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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,815 7,445 7,723
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.26% 22.59% 20.01%
As % of the General category 33.17% 35.58% 34.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,990 4,904 5,037
10th Percentile £360 £331 £360
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £785 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £492 £513
% change year-on-year +2.84% -3.95% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 319 136 166
10th Percentile £15.64 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.06 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.11% -18.50% +36.13%
75th Percentile - £58.13 £47.81
90th Percentile £75.40 £76.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -28.14% +16.67%

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 29,592 20,923 22,211
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.06% 63.49% 57.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,452 13,016 13,665
10th Percentile £313 £275 £293
25th Percentile £418 £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 £739 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% 0.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,301 1,177 1,214
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.50 £14.26
25th Percentile £16.93 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £31.16 £25.15 £37.04
Median % change year-on-year +23.88% -32.10% +34.69%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.11 £70.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.56 £22.05 £37.28
% change year-on-year +43.11% -40.85% +45.63%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 8,501 £550 - 8,038
London 0 5,116 £585 -2.50% 4,868
UK excluding London 0 3,882 £506 +2.84% 4,494
Work from Home -1 2,781 £550 -4.35% 3,229
North of England 0 1,341 £500 +7.99% 1,092
South East -1 735 £505 -3.81% 1,281
North West -1 681 £500 +11.11% 612
Midlands -1 614 £500 +8.40% 542
Yorkshire 0 580 £514 +6.20% 326
Scotland 0 525 £470 -2.49% 392
West Midlands +1 458 £520 +4.00% 342
South West -5 368 £550 -0.97% 706
East of England +4 207 £534 -6.36% 346
East Midlands -3 152 £500 +20.85% 198
North East -4 73 £500 +13.64% 168
Northern Ireland -1 64 £500 +3.90% 113
Wales -2 57 £525 +18.31% 111
Channel Islands +2 5 £550 - 5

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
1 340 (3.46%) Confluence
2 254 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 93 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
4 84 (0.86%) Apache Spark
5 73 (0.74%) Apache
6 45 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.36%) CMS
8 27 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.28%) SAS
9 21 (0.21%) IIS
10 17 (0.17%) Camunda
11 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.092%) CICS
14 8 (0.082%) WebLogic
15 7 (0.071%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 6 (0.061%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 5 (0.051%) Adobe Experience Manager
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 526 (5.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
3 189 (1.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 158 (1.61%) Microsoft Project
5 91 (0.93%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 30 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 8 (0.082%) 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 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.031%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 430 (4.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 126 (1.28%) Oracle Payables
3 109 (1.11%) NetSuite
4 105 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 97 (0.99%) Oracle ERP
6 74 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
7 71 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 68 (0.69%) SAP FI
9 64 (0.65%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 61 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
11 52 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 47 (0.48%) SAP CO
13 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
14 42 (0.43%) SAP FI/CO
15 37 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
16 34 (0.35%) SAP GRC
16 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
17 32 (0.33%) Workday HCM
18 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
19 25 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,546 (15.75%) Azure
2 1,062 (10.82%) AWS
3 676 (6.89%) Power Platform
4 518 (5.28%) GCP
5 354 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
6 325 (3.31%) SaaS
7 308 (3.14%) GitHub
8 305 (3.11%) Microsoft 365
