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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,907 6,483 8,292
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.04% 21.16% 18.78%
As % of the General category 32.63% 34.04% 31.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,019 4,085 5,655
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £792
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £504
% change year-on-year - -0.74% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 101 184
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.64 £22.27 £14.44
Median hourly rate £23.54 £35.00 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.75% +45.83% -6.65%
75th Percentile £41.98 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £72.25 £80.00 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £29.23 £21.85
% change year-on-year -24.73% +33.76% -37.56%

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 24,234 19,043 25,971
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.35% 62.16% 58.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,179 11,650 16,722
10th Percentile £300 £289 £265
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £496
% change year-on-year -0.42% -3.88% -0.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,473 622 1,713
10th Percentile £13.64 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.50 £20.46 £15.33
Median hourly rate £23.58 £29.90 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.15% +15.00% -10.34%
75th Percentile £54.00 £57.62 £51.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £65.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.27 £27.39 £25.00
% change year-on-year -18.70% +9.54% -3.85%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 6,951 £538 -9.17% 3,049
London 0 4,229 £575 -8.00% 1,360
UK excluding London 0 3,130 £500 - 2,441
Work from Home -1 2,248 £536 -9.31% 1,252
North of England +2 1,013 £475 -1.04% 571
Midlands -1 567 £490 -2.00% 347
South East -1 564 £500 -4.76% 932
North West +4 506 £450 -5.26% 315
Yorkshire 0 460 £500 -2.44% 205
Scotland 0 394 £476 +1.17% 107
West Midlands 0 362 £514 -6.55% 201
South West -5 311 £512 -2.57% 245
East Midlands 0 201 £450 +6.51% 146
East of England -1 187 £525 -2.33% 194
Wales +34 107 £413 +1.54% 55
Northern Ireland -2 49 £525 +61.54% 36
North East -11 47 £488 +4.84% 62
Channel Islands +3 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
1 327 (4.14%) Confluence
2 200 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 79 (1.00%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
5 46 (0.58%) Apache
6 40 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
7 35 (0.44%) SAS
8 26 (0.33%) CMS
9 21 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.21%) Appian
11 17 (0.21%) CICS
11 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
12 14 (0.18%) Hyperledger
13 12 (0.15%) HCL Notes
13 12 (0.15%) TPMS
14 11 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 11 (0.14%) Camunda
15 10 (0.13%) Mendix
16 8 (0.10%) nginx
Applications
1 527 (6.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 287 (3.63%) Microsoft Office
3 203 (2.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 182 (2.30%) Microsoft Project
5 145 (1.83%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.49%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.21%) Trello
9 14 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 13 (0.16%) Sketch
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.10%) InVision
13 7 (0.089%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.063%) Notion
14 5 (0.063%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.051%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 326 (4.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.45%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 73 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
5 71 (0.90%) NetSuite
5 71 (0.90%) SAP FI
6 69 (0.87%) Oracle General Ledger
7 65 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 59 (0.75%) SAP CO
9 57 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.67%) SAP FI/CO
11 44 (0.56%) Oracle Assets
12 41 (0.52%) Oracle Cash Management
13 40 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
14 39 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
15 37 (0.47%) Oracle Financials
15 37 (0.47%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 35 (0.44%) Workday HCM
17 27 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
18 23 (0.29%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,191 (15.06%) Azure
2 967 (12.23%) AWS
3 550 (6.96%) Power Platform
4 394 (4.98%) GCP
5 274 (3.47%) Microsoft 365
6 263 (3.33%) SaaS
7 246 (3.11%) Azure DevOps
