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 28 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,431 6,942 8,239
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.49% 22.72% 18.97%
As % of the General category 33.95% 35.89% 33.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,879 4,550 5,513
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £447 £425 £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 £820 £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 235 136 262
10th Percentile £14.89 £16.21 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.03 £24.55 £15.54
Median hourly rate £35.00 £35.45 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.26% +26.59% -7.83%
75th Percentile £54.11 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £88.00 £76.88 £57.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.13 £28.91 £30.83
% change year-on-year +49.19% -6.21% -31.50%

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 27,783 19,344 24,812
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.48% 63.32% 57.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,717 12,162 15,507
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £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 1,901 947 1,980
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.46 £12.79
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.39 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.50 £31.76
Median % change year-on-year +16.36% -13.40% +3.98%
75th Percentile £60.25 £53.63 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.50 £24.22 £31.00
% change year-on-year +30.06% -21.87% +19.46%

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 28 June 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 28 June 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 28 June 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 8,264 £550 - 4,056
London 0 4,966 £575 -4.17% 2,092
UK excluding London +1 3,763 £500 +2.04% 2,734
Work from Home -1 2,733 £550 -4.35% 1,646
North of England +2 1,279 £500 +7.18% 645
South East -1 694 £500 -4.76% 924
North West +4 672 £471 +4.61% 340
Midlands 0 649 £500 +11.11% 385
Yorkshire 0 562 £525 +8.19% 228
West Midlands +1 478 £500 +1.63% 234
Scotland 0 478 £496 +3.44% 155
South West -3 377 £525 - 303
East of England +3 193 £516 -10.22% 216
East Midlands 0 164 £475 +13.77% 150
Wales +5 88 £528 +13.44% 78
Northern Ireland -1 55 £475 +11.76% 82
North East -18 46 £500 +13.96% 87
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 337 (3.57%) Confluence
2 230 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 90 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 74 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
5 60 (0.64%) Apache
6 52 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 32 (0.34%) SAS
8 28 (0.30%) CMS
9 22 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.20%) CICS
11 17 (0.18%) IIS
12 12 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.13%) Camunda
13 11 (0.12%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.12%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.095%) Appian
14 9 (0.095%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.064%) Hyperledger
16 5 (0.053%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.053%) WebLogic
Applications
1 516 (5.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.35%) Microsoft Office
3 173 (1.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 151 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 117 (1.24%) MS Visio
6 68 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.074%) Sketch
9 6 (0.064%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.053%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.053%) Trello
11 4 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
11 4 (0.042%) InVision
11 4 (0.042%) Notion
11 4 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
11 4 (0.042%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.021%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Final Cut Pro
13 1 (0.011%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 426 (4.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 110 (1.17%) NetSuite
2 110 (1.17%) Oracle Payables
3 89 (0.94%) Oracle Receivables
4 81 (0.86%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 77 (0.82%) Oracle ERP
6 62 (0.66%) SAP FI
7 48 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
8 47 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
9 46 (0.49%) Oracle General Ledger
10 45 (0.48%) SAP CO
11 43 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
12 39 (0.41%) Aladdin
13 36 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
14 30 (0.32%) SAP ERP
15 29 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 27 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
17 26 (0.28%) SAP BRIM
18 25 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
