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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,027 7,265 7,743
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.28% 21.92% 20.36%
As % of the General category 32.54% 34.61% 34.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,030 4,734 4,861
10th Percentile £360 £335 £358
25th Percentile £450 £416 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.52% -6.70% -4.17%
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 351 138 130
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.41 £14.50
25th Percentile £19.36 £18.19 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.52 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.74% -16.61% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £53.95 £55.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £31.91
% change year-on-year +83.17% -24.79% +22.74%

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 30,811 20,994 22,244
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.17% 63.35% 58.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,953 13,037 13,174
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
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 £743 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,677 1,229 1,005
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.51 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £28.26 £25.08 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.68% -28.36% +27.27%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.80 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £21.39 £33.00
% change year-on-year +33.24% -35.18% +25.71%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 8,611 £550 - 20,781
London 0 5,220 £600 +1.69% 12,760
UK excluding London 0 3,889 £510 +2.00% 11,077
Work from Home -1 2,803 £550 -2.22% 9,989
North of England 0 1,347 £514 +9.36% 2,370
South East -1 741 £500 -2.72% 2,470
North West -2 643 £506 +12.44% 1,267
Yorkshire +1 625 £517 +3.36% 798
Midlands -3 614 £520 +9.47% 1,376
Scotland 0 542 £463 -7.04% 1,809
West Midlands -2 458 £518 -0.43% 823
South West -6 344 £538 -2.27% 1,173
East of England +2 204 £550 -4.35% 821
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +19.05% 553
North East -9 72 £500 +13.96% 325
Wales -1 62 £525 +20.00% 559
Northern Ireland 0 60 £510 -2.86% 593
Channel Islands 0 5 £600 - 18

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
1 325 (3.24%) Confluence
2 262 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 95 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
4 82 (0.82%) Apache
4 82 (0.82%) Apache Spark
5 46 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
6 30 (0.30%) CMS
7 23 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
8 22 (0.22%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 17 (0.17%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
14 10 (0.100%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 7 (0.070%) Adobe Experience Manager
17 6 (0.060%) Appian
17 6 (0.060%) JBoss
17 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
Applications
1 526 (5.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
3 193 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 144 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
5 85 (0.85%) MS Visio
6 65 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.27%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.080%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.080%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) Sketch
11 4 (0.040%) Windchill
12 3 (0.030%) 1Password
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 449 (4.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.24%) Oracle Payables
3 110 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
4 97 (0.97%) NetSuite
5 90 (0.90%) Oracle ERP
6 88 (0.88%) Oracle General Ledger
7 80 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
7 80 (0.80%) SAP FI
8 67 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
9 58 (0.58%) Oracle Financials
10 52 (0.52%) SAP CO
11 51 (0.51%) Workday HCM
12 47 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
13 46 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 45 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
15 40 (0.40%) Aladdin
16 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
16 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
17 30 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
18 25 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,605 (16.01%) Azure
2 1,108 (11.05%) AWS
3 662 (6.60%) Power Platform
4 568 (5.66%) GCP
5 361 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
6 335 (3.34%) GitHub
7 327 (3.26%) Microsoft 365
8 315 (3.14%) SaaS
