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 17 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,999 7,386 7,673
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.30% 22.42% 20.06%
As % of the General category 32.81% 35.26% 34.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,097 4,824 4,886
10th Percentile £360 £333 £363
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £535 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £494 £515
% change year-on-year +3.04% -4.13% -1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 133 147
10th Percentile £15.02 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.15 £21.00 £23.21
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -11.30% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £60.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.75 £70.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £33.00
% change year-on-year +71.18% -22.18% +24.53%

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 30,471 20,950 22,148
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.75% 63.60% 57.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,899 12,987 13,281
10th Percentile £313 £275 £283
25th Percentile £420 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,504 1,199 1,107
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.70
25th Percentile £16.38 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -30.14% +30.91%
75th Percentile £55.00 £48.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.50 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.50 £21.39 £35.36
% change year-on-year +42.59% -39.51% +34.70%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 8,603 £550 - 19,159
London 0 5,219 £590 +0.55% 12,400
UK excluding London 0 3,910 £509 +3.04% 8,425
Work from Home -1 2,835 £550 -2.22% 7,383
North of England 0 1,342 £513 +11.41% 1,977
South East -2 738 £500 -2.82% 2,173
North West -1 662 £500 +11.11% 1,113
Midlands -2 607 £500 +6.61% 1,122
Yorkshire 0 598 £519 +6.19% 630
Scotland 0 548 £465 -4.91% 1,014
West Midlands -1 452 £515 +2.90% 702
South West -7 357 £525 -8.70% 943
East of England +2 214 £553 +0.45% 696
East Midlands -4 152 £500 +19.76% 420
North East -7 75 £500 +14.29% 248
Northern Ireland -1 67 £510 +2.00% 385
Wales +1 62 £525 +13.51% 207
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 15

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
1 331 (3.31%) Confluence
2 260 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 94 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 81 (0.81%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.72%) Apache
6 48 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 36 (0.36%) CMS
8 28 (0.28%) SAS
9 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 17 (0.17%) Camunda
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.12%) CICS
14 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.080%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
17 5 (0.050%) Appian
17 5 (0.050%) JBoss
17 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 534 (5.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (2.23%) Microsoft Office
3 195 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 146 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
5 86 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 67 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
10 4 (0.040%) Windchill
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 447 (4.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 126 (1.26%) Oracle Payables
3 106 (1.06%) NetSuite
4 104 (1.04%) Oracle Receivables
5 92 (0.92%) Oracle ERP
6 76 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
7 75 (0.75%) Oracle General Ledger
8 74 (0.74%) SAP FI
9 66 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 53 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 51 (0.51%) SAP CO
13 46 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
14 38 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
15 36 (0.36%) Workday HCM
16 35 (0.35%) Aladdin
16 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
16 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
17 27 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
18 25 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,560 (15.60%) Azure
2 1,092 (10.92%) AWS
3 678 (6.78%) Power Platform
4 557 (5.57%) GCP
5 342 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
6 331 (3.31%) SaaS
7 320 (3.20%) GitHub
8 313 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
9 272 (2.72%) Dynamics 365
10 223 (2.23%) Snowflake
11 221 (2.21%) Entra ID
