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 22 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,351 6,727 8,189
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.45% 21.22% 19.00%
As % of the General category 32.51% 34.33% 32.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,704 4,218 5,562
10th Percentile £350 £356 £363
25th Percentile £425 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £668 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £505 £509
% change year-on-year -0.99% -0.79% -3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 94 134
10th Percentile £15.00 £18.20 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.55 £22.50 £14.07
Median hourly rate £23.50 £29.00 £22.57
Median % change year-on-year -18.97% +28.47% -9.71%
75th Percentile £40.00 £63.00 £46.81
90th Percentile £66.41 £79.63 £57.83
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -40.00%

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 22,609 19,593 25,374
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.81% 61.80% 58.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,246 11,682 16,524
10th Percentile £285 £285 £270
25th Percentile £401 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £730 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,393 656 1,370
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.62 £13.31
25th Percentile £16.45 £20.00 £15.41
Median hourly rate £22.99 £27.84 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.41% +1.22% +10.00%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £56.37
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.66 £68.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.30 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -19.62% +1.92% +15.56%

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 22 January 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 22 January 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 22 January 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 6,473 £536 -9.54% 5,521
London -1 3,940 £575 -5.35% 1,520
UK excluding London -2 2,916 £500 -0.99% 4,948
Work from Home -1 2,042 £525 -12.50% 2,315
North of England +1 931 £475 -4.34% 937
South East -2 538 £503 -4.29% 1,715
Midlands -3 519 £475 -9.52% 650
North West +2 454 £450 -8.16% 410
Yorkshire 0 429 £500 -2.91% 386
Scotland 0 382 £500 +7.64% 210
West Midlands -5 315 £525 -4.55% 275
South West -6 290 £525 -1.87% 580
East Midlands +1 203 £420 -1.18% 366
East of England -2 173 £529 +0.71% 644
Wales +25 75 £413 -12.00% 235
Northern Ireland -1 57 £500 +53.85% 104
North East -4 49 £481 +1.32% 154
Channel Islands +1 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
1 311 (4.23%) Confluence
2 203 (2.76%) SharePoint
3 74 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.86%) Apache
5 62 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
6 60 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
7 33 (0.45%) SAS
8 29 (0.39%) CMS
9 23 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.29%) IIS
11 16 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 14 (0.19%) Appian
12 14 (0.19%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 13 (0.18%) TPMS
14 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
15 11 (0.15%) Hyperledger
15 11 (0.15%) JBoss
Applications
1 503 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 290 (3.95%) Microsoft Office
3 206 (2.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 164 (2.23%) Microsoft Project
5 132 (1.80%) MS Visio
6 35 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 14 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.068%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.054%) Notion
16 3 (0.041%) Camtasia
16 3 (0.041%) Snagit
17 2 (0.027%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 295 (4.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 126 (1.71%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.31%) Oracle Receivables
4 94 (1.28%) Oracle EBS
5 85 (1.16%) Oracle General Ledger
6 71 (0.97%) SAP FI
7 67 (0.91%) NetSuite
8 63 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
9 60 (0.82%) SAP CO
10 54 (0.73%) SAP FI/CO
11 53 (0.72%) Oracle Cash Management
12 52 (0.71%) Oracle EBS R12
12 52 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 51 (0.69%) Oracle Assets
14 49 (0.67%) Oracle Financials
15 47 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
16 39 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 39 (0.53%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
18 27 (0.37%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,085 (14.76%) Azure
2 888 (12.08%) AWS
3 545 (7.41%) Power Platform
