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

6 months to
16 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,601 6,443 8,414
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.06% 21.00% 18.80%
As % of the General category 32.48% 33.86% 31.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,822 4,010 5,738
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £673 £700 £688
90th Percentile £788 £825 £795
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -1.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 90 169
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.11 £11.85
25th Percentile £17.09 £22.50 £14.06
Median hourly rate £23.50 £35.00 £20.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.86% +70.73% -18.00%
75th Percentile £42.65 £64.69 £38.12
90th Percentile £71.00 £83.20 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year -20.00% +41.03% -40.00%

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 23,400 19,028 26,302
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.66% 62.02% 58.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,641 11,454 16,971
10th Percentile £294 £284 £265
25th Percentile £403 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £644 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £500
% change year-on-year -0.52% -4.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,446 597 1,638
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.39 £20.12 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.83 £29.00 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.28% +13.73% -4.60%
75th Percentile £50.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £71.75 £75.00 £67.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.80 £27.13 £24.58
% change year-on-year -19.63% +10.38% -1.70%

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 16 February 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 16 February 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 16 February 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 6,692 £537 -8.60% 3,671
London -1 4,072 £575 -6.12% 1,683
UK excluding London -1 3,018 £500 - 2,706
Work from Home -1 2,139 £525 -11.17% 1,557
North of England +2 967 £475 -0.42% 623
South East -1 556 £503 -3.83% 1,022
Midlands -3 533 £485 -3.00% 401
North West +4 492 £450 -4.56% 345
Yorkshire 0 427 £509 -0.63% 218
Scotland 0 384 £475 +1.33% 123
West Midlands -3 338 £500 -9.09% 231
South West -5 301 £513 -2.38% 271
East Midlands 0 193 £450 +7.14% 167
East of England 0 189 £533 +1.43% 227
Wales +31 96 £413 +1.54% 69
Northern Ireland -1 50 £525 +61.54% 34
North East -6 49 £488 +8.33% 72
Channel Islands +2 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
1 316 (4.16%) Confluence
2 204 (2.68%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 62 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.64%) Apache
6 43 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 29 (0.38%) SAS
8 24 (0.32%) CMS
9 21 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 16 (0.21%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.17%) CICS
12 13 (0.17%) HCL Notes
12 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.17%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.17%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
14 10 (0.13%) IIS
Applications
1 521 (6.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 291 (3.83%) Microsoft Office
3 200 (2.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 178 (2.34%) Microsoft Project
5 136 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 35 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 18 (0.24%) Sketch
9 17 (0.22%) Trello
10 13 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 7 (0.092%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.066%) Notion
14 5 (0.066%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.053%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.026%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.026%) InDesign
16 2 (0.026%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 306 (4.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.53%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.26%) Oracle Receivables
4 71 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
4 71 (0.93%) Oracle General Ledger
5 69 (0.91%) SAP FI
6 65 (0.86%) NetSuite
7 62 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 59 (0.78%) SAP CO
9 58 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
10 52 (0.68%) SAP FI/CO
11 45 (0.59%) Oracle Assets
12 41 (0.54%) Oracle Cash Management
13 39 (0.51%) Oracle EBS R12
13 39 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
14 38 (0.50%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 36 (0.47%) Workday HCM
16 35 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
