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 9 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,917 6,401 8,359
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.75% 21.51% 18.69%
As % of the General category 32.61% 34.39% 31.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,034 4,159 5,630
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.54%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £696
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £509
% change year-on-year - -1.77% -2.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 196 107 214
10th Percentile £14.50 £17.58 £12.82
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.66 £35.00 £26.70
Median % change year-on-year -32.39% +31.11% -5.02%
75th Percentile £40.88 £65.50 £38.12
90th Percentile £67.31 £81.28 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £36.00 £26.70
% change year-on-year -38.89% +34.86% -23.73%

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 24,278 18,615 26,141
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.49% 62.56% 58.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,215 11,713 16,724
10th Percentile £300 £290 £263
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,481 657 1,815
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.26 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.35
Median hourly rate £24.03 £29.23 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -17.79% +13.69% -19.66%
75th Percentile £55.00 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £27.44 £25.00
% change year-on-year -16.88% +9.77% -5.87%

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 9 March 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 9 March 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 9 March 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 6,995 £537 -8.98% 4,244
London 0 4,257 £575 -8.00% 1,518
UK excluding London 0 3,121 £500 - 3,595
Work from Home -2 2,229 £550 -6.78% 1,740
North of England +4 1,009 £475 -1.04% 810
Midlands -1 578 £475 -5.00% 527
South East -2 576 £500 -5.88% 1,211
North West +5 516 £450 -5.26% 438
Yorkshire 0 447 £515 +2.90% 302
West Midlands 0 375 £500 -7.41% 282
Scotland 0 362 £500 +6.38% 173
South West -3 320 £512 -2.57% 402
East Midlands 0 198 £449 +5.59% 234
East of England -2 182 £515 -6.36% 359
Wales +29 107 £413 +6.45% 114
Northern Ireland -1 48 £525 +61.54% 59
North East -10 46 £488 +3.72% 79
Channel Islands +3 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
1 323 (4.08%) Confluence
2 204 (2.58%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.05%) Apache Spark
4 59 (0.75%) Microsoft Exchange
5 48 (0.61%) Apache
6 43 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
7 29 (0.37%) SAS
8 23 (0.29%) CMS
9 17 (0.21%) Appian
9 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
10 16 (0.20%) CICS
11 15 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.18%) Hyperledger
13 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.15%) Camunda
14 12 (0.15%) TPMS
15 11 (0.14%) Mendix
16 10 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.10%) nginx
Applications
1 516 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 274 (3.46%) Microsoft Office
3 195 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 175 (2.21%) Microsoft Project
5 141 (1.78%) MS Visio
6 44 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.14%) Sketch
11 10 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.10%) InVision
13 6 (0.076%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.063%) Notion
14 5 (0.063%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.051%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 327 (4.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 112 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 95 (1.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 72 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
5 71 (0.90%) NetSuite
6 66 (0.83%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 65 (0.82%) Oracle General Ledger
7 65 (0.82%) SAP FI
8 57 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
9 54 (0.68%) SAP CO
10 49 (0.62%) SAP FI/CO
11 42 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
12 39 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
13 38 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
14 37 (0.47%) Oracle Cash Management
15 36 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
15 36 (0.45%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 33 (0.42%) Workday HCM
17 27 (0.34%) Aladdin
18 23 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,197 (15.12%) Azure
2 965 (12.19%) AWS
3 550 (6.95%) Power Platform
4 391 (4.94%) GCP
5 277 (3.50%) Microsoft 365