19 23 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,489 (15.79%) Azure
2 1,063 (11.27%) AWS
3 623 (6.61%) Power Platform
4 476 (5.05%) GCP
5 323 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
6 311 (3.30%) SaaS
7 285 (3.02%) Microsoft 365
8 245 (2.60%) GitHub
9 215 (2.28%) Dynamics 365
10 197 (2.09%) Snowflake
11 175 (1.86%) Entra ID
12 146 (1.55%) Serverless
13 125 (1.33%) OCI
14 124 (1.31%) Amazon S3
15 108 (1.15%) Power Automate
16 106 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
17 98 (1.04%) dbt
18 93 (0.99%) Microsoft Copilot
19 90 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
20 84 (0.89%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 178 (1.89%) Firewall
2 144 (1.53%) Network Security
3 79 (0.84%) DNS
4 74 (0.78%) WAN
5 70 (0.74%) VPN
6 61 (0.65%) TCP/IP
7 44 (0.47%) BGP
8 38 (0.40%) SSL
9 37 (0.39%) LAN
10 36 (0.38%) HTTP
11 35 (0.37%) SD-WAN
12 31 (0.33%) Multicast
12 31 (0.33%) OSPF
13 30 (0.32%) DHCP
14 25 (0.27%) Internet
15 24 (0.25%) MPLS
16 21 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
17 19 (0.20%) VSAN
18 17 (0.18%) VLAN
19 16 (0.17%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 532 (5.64%) Power BI
2 260 (2.76%) SQL Server
3 244 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.14%) Metadata
5 179 (1.90%) Relational Database
6 177 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
7 150 (1.59%) Tableau
8 144 (1.53%) Data Lake
9 93 (0.99%) NoSQL
10 84 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (0.78%) Big Data
11 74 (0.78%) Oracle Database
12 70 (0.74%) BigQuery
13 69 (0.73%) MongoDB
14 62 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
15 50 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 47 (0.50%) Power Query
17 46 (0.49%) Delta Lake
18 45 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
19 41 (0.43%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 684 (7.25%) JIRA
2 242 (2.57%) Git
3 172 (1.82%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.03%) GitLab
5 56 (0.59%) JUnit
6 46 (0.49%) Cucumber
7 42 (0.45%) Selenium
8 30 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
9 29 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 28 (0.30%) Postman
11 25 (0.27%) ERwin
11 25 (0.27%) MLflow
12 24 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
14 21 (0.22%) Maven
15 19 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 19 (0.20%) Zephyr
16 17 (0.18%) Hudson
16 17 (0.18%) TeamCity
17 15 (0.16%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,757 (29.23%) Social Skills
2 1,746 (18.51%) Banking
3 1,238 (13.13%) Analytical Skills
4 528 (5.60%) Public Sector
5 465 (4.93%) Legal
6 376 (3.99%) Investment Banking
7 359 (3.81%) Financial Institution
8 340 (3.61%) Front Office
9 302 (3.20%) Organisational Skills
9 302 (3.20%) Retail
10 240 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
11 231 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
12 175 (1.86%) Manufacturing
13 171 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 153 (1.62%) General Ledger
14 153 (1.62%) Local Government
15 147 (1.56%) Billing
16 136 (1.44%) Marketing
17 132 (1.40%) Law
18 129 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,382 (14.65%) Analyst
2 1,020 (10.82%) Senior
3 996 (10.56%) Lead
4 949 (10.06%) Developer
5 881 (9.34%) Architect
6 708 (7.51%) Business Analyst
6 708 (7.51%) Project Manager
7 639 (6.78%) Consultant
8 350 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
9 318 (3.37%) Data Engineer
10 225 (2.39%) Financial Analyst
11 222 (2.35%) Senior Manager
12 199 (2.11%) Data Analyst
13 194 (2.06%) Accountant
13 194 (2.06%) Java Developer
14 189 (2.00%) Finance Manager
15 181 (1.92%) Programme Manager
16 175 (1.86%) Software Engineer
17 174 (1.84%) Senior Developer
18 167 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 292 (3.10%) REST
2 267 (2.83%) .NET
3 263 (2.79%) Kafka
3 263 (2.79%) React
4 201 (2.13%) Oracle Fusion
5 192 (2.04%) Middleware
6 175 (1.86%) Spring
7 165 (1.75%) Spring Boot
8 132 (1.40%) RESTful
9 117 (1.24%) Redux
10 113 (1.20%) PySpark
11 109 (1.16%) Node.js
12 92 (0.98%) AngularJS
12 92 (0.98%) JSON
13 87 (0.92%) OAuth
14 78 (0.83%) XML
15 65 (0.69%) CSS
16 63 (0.67%) GraphQL
17 62 (0.66%) OpenID
18 60 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 429 (4.55%) Onboarding
2 404 (4.28%) Product Ownership
3 397 (4.21%) Cloud Native
4 258 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
5 218 (2.31%) Management Information System
6 208 (2.21%) Data Structures
7 168 (1.78%) Fixed Income
8 167 (1.77%) Derivative
8 167 (1.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 166 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
10 165 (1.75%) Data Centre
11 164 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
12 143 (1.52%) Virtual Team
13 127 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
14 124 (1.31%) Equities
15 119 (1.26%) AI Agents
16 116 (1.23%) Public Cloud
17 103 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
