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 12 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,000 6,350 8,359
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.74% 21.58% 18.72%
As % of the General category 32.74% 34.41% 32.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,073 4,145 5,629
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -2.54%
75th Percentile £671 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 199 101 219
10th Percentile £14.42 £18.20 £12.83
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.58 £35.00 £26.73
Median % change year-on-year -32.64% +30.94% +3.97%
75th Percentile £41.25 £70.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £70.50 £83.20 £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £48.82 £26.86
% change year-on-year -54.93% +81.74% -23.26%

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 24,434 18,456 26,098
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.22% 62.71% 58.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,267 11,659 16,703
10th Percentile £300 £290 £263
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,499 645 1,815
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.35
Median hourly rate £24.09 £30.00 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -19.70% +16.69% -20.89%
75th Percentile £56.13 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.79 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.83 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -16.98% +10.00% -7.63%

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 12 March 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 12 March 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 12 March 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 7,072 £538 -9.17% 4,278
London 0 4,287 £575 -8.00% 2,026
UK excluding London 0 3,166 £500 - 3,014
Work from Home -2 2,241 £550 -7.76% 1,731
North of England +4 1,029 £475 - 742
South East -2 592 £500 -8.26% 1,056
Midlands -1 580 £475 -5.00% 445
North West +5 538 £450 -3.23% 407
Yorkshire 0 445 £500 - 265
West Midlands +1 378 £500 -7.41% 252
Scotland 0 361 £488 +3.01% 163
South West -2 328 £524 -0.19% 314
East Midlands 0 197 £450 +6.51% 192
East of England 0 185 £518 -5.91% 233
Wales +27 105 £413 +6.45% 78
Northern Ireland -1 48 £525 +61.54% 47
North East -10 46 £488 +3.72% 82
Channel Islands +5 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
1 326 (4.08%) Confluence
2 202 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.05%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.73%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.61%) Apache
6 43 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.38%) SAS
8 24 (0.30%) CMS
9 17 (0.21%) Appian
9 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
10 15 (0.19%) CICS
10 15 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 14 (0.18%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 13 (0.16%) Camunda
12 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 12 (0.15%) TPMS
14 11 (0.14%) Mendix
15 10 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 8 (0.10%) IIS
Applications
1 528 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 269 (3.36%) Microsoft Office
3 192 (2.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 183 (2.29%) Microsoft Project
5 138 (1.73%) MS Visio
6 44 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.48%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 12 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.13%) Sketch
11 9 (0.11%) InVision
12 7 (0.088%) Oracle Smart View
13 6 (0.075%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.063%) Notion
14 5 (0.063%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.050%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.025%) InDesign
16 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 336 (4.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 112 (1.40%) Oracle Payables
3 98 (1.23%) Oracle Receivables
4 74 (0.93%) NetSuite
5 70 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
5 70 (0.88%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 65 (0.81%) SAP FI
7 63 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
8 56 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
9 53 (0.66%) SAP CO
10 48 (0.60%) SAP FI/CO
11 43 (0.54%) Oracle Assets
12 40 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
13 38 (0.48%) Oracle Cash Management
13 38 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
14 34 (0.43%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 33 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
15 33 (0.41%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.35%) Aladdin
17 21 (0.26%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,215 (15.19%) Azure
