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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,821 7,405 7,725
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.30% 22.61% 20.01%
As % of the General category 33.20% 35.62% 34.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,999 4,871 5,036
10th Percentile £360 £331 £361
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £492 £513
% change year-on-year +2.74% -4.00% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 321 136 165
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.06 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.11% -18.50% +36.13%
75th Percentile - £58.13 £48.75
90th Percentile £75.40 £76.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -28.14% +20.73%

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 29,578 20,791 22,220
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.13% 63.49% 57.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,440 12,926 13,659
10th Percentile £313 £275 £292
25th Percentile £418 £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 £744 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £499
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.71% -0.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,300 1,170 1,213
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.50 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.87 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £31.16 £25.15 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.88% -31.10% +32.73%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.84 £70.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.93 £22.06 £36.08
% change year-on-year +44.72% -38.86% +39.05%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 8,496 £550 - 15,456
London 0 5,123 £585 -2.50% 10,228
UK excluding London 0 3,872 £506 +2.74% 7,426
Work from Home -1 2,792 £550 -4.35% 6,834
North of England 0 1,334 £503 +8.65% 1,824
South East -1 739 £503 -4.29% 1,684
North West -1 676 £500 +11.11% 1,101
Midlands -1 612 £500 +8.40% 842
Yorkshire 0 579 £514 +6.20% 504
Scotland 0 526 £470 -2.49% 964
West Midlands +1 457 £515 +2.90% 533
South West -6 362 £550 -0.97% 1,048
East of England +5 207 £534 -4.04% 587
East Midlands -3 152 £500 +20.85% 309
North East -9 72 £500 +13.64% 241
Northern Ireland -1 64 £500 +3.90% 414
Wales -1 57 £525 +18.31% 170
Channel Islands +2 5 £550 - 6

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
1 340 (3.46%) Confluence
2 255 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 93 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
4 84 (0.86%) Apache Spark
5 73 (0.74%) Apache
6 44 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
7 36 (0.37%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.27%) SAS
9 21 (0.21%) IIS
10 17 (0.17%) Camunda
11 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.092%) CICS
14 7 (0.071%) Ethereum
14 7 (0.071%) WebLogic
15 6 (0.061%) Appian
15 6 (0.061%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.051%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 527 (5.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
3 189 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 156 (1.59%) Microsoft Project
5 91 (0.93%) MS Visio
6 70 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
7 30 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 8 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.061%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.061%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.051%) Sketch
12 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.031%) Notion
13 3 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
14 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 429 (4.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 126 (1.28%) Oracle Payables
3 109 (1.11%) NetSuite
4 106 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
5 96 (0.98%) Oracle ERP
6 74 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
7 72 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
8 69 (0.70%) SAP FI
9 64 (0.65%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 62 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
11 51 (0.52%) Oracle Financials
12 48 (0.49%) SAP CO
13 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
13 43 (0.44%) SAP FI/CO
14 37 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
15 34 (0.35%) SAP GRC
15 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
16 32 (0.33%) Workday HCM
17 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
18 25 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,553 (15.81%) Azure
2 1,062 (10.81%) AWS
3 677 (6.89%) Power Platform
4 521 (5.30%) GCP
5 353 (3.59%) Azure DevOps
6 326 (3.32%) SaaS
