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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,496 6,586 8,450
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.14% 21.14% 18.87%
As % of the General category 32.42% 34.10% 32.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,756 4,096 5,768
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £425 £457 £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 £788 £825 £795
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -0.60% -2.44% -1.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 92 165
10th Percentile £14.50 £17.35 £11.81
25th Percentile £17.00 £22.27 £14.06
Median hourly rate £23.00 £29.12 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.00% +45.58% -20.00%
75th Percentile £40.00 £60.19 £38.12
90th Percentile £67.67 £78.72 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -43.61%

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 23,123 19,316 26,286
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.05% 61.99% 58.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,503 11,563 17,041
10th Percentile £290 £281 £265
25th Percentile £401 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.47% -4.09%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £731 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £481 £500
% change year-on-year -1.14% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,416 617 1,618
10th Percentile £13.70 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.33 £20.12 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.80 £29.00 £25.61
Median % change year-on-year -21.38% +13.26% -0.41%
75th Percentile £48.75 £55.25 £55.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.80 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £27.00 £24.65
% change year-on-year -20.37% +9.53% +6.48%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 6,593 £526 -10.81% 4,036
London -1 4,009 £575 -5.12% 1,966
UK excluding London -2 2,975 £497 -0.60% 2,834
Work from Home -1 2,104 £525 -12.50% 1,740
North of England +2 946 £475 -2.81% 665
South East -1 553 £500 -4.76% 1,018
Midlands -3 530 £475 -7.54% 416
North West +3 465 £450 -5.26% 367
Yorkshire 0 433 £509 -1.12% 233
Scotland 0 381 £475 +1.66% 153
West Midlands -3 336 £500 -9.09% 252
South West -7 298 £525 - 300
East Midlands 0 192 £447 +5.18% 164
East of England -2 175 £525 - 237
Wales +27 91 £413 -12.00% 76
Northern Ireland -1 54 £513 +57.69% 37
North East -7 49 £481 +6.94% 74
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
1 323 (4.31%) Confluence
2 209 (2.79%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 64 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 53 (0.71%) Apache
6 49 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.40%) SAS
8 26 (0.35%) CMS
9 22 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.21%) Appian
10 16 (0.21%) Ethereum
10 16 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 15 (0.20%) HCL Notes
12 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.17%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.17%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
14 11 (0.15%) CICS
14 11 (0.15%) IIS
Applications
1 506 (6.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 289 (3.86%) Microsoft Office
3 207 (2.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 171 (2.28%) Microsoft Project
5 133 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 38 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 31 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.25%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 13 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.080%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.067%) Notion
14 5 (0.067%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.053%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.027%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.027%) InDesign
16 2 (0.027%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 292 (3.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.59%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.28%) Oracle Receivables
4 82 (1.09%) Oracle EBS
5 75 (1.00%) Oracle General Ledger
6 67 (0.89%) NetSuite
6 67 (0.89%) SAP FI
7 63 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
8 59 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 57 (0.76%) SAP CO
10 50 (0.67%) SAP FI/CO
11 49 (0.65%) Oracle Cash Management
12 48 (0.64%) Oracle Assets
13 46 (0.61%) Oracle EBS R12
14 42 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
15 39 (0.52%) Oracle ERP
16 38 (0.51%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 36 (0.48%) Workday HCM
18 30 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
19 24 (0.32%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,124 (14.99%) Azure
