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

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,353 6,414 8,289
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.62% 22.06% 18.77%
As % of the General category 33.17% 35.03% 32.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,302 4,251 5,550
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £570 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.02% -0.87% -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 209 109 239
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.45 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.26 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £26.73
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +49.64% -17.12%
75th Percentile £42.75 £72.50 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.67 £83.20 £52.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £27.00
% change year-on-year -57.95% +94.44% -36.47%

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 25,183 18,311 25,690
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.13% 62.97% 58.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,679 11,735 16,325
10th Percentile £300 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,559 718 1,861
10th Percentile £13.71 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.20 £18.92 £15.29
Median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.14% +11.54% -25.71%
75th Percentile £59.25 £58.10 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.46 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -11.05% +10.00% -18.71%

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 3 April 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 3 April 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 3 April 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 7,383 £537 -6.61% 4,228
London 0 4,475 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,304 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -2 2,350 £550 -6.38% 1,715
North of England +3 1,086 £475 - 695
South East -1 644 £503 -6.07% 1,010
Midlands 0 582 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +6 577 £455 -2.10% 371
Yorkshire 0 460 £500 +2.30% 253
West Midlands 0 388 £492 -6.29% 251
Scotland 0 374 £500 +5.26% 161
South West -4 326 £523 +4.40% 302
East of England -2 196 £513 -5.75% 271
East Midlands 0 189 £450 +1.69% 171
Wales +26 105 £413 +6.45% 89
North East -4 49 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 46 £525 +59.09% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 4

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
1 335 (4.01%) Confluence
2 215 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 83 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.59%) Apache
5 49 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
6 34 (0.41%) SAS
7 30 (0.36%) CMS
8 19 (0.23%) CICS
9 18 (0.22%) Appian
9 18 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.18%) Camunda
11 14 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
13 11 (0.13%) TPMS
14 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 8 (0.096%) IIS
Applications
1 544 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 248 (2.97%) Microsoft Office
3 188 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 176 (2.11%) Microsoft Project
5 131 (1.57%) MS Visio
6 53 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 11 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.12%) Sketch
11 9 (0.11%) InVision
12 6 (0.072%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.060%) Notion
13 5 (0.060%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.048%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.024%) Adobe Captivate
15 2 (0.024%) InDesign
15 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
15 2 (0.024%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 353 (4.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.42%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.23%) Oracle Receivables
4 82 (0.98%) NetSuite
5 80 (0.96%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 72 (0.86%) Oracle EBS
7 69 (0.83%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
10 55 (0.66%) SAP CO
11 51 (0.61%) Oracle ERP
11 51 (0.61%) SAP FI/CO
12 43 (0.51%) Oracle Assets
13 38 (0.45%) Oracle Cash Management
14 35 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
15 32 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
16 31 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
17 29 (0.35%) Aladdin
18 27 (0.32%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,278 (15.30%) Azure
2 976 (11.68%) AWS
3 600 (7.18%) Power Platform
4 397 (4.75%) GCP
5 288 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
6 275 (3.29%) SaaS
7 272 (3.26%) Microsoft 365
