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 1 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,921 7,539 7,707
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.61% 22.92% 19.53%
As % of the General category 33.81% 36.29% 34.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,123 4,980 5,159
10th Percentile £358 £338 £356
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 292 146 200
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.74 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.06 £23.41
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £37.81
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.33% +30.42%
75th Percentile £50.94 £63.75 £42.31
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.63 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.39 £38.12
% change year-on-year +60.51% -28.15% +15.72%

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 29,343 20,776 22,576
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.04% 63.17% 57.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,454 12,989 14,241
10th Percentile £313 £280 £286
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,143 1,108 1,460
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £13.86
25th Percentile £17.92 £16.13 £16.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -32.93% +25.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £51.10 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.05 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +49.05% -41.92% +46.62%

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 1 August 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 1 August 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 1 August 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 8,657 £550 - 7,143
London 0 5,218 £585 -2.50% 4,250
UK excluding London 0 3,918 £500 +1.01% 3,855
Work from Home -1 2,861 £550 -4.35% 3,010
North of England 0 1,339 £500 +6.50% 969
South East -1 759 £501 -5.42% 1,067
North West 0 703 £495 +9.45% 518
Midlands -1 640 £514 +14.22% 532
Yorkshire 0 573 £519 +8.64% 337
Scotland 0 495 £475 -5.00% 254
West Midlands +1 493 £525 +7.80% 317
South West -3 384 £525 -5.01% 436
East of England +7 210 £525 -8.70% 272
East Midlands -3 142 £500 +19.05% 215
Wales +3 73 £525 +13.51% 213
Northern Ireland -1 63 £488 +3.72% 173
North East -13 56 £500 +13.64% 123
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 2

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
1 322 (3.25%) Confluence
2 247 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 87 (0.88%) Apache Spark
4 83 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
5 66 (0.67%) Apache
6 47 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.13%) Camunda
14 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.081%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.071%) Appian
16 5 (0.050%) JBoss
16 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 522 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 163 (1.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
5 106 (1.07%) MS Visio
6 74 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.36%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 6 (0.060%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.060%) Sketch
10 5 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.050%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.050%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.050%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
12 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 452 (4.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.20%) Oracle Payables
3 116 (1.17%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 89 (0.90%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
7 70 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 68 (0.69%) SAP FI
9 59 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
11 55 (0.55%) Oracle Financials
12 47 (0.47%) SAP CO
13 45 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 43 (0.43%) Aladdin
15 37 (0.37%) Unit4 Business World
16 35 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
17 33 (0.33%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
19 28 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
20 27 (0.27%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,549 (15.61%) Azure
2 1,105 (11.14%) AWS
3 672 (6.77%) Power Platform
4 525 (5.29%) GCP
5 333 (3.36%) Azure DevOps
5 333 (3.36%) SaaS
6 291 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
7 287 (2.89%) GitHub
8 255 (2.57%) Dynamics 365
9 217 (2.19%) Snowflake
10 203 (2.05%) Entra ID
11 142 (1.43%) Serverless
