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 26 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,745 6,328 8,065
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.01% 22.12% 18.91%
As % of the General category 33.59% 34.99% 32.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,480 4,132 5,403
10th Percentile £354 £350 £356
25th Percentile £440 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £509
% change year-on-year +0.10% -1.87% -3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 112 254
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.13 £23.89 £15.04
Median hourly rate £25.08 £41.00 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -38.84% +52.02% -10.10%
75th Percentile £54.17 £65.06 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.47 £55.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £49.90 £30.00
% change year-on-year -52.25% +66.33% -38.78%

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 26,031 18,083 24,665
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.62% 63.22% 57.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,818 11,497 15,556
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £772
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,703 775 1,958
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.56 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.84 £15.47
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.40 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.49% -8.67% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £54.50 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.28 £28.00
% change year-on-year +19.46% -13.30% -0.25%

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 26 May 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 26 May 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 26 May 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 7,751 £550 -4.35% 5,173
London 0 4,689 £575 -8.00% 2,964
UK excluding London 0 3,484 £500 +0.10% 2,892
Work from Home -2 2,419 £540 -6.90% 2,201
North of England +3 1,185 £492 +3.58% 771
South East 0 647 £500 -3.61% 854
North West +5 623 £465 - 450
Midlands 0 592 £492 +3.58% 456
Yorkshire +1 523 £525 +10.53% 254
Scotland 0 417 £500 +5.26% 185
West Midlands 0 402 £500 -4.76% 259
South West -2 357 £525 - 302
East of England +3 203 £513 -10.87% 221
East Midlands 0 186 £465 +5.08% 196
Wales +15 88 £463 +19.35% 62
Northern Ireland -1 47 £525 +28.05% 82
North East -14 40 £488 +4.84% 76
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 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
1 319 (3.65%) Confluence
2 217 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 83 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
5 53 (0.61%) Apache
6 52 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.35%) SAS
8 23 (0.26%) CMS
9 20 (0.23%) CICS
9 20 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.18%) IIS
11 14 (0.16%) Appian
12 13 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.14%) Camunda
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.11%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
17 8 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 506 (5.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.57%) Microsoft Office
3 171 (1.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 171 (1.96%) Microsoft Project
4 127 (1.45%) MS Visio
5 47 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
6 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.091%) Notion
7 8 (0.091%) Sketch
7 8 (0.091%) Trello
8 7 (0.080%) InVision
9 6 (0.069%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.011%) UXPin
12 1 (0.011%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 393 (4.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 117 (1.34%) Oracle Payables
3 107 (1.22%) NetSuite
4 98 (1.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 87 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 66 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
7 63 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
8 56 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
9 55 (0.63%) SAP FI
10 44 (0.50%) SAP CO
11 40 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
12 39 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
13 38 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
14 36 (0.41%) Aladdin
15 34 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
16 31 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 30 (0.34%) Oracle Cash Management
18 25 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
19 24 (0.27%) SAP ERP
19 24 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,341 (15.33%) Azure
2 969 (11.08%) AWS
3 591 (6.76%) Power Platform
4 386 (4.41%) GCP
5 304 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
6 289 (3.30%) SaaS
7 269 (3.08%) Microsoft 365
8 234 (2.68%) GitHub
