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 16 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,283 6,741 8,168
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.58% 21.16% 19.18%
As % of the General category 32.55% 34.35% 32.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,665 4,227 5,567
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -0.89%
75th Percentile £662 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £816 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -0.60% -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 94 109
10th Percentile £15.00 £18.20 £12.55
25th Percentile £17.55 £22.50 £14.50
Median hourly rate £23.50 £29.00 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.97% +20.83% -4.00%
75th Percentile £38.81 £59.88 £49.00
90th Percentile £65.04 £78.67 £60.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £29.00 £22.87
% change year-on-year -24.14% +26.80% -29.09%

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 22,374 19,622 25,110
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.17% 61.59% 58.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,087 11,709 16,440
10th Percentile £283 £281 £272
25th Percentile £400 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £729 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,370 656 1,193
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.48 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.39 £19.94 £16.19
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £30.48
Median % change year-on-year -16.38% -9.76% +21.90%
75th Percentile £45.94 £53.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.03 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.13 £26.50 £29.83
% change year-on-year -20.28% -11.15% +32.56%

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 16 January 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 16 January 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 16 January 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 6,412 £535 -9.48% 4,935
London -1 3,925 £575 -5.74% 1,383
UK excluding London -2 2,864 £497 -0.60% 4,338
Work from Home -1 2,013 £525 -12.50% 2,114
North of England +1 920 £475 -3.96% 856
South East -2 531 £505 -3.81% 1,483
Midlands -4 494 £478 -9.05% 572
North West +1 441 £450 -8.16% 384
Yorkshire 0 434 £500 -2.44% 344
Scotland 0 379 £488 +8.33% 177
West Midlands -6 307 £525 -4.55% 261
South West -4 286 £525 -0.94% 515
East Midlands +1 188 £423 +0.60% 301
East of England -2 172 £525 - 556
Wales +22 76 £413 - 193
Northern Ireland -1 55 £513 +57.69% 88
North East -8 45 £481 +1.32% 140
Channel Islands +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
1 305 (4.19%) Confluence
2 206 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 70 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 65 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 62 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
6 61 (0.84%) Apache
7 32 (0.44%) SAS
8 30 (0.41%) CMS
9 23 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.29%) IIS
11 18 (0.25%) HCL Notes
12 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.18%) Appian
13 13 (0.18%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 12 (0.16%) TPMS
14 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
15 11 (0.15%) JBoss
16 10 (0.14%) CICS
Applications
1 510 (7.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 287 (3.94%) Microsoft Office
3 208 (2.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (2.22%) Microsoft Project
5 132 (1.81%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 20 (0.27%) Sketch
9 19 (0.26%) Trello
10 14 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 9 (0.12%) InVision
13 6 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.069%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.069%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.055%) Notion
16 3 (0.041%) Camtasia
16 3 (0.041%) Snagit
17 2 (0.027%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 283 (3.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 125 (1.72%) Oracle Payables
3 98 (1.35%) Oracle EBS
4 95 (1.30%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (1.17%) Oracle General Ledger
6 69 (0.95%) NetSuite
6 69 (0.95%) SAP FI
7 62 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
8 58 (0.80%) SAP CO
9 55 (0.76%) Oracle Assets
10 54 (0.74%) Oracle Cash Management
10 54 (0.74%) Oracle EBS R12
11 52 (0.71%) SAP FI/CO
12 51 (0.70%) Oracle Financials
13 50 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 48 (0.66%) Oracle ERP
15 38 (0.52%) Workday HCM
16 37 (0.51%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 28 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
