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 10 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,028 7,214 7,732
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.37% 21.78% 20.39%
As % of the General category 32.52% 34.42% 34.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,990 4,689 4,840
10th Percentile £363 £333 £356
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £570
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -7.89% -4.84%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 146 129
10th Percentile £14.44 £15.48 £14.90
25th Percentile £18.88 £18.19 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -16.67% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £53.95 £55.00
90th Percentile £67.25 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +29.41%

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 30,832 20,956 22,240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.48% 63.27% 58.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,899 13,033 13,139
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £420 £400 £411
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 £740 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,749 1,247 954
10th Percentile £13.46 £13.51 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.01 £16.17 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -23.08% +18.18%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £72.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £31.97
% change year-on-year +28.56% -33.09% +21.79%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 8,575 £550 +0.92% 21,034
London 0 5,211 £600 +2.26% 13,499
UK excluding London 0 3,875 £510 +2.00% 9,408
Work from Home -1 2,790 £550 - 8,753
North of England 0 1,351 £514 +9.13% 2,226
South East -1 732 £500 -2.72% 2,057
North West -2 649 £502 +11.44% 1,244
Yorkshire 0 623 £515 +2.90% 720
Midlands -3 603 £525 +10.53% 1,235
Scotland +1 543 £463 -6.00% 1,325
West Midlands -3 448 £507 -1.55% 737
South West -6 338 £525 -4.55% 1,002
East of England +2 200 £534 -5.44% 757
East Midlands -2 149 £525 +25.00% 499
North East -9 72 £538 +22.51% 285
Wales +4 69 £525 +20.34% 224
Northern Ireland 0 62 £486 -7.38% 640
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 9

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 (3.26%) Confluence
2 260 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 97 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
4 83 (0.83%) Apache Spark
5 82 (0.82%) Apache
6 51 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 22 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
9 21 (0.21%) SAS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.11%) CICS
13 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
14 9 (0.090%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.060%) Appian
17 5 (0.050%) Adobe Experience Manager
17 5 (0.050%) nginx
17 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 531 (5.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 217 (2.16%) Microsoft Office
3 193 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 147 (1.47%) Microsoft Project
5 86 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.24%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.100%) Trello
9 9 (0.090%) Adobe Illustrator
9 9 (0.090%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) Windchill
12 3 (0.030%) 1Password
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.030%) Sketch
13 2 (0.020%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 444 (4.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.23%) Oracle Payables
3 110 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
4 96 (0.96%) NetSuite
5 89 (0.89%) Oracle ERP
5 89 (0.89%) Oracle General Ledger
6 85 (0.85%) SAP FI
7 80 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
8 73 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
9 60 (0.60%) Oracle Financials
10 56 (0.56%) SAP CO
11 52 (0.52%) Workday HCM
12 51 (0.51%) SAP FI/CO
13 48 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
14 44 (0.44%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
15 42 (0.42%) Aladdin
16 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
17 33 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
18 31 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
19 26 (0.26%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,615 (16.10%) Azure
2 1,100 (10.97%) AWS
3 656 (6.54%) Power Platform
4 567 (5.65%) GCP
5 370 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
6 339 (3.38%) GitHub
7 331 (3.30%) Microsoft 365
8 313 (3.12%) SaaS
9 270 (2.69%) Dynamics 365