9 231 (2.64%) Dynamics 365
10 162 (1.85%) Snowflake
11 154 (1.76%) Entra ID
12 137 (1.57%) Serverless
13 127 (1.45%) OCI
14 112 (1.28%) Power Automate
15 110 (1.26%) Amazon S3
16 97 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
17 87 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 83 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
19 78 (0.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 78 (0.89%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 158 (1.81%) Firewall
2 117 (1.34%) Network Security
3 78 (0.89%) WAN
4 71 (0.81%) DNS
5 60 (0.69%) VPN
6 54 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 40 (0.46%) BGP
8 39 (0.45%) LAN
9 38 (0.43%) SD-WAN
10 34 (0.39%) HTTP
11 31 (0.35%) SSL
12 30 (0.34%) OSPF
13 29 (0.33%) Multicast
14 26 (0.30%) DHCP
15 24 (0.27%) MPLS
16 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 20 (0.23%) VSAN
17 19 (0.22%) VLAN
18 17 (0.19%) Internet
19 13 (0.15%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 498 (5.69%) Power BI
2 219 (2.50%) SQL Server
3 215 (2.46%) Data Warehouse
4 176 (2.01%) Metadata
5 161 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
6 157 (1.80%) Relational Database
7 151 (1.73%) Tableau
8 125 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 90 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 79 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (0.85%) Big Data
12 68 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.71%) MongoDB
14 59 (0.67%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
16 46 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
17 44 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 41 (0.47%) Delta Lake
19 39 (0.45%) Power Query
20 36 (0.41%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 672 (7.68%) JIRA
2 206 (2.36%) Git
3 163 (1.86%) Jenkins
4 96 (1.10%) GitLab
5 46 (0.53%) Cucumber
5 46 (0.53%) JUnit
6 38 (0.43%) Selenium
7 31 (0.35%) Visual Studio
8 30 (0.34%) Postman
9 28 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 23 (0.26%) MLflow
11 22 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 19 (0.22%) ERwin
14 18 (0.21%) Maven
15 17 (0.19%) Hudson
15 17 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
16 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
17 13 (0.15%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,543 (29.08%) Social Skills
2 1,597 (18.26%) Banking
3 1,142 (13.06%) Analytical Skills
4 508 (5.81%) Public Sector
5 379 (4.33%) Legal
6 333 (3.81%) Financial Institution
7 319 (3.65%) Investment Banking
8 283 (3.24%) Front Office
9 268 (3.06%) Retail
10 245 (2.80%) Organisational Skills
11 232 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
12 215 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
13 171 (1.96%) Manufacturing
14 152 (1.74%) Marketing
15 146 (1.67%) General Ledger
16 132 (1.51%) Telecoms
17 128 (1.46%) Local Government
18 124 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 123 (1.41%) Law
20 122 (1.40%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,327 (15.17%) Analyst
2 918 (10.50%) Senior
3 893 (10.21%) Lead
4 878 (10.04%) Developer
5 799 (9.14%) Architect
6 712 (8.14%) Business Analyst
7 682 (7.80%) Project Manager
8 591 (6.76%) Consultant
9 333 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
10 285 (3.26%) Data Engineer
11 216 (2.47%) Financial Analyst
12 210 (2.40%) Senior Manager
13 198 (2.26%) Data Analyst
14 182 (2.08%) Finance Manager
15 176 (2.01%) Programme Manager
16 175 (2.00%) Accountant
17 154 (1.76%) Software Engineer
18 151 (1.73%) Java Developer
19 141 (1.61%) Delivery Manager
20 139 (1.59%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 256 (2.93%) REST
2 250 (2.86%) Kafka
3 241 (2.76%) .NET
4 211 (2.41%) React
5 185 (2.12%) Middleware
6 174 (1.99%) Oracle Fusion
7 150 (1.72%) Spring
8 145 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.54%) RESTful
10 105 (1.20%) PySpark
11 103 (1.18%) Node.js
12 94 (1.07%) AngularJS
13 85 (0.97%) OAuth
14 78 (0.89%) Redux
15 77 (0.88%) JSON
16 72 (0.82%) XML
17 65 (0.74%) CSS
18 64 (0.73%) HTML
19 61 (0.70%) OpenID
20 60 (0.69%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 380 (4.35%) Onboarding
2 369 (4.22%) Product Ownership
3 327 (3.74%) Cloud Native
4 239 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
5 195 (2.23%) Management Information System
6 187 (2.14%) Data Structures
7 171 (1.96%) Derivative
8 168 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
9 155 (1.77%) Data Centre
10 136 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
11 135 (1.54%) Fixed Income
12 133 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 103 (1.18%) Equities
14 102 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
15 99 (1.13%) Public Cloud
16 97 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 92 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
