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 25 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,396 6,850 8,222
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.46% 22.75% 18.87%
As % of the General category 33.92% 35.80% 33.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,865 4,475 5,511
10th Percentile £354 £350 £350
25th Percentile £443 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £690 £715
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £489 £500
% change year-on-year +2.25% -2.20% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 134 269
10th Percentile £14.91 £16.89 £12.79
25th Percentile £18.96 £24.66 £15.22
Median hourly rate £35.27 £36.00 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.04% +28.57% -6.67%
75th Percentile £54.06 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £88.00 £79.25 £56.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.13 £29.27 £28.00
% change year-on-year +47.35% +4.54% -41.53%

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 27,698 19,134 24,851
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.43% 63.53% 57.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,710 12,053 15,562
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,885 916 2,005
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.41 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.47 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.50 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.36% -12.70% +5.00%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.03 £72.50 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £23.10 £30.00
% change year-on-year +36.19% -23.00% +17.19%

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 25 June 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 25 June 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 25 June 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 8,243 £550 - 2,866
London 0 4,935 £575 -4.17% 1,200
UK excluding London +1 3,769 £500 +2.25% 2,359
Work from Home -1 2,716 £550 -4.35% 1,217
North of England +2 1,289 £500 +7.53% 573
South East -1 688 £500 -4.76% 826
North West +4 681 £468 +3.89% 298
Midlands 0 651 £500 +11.11% 362
Yorkshire 0 562 £525 +9.95% 209
West Midlands +1 478 £500 +2.15% 212
Scotland 0 472 £500 +5.26% 119
South West -3 379 £525 - 242
East of England +2 196 £513 -10.87% 191
East Midlands -1 166 £475 +13.77% 149
Wales +5 89 £530 +13.98% 71
Northern Ireland -1 56 £475 +11.76% 29
North East -18 47 £500 +13.96% 77
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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 (3.60%) Confluence
2 228 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 89 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 69 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
5 58 (0.62%) Apache
6 53 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 32 (0.34%) SAS
8 28 (0.30%) CMS
9 22 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.20%) CICS
11 16 (0.17%) IIS
12 12 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.13%) Camunda
13 11 (0.12%) Appian
13 11 (0.12%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.12%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.064%) Hyperledger
15 6 (0.064%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.053%) Mendix
Applications
1 520 (5.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (2.37%) Microsoft Office
3 173 (1.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.65%) Microsoft Project
5 118 (1.26%) MS Visio
6 66 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.074%) Sketch
9 6 (0.064%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.053%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.053%) Trello
11 4 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
11 4 (0.043%) InVision
11 4 (0.043%) Notion
11 4 (0.043%) Oracle Smart View
11 4 (0.043%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.021%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Final Cut Pro
13 1 (0.011%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 429 (4.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 112 (1.19%) NetSuite
3 111 (1.18%) Oracle Payables
4 89 (0.95%) Oracle Receivables
5 86 (0.92%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 74 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
7 63 (0.67%) SAP FI
8 48 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
9 47 (0.50%) SAP CO
10 46 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
11 45 (0.48%) Oracle General Ledger
11 45 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
12 38 (0.40%) Aladdin
13 35 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
14 33 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 29 (0.31%) SAP ERP
16 27 (0.29%) Unit4 Business World
17 26 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
18 25 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
