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 21 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,759 7,426 7,981
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.51% 22.79% 19.31%
As % of the General category 33.79% 36.24% 33.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,011 4,873 5,359
10th Percentile £358 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £419 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £719
90th Percentile £800 £813 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 263 148 221
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.84 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.97 £18.35
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -12.86% +28.49%
75th Percentile £54.36 £63.38 £40.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.38 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £35.00
% change year-on-year +60.58% -21.79% +6.25%

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 28,884 20,489 23,664
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.79% 62.87% 57.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,206 12,822 14,873
10th Percentile £313 £280 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.05% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,024 1,064 1,664
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.28 £13.31
25th Percentile £18.38 £16.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £33.00 £25.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.41% -27.14% +14.75%
75th Percentile £62.00 £51.31 £55.74
90th Percentile £81.18 £70.11 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +46.67% -35.71% +34.62%

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 21 July 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 21 July 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 21 July 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 8,501 £550 - 4,694
London 0 5,119 £583 -2.92% 2,724
UK excluding London -1 3,868 £500 +2.04% 2,576
Work from Home -1 2,838 £550 -4.35% 1,756
North of England 0 1,306 £500 +5.26% 711
South East -1 734 £503 -4.29% 799
North West +2 689 £492 +9.33% 377
Midlands +1 644 £500 +11.11% 387
Yorkshire 0 568 £525 +7.69% 249
Scotland 0 496 £475 -1.04% 148
West Midlands 0 494 £500 +4.17% 212
South West -4 380 £525 -4.55% 260
East of England +7 209 £528 -4.09% 193
East Midlands -2 144 £500 +19.05% 174
Wales +3 84 £525 +18.31% 63
Northern Ireland -1 63 £488 +8.33% 53
North East -22 50 £500 +13.96% 92
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
1 330 (3.38%) Confluence
2 238 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 78 (0.80%) Apache Spark
4 77 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 59 (0.60%) Apache
6 45 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) CMS
7 33 (0.34%) SAS
8 28 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 18 (0.18%) CICS
11 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.12%) Camunda
13 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.072%) WebLogic
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) Hyperledger
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
Applications
1 516 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 218 (2.23%) Microsoft Office
3 171 (1.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 154 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.10%) MS Visio
6 73 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.092%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.041%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 443 (4.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.16%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.74%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 69 (0.71%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
9 56 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
10 54 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
11 49 (0.50%) Oracle Financials
12 47 (0.48%) SAP CO
13 45 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
14 41 (0.42%) Aladdin
15 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
16 33 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
17 29 (0.30%) Workday HCM
18 26 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
19 25 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
19 25 (0.26%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,522 (15.60%) Azure
2 1,096 (11.23%) AWS
3 649 (6.65%) Power Platform
4 505 (5.17%) GCP
5 327 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
6 324 (3.32%) SaaS
7 285 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
