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 20 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,646 6,447 8,067
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 17.96% 22.10% 18.96%
As % of the General category 33.54% 34.97% 32.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,406 4,202 5,395
10th Percentile £356 £350 £356
25th Percentile £440 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £580
Median % change year-on-year - -5.17% -3.33%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £511
% change year-on-year - -2.20% -2.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 113 248
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.88 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.93 £22.27 £15.13
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +48.31% +0.47%
75th Percentile £54.25 £66.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £42.92 £30.00
% change year-on-year -44.49% +43.06% -36.84%

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 25,779 18,437 24,689
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.54% 63.21% 58.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,722 11,709 15,577
10th Percentile £310 £285 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.45% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,651 797 1,928
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.96 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.33 £16.95 £15.42
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £59.50 £56.00 £52.57
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £66.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.96 £24.62 £28.00
% change year-on-year +13.55% -12.06% -3.45%

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 20 May 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 20 May 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 20 May 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 7,650 £550 -4.35% 4,548
London 0 4,608 £575 -8.00% 2,436
UK excluding London 0 3,461 £500 - 2,832
Work from Home -2 2,408 £538 -7.73% 1,894
North of England +3 1,176 £492 +3.58% 724
South East -1 641 £503 -2.30% 905
North West +5 619 £466 +0.11% 408
Midlands -1 584 £492 +3.58% 408
Yorkshire +1 516 £519 +9.16% 240
Scotland 0 418 £500 +5.26% 175
West Midlands 0 395 £500 -4.76% 256
South West -2 359 £525 - 316
East of England +2 204 £523 -5.00% 224
East Midlands 0 185 £465 +5.68% 150
Wales +20 89 £450 +16.13% 62
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +28.05% 72
North East -15 42 £488 +3.72% 85
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
1 318 (3.68%) Confluence
2 216 (2.50%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.02%) Apache Spark
4 54 (0.62%) Apache
5 53 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
6 51 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.37%) SAS
8 23 (0.27%) CMS
9 20 (0.23%) CICS
10 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 17 (0.20%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Appian
13 12 (0.14%) Camunda
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.12%) Jupyter
15 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
16 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
17 8 (0.093%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 503 (5.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.57%) Microsoft Office
3 166 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 166 (1.92%) Microsoft Project
4 127 (1.47%) MS Visio
5 47 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
6 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.12%) Trello
8 8 (0.093%) Sketch
9 7 (0.081%) InVision
9 7 (0.081%) Notion
10 6 (0.069%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.012%) MicroStation
13 1 (0.012%) UXPin
13 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 391 (4.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.20%) NetSuite
4 98 (1.13%) Oracle Receivables
5 84 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 65 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
7 61 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
8 57 (0.66%) SAP FI
9 56 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
10 47 (0.54%) SAP CO
11 44 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
12 43 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
13 37 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
14 35 (0.40%) Aladdin
15 32 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
16 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
17 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 27 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
19 24 (0.28%) SAP ERP
19 24 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,330 (15.38%) Azure
2 957 (11.07%) AWS
3 600 (6.94%) Power Platform
4 384 (4.44%) GCP
