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

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,029 6,368 8,350
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.75% 21.61% 18.74%
As % of the General category 32.78% 34.48% 32.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,093 4,156 5,624
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -3.36%
75th Percentile £668 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 201 101 220
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.51 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.58 £36.00 £26.70
Median % change year-on-year -34.51% +34.86% -5.02%
75th Percentile £41.25 £72.50 £38.12
90th Percentile £70.00 £83.20 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £52.50 £26.86
% change year-on-year -58.10% +95.46% -23.26%

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 24,490 18,471 26,046
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.18% 62.69% 58.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,292 11,661 16,664
10th Percentile £300 £293 £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 £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £493
% change year-on-year - -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,503 647 1,814
10th Percentile £13.58 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.15 £15.38
Median hourly rate £24.09 £30.00 £25.90
Median % change year-on-year -19.70% +15.85% -20.32%
75th Percentile £56.25 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.79 £75.65 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £27.76 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.69% +11.04% -13.49%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 7,097 £538 -9.28% 4,299
London 0 4,301 £575 -8.00% 2,058
UK excluding London 0 3,174 £500 - 3,024
Work from Home -2 2,259 £550 -7.17% 1,752
North of England +3 1,030 £475 - 741
South East -2 597 £500 -8.26% 1,060
Midlands -1 583 £475 -5.00% 434
North West +5 537 £450 -3.23% 400
Yorkshire 0 446 £500 - 268
West Midlands +1 383 £500 -7.41% 251
Scotland 0 361 £476 +0.37% 165
South West -3 327 £524 -0.19% 314
East Midlands 0 195 £450 +5.88% 182
East of England 0 186 £514 -6.59% 236
Wales +28 105 £413 +6.45% 80
North East -9 47 £488 +3.72% 85
Northern Ireland -1 46 £525 +61.54% 47
Channel Islands +5 1 - - 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
1 328 (4.09%) Confluence
2 203 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 85 (1.06%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
5 50 (0.62%) Apache
6 46 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 31 (0.39%) SAS
8 24 (0.30%) CMS
9 17 (0.21%) Appian
9 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
10 15 (0.19%) CICS
10 15 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 13 (0.16%) Camunda
12 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 12 (0.15%) TPMS
14 11 (0.14%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 8 (0.100%) IIS
Applications
1 528 (6.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 266 (3.31%) Microsoft Office
3 189 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 181 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
5 137 (1.71%) MS Visio
6 46 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 13 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.100%) InVision
12 6 (0.075%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
13 5 (0.062%) Notion
13 5 (0.062%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.050%) Adobe Captivate
14 4 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.025%) InDesign
15 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 333 (4.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 114 (1.42%) Oracle Payables
3 100 (1.25%) Oracle Receivables
4 75 (0.93%) NetSuite
5 72 (0.90%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 71 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
7 66 (0.82%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
9 56 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.67%) SAP CO
11 49 (0.61%) SAP FI/CO
12 43 (0.54%) Oracle Assets
13 40 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
14 39 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
15 38 (0.47%) Oracle Cash Management
16 33 (0.41%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 33 (0.41%) Workday HCM
17 32 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
18 29 (0.36%) Aladdin
19 22 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,228 (15.29%) Azure
2 974 (12.13%) AWS
3 563 (7.01%) Power Platform
4 391 (4.87%) GCP
5 275 (3.43%) Microsoft 365
6 264 (3.29%) SaaS
7 263 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
8 229 (2.85%) Dynamics 365
9 209 (2.60%) GitHub