8 275 (2.82%) GitHub
9 241 (2.47%) Dynamics 365
10 203 (2.08%) Snowflake
11 199 (2.04%) Entra ID
12 141 (1.44%) Serverless
13 130 (1.33%) OCI
14 124 (1.27%) Amazon S3
15 111 (1.14%) Power Automate
16 105 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 103 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
18 100 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
19 99 (1.01%) dbt
20 92 (0.94%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 192 (1.97%) Firewall
2 143 (1.47%) Network Security
3 93 (0.95%) DNS
4 87 (0.89%) VPN
5 66 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.57%) WAN
7 50 (0.51%) BGP
8 47 (0.48%) SSL
9 40 (0.41%) DHCP
10 39 (0.40%) HTTP
10 39 (0.40%) LAN
10 39 (0.40%) Multicast
11 32 (0.33%) OSPF
12 26 (0.27%) Internet
13 24 (0.25%) MPLS
13 24 (0.25%) VLAN
13 24 (0.25%) Wireless
14 22 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
15 18 (0.18%) SAN
15 18 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 542 (5.55%) Power BI
2 272 (2.79%) SQL Server
3 248 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.08%) Metadata
5 174 (1.78%) Relational Database
6 167 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
7 153 (1.57%) Tableau
8 142 (1.46%) Data Lake
9 89 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
10 82 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.73%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.71%) BigQuery
14 65 (0.67%) Big Data
14 65 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
15 50 (0.51%) Power Query
16 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
17 46 (0.47%) Delta Lake
18 45 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 41 (0.42%) Db2
Development Applications
1 677 (6.94%) JIRA
2 259 (2.65%) Git
3 162 (1.66%) Jenkins
4 92 (0.94%) GitLab
5 52 (0.53%) JUnit
6 41 (0.42%) Cucumber
6 41 (0.42%) Selenium
7 28 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
8 27 (0.28%) Postman
9 25 (0.26%) ERwin
9 25 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
9 25 (0.26%) Visual Studio
10 24 (0.25%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.25%) SonarQube
11 21 (0.22%) Bitbucket
11 21 (0.22%) Maven
11 21 (0.22%) Zephyr
12 19 (0.19%) MLflow
13 17 (0.17%) Hudson
13 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,836 (29.06%) Social Skills
2 1,799 (18.43%) Banking
3 1,324 (13.57%) Analytical Skills
4 553 (5.67%) Public Sector
5 497 (5.09%) Legal
6 366 (3.75%) Investment Banking
7 358 (3.67%) Financial Institution
8 349 (3.58%) Organisational Skills
9 342 (3.50%) Front Office
10 333 (3.41%) Retail
11 271 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
12 239 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
13 187 (1.92%) Manufacturing
14 170 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 162 (1.66%) Billing
16 157 (1.61%) Local Government
17 155 (1.59%) Marketing
18 152 (1.56%) General Ledger
19 136 (1.39%) Law
20 133 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,457 (14.93%) Analyst
2 1,055 (10.81%) Senior
3 1,049 (10.75%) Lead
4 985 (10.09%) Developer
5 880 (9.02%) Architect
6 744 (7.62%) Business Analyst
7 703 (7.20%) Project Manager
8 646 (6.62%) Consultant
9 327 (3.35%) Solutions Architect
10 310 (3.18%) Data Engineer
11 246 (2.52%) Financial Analyst
12 232 (2.38%) Senior Manager
13 209 (2.14%) Java Developer
14 205 (2.10%) Accountant
14 205 (2.10%) Data Analyst
15 191 (1.96%) Programme Manager
16 184 (1.89%) Senior Developer
17 182 (1.86%) Finance Manager
18 179 (1.83%) Software Engineer
19 177 (1.81%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (3.20%) REST
2 273 (2.80%) .NET
3 269 (2.76%) Kafka
4 268 (2.75%) React
5 217 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
6 192 (1.97%) Middleware
7 179 (1.83%) Spring
8 170 (1.74%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.38%) RESTful
10 119 (1.22%) PySpark
10 119 (1.22%) Redux
11 111 (1.14%) Node.js
12 97 (0.99%) JSON
13 93 (0.95%) OAuth
14 92 (0.94%) AngularJS
15 87 (0.89%) XML
16 68 (0.70%) SOAP
17 65 (0.67%) CSS
18 64 (0.66%) HTML
19 63 (0.65%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 464 (4.75%) Onboarding
2 437 (4.48%) Product Ownership
3 413 (4.23%) Cloud Native
4 271 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
5 228 (2.34%) Data Structures
6 222 (2.27%) Management Information System
7 181 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
8 176 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
9 174 (1.78%) Derivative
10 173 (1.77%) Virtual Team
11 169 (1.73%) Fixed Income
12 167 (1.71%) Data Centre
