 (1.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 98 (1.28%) SLA
9 87 (1.14%) Accessibility
10 79 (1.03%) IFRS
10 79 (1.03%) PCI DSS
11 66 (0.86%) GRC
12 60 (0.78%) ISO 20022
13 47 (0.61%) PSD2
14 39 (0.51%) SEPA
15 38 (0.50%) MiFID
16 35 (0.46%) GAAP
17 34 (0.44%) NCSC
18 31 (0.40%) Basel III
19 29 (0.38%) COBIT
System Software
1 339 (4.43%) Docker
2 192 (2.51%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
5 26 (0.34%) vSphere
6 13 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.12%) GPFS
9 9 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.091%) HDFS
12 4 (0.052%) ISA Server
12 4 (0.052%) KVM
13 3 (0.039%) Firmware
13 3 (0.039%) RACF
13 3 (0.039%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (0.039%) Tivoli Directory Server
14 2 (0.026%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 403 (5.26%) Kubernetes
2 249 (3.25%) Terraform
3 158 (2.06%) Ansible
4 95 (1.24%) Grafana
5 87 (1.14%) Prometheus
6 55 (0.72%) SCCM
7 52 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
8 36 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 22 (0.29%) FortiGate
9 22 (0.29%) SCOM
10 21 (0.27%) HP SiteScope
10 21 (0.27%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.22%) Argo
11 17 (0.22%) Control-M
12 16 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
13 14 (0.18%) Kibana
13 14 (0.18%) vRealize
14 12 (0.16%) AirWatch
14 12 (0.16%) ITRS Geneos
15 10 (0.13%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,032 (13.47%) Microsoft
2 793 (10.35%) SAP
3 674 (8.80%) Oracle
4 295 (3.85%) ServiceNow
5 182 (2.38%) Salesforce
6 177 (2.31%) Databricks
7 174 (2.27%) Google
8 160 (2.09%) Splunk
9 154 (2.01%) Cisco
10 138 (1.80%) Workday
11 105 (1.37%) VMware
12 94 (1.23%) IBM
13 73 (0.95%) Citrix
13 73 (0.95%) CyberArk
14 66 (0.86%) Ariba
15 55 (0.72%) OpenAI
16 52 (0.68%) HP
17 51 (0.67%) Bloomberg
18 50 (0.65%) Murex
19 48 (0.63%) Dell