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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,715 6,436 8,327
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.02% 20.98% 18.77%
As % of the General category 32.45% 33.82% 31.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,900 4,012 5,660
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £671 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £506
% change year-on-year - -1.19% -1.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 92 170
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £11.86
25th Percentile £17.09 £22.50 £14.07
Median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £20.97
Median % change year-on-year -32.86% +66.94% -16.14%
75th Percentile £42.43 £64.06 £38.12
90th Percentile £70.75 £82.88 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year -20.00% +41.03% -43.61%

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 23,777 19,030 26,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.63% 62.04% 58.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,895 11,478 16,780
10th Percentile £300 £285 £265
25th Percentile £404 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £476 £500
% change year-on-year -0.21% -4.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,462 601 1,652
10th Percentile £13.64 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.12 £15.15
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +11.54% -3.70%
75th Percentile £50.00 £57.62 £53.06
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.00 £67.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.80 £27.13 £25.00
% change year-on-year -19.63% +8.50% -

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 18 February 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 6,782 £537 -8.60% 3,582
London -1 4,129 £575 -6.12% 1,663
UK excluding London -1 3,061 £500 - 2,701
Work from Home -1 2,180 £525 -11.39% 1,492
North of England +2 984 £475 - 632
South East -1 558 £503 -4.06% 1,023
Midlands -3 541 £488 -2.50% 398
North West +4 500 £450 -3.85% 355
Yorkshire 0 436 £513 - 219
Scotland 0 394 £475 +1.71% 126
West Midlands -3 344 £502 -8.82% 232
South West -5 302 £513 -2.38% 268
East Midlands 0 195 £449 +6.85% 165
East of England -1 191 £533 +1.43% 215
Wales +31 99 £413 +1.54% 68
Northern Ireland -2 50 £525 +61.54% 32
North East -6 49 £488 +8.33% 72
Channel Islands +2 1 - -

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
1 324 (4.20%) Confluence
2 204 (2.64%) SharePoint
3 74 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 64 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
5 51 (0.66%) Apache
6 43 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.41%) SAS
8 25 (0.32%) CMS
9 21 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 16 (0.21%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.17%) CICS
12 13 (0.17%) HCL Notes
12 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.17%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
14 11 (0.14%) Mattermost
14 11 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 10 (0.13%) Mendix
Applications
1 530 (6.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 290 (3.76%) Microsoft Office
3 203 (2.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 180 (2.33%) Microsoft Project
5 138 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 18 (0.23%) Sketch
9 17 (0.22%) Trello
10 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.10%) InVision
13 7 (0.091%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.065%) Notion
14 5 (0.065%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.026%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.026%) InDesign
16 2 (0.026%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 311 (4.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 117 (1.52%) Oracle Payables
3 97 (1.26%) Oracle Receivables
4 72 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
5 71 (0.92%) Oracle General Ledger
6 70 (0.91%) SAP FI
7 66 (0.86%) NetSuite
8 62 (0.80%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 60 (0.78%) SAP CO
10 59 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.69%) SAP FI/CO
12 45 (0.58%) Oracle Assets
13 41 (0.53%) Oracle Cash Management
14 39 (0.51%) Oracle EBS R12
14 39 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
15 38 (0.49%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 37 (0.48%) Oracle Financials
17 36 (0.47%) Workday HCM
18 32 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
19 24 (0.31%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,165 (15.10%) Azure
2 940 (12.18%) AWS
3 548 (7.10%) Power Platform
