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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,947 7,384 7,759
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.28% 22.41% 20.14%
As % of the General category 32.76% 35.21% 34.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,054 4,821 4,930
10th Percentile £359 £338 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -6.61% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £712
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £493 £513
% change year-on-year +2.89% -3.90% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 133 146
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.59 £21.00 £22.98
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 £74.50 £78.75 £70.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £33.00
% change year-on-year +71.18% -22.18% +23.39%

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 30,365 20,972 22,349
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.81% 63.65% 58.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,805 13,001 13,375
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £419 £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 2,530 1,207 1,105
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.71
25th Percentile £16.33 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -28.87% +28.58%
75th Percentile £55.00 £49.13 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.50 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.30 £35.36
% change year-on-year +40.85% -39.76% +30.56%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 8,550 £550 - 17,141
London 0 5,185 £590 - 11,049
UK excluding London 0 3,893 £507 +2.89% 7,643
Work from Home -1 2,813 £550 -2.65% 6,565
North of England 0 1,335 £513 +10.86% 1,797
South East -2 735 £500 -2.44% 2,040
North West -1 657 £500 +11.11% 1,004
Midlands -2 601 £500 +5.26% 1,047
Yorkshire 0 598 £519 +4.27% 569
Scotland 0 550 £467 -4.50% 881
West Midlands -1 444 £525 +2.19% 661
South West -6 355 £525 -6.67% 855
East of England +1 212 £550 -2.74% 588
East Midlands -4 154 £500 +20.48% 386
North East -10 73 £500 +14.29% 240
Northern Ireland 0 66 £510 -0.49% 341
Wales +1 62 £525 +13.51% 184
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
1 328 (3.30%) Confluence
2 260 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 91 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
4 81 (0.81%) Apache Spark
5 71 (0.71%) Apache
6 48 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.27%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 15 (0.15%) Camunda
10 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
11 12 (0.12%) CICS
12 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.080%) Ethereum
13 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.060%) Appian
14 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
15 5 (0.050%) JBoss
15 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 537 (5.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 200 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 142 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
5 89 (0.89%) 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%) Sketch
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
11 3 (0.030%) Windchill
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 448 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.25%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.05%) NetSuite
4 103 (1.04%) Oracle Receivables
5 90 (0.90%) Oracle ERP
6 76 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
7 75 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
8 74 (0.74%) SAP FI
9 66 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
11 51 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 51 (0.51%) SAP CO
12 46 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
13 38 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
14 36 (0.36%) Aladdin
14 36 (0.36%) Workday HCM
15 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
15 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
16 27 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
17 25 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,545 (15.53%) Azure
2 1,082 (10.88%) AWS
3 667 (6.71%) Power Platform
4 553 (5.56%) GCP
5 342 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
6 330 (3.32%) SaaS
7 322 (3.24%) GitHub
8 308 (3.10%) Microsoft 365
9 269 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
10 223 (2.24%) Entra ID
10 223 (2.24%) Snowflake
11 159 (1.60%) Serverless
12 144 (1.45%) OCI
13 130 (1.31%) GitHub Actions
14 129 (1.30%) Amazon S3
15 127 (1.28%) Power Automate
16 126 (1.27%) dbt
17 121 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
18 111 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
19 104 (1.05%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 172 (1.73%) Firewall
2 149 (1.50%) Network Security
3 103 (1.04%) VPN
4 85 (0.85%) DNS
5 61 (0.61%) 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 34 (0.34%) VLAN
12 33 (0.33%) 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
1 536 (5.39%) Power BI
2 287 (2.89%) SQL Server
3 253 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
4 207 (2.08%) Metadata
5 176 (1.77%) Relational Database
6 140 (1.41%) Data Lake
7 135 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
8 123 (1.24%) Tableau
9 84 (0.84%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.83%) BigQuery
11 81 (0.81%) Oracle Database
12 76 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 71 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
14 57 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
15 56 (0.56%) Power Query
16 52 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 49 (0.49%) Big Data
18 46 (0.46%) Db2
19 45 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
20 44 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 655 (6.58%) JIRA
2 318 (3.20%) Git
3 173 (1.74%) Jenkins
4 110 (1.11%) GitLab
5 61 (0.61%) Selenium
6 46 (0.46%) JUnit
7 36 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 36 (0.36%) Claude Code
8 35 (0.35%) Maven
8 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
9 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 30 (0.30%) Cucumber
10 30 (0.30%) Gradle
11 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
12 28 (0.28%) ERwin
13 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
14 25 (0.25%) Cypress.io
15 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
16 21 (0.21%) Postman
17 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 3,090 (31.06%) Social Skills
2 2,049 (20.60%) Banking
3 1,414 (14.22%) Analytical Skills
4 542 (5.45%) Legal
