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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,779 7,469 8,039
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.53% 22.77% 19.26%
As % of the General category 33.82% 36.20% 33.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,031 4,907 5,399
10th Percentile £356 £345 £350
25th Percentile £450 £420 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £717
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 263 149 226
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.90 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.00 £18.35
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -12.86% +25.09%
75th Percentile £54.36 £63.75 £40.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £35.00
% change year-on-year +60.58% -21.79% +7.69%

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 28,914 20,634 23,891
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.78% 62.91% 57.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,236 12,929 15,000
10th Percentile £313 £280 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £469 £490
% change year-on-year +6.61% -4.29% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,032 1,064 1,718
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.28 £13.18
25th Percentile £18.32 £16.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £32.81 £25.75 £34.23
Median % change year-on-year +27.40% -24.77% +12.16%
75th Percentile £61.50 £51.58 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.92 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.90 £22.50 £33.07
% change year-on-year +46.23% -31.95% +27.30%

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 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 20 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 20 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 8,515 £550 - 3,978
London 0 5,129 £582 -2.98% 2,192
UK excluding London 0 3,874 £500 +2.04% 2,365
Work from Home -1 2,861 £550 -4.35% 1,477
North of England 0 1,306 £500 +6.38% 643
South East 0 730 £503 -3.83% 767
North West +3 689 £490 +8.89% 334
Midlands +1 650 £500 +11.11% 364
Yorkshire 0 567 £525 +7.69% 234
Scotland 0 498 £475 -1.09% 116
West Midlands +1 493 £500 +4.17% 203
South West -4 379 £525 -4.55% 237
East of England +7 209 £528 -4.09% 182
East Midlands -1 151 £500 +19.05% 160
Wales +2 85 £525 +18.31% 52
Northern Ireland -1 64 £475 +5.56% 39
North East -19 51 £500 +14.29% 83
Channel Islands +4 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
1 330 (3.37%) Confluence
2 233 (2.38%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.84%) Apache Spark
4 77 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 62 (0.63%) Apache
6 44 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) SAS
8 32 (0.33%) CMS
9 28 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.12%) Camunda
14 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
14 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) Hyperledger
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WebLogic
Applications
1 520 (5.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 172 (1.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (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
1 446 (4.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.23%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.16%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 84 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
6 74 (0.76%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 69 (0.71%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
9 57 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
10 55 (0.56%) 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 32 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
17 30 (0.31%) 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 1,519 (15.53%) Azure
2 1,090 (11.15%) AWS
3 652 (6.67%) Power Platform
4 504 (5.15%) GCP
5 327 (3.34%) SaaS
6 326 (3.33%) Azure DevOps
7 282 (2.88%) Microsoft 365
8 276 (2.82%) GitHub
9 241 (2.46%) Dynamics 365
10 203 (2.08%) Snowflake
11 195 (1.99%) Entra ID
12 141 (1.44%) Serverless
13 130 (1.33%) OCI
14 125 (1.28%) Amazon S3
15 111 (1.14%) Power Automate
16 106 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 102 (1.04%) Microsoft Copilot
18 100 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
19 99 (1.01%) dbt
