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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,258 6,643 8,277
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.47% 21.24% 19.10%
As % of the General category 32.50% 34.41% 32.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,644 4,157 5,621
10th Percentile £350 £356 £363
25th Percentile £425 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £666 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £508 £513
% change year-on-year -1.48% -0.98% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 93 130
10th Percentile £15.00 £18.20 £11.86
25th Percentile £17.64 £22.50 £14.06
Median hourly rate £23.50 £29.00 £22.57
Median % change year-on-year -18.97% +28.47% -9.71%
75th Percentile £40.00 £60.75 £47.50
90th Percentile £67.25 £78.69 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -41.86%

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 22,334 19,303 25,535
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.91% 61.71% 58.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,075 11,487 16,655
10th Percentile £284 £285 £270
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £727 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,366 648 1,327
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £16.48 £20.00 £15.44
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year -16.36% -2.65% +13.00%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £56.49
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.82 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -18.87% +1.92% +15.56%

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 20 January 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 20 January 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 20 January 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 6,396 £535 -10.08% 5,439
London -1 3,895 £575 -5.74% 1,423
UK excluding London -2 2,874 £500 -1.48% 4,894
Work from Home -1 1,997 £525 -12.50% 2,351
North of England +1 915 £475 -4.26% 928
South East -2 535 £503 -4.29% 1,681
Midlands -3 508 £475 -9.52% 642
North West +1 441 £450 -8.16% 401
Yorkshire 0 426 £500 -2.91% 386
Scotland 0 377 £500 +7.30% 194
West Midlands -6 307 £525 -4.55% 266
South West -6 287 £525 -1.41% 588
East Midlands +1 200 £420 -1.18% 365
East of England -3 171 £541 +3.10% 648
Wales +25 74 £413 -12.00% 232
Northern Ireland -1 54 £500 +53.85% 103
North East -4 48 £475 -1.30% 155
Channel Islands +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
1 301 (4.15%) Confluence
2 203 (2.80%) SharePoint
3 69 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 62 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 60 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 59 (0.81%) Apache
7 32 (0.44%) SAS
8 29 (0.40%) CMS
9 23 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.29%) IIS
11 16 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 14 (0.19%) Appian
13 13 (0.18%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 13 (0.18%) TPMS
14 12 (0.17%) WebSphere
15 11 (0.15%) Camunda
15 11 (0.15%) JBoss
Applications
1 499 (6.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 288 (3.97%) Microsoft Office
3 202 (2.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (2.23%) Microsoft Project
5 134 (1.85%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.25%) Trello
10 14 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.083%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.069%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.069%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.055%) Notion
16 3 (0.041%) Camtasia
16 3 (0.041%) Snagit
17 2 (0.028%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 290 (4.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.69%) Oracle Payables
3 98 (1.35%) Oracle EBS
4 94 (1.30%) Oracle Receivables
5 84 (1.16%) Oracle General Ledger
6 71 (0.98%) SAP FI
7 67 (0.92%) NetSuite
8 62 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
9 60 (0.83%) SAP CO
10 55 (0.76%) Oracle Assets
10 55 (0.76%) Oracle EBS R12
11 54 (0.74%) Oracle Cash Management
11 54 (0.74%) SAP FI/CO
12 52 (0.72%) Oracle Financials
13 50 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 46 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
15 38 (0.52%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 38 (0.52%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
16 28 (0.39%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,070 (14.74%) Azure
2 877 (12.08%) AWS
3 538 (7.41%) Power Platform
4 347 (4.78%) GCP
5 245 (3.38%) Microsoft 365
6 222 (3.06%) SaaS