10 231 (2.30%) Entra ID
11 222 (2.21%) Snowflake
12 160 (1.60%) Serverless
13 141 (1.41%) GitHub Actions
14 139 (1.39%) OCI
15 128 (1.28%) Power Automate
16 127 (1.27%) Microsoft Copilot
17 126 (1.26%) dbt
18 125 (1.25%) Amazon S3
19 114 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
20 107 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 179 (1.79%) Firewall
2 171 (1.71%) Network Security
3 109 (1.09%) VPN
4 96 (0.96%) DNS
5 65 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 58 (0.58%) WAN
7 53 (0.53%) BGP
8 51 (0.51%) DHCP
9 39 (0.39%) Multicast
9 39 (0.39%) SSL
10 37 (0.37%) VLAN
11 34 (0.34%) LAN
11 34 (0.34%) OSPF
12 32 (0.32%) SAN
13 31 (0.31%) HTTP
13 31 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
14 29 (0.29%) Internet
14 29 (0.29%) Wireless
15 22 (0.22%) SD-WAN
16 19 (0.19%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 517 (5.16%) Power BI
2 292 (2.91%) SQL Server
3 258 (2.57%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (2.00%) Metadata
5 170 (1.70%) Relational Database
6 148 (1.48%) Data Lake
7 134 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
8 129 (1.29%) Tableau
9 87 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 86 (0.86%) Oracle Database
11 84 (0.84%) BigQuery
12 82 (0.82%) MongoDB
13 57 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
14 56 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.54%) Delta Lake
15 54 (0.54%) Power Query
16 46 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
16 46 (0.46%) Db2
17 44 (0.44%) Big Data
18 41 (0.41%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 663 (6.61%) JIRA
2 352 (3.51%) Git
3 197 (1.96%) Jenkins
4 121 (1.21%) GitLab
5 68 (0.68%) Selenium
6 50 (0.50%) JUnit
7 45 (0.45%) Claude Code
8 41 (0.41%) Maven
9 40 (0.40%) Bitbucket
10 39 (0.39%) Cucumber
11 38 (0.38%) Gradle
12 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
13 32 (0.32%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.32%) Visual Studio
14 29 (0.29%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.29%) Postman
15 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
16 25 (0.25%) ERwin
17 22 (0.22%) Mockito
17 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
General
1 3,147 (31.38%) Social Skills
2 2,184 (21.78%) Banking
3 1,435 (14.31%) Analytical Skills
4 546 (5.44%) Public Sector
5 534 (5.33%) Legal
6 472 (4.71%) Organisational Skills
7 403 (4.02%) Investment Banking
8 360 (3.59%) Retail
9 347 (3.46%) Influencing Skills
10 342 (3.41%) Front Office
11 311 (3.10%) Financial Institution
12 225 (2.24%) Manufacturing
13 210 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
14 196 (1.95%) Marketing
15 190 (1.89%) General Ledger
16 189 (1.88%) Billing
16 189 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 155 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
18 152 (1.52%) Local Government
19 147 (1.47%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,376 (13.72%) Analyst
2 1,144 (11.41%) Senior
3 994 (9.91%) Developer
4 963 (9.60%) Lead
5 871 (8.69%) Architect
6 737 (7.35%) Consultant
7 701 (6.99%) Business Analyst
8 677 (6.75%) Project Manager
9 352 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 289 (2.88%) Data Engineer
11 248 (2.47%) Financial Analyst
12 220 (2.19%) Senior Manager
13 215 (2.14%) Senior Developer
14 205 (2.04%) Java Developer
15 203 (2.02%) Programme Manager
16 201 (2.00%) Data Analyst
17 185 (1.84%) IT Manager
18 177 (1.77%) Accountant
19 164 (1.64%) Finance Manager
20 153 (1.53%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 426 (4.25%) REST
2 425 (4.24%) Terraform
3 284 (2.83%) Kafka
4 276 (2.75%) .NET
5 272 (2.71%) Oracle Fusion
6 245 (2.44%) React
7 198 (1.97%) Spring
8 194 (1.93%) Spring Boot
9 193 (1.92%) Middleware
10 150 (1.50%) PySpark
11 144 (1.44%) RESTful
12 117 (1.17%) JSON
13 111 (1.11%) XML
14 110 (1.10%) OAuth
15 100 (1.00%) SOAP
16 93 (0.93%) Web Services
17 86 (0.86%) Redux
18 85 (0.85%) AngularJS
19 84 (0.84%) HTML
20 75 (0.75%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 538 (5.36%) Onboarding
2 522 (5.21%) Product Ownership
3 492 (4.91%) Cloud Native
4 277 (2.76%) Management Information System
5 254 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 236 (2.35%) Data Structures
7 230 (2.29%) AI Agents
8 227 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
8 227 (2.26%) Virtual Team
9 208 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
10 194 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
11 193 (1.92%) Derivative
12 179 (1.79%) Data Centre
13 151 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 135 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