19 23 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,483 (15.78%) Azure
2 1,058 (11.26%) AWS
3 627 (6.67%) Power Platform
4 469 (4.99%) GCP
5 322 (3.43%) Azure DevOps
6 313 (3.33%) SaaS
7 288 (3.07%) Microsoft 365
8 241 (2.56%) GitHub
9 215 (2.29%) Dynamics 365
10 193 (2.05%) Snowflake
11 173 (1.84%) Entra ID
12 144 (1.53%) Serverless
13 128 (1.36%) OCI
14 122 (1.30%) Amazon S3
15 110 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 105 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
17 94 (1.00%) Microsoft Copilot
18 90 (0.96%) dbt
18 90 (0.96%) GitHub Actions
19 84 (0.89%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 177 (1.88%) Firewall
2 142 (1.51%) Network Security
3 77 (0.82%) DNS
4 75 (0.80%) WAN
5 69 (0.73%) VPN
6 61 (0.65%) TCP/IP
7 44 (0.47%) BGP
8 38 (0.40%) LAN
9 37 (0.39%) SSL
10 36 (0.38%) HTTP
11 35 (0.37%) SD-WAN
12 31 (0.33%) Multicast
12 31 (0.33%) OSPF
13 29 (0.31%) DHCP
14 24 (0.26%) Internet
14 24 (0.26%) MPLS
15 21 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
16 19 (0.20%) VSAN
17 17 (0.18%) VLAN
18 16 (0.17%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 536 (5.70%) Power BI
2 255 (2.71%) SQL Server
3 239 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
4 197 (2.10%) Metadata
5 177 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
6 176 (1.87%) Relational Database
7 148 (1.58%) Tableau
8 144 (1.53%) Data Lake
9 92 (0.98%) NoSQL
10 85 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (0.79%) Big Data
11 74 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 69 (0.73%) BigQuery
13 68 (0.72%) MongoDB
14 58 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
15 49 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 48 (0.51%) Power Query
17 45 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
17 45 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 40 (0.43%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 686 (7.30%) JIRA
2 236 (2.51%) Git
3 169 (1.80%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.03%) GitLab
5 58 (0.62%) JUnit
6 47 (0.50%) Cucumber
7 39 (0.42%) Selenium
8 30 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
9 29 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 28 (0.30%) Postman
11 25 (0.27%) ERwin
11 25 (0.27%) MLflow
12 24 (0.26%) REST Assured
13 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
14 21 (0.22%) Maven
15 19 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
16 18 (0.19%) Zephyr
17 17 (0.18%) Hudson
18 16 (0.17%) TeamCity
19 15 (0.16%) Gradle
General
1 2,762 (29.40%) Social Skills
2 1,744 (18.56%) Banking
3 1,223 (13.02%) Analytical Skills
4 522 (5.56%) Public Sector
5 461 (4.91%) Legal
6 376 (4.00%) Investment Banking
7 359 (3.82%) Financial Institution
8 337 (3.59%) Front Office
9 302 (3.21%) Retail
10 301 (3.20%) Organisational Skills
11 235 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
12 234 (2.49%) Influencing Skills
13 172 (1.83%) Manufacturing
14 170 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 157 (1.67%) General Ledger
16 152 (1.62%) Local Government
17 146 (1.55%) Billing
18 136 (1.45%) Marketing
19 132 (1.40%) Law
20 130 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,391 (14.80%) Analyst
2 1,017 (10.82%) Senior
3 992 (10.56%) Lead
4 936 (9.96%) Developer
5 870 (9.26%) Architect
6 715 (7.61%) Project Manager
7 711 (7.57%) Business Analyst
8 637 (6.78%) Consultant
9 348 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
10 317 (3.37%) Data Engineer
11 226 (2.41%) Financial Analyst
12 222 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 198 (2.11%) Data Analyst
14 196 (2.09%) Accountant
15 195 (2.08%) Java Developer
16 193 (2.05%) Finance Manager
17 176 (1.87%) Programme Manager
18 175 (1.86%) Software Engineer
19 173 (1.84%) Senior Developer
20 166 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 290 (3.09%) REST
2 264 (2.81%) React
3 262 (2.79%) .NET
3 262 (2.79%) Kafka
4 203 (2.16%) Oracle Fusion
5 191 (2.03%) Middleware
6 175 (1.86%) Spring
7 166 (1.77%) Spring Boot
8 135 (1.44%) RESTful
9 117 (1.25%) Redux
10 113 (1.20%) PySpark
11 109 (1.16%) Node.js
12 92 (0.98%) AngularJS
13 90 (0.96%) JSON
14 88 (0.94%) OAuth
15 78 (0.83%) XML
16 65 (0.69%) CSS
17 62 (0.66%) OpenID
18 61 (0.65%) GraphQL
19 59 (0.63%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 426 (4.53%) Onboarding
2 401 (4.27%) Product Ownership
3 396 (4.21%) Cloud Native
4 256 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
5 215 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 207 (2.20%) Data Structures
7 168 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
7 168 (1.79%) Derivative
8 167 (1.78%) Fixed Income
8 167 (1.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 164 (1.75%) Data Centre
10 163 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
11 143 (1.52%) Virtual Team
12 127 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