7 215 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
8 209 (2.88%) Dynamics 365
9 187 (2.58%) GitHub
10 138 (1.90%) OCI
10 138 (1.90%) Serverless
11 134 (1.85%) Snowflake
12 115 (1.58%) Entra ID
13 98 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
14 87 (1.20%) Power Automate
15 86 (1.18%) Amazon S3
16 73 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
17 72 (0.99%) PowerApps
18 68 (0.94%) Figma
19 66 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 116 (1.60%) Firewall
2 69 (0.95%) Network Security
3 62 (0.85%) WAN
4 41 (0.56%) DNS
5 40 (0.55%) SD-WAN
6 37 (0.51%) VPN
7 34 (0.47%) LAN
8 32 (0.44%) TCP/IP
8 32 (0.44%) Wireless
9 27 (0.37%) HTTP
9 27 (0.37%) Skype
9 27 (0.37%) SSL
10 24 (0.33%) SSH
11 21 (0.29%) DHCP
12 18 (0.25%) BGP
12 18 (0.25%) OSPF
13 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
14 15 (0.21%) Cisco IOS
14 15 (0.21%) Internet
15 14 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 472 (6.50%) Power BI
2 196 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
3 190 (2.62%) SQL Server
4 149 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
5 128 (1.76%) NoSQL
6 127 (1.75%) Tableau
7 121 (1.67%) Relational Database
8 113 (1.56%) Data Lake
9 108 (1.49%) Metadata
10 89 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (1.03%) MongoDB
12 69 (0.95%) Big Data
12 69 (0.95%) Oracle Database
13 50 (0.69%) BigQuery
14 44 (0.61%) Hadoop
15 41 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.54%) Power Query
17 36 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
18 35 (0.48%) MySQL
18 35 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 560 (7.72%) JIRA
2 255 (3.51%) Jenkins
3 208 (2.87%) Git
4 149 (2.05%) GitLab
5 75 (1.03%) JUnit
6 57 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 55 (0.76%) Selenium
8 50 (0.69%) Bitbucket
9 46 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
10 34 (0.47%) Postman
11 32 (0.44%) Visual Studio
12 25 (0.34%) Gradle
13 24 (0.33%) Liquibase
14 23 (0.32%) Cypress.io
15 21 (0.29%) Maven
15 21 (0.29%) MLflow
16 20 (0.28%) REST Assured
17 19 (0.26%) JMeter
18 17 (0.23%) SonarQube
19 16 (0.22%) webpack
General
1 2,528 (34.83%) Social Skills
2 1,516 (20.89%) Banking
3 983 (13.54%) Analytical Skills
4 584 (8.05%) Public Sector
5 337 (4.64%) Financial Institution
6 319 (4.40%) Marketing
7 298 (4.11%) Manufacturing
8 286 (3.94%) Investment Banking
9 277 (3.82%) Telecoms
10 269 (3.71%) Front Office
11 267 (3.68%) Legal
12 207 (2.85%) Organisational Skills
13 198 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
14 187 (2.58%) Electronics
15 158 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
16 142 (1.96%) Retail
17 133 (1.83%) Presentation Skills
18 132 (1.82%) General Ledger
19 122 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 108 (1.49%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,161 (16.00%) Analyst
2 813 (11.20%) Developer
3 700 (9.64%) Senior
4 596 (8.21%) Business Analyst
5 582 (8.02%) Consultant
5 582 (8.02%) Project Manager
6 564 (7.77%) Architect
7 524 (7.22%) Lead
8 236 (3.25%) Solutions Architect
9 191 (2.63%) Data Analyst
10 165 (2.27%) Data Engineer
11 157 (2.16%) Financial Analyst
12 147 (2.03%) Programme Manager
13 143 (1.97%) Java Developer
14 138 (1.90%) Senior Developer
14 138 (1.90%) Software Engineer
15 122 (1.68%) Senior Manager
16 113 (1.56%) Oracle Consultant
17 112 (1.54%) IT Manager
18 108 (1.49%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 273 (3.76%) REST
2 225 (3.10%) Kafka
3 210 (2.89%) .NET
4 163 (2.25%) React
5 158 (2.18%) RESTful
6 156 (2.15%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (2.03%) Spring
8 121 (1.67%) Spring Boot
9 103 (1.42%) Middleware
10 99 (1.36%) AngularJS
11 94 (1.30%) Pandas
12 90 (1.24%) XML
13 86 (1.18%) HTML
14 83 (1.14%) NumPy
15 81 (1.12%) Node.js
16 76 (1.05%) CSS
17 75 (1.03%) PySpark
18 71 (0.98%) OAuth
19 70 (0.96%) SOAP
20 67 (0.92%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 318 (4.38%) Onboarding
2 286 (3.94%) Product Ownership
3 212 (2.92%) Cloud Native
4 176 (2.42%) Derivative
5 168 (2.31%) Management Information System
6 154 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
7 151 (2.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 133 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
9 132 (1.82%) Data Centre
10 128 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
11 126 (1.74%) Equities
12 124 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
13 123 (1.69%) Data Structures
14 119 (1.64%) Fixed Income
15 108 (1.49%) Public Cloud
16 94 (1.30%) Hedge funds
17 90 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