6 263 (3.32%) SaaS
7 253 (3.20%) Azure DevOps
8 220 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
9 205 (2.59%) GitHub
10 149 (1.88%) Serverless
11 144 (1.82%) OCI
12 131 (1.65%) Snowflake
13 119 (1.50%) Entra ID
14 105 (1.33%) Amazon S3
15 96 (1.21%) Power Automate
16 85 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
17 84 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
18 76 (0.96%) OpenShift
19 75 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
19 75 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 155 (1.96%) Firewall
2 95 (1.20%) Network Security
3 77 (0.97%) WAN
4 59 (0.75%) DNS
5 48 (0.61%) LAN
5 48 (0.61%) VPN
6 42 (0.53%) SD-WAN
7 41 (0.52%) TCP/IP
8 34 (0.43%) Wireless
9 29 (0.37%) BGP
10 26 (0.33%) HTTP
10 26 (0.33%) OSPF
11 25 (0.32%) SSL
12 24 (0.30%) Internet
12 24 (0.30%) Multicast
13 20 (0.25%) MPLS
13 20 (0.25%) Skype
14 18 (0.23%) DHCP
15 17 (0.21%) Cisco ASA
16 16 (0.20%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 486 (6.14%) Power BI
2 210 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
3 199 (2.51%) SQL Server
4 194 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
5 147 (1.86%) Tableau
6 135 (1.71%) Metadata
7 118 (1.49%) Relational Database
8 114 (1.44%) Data Lake
8 114 (1.44%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
10 78 (0.99%) Big Data
11 73 (0.92%) MongoDB
12 62 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 61 (0.77%) BigQuery
14 49 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
16 40 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
17 36 (0.45%) Hadoop
17 36 (0.45%) MySQL
18 35 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 650 (8.21%) JIRA
2 235 (2.97%) Jenkins
3 210 (2.65%) Git
4 150 (1.89%) GitLab
5 64 (0.81%) JUnit
6 63 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 45 (0.57%) Sonatype Nexus
8 42 (0.53%) Selenium
9 34 (0.43%) Bitbucket
10 33 (0.42%) Postman
11 31 (0.39%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.30%) MLflow
13 22 (0.28%) Gradle
14 20 (0.25%) Maven
14 20 (0.25%) REST Assured
15 15 (0.19%) ERwin
15 15 (0.19%) Liquibase
15 15 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
15 15 (0.19%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,616 (33.04%) Social Skills
2 1,535 (19.39%) Banking
3 1,032 (13.04%) Analytical Skills
4 635 (8.02%) Public Sector
5 347 (4.38%) Financial Institution
6 298 (3.76%) Legal
7 287 (3.63%) Front Office
8 282 (3.56%) Marketing
9 274 (3.46%) Investment Banking
10 264 (3.33%) Manufacturing
11 245 (3.09%) Telecoms
12 240 (3.03%) Organisational Skills
13 226 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
14 180 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
15 176 (2.22%) Retail
16 145 (1.83%) Electronics
17 126 (1.59%) General Ledger
18 123 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
19 114 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 113 (1.43%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,243 (15.70%) Analyst
2 852 (10.76%) Developer
3 815 (10.29%) Senior
4 699 (8.83%) Lead
5 673 (8.50%) Architect
6 665 (8.40%) Business Analyst
7 640 (8.08%) Project Manager
8 578 (7.30%) Consultant
9 282 (3.56%) Solutions Architect
10 196 (2.48%) Data Engineer
11 188 (2.37%) Data Analyst
12 174 (2.20%) Senior Manager
13 172 (2.17%) Programme Manager
14 171 (2.16%) Financial Analyst
15 146 (1.84%) Finance Manager
16 139 (1.76%) Java Developer
17 137 (1.73%) Software Engineer
18 129 (1.63%) Senior Developer
19 128 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
19 128 (1.62%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (3.39%) Kafka
2 265 (3.35%) REST
3 207 (2.61%) .NET
4 203 (2.56%) React
5 152 (1.92%) Oracle Fusion
6 147 (1.86%) Middleware
7 140 (1.77%) RESTful
8 136 (1.72%) Spring
9 116 (1.47%) Node.js
10 115 (1.45%) Spring Boot
11 106 (1.34%) AngularJS
12 90 (1.14%) PySpark
13 81 (1.02%) HTML
13 81 (1.02%) XML
14 78 (0.99%) JSON
15 76 (0.96%) Pandas
16 75 (0.95%) CSS
17 73 (0.92%) OAuth
18 70 (0.88%) SOAP
19 68 (0.86%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 342 (4.32%) Onboarding
2 307 (3.88%) Product Ownership
3 245 (3.09%) Cloud Native
4 194 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
5 174 (2.20%) Derivative
6 173 (2.19%) Management Information System
7 161 (2.03%) Data Centre
8 147 (1.86%) Fixed Income
9 143 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
9 143 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
10 142 (1.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 136 (1.72%) Data Structures
12 126 (1.59%) Equities
13 112 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
14 107 (1.35%) Public Cloud
15 90 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