2 908 (12.11%) AWS
3 535 (7.14%) Power Platform
4 367 (4.90%) GCP
5 265 (3.54%) Microsoft 365
6 240 (3.20%) SaaS
7 229 (3.05%) Azure DevOps
8 217 (2.89%) Dynamics 365
9 199 (2.65%) GitHub
10 143 (1.91%) Serverless
11 138 (1.84%) OCI
12 129 (1.72%) Snowflake
13 123 (1.64%) Entra ID
14 91 (1.21%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (1.19%) Power Automate
16 87 (1.16%) Amazon S3
17 76 (1.01%) OpenShift
18 73 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
19 69 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
20 66 (0.88%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 126 (1.68%) Firewall
2 73 (0.97%) Network Security
3 67 (0.89%) WAN
4 46 (0.61%) DNS
5 42 (0.56%) VPN
6 39 (0.52%) LAN
6 39 (0.52%) SD-WAN
7 32 (0.43%) Wireless
8 30 (0.40%) TCP/IP
9 29 (0.39%) Skype
10 26 (0.35%) HTTP
11 22 (0.29%) DHCP
11 22 (0.29%) SSL
12 20 (0.27%) Internet
12 20 (0.27%) SSH
13 17 (0.23%) BGP
13 17 (0.23%) OSPF
14 16 (0.21%) Kerberos
15 14 (0.19%) Multicast
16 13 (0.17%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 466 (6.22%) Power BI
2 198 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
3 189 (2.52%) SQL Server
4 160 (2.13%) PostgreSQL
5 132 (1.76%) Tableau
6 125 (1.67%) NoSQL
7 120 (1.60%) Metadata
7 120 (1.60%) Relational Database
8 112 (1.49%) Data Lake
9 83 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
10 73 (0.97%) Oracle Database
11 69 (0.92%) MongoDB
12 66 (0.88%) Big Data
13 54 (0.72%) BigQuery
14 42 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
15 40 (0.53%) Hadoop
16 36 (0.48%) MySQL
17 34 (0.45%) Power Query
17 34 (0.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 33 (0.44%) DB2
Development Applications
1 606 (8.08%) JIRA
2 258 (3.44%) Jenkins
3 205 (2.73%) Git
4 154 (2.05%) GitLab
5 72 (0.96%) JUnit
6 59 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 50 (0.67%) Selenium
8 47 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
9 43 (0.57%) Bitbucket
10 37 (0.49%) Postman
11 33 (0.44%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.32%) Gradle
13 23 (0.31%) REST Assured
14 22 (0.29%) Maven
14 22 (0.29%) MLflow
15 21 (0.28%) Liquibase
16 18 (0.24%) Cypress.io
16 18 (0.24%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.21%) JMeter
17 16 (0.21%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,600 (34.69%) Social Skills
2 1,517 (20.24%) Banking
3 982 (13.10%) Analytical Skills
4 617 (8.23%) Public Sector
5 332 (4.43%) Financial Institution
6 316 (4.22%) Marketing
7 286 (3.82%) Manufacturing
8 273 (3.64%) Investment Banking
9 266 (3.55%) Legal
9 266 (3.55%) Telecoms
10 263 (3.51%) Front Office
11 220 (2.93%) Organisational Skills
12 208 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
13 176 (2.35%) Electronics
14 168 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
15 153 (2.04%) Retail
16 132 (1.76%) General Ledger
17 123 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
18 121 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 115 (1.53%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,205 (16.08%) Analyst
2 836 (11.15%) Developer
3 734 (9.79%) Senior
4 643 (8.58%) Business Analyst
5 607 (8.10%) Architect
6 590 (7.87%) Lead
7 588 (7.84%) Project Manager
8 558 (7.44%) Consultant
9 253 (3.38%) Solutions Architect
10 189 (2.52%) Data Analyst
11 169 (2.25%) Data Engineer
12 166 (2.21%) Financial Analyst
13 163 (2.17%) Programme Manager
14 147 (1.96%) Java Developer
15 143 (1.91%) Senior Developer
16 140 (1.87%) Senior Manager
17 129 (1.72%) Software Engineer
18 115 (1.53%) Finance Manager
19 113 (1.51%) Senior Analyst
20 111 (1.48%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 277 (3.70%) REST
2 233 (3.11%) Kafka
3 211 (2.81%) .NET
4 170 (2.27%) React
5 160 (2.13%) RESTful
6 152 (2.03%) Spring
7 147 (1.96%) Oracle Fusion
8 127 (1.69%) Spring Boot
9 119 (1.59%) Middleware
10 104 (1.39%) AngularJS
11 88 (1.17%) XML
12 86 (1.15%) HTML
12 86 (1.15%) Pandas
13 85 (1.13%) Node.js
14 76 (1.01%) NumPy
14 76 (1.01%) PySpark
15 75 (1.00%) CSS
16 73 (0.97%) JSON
17 71 (0.95%) SOAP
18 70 (0.93%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 327 (4.36%) Onboarding
2 307 (4.10%) Product Ownership
3 231 (3.08%) Cloud Native
4 173 (2.31%) Derivative
5 171 (2.28%) Management Information System
6 167 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
7 154 (2.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 144 (1.92%) Distributed Systems
9 140 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
10 136 (1.81%) Data Centre
11 130 (1.73%) Data Structures
12 126 (1.68%) Equities
13 113 (1.51%) Fixed Income
14 112 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
15 106 (1.41%) Public Cloud
16 96 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
17 83 (1.11%) Hedge funds