4 350 (4.76%) GCP
5 247 (3.36%) Microsoft 365
6 228 (3.10%) SaaS
7 220 (2.99%) Azure DevOps
8 210 (2.86%) Dynamics 365
9 193 (2.63%) GitHub
10 141 (1.92%) Serverless
11 140 (1.90%) OCI
12 136 (1.85%) Snowflake
13 117 (1.59%) Entra ID
14 97 (1.32%) GitHub Actions
15 87 (1.18%) Amazon S3
15 87 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 73 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
17 71 (0.97%) PowerApps
18 69 (0.94%) Figma
19 68 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 115 (1.56%) Firewall
2 71 (0.97%) Network Security
3 65 (0.88%) WAN
4 42 (0.57%) DNS
5 41 (0.56%) SD-WAN
6 39 (0.53%) VPN
7 36 (0.49%) LAN
8 33 (0.45%) TCP/IP
9 32 (0.44%) Wireless
10 29 (0.39%) HTTP
11 27 (0.37%) Skype
12 26 (0.35%) SSL
13 24 (0.33%) SSH
14 22 (0.30%) DHCP
15 17 (0.23%) BGP
15 17 (0.23%) OSPF
16 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
17 15 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
17 15 (0.20%) Internet
18 14 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 477 (6.49%) Power BI
2 197 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
3 191 (2.60%) SQL Server
4 150 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
5 129 (1.75%) NoSQL
6 127 (1.73%) Tableau
7 122 (1.66%) Relational Database
8 116 (1.58%) Data Lake
9 111 (1.51%) Metadata
10 89 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (1.01%) MongoDB
12 70 (0.95%) Big Data
13 69 (0.94%) Oracle Database
14 50 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 43 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
15 43 (0.58%) Hadoop
16 39 (0.53%) Power Query
17 37 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
17 37 (0.50%) MySQL
18 36 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 576 (7.84%) JIRA
2 259 (3.52%) Jenkins
3 216 (2.94%) Git
4 153 (2.08%) GitLab
5 77 (1.05%) JUnit
6 59 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 55 (0.75%) Selenium
8 50 (0.68%) Bitbucket
9 47 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
10 37 (0.50%) Postman
11 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 25 (0.34%) Gradle
13 24 (0.33%) Liquibase
14 23 (0.31%) Cypress.io
15 21 (0.29%) Maven
15 21 (0.29%) MLflow
15 21 (0.29%) REST Assured
16 19 (0.26%) JMeter
17 18 (0.24%) SonarQube
18 16 (0.22%) TeamCity
General
1 2,566 (34.91%) Social Skills
2 1,530 (20.81%) Banking
3 997 (13.56%) Analytical Skills
4 592 (8.05%) Public Sector
5 338 (4.60%) Financial Institution
6 316 (4.30%) Marketing
7 297 (4.04%) Manufacturing
8 289 (3.93%) Investment Banking
9 278 (3.78%) Telecoms
10 270 (3.67%) Front Office
11 268 (3.65%) Legal
12 208 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
13 206 (2.80%) Organisational Skills
14 186 (2.53%) Electronics
15 160 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
16 146 (1.99%) Retail
17 135 (1.84%) General Ledger
17 135 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
18 125 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 110 (1.50%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,172 (15.94%) Analyst
2 826 (11.24%) Developer
3 705 (9.59%) Senior
4 606 (8.24%) Business Analyst
5 593 (8.07%) Project Manager
6 582 (7.92%) Consultant
7 580 (7.89%) Architect
8 536 (7.29%) Lead
9 241 (3.28%) Solutions Architect
10 185 (2.52%) Data Analyst
11 165 (2.24%) Data Engineer
12 160 (2.18%) Financial Analyst
13 150 (2.04%) Programme Manager
14 145 (1.97%) Java Developer
15 139 (1.89%) Senior Developer
16 138 (1.88%) Software Engineer
17 124 (1.69%) Senior Manager
18 114 (1.55%) IT Manager
19 111 (1.51%) Senior Analyst
20 108 (1.47%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (3.75%) REST
2 227 (3.09%) Kafka
3 211 (2.87%) .NET
4 166 (2.26%) React
5 162 (2.20%) RESTful
6 157 (2.14%) Oracle Fusion
7 148 (2.01%) Spring
8 121 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 111 (1.51%) Middleware
10 103 (1.40%) AngularJS
11 94 (1.28%) Pandas
12 91 (1.24%) XML
13 87 (1.18%) HTML
14 83 (1.13%) NumPy
15 82 (1.12%) Node.js
16 76 (1.03%) CSS
16 76 (1.03%) PySpark
17 73 (0.99%) OAuth
17 73 (0.99%) SOAP
18 71 (0.97%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 320 (4.35%) Onboarding
2 292 (3.97%) Product Ownership
3 217 (2.95%) Cloud Native
4 176 (2.39%) Derivative
5 171 (2.33%) Management Information System
6 154 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
7 152 (2.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 134 (1.82%) Data Centre
8 134 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
9 128 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
10 127 (1.73%) Equities
11 125 (1.70%) Analytical Mindset
12 124 (1.69%) Data Structures
13 118 (1.61%) Fixed Income
