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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,883 7,355 7,695
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.26% 22.50% 20.04%
As % of the General category 32.88% 35.33% 34.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,026 4,802 4,927
10th Percentile £359 £331 £360
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £535 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £495 £513
% change year-on-year +2.80% -3.41% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 135 152
10th Percentile £15.01 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £20.57 £23.43
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.25
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -11.97% +29.33%
75th Percentile - £61.13 £53.19
90th Percentile £74.63 £78.75 £70.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £33.00
% change year-on-year +71.18% -22.18% +24.53%

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 30,059 20,818 22,215
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.53% 63.69% 57.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,649 12,901 13,405
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
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 2,459 1,196 1,125
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.69
25th Percentile £16.38 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £29.96 £25.15 £37.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.13% -32.03% +34.55%
75th Percentile £53.87 £48.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.25 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.30 £37.00
% change year-on-year +40.85% -42.43% +42.31%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 8,519 £550 - 18,472
London 0 5,159 £585 - 12,439
UK excluding London 0 3,871 £509 +2.80% 8,157
Work from Home -1 2,813 £550 -2.65% 10,059
North of England 0 1,330 £509 +10.60% 1,957
South East -2 729 £500 -2.91% 1,883
North West -1 660 £500 +11.11% 1,163
Midlands -1 609 £500 +6.61% 987
Yorkshire 0 589 £515 +5.10% 596
Scotland 0 532 £464 -6.31% 1,170
West Midlands +1 455 £514 +2.80% 619
South West -7 349 £550 -4.35% 998
East of England +2 218 £555 -0.22% 648
East Midlands -4 151 £500 +19.76% 368
North East -6 74 £500 +14.29% 227
Northern Ireland -1 67 £510 +2.00% 449
Wales 0 61 £525 +13.51% 169
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 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
1 326 (3.30%) Confluence
2 260 (2.63%) SharePoint
3 91 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 80 (0.81%) Apache Spark
5 68 (0.69%) Apache
6 48 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 25 (0.25%) SAS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 17 (0.17%) Camunda
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.11%) CICS
14 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 7 (0.071%) Ethereum
17 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 6 (0.061%) WebLogic
18 5 (0.051%) JBoss
18 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 524 (5.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.28%) Microsoft Office
3 194 (1.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 146 (1.48%) Microsoft Project
5 85 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 67 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.071%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 1 (0.010%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 440 (4.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 126 (1.27%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.05%) NetSuite
3 104 (1.05%) Oracle Receivables
4 93 (0.94%) Oracle ERP
5 75 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
5 75 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
6 72 (0.73%) SAP FI
7 63 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
8 54 (0.55%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 52 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
10 49 (0.50%) SAP CO
11 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
12 38 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
13 36 (0.36%) Workday HCM
14 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
14 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
15 34 (0.34%) Aladdin
16 26 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
17 25 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,548 (15.66%) Azure
2 1,065 (10.78%) AWS
3 669 (6.77%) Power Platform
4 536 (5.42%) GCP
5 346 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
6 329 (3.33%) SaaS
