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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,846 7,502 7,715
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.40% 22.85% 19.89%
As % of the General category 33.43% 35.98% 34.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,053 4,943 5,103
10th Percentile £363 £331 £363
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £714
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £493 £513
% change year-on-year +2.54% -3.90% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 305 144 187
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.64 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.97 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -21.95% +44.23%
75th Percentile - £63.38 £43.90
90th Percentile £75.76 £75.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +65.89% -30.48% +18.86%

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 29,452 20,852 22,255
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.04% 63.51% 57.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,473 12,975 13,936
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
25th Percentile £415 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £746 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,245 1,142 1,320
10th Percentile £13.90 £13.26 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.20 £16.30 £16.85
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -32.93% +36.36%
75th Percentile £56.25 £50.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £71.14 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +44.53% -41.92% +52.48%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 8,565 £550 - 6,326
London 0 5,160 £588 -2.08% 3,543
UK excluding London 0 3,887 £505 +2.54% 3,774
Work from Home -1 2,803 £550 -4.35% 2,454
North of England 0 1,336 £500 +6.38% 904
South East -4 734 £505 -3.81% 1,227
North West 0 693 £500 +10.56% 479
Midlands 0 628 £500 +11.11% 463
Yorkshire 0 567 £514 +6.42% 303
Scotland 0 505 £475 -2.86% 326
West Midlands +1 473 £500 - 284
South West -4 381 £545 -1.44% 430
East of England +5 206 £525 -8.70% 343
East Midlands -3 149 £500 +21.21% 178
North East -8 69 £500 +11.11% 138
Northern Ireland -1 67 £475 -1.30% 67
Wales -1 61 £525 +13.51% 102
Channel Islands +2 4 £500 - 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
1 338 (3.43%) Confluence
2 250 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
4 88 (0.89%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.73%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.35%) CMS
8 29 (0.29%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.21%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 7 (0.071%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 523 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.28%) Microsoft Office
3 182 (1.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 153 (1.55%) Microsoft Project
5 99 (1.01%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Sketch
11 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 435 (4.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 127 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.13%) NetSuite
4 105 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 95 (0.96%) Oracle ERP
6 74 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
7 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
8 65 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
11 45 (0.46%) SAP CO
12 42 (0.43%) Aladdin
12 42 (0.43%) SAP FI/CO
13 36 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
14 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
15 30 (0.30%) SAP GRC
16 29 (0.29%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.28%) SAP ERP
18 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,555 (15.79%) Azure
2 1,079 (10.96%) AWS
3 660 (6.70%) Power Platform
4 520 (5.28%) GCP
5 355 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
6 329 (3.34%) SaaS
7 302 (3.07%) Microsoft 365
8 300 (3.05%) GitHub
9 255 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
10 218 (2.21%) Entra ID
10 218 (2.21%) Snowflake
11 150 (1.52%) Serverless
12 148 (1.50%) OCI
13 122 (1.24%) Power Automate
14 118 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
15 117 (1.19%) Amazon S3
16 113 (1.15%) dbt
17 111 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
18 109 (1.11%) Microsoft Copilot
19 105 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 174 (1.77%) Firewall
2 156 (1.58%) Network Security
3 99 (1.01%) VPN
4 96 (0.98%) DNS
5 66 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 61 (0.62%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 42 (0.43%) BGP
9 42 (0.43%) LAN
10 39 (0.40%) HTTP
11 32 (0.33%) Multicast
11 32 (0.33%) VLAN
12 29 (0.29%) Wireless
13 28 (0.28%) Internet
14 27 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
15 25 (0.25%) OSPF
15 25 (0.25%) SAN
16 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
17 18 (0.18%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 543 (5.51%) Power BI
2 286 (2.90%) SQL Server
3 264 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.05%) Metadata
5 176 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 145 (1.47%) Data Lake
7 141 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
8 129 (1.31%) Tableau
9 86 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 81 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (0.78%) BigQuery
12 75 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 74 (0.75%) Oracle Database
14 60 (0.61%) Big Data
15 59 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
16 54 (0.55%) Power Query
17 52 (0.53%) Delta Lake
18 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
19 45 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
19 45 (0.46%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 672 (6.83%) JIRA
2 292 (2.97%) Git
3 165 (1.68%) Jenkins
4 99 (1.01%) GitLab
5 54 (0.55%) Selenium
6 44 (0.45%) JUnit
7 32 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 30 (0.30%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.27%) Claude Code
9 27 (0.27%) Maven
9 27 (0.27%) SonarQube
9 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
10 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.22%) Postman
11 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
12 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
13 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,954 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 1,925 (19.55%) Banking
3 1,387 (14.09%) Analytical Skills
4 543 (5.51%) Legal
5 531 (5.39%) Public Sector
6 409 (4.15%) Organisational Skills
7 382 (3.88%) Investment Banking
8 381 (3.87%) Retail
9 351 (3.56%) Financial Institution
10 345 (3.50%) Front Office
11 294 (2.99%) Influencing Skills
12 228 (2.32%) Documentation Skills
13 207 (2.10%) Manufacturing