10 153 (1.91%) Serverless
11 142 (1.77%) OCI
12 129 (1.61%) Snowflake
13 123 (1.53%) Entra ID
14 108 (1.35%) Amazon S3
15 95 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 87 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 85 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
18 78 (0.97%) Azure Data Factory
19 75 (0.93%) OpenShift
20 74 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 158 (1.97%) Firewall
2 101 (1.26%) Network Security
3 81 (1.01%) WAN
4 63 (0.78%) DNS
5 51 (0.64%) LAN
6 50 (0.62%) VPN
7 44 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 42 (0.52%) TCP/IP
9 34 (0.42%) Wireless
10 30 (0.37%) BGP
11 27 (0.34%) Internet
12 26 (0.32%) HTTP
12 26 (0.32%) OSPF
12 26 (0.32%) SSL
13 24 (0.30%) Multicast
14 21 (0.26%) MPLS
15 20 (0.25%) DHCP
16 18 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
16 18 (0.22%) Skype
17 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 497 (6.19%) Power BI
2 218 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
3 200 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 194 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
5 149 (1.86%) Tableau
6 146 (1.82%) Metadata
7 117 (1.46%) Relational Database
8 115 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 109 (1.36%) NoSQL
10 91 (1.13%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (0.93%) Big Data
12 71 (0.88%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.82%) Oracle Database
14 63 (0.78%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
17 41 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
18 37 (0.46%) Power Query
19 36 (0.45%) Delta Lake
20 35 (0.44%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 662 (8.25%) JIRA
2 231 (2.88%) Jenkins
3 213 (2.65%) Git
4 150 (1.87%) GitLab
5 64 (0.80%) JUnit
6 61 (0.76%) Cucumber
7 45 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.54%) Selenium
9 34 (0.42%) Bitbucket
10 33 (0.41%) Postman
11 31 (0.39%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.30%) MLflow
13 21 (0.26%) Gradle
13 21 (0.26%) REST Assured
14 18 (0.22%) Maven
15 16 (0.20%) ERwin
15 16 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 16 (0.20%) SonarQube
16 15 (0.19%) SpecFlow
16 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,638 (32.86%) Social Skills
2 1,552 (19.33%) Banking
3 1,063 (13.24%) Analytical Skills
4 638 (7.95%) Public Sector
5 349 (4.35%) Financial Institution
6 309 (3.85%) Legal
7 289 (3.60%) Front Office
8 279 (3.47%) Investment Banking
9 276 (3.44%) Marketing
10 267 (3.33%) Manufacturing
11 244 (3.04%) Organisational Skills
12 239 (2.98%) Telecoms
13 235 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
14 184 (2.29%) Retail
15 180 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
16 141 (1.76%) Electronics
17 129 (1.61%) General Ledger
18 123 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
19 118 (1.47%) Local Government
20 115 (1.43%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,239 (15.43%) Analyst
2 856 (10.66%) Developer
3 825 (10.28%) Senior
4 714 (8.89%) Lead
5 695 (8.66%) Architect
6 664 (8.27%) Business Analyst
7 661 (8.23%) Project Manager
8 593 (7.39%) Consultant
9 285 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
10 204 (2.54%) Data Engineer
11 191 (2.38%) Data Analyst
12 179 (2.23%) Senior Manager
13 174 (2.17%) Programme Manager
14 173 (2.15%) Financial Analyst
15 156 (1.94%) Finance Manager
16 138 (1.72%) Java Developer
17 129 (1.61%) Delivery Manager
17 129 (1.61%) Senior Developer
18 128 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
18 128 (1.59%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (3.36%) REST
2 265 (3.30%) Kafka
3 210 (2.62%) .NET
4 199 (2.48%) React
5 160 (1.99%) Oracle Fusion
6 148 (1.84%) Middleware
7 140 (1.74%) RESTful
8 137 (1.71%) Spring
9 118 (1.47%) Spring Boot
10 115 (1.43%) Node.js
11 107 (1.33%) AngularJS
12 93 (1.16%) PySpark
13 85 (1.06%) XML
14 81 (1.01%) HTML
15 76 (0.95%) CSS
15 76 (0.95%) JSON
16 75 (0.93%) OAuth
17 74 (0.92%) Pandas
18 68 (0.85%) SOAP
19 67 (0.83%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 349 (4.35%) Onboarding
2 306 (3.81%) Product Ownership
3 252 (3.14%) Cloud Native
4 201 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
5 184 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 173 (2.15%) Derivative
7 159 (1.98%) Data Centre
8 148 (1.84%) Fixed Income
9 144 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
10 142 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
10 142 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 140 (1.74%) Data Structures
12 128 (1.59%) Equities
13 108 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
14 105 (1.31%) Public Cloud
15 94 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