2 971 (12.14%) AWS
3 557 (6.96%) Power Platform
4 388 (4.85%) GCP
5 273 (3.41%) Microsoft 365
6 266 (3.33%) SaaS
7 259 (3.24%) Azure DevOps
8 227 (2.84%) Dynamics 365
9 208 (2.60%) GitHub
10 153 (1.91%) Serverless
11 142 (1.78%) OCI
12 130 (1.63%) Snowflake
13 122 (1.53%) Entra ID
14 108 (1.35%) Amazon S3
15 95 (1.19%) Power Automate
16 88 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
17 85 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
18 76 (0.95%) OpenShift
19 75 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
20 74 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 158 (1.98%) Firewall
2 96 (1.20%) Network Security
3 81 (1.01%) WAN
4 62 (0.78%) DNS
5 51 (0.64%) LAN
6 50 (0.63%) VPN
7 44 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 42 (0.53%) TCP/IP
9 34 (0.43%) Wireless
10 30 (0.38%) BGP
11 27 (0.34%) Internet
12 26 (0.33%) HTTP
12 26 (0.33%) OSPF
12 26 (0.33%) SSL
13 24 (0.30%) Multicast
14 21 (0.26%) MPLS
15 20 (0.25%) DHCP
16 18 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 18 (0.23%) Skype
17 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 492 (6.15%) Power BI
2 214 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
3 201 (2.51%) SQL Server
4 193 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
5 147 (1.84%) Tableau
6 142 (1.78%) Metadata
7 119 (1.49%) Relational Database
8 112 (1.40%) Data Lake
9 110 (1.38%) NoSQL
10 91 (1.14%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (0.96%) Big Data
12 71 (0.89%) MongoDB
13 64 (0.80%) Oracle Database
14 62 (0.78%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
17 40 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 35 (0.44%) Hadoop
18 35 (0.44%) MySQL
18 35 (0.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 658 (8.23%) JIRA
2 232 (2.90%) Jenkins
3 211 (2.64%) Git
4 150 (1.88%) GitLab
5 65 (0.81%) JUnit
6 62 (0.78%) Cucumber
7 46 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
8 42 (0.53%) Selenium
9 34 (0.43%) Bitbucket
10 33 (0.41%) Postman
11 31 (0.39%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.30%) MLflow
13 22 (0.28%) Gradle
14 21 (0.26%) REST Assured
15 19 (0.24%) Maven
16 16 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 15 (0.19%) ERwin
17 15 (0.19%) SonarQube
17 15 (0.19%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,637 (32.96%) Social Skills
2 1,555 (19.44%) Banking
3 1,056 (13.20%) Analytical Skills
4 639 (7.99%) Public Sector
5 352 (4.40%) Financial Institution
6 308 (3.85%) Legal
7 288 (3.60%) Front Office
8 280 (3.50%) Investment Banking
9 276 (3.45%) Marketing
10 267 (3.34%) Manufacturing
11 245 (3.06%) Organisational Skills
12 240 (3.00%) Telecoms
13 233 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
14 183 (2.29%) Retail
15 180 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
16 141 (1.76%) Electronics
17 129 (1.61%) General Ledger
18 123 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
19 116 (1.45%) Local Government
20 115 (1.44%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,242 (15.53%) Analyst
2 851 (10.64%) Developer
3 825 (10.31%) Senior
4 708 (8.85%) Lead
5 688 (8.60%) Architect
6 667 (8.34%) Business Analyst
7 654 (8.18%) Project Manager
8 591 (7.39%) Consultant
9 286 (3.58%) Solutions Architect
10 200 (2.50%) Data Engineer
11 192 (2.40%) Data Analyst
12 178 (2.23%) Senior Manager
13 175 (2.19%) Programme Manager
14 173 (2.16%) Financial Analyst
15 154 (1.93%) Finance Manager
16 139 (1.74%) Java Developer
17 132 (1.65%) Delivery Manager
18 130 (1.63%) Senior Developer
19 128 (1.60%) Software Engineer
20 127 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (3.36%) REST
2 267 (3.34%) Kafka
3 211 (2.64%) .NET
4 200 (2.50%) React
5 159 (1.99%) Oracle Fusion
6 147 (1.84%) Middleware
7 140 (1.75%) RESTful
8 137 (1.71%) Spring
9 116 (1.45%) Spring Boot
10 115 (1.44%) Node.js
11 107 (1.34%) AngularJS
12 91 (1.14%) PySpark
13 85 (1.06%) XML
14 82 (1.03%) HTML
15 77 (0.96%) CSS
15 77 (0.96%) OAuth
16 76 (0.95%) JSON
17 74 (0.93%) Pandas
18 69 (0.86%) SOAP
19 68 (0.85%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 346 (4.33%) Onboarding
2 304 (3.80%) Product Ownership
3 244 (3.05%) Cloud Native
4 197 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
5 181 (2.26%) Management Information System
6 173 (2.16%) Derivative
7 160 (2.00%) Data Centre
8 148 (1.85%) Fixed Income
9 143 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
9 143 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
10 142 (1.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 139 (1.74%) Data Structures
12 127 (1.59%) Equities
13 108 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
14 106 (1.33%) Public Cloud
15 93 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
16 91 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