18 78 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
18 78 (1.04%) Virtual Team
19 69 (0.92%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 333 (4.44%) Linux
2 308 (4.11%) Windows
3 144 (1.92%) Unix
4 67 (0.89%) Windows 10
5 62 (0.83%) Mac OS
6 61 (0.81%) Windows Server
7 59 (0.79%) Android
8 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 11 (0.15%) zOS
11 7 (0.093%) VMS
12 6 (0.080%) CentOS
12 6 (0.080%) Solaris
13 5 (0.067%) AIX
13 5 (0.067%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.053%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.053%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.040%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.027%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,713 (22.85%) Agile
2 1,413 (18.85%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,225 (16.34%) Problem-Solving
4 890 (11.87%) Migration
5 835 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 804 (10.73%) DevOps
7 783 (10.45%) CI/CD
8 746 (9.95%) Business Intelligence
9 738 (9.85%) Analytics
10 734 (9.79%) Project Management
11 668 (8.91%) Continuous Improvement
12 662 (8.83%) ERP
13 576 (7.68%) AI
14 544 (7.26%) Roadmaps
15 540 (7.20%) Change Management
15 540 (7.20%) Decision-Making
16 519 (6.92%) Risk Management
17 518 (6.91%) Data Modelling
18 496 (6.62%) User Acceptance Testing
19 487 (6.50%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,113 (14.85%) SQL
2 953 (12.71%) Python
3 532 (7.10%) Java
4 303 (4.04%) C#
5 205 (2.73%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.72%) PowerShell
7 157 (2.09%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.04%) C++
9 83 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 67 (0.89%) Bash
11 65 (0.87%) Go
12 50 (0.67%) VBA
13 47 (0.63%) Shell Script
14 41 (0.55%) Kotlin
15 38 (0.51%) R
16 37 (0.49%) T-SQL
17 34 (0.45%) Rust
18 33 (0.44%) Scala
19 30 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
20 28 (0.37%) Korn
Qualifications
1 815 (10.87%) Degree
2 587 (7.83%) Security Cleared
3 436 (5.82%) SC Cleared
4 189 (2.52%) PMI Certification
5 187 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 178 (2.37%) PMP
7 172 (2.29%) Master's Degree
8 151 (2.01%) ACCA
9 138 (1.84%) CIMA
10 119 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 87 (1.16%) AWS Certification
12 86 (1.15%) CISSP
13 62 (0.83%) CISM
14 61 (0.81%) Azure Certification
14 61 (0.81%) DV Cleared
15 44 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
16 40 (0.53%) CBAP
17 34 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 31 (0.41%) ISTQB
18 31 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 390 (5.20%) QA
2 356 (4.75%) Data Quality
3 277 (3.70%) PMO
4 253 (3.38%) GDPR
5 125 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 122 (1.63%) NIST
7 107 (1.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 94 (1.25%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.20%) SLA
10 75 (1.00%) IFRS
11 74 (0.99%) PCI DSS
12 63 (0.84%) GRC
13 53 (0.71%) ISO 20022
14 45 (0.60%) PSD2
15 38 (0.51%) MiFID
16 36 (0.48%) SEPA
17 35 (0.47%) NCSC
18 32 (0.43%) GAAP
19 31 (0.41%) Basel III
20 30 (0.40%) COBIT
System Software
1 335 (4.47%) Docker
2 192 (2.56%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
5 26 (0.35%) vSphere
6 12 (0.16%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.12%) GPFS
9 9 (0.12%) HDFS
9 9 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
11 4 (0.053%) ISA Server
11 4 (0.053%) KVM
12 3 (0.040%) Firmware
12 3 (0.040%) RACF
12 3 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
12 3 (0.040%) Tivoli Directory Server
13 2 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 397 (5.30%) Kubernetes
2 256 (3.42%) Terraform
3 165 (2.20%) Ansible
4 91 (1.21%) Grafana
5 84 (1.12%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.84%) SCCM
7 59 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 37 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 23 (0.31%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 22 (0.29%) SCOM
11 21 (0.28%) HP SiteScope
12 19 (0.25%) Argo
13 17 (0.23%) Kibana
14 16 (0.21%) Control-M
14 16 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
15 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
15 14 (0.19%) vRealize
16 11 (0.15%) AirWatch
17 10 (0.13%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,034 (13.79%) Microsoft
2 790 (10.54%) SAP
3 683 (9.11%) Oracle
4 289 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 184 (2.45%) Salesforce
6 166 (2.21%) Databricks
6 166 (2.21%) Google
7 163 (2.17%) Splunk
8 150 (2.00%) Cisco
9 137 (1.83%) Workday
10 106 (1.41%) VMware
11 90 (1.20%) IBM
12 73 (0.97%) Citrix
13 71 (0.95%) CyberArk
14 61 (0.81%) Ariba
15 55 (0.73%) HP
16 51 (0.68%) OpenAI
17 49 (0.65%) Bloomberg
17 49 (0.65%) Dell
18 48 (0.64%) Informatica