20 93 (0.95%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 189 (1.93%) Firewall
2 143 (1.46%) Network Security
3 90 (0.92%) DNS
4 84 (0.86%) VPN
5 65 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 57 (0.58%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) BGP
8 46 (0.47%) SSL
9 39 (0.40%) LAN
10 38 (0.39%) HTTP
11 37 (0.38%) DHCP
12 36 (0.37%) Multicast
13 30 (0.31%) OSPF
14 26 (0.27%) Internet
15 24 (0.25%) MPLS
16 23 (0.24%) Wireless
17 22 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
18 21 (0.21%) VLAN
19 18 (0.18%) SAN
19 18 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 543 (5.55%) Power BI
2 272 (2.78%) SQL Server
3 249 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.08%) Metadata
5 176 (1.80%) Relational Database
6 168 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
7 153 (1.56%) Tableau
8 144 (1.47%) Data Lake
9 91 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
10 82 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.73%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.71%) BigQuery
14 66 (0.67%) Big Data
15 65 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
16 50 (0.51%) Power Query
17 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 46 (0.47%) Delta Lake
18 46 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 41 (0.42%) Db2
Development Applications
1 679 (6.94%) JIRA
2 263 (2.69%) Git
3 167 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 91 (0.93%) GitLab
5 53 (0.54%) JUnit
6 43 (0.44%) Cucumber
7 41 (0.42%) Selenium
8 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.29%) Postman
10 26 (0.27%) ERwin
10 26 (0.27%) Visual Studio
11 25 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 24 (0.25%) SonarQube
13 21 (0.21%) Bitbucket
13 21 (0.21%) Maven
14 20 (0.20%) Zephyr
15 19 (0.19%) MLflow
16 17 (0.17%) Hudson
16 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,848 (29.12%) Social Skills
2 1,803 (18.44%) Banking
3 1,327 (13.57%) Analytical Skills
4 555 (5.68%) Public Sector
5 498 (5.09%) Legal
6 369 (3.77%) Investment Banking
7 360 (3.68%) Financial Institution
8 347 (3.55%) Organisational Skills
9 341 (3.49%) Front Office
10 331 (3.38%) Retail
11 269 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
12 241 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
13 186 (1.90%) Manufacturing
14 169 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 163 (1.67%) Billing
16 158 (1.62%) Local Government
17 156 (1.60%) General Ledger
18 154 (1.57%) Marketing
19 136 (1.39%) Law
20 133 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,457 (14.90%) Analyst
2 1,053 (10.77%) Senior
3 1,048 (10.72%) Lead
4 990 (10.12%) Developer
5 884 (9.04%) Architect
6 750 (7.67%) Business Analyst
7 712 (7.28%) Project Manager
8 649 (6.64%) Consultant
9 330 (3.37%) Solutions Architect
10 311 (3.18%) Data Engineer
11 247 (2.53%) Financial Analyst
12 232 (2.37%) Senior Manager
13 210 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 209 (2.14%) Accountant
15 205 (2.10%) Data Analyst
16 192 (1.96%) Programme Manager
17 187 (1.91%) Finance Manager
18 185 (1.89%) Senior Developer
19 177 (1.81%) IT Manager
19 177 (1.81%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (3.19%) REST
2 274 (2.80%) .NET
3 269 (2.75%) Kafka
4 268 (2.74%) React
5 217 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
6 199 (2.03%) Middleware
7 178 (1.82%) Spring
8 168 (1.72%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.38%) RESTful
10 119 (1.22%) PySpark
10 119 (1.22%) Redux
11 112 (1.15%) Node.js
12 97 (0.99%) JSON
13 94 (0.96%) OAuth
14 93 (0.95%) AngularJS
15 86 (0.88%) XML
16 69 (0.71%) SOAP
17 64 (0.65%) CSS
18 63 (0.64%) GraphQL
18 63 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 464 (4.74%) Onboarding
2 438 (4.48%) Product Ownership
3 410 (4.19%) Cloud Native
4 272 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
5 230 (2.35%) Data Structures
6 222 (2.27%) Management Information System
7 182 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
8 176 (1.80%) Virtual Team
9 174 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
10 173 (1.77%) Derivative
11 170 (1.74%) Data Centre
12 169 (1.73%) Fixed Income
13 163 (1.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 142 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
15 138 (1.41%) AI Agents
16 122 (1.25%) Equities
17 113 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
18 106 (1.08%) Public Cloud