18 72 (0.99%) Credit Risk
18 72 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
18 72 (0.99%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 345 (4.75%) Linux
2 319 (4.40%) Windows
3 149 (2.05%) Unix
4 67 (0.92%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.88%) Android
6 63 (0.87%) Mac OS
7 61 (0.84%) Windows Server
8 34 (0.47%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.14%) zOS
11 7 (0.096%) CentOS
12 6 (0.083%) VMS
13 4 (0.055%) Solaris
13 4 (0.055%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.041%) AIX
14 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.041%) Windows Server 2019
15 2 (0.028%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.028%) Windows 8
15 2 (0.028%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,680 (23.15%) Agile
2 1,329 (18.31%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,185 (16.33%) Problem-Solving
4 822 (11.33%) Migration
5 781 (10.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 776 (10.69%) DevOps
7 760 (10.47%) CI/CD
8 750 (10.33%) Business Intelligence
9 712 (9.81%) Analytics
10 704 (9.70%) Project Management
11 627 (8.64%) ERP
12 605 (8.34%) Continuous Improvement
13 522 (7.19%) Decision-Making
14 514 (7.08%) Risk Management
15 513 (7.07%) Change Management
16 507 (6.99%) AI
17 492 (6.78%) Roadmaps
18 472 (6.50%) Data Modelling
19 464 (6.39%) Project Delivery
20 457 (6.30%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,074 (14.80%) SQL
2 942 (12.98%) Python
3 509 (7.01%) Java
4 306 (4.22%) C#
5 209 (2.88%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.69%) PowerShell
7 152 (2.09%) C++
8 146 (2.01%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 69 (0.95%) Bash
10 69 (0.95%) Go
11 53 (0.73%) Shell Script
12 51 (0.70%) VBA
13 45 (0.62%) R
14 40 (0.55%) Kotlin
15 37 (0.51%) Groovy
16 32 (0.44%) Perl
16 32 (0.44%) Rust
16 32 (0.44%) T-SQL
17 29 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 780 (10.75%) Degree
2 547 (7.54%) Security Cleared
3 396 (5.46%) SC Cleared
4 187 (2.58%) PMI Certification
5 181 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 175 (2.41%) PMP
7 166 (2.29%) Master's Degree
8 146 (2.01%) ACCA
9 127 (1.75%) CIMA
10 103 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
11 94 (1.30%) CISSP
12 92 (1.27%) AWS Certification
13 64 (0.88%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.87%) CISM
15 61 (0.84%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
17 35 (0.48%) CBAP
17 35 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 27 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 27 (0.37%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 374 (5.15%) QA
2 332 (4.57%) Data Quality
3 269 (3.71%) PMO
4 250 (3.44%) GDPR
5 120 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 113 (1.56%) NIST
7 110 (1.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 97 (1.34%) Accessibility
9 96 (1.32%) SLA
10 76 (1.05%) PCI DSS
11 75 (1.03%) IFRS
12 54 (0.74%) GRC
13 48 (0.66%) ISO 20022
14 44 (0.61%) PSD2
15 39 (0.54%) MiFID
16 32 (0.44%) Basel III
16 32 (0.44%) SEPA
17 28 (0.39%) GAAP
18 27 (0.37%) COBIT
18 27 (0.37%) NCSC
System Software
1 329 (4.53%) Docker
2 190 (2.62%) Active Directory
3 50 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (0.26%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) HDFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) NFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 6 (0.083%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.069%) Firmware
10 5 (0.069%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.055%) BitLocker
11 4 (0.055%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.041%) RACF
12 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.028%) KVM
Systems Management
1 368 (5.07%) Kubernetes
2 264 (3.64%) Terraform
3 174 (2.40%) Ansible
4 87 (1.20%) Grafana
5 78 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.87%) SCCM
7 56 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 34 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
15 13 (0.18%) Control-M
15 13 (0.18%) Puppet
16 9 (0.12%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,005 (13.85%) Microsoft
2 789 (10.87%) SAP
3 703 (9.69%) Oracle
4 264 (3.64%) ServiceNow
5 174 (2.40%) Salesforce
6 158 (2.18%) Databricks
7 157 (2.16%) Splunk
8 153 (2.11%) Google
9 145 (2.00%) Cisco
10 143 (1.97%) Workday
11 96 (1.32%) VMware
12 90 (1.24%) IBM
13 69 (0.95%) Citrix
14 63 (0.87%) Ariba
15 60 (0.83%) CyberArk
16 56 (0.77%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.73%) HP
18 48 (0.66%) Murex
19 47 (0.65%) Apple
19 47 (0.65%) Informatica