8 230 (2.91%) Dynamics 365
9 204 (2.58%) GitHub
10 156 (1.97%) Serverless
11 155 (1.96%) OCI
12 129 (1.63%) Snowflake
13 122 (1.54%) Entra ID
14 102 (1.29%) Amazon S3
15 92 (1.16%) Power Automate
16 84 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
17 81 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
18 77 (0.97%) OpenShift
19 75 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
20 74 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 152 (1.92%) Firewall
2 89 (1.13%) Network Security
3 70 (0.89%) WAN
4 49 (0.62%) DNS
5 43 (0.54%) VPN
6 42 (0.53%) LAN
7 39 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 36 (0.46%) TCP/IP
9 34 (0.43%) Wireless
10 25 (0.32%) SSL
11 24 (0.30%) BGP
11 24 (0.30%) Skype
12 23 (0.29%) OSPF
13 22 (0.28%) HTTP
14 21 (0.27%) Multicast
15 19 (0.24%) DHCP
15 19 (0.24%) Internet
16 17 (0.21%) SSH
17 15 (0.19%) Cisco IOS
18 14 (0.18%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 486 (6.15%) Power BI
2 204 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
3 194 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 182 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
5 143 (1.81%) Tableau
6 134 (1.69%) Metadata
7 124 (1.57%) NoSQL
8 122 (1.54%) Relational Database
9 114 (1.44%) Data Lake
10 94 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (0.97%) Big Data
12 72 (0.91%) MongoDB
13 68 (0.86%) Oracle Database
14 59 (0.75%) BigQuery
15 45 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 42 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 36 (0.46%) MySQL
18 35 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
18 35 (0.44%) Hadoop
18 35 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 638 (8.07%) JIRA
2 251 (3.17%) Jenkins
3 216 (2.73%) Git
4 160 (2.02%) GitLab
5 70 (0.89%) JUnit
6 64 (0.81%) Cucumber
7 48 (0.61%) Sonatype Nexus
8 44 (0.56%) Selenium
9 37 (0.47%) Postman
10 36 (0.46%) Bitbucket
11 31 (0.39%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.30%) Gradle
12 24 (0.30%) MLflow
13 23 (0.29%) Liquibase
14 22 (0.28%) Maven
15 19 (0.24%) REST Assured
16 17 (0.21%) SpecFlow
17 16 (0.20%) ERwin
17 16 (0.20%) SonarQube
18 14 (0.18%) JMeter
General
1 2,674 (33.82%) Social Skills
2 1,555 (19.67%) Banking
3 1,027 (12.99%) Analytical Skills
4 626 (7.92%) Public Sector
5 350 (4.43%) Financial Institution
6 291 (3.68%) Legal
7 289 (3.65%) Marketing
8 278 (3.52%) Front Office
9 276 (3.49%) Investment Banking
10 270 (3.41%) Manufacturing
11 246 (3.11%) Telecoms
12 245 (3.10%) Organisational Skills
13 225 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
14 182 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
15 172 (2.18%) Retail
16 149 (1.88%) Electronics
17 131 (1.66%) General Ledger
18 128 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
19 120 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 118 (1.49%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,265 (16.00%) Analyst
2 864 (10.93%) Developer
3 806 (10.19%) Senior
4 675 (8.54%) Business Analyst
5 672 (8.50%) Lead
6 661 (8.36%) Architect
7 625 (7.90%) Project Manager
8 590 (7.46%) Consultant
9 279 (3.53%) Solutions Architect
10 198 (2.50%) Data Analyst
11 190 (2.40%) Data Engineer
12 180 (2.28%) Programme Manager
13 175 (2.21%) Financial Analyst
14 162 (2.05%) Senior Manager
15 144 (1.82%) Software Engineer
16 142 (1.80%) Java Developer
17 137 (1.73%) Finance Manager
18 135 (1.71%) Senior Developer
19 128 (1.62%) Senior Analyst
20 118 (1.49%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (3.57%) REST
2 267 (3.38%) Kafka
3 206 (2.61%) React
4 205 (2.59%) .NET
5 165 (2.09%) Oracle Fusion
6 147 (1.86%) RESTful
7 142 (1.80%) Middleware
8 140 (1.77%) Spring
9 118 (1.49%) Spring Boot
10 110 (1.39%) AngularJS
10 110 (1.39%) Node.js
11 91 (1.15%) HTML
11 91 (1.15%) PySpark
12 88 (1.11%) XML
13 84 (1.06%) CSS
14 81 (1.02%) JSON
14 81 (1.02%) Pandas
15 73 (0.92%) OAuth
15 73 (0.92%) SOAP
16 70 (0.89%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 337 (4.26%) Onboarding
2 306 (3.87%) Product Ownership
3 250 (3.16%) Cloud Native
4 191 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
5 176 (2.23%) Management Information System
6 171 (2.16%) Derivative
7 149 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
8 148 (1.87%) Data Centre
9 145 (1.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 143 (1.81%) Data Structures
11 140 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
12 134 (1.69%) Fixed Income
13 123 (1.56%) Equities
14 113 (1.43%) Public Cloud
15 110 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
16 92 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
17 88 (1.11%) Virtual Team
18 84 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