13 124 (1.32%) Equities
14 115 (1.22%) AI Agents
14 115 (1.22%) Public Cloud
15 103 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
16 101 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
17 88 (0.94%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 316 (3.36%) Windows
2 272 (2.89%) Linux
3 148 (1.58%) Unix
4 71 (0.76%) Windows Server
5 38 (0.40%) Solaris
6 36 (0.38%) Windows 10
7 35 (0.37%) zOS
8 34 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 34 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 28 (0.30%) Android
10 20 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 19 (0.20%) AIX
12 7 (0.074%) Oracle Linux
12 7 (0.074%) Ubuntu
12 7 (0.074%) VMS
13 5 (0.053%) HPUX
13 5 (0.053%) SUSE
13 5 (0.053%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.043%) MVS
15 3 (0.032%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,018 (21.48%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,894 (20.16%) Agile
3 1,306 (13.90%) Migration
4 1,257 (13.38%) Problem-Solving
5 1,077 (11.46%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,033 (10.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,008 (10.73%) AI
8 1,001 (10.65%) DevOps
9 983 (10.46%) ERP
10 969 (10.31%) CI/CD
11 921 (9.80%) Analytics
12 825 (8.78%) Decision-Making
13 789 (8.40%) Project Management
14 785 (8.35%) Validation
15 775 (8.25%) Data Modelling
16 759 (8.08%) Roadmaps
17 741 (7.89%) User Acceptance Testing
18 675 (7.18%) Business Intelligence
19 671 (7.14%) Change Management
20 599 (6.38%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,262 (13.43%) SQL
2 1,148 (12.22%) Python
3 633 (6.74%) Java
4 378 (4.02%) C#
5 256 (2.72%) JavaScript
6 254 (2.70%) TypeScript
7 215 (2.29%) PowerShell
8 91 (0.97%) C++
9 89 (0.95%) Bash
10 82 (0.87%) PL/SQL
11 78 (0.83%) Go
12 72 (0.77%) T-SQL
13 57 (0.61%) Shell Script
14 56 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.49%) Scala
15 46 (0.49%) VBA
16 33 (0.35%) Bicep
17 32 (0.34%) Apex Code
17 32 (0.34%) Rust
18 29 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 741 (7.89%) Degree
2 700 (7.45%) Security Cleared
3 500 (5.32%) SC Cleared
4 229 (2.44%) ACCA
5 222 (2.36%) PMP
6 207 (2.20%) CIMA
7 196 (2.09%) PMI Certification
8 187 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
9 155 (1.65%) CISSP
10 137 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
11 94 (1.00%) DV Cleared
12 92 (0.98%) CISM
13 87 (0.93%) Master's Degree
14 83 (0.88%) Azure Certification
15 72 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 52 (0.55%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
18 39 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 39 (0.42%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 33 (0.35%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 578 (6.15%) Data Quality
2 413 (4.40%) QA
3 330 (3.51%) PMO
4 305 (3.25%) GDPR
5 163 (1.73%) NIST
6 129 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 119 (1.27%) IFRS
8 112 (1.19%) SLA
9 106 (1.13%) GRC
10 105 (1.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 90 (0.96%) Accessibility
12 66 (0.70%) GAAP
13 65 (0.69%) ISO 20022
14 64 (0.68%) PCI DSS
15 39 (0.42%) SEPA
16 37 (0.39%) NCSC
17 36 (0.38%) Solvency II
18 34 (0.36%) PSD2
19 31 (0.33%) IFRS 17
20 29 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 279 (2.97%) Docker
2 189 (2.01%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
4 29 (0.31%) vSphere
5 23 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 16 (0.17%) RACF
7 15 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 11 (0.12%) NFS
10 10 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.064%) GPFS
11 6 (0.064%) KVM
12 5 (0.053%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.043%) Firmware
14 3 (0.032%) GridGain
14 3 (0.032%) SRDF
15 2 (0.021%) ACF2
15 2 (0.021%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 423 (4.50%) Kubernetes
2 287 (3.05%) Terraform
3 153 (1.63%) Ansible
4 87 (0.93%) Grafana
5 74 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 66 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.53%) SCCM
8 47 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (0.31%) FortiGate
10 26 (0.28%) Control-M
11 18 (0.19%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.19%) vRealize
12 15 (0.16%) Argo
12 15 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (0.15%) Nessus
14 13 (0.14%) OMEGAMON
14 13 (0.14%) Puppet
15 12 (0.13%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,193 (12.70%) Microsoft
2 832 (8.85%) SAP
3 786 (8.37%) Oracle
4 332 (3.53%) ServiceNow
5 291 (3.10%) Databricks
6 213 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 209 (2.22%) Google
8 137 (1.46%) Workday
9 123 (1.31%) IBM
10 117 (1.25%) Cisco
11 114 (1.21%) Splunk
11 114 (1.21%) VMware
12 93 (0.99%) CyberArk
13 83 (0.88%) Ariba
14 70 (0.74%) OpenAI
15 67 (0.71%) Sage
16 63 (0.67%) Citrix
17 56 (0.60%) Informatica
18 54 (0.57%) Bloomberg
19 49 (0.52%) Palo Alto