17 34 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
18 24 (0.32%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,137 (14.96%) Azure
2 929 (12.22%) AWS
3 543 (7.14%) Power Platform
4 384 (5.05%) GCP
5 267 (3.51%) Microsoft 365
6 250 (3.29%) SaaS
7 227 (2.99%) Azure DevOps
8 222 (2.92%) Dynamics 365
9 201 (2.64%) GitHub
10 142 (1.87%) OCI
10 142 (1.87%) Serverless
11 127 (1.67%) Snowflake
12 122 (1.61%) Entra ID
13 91 (1.20%) Power Automate
14 90 (1.18%) Amazon S3
14 90 (1.18%) GitHub Actions
15 76 (1.00%) OpenShift
16 73 (0.96%) AWS Lambda
17 71 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
18 68 (0.89%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 138 (1.82%) Firewall
2 77 (1.01%) Network Security
3 68 (0.89%) WAN
4 48 (0.63%) DNS
5 44 (0.58%) VPN
6 40 (0.53%) LAN
7 37 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 33 (0.43%) TCP/IP
9 32 (0.42%) Wireless
10 31 (0.41%) Skype
11 25 (0.33%) SSL
12 23 (0.30%) HTTP
13 21 (0.28%) BGP
13 21 (0.28%) DHCP
14 20 (0.26%) OSPF
15 19 (0.25%) Internet
15 19 (0.25%) Multicast
16 18 (0.24%) SSH
17 16 (0.21%) Kerberos
18 13 (0.17%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 476 (6.26%) Power BI
2 196 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
3 185 (2.43%) SQL Server
4 168 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
5 138 (1.82%) Tableau
6 123 (1.62%) Metadata
6 123 (1.62%) NoSQL
7 119 (1.57%) Relational Database
8 113 (1.49%) Data Lake
9 84 (1.11%) Oracle Reports
10 71 (0.93%) Oracle Database
11 69 (0.91%) Big Data
12 67 (0.88%) MongoDB
13 57 (0.75%) BigQuery
14 43 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
15 37 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 35 (0.46%) Hadoop
16 35 (0.46%) MySQL
17 33 (0.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
18 32 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 606 (7.97%) JIRA
2 250 (3.29%) Jenkins
3 202 (2.66%) Git
4 153 (2.01%) GitLab
5 69 (0.91%) JUnit
6 57 (0.75%) Cucumber
7 47 (0.62%) Sonatype Nexus
8 46 (0.61%) Selenium
9 38 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 35 (0.46%) Postman
11 32 (0.42%) Visual Studio
12 26 (0.34%) MLflow
13 24 (0.32%) Gradle
14 22 (0.29%) Liquibase
14 22 (0.29%) Maven
15 21 (0.28%) REST Assured
16 16 (0.21%) Cypress.io
16 16 (0.21%) JMeter
16 16 (0.21%) SonarQube
17 15 (0.20%) ERwin
General
1 2,637 (34.69%) Social Skills
2 1,503 (19.77%) Banking
3 999 (13.14%) Analytical Skills
4 618 (8.13%) Public Sector
5 333 (4.38%) Financial Institution
6 304 (4.00%) Marketing
7 278 (3.66%) Front Office
8 274 (3.60%) Investment Banking
9 269 (3.54%) Legal
10 267 (3.51%) Manufacturing
11 258 (3.39%) Telecoms
12 231 (3.04%) Organisational Skills
13 217 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
14 171 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
15 163 (2.14%) Electronics
16 160 (2.10%) Retail
17 131 (1.72%) General Ledger
18 126 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
19 117 (1.54%) Billing
19 117 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1,223 (16.09%) Analyst
2 848 (11.16%) Developer
3 758 (9.97%) Senior
4 661 (8.70%) Business Analyst
5 633 (8.33%) Architect
6 610 (8.03%) Lead
7 588 (7.74%) Project Manager
8 554 (7.29%) Consultant
9 267 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 189 (2.49%) Data Analyst
11 176 (2.32%) Data Engineer
12 174 (2.29%) Programme Manager
13 169 (2.22%) Financial Analyst
14 147 (1.93%) Java Developer
14 147 (1.93%) Senior Manager
15 143 (1.88%) Software Engineer
16 140 (1.84%) Senior Developer
17 125 (1.64%) Finance Manager
18 115 (1.51%) Senior Analyst
19 111 (1.46%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (3.63%) REST
2 251 (3.30%) Kafka
3 196 (2.58%) .NET
4 189 (2.49%) React
5 154 (2.03%) Oracle Fusion
6 149 (1.96%) RESTful
7 147 (1.93%) Spring
8 131 (1.72%) Middleware
9 123 (1.62%) Spring Boot
10 102 (1.34%) AngularJS
11 100 (1.32%) Node.js
12 88 (1.16%) XML
13 86 (1.13%) Pandas
14 84 (1.11%) HTML
15 78 (1.03%) CSS
16 77 (1.01%) PySpark
17 76 (1.00%) NumPy
18 74 (0.97%) JSON
19 73 (0.96%) OAuth
20 68 (0.89%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 326 (4.29%) Onboarding
2 306 (4.03%) Product Ownership
3 224 (2.95%) Cloud Native
4 175 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
5 173 (2.28%) Management Information System
6 171 (2.25%) Derivative
7 155 (2.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 143 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
9 140 (1.84%) Data Centre
10 135 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
11 127 (1.67%) Data Structures
11 127 (1.67%) Fixed Income
12 126 (1.66%) Equities
13 108 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
14 107 (1.41%) Public Cloud
15 95 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
