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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,519 6,502 8,103
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.06% 22.20% 18.78%
As % of the General category 33.30% 35.15% 32.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,348 4,255 5,388
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £435 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £570 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.14% -0.87% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £712
90th Percentile £800 £834 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 110 245
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.79 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.82 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £35.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.89% +31.48% +0.58%
75th Percentile £54.00 £69.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.51 £55.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £36.00 £32.12
% change year-on-year -37.50% +12.10% -24.44%

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 25,584 18,500 25,090
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.23% 63.16% 58.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,735 11,804 15,823
10th Percentile £306 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £641 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £766
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,631 792 1,939
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.66 £17.49 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -10.14%
75th Percentile £60.60 £56.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.01
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £28.25
% change year-on-year +10.00% -11.50% -2.59%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 7,526 £538 -6.52% 4,761
London 0 4,535 £575 -8.00% 2,460
UK excluding London 0 3,407 £500 - 2,971
Work from Home -2 2,390 £525 -12.50% 2,081
North of England +3 1,135 £481 +1.32% 740
South East -2 648 £503 -2.36% 956
North West +5 613 £465 - 402
Midlands -1 586 £475 -4.04% 465
Yorkshire +1 483 £510 +2.05% 264
Scotland +1 415 £500 +2.25% 137
West Midlands 0 391 £492 -6.29% 261
South West -2 341 £505 -3.81% 353
East of England -3 197 £525 -4.55% 254
East Midlands 0 191 £463 +3.47% 202
Wales +21 93 £413 +10.00% 75
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +31.25% 48
North East -14 40 £488 +3.72% 84
Channel Islands - 2 £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
1 327 (3.84%) Confluence
2 212 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.03%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.68%) Apache
5 51 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
6 48 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.43%) SAS
8 23 (0.27%) CMS
9 22 (0.26%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.18%) Appian
11 15 (0.18%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Camunda
12 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
13 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 9 (0.11%) WebSphere
Applications
1 525 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
3 174 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
4 173 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 127 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 32 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.15%) Trello
9 8 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.094%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
10 7 (0.082%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 373 (4.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.35%) Oracle Payables
3 100 (1.17%) Oracle Receivables
4 98 (1.15%) NetSuite
5 86 (1.01%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 67 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
7 62 (0.73%) SAP FI
8 58 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
8 58 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
9 51 (0.60%) SAP CO
10 49 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
11 47 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
12 40 (0.47%) Oracle Assets
13 33 (0.39%) Oracle Cash Management
13 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
13 33 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
14 29 (0.34%) Aladdin
14 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 28 (0.33%) SAP ERP
15 28 (0.33%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,283 (15.06%) Azure
2 971 (11.40%) AWS
3 618 (7.25%) Power Platform
4 387 (4.54%) GCP
5 293 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
6 288 (3.38%) SaaS
7 268 (3.15%) Microsoft 365
8 235 (2.76%) Dynamics 365
