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

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,890 7,574 7,689
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.42% 22.89% 19.83%
As % of the General category 33.43% 36.08% 34.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,083 4,977 5,113
10th Percentile £360 £331 £363
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £543 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.38% -5.65% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £719
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 298 144 195
10th Percentile £16.00 £16.00 £14.70
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.97 £23.91
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.64 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +48.34% -22.26% +46.62%
75th Percentile - £63.38 £43.13
90th Percentile £76.23 £75.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +65.89% -30.48% +18.86%

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 29,588 20,993 22,260
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.10% 63.45% 57.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,559 13,056 13,993
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £749 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,243 1,151 1,365
10th Percentile £13.96 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.25 £17.00
Median hourly rate £31.56 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +25.47% -34.02% +38.62%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.75 £58.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +52.48%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 8,614 £550 - 8,350
London 0 5,181 £585 -2.50% 5,172
UK excluding London -1 3,910 £500 - 4,260
Work from Home -1 2,831 £550 -4.35% 3,189
North of England 0 1,353 £500 +6.38% 1,081
South East -2 735 £500 -4.76% 1,235
North West 0 696 £500 +11.11% 611
Midlands 0 637 £500 +11.11% 556
Yorkshire 0 585 £514 +6.20% 347
Scotland 0 501 £475 -5.00% 344
West Midlands +1 480 £525 +5.00% 343
South West -4 383 £538 -4.44% 495
East of England +4 202 £525 -8.70% 318
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +21.21% 213
Wales 0 66 £528 +14.05% 127
Northern Ireland -1 66 £475 - 176
North East -9 65 £500 +11.11% 133
Channel Islands +5 4 £500 - 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
1 333 (3.37%) Confluence
2 250 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 91 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 90 (0.91%) Apache Spark
5 73 (0.74%) Apache
6 51 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
7 36 (0.36%) CMS
8 34 (0.34%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.21%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 7 (0.071%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 523 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
3 178 (1.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 156 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 102 (1.03%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 34 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 8 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Sketch
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.040%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 438 (4.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 127 (1.28%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.14%) NetSuite
4 106 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 95 (0.96%) Oracle ERP
6 73 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.69%) SAP FI
8 66 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 64 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 55 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
12 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
13 44 (0.44%) SAP FI/CO
14 40 (0.40%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
15 36 (0.36%) Unit4 Business World
16 30 (0.30%) SAP GRC
16 30 (0.30%) Workday HCM
17 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
18 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,562 (15.79%) Azure
2 1,075 (10.87%) AWS
3 663 (6.70%) Power Platform
4 519 (5.25%) GCP
5 351 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
6 334 (3.38%) SaaS
7 303 (3.06%) Microsoft 365
8 298 (3.01%) GitHub
9 257 (2.60%) Dynamics 365
10 216 (2.18%) Snowflake
11 214 (2.16%) Entra ID
12 149 (1.51%) OCI
12 149 (1.51%) Serverless
13 123 (1.24%) Amazon S3
14 122 (1.23%) Power Automate
15 116 (1.17%) GitHub Actions
16 112 (1.13%) dbt
17 111 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
