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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,643 6,526 8,167
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.12% 22.28% 18.82%
As % of the General category 33.49% 35.19% 32.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,407 4,269 5,435
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £435 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £565 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.31% -1.74% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £712
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.86% -2.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 110 245
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.79 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.13 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.70% +37.24% +0.58%
75th Percentile £54.00 £69.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.51 £55.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £42.41 £32.12
% change year-on-year -46.94% +32.05% -26.59%

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 25,811 18,544 25,243
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.11% 63.31% 58.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,809 11,835 15,931
10th Percentile £306 £296 £275
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £639 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +0.42% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,652 790 1,945
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.53 £15.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.45% -8.33% -7.96%
75th Percentile £60.59 £56.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £28.25
% change year-on-year +10.00% -11.50% -2.59%

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 7 May 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 7 May 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 7 May 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 7,635 £538 -6.52% 5,040
London 0 4,603 £575 -8.00% 2,478
UK excluding London -1 3,462 £500 - 3,324
Work from Home -2 2,420 £525 -12.43% 2,098
North of England +2 1,155 £481 +1.32% 855
South East -1 658 £503 -2.30% 1,006
North West +5 620 £464 -0.27% 467
Midlands -1 589 £475 -5.00% 463
Yorkshire +1 496 £514 +2.80% 290
Scotland +1 431 £500 +3.09% 164
West Midlands 0 393 £492 -6.29% 257
South West -2 347 £503 -4.29% 409
East of England -4 199 £525 -6.67% 306
East Midlands 0 192 £463 +3.47% 205
Wales +19 93 £419 +11.67% 109
Northern Ireland -1 43 £525 +28.83% 69
North East -12 40 £488 +3.72% 105
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 2

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
1 329 (3.81%) Confluence
2 215 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 93 (1.08%) Apache Spark
4 61 (0.71%) Apache
5 53 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
6 52 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.42%) SAS
8 24 (0.28%) CMS
9 22 (0.25%) CICS
10 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.17%) Appian
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Camunda
12 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
12 14 (0.16%) IIS
13 11 (0.13%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 9 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 9 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 529 (6.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 227 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
3 177 (2.05%) Microsoft Project
4 174 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 128 (1.48%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 32 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.15%) Trello
9 8 (0.093%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.093%) Sketch
10 7 (0.081%) InVision
10 7 (0.081%) Notion
11 6 (0.069%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
13 3 (0.035%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
14 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 381 (4.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.37%) Oracle Payables
3 102 (1.18%) NetSuite
4 100 (1.16%) Oracle Receivables
5 86 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 66 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
7 60 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
7 60 (0.69%) SAP FI
8 59 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
9 51 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
10 49 (0.57%) SAP CO
11 45 (0.52%) SAP FI/CO
12 40 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
13 33 (0.38%) Oracle Cash Management
13 33 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
14 32 (0.37%) Aladdin
14 32 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
