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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,606 6,478 8,127
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.13% 22.26% 18.84%
As % of the General category 33.55% 35.13% 32.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,389 4,242 5,413
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £431 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £563 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.89% -2.17% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 110 244
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.79 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.27 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.70% +37.24% +5.02%
75th Percentile £56.25 £69.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.51 £55.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £42.41 £32.12
% change year-on-year -44.59% +32.05% -24.44%

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 25,651 18,440 25,063
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.05% 63.36% 58.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,724 11,753 15,798
10th Percentile £306 £295 £275
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +0.53% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,633 780 1,936
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.82% -8.17%
75th Percentile £61.18 £56.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.14
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.62 £24.66 £28.50
% change year-on-year +12.00% -13.47% -1.72%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 May 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 7,606 £538 -6.52% 4,419
London 0 4,577 £575 -8.00% 2,281
UK excluding London -1 3,450 £500 - 2,832
Work from Home -2 2,414 £525 -12.35% 1,810
North of England +3 1,155 £482 +1.39% 741
South East -1 654 £500 -2.85% 936
North West +5 622 £465 - 410
Midlands -1 590 £475 -5.00% 401
Yorkshire +1 496 £510 +3.08% 257
Scotland +1 423 £500 +3.09% 145
West Midlands +1 391 £492 -7.73% 225
South West -2 345 £508 -3.33% 301
East of England -2 202 £525 -8.70% 234
East Midlands 0 195 £463 +3.47% 175
Wales +23 92 £438 +16.67% 71
Northern Ireland -1 42 £525 +28.83% 57
North East -15 38 £488 +3.72% 79
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 2

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 (3.80%) Confluence
2 213 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 91 (1.06%) Apache Spark
4 61 (0.71%) Apache
5 51 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
5 51 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
6 36 (0.42%) SAS
7 24 (0.28%) CMS
8 22 (0.26%) CICS
9 20 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 14 (0.16%) Appian
10 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
10 14 (0.16%) IIS
11 13 (0.15%) Camunda
12 11 (0.13%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
12 11 (0.13%) Mendix
13 9 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.10%) TPMS
Applications
1 523 (6.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 227 (2.64%) Microsoft Office
3 177 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
4 175 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 128 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 49 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.15%) Trello
9 8 (0.093%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.093%) Sketch
10 7 (0.081%) InVision
10 7 (0.081%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 385 (4.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 118 (1.37%) Oracle Payables
3 102 (1.19%) NetSuite
4 97 (1.13%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (0.99%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 63 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
7 61 (0.71%) Oracle ERP
8 60 (0.70%) SAP FI
9 57 (0.66%) Oracle General Ledger
10 49 (0.57%) SAP CO
11 46 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
12 45 (0.52%) SAP FI/CO
13 38 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
14 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
15 32 (0.37%) Aladdin
15 32 (0.37%) Oracle Cash Management
16 30 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
17 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 28 (0.33%) Workday HCM
19 26 (0.30%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,312 (15.25%) Azure