18 27 (0.37%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,077 (14.79%) Azure
2 880 (12.08%) AWS
3 549 (7.54%) Power Platform
4 351 (4.82%) GCP
5 245 (3.36%) Microsoft 365
6 219 (3.01%) SaaS
7 214 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
8 211 (2.90%) Dynamics 365
9 187 (2.57%) GitHub
10 141 (1.94%) Serverless
11 140 (1.92%) OCI
12 139 (1.91%) Snowflake
13 116 (1.59%) Entra ID
14 101 (1.39%) GitHub Actions
15 87 (1.19%) Power Automate
16 83 (1.14%) Amazon S3
17 76 (1.04%) PowerApps
18 74 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
19 70 (0.96%) Figma
20 66 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 114 (1.57%) Firewall
2 66 (0.91%) Network Security
3 60 (0.82%) WAN
4 41 (0.56%) DNS
5 38 (0.52%) SD-WAN
6 37 (0.51%) VPN
7 34 (0.47%) LAN
8 33 (0.45%) TCP/IP
9 32 (0.44%) Wireless
10 29 (0.40%) HTTP
11 28 (0.38%) SSL
12 27 (0.37%) Skype
13 23 (0.32%) SSH
14 21 (0.29%) DHCP
15 18 (0.25%) BGP
15 18 (0.25%) OSPF
16 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
17 15 (0.21%) Cisco IOS
17 15 (0.21%) Internet
18 14 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 481 (6.60%) Power BI
2 199 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
3 193 (2.65%) SQL Server
4 152 (2.09%) PostgreSQL
5 131 (1.80%) NoSQL
6 129 (1.77%) Tableau
7 124 (1.70%) Relational Database
8 119 (1.63%) Data Lake
9 110 (1.51%) Metadata
10 92 (1.26%) Oracle Reports
11 78 (1.07%) MongoDB
12 72 (0.99%) Big Data
13 71 (0.97%) Oracle Database
14 50 (0.69%) BigQuery
15 46 (0.63%) Hadoop
16 42 (0.58%) Power Query
17 40 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
17 40 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
18 36 (0.49%) DB2
19 35 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 556 (7.63%) JIRA
2 256 (3.52%) Jenkins
3 208 (2.86%) Git
4 150 (2.06%) GitLab
5 74 (1.02%) JUnit
6 56 (0.77%) Cucumber
7 55 (0.76%) Selenium
8 52 (0.71%) Bitbucket
9 46 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
10 36 (0.49%) Postman
11 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 28 (0.38%) Liquibase
13 23 (0.32%) Cypress.io
14 22 (0.30%) Gradle
15 20 (0.27%) MLflow
16 19 (0.26%) JMeter
16 19 (0.26%) REST Assured
17 18 (0.25%) Maven
18 17 (0.23%) SonarQube
18 17 (0.23%) webpack
General
1 2,522 (34.63%) Social Skills
2 1,530 (21.01%) Banking
3 997 (13.69%) Analytical Skills
4 579 (7.95%) Public Sector
5 339 (4.65%) Financial Institution
6 325 (4.46%) Marketing
7 306 (4.20%) Manufacturing
8 300 (4.12%) Investment Banking
9 282 (3.87%) Telecoms
10 280 (3.84%) Front Office
11 267 (3.67%) Legal
12 210 (2.88%) Organisational Skills
13 197 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
14 193 (2.65%) Electronics
15 153 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
16 143 (1.96%) Retail
17 133 (1.83%) Presentation Skills
18 127 (1.74%) General Ledger
19 126 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 108 (1.48%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,190 (16.34%) Analyst
2 825 (11.33%) Developer
3 709 (9.73%) Senior
4 601 (8.25%) Business Analyst
5 579 (7.95%) Consultant
6 576 (7.91%) Project Manager
7 552 (7.58%) Architect
8 503 (6.91%) Lead
9 226 (3.10%) Solutions Architect
10 193 (2.65%) Data Analyst
11 164 (2.25%) Data Engineer
12 160 (2.20%) Financial Analyst
13 148 (2.03%) Programme Manager
14 146 (2.00%) Java Developer
14 146 (2.00%) Senior Developer
14 146 (2.00%) Software Engineer
15 116 (1.59%) Senior Manager
16 114 (1.57%) IT Manager
17 113 (1.55%) Oracle Consultant
18 108 (1.48%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (3.72%) REST
2 229 (3.14%) Kafka
3 219 (3.01%) .NET
4 164 (2.25%) React
4 164 (2.25%) RESTful
5 155 (2.13%) Oracle Fusion
6 146 (2.00%) Spring
7 121 (1.66%) Spring Boot
8 99 (1.36%) Middleware
9 97 (1.33%) AngularJS
10 96 (1.32%) Pandas
11 91 (1.25%) XML
12 86 (1.18%) HTML
13 85 (1.17%) NumPy
14 83 (1.14%) Node.js
15 76 (1.04%) CSS
16 75 (1.03%) PySpark
17 74 (1.02%) SOAP
18 72 (0.99%) OAuth
19 70 (0.96%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 318 (4.37%) Onboarding
2 289 (3.97%) Product Ownership
3 212 (2.91%) Cloud Native
4 182 (2.50%) Derivative
5 171 (2.35%) Management Information System
6 158 (2.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 152 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (1.81%) Equities
9 131 (1.80%) Data Centre
9 131 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
10 129 (1.77%) Analytical Mindset
11 125 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
12 124 (1.70%) Data Structures
13 123 (1.69%) Fixed Income
14 99 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