18 110 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
19 102 (1.03%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 174 (1.76%) Firewall
2 151 (1.53%) Network Security
3 99 (1.00%) VPN
4 97 (0.98%) DNS
5 67 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 57 (0.58%) WAN
7 47 (0.48%) DHCP
8 46 (0.47%) SSL
9 43 (0.43%) BGP
9 43 (0.43%) LAN
10 39 (0.39%) HTTP
11 29 (0.29%) Multicast
11 29 (0.29%) Wireless
12 28 (0.28%) Internet
12 28 (0.28%) VLAN
13 27 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
14 26 (0.26%) OSPF
15 25 (0.25%) SAN
16 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
17 19 (0.19%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 544 (5.50%) Power BI
2 283 (2.86%) SQL Server
3 265 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
4 204 (2.06%) Metadata
5 177 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 144 (1.46%) Data Lake
6 144 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
7 133 (1.34%) Tableau
8 83 (0.84%) Oracle Reports
9 82 (0.83%) NoSQL
10 77 (0.78%) BigQuery
11 75 (0.76%) MongoDB
12 71 (0.72%) Oracle Database
13 63 (0.64%) Big Data
14 61 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (0.54%) Power Query
16 52 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 47 (0.48%) Data Vault
19 45 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 672 (6.79%) JIRA
2 293 (2.96%) Git
3 161 (1.63%) Jenkins
4 101 (1.02%) GitLab
5 49 (0.50%) Selenium
6 47 (0.48%) JUnit
7 35 (0.35%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.27%) Bitbucket
9 27 (0.27%) Claude Code
9 27 (0.27%) Maven
9 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
11 25 (0.25%) Postman
12 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 23 (0.23%) Zephyr
14 22 (0.22%) REST Assured
15 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
16 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,926 (29.59%) Social Skills
2 1,915 (19.36%) Banking
3 1,393 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
4 543 (5.49%) Public Sector
5 538 (5.44%) Legal
6 406 (4.11%) Organisational Skills
7 385 (3.89%) Investment Banking
8 376 (3.80%) Retail
9 357 (3.61%) Financial Institution
10 339 (3.43%) Front Office
11 295 (2.98%) Influencing Skills
12 231 (2.34%) Documentation Skills
13 206 (2.08%) Manufacturing
14 187 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 166 (1.68%) Billing
16 163 (1.65%) General Ledger
17 157 (1.59%) Marketing
18 152 (1.54%) Local Government
19 141 (1.43%) Law
20 140 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,433 (14.49%) Analyst
2 1,063 (10.75%) Senior
3 1,062 (10.74%) Lead
4 971 (9.82%) Developer
5 866 (8.76%) Architect
6 739 (7.47%) Business Analyst
7 709 (7.17%) Consultant
7 709 (7.17%) Project Manager
8 322 (3.26%) Solutions Architect
9 316 (3.20%) Data Engineer
10 254 (2.57%) Financial Analyst
11 231 (2.34%) Senior Manager
12 199 (2.01%) Data Analyst
13 198 (2.00%) Java Developer
14 197 (1.99%) Accountant
15 186 (1.88%) Programme Manager
16 185 (1.87%) Finance Manager
17 184 (1.86%) IT Manager
18 182 (1.84%) Senior Developer
19 164 (1.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 341 (3.45%) REST
2 278 (2.81%) .NET
3 264 (2.67%) Oracle Fusion
4 255 (2.58%) Kafka
5 240 (2.43%) React
6 188 (1.90%) Middleware
7 179 (1.81%) Spring
8 168 (1.70%) Spring Boot
9 147 (1.49%) PySpark
10 128 (1.29%) RESTful
11 98 (0.99%) JSON
12 97 (0.98%) XML
13 96 (0.97%) Redux
14 91 (0.92%) OAuth
15 90 (0.91%) Node.js
16 89 (0.90%) AngularJS
17 75 (0.76%) SOAP
18 64 (0.65%) Web Services
19 61 (0.62%) HTML
20 57 (0.58%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 498 (5.04%) Onboarding
2 470 (4.75%) Product Ownership
3 426 (4.31%) Cloud Native
4 263 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
5 244 (2.47%) Data Structures
6 225 (2.28%) Management Information System
7 210 (2.12%) Virtual Team
8 186 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
9 184 (1.86%) Derivative
10 174 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
11 159 (1.61%) Data Centre
12 158 (1.60%) AI Agents
13 151 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 148 (1.50%) Fixed Income
15 137 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
16 117 (1.18%) Equities
17 112 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 109 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
18 109 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
19 99 (1.00%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 368 (3.72%) Windows
2 302 (3.05%) Linux
3 153 (1.55%) Unix