9 266 (2.71%) Dynamics 365
10 221 (2.25%) Snowflake
11 219 (2.23%) Entra ID
12 150 (1.53%) Serverless
13 144 (1.47%) OCI
14 123 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
14 123 (1.25%) Power Automate
15 120 (1.22%) dbt
16 115 (1.17%) Amazon S3
16 115 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
17 113 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
18 105 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 176 (1.79%) Firewall
2 150 (1.53%) Network Security
3 106 (1.08%) VPN
4 95 (0.97%) DNS
5 67 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 63 (0.64%) WAN
7 50 (0.51%) DHCP
8 44 (0.45%) BGP
8 44 (0.45%) SSL
9 39 (0.40%) HTTP
9 39 (0.40%) LAN
10 34 (0.35%) VLAN
11 33 (0.34%) Multicast
12 31 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.31%) Internet
14 29 (0.30%) Wireless
15 24 (0.24%) OSPF
16 22 (0.22%) SAN
17 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 551 (5.61%) Power BI
2 282 (2.87%) SQL Server
3 263 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
4 204 (2.08%) Metadata
5 180 (1.83%) Relational Database
6 145 (1.48%) Data Lake
7 131 (1.33%) Tableau
8 123 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
9 78 (0.79%) NoSQL
10 77 (0.78%) BigQuery
11 75 (0.76%) Oracle Database
12 73 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
13 68 (0.69%) MongoDB
14 60 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.58%) Delta Lake
16 54 (0.55%) Power Query
17 52 (0.53%) Big Data
18 45 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
19 44 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 669 (6.82%) JIRA
2 293 (2.99%) Git
3 170 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 103 (1.05%) GitLab
5 57 (0.58%) Selenium
6 48 (0.49%) JUnit
7 33 (0.34%) Maven
8 32 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 32 (0.33%) SonarQube
8 32 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.31%) ERwin
9 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 28 (0.29%) Claude Code
10 28 (0.29%) Cucumber
10 28 (0.29%) REST Assured
11 25 (0.25%) Gradle
12 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 22 (0.22%) Postman
14 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
14 21 (0.21%) Zephyr
General
1 3,010 (30.67%) Social Skills
2 1,967 (20.04%) Banking
3 1,384 (14.10%) Analytical Skills
4 546 (5.56%) Legal
5 527 (5.37%) Public Sector
6 426 (4.34%) Organisational Skills
7 393 (4.00%) Investment Banking
8 381 (3.88%) Retail
9 334 (3.40%) Financial Institution
10 328 (3.34%) Front Office
11 311 (3.17%) Influencing Skills
12 223 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
13 202 (2.06%) Manufacturing
14 189 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 169 (1.72%) General Ledger
16 166 (1.69%) Billing
17 161 (1.64%) Marketing
18 150 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
19 148 (1.51%) Local Government
20 143 (1.46%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,422 (14.49%) Analyst
2 1,044 (10.64%) Senior
3 1,024 (10.43%) Lead
4 958 (9.76%) Developer
5 865 (8.81%) Architect
6 740 (7.54%) Business Analyst
7 701 (7.14%) Consultant
8 695 (7.08%) Project Manager
9 326 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
10 305 (3.11%) Data Engineer
11 259 (2.64%) Financial Analyst
12 225 (2.29%) Senior Manager
13 203 (2.07%) Java Developer
14 197 (2.01%) Data Analyst
15 186 (1.90%) Senior Developer
16 183 (1.86%) Programme Manager
17 181 (1.84%) Accountant
18 180 (1.83%) Finance Manager
19 174 (1.77%) IT Manager
20 150 (1.53%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 370 (3.77%) Terraform
2 356 (3.63%) REST
3 271 (2.76%) .NET
4 266 (2.71%) Oracle Fusion
5 240 (2.45%) Kafka
6 223 (2.27%) React
7 187 (1.91%) Spring
8 183 (1.86%) Middleware
9 182 (1.85%) Spring Boot
10 144 (1.47%) PySpark
11 135 (1.38%) RESTful
12 101 (1.03%) XML
13 99 (1.01%) OAuth
14 97 (0.99%) JSON
15 78 (0.79%) AngularJS
15 78 (0.79%) SOAP
16 76 (0.77%) Redux
17 70 (0.71%) Node.js
18 67 (0.68%) Web Services
19 65 (0.66%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 508 (5.18%) Onboarding
2 491 (5.00%) Product Ownership
3 423 (4.31%) Cloud Native
4 249 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
5 239 (2.44%) Data Structures
6 236 (2.40%) Management Information System
7 219 (2.23%) Virtual Team
8 190 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
9 184 (1.87%) Derivative
10 180 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
11 174 (1.77%) AI Agents
12 161 (1.64%) Data Centre
13 156 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 131 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
15 124 (1.26%) Fixed Income
16 120 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