15 28 (0.32%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 28 (0.32%) Workday HCM
16 27 (0.31%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,312 (15.18%) Azure
2 992 (11.48%) AWS
3 620 (7.17%) Power Platform
4 392 (4.54%) GCP
5 300 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
6 288 (3.33%) SaaS
7 271 (3.14%) Microsoft 365
8 238 (2.75%) Dynamics 365
9 236 (2.73%) GitHub
10 150 (1.74%) Snowflake
11 148 (1.71%) Serverless
12 134 (1.55%) OCI
13 132 (1.53%) Entra ID
14 121 (1.40%) Amazon S3
15 107 (1.24%) Power Automate
16 93 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 91 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
18 88 (1.02%) OpenShift
19 87 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
20 80 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.89%) Firewall
2 118 (1.37%) Network Security
3 78 (0.90%) WAN
4 71 (0.82%) DNS
5 60 (0.69%) VPN
6 50 (0.58%) TCP/IP
7 41 (0.47%) SD-WAN
8 39 (0.45%) LAN
9 38 (0.44%) BGP
10 34 (0.39%) HTTP
11 32 (0.37%) OSPF
12 29 (0.34%) SSL
13 28 (0.32%) Multicast
14 25 (0.29%) DHCP
14 25 (0.29%) MPLS
15 21 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.24%) Internet
16 18 (0.21%) VSAN
17 17 (0.20%) VLAN
18 14 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 533 (6.17%) Power BI
2 217 (2.51%) SQL Server
3 207 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
4 171 (1.98%) PostgreSQL
5 164 (1.90%) Metadata
6 149 (1.72%) Relational Database
7 145 (1.68%) Tableau
8 126 (1.46%) Data Lake
9 87 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 87 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
10 79 (0.91%) Big Data
11 67 (0.78%) Oracle Database
12 61 (0.71%) MongoDB
13 59 (0.68%) BigQuery
14 49 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
15 44 (0.51%) Delta Lake
15 44 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 43 (0.50%) Snowflake Schema
17 42 (0.49%) DynamoDB
18 41 (0.47%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 683 (7.90%) JIRA
2 217 (2.51%) Git
3 183 (2.12%) Jenkins
4 115 (1.33%) GitLab
5 50 (0.58%) JUnit
6 49 (0.57%) Cucumber
7 37 (0.43%) Selenium
8 34 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
9 27 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 26 (0.30%) Postman
11 25 (0.29%) MLflow
12 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.24%) SonarQube
13 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
14 19 (0.22%) Maven
15 18 (0.21%) Hudson
16 17 (0.20%) Bitbucket
16 17 (0.20%) ERwin
16 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,589 (29.95%) Social Skills
2 1,572 (18.19%) Banking
3 1,159 (13.41%) Analytical Skills
4 549 (6.35%) Public Sector
5 361 (4.18%) Legal
6 336 (3.89%) Financial Institution
7 287 (3.32%) Investment Banking
8 280 (3.24%) Front Office
9 246 (2.85%) Organisational Skills
10 245 (2.83%) Retail
11 234 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
12 206 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
13 186 (2.15%) Manufacturing
14 174 (2.01%) Marketing
15 152 (1.76%) Telecoms
16 143 (1.65%) General Ledger
17 127 (1.47%) Local Government
18 125 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
19 121 (1.40%) Law
20 119 (1.38%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,310 (15.16%) Analyst
2 899 (10.40%) Senior
3 881 (10.19%) Developer
4 872 (10.09%) Lead
5 777 (8.99%) Architect
6 703 (8.13%) Business Analyst
7 685 (7.93%) Project Manager
8 599 (6.93%) Consultant
9 311 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
10 282 (3.26%) Data Engineer
11 214 (2.48%) Financial Analyst
12 204 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 190 (2.20%) Finance Manager
14 183 (2.12%) Data Analyst
15 176 (2.04%) Programme Manager
16 165 (1.91%) Accountant
17 147 (1.70%) Java Developer
18 143 (1.65%) Delivery Manager
19 137 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
20 134 (1.55%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (3.14%) Kafka
2 254 (2.94%) REST
3 239 (2.77%) .NET
4 204 (2.36%) React
5 181 (2.09%) Middleware
6 157 (1.82%) Oracle Fusion
7 149 (1.72%) Spring
8 143 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.57%) RESTful
10 110 (1.27%) PySpark
11 107 (1.24%) Node.js
12 93 (1.08%) AngularJS
13 84 (0.97%) OAuth
14 79 (0.91%) JSON
14 79 (0.91%) Redux
15 77 (0.89%) XML
16 72 (0.83%) HTML
17 70 (0.81%) CSS
18 64 (0.74%) Pandas
19 60 (0.69%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 354 (4.10%) Onboarding
2 334 (3.86%) Product Ownership
3 308 (3.56%) Cloud Native
4 226 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
5 200 (2.31%) Management Information System
6 183 (2.12%) Data Structures
7 168 (1.94%) Derivative
8 165 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
9 147 (1.70%) Data Centre
10 144 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