13 163 (1.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 142 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
15 140 (1.43%) AI Agents
16 122 (1.25%) Equities
17 112 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
18 106 (1.09%) Public Cloud
19 104 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
20 99 (1.01%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 333 (3.41%) Windows
2 289 (2.96%) Linux
3 163 (1.67%) Unix
4 76 (0.78%) Windows Server
5 40 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (0.40%) Solaris
7 37 (0.38%) zOS
8 36 (0.37%) Apple iOS
9 35 (0.36%) Windows 10
10 29 (0.30%) Android
11 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
12 20 (0.20%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 9 (0.092%) VMS
15 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 5 (0.051%) MVS
17 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
18 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,164 (22.17%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,976 (20.25%) Agile
3 1,352 (13.85%) Migration
4 1,284 (13.16%) Problem-Solving
5 1,154 (11.82%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,124 (11.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,086 (11.13%) AI
8 1,013 (10.38%) DevOps
9 1,006 (10.31%) ERP
10 995 (10.20%) CI/CD
11 963 (9.87%) Analytics
12 883 (9.05%) Decision-Making
13 811 (8.31%) Roadmaps
14 810 (8.30%) Validation
15 782 (8.01%) Data Modelling
16 753 (7.72%) User Acceptance Testing
17 752 (7.71%) Project Management
18 706 (7.23%) Change Management
19 674 (6.91%) Business Intelligence
20 629 (6.45%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,262 (12.93%) SQL
2 1,186 (12.15%) Python
3 648 (6.64%) Java
4 385 (3.95%) C#
5 262 (2.68%) JavaScript
6 260 (2.66%) TypeScript
7 229 (2.35%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.08%) Bash
9 94 (0.96%) PL/SQL
10 83 (0.85%) C++
10 83 (0.85%) Go
11 75 (0.77%) Shell Script
12 74 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 62 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 50 (0.51%) VBA
15 46 (0.47%) Bicep
16 39 (0.40%) Scala
17 37 (0.38%) Kotlin
18 34 (0.35%) Apex Code
19 28 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 746 (7.64%) Security Cleared
2 737 (7.55%) Degree
3 535 (5.48%) SC Cleared
4 227 (2.33%) PMP
5 205 (2.10%) PMI Certification
6 200 (2.05%) ACCA
7 188 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 178 (1.82%) CIMA
9 157 (1.61%) CISSP
10 124 (1.27%) Computer Science Degree
11 115 (1.18%) DV Cleared
12 95 (0.97%) Azure Certification
13 89 (0.91%) CISM
14 82 (0.84%) Master's Degree
15 75 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 61 (0.63%) AWS Certification
17 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
18 46 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 607 (6.22%) Data Quality
2 424 (4.34%) QA
3 356 (3.65%) PMO
4 284 (2.91%) GDPR
5 161 (1.65%) NIST
6 132 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 106 (1.09%) GRC
7 106 (1.09%) SLA
8 105 (1.08%) IFRS
9 103 (1.06%) Accessibility
10 99 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 63 (0.65%) GAAP
12 62 (0.64%) ISO 20022
13 54 (0.55%) PCI DSS
14 37 (0.38%) SEPA
15 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
16 32 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 29 (0.30%) EMIR
17 29 (0.30%) NCSC
18 28 (0.29%) COBIT
System Software
1 270 (2.77%) Docker
2 215 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 64 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.27%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) RACF
7 21 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) NFS
10 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.072%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
14 3 (0.031%) SRDF
15 2 (0.020%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 438 (4.49%) Kubernetes
2 326 (3.34%) Terraform
3 160 (1.64%) Ansible
4 95 (0.97%) Grafana
5 78 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 70 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 54 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 48 (0.49%) SCCM
9 27 (0.28%) Control-M
10 21 (0.22%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,256 (12.87%) Microsoft
2 831 (8.52%) Oracle
2 831 (8.52%) SAP
3 346 (3.55%) ServiceNow
4 293 (3.00%) Databricks
5 219 (2.24%) Salesforce
6 210 (2.15%) Google
7 153 (1.57%) IBM
8 135 (1.38%) Workday
9 129 (1.32%) VMware
10 116 (1.19%) Splunk
11 111 (1.14%) Cisco
12 91 (0.93%) Ariba
12 91 (0.93%) CyberArk
13 68 (0.70%) OpenAI
14 67 (0.69%) Sage
15 64 (0.66%) Citrix
16 54 (0.55%) Informatica
17 51 (0.52%) Bloomberg
18 49 (0.50%) F5