17 114 (1.16%) Equities
17 114 (1.16%) Podcast
18 112 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
19 109 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 372 (3.79%) Windows
2 305 (3.11%) Linux
3 162 (1.65%) Unix
4 89 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 54 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 47 (0.48%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.43%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) Android
9 34 (0.35%) Solaris
10 32 (0.33%) zOS
11 28 (0.29%) Mac OS
12 15 (0.15%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 4 (0.041%) CentOS
17 4 (0.041%) MVS
18 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,505 (25.52%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,023 (20.61%) Agile
3 1,318 (13.43%) Migration
4 1,299 (13.23%) Problem-Solving
5 1,206 (12.29%) AI
6 1,166 (11.88%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,148 (11.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,070 (10.90%) CI/CD
9 1,020 (10.39%) ERP
10 1,003 (10.22%) Analytics
11 1,002 (10.21%) DevOps
12 900 (9.17%) Decision-Making
13 809 (8.24%) Validation
14 808 (8.23%) Roadmaps
15 774 (7.89%) Data Modelling
16 769 (7.83%) Project Management
17 763 (7.77%) User Acceptance Testing
18 727 (7.41%) Change Management
19 671 (6.84%) Business Intelligence
20 663 (6.75%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,298 (13.22%) SQL
2 1,204 (12.27%) Python
3 631 (6.43%) Java
4 359 (3.66%) C#
5 271 (2.76%) PowerShell
6 236 (2.40%) JavaScript
7 201 (2.05%) TypeScript
8 142 (1.45%) Bash
9 106 (1.08%) PL/SQL
10 91 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 67 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 65 (0.66%) T-SQL
14 57 (0.58%) Bicep
15 51 (0.52%) Go
16 42 (0.43%) Korn
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.40%) VBA
18 38 (0.39%) Scala
19 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 776 (7.91%) Security Cleared
2 729 (7.43%) Degree
3 558 (5.69%) SC Cleared
4 245 (2.50%) PMP
5 235 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
6 221 (2.25%) PMI Certification
7 196 (2.00%) ACCA
8 171 (1.74%) CIMA
9 141 (1.44%) CISSP
10 140 (1.43%) DV Cleared
11 133 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
12 106 (1.08%) Azure Certification
13 85 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
14 83 (0.85%) CISM
15 69 (0.70%) Master's Degree
16 66 (0.67%) AWS Certification
17 55 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 44 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.38%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 654 (6.66%) Data Quality
2 423 (4.31%) QA
3 357 (3.64%) PMO
4 244 (2.49%) GDPR
5 143 (1.46%) NIST
6 125 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 118 (1.20%) GRC
8 108 (1.10%) Accessibility
9 98 (1.00%) SLA
10 95 (0.97%) IFRS
11 89 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 52 (0.53%) GAAP
14 45 (0.46%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.38%) Solvency II
16 32 (0.33%) SEPA
17 28 (0.29%) COBIT
17 28 (0.29%) EMIR
18 27 (0.28%) MiFID
19 23 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 261 (2.66%) Docker
2 239 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 81 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.24%) RACF
7 21 (0.21%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.082%) IAG
11 6 (0.061%) ACF2
11 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.041%) KVM
13 4 (0.041%) zsh
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 459 (4.68%) Kubernetes
2 172 (1.75%) Ansible
3 101 (1.03%) Grafana
4 80 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (0.74%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.61%) SCCM
7 56 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 27 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 25 (0.25%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) Argo
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.14%) Istio
12 14 (0.14%) Puppet
13 13 (0.13%) vRealize
14 12 (0.12%) FortiGate
15 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 11 (0.11%) Packer
16 9 (0.092%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,393 (14.19%) Microsoft
2 882 (8.99%) Oracle
3 834 (8.50%) SAP
4 371 (3.78%) ServiceNow
5 346 (3.53%) Databricks
6 233 (2.37%) Salesforce
7 220 (2.24%) Google
8 173 (1.76%) IBM
9 135 (1.38%) VMware
10 129 (1.31%) Workday
11 118 (1.20%) Cisco
12 114 (1.16%) Splunk
13 97 (0.99%) Ariba
14 88 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 79 (0.80%) OpenAI
16 56 (0.57%) Bloomberg
17 55 (0.56%) Citrix
17 55 (0.56%) Sage
18 52 (0.53%) Informatica
19 47 (0.48%) Adobe