9 264 (2.63%) Dynamics 365
10 232 (2.31%) Entra ID
11 222 (2.21%) Snowflake
12 164 (1.64%) Serverless
13 142 (1.42%) OCI
14 136 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
15 133 (1.33%) Power Automate
16 129 (1.29%) Amazon S3
16 129 (1.29%) dbt
17 124 (1.24%) Microsoft Copilot
18 116 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
19 106 (1.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 177 (1.77%) Firewall
2 162 (1.62%) Network Security
3 106 (1.06%) VPN
4 89 (0.89%) DNS
5 60 (0.60%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.56%) WAN
7 48 (0.48%) DHCP
8 46 (0.46%) BGP
9 38 (0.38%) SSL
10 34 (0.34%) Multicast
11 33 (0.33%) LAN
12 32 (0.32%) HTTP
13 31 (0.31%) VLAN
14 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
14 30 (0.30%) Wireless
15 28 (0.28%) SAN
16 27 (0.27%) OSPF
17 25 (0.25%) Internet
18 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
19 18 (0.18%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 526 (5.25%) Power BI
2 290 (2.89%) SQL Server
3 259 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.01%) Metadata
5 176 (1.76%) Relational Database
6 147 (1.47%) Data Lake
7 139 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
8 125 (1.25%) Tableau
9 89 (0.89%) NoSQL
10 85 (0.85%) BigQuery
11 84 (0.84%) Oracle Database
12 80 (0.80%) MongoDB
13 61 (0.61%) Oracle Reports
14 58 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.54%) Delta Lake
15 54 (0.54%) Power Query
16 46 (0.46%) Db2
17 44 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
17 44 (0.44%) Big Data
18 42 (0.42%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 652 (6.50%) JIRA
2 345 (3.44%) Git
3 185 (1.85%) Jenkins
4 117 (1.17%) GitLab
5 65 (0.65%) Selenium
6 49 (0.49%) JUnit
7 41 (0.41%) Claude Code
8 39 (0.39%) Maven
9 38 (0.38%) Bitbucket
9 38 (0.38%) Cucumber
10 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
11 34 (0.34%) Gradle
12 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
13 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
14 28 (0.28%) ERwin
15 26 (0.26%) Cypress.io
15 26 (0.26%) Postman
15 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
16 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
16 20 (0.20%) Mockito
General
1 3,156 (31.48%) Social Skills
2 2,142 (21.36%) Banking
3 1,432 (14.28%) Analytical Skills
4 542 (5.41%) Public Sector
5 531 (5.30%) Legal
6 469 (4.68%) Organisational Skills
7 402 (4.01%) Investment Banking
8 371 (3.70%) Retail
9 346 (3.45%) Front Office
10 345 (3.44%) Influencing Skills
11 311 (3.10%) Financial Institution
12 226 (2.25%) Manufacturing
13 205 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
14 194 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 190 (1.89%) Marketing
16 188 (1.87%) Billing
17 183 (1.83%) General Ledger
18 160 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
19 153 (1.53%) Local Government
20 145 (1.45%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,386 (13.82%) Analyst
2 1,149 (11.46%) Senior
3 1,003 (10.00%) Developer
4 972 (9.69%) Lead
5 874 (8.72%) Architect
6 733 (7.31%) Consultant
7 719 (7.17%) Business Analyst
8 681 (6.79%) Project Manager
9 348 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
10 295 (2.94%) Data Engineer
11 249 (2.48%) Financial Analyst
12 225 (2.24%) Senior Manager
13 212 (2.11%) Senior Developer
14 210 (2.09%) Java Developer
15 200 (1.99%) Data Analyst
15 200 (1.99%) Programme Manager
16 180 (1.80%) IT Manager
17 177 (1.77%) Accountant
18 170 (1.70%) Finance Manager
19 154 (1.54%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 419 (4.18%) Terraform
2 418 (4.17%) REST
3 279 (2.78%) Kafka
4 273 (2.72%) .NET
5 271 (2.70%) Oracle Fusion
6 249 (2.48%) React
7 200 (1.99%) Spring
8 197 (1.96%) Middleware
9 196 (1.95%) Spring Boot
10 145 (1.45%) PySpark
11 144 (1.44%) RESTful
12 114 (1.14%) JSON
13 110 (1.10%) XML
14 109 (1.09%) OAuth
15 101 (1.01%) SOAP
16 93 (0.93%) Web Services
17 88 (0.88%) Redux
18 86 (0.86%) AngularJS
19 82 (0.82%) HTML
20 74 (0.74%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 540 (5.39%) Onboarding
2 516 (5.15%) Product Ownership
3 481 (4.80%) Cloud Native
4 270 (2.69%) Management Information System
5 253 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
6 240 (2.39%) Data Structures
7 229 (2.28%) Virtual Team
8 224 (2.23%) AI Agents
9 220 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
10 204 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
11 196 (1.95%) Derivative
12 177 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
13 173 (1.73%) Data Centre
14 151 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 138 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
16 134 (1.34%) Fixed Income