4 387 (5.02%) GCP
5 270 (3.50%) Microsoft 365
6 253 (3.28%) SaaS
7 233 (3.02%) Azure DevOps
8 227 (2.94%) Dynamics 365
9 203 (2.63%) GitHub
10 145 (1.88%) Serverless
11 143 (1.85%) OCI
12 129 (1.67%) Snowflake
13 124 (1.61%) Entra ID
14 96 (1.24%) Amazon S3
15 91 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 90 (1.17%) GitHub Actions
17 76 (0.99%) AWS Lambda
17 76 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 72 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
19 71 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 142 (1.84%) Firewall
2 76 (0.99%) Network Security
3 68 (0.88%) WAN
4 49 (0.64%) DNS
5 44 (0.57%) VPN
6 40 (0.52%) LAN
7 37 (0.48%) SD-WAN
8 35 (0.45%) TCP/IP
9 32 (0.41%) Wireless
10 29 (0.38%) Skype
11 26 (0.34%) SSL
12 23 (0.30%) HTTP
13 21 (0.27%) BGP
13 21 (0.27%) DHCP
14 20 (0.26%) Multicast
14 20 (0.26%) OSPF
15 19 (0.25%) Internet
16 18 (0.23%) SSH
17 16 (0.21%) Kerberos
18 13 (0.17%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 481 (6.23%) Power BI
2 203 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
3 189 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 171 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
5 142 (1.84%) Tableau
6 126 (1.63%) Metadata
7 123 (1.59%) NoSQL
8 120 (1.56%) Relational Database
9 115 (1.49%) Data Lake
10 87 (1.13%) Oracle Reports
11 71 (0.92%) Oracle Database
12 70 (0.91%) Big Data
13 69 (0.89%) MongoDB
14 57 (0.74%) BigQuery
15 44 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 35 (0.45%) Hadoop
17 35 (0.45%) MySQL
18 34 (0.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
19 33 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 618 (8.01%) JIRA
2 252 (3.27%) Jenkins
3 209 (2.71%) Git
4 155 (2.01%) GitLab
5 69 (0.89%) JUnit
6 57 (0.74%) Cucumber
7 47 (0.61%) Selenium
7 47 (0.61%) Sonatype Nexus
8 38 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 37 (0.48%) Postman
10 32 (0.41%) Visual Studio
11 26 (0.34%) MLflow
12 24 (0.31%) Gradle
13 22 (0.29%) Liquibase
13 22 (0.29%) Maven
14 21 (0.27%) REST Assured
15 16 (0.21%) Cypress.io
15 16 (0.21%) JMeter
15 16 (0.21%) SonarQube
16 15 (0.19%) ERwin
General
1 2,673 (34.65%) Social Skills
2 1,526 (19.78%) Banking
3 1,016 (13.17%) Analytical Skills
4 625 (8.10%) Public Sector
5 337 (4.37%) Financial Institution
6 303 (3.93%) Marketing
7 280 (3.63%) Front Office
8 278 (3.60%) Investment Banking
9 275 (3.56%) Legal
10 270 (3.50%) Manufacturing
11 259 (3.36%) Telecoms
12 235 (3.05%) Organisational Skills
13 224 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
14 177 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
15 163 (2.11%) Retail
16 162 (2.10%) Electronics
17 132 (1.71%) General Ledger
18 128 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
19 118 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 117 (1.52%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,247 (16.16%) Analyst
2 864 (11.20%) Developer
3 777 (10.07%) Senior
4 672 (8.71%) Business Analyst
5 640 (8.30%) Architect
6 623 (8.08%) Lead
7 599 (7.76%) Project Manager
8 562 (7.28%) Consultant
9 271 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 197 (2.55%) Data Analyst
11 185 (2.40%) Data Engineer
12 175 (2.27%) Programme Manager
13 173 (2.24%) Financial Analyst
14 148 (1.92%) Java Developer
14 148 (1.92%) Senior Manager
15 143 (1.85%) Software Engineer
16 142 (1.84%) Senior Developer
17 126 (1.63%) Finance Manager
18 121 (1.57%) Senior Analyst
19 114 (1.48%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 279 (3.62%) REST
2 252 (3.27%) Kafka
3 200 (2.59%) .NET
4 192 (2.49%) React
5 158 (2.05%) Oracle Fusion
6 150 (1.94%) RESTful
7 147 (1.91%) Spring
8 134 (1.74%) Middleware
9 123 (1.59%) Spring Boot
10 103 (1.34%) AngularJS
11 100 (1.30%) Node.js
12 88 (1.14%) Pandas
12 88 (1.14%) XML
13 85 (1.10%) HTML
14 84 (1.09%) PySpark
15 79 (1.02%) CSS
16 78 (1.01%) NumPy
17 76 (0.99%) JSON
18 73 (0.95%) OAuth
19 68 (0.88%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 328 (4.25%) Onboarding
2 307 (3.98%) Product Ownership
3 227 (2.94%) Cloud Native
4 180 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
5 174 (2.26%) Management Information System
6 171 (2.22%) Derivative
7 156 (2.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 144 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
9 142 (1.84%) Data Centre
10 139 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
11 130 (1.69%) Data Structures
12 127 (1.65%) Fixed Income
13 126 (1.63%) Equities
14 108 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
15 107 (1.39%) Public Cloud
16 96 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