8 249 (2.98%) Dynamics 365
9 225 (2.69%) GitHub
10 156 (1.87%) Serverless
11 140 (1.68%) OCI
12 136 (1.63%) Snowflake
13 122 (1.46%) Entra ID
14 116 (1.39%) Amazon S3
15 96 (1.15%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
17 87 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
18 86 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
19 85 (1.02%) OpenShift
20 75 (0.90%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 166 (1.99%) Firewall
2 105 (1.26%) Network Security
3 81 (0.97%) WAN
4 67 (0.80%) DNS
5 58 (0.69%) VPN
6 47 (0.56%) LAN
7 45 (0.54%) TCP/IP
8 44 (0.53%) SD-WAN
9 35 (0.42%) BGP
10 32 (0.38%) HTTP
11 30 (0.36%) OSPF
11 30 (0.36%) SSL
12 29 (0.35%) Multicast
13 26 (0.31%) Internet
14 23 (0.28%) MPLS
14 23 (0.28%) Wireless
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
16 19 (0.23%) DHCP
17 18 (0.22%) Skype
18 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 523 (6.26%) Power BI
2 217 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
3 209 (2.50%) SQL Server
4 181 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
5 158 (1.89%) Metadata
6 146 (1.75%) Tableau
7 125 (1.50%) Data Lake
8 121 (1.45%) Relational Database
9 103 (1.23%) NoSQL
10 102 (1.22%) Oracle Reports
11 79 (0.95%) Big Data
12 64 (0.77%) Oracle Database
13 61 (0.73%) BigQuery
14 55 (0.66%) MongoDB
15 47 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
17 41 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
18 40 (0.48%) Power Query
19 39 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
19 39 (0.47%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 678 (8.12%) JIRA
2 221 (2.65%) Jenkins
3 210 (2.51%) Git
4 139 (1.66%) GitLab
5 61 (0.73%) JUnit
6 58 (0.69%) Cucumber
7 43 (0.51%) Selenium
7 43 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
8 32 (0.38%) Postman
9 28 (0.34%) Bitbucket
9 28 (0.34%) Visual Studio
10 23 (0.28%) MLflow
11 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 19 (0.23%) Maven
13 18 (0.22%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 16 (0.19%) ERwin
15 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
16 14 (0.17%) Hudson
17 13 (0.16%) Liquibase
General
1 2,646 (31.68%) Social Skills
2 1,592 (19.06%) Banking
3 1,113 (13.32%) Analytical Skills
4 626 (7.49%) Public Sector
5 340 (4.07%) Financial Institution
6 321 (3.84%) Legal
7 285 (3.41%) Front Office
8 280 (3.35%) Investment Banking
9 241 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
9 241 (2.89%) Manufacturing
9 241 (2.89%) Marketing
10 239 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
11 219 (2.62%) Telecoms
12 213 (2.55%) Retail
13 196 (2.35%) Influencing Skills
14 137 (1.64%) General Ledger
15 127 (1.52%) Local Government
16 122 (1.46%) Law
16 122 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
17 117 (1.40%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,292 (15.47%) Analyst
2 856 (10.25%) Senior
3 847 (10.14%) Developer
4 795 (9.52%) Lead
5 740 (8.86%) Architect
6 693 (8.30%) Business Analyst
7 669 (8.01%) Project Manager
8 627 (7.51%) Consultant
9 294 (3.52%) Solutions Architect
10 240 (2.87%) Data Engineer
11 196 (2.35%) Financial Analyst
12 193 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 186 (2.23%) Data Analyst
14 183 (2.19%) Finance Manager
15 165 (1.98%) Programme Manager
16 145 (1.74%) Java Developer
17 143 (1.71%) Accountant
18 139 (1.66%) Delivery Manager
19 134 (1.60%) Senior Developer
20 129 (1.54%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (3.23%) Kafka
2 269 (3.22%) REST
3 207 (2.48%) .NET
4 195 (2.33%) React
5 161 (1.93%) Middleware
6 157 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
7 145 (1.74%) Spring
8 141 (1.69%) RESTful
9 130 (1.56%) Spring Boot
10 116 (1.39%) Node.js
11 100 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 94 (1.13%) PySpark
13 82 (0.98%) XML
14 80 (0.96%) OAuth
15 75 (0.90%) JSON
16 74 (0.89%) HTML
17 71 (0.85%) Redux
18 70 (0.84%) CSS
19 67 (0.80%) Pandas
20 64 (0.77%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 353 (4.23%) Onboarding
2 317 (3.80%) Product Ownership
3 266 (3.18%) Cloud Native
4 208 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
5 186 (2.23%) Management Information System
6 166 (1.99%) Derivative
7 156 (1.87%) Data Structures
8 152 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
9 151 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
10 150 (1.80%) Data Centre
11 144 (1.72%) Fixed Income
11 144 (1.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 119 (1.42%) Equities
13 111 (1.33%) Public Cloud
14 101 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
15 99 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
16 93 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 87 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