9 234 (2.75%) GitHub
10 147 (1.73%) Snowflake
11 144 (1.69%) Serverless
12 134 (1.57%) OCI
13 130 (1.53%) Entra ID
14 116 (1.36%) Amazon S3
15 107 (1.26%) Power Automate
16 92 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 89 (1.04%) GitHub Actions
18 86 (1.01%) OpenShift
19 83 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
20 81 (0.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 161 (1.89%) Firewall
2 111 (1.30%) Network Security
3 77 (0.90%) WAN
4 70 (0.82%) DNS
5 61 (0.72%) VPN
6 48 (0.56%) TCP/IP
7 41 (0.48%) SD-WAN
8 39 (0.46%) LAN
9 35 (0.41%) BGP
10 33 (0.39%) HTTP
11 30 (0.35%) OSPF
12 27 (0.32%) Multicast
12 27 (0.32%) SSL
13 24 (0.28%) DHCP
13 24 (0.28%) MPLS
14 21 (0.25%) Internet
15 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 17 (0.20%) VSAN
17 16 (0.19%) VLAN
18 14 (0.16%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 531 (6.23%) Power BI
2 214 (2.51%) SQL Server
3 209 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
4 162 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
5 161 (1.89%) Metadata
6 143 (1.68%) Tableau
7 142 (1.67%) Relational Database
8 127 (1.49%) Data Lake
9 88 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
10 87 (1.02%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.92%) Big Data
12 67 (0.79%) Oracle Database
13 60 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 58 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.49%) DynamoDB
17 41 (0.48%) Delta Lake
17 41 (0.48%) Power Query
17 41 (0.48%) Snowflake Schema
17 41 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 683 (8.02%) JIRA
2 216 (2.54%) Git
3 180 (2.11%) Jenkins
4 114 (1.34%) GitLab
5 50 (0.59%) Cucumber
5 50 (0.59%) JUnit
6 38 (0.45%) Selenium
7 35 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
8 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.32%) Postman
10 25 (0.29%) MLflow
11 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 19 (0.22%) Bitbucket
13 19 (0.22%) REST Assured
14 18 (0.21%) Maven
15 17 (0.20%) ERwin
15 17 (0.20%) Hudson
15 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.18%) TeamCity
General
1 2,579 (30.27%) Social Skills
2 1,556 (18.27%) Banking
3 1,144 (13.43%) Analytical Skills
4 548 (6.43%) Public Sector
5 351 (4.12%) Legal
6 334 (3.92%) Financial Institution
7 283 (3.32%) Investment Banking
8 276 (3.24%) Front Office
9 244 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
10 242 (2.84%) Retail
11 232 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
12 207 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
13 189 (2.22%) Manufacturing
14 178 (2.09%) Marketing
15 152 (1.78%) Telecoms
16 142 (1.67%) General Ledger
17 125 (1.47%) Local Government
18 124 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
19 120 (1.41%) Law
20 117 (1.37%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,299 (15.25%) Analyst
2 883 (10.37%) Senior
3 873 (10.25%) Developer
4 856 (10.05%) Lead
5 769 (9.03%) Architect
6 700 (8.22%) Business Analyst
7 682 (8.01%) Project Manager
8 592 (6.95%) Consultant
9 307 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
10 268 (3.15%) Data Engineer
11 209 (2.45%) Financial Analyst
12 202 (2.37%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.21%) Finance Manager
14 181 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 173 (2.03%) Programme Manager
16 161 (1.89%) Accountant
17 146 (1.71%) Java Developer
18 140 (1.64%) Delivery Manager
19 137 (1.61%) Senior Analyst
20 129 (1.51%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (3.10%) Kafka
2 251 (2.95%) REST
3 234 (2.75%) .NET
4 197 (2.31%) React
5 175 (2.05%) Middleware
6 150 (1.76%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (1.71%) Spring
8 140 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 132 (1.55%) RESTful
10 107 (1.26%) Node.js
11 105 (1.23%) PySpark
12 92 (1.08%) AngularJS
13 85 (1.00%) OAuth
14 79 (0.93%) JSON
15 76 (0.89%) XML
16 75 (0.88%) Redux
17 68 (0.80%) HTML
18 65 (0.76%) CSS
19 64 (0.75%) Pandas
20 60 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 352 (4.13%) Onboarding
2 326 (3.83%) Product Ownership
3 300 (3.52%) Cloud Native
4 222 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
5 196 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 181 (2.12%) Data Structures
7 165 (1.94%) Derivative
8 163 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
9 145 (1.70%) Data Centre
10 142 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
11 137 (1.61%) Fixed Income
12 131 (1.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 112 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
14 103 (1.21%) Equities
15 101 (1.19%) Public Cloud
15 101 (1.19%) Virtual Team
16 93 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