12 161 (1.61%) Serverless
13 145 (1.45%) OCI
14 131 (1.31%) Amazon S3
15 130 (1.30%) GitHub Actions
15 130 (1.30%) Power Automate
16 128 (1.28%) dbt
17 121 (1.21%) Microsoft Copilot
18 112 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
19 106 (1.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 172 (1.72%) Firewall
2 149 (1.49%) Network Security
3 104 (1.04%) VPN
4 87 (0.87%) DNS
5 62 (0.62%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.56%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.45%) BGP
9 44 (0.44%) SSL
10 36 (0.36%) HTTP
11 35 (0.35%) VLAN
12 34 (0.34%) Multicast
13 32 (0.32%) LAN
14 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
14 30 (0.30%) Wireless
15 26 (0.26%) OSPF
16 25 (0.25%) SAN
17 24 (0.24%) Internet
18 18 (0.18%) Broadband
19 17 (0.17%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 545 (5.45%) Power BI
2 293 (2.93%) SQL Server
3 255 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
4 205 (2.05%) Metadata
5 183 (1.83%) Relational Database
6 141 (1.41%) Data Lake
7 136 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
8 124 (1.24%) Tableau
9 84 (0.84%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.83%) BigQuery
11 80 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 76 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 74 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 59 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.57%) Power Query
16 53 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 51 (0.51%) Big Data
18 46 (0.46%) Db2
19 44 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
19 44 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 660 (6.60%) JIRA
2 317 (3.17%) Git
3 177 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 108 (1.08%) GitLab
5 59 (0.59%) Selenium
6 47 (0.47%) JUnit
7 38 (0.38%) Maven
8 36 (0.36%) Bitbucket
8 36 (0.36%) Claude Code
9 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
10 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
11 30 (0.30%) Gradle
11 30 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
12 29 (0.29%) ERwin
13 28 (0.28%) Cucumber
13 28 (0.28%) REST Assured
14 24 (0.24%) Cypress.io
15 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
16 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
16 20 (0.20%) Postman
General
1 3,106 (31.06%) Social Skills
2 2,057 (20.57%) Banking
3 1,417 (14.17%) Analytical Skills
4 547 (5.47%) Legal
5 533 (5.33%) Public Sector
6 446 (4.46%) Organisational Skills
7 399 (3.99%) Investment Banking
8 384 (3.84%) Retail
9 342 (3.42%) Front Office
9 342 (3.42%) Influencing Skills
10 314 (3.14%) Financial Institution
11 214 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
12 212 (2.12%) Manufacturing
13 196 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 175 (1.75%) General Ledger
14 175 (1.75%) Marketing
15 169 (1.69%) Billing
16 159 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
17 150 (1.50%) Local Government
18 142 (1.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,441 (14.41%) Analyst
2 1,094 (10.94%) Senior
3 995 (9.95%) Lead
4 992 (9.92%) Developer
5 885 (8.85%) Architect
6 742 (7.42%) Business Analyst
7 714 (7.14%) Consultant
8 693 (6.93%) Project Manager
9 343 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
10 310 (3.10%) Data Engineer
11 265 (2.65%) Financial Analyst
12 222 (2.22%) Senior Manager
13 213 (2.13%) Java Developer
14 205 (2.05%) Data Analyst
15 203 (2.03%) Senior Developer
16 192 (1.92%) Programme Manager
17 181 (1.81%) IT Manager
18 176 (1.76%) Accountant
19 175 (1.75%) Finance Manager
20 155 (1.55%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 400 (4.00%) Terraform
2 387 (3.87%) REST
3 270 (2.70%) .NET
4 267 (2.67%) Kafka
5 262 (2.62%) Oracle Fusion
6 240 (2.40%) React
7 198 (1.98%) Spring
8 191 (1.91%) Spring Boot
9 189 (1.89%) Middleware
10 147 (1.47%) PySpark
11 141 (1.41%) RESTful
12 106 (1.06%) OAuth
13 104 (1.04%) JSON
13 104 (1.04%) XML
14 93 (0.93%) SOAP
15 83 (0.83%) Redux
16 81 (0.81%) AngularJS
16 81 (0.81%) Web Services
17 79 (0.79%) Node.js
18 71 (0.71%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 521 (5.21%) Onboarding
2 514 (5.14%) Product Ownership
3 454 (4.54%) Cloud Native
4 253 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
4 253 (2.53%) Management Information System
5 238 (2.38%) Data Structures
6 232 (2.32%) Virtual Team
7 204 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
8 203 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
9 202 (2.02%) AI Agents
10 190 (1.90%) Derivative
11 163 (1.63%) Data Centre