12 140 (1.41%) OCI
13 123 (1.24%) Amazon S3
14 122 (1.23%) Power Automate
15 115 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
16 108 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
17 106 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
18 105 (1.06%) dbt
19 102 (1.03%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 184 (1.85%) Firewall
2 144 (1.45%) Network Security
3 93 (0.94%) DNS
3 93 (0.94%) VPN
4 65 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 55 (0.55%) WAN
6 48 (0.48%) SSL
7 47 (0.47%) BGP
8 42 (0.42%) DHCP
9 38 (0.38%) LAN
10 37 (0.37%) HTTP
11 35 (0.35%) Multicast
12 29 (0.29%) OSPF
13 27 (0.27%) Wireless
14 26 (0.26%) VLAN
15 25 (0.25%) Internet
16 22 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
17 21 (0.21%) SAN
18 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
19 18 (0.18%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 556 (5.60%) Power BI
2 283 (2.85%) SQL Server
3 260 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.04%) Metadata
5 180 (1.81%) Relational Database
6 166 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
7 151 (1.52%) Tableau
8 141 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 88 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
10 83 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 74 (0.75%) BigQuery
11 74 (0.75%) MongoDB
11 74 (0.75%) Oracle Database
12 68 (0.69%) Big Data
13 66 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
14 55 (0.55%) Power Query
15 50 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
15 50 (0.50%) Delta Lake
16 49 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 44 (0.44%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 669 (6.74%) JIRA
2 276 (2.78%) Git
3 162 (1.63%) Jenkins
4 96 (0.97%) GitLab
5 47 (0.47%) JUnit
6 41 (0.41%) Selenium
7 39 (0.39%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
9 29 (0.29%) Visual Studio
10 27 (0.27%) REST Assured
10 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 26 (0.26%) Bitbucket
11 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.24%) Maven
12 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 23 (0.23%) Postman
14 22 (0.22%) Claude Code
15 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
16 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,907 (29.30%) Social Skills
2 1,875 (18.90%) Banking
3 1,381 (13.92%) Analytical Skills
4 558 (5.62%) Public Sector
5 523 (5.27%) Legal
6 384 (3.87%) Investment Banking
7 380 (3.83%) Organisational Skills
8 364 (3.67%) Financial Institution
9 354 (3.57%) Front Office
9 354 (3.57%) Retail
10 277 (2.79%) Influencing Skills
11 229 (2.31%) Documentation Skills
12 193 (1.95%) Manufacturing
13 176 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 163 (1.64%) Billing
15 162 (1.63%) Local Government
16 159 (1.60%) Marketing
17 155 (1.56%) General Ledger
18 139 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
19 138 (1.39%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,446 (14.58%) Analyst
2 1,078 (10.87%) Lead
3 1,073 (10.82%) Senior
4 1,003 (10.11%) Developer
5 889 (8.96%) Architect
6 743 (7.49%) Business Analyst
7 709 (7.15%) Project Manager
8 678 (6.83%) Consultant
9 342 (3.45%) Solutions Architect
10 323 (3.26%) Data Engineer
11 246 (2.48%) Financial Analyst
12 227 (2.29%) Senior Manager
13 212 (2.14%) Java Developer
14 210 (2.12%) Accountant
15 205 (2.07%) Data Analyst
16 192 (1.94%) Senior Developer
17 188 (1.89%) Programme Manager
18 183 (1.84%) Finance Manager
18 183 (1.84%) Software Engineer
19 176 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 327 (3.30%) REST
2 278 (2.80%) .NET
3 276 (2.78%) React
4 271 (2.73%) Kafka
5 237 (2.39%) Oracle Fusion
6 195 (1.97%) Middleware
7 181 (1.82%) Spring
8 171 (1.72%) Spring Boot
9 138 (1.39%) PySpark
10 132 (1.33%) RESTful
11 121 (1.22%) Redux
12 118 (1.19%) Node.js
13 99 (1.00%) JSON
14 95 (0.96%) AngularJS
15 93 (0.94%) OAuth
16 89 (0.90%) XML
17 68 (0.69%) SOAP
17 68 (0.69%) Web Services
18 62 (0.62%) CSS
18 62 (0.62%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 479 (4.83%) Onboarding
2 463 (4.67%) Product Ownership
3 426 (4.29%) Cloud Native
4 269 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
5 244 (2.46%) Data Structures
6 225 (2.27%) Management Information System
7 197 (1.99%) Virtual Team
8 181 (1.82%) Derivative
9 180 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
10 176 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
11 170 (1.71%) Fixed Income
12 163 (1.64%) Data Centre
13 158 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 151 (1.52%) AI Agents
15 136 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