18 90 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
19 75 (0.86%) AI Agents
20 68 (0.78%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 272 (3.11%) Windows
2 258 (2.95%) Linux
3 139 (1.59%) Unix
4 71 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.48%) Windows 10
6 36 (0.41%) Solaris
7 31 (0.35%) Apple iOS
8 28 (0.32%) Android
8 28 (0.32%) zOS
9 22 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 17 (0.19%) AIX
10 17 (0.19%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.080%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.069%) VMS
12 6 (0.069%) Windows Server 2019
13 5 (0.057%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.046%) HPUX
14 4 (0.046%) MVS
14 4 (0.046%) SUSE
15 3 (0.034%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,796 (20.54%) Agile
2 1,753 (20.05%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,201 (13.73%) Migration
4 1,199 (13.71%) Problem-Solving
5 969 (11.08%) Continuous Improvement
6 936 (10.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 925 (10.58%) ERP
8 916 (10.47%) DevOps
9 871 (9.96%) CI/CD
10 864 (9.88%) AI
11 835 (9.55%) Analytics
12 786 (8.99%) Project Management
13 724 (8.28%) Data Modelling
14 722 (8.26%) Decision-Making
15 698 (7.98%) Validation
16 694 (7.94%) Roadmaps
17 676 (7.73%) Business Intelligence
18 675 (7.72%) User Acceptance Testing
19 619 (7.08%) Change Management
20 568 (6.50%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,183 (13.53%) SQL
2 1,037 (11.86%) Python
3 565 (6.46%) Java
4 343 (3.92%) C#
5 218 (2.49%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 169 (1.93%) PowerShell
8 108 (1.23%) C++
9 73 (0.83%) Go
10 71 (0.81%) PL/SQL
11 67 (0.77%) Bash
12 62 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 52 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 51 (0.58%) Shell Script
15 45 (0.51%) Scala
16 41 (0.47%) VBA
17 30 (0.34%) R
18 29 (0.33%) Bicep
18 29 (0.33%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.32%) Rust
Qualifications
1 731 (8.36%) Degree
2 683 (7.81%) Security Cleared
3 487 (5.57%) SC Cleared
4 223 (2.55%) ACCA
5 206 (2.36%) PMP
6 204 (2.33%) CIMA
7 185 (2.12%) PMI Certification
8 143 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
9 125 (1.43%) CISSP
9 125 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
10 93 (1.06%) Master's Degree
11 83 (0.95%) CISM
12 76 (0.87%) DV Cleared
13 67 (0.77%) Azure Certification
14 57 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
15 44 (0.50%) AWS Certification
16 40 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
17 31 (0.35%) ISTQB
18 30 (0.34%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 30 (0.34%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (6.00%) Data Quality
2 409 (4.68%) QA
3 315 (3.60%) PMO
4 283 (3.24%) GDPR
5 161 (1.84%) NIST
6 127 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 114 (1.30%) IFRS
8 109 (1.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 108 (1.23%) SLA
10 95 (1.09%) GRC
11 87 (0.99%) Accessibility
12 69 (0.79%) PCI DSS
13 61 (0.70%) GAAP
14 60 (0.69%) ISO 20022
15 38 (0.43%) NCSC
16 37 (0.42%) SEPA
17 35 (0.40%) PSD2
18 27 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
18 27 (0.31%) IFRS 17
19 26 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 270 (3.09%) Docker
2 157 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 52 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.34%) vSphere
5 28 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 20 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.17%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.14%) NFS
10 8 (0.091%) GPFS
11 7 (0.080%) RACF
12 6 (0.069%) KVM
13 5 (0.057%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.046%) Firmware
14 4 (0.046%) HDFS
15 3 (0.034%) GridGain
15 3 (0.034%) SRDF
16 2 (0.023%) ACF2
16 2 (0.023%) IAG
Systems Management
1 394 (4.51%) Kubernetes
2 253 (2.89%) Terraform
3 128 (1.46%) Ansible
4 88 (1.01%) Grafana
5 71 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 42 (0.48%) SCCM
8 37 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
10 18 (0.21%) vRealize
11 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 15 (0.17%) Argo
11 15 (0.17%) Puppet
12 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
12 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
13 12 (0.14%) CASB
13 12 (0.14%) Nessus
14 9 (0.10%) NetBackup
14 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,115 (12.75%) Microsoft
2 786 (8.99%) SAP
3 735 (8.40%) Oracle
4 312 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 245 (2.80%) Databricks
6 191 (2.18%) Salesforce
7 172 (1.97%) Google
8 131 (1.50%) Workday
9 118 (1.35%) Cisco
10 114 (1.30%) Splunk
11 105 (1.20%) VMware
12 97 (1.11%) IBM
13 80 (0.91%) CyberArk
14 76 (0.87%) Ariba
15 67 (0.77%) Citrix
16 65 (0.74%) Sage
17 61 (0.70%) OpenAI
18 51 (0.58%) IFS
18 51 (0.58%) Palo Alto
19 49 (0.56%) Informatica