7 311 (3.17%) GitHub
8 302 (3.08%) Microsoft 365
9 274 (2.79%) Dynamics 365
10 221 (2.25%) Snowflake
11 219 (2.23%) Entra ID
12 156 (1.59%) Serverless
13 144 (1.47%) OCI
14 123 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
14 123 (1.25%) Power Automate
15 121 (1.23%) dbt
16 117 (1.19%) Amazon S3
17 115 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
18 112 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
19 105 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 176 (1.79%) Firewall
2 151 (1.54%) Network Security
3 106 (1.08%) VPN
4 92 (0.94%) DNS
5 66 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 62 (0.63%) WAN
7 50 (0.51%) DHCP
8 44 (0.45%) BGP
9 43 (0.44%) SSL
10 39 (0.40%) LAN
11 38 (0.39%) HTTP
12 34 (0.35%) VLAN
13 33 (0.34%) Multicast
14 31 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
15 30 (0.31%) Internet
16 29 (0.30%) Wireless
17 25 (0.25%) OSPF
18 23 (0.23%) SAN
19 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
20 15 (0.15%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 552 (5.62%) Power BI
2 283 (2.88%) SQL Server
3 265 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
4 207 (2.11%) Metadata
5 180 (1.83%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.49%) Data Lake
7 131 (1.33%) Tableau
8 122 (1.24%) PostgreSQL
9 78 (0.79%) BigQuery
10 77 (0.78%) NoSQL
11 76 (0.77%) Oracle Database
12 73 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
13 66 (0.67%) MongoDB
14 58 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.58%) Delta Lake
16 54 (0.55%) Power Query
17 52 (0.53%) Big Data
18 45 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
19 44 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 668 (6.80%) JIRA
2 289 (2.94%) Git
3 170 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 103 (1.05%) GitLab
5 58 (0.59%) Selenium
6 48 (0.49%) JUnit
7 33 (0.34%) Maven
8 32 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 32 (0.33%) SonarQube
8 32 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.31%) ERwin
9 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 29 (0.30%) Claude Code
11 28 (0.29%) Cucumber
11 28 (0.29%) REST Assured
12 25 (0.25%) Gradle
13 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
14 22 (0.22%) Postman
15 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
15 21 (0.21%) Zephyr
General
1 3,024 (30.79%) Social Skills
2 1,963 (19.99%) Banking
3 1,389 (14.14%) Analytical Skills
4 545 (5.55%) Legal
5 522 (5.32%) Public Sector
6 428 (4.36%) Organisational Skills
7 393 (4.00%) Investment Banking
8 383 (3.90%) Retail
9 333 (3.39%) Financial Institution
10 329 (3.35%) Front Office
11 315 (3.21%) Influencing Skills
12 224 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
13 204 (2.08%) Manufacturing
14 188 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 170 (1.73%) General Ledger
16 167 (1.70%) Billing
17 163 (1.66%) Marketing
18 152 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
19 148 (1.51%) Local Government
20 142 (1.45%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,422 (14.48%) Analyst
2 1,048 (10.67%) Senior
3 1,023 (10.42%) Lead
4 954 (9.71%) Developer
5 870 (8.86%) Architect
6 741 (7.55%) Business Analyst
7 702 (7.15%) Consultant
8 689 (7.02%) Project Manager
9 327 (3.33%) Solutions Architect
10 305 (3.11%) Data Engineer
11 261 (2.66%) Financial Analyst
12 225 (2.29%) Senior Manager
13 203 (2.07%) Java Developer
14 200 (2.04%) Data Analyst
15 187 (1.90%) Senior Developer
16 182 (1.85%) Programme Manager
17 180 (1.83%) Accountant
18 179 (1.82%) Finance Manager
19 170 (1.73%) IT Manager
20 150 (1.53%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 370 (3.77%) Terraform
2 357 (3.64%) REST
3 270 (2.75%) .NET
4 268 (2.73%) Oracle Fusion
5 240 (2.44%) Kafka
6 225 (2.29%) React
7 187 (1.90%) Spring
8 183 (1.86%) Middleware
9 182 (1.85%) Spring Boot
10 147 (1.50%) PySpark
11 136 (1.38%) RESTful
12 101 (1.03%) OAuth
13 100 (1.02%) XML
14 97 (0.99%) JSON
15 79 (0.80%) AngularJS
16 78 (0.79%) SOAP
17 76 (0.77%) Redux
18 71 (0.72%) Node.js
19 66 (0.67%) HTML
19 66 (0.67%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 515 (5.24%) Onboarding
2 492 (5.01%) Product Ownership
3 423 (4.31%) Cloud Native
4 250 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
5 238 (2.42%) Data Structures
5 238 (2.42%) Management Information System
6 218 (2.22%) Virtual Team
7 190 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
8 184 (1.87%) Derivative
9 180 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
10 175 (1.78%) AI Agents
11 159 (1.62%) Data Centre
12 157 (1.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 132 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
14 124 (1.26%) Fixed Income