17 83 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
18 81 (1.05%) Virtual Team
19 79 (1.02%) Hedge funds
20 68 (0.88%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 337 (4.37%) Linux
2 300 (3.89%) Windows
3 149 (1.93%) Unix
4 66 (0.86%) Windows 10
5 61 (0.79%) Mac OS
6 60 (0.78%) Android
7 57 (0.74%) Windows Server
8 31 (0.40%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 13 (0.17%) zOS
11 9 (0.12%) Solaris
12 8 (0.10%) AIX
13 7 (0.091%) VMS
14 5 (0.065%) CentOS
14 5 (0.065%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.052%) Windows Server 2016
16 3 (0.039%) Ubuntu
17 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,727 (22.38%) Agile
2 1,466 (19.00%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,240 (16.07%) Problem-Solving
4 935 (12.12%) Migration
5 851 (11.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 812 (10.52%) DevOps
7 785 (10.17%) CI/CD
8 758 (9.83%) Analytics
9 757 (9.81%) Business Intelligence
10 752 (9.75%) Project Management
11 707 (9.16%) Continuous Improvement
12 691 (8.96%) ERP
13 607 (7.87%) AI
14 573 (7.43%) Decision-Making
15 571 (7.40%) Roadmaps
16 559 (7.25%) Change Management
17 552 (7.15%) Data Modelling
18 529 (6.86%) Risk Management
19 499 (6.47%) User Acceptance Testing
20 498 (6.45%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,134 (14.70%) SQL
2 1,005 (13.03%) Python
3 550 (7.13%) Java
4 299 (3.88%) C#
5 229 (2.97%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.53%) PowerShell
7 180 (2.33%) TypeScript
8 149 (1.93%) C++
9 80 (1.04%) PL/SQL
10 79 (1.02%) Go
11 69 (0.89%) Bash
12 52 (0.67%) VBA
13 45 (0.58%) Shell Script
14 43 (0.56%) R
14 43 (0.56%) T-SQL
15 41 (0.53%) Kotlin
16 36 (0.47%) Scala
17 33 (0.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 33 (0.43%) Rust
18 27 (0.35%) Korn
Qualifications
1 824 (10.68%) Degree
2 605 (7.84%) Security Cleared
3 446 (5.78%) SC Cleared
4 190 (2.46%) PMI Certification
5 182 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 181 (2.35%) PMP
7 174 (2.26%) Master's Degree
8 157 (2.03%) ACCA
9 148 (1.92%) CIMA
10 122 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
11 89 (1.15%) CISSP
12 84 (1.09%) AWS Certification
13 70 (0.91%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.82%) Azure Certification
15 62 (0.80%) CISM
16 42 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
17 37 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 36 (0.47%) CBAP
18 36 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
19 32 (0.41%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 394 (5.11%) QA
2 380 (4.93%) Data Quality
3 299 (3.88%) PMO
4 264 (3.42%) GDPR
5 126 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 126 (1.63%) NIST
6 113 (1.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 98 (1.27%) SLA
8 88 (1.14%) Accessibility
9 80 (1.04%) PCI DSS
10 79 (1.02%) IFRS
11 68 (0.88%) GRC
12 60 (0.78%) ISO 20022
13 47 (0.61%) PSD2
14 39 (0.51%) MiFID
14 39 (0.51%) SEPA
15 35 (0.45%) GAAP
16 34 (0.44%) NCSC
17 31 (0.40%) Basel III
17 31 (0.40%) COBIT
System Software
1 339 (4.39%) Docker
2 192 (2.49%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
5 26 (0.34%) vSphere
6 13 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.12%) GPFS
9 9 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.091%) HDFS
12 4 (0.052%) ISA Server
12 4 (0.052%) KVM
13 3 (0.039%) Firmware
13 3 (0.039%) RACF
13 3 (0.039%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (0.039%) Tivoli Directory Server
14 2 (0.026%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 402 (5.21%) Kubernetes
2 250 (3.24%) Terraform
3 159 (2.06%) Ansible
4 95 (1.23%) Grafana
5 87 (1.13%) Prometheus
6 55 (0.71%) SCCM
7 54 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
8 37 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 22 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.27%) Progress Chef
11 19 (0.25%) SCOM
12 18 (0.23%) Control-M
12 18 (0.23%) HP SiteScope
13 17 (0.22%) Argo
14 16 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
15 14 (0.18%) Kibana
15 14 (0.18%) vRealize
16 13 (0.17%) AirWatch
17 12 (0.16%) ITRS Geneos
18 11 (0.14%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,040 (13.48%) Microsoft
2 796 (10.32%) SAP
3 683 (8.85%) Oracle
4 299 (3.88%) ServiceNow
5 184 (2.38%) Salesforce
6 179 (2.32%) Databricks
7 173 (2.24%) Google
8 158 (2.05%) Splunk
9 152 (1.97%) Cisco
10 140 (1.81%) Workday
11 107 (1.39%) VMware
12 97 (1.26%) IBM
13 75 (0.97%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.96%) Citrix
15 66 (0.86%) Ariba
16 55 (0.71%) OpenAI
17 52 (0.67%) HP
18 51 (0.66%) Bloomberg
19 50 (0.65%) Murex
20 48 (0.62%) Dell