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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,447 6,578 8,203
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.32% 22.35% 18.76%
As % of the General category 33.23% 35.37% 32.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,335 4,334 5,486
10th Percentile £352 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £570 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.76% -0.83% -4.17%
75th Percentile £669 £700 £700
90th Percentile £789 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 107 249
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.51 £12.73
25th Percentile £17.98 £22.39 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +48.15% -16.28%
75th Percentile £43.88 £71.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £76.48 £83.20 £54.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £53.75 £30.83
% change year-on-year -58.93% +74.37% -33.35%

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 25,419 18,596 25,477
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.12% 63.19% 58.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,754 11,902 16,136
10th Percentile £305 £296 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,600 775 1,917
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.34 £18.17 £15.39
Median hourly rate £27.80 £28.60 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.80% +4.00% -21.43%
75th Percentile £59.50 £56.00 £51.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -5.09% +1.92% -14.75%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 7,474 £537 -6.61% 4,044
London 0 4,528 £575 -8.00% 1,966
UK excluding London 0 3,347 £500 - 2,717
Work from Home -2 2,372 £540 -10.00% 1,648
North of England +3 1,099 £475 - 640
South East -1 645 £503 -4.06% 925
North West +4 589 £465 - 342
Midlands -1 584 £475 -5.00% 393
Yorkshire +1 465 £500 +3.63% 229
Scotland 0 394 £500 +3.57% 141
West Midlands 0 387 £492 -6.29% 228
South West -3 331 £525 +4.95% 309
East of England -2 202 £525 -4.55% 231
East Midlands 0 192 £450 +0.67% 162
Wales +26 101 £413 +10.00% 75
North East -10 45 £488 +8.33% 81
Northern Ireland 0 42 £513 +46.43% 50
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 327 (3.87%) Confluence
2 213 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 51 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
6 49 (0.58%) Apache
7 39 (0.46%) SAS
8 28 (0.33%) CMS
9 20 (0.24%) CICS
10 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 17 (0.20%) Appian
12 15 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 15 (0.18%) Camunda
13 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
14 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
15 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
15 11 (0.13%) Mendix
16 10 (0.12%) TPMS
17 9 (0.11%) IIS
17 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 539 (6.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 245 (2.90%) Microsoft Office
3 184 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 171 (2.02%) Microsoft Project
5 129 (1.53%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.17%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Sketch
10 8 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.095%) InVision
11 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.059%) Notion
13 3 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 366 (4.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.37%) Oracle Payables
3 100 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 98 (1.16%) NetSuite
5 85 (1.01%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 77 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
7 65 (0.77%) SAP FI
8 62 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
9 57 (0.67%) Oracle ERP
10 50 (0.59%) SAP CO
11 46 (0.54%) SAP FI/CO
12 41 (0.49%) Oracle Assets
13 36 (0.43%) Oracle Financials
14 35 (0.41%) Oracle Cash Management
15 33 (0.39%) Aladdin
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
16 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
17 30 (0.36%) SAP ERP
18 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,269 (15.02%) Azure
2 968 (11.46%) AWS
3 608 (7.20%) Power Platform
4 380 (4.50%) GCP
5 288 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
6 278 (3.29%) SaaS
7 275 (3.26%) Microsoft 365
8 237 (2.81%) Dynamics 365
9 233 (2.76%) GitHub
10 146 (1.73%) OCI
11 144 (1.70%) Serverless
12 143 (1.69%) Snowflake
13 130 (1.54%) Entra ID
14 123 (1.46%) Amazon S3
15 98 (1.16%) Power Automate
16 90 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
17 87 (1.03%) OpenShift