5 300 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
6 296 (3.42%) SaaS
7 270 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
8 241 (2.79%) Dynamics 365
9 228 (2.64%) GitHub
10 155 (1.79%) Snowflake
11 145 (1.68%) Entra ID
12 136 (1.57%) Serverless
13 125 (1.45%) OCI
14 115 (1.33%) Power Automate
15 111 (1.28%) Amazon S3
16 93 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 85 (0.98%) OpenShift
18 84 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
19 78 (0.90%) PowerApps
20 76 (0.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 155 (1.79%) Firewall
2 117 (1.35%) Network Security
3 75 (0.87%) WAN
4 73 (0.84%) DNS
5 59 (0.68%) VPN
6 55 (0.64%) TCP/IP
7 39 (0.45%) BGP
8 38 (0.44%) LAN
8 38 (0.44%) SD-WAN
9 33 (0.38%) HTTP
10 29 (0.34%) OSPF
10 29 (0.34%) SSL
11 28 (0.32%) Multicast
12 27 (0.31%) DHCP
13 24 (0.28%) MPLS
14 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
14 20 (0.23%) VSAN
15 18 (0.21%) Internet
15 18 (0.21%) VLAN
16 12 (0.14%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 504 (5.83%) Power BI
2 216 (2.50%) SQL Server
3 209 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
4 167 (1.93%) Metadata
5 159 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
6 152 (1.76%) Tableau
7 149 (1.72%) Relational Database
8 123 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 89 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 81 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (0.87%) Big Data
12 67 (0.77%) Oracle Database
13 59 (0.68%) BigQuery
13 59 (0.68%) MongoDB
14 46 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
15 44 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
15 44 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 42 (0.49%) Delta Lake
17 38 (0.44%) DynamoDB
18 35 (0.40%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 667 (7.71%) JIRA
2 199 (2.30%) Git
3 166 (1.92%) Jenkins
4 98 (1.13%) GitLab
5 45 (0.52%) JUnit
6 43 (0.50%) Cucumber
7 38 (0.44%) Selenium
8 31 (0.36%) Visual Studio
9 28 (0.32%) Postman
9 28 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 23 (0.27%) MLflow
11 22 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 19 (0.22%) Maven
14 17 (0.20%) ERwin
14 17 (0.20%) Hudson
15 16 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
16 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
17 13 (0.15%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,523 (29.18%) Social Skills
2 1,553 (17.96%) Banking
3 1,135 (13.13%) Analytical Skills
4 515 (5.96%) Public Sector
5 367 (4.24%) Legal
6 331 (3.83%) Financial Institution
7 302 (3.49%) Investment Banking
8 277 (3.20%) Front Office
9 266 (3.08%) Retail
10 238 (2.75%) Organisational Skills
11 235 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
12 210 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
13 172 (1.99%) Manufacturing
14 157 (1.82%) Marketing
15 143 (1.65%) General Ledger
16 138 (1.60%) Telecoms
17 129 (1.49%) Local Government
18 120 (1.39%) Law
19 117 (1.35%) Billing
19 117 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,313 (15.19%) Analyst
2 910 (10.53%) Senior
3 872 (10.09%) Lead
4 868 (10.04%) Developer
5 798 (9.23%) Architect
6 717 (8.29%) Business Analyst
7 684 (7.91%) Project Manager
8 593 (6.86%) Consultant
9 333 (3.85%) Solutions Architect
10 280 (3.24%) Data Engineer
11 216 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 204 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 189 (2.19%) Data Analyst
14 187 (2.16%) Finance Manager
15 177 (2.05%) Programme Manager
16 175 (2.02%) Accountant
17 149 (1.72%) Software Engineer
18 146 (1.69%) Java Developer
19 141 (1.63%) Senior Analyst
20 140 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 259 (3.00%) Kafka
2 246 (2.85%) REST
3 236 (2.73%) .NET
4 204 (2.36%) React
5 188 (2.17%) Middleware
6 164 (1.90%) Oracle Fusion
7 149 (1.72%) Spring
8 144 (1.67%) Spring Boot
9 134 (1.55%) RESTful
10 104 (1.20%) Node.js
10 104 (1.20%) PySpark
11 95 (1.10%) AngularJS
12 80 (0.93%) OAuth
13 78 (0.90%) Redux
14 77 (0.89%) JSON
15 70 (0.81%) XML
16 68 (0.79%) HTML
17 67 (0.77%) CSS
18 63 (0.73%) Pandas
19 61 (0.71%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 376 (4.35%) Onboarding
2 354 (4.09%) Product Ownership
3 318 (3.68%) Cloud Native
4 231 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
5 198 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 188 (2.17%) Data Structures
7 169 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
7 169 (1.95%) Derivative
8 151 (1.75%) Data Centre
9 137 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
10 134 (1.55%) Fixed Income
11 130 (1.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 102 (1.18%) Equities
13 101 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
14 97 (1.12%) Public Cloud
14 97 (1.12%) Virtual Team