16 88 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
17 87 (1.10%) Virtual Team
18 70 (0.88%) Hedge funds
19 60 (0.76%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 312 (3.94%) Linux
2 283 (3.57%) Windows
3 140 (1.77%) Unix
4 64 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 59 (0.75%) Windows 10
6 57 (0.72%) Android
7 49 (0.62%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.33%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 16 (0.20%) zOS
11 11 (0.14%) AIX
12 9 (0.11%) Solaris
13 7 (0.088%) VMS
14 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
16 3 (0.038%) Ubuntu
17 1 (0.013%) CentOS
17 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
17 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,740 (21.98%) Agile
2 1,545 (19.51%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,218 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
4 1,003 (12.67%) Migration
5 879 (11.10%) DevOps
6 862 (10.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 803 (10.14%) CI/CD
8 771 (9.74%) Analytics
8 771 (9.74%) Project Management
9 757 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
10 756 (9.55%) Continuous Improvement
11 728 (9.20%) ERP
12 647 (8.17%) AI
13 601 (7.59%) Roadmaps
14 592 (7.48%) Decision-Making
15 584 (7.38%) Data Modelling
16 550 (6.95%) Project Delivery
17 548 (6.92%) Change Management
18 542 (6.85%) Validation
19 527 (6.66%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,128 (14.25%) SQL
2 1,013 (12.80%) Python
3 551 (6.96%) Java
4 303 (3.83%) C#
5 241 (3.04%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.51%) TypeScript
7 179 (2.26%) PowerShell
8 126 (1.59%) C++
9 82 (1.04%) Go
10 76 (0.96%) Bash
11 67 (0.85%) PL/SQL
12 52 (0.66%) VBA
13 47 (0.59%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 40 (0.51%) Scala
16 38 (0.48%) R
16 38 (0.48%) Shell Script
17 37 (0.47%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.37%) Rust
19 26 (0.33%) Perl
Qualifications
1 796 (10.05%) Degree
2 667 (8.42%) Security Cleared
3 478 (6.04%) SC Cleared
4 189 (2.39%) PMI Certification
5 188 (2.37%) PMP
6 168 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
7 162 (2.05%) Master's Degree
8 161 (2.03%) ACCA
9 152 (1.92%) CIMA
10 128 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
11 103 (1.30%) CISSP
12 75 (0.95%) AWS Certification
12 75 (0.95%) DV Cleared
13 71 (0.90%) CISM
14 68 (0.86%) Azure Certification
15 37 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
15 37 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
15 37 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
16 34 (0.43%) ISTQB
17 30 (0.38%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 401 (5.07%) QA
2 396 (5.00%) Data Quality
3 315 (3.98%) PMO
4 280 (3.54%) GDPR
5 139 (1.76%) NIST
6 128 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 113 (1.43%) SLA
8 82 (1.04%) IFRS
9 81 (1.02%) PCI DSS
10 78 (0.99%) Accessibility
11 70 (0.88%) GRC
12 57 (0.72%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.58%) PSD2
14 42 (0.53%) GAAP
15 38 (0.48%) SEPA
16 37 (0.47%) NCSC
17 36 (0.45%) MiFID
18 30 (0.38%) COBIT
19 29 (0.37%) Basel III
System Software
1 327 (4.13%) Docker
2 160 (2.02%) Active Directory
3 59 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.42%) vSphere
5 27 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.14%) GPFS
7 11 (0.14%) NFS
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
10 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.088%) HDFS
12 4 (0.051%) Firmware
12 4 (0.051%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.038%) RACF
13 3 (0.038%) SRDF
13 3 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.025%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.025%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 410 (5.18%) Kubernetes
2 252 (3.18%) Terraform
3 153 (1.93%) Ansible
4 94 (1.19%) Grafana
5 85 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
7 52 (0.66%) SCCM
8 39 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) vRealize
11 18 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.20%) Argo
12 16 (0.20%) Control-M
13 14 (0.18%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.15%) Kibana
16 11 (0.14%) Nessus
16 11 (0.14%) Puppet
17 10 (0.13%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,021 (12.90%) Microsoft
2 797 (10.07%) SAP
3 677 (8.55%) Oracle
4 311 (3.93%) ServiceNow
5 192 (2.43%) Salesforce
6 186 (2.35%) Databricks
7 176 (2.22%) Google
8 161 (2.03%) Cisco
9 142 (1.79%) Workday
10 134 (1.69%) Splunk
11 119 (1.50%) VMware
12 95 (1.20%) IBM
13 74 (0.93%) Citrix
14 73 (0.92%) CyberArk
15 69 (0.87%) Ariba
16 59 (0.75%) Sage
17 54 (0.68%) HP
18 52 (0.66%) Informatica
18 52 (0.66%) OpenAI
19 51 (0.64%) Murex