18 64 (0.77%) Hedge funds
19 63 (0.75%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 302 (3.62%) Linux
2 271 (3.24%) Windows
3 138 (1.65%) Unix
4 66 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.62%) Windows 10
6 41 (0.49%) Android
7 33 (0.40%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 20 (0.24%) zOS
10 17 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 13 (0.16%) AIX
12 12 (0.14%) Solaris
13 7 (0.084%) VMS
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) MVS
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,756 (21.02%) Agile
2 1,634 (19.56%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,234 (14.77%) Problem-Solving
4 1,115 (13.35%) Migration
5 947 (11.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 915 (10.95%) DevOps
7 889 (10.64%) Continuous Improvement
8 852 (10.20%) ERP
9 826 (9.89%) CI/CD
10 808 (9.67%) Analytics
10 808 (9.67%) Project Management
11 785 (9.40%) Business Intelligence
12 716 (8.57%) AI
13 657 (7.87%) Decision-Making
14 640 (7.66%) Data Modelling
14 640 (7.66%) Roadmaps
15 603 (7.22%) Validation
16 596 (7.14%) Change Management
17 590 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
18 578 (6.92%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,173 (14.04%) SQL
2 995 (11.91%) Python
3 554 (6.63%) Java
4 302 (3.62%) C#
5 225 (2.69%) JavaScript
6 192 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 169 (2.02%) PowerShell
8 114 (1.36%) C++
9 83 (0.99%) Go
10 71 (0.85%) Bash
11 70 (0.84%) PL/SQL
12 58 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 54 (0.65%) VBA
14 48 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.47%) Scala
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 30 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 29 (0.35%) Bicep
20 26 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 786 (9.41%) Degree
2 718 (8.60%) Security Cleared
3 509 (6.09%) SC Cleared
4 207 (2.48%) PMP
5 201 (2.41%) PMI Certification
6 190 (2.27%) ACCA
7 179 (2.14%) CIMA
8 164 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
9 149 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
9 149 (1.78%) Master's Degree
10 120 (1.44%) CISSP
11 86 (1.03%) DV Cleared
12 84 (1.01%) CISM
13 71 (0.85%) Azure Certification
14 62 (0.74%) AWS Certification
15 44 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
16 37 (0.44%) ISTQB
17 36 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
18 35 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
19 29 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (5.48%) Data Quality
2 403 (4.82%) QA
3 340 (4.07%) PMO
4 296 (3.54%) GDPR
5 152 (1.82%) NIST
6 132 (1.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.34%) SLA
8 101 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 92 (1.10%) IFRS
10 77 (0.92%) PCI DSS
11 75 (0.90%) Accessibility
12 69 (0.83%) GRC
13 59 (0.71%) ISO 20022
14 48 (0.57%) GAAP
15 40 (0.48%) PSD2
16 37 (0.44%) SEPA
17 36 (0.43%) NCSC
18 35 (0.42%) MiFID
19 27 (0.32%) Basel III
20 26 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 310 (3.71%) Docker
2 149 (1.78%) Active Directory
3 58 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.40%) vSphere
5 24 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 16 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
6 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.14%) NFS
8 11 (0.13%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.096%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.060%) HDFS
13 4 (0.048%) ISA Server
13 4 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.036%) Firmware
14 3 (0.036%) GridGain
14 3 (0.036%) KVM
14 3 (0.036%) RACF
14 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 408 (4.88%) Kubernetes
2 264 (3.16%) Terraform
3 137 (1.64%) Ansible
4 97 (1.16%) Grafana
5 81 (0.97%) Prometheus
6 57 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.59%) SCCM
8 36 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.24%) vRealize
11 18 (0.22%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.19%) Argo
12 16 (0.19%) Control-M
13 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.16%) Puppet
15 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 12 (0.14%) HP ALM
16 11 (0.13%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,107 (13.25%) Microsoft
2 809 (9.69%) SAP
3 717 (8.58%) Oracle
4 325 (3.89%) ServiceNow
5 213 (2.55%) Databricks
6 194 (2.32%) Salesforce
7 179 (2.14%) Google
8 148 (1.77%) Cisco
9 142 (1.70%) Workday
10 130 (1.56%) Splunk
11 114 (1.36%) VMware
12 104 (1.25%) IBM
13 76 (0.91%) Ariba
13 76 (0.91%) Citrix
14 73 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 69 (0.83%) Sage
16 58 (0.69%) Informatica
17 53 (0.63%) Bloomberg
18 52 (0.62%) OpenAI
19 49 (0.59%) Murex