17 88 (1.10%) Virtual Team
18 72 (0.90%) Hedge funds
19 63 (0.79%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 303 (3.79%) Linux
2 279 (3.49%) Windows
3 137 (1.71%) Unix
4 64 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 59 (0.74%) Windows 10
6 57 (0.71%) Android
7 48 (0.60%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.33%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.20%) zOS
10 15 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.14%) AIX
12 7 (0.088%) Solaris
12 7 (0.088%) VMS
13 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.063%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.038%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.013%) CentOS
15 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.013%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,747 (21.84%) Agile
2 1,566 (19.58%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,230 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
4 1,023 (12.79%) Migration
5 884 (11.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 878 (10.98%) DevOps
7 805 (10.06%) CI/CD
8 780 (9.75%) Project Management
9 778 (9.73%) Analytics
10 777 (9.71%) Continuous Improvement
11 766 (9.58%) Business Intelligence
12 753 (9.41%) ERP
13 648 (8.10%) AI
14 609 (7.61%) Roadmaps
15 606 (7.58%) Decision-Making
16 605 (7.56%) Data Modelling
17 561 (7.01%) Project Delivery
18 554 (6.93%) Validation
19 552 (6.90%) Change Management
20 540 (6.75%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,142 (14.28%) SQL
2 1,016 (12.70%) Python
3 555 (6.94%) Java
4 303 (3.79%) C#
5 239 (2.99%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.45%) TypeScript
7 170 (2.13%) PowerShell
8 119 (1.49%) C++
9 80 (1.00%) Go
10 71 (0.89%) Bash
11 67 (0.84%) PL/SQL
12 53 (0.66%) VBA
13 51 (0.64%) T-SQL
14 44 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 41 (0.51%) Scala
16 39 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 39 (0.49%) Shell Script
17 38 (0.48%) R
18 29 (0.36%) Rust
19 26 (0.33%) Korn
Qualifications
1 798 (9.98%) Degree
2 680 (8.50%) Security Cleared
3 484 (6.05%) SC Cleared
4 194 (2.43%) PMI Certification
5 191 (2.39%) PMP
6 171 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
7 168 (2.10%) ACCA
8 160 (2.00%) Master's Degree
9 158 (1.98%) CIMA
10 127 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 103 (1.29%) CISSP
12 77 (0.96%) DV Cleared
13 74 (0.93%) AWS Certification
14 71 (0.89%) CISM
15 70 (0.88%) Azure Certification
16 38 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
17 37 (0.46%) ITIL Certification
17 37 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
18 34 (0.43%) ISTQB
19 33 (0.41%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 406 (5.08%) Data Quality
2 403 (5.04%) QA
3 326 (4.08%) PMO
4 283 (3.54%) GDPR
5 141 (1.76%) NIST
6 126 (1.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.41%) SLA
8 111 (1.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 85 (1.06%) IFRS
10 79 (0.99%) Accessibility
11 76 (0.95%) PCI DSS
12 67 (0.84%) GRC
13 56 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 44 (0.55%) GAAP
14 44 (0.55%) PSD2
15 38 (0.48%) SEPA
16 37 (0.46%) MiFID
17 36 (0.45%) NCSC
18 30 (0.38%) COBIT
19 29 (0.36%) Basel III
System Software
1 321 (4.01%) Docker
2 156 (1.95%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 26 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.14%) GPFS
8 11 (0.14%) NFS
9 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 8 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.075%) HDFS
13 4 (0.050%) Firmware
13 4 (0.050%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.038%) KVM
14 3 (0.038%) RACF
14 3 (0.038%) SRDF
14 3 (0.038%) Time Sharing Option
15 2 (0.025%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 407 (5.09%) Kubernetes
2 252 (3.15%) Terraform
3 154 (1.93%) Ansible
4 95 (1.19%) Grafana
5 86 (1.08%) Prometheus
6 59 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.64%) SCCM
8 41 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) vRealize
11 18 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.20%) Argo
12 16 (0.20%) Control-M
13 14 (0.18%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.15%) Kibana
16 11 (0.14%) Nessus
16 11 (0.14%) Puppet
17 9 (0.11%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,033 (12.91%) Microsoft
2 803 (10.04%) SAP
3 680 (8.50%) Oracle
4 309 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 193 (2.41%) Salesforce
6 190 (2.38%) Databricks
7 174 (2.18%) Google
8 158 (1.98%) Cisco
9 142 (1.78%) Workday
10 128 (1.60%) Splunk
11 113 (1.41%) VMware
12 93 (1.16%) IBM
13 74 (0.93%) CyberArk
14 73 (0.91%) Citrix
15 70 (0.88%) Ariba
16 62 (0.78%) Sage
17 55 (0.69%) HP
18 52 (0.65%) Informatica
18 52 (0.65%) Murex
19 51 (0.64%) Bloomberg