15 92 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
16 90 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
17 71 (0.82%) AI Agents
18 66 (0.76%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 270 (3.12%) Windows
2 251 (2.90%) Linux
3 135 (1.56%) Unix
4 71 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 40 (0.46%) Windows 10
6 32 (0.37%) Solaris
7 28 (0.32%) Apple iOS
8 26 (0.30%) Android
9 25 (0.29%) zOS
10 20 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 17 (0.20%) AIX
11 17 (0.20%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.081%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.069%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.058%) VMS
15 4 (0.046%) HPUX
15 4 (0.046%) MVS
15 4 (0.046%) SUSE
15 4 (0.046%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,787 (20.67%) Agile
2 1,729 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,193 (13.80%) Problem-Solving
4 1,182 (13.67%) Migration
5 953 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
6 925 (10.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 919 (10.63%) ERP
8 907 (10.49%) DevOps
9 847 (9.80%) CI/CD
10 840 (9.72%) AI
11 812 (9.39%) Analytics
12 787 (9.10%) Project Management
13 719 (8.32%) Decision-Making
14 701 (8.11%) Data Modelling
15 688 (7.96%) Roadmaps
16 684 (7.91%) Business Intelligence
17 672 (7.77%) Validation
18 668 (7.73%) User Acceptance Testing
19 610 (7.06%) Change Management
20 567 (6.56%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,170 (13.53%) SQL
2 1,011 (11.69%) Python
3 551 (6.37%) Java
4 337 (3.90%) C#
5 217 (2.51%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.31%) TypeScript
7 158 (1.83%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.21%) C++
9 74 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 69 (0.80%) Go
11 66 (0.76%) Bash
12 63 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.51%) Scala
16 40 (0.46%) VBA
17 30 (0.35%) R
18 27 (0.31%) Apex Code
19 26 (0.30%) Kotlin
19 26 (0.30%) Rust
Qualifications
1 732 (8.47%) Degree
2 688 (7.96%) Security Cleared
3 492 (5.69%) SC Cleared
4 213 (2.46%) ACCA
5 207 (2.39%) PMP
6 196 (2.27%) CIMA
7 191 (2.21%) PMI Certification
8 141 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 126 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
10 123 (1.42%) CISSP
11 100 (1.16%) Master's Degree
12 84 (0.97%) CISM
13 81 (0.94%) DV Cleared
14 65 (0.75%) Azure Certification
15 57 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
16 48 (0.56%) AWS Certification
17 38 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 34 (0.39%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) CBAP
20 30 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 502 (5.81%) Data Quality
2 400 (4.63%) QA
3 312 (3.61%) PMO
4 278 (3.22%) GDPR
5 161 (1.86%) NIST
6 125 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 106 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 106 (1.23%) SLA
8 103 (1.19%) IFRS
9 90 (1.04%) GRC
10 81 (0.94%) Accessibility
11 66 (0.76%) PCI DSS
12 60 (0.69%) ISO 20022
13 56 (0.65%) GAAP
14 37 (0.43%) SEPA
15 36 (0.42%) NCSC
16 35 (0.40%) PSD2
17 27 (0.31%) MiFID
18 26 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
18 26 (0.30%) EMIR
System Software
1 275 (3.18%) Docker
2 152 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 29 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.16%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.14%) NFS
10 8 (0.093%) GPFS
11 6 (0.069%) KVM
12 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.046%) Firmware
13 4 (0.046%) HDFS
13 4 (0.046%) RACF
14 3 (0.035%) GridGain
14 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.035%) SRDF
15 2 (0.023%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 394 (4.56%) Kubernetes
2 242 (2.80%) Terraform
3 121 (1.40%) Ansible
4 84 (0.97%) Grafana
5 67 (0.77%) Prometheus
6 61 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 44 (0.51%) SCCM
8 37 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 17 (0.20%) Control-M
10 17 (0.20%) vRealize
11 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 15 (0.17%) Argo
12 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
12 14 (0.16%) Puppet
13 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
14 12 (0.14%) Nessus
15 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
16 8 (0.093%) Kiali
Vendors
1 1,104 (12.77%) Microsoft
2 780 (9.02%) SAP
3 722 (8.35%) Oracle
4 315 (3.64%) ServiceNow
5 240 (2.78%) Databricks
6 191 (2.21%) Salesforce
7 171 (1.98%) Google
8 130 (1.50%) Workday
9 116 (1.34%) Cisco
10 115 (1.33%) Splunk
11 105 (1.21%) VMware
12 90 (1.04%) IBM
13 78 (0.90%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.86%) Ariba
15 72 (0.83%) Citrix
16 66 (0.76%) Sage
17 57 (0.66%) OpenAI
18 52 (0.60%) IFS
19 51 (0.59%) Informatica
19 51 (0.59%) Palo Alto