12 159 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 156 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
14 135 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
15 127 (1.27%) Fixed Income
16 115 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
17 114 (1.14%) Equities
17 114 (1.14%) Podcast
18 113 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 380 (3.80%) Windows
2 324 (3.24%) Linux
3 171 (1.71%) Unix
4 89 (0.89%) Windows Server
5 58 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 39 (0.39%) Android
9 37 (0.37%) zOS
10 34 (0.34%) Solaris
11 31 (0.31%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 4 (0.040%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,656 (26.56%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,046 (20.46%) Agile
3 1,346 (13.46%) Migration
4 1,324 (13.24%) Problem-Solving
5 1,300 (13.00%) AI
6 1,159 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,148 (11.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,140 (11.40%) CI/CD
9 1,034 (10.34%) Analytics
10 1,001 (10.01%) DevOps
11 995 (9.95%) ERP
12 928 (9.28%) Decision-Making
13 870 (8.70%) Validation
14 861 (8.61%) Roadmaps
15 785 (7.85%) Data Modelling
16 777 (7.77%) Project Management
17 761 (7.61%) User Acceptance Testing
18 741 (7.41%) Change Management
19 703 (7.03%) Risk Management
20 674 (6.74%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,366 (13.66%) SQL
2 1,270 (12.70%) Python
3 661 (6.61%) Java
4 362 (3.62%) C#
5 284 (2.84%) PowerShell
6 249 (2.49%) JavaScript
7 217 (2.17%) TypeScript
8 154 (1.54%) Bash
9 113 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.97%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.80%) C++
12 69 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 64 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 63 (0.63%) Go
15 58 (0.58%) Bicep
16 50 (0.50%) Korn
17 42 (0.42%) Scala
18 37 (0.37%) VBA
19 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
20 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 782 (7.82%) Security Cleared
2 740 (7.40%) Degree
3 564 (5.64%) SC Cleared
4 255 (2.55%) PMP
5 252 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
6 225 (2.25%) PMI Certification
7 193 (1.93%) ACCA
8 168 (1.68%) CIMA
9 140 (1.40%) DV Cleared
10 135 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 134 (1.34%) CISSP
12 112 (1.12%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
14 75 (0.75%) CISM
15 74 (0.74%) AWS Certification
15 74 (0.74%) Master's Degree
16 53 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
17 49 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 43 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 699 (6.99%) Data Quality
2 435 (4.35%) QA
3 355 (3.55%) PMO
4 218 (2.18%) GDPR
5 136 (1.36%) NIST
6 124 (1.24%) GRC
7 118 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 106 (1.06%) Accessibility
9 96 (0.96%) IFRS
10 95 (0.95%) SLA
11 79 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 68 (0.68%) ISO 20022
13 47 (0.47%) GAAP
14 41 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 38 (0.38%) SEPA
16 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) COBIT
18 28 (0.28%) EMIR
19 24 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 279 (2.79%) Docker
2 236 (2.36%) Active Directory
3 89 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) RACF
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 19 (0.19%) vSphere
7 15 (0.15%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 9 (0.090%) IAG
11 6 (0.060%) ACF2
11 6 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.050%) GPFS
12 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
14 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 497 (4.97%) Kubernetes
2 185 (1.85%) Ansible
3 100 (1.00%) Grafana
4 79 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 70 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.62%) SCCM
7 60 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 19 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
13 13 (0.13%) Istio
13 13 (0.13%) Puppet
14 12 (0.12%) HP ALM
15 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 10 (0.10%) Packer
16 10 (0.10%) vRealize
17 9 (0.090%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,429 (14.29%) Microsoft
2 892 (8.92%) Oracle
3 873 (8.73%) SAP
4 374 (3.74%) ServiceNow
5 362 (3.62%) Databricks
6 240 (2.40%) Salesforce
7 236 (2.36%) Google
8 192 (1.92%) IBM
9 143 (1.43%) VMware
10 138 (1.38%) Workday
11 126 (1.26%) Cisco
12 119 (1.19%) Splunk
13 105 (1.05%) Ariba
14 88 (0.88%) OpenAI
15 87 (0.87%) CyberArk
16 57 (0.57%) Bloomberg
16 57 (0.57%) Citrix
17 53 (0.53%) Sage
18 52 (0.52%) Murex
19 48 (0.48%) Red Hat