11 139 (1.61%) Fixed Income
12 131 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 113 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
14 105 (1.21%) Equities
15 103 (1.19%) Virtual Team
16 101 (1.17%) Public Cloud
17 95 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 85 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
19 71 (0.82%) Mainframe
20 69 (0.80%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 276 (3.19%) Windows
2 272 (3.15%) Linux
3 139 (1.61%) Unix
4 69 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 47 (0.54%) Windows 10
6 31 (0.36%) Apple iOS
7 29 (0.34%) Solaris
7 29 (0.34%) zOS
8 26 (0.30%) Android
9 22 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 18 (0.21%) AIX
10 18 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.093%) VMS
12 6 (0.069%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.046%) HPUX
14 4 (0.046%) MVS
14 4 (0.046%) SUSE
14 4 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,814 (20.99%) Agile
2 1,717 (19.87%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,232 (14.25%) Problem-Solving
4 1,172 (13.56%) Migration
5 963 (11.14%) Continuous Improvement
6 952 (11.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 924 (10.69%) DevOps
8 906 (10.48%) ERP
9 870 (10.07%) CI/CD
10 832 (9.63%) AI
11 827 (9.57%) Analytics
12 797 (9.22%) Project Management
13 733 (8.48%) Business Intelligence
14 717 (8.30%) Decision-Making
15 692 (8.01%) Data Modelling
16 685 (7.93%) Roadmaps
17 673 (7.79%) Validation
18 660 (7.64%) User Acceptance Testing
19 594 (6.87%) Change Management
20 573 (6.63%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,198 (13.86%) SQL
2 1,030 (11.92%) Python
3 563 (6.51%) Java
4 335 (3.88%) C#
5 218 (2.52%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.36%) TypeScript
7 164 (1.90%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.21%) C++
9 74 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 72 (0.83%) Bash
11 69 (0.80%) Go
12 63 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 49 (0.57%) VBA
15 45 (0.52%) Scala
16 32 (0.37%) R
17 29 (0.34%) Kotlin
18 26 (0.30%) Bicep
19 24 (0.28%) Korn
Qualifications
1 745 (8.62%) Degree
2 706 (8.17%) Security Cleared
3 502 (5.81%) SC Cleared
4 214 (2.48%) ACCA
5 213 (2.46%) PMP
6 200 (2.31%) PMI Certification
7 197 (2.28%) CIMA
8 146 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
9 142 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
10 126 (1.46%) CISSP
11 117 (1.35%) Master's Degree
12 86 (1.00%) CISM
13 85 (0.98%) DV Cleared
14 64 (0.74%) Azure Certification
15 59 (0.68%) AWS Certification
16 52 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
17 39 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 34 (0.39%) ISTQB
19 32 (0.37%) CBAP
20 31 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 500 (5.79%) Data Quality
2 415 (4.80%) QA
3 338 (3.91%) PMO
4 304 (3.52%) GDPR
5 155 (1.79%) NIST
6 129 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 103 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 103 (1.19%) SLA
8 101 (1.17%) IFRS
9 85 (0.98%) GRC
10 77 (0.89%) Accessibility
11 71 (0.82%) PCI DSS
12 61 (0.71%) ISO 20022
13 53 (0.61%) GAAP
14 39 (0.45%) PSD2
15 38 (0.44%) SEPA
16 34 (0.39%) NCSC
17 30 (0.35%) MiFID
18 28 (0.32%) EMIR
19 26 (0.30%) Basel III
System Software
1 293 (3.39%) Docker
2 148 (1.71%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 25 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.10%) GPFS
11 6 (0.069%) RACF
12 5 (0.058%) HDFS
12 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.046%) ACF2
13 4 (0.046%) Firmware
13 4 (0.046%) KVM
14 3 (0.035%) GridGain
14 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.035%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 408 (4.72%) Kubernetes
2 256 (2.96%) Terraform
3 121 (1.40%) Ansible
4 90 (1.04%) Grafana
5 70 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.57%) SCCM
8 36 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.30%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
11 16 (0.19%) vRealize
12 14 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.15%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
14 12 (0.14%) HP ALM
14 12 (0.14%) Progress Chef
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 10 (0.12%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,113 (12.88%) Microsoft
2 782 (9.05%) SAP
3 720 (8.33%) Oracle
4 311 (3.60%) ServiceNow
5 232 (2.68%) Databricks
6 190 (2.20%) Salesforce
7 176 (2.04%) Google
8 136 (1.57%) Workday
9 120 (1.39%) Cisco
10 117 (1.35%) Splunk
11 102 (1.18%) VMware
12 97 (1.12%) IBM
13 78 (0.90%) CyberArk
14 75 (0.87%) Citrix
15 73 (0.84%) Ariba
16 71 (0.82%) Sage
17 57 (0.66%) Informatica
18 56 (0.65%) OpenAI
19 51 (0.59%) Palo Alto
20 50 (0.58%) IFS