18 86 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
18 86 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
19 75 (0.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.93%) Firewall
2 109 (1.29%) Network Security
3 76 (0.90%) WAN
4 66 (0.78%) DNS
5 60 (0.71%) VPN
6 47 (0.56%) TCP/IP
7 42 (0.50%) LAN
7 42 (0.50%) SD-WAN
8 34 (0.40%) BGP
9 31 (0.37%) HTTP
10 29 (0.34%) OSPF
10 29 (0.34%) SSL
11 27 (0.32%) Multicast
12 24 (0.28%) Internet
13 23 (0.27%) MPLS
14 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
15 20 (0.24%) DHCP
16 18 (0.21%) Skype
17 17 (0.20%) VSAN
17 17 (0.20%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 527 (6.24%) Power BI
2 212 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
3 207 (2.45%) SQL Server
4 171 (2.02%) Metadata
5 164 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
6 148 (1.75%) Tableau
7 127 (1.50%) Relational Database
8 118 (1.40%) Data Lake
9 104 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
10 89 (1.05%) NoSQL
11 76 (0.90%) Big Data
12 64 (0.76%) BigQuery
12 64 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 57 (0.67%) MongoDB
14 45 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
16 43 (0.51%) Power Query
17 41 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
18 40 (0.47%) DynamoDB
19 38 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 670 (7.93%) JIRA
2 209 (2.47%) Git
3 195 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 117 (1.39%) GitLab
5 58 (0.69%) JUnit
6 55 (0.65%) Cucumber
7 43 (0.51%) Selenium
8 35 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.36%) Postman
10 26 (0.31%) Visual Studio
11 24 (0.28%) Bitbucket
12 23 (0.27%) MLflow
13 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
14 20 (0.24%) REST Assured
15 18 (0.21%) ERwin
15 18 (0.21%) Zephyr
16 17 (0.20%) Maven
16 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 15 (0.18%) Hudson
18 12 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 2,625 (31.08%) Social Skills
2 1,565 (18.53%) Banking
3 1,143 (13.53%) Analytical Skills
4 583 (6.90%) Public Sector
5 324 (3.84%) Legal
6 323 (3.82%) Financial Institution
7 286 (3.39%) Front Office
8 282 (3.34%) Investment Banking
9 242 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
10 236 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
11 232 (2.75%) Retail
12 227 (2.69%) Manufacturing
13 220 (2.60%) Marketing
14 207 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
15 184 (2.18%) Telecoms
16 140 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 127 (1.50%) Local Government
17 127 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
18 121 (1.43%) Law
19 110 (1.30%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,292 (15.30%) Analyst
2 854 (10.11%) Developer
3 853 (10.10%) Senior
4 846 (10.02%) Lead
5 753 (8.91%) Architect
6 699 (8.28%) Business Analyst
7 672 (7.96%) Project Manager
8 623 (7.38%) Consultant
9 296 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
10 257 (3.04%) Data Engineer
11 203 (2.40%) Financial Analyst
12 192 (2.27%) Senior Manager
13 186 (2.20%) Data Analyst
13 186 (2.20%) Finance Manager
14 166 (1.97%) Programme Manager
15 155 (1.83%) Accountant
16 151 (1.79%) Java Developer
17 135 (1.60%) Delivery Manager
18 131 (1.55%) Senior Analyst
19 126 (1.49%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (3.15%) Kafka
2 249 (2.95%) REST
3 215 (2.55%) .NET
4 200 (2.37%) React
5 169 (2.00%) Middleware
6 157 (1.86%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (1.73%) Spring
8 135 (1.60%) Spring Boot
9 133 (1.57%) RESTful
10 111 (1.31%) Node.js
11 95 (1.12%) AngularJS
12 94 (1.11%) PySpark
13 85 (1.01%) OAuth
14 78 (0.92%) XML
15 75 (0.89%) JSON
16 73 (0.86%) HTML
17 72 (0.85%) Redux
18 70 (0.83%) CSS
19 66 (0.78%) Pandas
20 57 (0.67%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 353 (4.18%) Onboarding
2 316 (3.74%) Product Ownership
3 276 (3.27%) Cloud Native
4 228 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
5 190 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 164 (1.94%) Data Structures
7 162 (1.92%) Derivative
8 155 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
9 145 (1.72%) Data Centre
10 144 (1.70%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 143 (1.69%) Fixed Income
12 136 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
13 113 (1.34%) Equities
14 103 (1.22%) Public Cloud
15 102 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
16 97 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
17 96 (1.14%) Virtual Team
18 81 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
19 65 (0.77%) Mainframe