17 82 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
18 70 (0.82%) Mainframe
19 68 (0.80%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 274 (3.22%) Windows
2 269 (3.16%) Linux
3 139 (1.63%) Unix
4 70 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 48 (0.56%) Windows 10
6 30 (0.35%) Apple iOS
7 28 (0.33%) Solaris
7 28 (0.33%) zOS
8 27 (0.32%) Android
9 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.22%) Mac OS
11 18 (0.21%) AIX
12 8 (0.094%) VMS
13 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.059%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.047%) HPUX
15 4 (0.047%) MVS
15 4 (0.047%) SUSE
15 4 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,789 (21.00%) Agile
2 1,687 (19.80%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,220 (14.32%) Problem-Solving
4 1,166 (13.69%) Migration
5 952 (11.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 942 (11.06%) Continuous Improvement
7 917 (10.76%) DevOps
8 897 (10.53%) ERP
9 860 (10.10%) CI/CD
10 825 (9.68%) Analytics
11 815 (9.57%) AI
12 795 (9.33%) Project Management
13 736 (8.64%) Business Intelligence
14 702 (8.24%) Decision-Making
15 675 (7.92%) Roadmaps
16 674 (7.91%) Data Modelling
17 661 (7.76%) Validation
18 650 (7.63%) User Acceptance Testing
19 592 (6.95%) Change Management
20 575 (6.75%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,189 (13.96%) SQL
2 1,010 (11.86%) Python
3 558 (6.55%) Java
4 328 (3.85%) C#
5 211 (2.48%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 160 (1.88%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.23%) C++
9 73 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 72 (0.85%) Bash
11 68 (0.80%) Go
12 61 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.60%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 50 (0.59%) VBA
15 43 (0.50%) Scala
16 34 (0.40%) R
17 31 (0.36%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.32%) Bicep
19 25 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 740 (8.69%) Degree
2 693 (8.13%) Security Cleared
3 493 (5.79%) SC Cleared
4 211 (2.48%) PMP
5 205 (2.41%) ACCA
6 199 (2.34%) PMI Certification
7 188 (2.21%) CIMA
8 145 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
9 144 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
10 121 (1.42%) CISSP
11 119 (1.40%) Master's Degree
12 84 (0.99%) CISM
13 81 (0.95%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.74%) Azure Certification
15 58 (0.68%) AWS Certification
16 48 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
17 41 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 36 (0.42%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) CBAP
20 30 (0.35%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 488 (5.73%) Data Quality
2 414 (4.86%) QA
3 335 (3.93%) PMO
4 305 (3.58%) GDPR
5 150 (1.76%) NIST
6 125 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 101 (1.19%) SLA
8 100 (1.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 97 (1.14%) IFRS
10 78 (0.92%) Accessibility
10 78 (0.92%) GRC
11 72 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 58 (0.68%) ISO 20022
13 52 (0.61%) GAAP
14 38 (0.45%) PSD2
15 37 (0.43%) SEPA
16 34 (0.40%) NCSC
17 29 (0.34%) MiFID
18 28 (0.33%) EMIR
19 26 (0.31%) Basel III
System Software
1 288 (3.38%) Docker
2 144 (1.69%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 25 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.11%) GPFS
11 6 (0.070%) RACF
12 5 (0.059%) HDFS
12 5 (0.059%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.047%) ACF2
13 4 (0.047%) Firmware
13 4 (0.047%) KVM
14 3 (0.035%) GridGain
14 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.035%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 402 (4.72%) Kubernetes
2 253 (2.97%) Terraform
3 120 (1.41%) Ansible
4 89 (1.04%) Grafana
5 69 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.58%) SCCM
8 35 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.31%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
11 16 (0.19%) vRealize
12 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
12 14 (0.16%) Puppet
13 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
13 13 (0.15%) Progress Chef
14 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 10 (0.12%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,100 (12.91%) Microsoft
2 767 (9.00%) SAP
3 709 (8.32%) Oracle
4 310 (3.64%) ServiceNow
5 226 (2.65%) Databricks
6 190 (2.23%) Salesforce
7 174 (2.04%) Google
8 137 (1.61%) Workday
9 116 (1.36%) Cisco
10 113 (1.33%) Splunk
11 101 (1.19%) VMware
12 95 (1.12%) IBM
13 78 (0.92%) Citrix
14 76 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 73 (0.86%) Ariba
16 72 (0.85%) Sage
17 57 (0.67%) Informatica
18 56 (0.66%) OpenAI
19 51 (0.60%) Murex
20 49 (0.58%) Palo Alto