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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,952 6,361 8,363
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.74% 21.52% 18.69%
As % of the General category 32.69% 34.38% 31.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,050 4,137 5,632
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 £508
% change year-on-year - -1.57% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 196 103 215
10th Percentile £14.50 £17.88 £12.82
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.66 £35.00 £26.73
Median % change year-on-year -32.39% +30.94% -4.89%
75th Percentile £40.88 £68.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £67.31 £82.56 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £36.00 £26.73
% change year-on-year -38.89% +34.68% -23.63%

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 24,323 18,503 26,150
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.33% 62.59% 58.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,224 11,652 16,729
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 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,477 647 1,816
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.26 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.37
Median hourly rate £24.03 £29.07 £25.75
Median % change year-on-year -17.34% +12.89% -20.77%
75th Percentile £55.00 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £27.39 £25.00
% change year-on-year -16.71% +9.54% -7.41%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 7,030 £537 -9.25% 4,082
London 0 4,272 £575 -8.00% 1,363
UK excluding London 0 3,138 £500 - 2,886
Work from Home -2 2,238 £550 -6.78% 1,719
North of England +4 1,016 £475 -0.52% 685
South East -2 583 £500 -7.19% 986
Midlands -1 581 £475 -5.00% 418
North West +5 526 £450 -5.26% 360
Yorkshire 0 444 £513 +2.50% 249
West Midlands 0 377 £500 -7.41% 243
Scotland 0 359 £500 +6.38% 159
South West -3 324 £512 -2.57% 314
East Midlands 0 199 £450 +5.88% 171
East of England -1 182 £515 -6.36% 230
Wales +31 107 £413 +6.45% 91
Northern Ireland -1 48 £525 +61.54% 55
North East -10 46 £488 +3.72% 85
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 (4.06%) Confluence
2 203 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.06%) Apache Spark
4 59 (0.74%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.62%) Apache
6 42 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.38%) SAS
8 22 (0.28%) CMS
9 17 (0.21%) Appian
9 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
10 15 (0.19%) CICS
10 15 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 14 (0.18%) 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 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 8 (0.10%) nginx
Applications
1 516 (6.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 271 (3.41%) Microsoft Office
3 194 (2.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 178 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
5 139 (1.75%) MS Visio
6 44 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 12 (0.15%) Sketch
11 9 (0.11%) InVision
12 8 (0.10%) Oracle Smart View
13 6 (0.075%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.063%) Notion
14 5 (0.063%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.050%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 334 (4.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 112 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 73 (0.92%) NetSuite
5 70 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
6 68 (0.86%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 65 (0.82%) SAP FI
8 63 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
9 56 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.68%) SAP CO
11 49 (0.62%) SAP FI/CO
12 42 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
13 39 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
14 38 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
15 37 (0.47%) Oracle Cash Management
16 34 (0.43%) Oracle Financials
16 34 (0.43%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 33 (0.41%) Workday HCM
18 27 (0.34%) Aladdin
19 23 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,208 (15.19%) Azure
2 968 (12.17%) AWS
3 554 (6.97%) Power Platform
4 390 (4.90%) GCP
5 276 (3.47%) Microsoft 365