16 125 (1.26%) Equities
17 109 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 103 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
19 100 (1.01%) Public Cloud
20 99 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 353 (3.56%) Windows
2 292 (2.94%) Linux
3 156 (1.57%) Unix
4 80 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 46 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 41 (0.41%) Apple iOS
7 38 (0.38%) Solaris
7 38 (0.38%) zOS
8 36 (0.36%) Windows 10
9 32 (0.32%) Android
10 25 (0.25%) Mac OS
11 19 (0.19%) AIX
12 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
13 8 (0.081%) VMS
14 6 (0.060%) HPUX
14 6 (0.060%) SUSE
15 5 (0.050%) MVS
16 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
17 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,285 (23.03%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,034 (20.50%) Agile
3 1,369 (13.80%) Migration
4 1,325 (13.36%) Problem-Solving
5 1,181 (11.90%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,155 (11.64%) AI
7 1,131 (11.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,040 (10.48%) ERP
9 1,031 (10.39%) CI/CD
10 1,014 (10.22%) Analytics
11 1,006 (10.14%) DevOps
12 910 (9.17%) Decision-Making
13 816 (8.22%) Validation
14 807 (8.13%) Roadmaps
15 801 (8.07%) Data Modelling
16 768 (7.74%) User Acceptance Testing
17 752 (7.58%) Project Management
18 715 (7.21%) Change Management
19 689 (6.94%) Business Intelligence
20 647 (6.52%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,282 (12.92%) SQL
2 1,226 (12.36%) Python
3 650 (6.55%) Java
4 387 (3.90%) C#
5 274 (2.76%) JavaScript
6 253 (2.55%) TypeScript
7 235 (2.37%) PowerShell
8 117 (1.18%) Bash
9 95 (0.96%) PL/SQL
10 79 (0.80%) C++
11 78 (0.79%) Go
11 78 (0.79%) Shell Script
12 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 68 (0.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 50 (0.50%) Bicep
15 49 (0.49%) VBA
16 41 (0.41%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.37%) Scala
18 34 (0.34%) Apex Code
18 34 (0.34%) Korn
Qualifications
1 776 (7.82%) Security Cleared
2 726 (7.32%) Degree
3 554 (5.58%) SC Cleared
4 237 (2.39%) PMP
5 212 (2.14%) PMI Certification
6 206 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
7 205 (2.07%) ACCA
8 181 (1.82%) CIMA
9 153 (1.54%) CISSP
10 136 (1.37%) DV Cleared
11 121 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 97 (0.98%) Azure Certification
13 89 (0.90%) CISM
14 79 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
15 78 (0.79%) Master's Degree
16 61 (0.61%) AWS Certification
17 54 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 33 (0.33%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 636 (6.41%) Data Quality
2 431 (4.34%) QA
3 361 (3.64%) PMO
4 277 (2.79%) GDPR
5 158 (1.59%) NIST
6 124 (1.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.13%) SLA
8 111 (1.12%) GRC
9 108 (1.09%) Accessibility
10 103 (1.04%) IFRS
11 99 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 63 (0.64%) GAAP
13 58 (0.58%) ISO 20022
14 49 (0.49%) PCI DSS
15 36 (0.36%) SEPA
16 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
17 31 (0.31%) COBIT
17 31 (0.31%) MiFID
18 30 (0.30%) EMIR
18 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 272 (2.74%) Docker
2 222 (2.24%) Active Directory
3 67 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.23%) RACF
5 23 (0.23%) vSphere
6 22 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
8 12 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
10 7 (0.071%) IAG
11 5 (0.050%) ACF2
11 5 (0.050%) GPFS
11 5 (0.050%) KVM
11 5 (0.050%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.030%) GridGain
12 3 (0.030%) SRDF
12 3 (0.030%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 437 (4.40%) Kubernetes
2 333 (3.36%) Terraform
3 158 (1.59%) Ansible
4 92 (0.93%) Grafana
5 75 (0.76%) Prometheus
6 74 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 50 (0.50%) SCCM
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 22 (0.22%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 15 (0.15%) Puppet
15 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.12%) Istio
17 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,308 (13.18%) Microsoft
2 854 (8.61%) Oracle
3 844 (8.51%) SAP
4 364 (3.67%) ServiceNow
5 317 (3.20%) Databricks
6 229 (2.31%) Salesforce
7 212 (2.14%) Google
8 159 (1.60%) IBM
9 141 (1.42%) Workday
10 127 (1.28%) VMware
11 108 (1.09%) Cisco
12 106 (1.07%) Splunk
13 95 (0.96%) Ariba
14 89 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 75 (0.76%) OpenAI
16 66 (0.67%) Sage
17 61 (0.61%) Citrix
18 52 (0.52%) Informatica
19 51 (0.51%) Bloomberg
20 44 (0.44%) F5