15 123 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
16 115 (1.17%) Equities
17 114 (1.16%) Podcast
18 112 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
19 111 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 370 (3.77%) Windows
2 301 (3.06%) Linux
3 161 (1.64%) Unix
4 89 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 54 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 47 (0.48%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) Android
9 34 (0.35%) Solaris
10 32 (0.33%) zOS
11 28 (0.29%) Mac OS
12 15 (0.15%) 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 (0.041%) CentOS
17 4 (0.041%) MVS
18 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,519 (25.65%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,024 (20.61%) Agile
3 1,320 (13.44%) Migration
4 1,301 (13.25%) Problem-Solving
5 1,218 (12.40%) AI
6 1,165 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,142 (11.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,072 (10.92%) CI/CD
9 1,022 (10.41%) ERP
10 1,010 (10.28%) Analytics
11 1,001 (10.19%) DevOps
12 906 (9.23%) Decision-Making
13 820 (8.35%) Roadmaps
14 816 (8.31%) Validation
15 780 (7.94%) Data Modelling
16 767 (7.81%) User Acceptance Testing
17 766 (7.80%) Project Management
18 725 (7.38%) Change Management
19 668 (6.80%) Business Intelligence
20 662 (6.74%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,310 (13.34%) SQL
2 1,214 (12.36%) Python
3 630 (6.41%) Java
4 358 (3.65%) C#
5 271 (2.76%) PowerShell
6 237 (2.41%) JavaScript
7 202 (2.06%) TypeScript
8 141 (1.44%) Bash
9 107 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 91 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 68 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 57 (0.58%) Bicep
15 51 (0.52%) Go
16 42 (0.43%) Korn
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.40%) VBA
18 38 (0.39%) Scala
19 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 770 (7.84%) Security Cleared
2 721 (7.34%) Degree
3 557 (5.67%) SC Cleared
4 244 (2.48%) PMP
5 238 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
6 219 (2.23%) PMI Certification
7 195 (1.99%) ACCA
8 170 (1.73%) CIMA
9 142 (1.45%) CISSP
10 137 (1.39%) DV Cleared
11 131 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
12 105 (1.07%) Azure Certification
13 84 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
13 84 (0.86%) CISM
14 66 (0.67%) AWS Certification
14 66 (0.67%) Master's Degree
15 55 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
16 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 45 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 37 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 663 (6.75%) Data Quality
2 425 (4.33%) QA
3 353 (3.59%) PMO
4 244 (2.48%) GDPR
5 142 (1.45%) NIST
6 124 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 116 (1.18%) GRC
8 107 (1.09%) Accessibility
9 98 (1.00%) SLA
10 95 (0.97%) IFRS
11 88 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 51 (0.52%) GAAP
14 45 (0.46%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.38%) Solvency II
16 32 (0.33%) SEPA
17 28 (0.29%) COBIT
17 28 (0.29%) EMIR
18 27 (0.27%) MiFID
19 23 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 259 (2.64%) Docker
2 235 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 79 (0.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.24%) RACF
7 18 (0.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.11%) NFS
11 8 (0.081%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) ACF2
12 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.041%) GPFS
14 4 (0.041%) KVM
14 4 (0.041%) zsh
15 3 (0.031%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 458 (4.66%) Kubernetes
2 169 (1.72%) Ansible
3 99 (1.01%) Grafana
4 80 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
5 71 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 61 (0.62%) SCCM
7 56 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 25 (0.25%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) Argo
10 18 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 14 (0.14%) Istio
11 14 (0.14%) Puppet
12 12 (0.12%) FortiGate
13 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
13 11 (0.11%) Packer
14 10 (0.10%) vRealize
15 9 (0.092%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,401 (14.27%) Microsoft
2 885 (9.01%) Oracle
3 836 (8.51%) SAP
4 369 (3.76%) ServiceNow
5 353 (3.59%) Databricks
6 235 (2.39%) Salesforce
7 222 (2.26%) Google
8 172 (1.75%) IBM
9 133 (1.35%) VMware
10 129 (1.31%) Workday
11 117 (1.19%) Cisco
12 114 (1.16%) Splunk
13 98 (1.00%) Ariba
14 88 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 81 (0.82%) OpenAI
16 56 (0.57%) Sage
17 55 (0.56%) Bloomberg
18 54 (0.55%) Citrix
19 52 (0.53%) Informatica
20 47 (0.48%) Adobe