16 91 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
17 87 (1.08%) Virtual Team
18 73 (0.91%) Hedge funds
19 63 (0.78%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 304 (3.79%) Linux
2 278 (3.46%) Windows
3 138 (1.72%) Unix
4 64 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 60 (0.75%) Windows 10
6 57 (0.71%) Android
7 46 (0.57%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.32%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.20%) zOS
10 15 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.14%) AIX
12 7 (0.087%) Solaris
12 7 (0.087%) VMS
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.037%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.012%) CentOS
15 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.012%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,751 (21.81%) Agile
2 1,568 (19.53%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,233 (15.36%) Problem-Solving
4 1,032 (12.85%) Migration
5 884 (11.01%) DevOps
6 882 (10.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 808 (10.06%) CI/CD
8 787 (9.80%) Continuous Improvement
9 783 (9.75%) Analytics
10 780 (9.71%) Project Management
11 773 (9.63%) Business Intelligence
12 753 (9.38%) ERP
13 648 (8.07%) AI
14 615 (7.66%) Decision-Making
15 611 (7.61%) Data Modelling
16 609 (7.59%) Roadmaps
17 561 (6.99%) Project Delivery
18 559 (6.96%) Validation
19 552 (6.88%) Change Management
20 542 (6.75%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,144 (14.25%) SQL
2 1,021 (12.72%) Python
3 555 (6.91%) Java
4 302 (3.76%) C#
5 239 (2.98%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.43%) TypeScript
7 171 (2.13%) PowerShell
8 118 (1.47%) C++
9 81 (1.01%) Go
10 70 (0.87%) Bash
11 67 (0.83%) PL/SQL
12 53 (0.66%) VBA
13 51 (0.64%) T-SQL
14 45 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 41 (0.51%) Scala
15 41 (0.51%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.49%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.46%) R
18 29 (0.36%) Rust
19 26 (0.32%) Korn
Qualifications
1 795 (9.90%) Degree
2 685 (8.53%) Security Cleared
3 489 (6.09%) SC Cleared
4 197 (2.45%) PMI Certification
5 194 (2.42%) PMP
6 171 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
7 168 (2.09%) ACCA
8 162 (2.02%) Master's Degree
9 158 (1.97%) CIMA
10 128 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 108 (1.35%) CISSP
12 77 (0.96%) DV Cleared
13 75 (0.93%) CISM
14 74 (0.92%) AWS Certification
15 73 (0.91%) Azure Certification
16 38 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
17 37 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
18 35 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
19 33 (0.41%) Cisco Certification
19 33 (0.41%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 414 (5.16%) Data Quality
2 408 (5.08%) QA
3 327 (4.07%) PMO
4 287 (3.57%) GDPR
5 139 (1.73%) NIST
6 122 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.38%) SLA
8 110 (1.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 85 (1.06%) IFRS
10 80 (1.00%) Accessibility
11 75 (0.93%) PCI DSS
12 68 (0.85%) GRC
13 56 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 44 (0.55%) GAAP
15 43 (0.54%) PSD2
16 38 (0.47%) SEPA
17 37 (0.46%) MiFID
18 36 (0.45%) NCSC
19 29 (0.36%) COBIT
20 28 (0.35%) Basel III
System Software
1 319 (3.97%) Docker
2 157 (1.96%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 26 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.14%) GPFS
8 11 (0.14%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 8 (0.100%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.075%) HDFS
13 4 (0.050%) Firmware
13 4 (0.050%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.037%) KVM
14 3 (0.037%) RACF
14 3 (0.037%) SRDF
14 3 (0.037%) Time Sharing Option
15 2 (0.025%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 404 (5.03%) Kubernetes
2 251 (3.13%) Terraform
3 153 (1.91%) Ansible
4 95 (1.18%) Grafana
5 86 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.64%) SCCM
8 40 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) vRealize
11 17 (0.21%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.20%) Argo
12 16 (0.20%) Control-M
13 14 (0.17%) 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 9 (0.11%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,038 (12.93%) Microsoft
2 802 (9.99%) SAP
3 683 (8.51%) Oracle
4 308 (3.84%) ServiceNow
5 195 (2.43%) Databricks
6 192 (2.39%) Salesforce
7 173 (2.15%) Google
8 157 (1.96%) Cisco
9 141 (1.76%) Workday
10 128 (1.59%) Splunk
11 111 (1.38%) VMware
12 93 (1.16%) IBM
13 73 (0.91%) Citrix
13 73 (0.91%) CyberArk
14 70 (0.87%) Ariba
15 62 (0.77%) Sage
16 54 (0.67%) HP
17 53 (0.66%) Informatica
18 52 (0.65%) Murex
19 50 (0.62%) Dell