6 267 (3.36%) SaaS
7 257 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
8 221 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
9 204 (2.57%) GitHub
10 150 (1.89%) Serverless
11 141 (1.77%) OCI
12 130 (1.63%) Snowflake
13 121 (1.52%) Entra ID
14 106 (1.33%) Amazon S3
15 96 (1.21%) Power Automate
16 84 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
16 84 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
17 75 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
17 75 (0.94%) OpenShift
18 74 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 154 (1.94%) Firewall
2 96 (1.21%) Network Security
3 78 (0.98%) WAN
4 60 (0.75%) DNS
5 49 (0.62%) LAN
5 49 (0.62%) VPN
6 43 (0.54%) SD-WAN
7 42 (0.53%) TCP/IP
8 34 (0.43%) Wireless
9 29 (0.36%) BGP
10 27 (0.34%) HTTP
11 26 (0.33%) OSPF
11 26 (0.33%) SSL
12 25 (0.31%) Internet
13 23 (0.29%) Multicast
14 20 (0.25%) MPLS
14 20 (0.25%) Skype
15 19 (0.24%) DHCP
16 17 (0.21%) Cisco ASA
17 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 489 (6.15%) Power BI
2 209 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
3 202 (2.54%) SQL Server
4 194 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
5 148 (1.86%) Tableau
6 137 (1.72%) Metadata
7 118 (1.48%) Relational Database
8 113 (1.42%) Data Lake
8 113 (1.42%) NoSQL
9 91 (1.14%) Oracle Reports
10 78 (0.98%) Big Data
11 73 (0.92%) MongoDB
12 64 (0.80%) Oracle Database
13 60 (0.75%) BigQuery
14 49 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
16 40 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
17 36 (0.45%) Hadoop
17 36 (0.45%) MySQL
18 35 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 654 (8.22%) JIRA
2 235 (2.96%) Jenkins
3 214 (2.69%) Git
4 149 (1.87%) GitLab
5 64 (0.80%) Cucumber
5 64 (0.80%) JUnit
6 45 (0.57%) Sonatype Nexus
7 43 (0.54%) Selenium
8 34 (0.43%) Bitbucket
8 34 (0.43%) Postman
9 31 (0.39%) Visual Studio
10 24 (0.30%) MLflow
11 22 (0.28%) Gradle
12 20 (0.25%) Maven
12 20 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 16 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
14 15 (0.19%) ERwin
14 15 (0.19%) Liquibase
14 15 (0.19%) SpecFlow
14 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,624 (33.00%) Social Skills
2 1,544 (19.42%) Banking
3 1,041 (13.09%) Analytical Skills
4 640 (8.05%) Public Sector
5 347 (4.36%) Financial Institution
6 304 (3.82%) Legal
7 287 (3.61%) Front Office
8 281 (3.53%) Marketing
9 277 (3.48%) Investment Banking
10 264 (3.32%) Manufacturing
11 245 (3.08%) Telecoms
12 242 (3.04%) Organisational Skills
13 231 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
14 182 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
15 179 (2.25%) Retail
16 145 (1.82%) Electronics
17 127 (1.60%) General Ledger
18 124 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
19 115 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 114 (1.43%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,244 (15.64%) Analyst
2 853 (10.73%) Developer
3 824 (10.36%) Senior
4 702 (8.83%) Lead
5 678 (8.53%) Architect
6 665 (8.36%) Business Analyst
7 643 (8.09%) Project Manager
8 581 (7.31%) Consultant
9 283 (3.56%) Solutions Architect
10 197 (2.48%) Data Engineer
11 190 (2.39%) Data Analyst
12 177 (2.23%) Senior Manager
13 174 (2.19%) Programme Manager
14 173 (2.18%) Financial Analyst
15 149 (1.87%) Finance Manager
16 139 (1.75%) Java Developer
17 135 (1.70%) Software Engineer
18 130 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
18 130 (1.63%) Senior Analyst
19 129 (1.62%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (3.37%) Kafka
1 268 (3.37%) REST
2 212 (2.67%) .NET
3 200 (2.52%) React
4 155 (1.95%) Oracle Fusion
5 149 (1.87%) Middleware
6 140 (1.76%) RESTful
7 137 (1.72%) Spring
8 116 (1.46%) Spring Boot
9 115 (1.45%) Node.js
10 106 (1.33%) AngularJS
11 90 (1.13%) PySpark
12 82 (1.03%) HTML
13 80 (1.01%) XML
14 77 (0.97%) JSON
15 76 (0.96%) CSS
16 74 (0.93%) OAuth
17 73 (0.92%) Pandas
18 70 (0.88%) SOAP
19 68 (0.86%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 343 (4.31%) Onboarding
2 305 (3.84%) Product Ownership
3 245 (3.08%) Cloud Native
4 197 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
5 179 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 175 (2.20%) Derivative
7 160 (2.01%) Data Centre
8 145 (1.82%) Fixed Income