15 131 (1.31%) Fixed Income
16 124 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
17 116 (1.16%) Equities
18 114 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
19 113 (1.13%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 388 (3.87%) Windows
2 346 (3.45%) Linux
3 168 (1.68%) Unix
4 103 (1.03%) Windows Server
5 61 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 47 (0.47%) Apple iOS
7 43 (0.43%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 37 (0.37%) Mac OS
10 34 (0.34%) zOS
11 25 (0.25%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.050%) CentOS
14 5 (0.050%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.040%) HPUX
15 4 (0.040%) SUSE
15 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
16 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,852 (28.44%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,077 (20.71%) Agile
3 1,371 (13.67%) AI
4 1,364 (13.60%) Migration
5 1,358 (13.54%) Problem-Solving
6 1,195 (11.92%) CI/CD
7 1,133 (11.30%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,116 (11.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,039 (10.36%) Analytics
9 1,039 (10.36%) DevOps
10 945 (9.42%) Decision-Making
11 943 (9.40%) ERP
12 925 (9.22%) Roadmaps
13 909 (9.06%) Validation
14 772 (7.70%) Project Management
15 766 (7.64%) Data Modelling
16 755 (7.53%) User Acceptance Testing
17 754 (7.52%) Risk Management
18 706 (7.04%) Project Delivery
19 702 (7.00%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,376 (13.72%) SQL
2 1,325 (13.21%) Python
3 660 (6.58%) Java
4 364 (3.63%) C#
5 312 (3.11%) PowerShell
6 276 (2.75%) JavaScript
7 221 (2.20%) TypeScript
8 178 (1.78%) Bash
9 106 (1.06%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 79 (0.79%) C++
12 74 (0.74%) Go
13 68 (0.68%) T-SQL
14 64 (0.64%) Bicep
15 62 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 53 (0.53%) Korn
17 47 (0.47%) Scala
18 37 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.32%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.30%) VBA
Qualifications
1 787 (7.85%) Security Cleared
2 724 (7.22%) Degree
3 564 (5.62%) SC Cleared
4 257 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 256 (2.55%) PMP
6 234 (2.33%) PMI Certification
7 181 (1.80%) ACCA
8 161 (1.61%) CIMA
9 146 (1.46%) DV Cleared
10 139 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
11 125 (1.25%) CISSP
12 116 (1.16%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.87%) AWS Certification
14 78 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
14 78 (0.78%) Master's Degree
15 66 (0.66%) CISM
16 51 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
17 45 (0.45%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
19 39 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 735 (7.33%) Data Quality
2 418 (4.17%) QA
3 359 (3.58%) PMO
4 202 (2.01%) GDPR
5 128 (1.28%) NIST
6 123 (1.23%) GRC
7 117 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.07%) Accessibility
9 90 (0.90%) SLA
10 89 (0.89%) IFRS
11 74 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.44%) PCI DSS
14 42 (0.42%) SEPA
15 40 (0.40%) GAAP
16 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
17 28 (0.28%) COBIT
18 27 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 25 (0.25%) MiFID
19 25 (0.25%) NCSC
System Software
1 276 (2.75%) Docker
2 248 (2.47%) Active Directory
3 106 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
5 31 (0.31%) vSphere
6 27 (0.27%) RACF
6 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 7 (0.070%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.050%) ACF2
14 4 (0.040%) Firmware
14 4 (0.040%) GPFS
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 517 (5.16%) Kubernetes
2 202 (2.01%) Ansible
3 98 (0.98%) Grafana
4 84 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.63%) SCCM
7 60 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 22 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.14%) Istio
14 11 (0.11%) Puppet
14 11 (0.11%) Tivoli
15 10 (0.100%) Cisco Prime
15 10 (0.100%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.100%) Packer
16 8 (0.080%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,489 (14.85%) Microsoft
2 890 (8.88%) SAP
3 869 (8.67%) Oracle
4 358 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 354 (3.53%) Databricks
6 246 (2.45%) Salesforce
7 244 (2.43%) Google
8 205 (2.04%) IBM
9 162 (1.62%) VMware
10 159 (1.59%) Workday
11 137 (1.37%) Cisco
12 127 (1.27%) Splunk
13 121 (1.21%) Ariba
14 91 (0.91%) OpenAI
15 90 (0.90%) CyberArk
16 61 (0.61%) Bloomberg
17 56 (0.56%) Citrix
17 56 (0.56%) Murex
18 55 (0.55%) Sage
19 52 (0.52%) F5