7 317 (3.21%) GitHub
8 312 (3.16%) Microsoft 365
9 273 (2.76%) Dynamics 365
10 218 (2.21%) Snowflake
11 217 (2.20%) Entra ID
12 156 (1.58%) Serverless
13 144 (1.46%) OCI
14 128 (1.30%) GitHub Actions
15 125 (1.26%) dbt
16 123 (1.24%) Power Automate
17 121 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
18 118 (1.19%) Amazon S3
19 115 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
20 104 (1.05%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 170 (1.72%) Firewall
2 145 (1.47%) Network Security
3 103 (1.04%) VPN
4 85 (0.86%) DNS
5 62 (0.63%) TCP/IP
6 55 (0.56%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) DHCP
8 44 (0.45%) BGP
8 44 (0.45%) SSL
9 36 (0.36%) HTTP
10 34 (0.34%) VLAN
11 33 (0.33%) Multicast
12 31 (0.31%) LAN
13 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.30%) Wireless
14 25 (0.25%) Internet
14 25 (0.25%) OSPF
14 25 (0.25%) SAN
15 18 (0.18%) SD-WAN
16 17 (0.17%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 538 (5.44%) Power BI
2 290 (2.93%) SQL Server
3 251 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.04%) Metadata
5 179 (1.81%) Relational Database
6 142 (1.44%) Data Lake
7 133 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
8 119 (1.20%) Tableau
9 83 (0.84%) NoSQL
10 79 (0.80%) Oracle Database
11 78 (0.79%) BigQuery
12 76 (0.77%) MongoDB
13 75 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 55 (0.56%) Delta Lake
14 55 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.55%) Power Query
16 50 (0.51%) Big Data
17 46 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
17 46 (0.47%) Db2
18 44 (0.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 653 (6.61%) JIRA
2 303 (3.07%) Git
3 171 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 104 (1.05%) GitLab
5 56 (0.57%) Selenium
6 47 (0.48%) JUnit
7 36 (0.36%) Maven
8 34 (0.34%) Claude Code
8 34 (0.34%) SonarQube
9 33 (0.33%) Bitbucket
10 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
11 30 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
12 29 (0.29%) ERwin
12 29 (0.29%) Gradle
12 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
13 26 (0.26%) Cucumber
14 23 (0.23%) Cypress.io
15 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
16 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
16 20 (0.20%) Zephyr
General
1 3,069 (31.05%) Social Skills
2 2,017 (20.41%) Banking
3 1,389 (14.05%) Analytical Skills
4 537 (5.43%) Legal
5 527 (5.33%) Public Sector
6 444 (4.49%) Organisational Skills
7 390 (3.95%) Investment Banking
8 383 (3.88%) Retail
9 338 (3.42%) Front Office
10 334 (3.38%) Influencing Skills
11 317 (3.21%) Financial Institution
12 216 (2.19%) Documentation Skills
13 205 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 195 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 175 (1.77%) General Ledger
16 170 (1.72%) Marketing
17 163 (1.65%) Billing
18 160 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
19 148 (1.50%) Local Government
20 140 (1.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,433 (14.50%) Analyst
2 1,076 (10.89%) Senior
3 992 (10.04%) Lead
4 975 (9.87%) Developer
5 873 (8.83%) Architect
6 734 (7.43%) Business Analyst
7 713 (7.21%) Consultant
8 683 (6.91%) Project Manager
9 333 (3.37%) Solutions Architect
10 301 (3.05%) Data Engineer
11 263 (2.66%) Financial Analyst
12 218 (2.21%) Senior Manager
13 209 (2.11%) Java Developer
14 203 (2.05%) Data Analyst
15 200 (2.02%) Senior Developer
16 186 (1.88%) Programme Manager
17 178 (1.80%) IT Manager
18 176 (1.78%) Accountant
18 176 (1.78%) Finance Manager
19 152 (1.54%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 387 (3.92%) Terraform
2 379 (3.83%) REST
3 268 (2.71%) .NET
4 265 (2.68%) Kafka
5 261 (2.64%) Oracle Fusion
6 235 (2.38%) React
7 191 (1.93%) Spring
8 187 (1.89%) Spring Boot
9 181 (1.83%) Middleware
10 145 (1.47%) PySpark
11 140 (1.42%) RESTful
12 103 (1.04%) OAuth
13 102 (1.03%) JSON
13 102 (1.03%) XML
14 87 (0.88%) SOAP
15 83 (0.84%) Redux
16 77 (0.78%) AngularJS
17 75 (0.76%) Node.js
17 75 (0.76%) Web Services
18 70 (0.71%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 513 (5.19%) Onboarding
2 510 (5.16%) Product Ownership
3 441 (4.46%) Cloud Native
4 249 (2.52%) Management Information System
5 246 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
6 236 (2.39%) Data Structures
7 226 (2.29%) Virtual Team
8 198 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
8 198 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
9 195 (1.97%) AI Agents
10 183 (1.85%) Derivative
11 160 (1.62%) Data Centre