18 102 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
19 88 (0.93%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 317 (3.36%) Windows
2 275 (2.92%) Linux
3 153 (1.62%) Unix
4 71 (0.75%) Windows Server
5 38 (0.40%) Solaris
6 36 (0.38%) Windows 10
7 35 (0.37%) zOS
8 34 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 34 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 29 (0.31%) Android
10 20 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 19 (0.20%) AIX
12 8 (0.085%) VMS
13 7 (0.074%) Oracle Linux
13 7 (0.074%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.053%) HPUX
14 5 (0.053%) SUSE
14 5 (0.053%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.042%) MVS
16 3 (0.032%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,020 (21.42%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,902 (20.17%) Agile
3 1,304 (13.83%) Migration
4 1,263 (13.39%) Problem-Solving
5 1,083 (11.48%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,043 (11.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,024 (10.86%) AI
8 998 (10.58%) DevOps
9 977 (10.36%) CI/CD
9 977 (10.36%) ERP
10 932 (9.88%) Analytics
11 827 (8.77%) Decision-Making
12 786 (8.33%) Validation
13 784 (8.31%) Project Management
14 777 (8.24%) Data Modelling
15 768 (8.14%) Roadmaps
16 735 (7.79%) User Acceptance Testing
17 671 (7.11%) Change Management
18 668 (7.08%) Business Intelligence
19 610 (6.47%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,276 (13.53%) SQL
2 1,156 (12.26%) Python
3 630 (6.68%) Java
4 381 (4.04%) C#
5 258 (2.74%) JavaScript
6 256 (2.71%) TypeScript
7 214 (2.27%) PowerShell
8 92 (0.98%) Bash
9 91 (0.96%) C++
10 81 (0.86%) PL/SQL
11 79 (0.84%) Go
12 73 (0.77%) T-SQL
13 60 (0.64%) Shell Script
14 57 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 47 (0.50%) Scala
15 47 (0.50%) VBA
16 35 (0.37%) Bicep
17 33 (0.35%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.33%) Rust
19 29 (0.31%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 742 (7.87%) Degree
2 705 (7.48%) Security Cleared
3 504 (5.34%) SC Cleared
4 222 (2.35%) ACCA
5 221 (2.34%) PMP
6 200 (2.12%) CIMA
7 197 (2.09%) PMI Certification
8 182 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
9 157 (1.66%) CISSP
10 136 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.02%) DV Cleared
12 93 (0.99%) CISM
13 86 (0.91%) Master's Degree
14 85 (0.90%) Azure Certification
15 74 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
16 52 (0.55%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
18 41 (0.43%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 39 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 33 (0.35%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 583 (6.18%) Data Quality
2 413 (4.38%) QA
3 329 (3.49%) PMO
4 305 (3.23%) GDPR
5 164 (1.74%) NIST
6 130 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.22%) IFRS
8 111 (1.18%) SLA
9 106 (1.12%) GRC
10 102 (1.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 94 (1.00%) Accessibility
12 65 (0.69%) GAAP
13 64 (0.68%) ISO 20022
14 63 (0.67%) PCI DSS
15 39 (0.41%) SEPA
16 37 (0.39%) NCSC
17 36 (0.38%) Solvency II
18 33 (0.35%) PSD2
19 30 (0.32%) SOC 2
20 29 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 282 (2.99%) Docker
2 191 (2.03%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
5 29 (0.31%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
7 16 (0.17%) RACF
8 15 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.13%) NFS
11 10 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.064%) GPFS
12 6 (0.064%) KVM
13 5 (0.053%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.053%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.032%) Firmware
14 3 (0.032%) GridGain
14 3 (0.032%) SRDF
15 2 (0.021%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
15 2 (0.021%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 431 (4.57%) Kubernetes
2 291 (3.09%) Terraform
3 152 (1.61%) Ansible
4 87 (0.92%) Grafana
5 73 (0.77%) Prometheus
6 66 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.53%) SCCM
8 47 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (0.31%) FortiGate
10 25 (0.27%) Control-M
11 18 (0.19%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.19%) vRealize
12 16 (0.17%) HP ALM
13 15 (0.16%) Argo
14 14 (0.15%) Nessus
15 13 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (0.14%) OMEGAMON
15 13 (0.14%) Puppet
16 12 (0.13%) AirWatch
16 12 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,195 (12.67%) Microsoft
2 824 (8.74%) SAP
3 784 (8.31%) Oracle
4 336 (3.56%) ServiceNow
5 292 (3.10%) Databricks
6 213 (2.26%) Salesforce
7 209 (2.22%) Google
8 135 (1.43%) Workday
9 125 (1.33%) IBM
10 119 (1.26%) Cisco
11 114 (1.21%) VMware
12 113 (1.20%) Splunk
13 94 (1.00%) CyberArk
14 85 (0.90%) Ariba
15 68 (0.72%) OpenAI
16 66 (0.70%) Sage
17 63 (0.67%) Citrix
18 56 (0.59%) Informatica
19 55 (0.58%) Bloomberg
20 49 (0.52%) Murex