14 188 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 169 (1.72%) Billing
16 163 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 159 (1.61%) Marketing
18 147 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
19 145 (1.47%) Local Government
20 144 (1.46%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,406 (14.28%) Analyst
2 1,055 (10.72%) Senior
3 1,054 (10.70%) Lead
4 970 (9.85%) Developer
5 868 (8.82%) Architect
6 729 (7.40%) Business Analyst
7 708 (7.19%) Project Manager
8 704 (7.15%) Consultant
9 323 (3.28%) Solutions Architect
10 308 (3.13%) Data Engineer
11 246 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 231 (2.35%) Senior Manager
13 199 (2.02%) Java Developer
14 192 (1.95%) Accountant
15 191 (1.94%) Data Analyst
16 185 (1.88%) Finance Manager
17 183 (1.86%) Programme Manager
18 182 (1.85%) Senior Developer
19 181 (1.84%) IT Manager
20 162 (1.65%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 359 (3.65%) Terraform
2 348 (3.53%) REST
3 280 (2.84%) .NET
4 267 (2.71%) Oracle Fusion
5 254 (2.58%) Kafka
6 234 (2.38%) React
7 189 (1.92%) Middleware
8 180 (1.83%) Spring
9 169 (1.72%) Spring Boot
10 144 (1.46%) PySpark
11 131 (1.33%) RESTful
12 100 (1.02%) XML
13 96 (0.98%) JSON
13 96 (0.98%) Redux
14 93 (0.94%) OAuth
15 90 (0.91%) AngularJS
16 89 (0.90%) Node.js
17 75 (0.76%) SOAP
18 67 (0.68%) Web Services
19 62 (0.63%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 506 (5.14%) Onboarding
2 482 (4.90%) Product Ownership
3 417 (4.24%) Cloud Native
4 254 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
5 237 (2.41%) Data Structures
6 236 (2.40%) Management Information System
7 214 (2.17%) Virtual Team
8 189 (1.92%) Derivative
9 185 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
10 180 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
11 161 (1.64%) Data Centre
12 158 (1.60%) AI Agents
13 153 (1.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 150 (1.52%) Fixed Income
15 135 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
16 120 (1.22%) Equities
17 113 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
18 111 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
19 105 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
20 103 (1.05%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 376 (3.82%) Windows
2 306 (3.11%) Linux
3 158 (1.60%) Unix
4 88 (0.89%) Windows Server
5 53 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 45 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.42%) Windows 10
8 35 (0.36%) Solaris
8 35 (0.36%) zOS
9 33 (0.34%) Android
10 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
11 16 (0.16%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.091%) VMS
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) CentOS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,441 (24.79%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,032 (20.64%) Agile
3 1,338 (13.59%) Migration
4 1,306 (13.26%) Problem-Solving
5 1,181 (11.99%) AI
6 1,164 (11.82%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,136 (11.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,059 (10.76%) CI/CD
9 1,028 (10.44%) ERP
10 1,017 (10.33%) DevOps
11 1,001 (10.17%) Analytics
12 902 (9.16%) Decision-Making
13 798 (8.10%) Roadmaps
14 797 (8.09%) Validation
15 783 (7.95%) Data Modelling
16 767 (7.79%) User Acceptance Testing
17 752 (7.64%) Project Management
18 729 (7.40%) Change Management
19 671 (6.81%) Business Intelligence
20 657 (6.67%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,285 (13.05%) SQL
2 1,206 (12.25%) Python
3 624 (6.34%) Java
4 381 (3.87%) C#
5 263 (2.67%) PowerShell
6 251 (2.55%) JavaScript
7 220 (2.23%) TypeScript
8 140 (1.42%) Bash
9 105 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 91 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.78%) C++
12 69 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 65 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 60 (0.61%) Go
15 56 (0.57%) Bicep
16 44 (0.45%) VBA
17 39 (0.40%) Korn
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.40%) Scala
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 781 (7.93%) Security Cleared
2 725 (7.36%) Degree
3 558 (5.67%) SC Cleared
4 249 (2.53%) PMP
5 221 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
6 218 (2.21%) PMI Certification
7 194 (1.97%) ACCA
8 170 (1.73%) CIMA
9 150 (1.52%) CISSP
10 136 (1.38%) DV Cleared
11 126 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
12 104 (1.06%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.88%) CISM
14 86 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
15 69 (0.70%) Master's Degree
16 66 (0.67%) AWS Certification
17 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 46 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 39 (0.40%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 641 (6.51%) Data Quality
2 418 (4.25%) QA
3 361 (3.67%) PMO
4 252 (2.56%) GDPR
5 156 (1.58%) NIST
6 131 (1.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.12%) GRC
7 110 (1.12%) SLA
8 104 (1.06%) Accessibility
9 97 (0.99%) IFRS
10 92 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 56 (0.57%) GAAP
12 55 (0.56%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.47%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
15 32 (0.33%) SEPA
16 28 (0.28%) COBIT
16 28 (0.28%) EMIR
16 28 (0.28%) MiFID
17 27 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 266 (2.70%) Docker
2 241 (2.45%) Active Directory
3 80 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
6 23 (0.23%) vSphere
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.081%) IAG
11 5 (0.051%) ACF2
11 5 (0.051%) GPFS
11 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
11 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.041%) KVM
12 4 (0.041%) zsh
13 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 446 (4.53%) Kubernetes
2 168 (1.71%) Ansible
3 98 (1.00%) Grafana
4 82 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
7 58 (0.59%) SCCM
8 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 25 (0.25%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
13 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
13 15 (0.15%) Istio
13 15 (0.15%) Puppet
13 15 (0.15%) vRealize
14 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 10 (0.10%) Packer
17 9 (0.091%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,375 (13.97%) Microsoft
2 887 (9.01%) Oracle
3 841 (8.54%) SAP
4 380 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 333 (3.38%) Databricks
6 230 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 224 (2.28%) Google
8 165 (1.68%) IBM
9 139 (1.41%) VMware
10 129 (1.31%) Workday
11 116 (1.18%) Cisco
12 109 (1.11%) Splunk
13 92 (0.93%) CyberArk
14 91 (0.92%) Ariba
15 73 (0.74%) OpenAI
16 60 (0.61%) Citrix
16 60 (0.61%) Sage
17 53 (0.54%) Informatica
18 51 (0.52%) Bloomberg
19 46 (0.47%) Adobe