20 64 (0.76%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 283 (3.35%) Linux
2 278 (3.29%) Windows
3 140 (1.66%) Unix
4 71 (0.84%) Windows Server
5 49 (0.58%) Windows 10
6 33 (0.39%) Android
7 28 (0.33%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.31%) zOS
9 25 (0.30%) Apple iOS
10 21 (0.25%) Solaris
11 20 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 16 (0.19%) AIX
13 8 (0.095%) VMS
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.047%) MVS
15 4 (0.047%) Oracle Linux
16 3 (0.036%) SUSE
16 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,743 (20.63%) Agile
2 1,653 (19.57%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,243 (14.72%) Problem-Solving
4 1,143 (13.53%) Migration
5 949 (11.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 920 (10.89%) Continuous Improvement
7 898 (10.63%) DevOps
8 888 (10.51%) ERP
9 839 (9.93%) CI/CD
10 820 (9.71%) Analytics
11 813 (9.62%) Project Management
12 775 (9.17%) AI
13 769 (9.10%) Business Intelligence
14 690 (8.17%) Decision-Making
15 668 (7.91%) Data Modelling
16 651 (7.71%) Roadmaps
17 634 (7.51%) Validation
18 627 (7.42%) User Acceptance Testing
19 603 (7.14%) Change Management
20 576 (6.82%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,183 (14.00%) SQL
2 991 (11.73%) Python
3 560 (6.63%) Java
4 313 (3.71%) C#
5 222 (2.63%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 166 (1.97%) PowerShell
8 108 (1.28%) C++
9 73 (0.86%) Bash
10 70 (0.83%) PL/SQL
11 68 (0.81%) Go
12 61 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 55 (0.65%) VBA
14 50 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.54%) Shell Script
16 38 (0.45%) Scala
17 36 (0.43%) R
18 29 (0.34%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.32%) Bicep
20 24 (0.28%) Korn
Qualifications
1 754 (8.93%) Degree
2 695 (8.23%) Security Cleared
3 495 (5.86%) SC Cleared
4 208 (2.46%) PMP
5 202 (2.39%) ACCA
6 199 (2.36%) PMI Certification
7 191 (2.26%) CIMA
8 147 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
9 144 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
10 125 (1.48%) Master's Degree
11 123 (1.46%) CISSP
12 83 (0.98%) DV Cleared
13 81 (0.96%) CISM
14 70 (0.83%) Azure Certification
15 61 (0.72%) AWS Certification
16 46 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
17 39 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
18 38 (0.45%) ISTQB
19 35 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
20 30 (0.36%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 468 (5.54%) Data Quality
2 411 (4.87%) QA
3 339 (4.01%) PMO
4 301 (3.56%) GDPR
5 149 (1.76%) NIST
6 125 (1.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 108 (1.28%) SLA
8 93 (1.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 92 (1.09%) IFRS
10 78 (0.92%) Accessibility
11 72 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 70 (0.83%) GRC
13 59 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 50 (0.59%) GAAP
15 39 (0.46%) PSD2
16 35 (0.41%) SEPA
17 34 (0.40%) NCSC
18 27 (0.32%) Basel III
19 26 (0.31%) MiFID
20 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 294 (3.48%) Docker
2 150 (1.78%) Active Directory
3 62 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.41%) vSphere
5 25 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
7 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
8 13 (0.15%) NFS
9 12 (0.14%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 5 (0.059%) HDFS
12 5 (0.059%) RACF
13 4 (0.047%) ACF2
13 4 (0.047%) Firmware
13 4 (0.047%) KVM
13 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.036%) GridGain
14 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 389 (4.61%) Kubernetes
2 252 (2.98%) Terraform
3 127 (1.50%) Ansible
4 87 (1.03%) Grafana
5 68 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.59%) SCCM
8 35 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Control-M
12 17 (0.20%) Argo
13 15 (0.18%) Progress Chef
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 13 (0.15%) Puppet
15 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 12 (0.14%) vCenter Server
16 11 (0.13%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,111 (13.15%) Microsoft
2 802 (9.49%) SAP
3 737 (8.72%) Oracle
4 330 (3.91%) ServiceNow
5 220 (2.60%) Databricks
6 190 (2.25%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.07%) Google
8 147 (1.74%) Workday
9 136 (1.61%) Cisco
10 113 (1.34%) VMware
11 112 (1.33%) Splunk
12 105 (1.24%) IBM
13 80 (0.95%) Citrix
14 78 (0.92%) Ariba
15 74 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 74 (0.88%) Sage
16 55 (0.65%) Informatica
17 54 (0.64%) OpenAI
18 49 (0.58%) Bloomberg
19 48 (0.57%) Murex