11 160 (1.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 146 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
13 133 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
14 124 (1.25%) Fixed Income
15 114 (1.15%) Podcast
16 113 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
17 110 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
18 109 (1.10%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 375 (3.79%) Windows
2 311 (3.15%) Linux
3 164 (1.66%) Unix
4 88 (0.89%) Windows Server
5 57 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.50%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 39 (0.39%) Android
9 36 (0.36%) zOS
10 34 (0.34%) Solaris
11 30 (0.30%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 4 (0.040%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,601 (26.32%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,009 (20.33%) Agile
3 1,332 (13.48%) Migration
4 1,305 (13.20%) Problem-Solving
5 1,280 (12.95%) AI
6 1,154 (11.68%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,138 (11.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,109 (11.22%) CI/CD
9 1,008 (10.20%) Analytics
10 992 (10.04%) DevOps
11 987 (9.99%) ERP
12 910 (9.21%) Decision-Making
13 849 (8.59%) Validation
14 840 (8.50%) Roadmaps
15 767 (7.76%) Data Modelling
16 764 (7.73%) Project Management
17 757 (7.66%) User Acceptance Testing
18 732 (7.41%) Change Management
19 691 (6.99%) Risk Management
20 655 (6.63%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,329 (13.45%) SQL
2 1,238 (12.53%) Python
3 647 (6.55%) Java
4 360 (3.64%) C#
5 285 (2.88%) PowerShell
6 245 (2.48%) JavaScript
7 214 (2.17%) TypeScript
8 151 (1.53%) Bash
9 113 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 95 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.81%) C++
12 71 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 64 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 60 (0.61%) Go
15 57 (0.58%) Bicep
16 49 (0.50%) Korn
17 41 (0.41%) Scala
18 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
18 36 (0.36%) VBA
19 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 768 (7.77%) Security Cleared
2 727 (7.36%) Degree
3 555 (5.62%) SC Cleared
4 257 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 247 (2.50%) PMP
6 217 (2.20%) PMI Certification
7 192 (1.94%) ACCA
8 167 (1.69%) CIMA
9 135 (1.37%) CISSP
9 135 (1.37%) DV Cleared
10 132 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
11 108 (1.09%) Azure Certification
12 86 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
13 76 (0.77%) CISM
14 71 (0.72%) Master's Degree
15 67 (0.68%) AWS Certification
16 52 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
17 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 44 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 679 (6.87%) Data Quality
2 428 (4.33%) QA
3 355 (3.59%) PMO
4 220 (2.23%) GDPR
5 135 (1.37%) NIST
6 120 (1.21%) GRC
7 116 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 106 (1.07%) Accessibility
9 95 (0.96%) IFRS
10 92 (0.93%) SLA
11 81 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.68%) ISO 20022
13 49 (0.50%) GAAP
14 41 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.37%) SEPA
16 35 (0.35%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) COBIT
18 28 (0.28%) EMIR
19 22 (0.22%) NCSC
System Software
1 274 (2.77%) Docker
2 233 (2.36%) Active Directory
3 87 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.25%) RACF
7 18 (0.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 9 (0.091%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) ACF2
12 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) GridGain
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 486 (4.92%) Kubernetes
2 177 (1.79%) Ansible
3 99 (1.00%) Grafana
4 78 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 69 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.64%) SCCM
7 58 (0.59%) 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 13 (0.13%) Istio
12 13 (0.13%) Puppet
13 12 (0.12%) FortiGate
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
15 10 (0.10%) vRealize
16 9 (0.091%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,419 (14.36%) Microsoft
2 886 (8.96%) Oracle
3 860 (8.70%) SAP
4 371 (3.75%) ServiceNow
5 359 (3.63%) Databricks
6 237 (2.40%) Salesforce
7 227 (2.30%) Google
8 182 (1.84%) IBM
9 141 (1.43%) VMware
10 133 (1.35%) Workday
11 123 (1.24%) Cisco
12 118 (1.19%) Splunk
13 100 (1.01%) Ariba
14 86 (0.87%) CyberArk
14 86 (0.87%) OpenAI
15 57 (0.58%) Citrix
16 56 (0.57%) Bloomberg
17 51 (0.52%) Informatica
17 51 (0.52%) Murex
18 50 (0.51%) Sage