9 143 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
10 142 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
11 141 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 137 (1.72%) Data Structures
13 124 (1.56%) Equities
14 110 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
15 106 (1.33%) Public Cloud
16 90 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 88 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
18 87 (1.09%) Virtual Team
19 69 (0.87%) Hedge funds
20 61 (0.77%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 311 (3.91%) Linux
2 282 (3.55%) Windows
3 140 (1.76%) Unix
4 63 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 59 (0.74%) Windows 10
6 57 (0.72%) Android
7 50 (0.63%) 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 (0.050%) 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 (21.88%) Agile
2 1,555 (19.55%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,226 (15.42%) Problem-Solving
4 1,011 (12.71%) Migration
5 882 (11.09%) DevOps
6 871 (10.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 804 (10.11%) CI/CD
8 772 (9.71%) Project Management
9 770 (9.68%) Analytics
10 766 (9.63%) Continuous Improvement
11 763 (9.60%) Business Intelligence
12 739 (9.29%) ERP
13 647 (8.14%) AI
14 601 (7.56%) Roadmaps
15 599 (7.53%) Decision-Making
16 590 (7.42%) Data Modelling
17 556 (6.99%) Project Delivery
18 552 (6.94%) Validation
19 551 (6.93%) Change Management
20 530 (6.66%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,133 (14.25%) SQL
2 1,014 (12.75%) Python
3 554 (6.97%) Java
4 306 (3.85%) C#
5 240 (3.02%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.48%) TypeScript
7 179 (2.25%) PowerShell
8 125 (1.57%) C++
9 81 (1.02%) Go
10 75 (0.94%) Bash
11 67 (0.84%) PL/SQL
12 52 (0.65%) VBA
13 47 (0.59%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 41 (0.52%) Scala
15 38 (0.48%) R
15 38 (0.48%) Shell Script
16 37 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 29 (0.36%) Rust
18 26 (0.33%) Perl
Qualifications
1 797 (10.02%) Degree
2 672 (8.45%) Security Cleared
3 481 (6.05%) SC Cleared
4 189 (2.38%) PMI Certification
5 188 (2.36%) PMP
6 170 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
7 167 (2.10%) ACCA
8 161 (2.02%) Master's Degree
9 157 (1.97%) CIMA
10 128 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
11 103 (1.30%) CISSP
12 77 (0.97%) DV Cleared
13 74 (0.93%) AWS Certification
14 71 (0.89%) CISM
15 69 (0.87%) Azure Certification
16 37 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
16 37 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
16 37 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
17 34 (0.43%) ISTQB
18 30 (0.38%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 405 (5.09%) QA
2 397 (4.99%) Data Quality
3 320 (4.02%) PMO
4 283 (3.56%) GDPR
5 141 (1.77%) NIST
6 130 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 112 (1.41%) SLA
9 85 (1.07%) IFRS
10 81 (1.02%) PCI DSS
11 79 (0.99%) Accessibility
12 69 (0.87%) GRC
13 56 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 44 (0.55%) GAAP
14 44 (0.55%) PSD2
15 38 (0.48%) SEPA
16 37 (0.47%) NCSC
17 36 (0.45%) MiFID
18 30 (0.38%) COBIT
19 29 (0.36%) Basel III
System Software
1 326 (4.10%) Docker
2 161 (2.02%) Active Directory
3 58 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) 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 6 (0.075%) HDFS
12 4 (0.050%) Firmware
12 4 (0.050%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.038%) RACF
13 3 (0.038%) SRDF
13 3 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.025%) ACF2
14 2 (0.025%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 409 (5.14%) Kubernetes
2 252 (3.17%) Terraform
3 153 (1.92%) Ansible
4 94 (1.18%) Grafana
5 85 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
7 52 (0.65%) SCCM
8 41 (0.52%) 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 1,024 (12.88%) Microsoft
2 804 (10.11%) SAP
3 677 (8.51%) Oracle
4 308 (3.87%) ServiceNow
5 192 (2.41%) Salesforce
6 187 (2.35%) Databricks
7 175 (2.20%) Google
8 160 (2.01%) Cisco
9 142 (1.79%) Workday
10 133 (1.67%) Splunk
11 118 (1.48%) VMware
12 94 (1.18%) IBM
13 75 (0.94%) Citrix
14 74 (0.93%) CyberArk
15 70 (0.88%) Ariba
16 60 (0.75%) Sage
17 54 (0.68%) HP
18 52 (0.65%) Informatica
18 52 (0.65%) Murex
19 51 (0.64%) OpenAI