17 122 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
18 117 (1.17%) Equities
19 114 (1.14%) Podcast
19 114 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 387 (3.86%) Windows
2 345 (3.44%) Linux
3 175 (1.75%) Unix
4 99 (0.99%) Windows Server
5 61 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 50 (0.50%) Apple iOS
7 43 (0.43%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 37 (0.37%) zOS
10 36 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 31 (0.31%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 7 (0.070%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.060%) HPUX
15 6 (0.060%) SUSE
16 5 (0.050%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,801 (27.93%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,078 (20.72%) Agile
3 1,353 (13.49%) Migration
4 1,349 (13.45%) AI
4 1,349 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
5 1,188 (11.85%) CI/CD
6 1,130 (11.27%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,116 (11.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,038 (10.35%) Analytics
9 1,029 (10.26%) DevOps
10 958 (9.55%) ERP
11 937 (9.34%) Decision-Making
12 903 (9.01%) Roadmaps
13 900 (8.98%) Validation
14 784 (7.82%) Project Management
15 771 (7.69%) Data Modelling
16 764 (7.62%) User Acceptance Testing
17 740 (7.38%) Risk Management
18 716 (7.14%) Change Management
19 694 (6.92%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,375 (13.71%) SQL
2 1,309 (13.05%) Python
3 664 (6.62%) Java
4 367 (3.66%) C#
5 299 (2.98%) PowerShell
6 267 (2.66%) JavaScript
7 224 (2.23%) TypeScript
8 174 (1.74%) Bash
9 109 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 95 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.78%) C++
12 71 (0.71%) Go
13 70 (0.70%) T-SQL
14 61 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 59 (0.59%) Bicep
16 53 (0.53%) Korn
17 46 (0.46%) Scala
18 36 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.32%) Apex Code
19 32 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 774 (7.72%) Security Cleared
2 732 (7.30%) Degree
3 554 (5.53%) SC Cleared
4 260 (2.59%) PMP
5 256 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
6 233 (2.32%) PMI Certification
7 184 (1.84%) ACCA
8 161 (1.61%) CIMA
9 142 (1.42%) DV Cleared
10 137 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
11 124 (1.24%) CISSP
12 113 (1.13%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.87%) AWS Certification
14 79 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
14 79 (0.79%) Master's Degree
15 62 (0.62%) CISM
16 54 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
17 48 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
19 36 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 718 (7.16%) Data Quality
2 426 (4.25%) QA
3 356 (3.55%) PMO
4 200 (1.99%) GDPR
5 128 (1.28%) NIST
6 127 (1.27%) GRC
7 111 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 109 (1.09%) Accessibility
9 93 (0.93%) SLA
10 91 (0.91%) IFRS
11 73 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.44%) GAAP
14 42 (0.42%) PCI DSS
15 40 (0.40%) SEPA
16 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 28 (0.28%) COBIT
17 28 (0.28%) MiFID
18 27 (0.27%) EMIR
19 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 270 (2.69%) Docker
2 246 (2.45%) Active Directory
3 102 (1.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 29 (0.29%) vSphere
6 28 (0.28%) RACF
7 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.17%) Hyper-V
9 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.11%) NFS
11 8 (0.080%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
12 6 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
16 2 (0.020%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 505 (5.04%) Kubernetes
2 198 (1.97%) Ansible
3 98 (0.98%) Grafana
4 85 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (0.73%) 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 21 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
11 19 (0.19%) Argo
12 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
13 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
14 14 (0.14%) Istio
15 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 11 (0.11%) Puppet
16 10 (0.100%) Packer
16 10 (0.100%) Tivoli
17 8 (0.080%) Kustomize
17 8 (0.080%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,463 (14.59%) Microsoft
2 894 (8.92%) SAP
3 874 (8.72%) Oracle
4 365 (3.64%) ServiceNow
5 362 (3.61%) Databricks
6 241 (2.40%) Google
7 232 (2.31%) Salesforce
8 204 (2.03%) IBM
9 159 (1.59%) Workday
10 154 (1.54%) VMware
11 133 (1.33%) Cisco
12 119 (1.19%) Ariba
13 118 (1.18%) Splunk
14 92 (0.92%) OpenAI
15 89 (0.89%) CyberArk
16 57 (0.57%) Citrix
17 56 (0.56%) Bloomberg
18 55 (0.55%) Murex
18 55 (0.55%) Sage
19 54 (0.54%) Red Hat