16 81 (1.07%) Virtual Team
17 80 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
18 79 (1.04%) Hedge funds
19 68 (0.89%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 335 (4.41%) Linux
2 295 (3.88%) Windows
3 147 (1.93%) Unix
4 66 (0.87%) Windows 10
5 61 (0.80%) Mac OS
6 59 (0.78%) Android
7 57 (0.75%) Windows Server
8 30 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 12 (0.16%) zOS
11 9 (0.12%) Solaris
12 8 (0.11%) AIX
13 7 (0.092%) VMS
14 5 (0.066%) CentOS
14 5 (0.066%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.053%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.053%) Windows Server 2016
16 3 (0.039%) Ubuntu
17 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,710 (22.50%) Agile
2 1,445 (19.01%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,226 (16.13%) Problem-Solving
4 915 (12.04%) Migration
5 834 (10.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 796 (10.47%) DevOps
7 774 (10.18%) CI/CD
8 751 (9.88%) Business Intelligence
9 746 (9.81%) Analytics
10 740 (9.74%) Project Management
11 693 (9.12%) Continuous Improvement
12 679 (8.93%) ERP
13 598 (7.87%) AI
14 565 (7.43%) Roadmaps
15 562 (7.39%) Decision-Making
16 553 (7.28%) Change Management
17 541 (7.12%) Data Modelling
18 519 (6.83%) Risk Management
19 496 (6.53%) User Acceptance Testing
20 488 (6.42%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,117 (14.70%) SQL
2 984 (12.95%) Python
3 543 (7.14%) Java
4 296 (3.89%) C#
5 225 (2.96%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.60%) PowerShell
7 179 (2.35%) TypeScript
8 148 (1.95%) C++
9 80 (1.05%) PL/SQL
10 79 (1.04%) Go
11 67 (0.88%) Bash
12 51 (0.67%) VBA
13 44 (0.58%) Shell Script
14 42 (0.55%) R
15 41 (0.54%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.53%) T-SQL
17 35 (0.46%) Scala
18 33 (0.43%) Rust
19 31 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
20 27 (0.36%) Korn
Qualifications
1 816 (10.74%) Degree
2 603 (7.93%) Security Cleared
3 446 (5.87%) SC Cleared
4 188 (2.47%) PMI Certification
5 179 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 179 (2.35%) PMP
6 173 (2.28%) Master's Degree
7 157 (2.07%) ACCA
8 148 (1.95%) CIMA
9 121 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
10 85 (1.12%) CISSP
11 83 (1.09%) AWS Certification
12 69 (0.91%) DV Cleared
13 60 (0.79%) Azure Certification
13 60 (0.79%) CISM
14 44 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
15 36 (0.47%) CBAP
16 35 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
17 34 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
18 32 (0.42%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 388 (5.10%) QA
2 368 (4.84%) Data Quality
3 291 (3.83%) PMO
4 256 (3.37%) GDPR
5 125 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 124 (1.63%) NIST
7 110 (1.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 98 (1.29%) SLA
9 88 (1.16%) Accessibility
10 79 (1.04%) IFRS
10 79 (1.04%) PCI DSS
11 66 (0.87%) GRC
12 57 (0.75%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.58%) PSD2
14 38 (0.50%) MiFID
14 38 (0.50%) SEPA
15 35 (0.46%) GAAP
16 34 (0.45%) NCSC
17 31 (0.41%) Basel III
18 29 (0.38%) COBIT
System Software
1 336 (4.42%) Docker
2 191 (2.51%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
5 26 (0.34%) vSphere
6 12 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 10 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.12%) GPFS
9 9 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.092%) HDFS
12 4 (0.053%) ISA Server
12 4 (0.053%) KVM
13 3 (0.039%) Firmware
13 3 (0.039%) RACF
13 3 (0.039%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (0.039%) Tivoli Directory Server
14 2 (0.026%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 399 (5.25%) Kubernetes
2 249 (3.28%) Terraform
3 158 (2.08%) Ansible
4 94 (1.24%) Grafana
5 87 (1.14%) Prometheus
6 55 (0.72%) SCCM
7 52 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
8 36 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 22 (0.29%) FortiGate
9 22 (0.29%) SCOM
10 21 (0.28%) HP SiteScope
10 21 (0.28%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.24%) Argo
12 17 (0.22%) Control-M
13 16 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
14 14 (0.18%) vRealize
15 13 (0.17%) Kibana
16 12 (0.16%) AirWatch
16 12 (0.16%) ITRS Geneos
17 10 (0.13%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,030 (13.55%) Microsoft
2 792 (10.42%) SAP
3 672 (8.84%) Oracle
4 294 (3.87%) ServiceNow
5 180 (2.37%) Salesforce
6 173 (2.28%) Google
7 170 (2.24%) Databricks
8 159 (2.09%) Splunk
9 154 (2.03%) Cisco
10 138 (1.82%) Workday
11 105 (1.38%) VMware
12 94 (1.24%) IBM
13 73 (0.96%) Citrix
14 72 (0.95%) CyberArk
15 65 (0.86%) Ariba
16 53 (0.70%) OpenAI
17 52 (0.68%) HP
18 50 (0.66%) Bloomberg
18 50 (0.66%) Murex
19 48 (0.63%) Dell