19 74 (0.94%) Hedge funds
20 66 (0.83%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 330 (4.17%) Linux
2 282 (3.57%) Windows
3 150 (1.90%) Unix
4 61 (0.77%) Windows 10
5 57 (0.72%) Android
6 56 (0.71%) Mac OS
7 54 (0.68%) Windows Server
8 27 (0.34%) Apple iOS
9 19 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 16 (0.20%) zOS
11 10 (0.13%) AIX
11 10 (0.13%) Solaris
12 7 (0.089%) VMS
13 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.051%) CentOS
14 4 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.051%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.038%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,759 (22.25%) Agile
2 1,523 (19.26%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,232 (15.58%) Problem-Solving
4 993 (12.56%) Migration
5 862 (10.90%) DevOps
5 862 (10.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 806 (10.19%) CI/CD
7 779 (9.85%) Analytics
8 761 (9.62%) Project Management
9 754 (9.54%) Business Intelligence
10 738 (9.33%) Continuous Improvement
11 728 (9.21%) ERP
12 640 (8.09%) AI
13 597 (7.55%) Decision-Making
14 595 (7.52%) Roadmaps
15 573 (7.25%) Data Modelling
16 563 (7.12%) Change Management
17 543 (6.87%) Risk Management
18 520 (6.58%) Project Delivery
19 519 (6.56%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,140 (14.42%) SQL
2 1,020 (12.90%) Python
3 558 (7.06%) Java
4 305 (3.86%) C#
5 242 (3.06%) JavaScript
6 193 (2.44%) TypeScript
7 188 (2.38%) PowerShell
8 136 (1.72%) C++
9 85 (1.07%) Go
10 78 (0.99%) PL/SQL
11 74 (0.94%) Bash
12 52 (0.66%) VBA
13 48 (0.61%) T-SQL
14 45 (0.57%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.54%) R
16 38 (0.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 38 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.47%) Scala
18 31 (0.39%) Rust
19 27 (0.34%) Korn
Qualifications
1 809 (10.23%) Degree
2 646 (8.17%) Security Cleared
3 475 (6.01%) SC Cleared
4 185 (2.34%) PMI Certification
5 183 (2.31%) PMP
6 176 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
7 171 (2.16%) Master's Degree
8 162 (2.05%) ACCA
9 152 (1.92%) CIMA
10 126 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 102 (1.29%) CISSP
12 81 (1.02%) AWS Certification
13 71 (0.90%) DV Cleared
14 70 (0.89%) CISM
15 64 (0.81%) Azure Certification
16 41 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
17 37 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
18 35 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
19 34 (0.43%) ISTQB
20 33 (0.42%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 399 (5.05%) QA
2 393 (4.97%) Data Quality
3 312 (3.95%) PMO
4 268 (3.39%) GDPR
5 137 (1.73%) NIST
6 129 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 104 (1.32%) SLA
9 84 (1.06%) IFRS
10 81 (1.02%) Accessibility
11 76 (0.96%) PCI DSS
12 70 (0.89%) GRC
13 59 (0.75%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.58%) PSD2
15 41 (0.52%) GAAP
16 38 (0.48%) SEPA
17 37 (0.47%) NCSC
18 36 (0.46%) MiFID
19 34 (0.43%) COBIT
20 31 (0.39%) Basel III
System Software
1 338 (4.27%) Docker
2 167 (2.11%) Active Directory
3 57 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
5 29 (0.37%) vSphere
6 13 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) GPFS
8 10 (0.13%) NFS
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 8 (0.10%) Hyper-V
9 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
10 7 (0.089%) HDFS
11 4 (0.051%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.038%) Firmware
12 3 (0.038%) KVM
12 3 (0.038%) RACF
12 3 (0.038%) SRDF
12 3 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.025%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 410 (5.19%) Kubernetes
2 256 (3.24%) Terraform
3 157 (1.99%) Ansible
4 99 (1.25%) Grafana
5 91 (1.15%) Prometheus
6 57 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 54 (0.68%) SCCM
8 39 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.32%) FortiGate
10 22 (0.28%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.23%) Control-M
12 17 (0.21%) Argo
13 15 (0.19%) vRealize
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.16%) Kibana
15 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.15%) ITRS Geneos
15 12 (0.15%) Jamf Pro
16 11 (0.14%) Nessus
16 11 (0.14%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,038 (13.13%) Microsoft
2 802 (10.14%) SAP
3 697 (8.81%) Oracle
4 308 (3.90%) ServiceNow
5 192 (2.43%) Salesforce
6 182 (2.30%) Databricks
7 177 (2.24%) Google
8 157 (1.99%) Cisco
9 151 (1.91%) Splunk
10 146 (1.85%) Workday
11 113 (1.43%) VMware
12 101 (1.28%) IBM
13 74 (0.94%) CyberArk
14 73 (0.92%) Citrix
15 65 (0.82%) Ariba
16 57 (0.72%) HP
17 54 (0.68%) Sage
18 53 (0.67%) OpenAI
19 52 (0.66%) Dell
20 51 (0.64%) Bloomberg