19 105 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
20 98 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 329 (3.36%) Windows
2 286 (2.92%) Linux
3 162 (1.66%) Unix
4 75 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 39 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 39 (0.40%) Solaris
6 37 (0.38%) zOS
7 36 (0.37%) Apple iOS
8 35 (0.36%) Windows 10
9 29 (0.30%) Android
10 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
11 20 (0.20%) AIX
12 9 (0.092%) Ubuntu
12 9 (0.092%) VMS
13 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 5 (0.051%) MVS
15 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
16 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,169 (22.18%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,980 (20.25%) Agile
3 1,358 (13.89%) Migration
4 1,295 (13.24%) Problem-Solving
5 1,158 (11.84%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,128 (11.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,091 (11.16%) AI
8 1,019 (10.42%) ERP
9 1,015 (10.38%) DevOps
10 999 (10.22%) CI/CD
11 965 (9.87%) Analytics
12 883 (9.03%) Decision-Making
13 814 (8.32%) Validation
14 810 (8.28%) Roadmaps
15 790 (8.08%) Data Modelling
16 764 (7.81%) Project Management
17 763 (7.80%) User Acceptance Testing
18 705 (7.21%) Change Management
19 677 (6.92%) Business Intelligence
20 631 (6.45%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,272 (13.01%) SQL
2 1,187 (12.14%) Python
3 645 (6.60%) Java
4 387 (3.96%) C#
5 263 (2.69%) JavaScript
6 261 (2.67%) TypeScript
7 227 (2.32%) PowerShell
8 104 (1.06%) Bash
9 95 (0.97%) PL/SQL
10 83 (0.85%) C++
10 83 (0.85%) Go
11 75 (0.77%) Shell Script
11 75 (0.77%) T-SQL
12 62 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 51 (0.52%) VBA
14 45 (0.46%) Bicep
15 43 (0.44%) Scala
16 37 (0.38%) Apex Code
16 37 (0.38%) Kotlin
17 27 (0.28%) Rust
Qualifications
1 747 (7.64%) Security Cleared
2 738 (7.55%) Degree
3 535 (5.47%) SC Cleared
4 228 (2.33%) PMP
5 207 (2.12%) ACCA
5 207 (2.12%) PMI Certification
6 194 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
7 185 (1.89%) CIMA
8 156 (1.60%) CISSP
9 125 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
10 115 (1.18%) DV Cleared
11 94 (0.96%) Azure Certification
12 89 (0.91%) CISM
13 83 (0.85%) Master's Degree
14 74 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
15 59 (0.60%) AWS Certification
16 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
17 46 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 607 (6.21%) Data Quality
2 423 (4.33%) QA
3 353 (3.61%) PMO
4 287 (2.93%) GDPR
5 161 (1.65%) NIST
6 131 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 109 (1.11%) GRC
8 106 (1.08%) IFRS
8 106 (1.08%) SLA
9 104 (1.06%) Accessibility
10 98 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 64 (0.65%) GAAP
12 62 (0.63%) ISO 20022
13 53 (0.54%) PCI DSS
14 38 (0.39%) SEPA
15 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
16 31 (0.32%) NCSC
16 31 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 29 (0.30%) EMIR
18 28 (0.29%) COBIT
System Software
1 270 (2.76%) Docker
2 210 (2.15%) Active Directory
3 63 (0.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.27%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) RACF
7 20 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) NFS
10 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.061%) IAG
11 6 (0.061%) KVM
12 5 (0.051%) ACF2
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.031%) GridGain
13 3 (0.031%) SRDF
14 2 (0.020%) zsh
Systems Management
1 436 (4.46%) Kubernetes
2 323 (3.30%) Terraform
3 160 (1.64%) Ansible
4 93 (0.95%) Grafana
5 77 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 69 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 54 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 48 (0.49%) SCCM
9 27 (0.28%) Control-M
10 20 (0.20%) 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 1,258 (12.86%) Microsoft
2 834 (8.53%) Oracle
3 833 (8.52%) SAP
4 349 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 295 (3.02%) Databricks
6 222 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 211 (2.16%) Google
8 146 (1.49%) IBM
9 137 (1.40%) Workday
10 127 (1.30%) VMware
11 117 (1.20%) Splunk
12 109 (1.11%) Cisco
13 92 (0.94%) CyberArk
14 91 (0.93%) Ariba
15 68 (0.70%) OpenAI
15 68 (0.70%) Sage
16 65 (0.66%) Citrix
17 54 (0.55%) Informatica
18 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
19 46 (0.47%) F5