14 109 (1.48%) Public Cloud
15 94 (1.28%) Hedge funds
16 92 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
17 74 (1.01%) Credit Risk
18 73 (0.99%) Virtual Team
19 71 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 345 (4.69%) Linux
2 320 (4.35%) Windows
3 150 (2.04%) Unix
4 68 (0.93%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.87%) Android
6 63 (0.86%) Windows Server
7 62 (0.84%) Mac OS
8 34 (0.46%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.14%) zOS
11 7 (0.095%) CentOS
12 6 (0.082%) VMS
13 4 (0.054%) Solaris
13 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.041%) AIX
14 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.041%) Windows Server 2019
15 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
15 2 (0.027%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,709 (23.25%) Agile
2 1,365 (18.57%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,199 (16.31%) Problem-Solving
4 841 (11.44%) Migration
5 799 (10.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 797 (10.84%) DevOps
7 780 (10.61%) CI/CD
8 752 (10.23%) Business Intelligence
9 723 (9.84%) Project Management
10 717 (9.75%) Analytics
11 645 (8.77%) ERP
12 624 (8.49%) Continuous Improvement
13 529 (7.20%) Decision-Making
14 525 (7.14%) AI
15 519 (7.06%) Change Management
16 515 (7.01%) Risk Management
17 500 (6.80%) Roadmaps
18 487 (6.62%) Data Modelling
19 473 (6.43%) Project Delivery
20 469 (6.38%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,085 (14.76%) SQL
2 953 (12.96%) Python
3 514 (6.99%) Java
4 311 (4.23%) C#
5 216 (2.94%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.68%) PowerShell
7 152 (2.07%) TypeScript
8 151 (2.05%) C++
9 88 (1.20%) PL/SQL
10 71 (0.97%) Bash
11 69 (0.94%) Go
12 53 (0.72%) Shell Script
12 53 (0.72%) VBA
13 42 (0.57%) R
14 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
15 35 (0.48%) Groovy
16 32 (0.44%) Perl
16 32 (0.44%) Rust
16 32 (0.44%) Scala
16 32 (0.44%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 790 (10.75%) Degree
2 559 (7.60%) Security Cleared
3 407 (5.54%) SC Cleared
4 191 (2.60%) PMI Certification
5 185 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
6 178 (2.42%) PMP
7 168 (2.29%) Master's Degree
8 153 (2.08%) ACCA
9 134 (1.82%) CIMA
10 112 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
11 93 (1.27%) AWS Certification
11 93 (1.27%) CISSP
12 63 (0.86%) CISM
12 63 (0.86%) DV Cleared
13 61 (0.83%) Azure Certification
14 45 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
15 39 (0.53%) CBAP
16 33 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
17 27 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 27 (0.37%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (5.18%) QA
2 330 (4.49%) Data Quality
3 272 (3.70%) PMO
4 255 (3.47%) GDPR
5 125 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 118 (1.61%) NIST
7 111 (1.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 97 (1.32%) Accessibility
8 97 (1.32%) SLA
9 79 (1.07%) PCI DSS
10 76 (1.03%) IFRS
11 58 (0.79%) GRC
12 49 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.63%) PSD2
14 38 (0.52%) MiFID
15 33 (0.45%) SEPA
16 32 (0.44%) Basel III
17 31 (0.42%) NCSC
18 29 (0.39%) GAAP
19 28 (0.38%) COBIT
System Software
1 334 (4.54%) Docker
2 191 (2.60%) Active Directory
3 50 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (0.26%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) HDFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) NFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
8 8 (0.11%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.068%) Firmware
9 5 (0.068%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.054%) BitLocker
10 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.041%) RACF
11 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 374 (5.09%) Kubernetes
2 260 (3.54%) Terraform
3 178 (2.42%) Ansible
4 87 (1.18%) Grafana
5 78 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.87%) SCCM
7 56 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
8 35 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
15 13 (0.18%) Control-M
15 13 (0.18%) Puppet
16 9 (0.12%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,014 (13.79%) Microsoft
2 796 (10.83%) SAP
3 709 (9.64%) Oracle
4 272 (3.70%) ServiceNow
5 180 (2.45%) Salesforce
6 164 (2.23%) Splunk
7 161 (2.19%) Databricks
8 154 (2.09%) Google
9 148 (2.01%) Cisco
10 145 (1.97%) Workday
11 98 (1.33%) VMware
12 93 (1.27%) IBM
13 69 (0.94%) Citrix
14 64 (0.87%) Ariba
14 64 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 56 (0.76%) Bloomberg
16 53 (0.72%) HP
17 48 (0.65%) Murex
17 48 (0.65%) OpenAI
18 47 (0.64%) Informatica