15 98 (1.35%) Public Cloud
16 96 (1.32%) Hedge funds
17 73 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
18 72 (0.99%) Credit Risk
19 71 (0.97%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 354 (4.86%) Linux
2 326 (4.48%) Windows
3 150 (2.06%) Unix
4 66 (0.91%) Windows 10
5 65 (0.89%) Android
6 63 (0.87%) Mac OS
6 63 (0.87%) Windows Server
7 35 (0.48%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 11 (0.15%) zOS
10 7 (0.096%) CentOS
11 6 (0.082%) VMS
12 4 (0.055%) Solaris
12 4 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.041%) AIX
13 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.041%) Windows Server 2019
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
14 2 (0.027%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,705 (23.41%) Agile
2 1,312 (18.01%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,200 (16.48%) Problem-Solving
4 825 (11.33%) Migration
5 779 (10.70%) DevOps
6 778 (10.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 766 (10.52%) Business Intelligence
8 760 (10.44%) CI/CD
9 709 (9.73%) Project Management
10 704 (9.67%) Analytics
11 631 (8.66%) ERP
12 611 (8.39%) Continuous Improvement
13 521 (7.15%) Decision-Making
14 512 (7.03%) Risk Management
15 507 (6.96%) Change Management
16 501 (6.88%) AI
17 491 (6.74%) Roadmaps
18 466 (6.40%) Data Modelling
19 460 (6.32%) Project Delivery
20 452 (6.21%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,081 (14.84%) SQL
2 953 (13.09%) Python
3 517 (7.10%) Java
4 318 (4.37%) C#
5 217 (2.98%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.69%) PowerShell
7 155 (2.13%) C++
8 151 (2.07%) TypeScript
9 87 (1.19%) PL/SQL
10 74 (1.02%) Go
11 70 (0.96%) Bash
12 55 (0.76%) Shell Script
13 54 (0.74%) VBA
14 45 (0.62%) R
15 41 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 37 (0.51%) Groovy
17 34 (0.47%) T-SQL
18 33 (0.45%) Perl
18 33 (0.45%) Rust
19 30 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 785 (10.78%) Degree
2 555 (7.62%) Security Cleared
3 403 (5.53%) SC Cleared
4 186 (2.55%) PMI Certification
5 182 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 171 (2.35%) PMP
7 170 (2.33%) Master's Degree
8 150 (2.06%) ACCA
9 130 (1.78%) CIMA
10 99 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
11 95 (1.30%) AWS Certification
12 94 (1.29%) CISSP
13 63 (0.87%) CISM
14 62 (0.85%) Azure Certification
14 62 (0.85%) DV Cleared
15 45 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
16 36 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
17 35 (0.48%) CBAP
18 30 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 26 (0.36%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (5.19%) QA
2 329 (4.52%) Data Quality
3 272 (3.73%) PMO
4 254 (3.49%) GDPR
5 118 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 111 (1.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 108 (1.48%) NIST
8 100 (1.37%) Accessibility
9 97 (1.33%) SLA
10 76 (1.04%) IFRS
11 75 (1.03%) PCI DSS
12 52 (0.71%) GRC
13 43 (0.59%) ISO 20022
13 43 (0.59%) PSD2
14 39 (0.54%) MiFID
15 31 (0.43%) Basel III
16 28 (0.38%) GAAP
16 28 (0.38%) SEPA
17 27 (0.37%) COBIT
18 25 (0.34%) NCSC
System Software
1 328 (4.50%) Docker
2 190 (2.61%) Active Directory
3 51 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (0.26%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) HDFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) NFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 6 (0.082%) Firmware
9 6 (0.082%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.069%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.055%) BitLocker
11 4 (0.055%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.041%) RACF
12 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.027%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 370 (5.08%) Kubernetes
2 272 (3.73%) Terraform
3 180 (2.47%) Ansible
4 89 (1.22%) Grafana
5 78 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.87%) SCCM
7 56 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 34 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 14 (0.19%) Control-M
14 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
14 14 (0.19%) Puppet
15 9 (0.12%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,016 (13.95%) Microsoft
2 790 (10.85%) SAP
3 711 (9.76%) Oracle
4 269 (3.69%) ServiceNow
5 180 (2.47%) Salesforce
6 159 (2.18%) Databricks
7 158 (2.17%) Google
8 155 (2.13%) Splunk
9 146 (2.00%) Workday
10 143 (1.96%) Cisco
11 98 (1.35%) VMware
12 90 (1.24%) IBM
13 72 (0.99%) Citrix
14 64 (0.88%) Ariba
15 58 (0.80%) CyberArk
16 56 (0.77%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.73%) HP
18 50 (0.69%) Murex
19 47 (0.65%) Adobe
19 47 (0.65%) Apple