4 86 (0.87%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 46 (0.47%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.36%) zOS
9 34 (0.34%) Android
9 34 (0.34%) Solaris
10 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
11 15 (0.15%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 7 (0.071%) VMS
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 5 (0.051%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) CentOS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,390 (24.17%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,023 (20.46%) Agile
3 1,356 (13.71%) Migration
4 1,310 (13.25%) Problem-Solving
5 1,185 (11.98%) AI
6 1,167 (11.80%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,142 (11.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,057 (10.69%) CI/CD
9 1,045 (10.57%) ERP
10 1,022 (10.33%) DevOps
11 1,002 (10.13%) Analytics
12 905 (9.15%) Decision-Making
13 805 (8.14%) Validation
14 795 (8.04%) Roadmaps
15 789 (7.98%) Data Modelling
16 763 (7.71%) User Acceptance Testing
17 751 (7.59%) Project Management
18 717 (7.25%) Change Management
19 670 (6.77%) Business Intelligence
20 656 (6.63%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,286 (13.00%) SQL
2 1,213 (12.26%) Python
3 635 (6.42%) Java
4 377 (3.81%) C#
5 257 (2.60%) PowerShell
6 253 (2.56%) JavaScript
7 224 (2.26%) TypeScript
8 137 (1.39%) Bash
9 102 (1.03%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.89%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.78%) C++
12 70 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 62 (0.63%) Go
15 54 (0.55%) Bicep
16 46 (0.47%) VBA
17 40 (0.40%) Scala
18 38 (0.38%) Korn
18 38 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 37 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 780 (7.89%) Security Cleared
2 722 (7.30%) Degree
3 556 (5.62%) SC Cleared
4 245 (2.48%) PMP
5 215 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 215 (2.17%) PMI Certification
6 196 (1.98%) ACCA
7 172 (1.74%) CIMA
8 151 (1.53%) CISSP
9 135 (1.37%) DV Cleared
10 124 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
11 105 (1.06%) Azure Certification
12 88 (0.89%) CISM
13 80 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
14 68 (0.69%) Master's Degree
15 65 (0.66%) AWS Certification
16 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
17 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 44 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 37 (0.37%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 641 (6.48%) Data Quality
2 417 (4.22%) QA
3 364 (3.68%) PMO
4 261 (2.64%) GDPR
5 155 (1.57%) NIST
6 129 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.11%) GRC
8 109 (1.10%) SLA
9 106 (1.07%) Accessibility
10 98 (0.99%) IFRS
11 96 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 58 (0.59%) ISO 20022
13 57 (0.58%) GAAP
14 44 (0.44%) PCI DSS
15 36 (0.36%) Solvency II
16 35 (0.35%) SEPA
17 30 (0.30%) COBIT
18 28 (0.28%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) SOC 2
19 27 (0.27%) EMIR
System Software
1 266 (2.69%) Docker
2 239 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 76 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
6 24 (0.24%) vSphere
7 23 (0.23%) RACF
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 8 (0.081%) IAG
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.040%) KVM
14 4 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 446 (4.51%) Kubernetes
2 358 (3.62%) Terraform
3 164 (1.66%) Ansible
4 94 (0.95%) Grafana
5 83 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
6 72 (0.73%) Prometheus
7 58 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
8 57 (0.58%) SCCM
9 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
10 26 (0.26%) Control-M
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.16%) Argo
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 16 (0.16%) Puppet
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 14 (0.14%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Istio
15 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 11 (0.11%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,370 (13.85%) Microsoft
2 884 (8.94%) Oracle
3 841 (8.50%) SAP
4 380 (3.84%) ServiceNow
5 331 (3.35%) Databricks
6 231 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 229 (2.32%) Google
8 169 (1.71%) IBM
9 141 (1.43%) VMware
10 131 (1.32%) Workday
11 112 (1.13%) Cisco
11 112 (1.13%) Splunk
12 90 (0.91%) Ariba
12 90 (0.91%) CyberArk
13 74 (0.75%) OpenAI
14 63 (0.64%) Sage
15 59 (0.60%) Citrix
16 53 (0.54%) Informatica
17 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
18 46 (0.47%) Adobe