5 527 (5.30%) Public Sector
6 448 (4.50%) Organisational Skills
7 397 (3.99%) Investment Banking
8 383 (3.85%) Retail
9 346 (3.48%) Influencing Skills
10 340 (3.42%) Front Office
11 306 (3.08%) Financial Institution
12 212 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
13 210 (2.11%) Manufacturing
14 194 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 175 (1.76%) Marketing
16 174 (1.75%) General Ledger
17 171 (1.72%) Billing
18 156 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
19 149 (1.50%) Local Government
20 140 (1.41%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,434 (14.42%) Analyst
2 1,084 (10.90%) Senior
3 994 (9.99%) Lead
4 984 (9.89%) Developer
5 883 (8.88%) Architect
6 743 (7.47%) Business Analyst
7 711 (7.15%) Consultant
8 682 (6.86%) Project Manager
9 339 (3.41%) Solutions Architect
10 302 (3.04%) Data Engineer
11 267 (2.68%) Financial Analyst
12 217 (2.18%) Senior Manager
13 211 (2.12%) Java Developer
14 203 (2.04%) Data Analyst
15 202 (2.03%) Senior Developer
16 194 (1.95%) Programme Manager
17 178 (1.79%) IT Manager
18 176 (1.77%) Accountant
19 171 (1.72%) Finance Manager
20 153 (1.54%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 399 (4.01%) Terraform
2 388 (3.90%) REST
3 266 (2.67%) .NET
3 266 (2.67%) Kafka
4 260 (2.61%) Oracle Fusion
5 238 (2.39%) React
6 198 (1.99%) Spring
7 191 (1.92%) Middleware
7 191 (1.92%) Spring Boot
8 143 (1.44%) PySpark
9 139 (1.40%) RESTful
10 107 (1.08%) JSON
11 106 (1.07%) OAuth
12 105 (1.06%) XML
13 93 (0.93%) SOAP
14 83 (0.83%) Redux
15 82 (0.82%) Web Services
16 79 (0.79%) AngularJS
17 78 (0.78%) Node.js
18 71 (0.71%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 524 (5.27%) Onboarding
2 509 (5.12%) Product Ownership
3 452 (4.54%) Cloud Native
4 255 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
5 253 (2.54%) Management Information System
6 236 (2.37%) Data Structures
7 230 (2.31%) Virtual Team
8 205 (2.06%) AI Agents
9 204 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
10 197 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
11 190 (1.91%) Derivative
12 165 (1.66%) Data Centre
13 158 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 156 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
15 133 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
16 124 (1.25%) Fixed Income
17 114 (1.15%) Podcast
18 113 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
18 113 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
19 112 (1.13%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 379 (3.81%) Windows
2 320 (3.22%) Linux
3 166 (1.67%) Unix
4 89 (0.89%) Windows Server
5 57 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.40%) Android
7 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 37 (0.37%) zOS
9 33 (0.33%) Solaris
10 31 (0.31%) Mac OS
11 14 (0.14%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.10%) VMS
14 7 (0.070%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.060%) HPUX
15 6 (0.060%) SUSE
16 4 (0.040%) CentOS
16 4 (0.040%) MVS
16 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,667 (26.81%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,021 (20.32%) Agile
3 1,339 (13.46%) Migration
4 1,316 (13.23%) Problem-Solving
5 1,297 (13.04%) AI
6 1,144 (11.50%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,140 (11.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,135 (11.41%) CI/CD
9 1,024 (10.29%) Analytics
10 996 (10.01%) ERP
11 990 (9.95%) DevOps
12 929 (9.34%) Decision-Making
13 873 (8.78%) Validation
14 855 (8.60%) Roadmaps
15 775 (7.79%) Data Modelling
16 773 (7.77%) Project Management
17 757 (7.61%) User Acceptance Testing
18 737 (7.41%) Change Management
19 704 (7.08%) Risk Management
20 666 (6.70%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,353 (13.60%) SQL
2 1,261 (12.68%) Python
3 655 (6.58%) Java
4 358 (3.60%) C#
5 283 (2.85%) PowerShell
6 247 (2.48%) JavaScript
7 216 (2.17%) TypeScript
8 153 (1.54%) Bash
9 112 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.80%) C++
12 68 (0.68%) T-SQL
13 63 (0.63%) Go
14 60 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 58 (0.58%) Bicep
16 49 (0.49%) Korn
17 42 (0.42%) Scala
18 37 (0.37%) VBA
19 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
20 34 (0.34%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 769 (7.73%) Security Cleared
2 735 (7.39%) Degree
3 551 (5.54%) SC Cleared
4 254 (2.55%) PMP
5 253 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
6 222 (2.23%) PMI Certification
7 194 (1.95%) ACCA
8 169 (1.70%) CIMA
9 139 (1.40%) DV Cleared
10 135 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
11 130 (1.31%) CISSP
12 117 (1.18%) Azure Certification
13 80 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
14 79 (0.79%) AWS Certification
15 74 (0.74%) Master's Degree
16 71 (0.71%) CISM
17 53 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
18 49 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 39 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.37%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 700 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 431 (4.33%) QA
3 353 (3.55%) PMO
4 217 (2.18%) GDPR
5 136 (1.37%) NIST
6 125 (1.26%) GRC
7 118 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 106 (1.07%) Accessibility
9 97 (0.98%) IFRS
10 96 (0.97%) SLA
11 78 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 47 (0.47%) GAAP
14 42 (0.42%) 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
1 272 (2.73%) Docker
2 238 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 87 (0.87%) 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 14 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
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%) KVM
14 3 (0.030%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 494 (4.97%) Kubernetes
2 188 (1.89%) Ansible
3 100 (1.01%) Grafana
4 80 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
5 70 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.63%) SCCM
7 61 (0.61%) 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
17 9 (0.090%) ITRS Geneos
17 9 (0.090%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,421 (14.29%) Microsoft
2 883 (8.88%) Oracle
3 874 (8.79%) SAP
4 375 (3.77%) ServiceNow
5 363 (3.65%) Databricks
6 239 (2.40%) Google
6 239 (2.40%) Salesforce
7 193 (1.94%) IBM
8 141 (1.42%) Workday
9 140 (1.41%) VMware
10 126 (1.27%) Cisco
11 119 (1.20%) Splunk
12 105 (1.06%) Ariba
13 88 (0.88%) OpenAI
14 87 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 58 (0.58%) Citrix
16 57 (0.57%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.53%) Sage
18 50 (0.50%) Informatica
18 50 (0.50%) Murex