2 979 (11.38%) AWS
3 614 (7.13%) Power Platform
4 391 (4.54%) GCP
5 303 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
6 288 (3.35%) SaaS
7 268 (3.11%) Microsoft 365
8 237 (2.75%) GitHub
9 236 (2.74%) Dynamics 365
10 148 (1.72%) Snowflake
11 143 (1.66%) Serverless
12 132 (1.53%) OCI
13 131 (1.52%) Entra ID
14 120 (1.39%) Amazon S3
15 108 (1.25%) Power Automate
16 95 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
17 92 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
18 87 (1.01%) OpenShift
19 81 (0.94%) AWS Lambda
20 80 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.88%) Firewall
2 116 (1.35%) Network Security
3 76 (0.88%) WAN
4 69 (0.80%) DNS
5 58 (0.67%) VPN
6 50 (0.58%) TCP/IP
7 39 (0.45%) SD-WAN
8 37 (0.43%) BGP
8 37 (0.43%) LAN
9 34 (0.40%) HTTP
10 31 (0.36%) OSPF
11 29 (0.34%) SSL
12 28 (0.33%) Multicast
13 25 (0.29%) DHCP
13 25 (0.29%) MPLS
14 21 (0.24%) Internet
15 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 18 (0.21%) VSAN
17 16 (0.19%) VLAN
18 14 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 526 (6.11%) Power BI
2 218 (2.53%) SQL Server
3 206 (2.39%) Data Warehouse
4 168 (1.95%) PostgreSQL
5 164 (1.91%) Metadata
6 148 (1.72%) Relational Database
7 143 (1.66%) Tableau
8 127 (1.48%) Data Lake
9 88 (1.02%) NoSQL
10 87 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
11 79 (0.92%) Big Data
12 68 (0.79%) Oracle Database
13 61 (0.71%) MongoDB
14 59 (0.69%) BigQuery
15 50 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
16 44 (0.51%) Delta Lake
16 44 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
16 44 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 41 (0.48%) Power Query
18 39 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 682 (7.92%) JIRA
2 213 (2.48%) Git
3 182 (2.11%) Jenkins
4 115 (1.34%) GitLab
5 50 (0.58%) JUnit
6 47 (0.55%) Cucumber
7 37 (0.43%) Selenium
8 34 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.29%) MLflow
10 25 (0.29%) Postman
11 21 (0.24%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
12 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 19 (0.22%) Maven
14 18 (0.21%) Hudson
15 17 (0.20%) Bitbucket
15 17 (0.20%) ERwin
15 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
16 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,572 (29.89%) Social Skills
2 1,563 (18.16%) Banking
3 1,146 (13.32%) Analytical Skills
4 536 (6.23%) Public Sector
5 359 (4.17%) Legal
6 333 (3.87%) Financial Institution
7 287 (3.33%) Investment Banking
8 274 (3.18%) Front Office
9 247 (2.87%) Retail
10 243 (2.82%) Organisational Skills
11 235 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
12 208 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 181 (2.10%) Manufacturing
14 164 (1.91%) Marketing
15 147 (1.71%) Telecoms
16 145 (1.68%) General Ledger
17 127 (1.48%) Local Government
18 125 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
19 122 (1.42%) Law
20 119 (1.38%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,311 (15.23%) Analyst
2 891 (10.35%) Senior
3 874 (10.16%) Lead
4 871 (10.12%) Developer
5 778 (9.04%) Architect
6 703 (8.17%) Business Analyst
7 682 (7.92%) Project Manager
8 596 (6.93%) Consultant
9 313 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
10 281 (3.27%) Data Engineer
11 215 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 205 (2.38%) Senior Manager
13 189 (2.20%) Finance Manager
14 183 (2.13%) Data Analyst
15 181 (2.10%) Programme Manager
16 166 (1.93%) Accountant
17 143 (1.66%) Java Developer
18 139 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
19 136 (1.58%) Senior Analyst
19 136 (1.58%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (3.09%) Kafka
2 249 (2.89%) REST
3 240 (2.79%) .NET
4 206 (2.39%) React
5 182 (2.11%) Middleware
6 154 (1.79%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (1.71%) Spring
8 142 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 134 (1.56%) RESTful
10 108 (1.25%) PySpark
11 105 (1.22%) Node.js
12 93 (1.08%) AngularJS
13 83 (0.96%) OAuth
14 78 (0.91%) JSON
14 78 (0.91%) Redux
15 77 (0.89%) XML
16 71 (0.83%) HTML
17 69 (0.80%) CSS
18 62 (0.72%) Pandas
19 60 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 354 (4.11%) Onboarding
2 338 (3.93%) Product Ownership
3 309 (3.59%) Cloud Native
4 224 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
5 202 (2.35%) Management Information System
6 183 (2.13%) Data Structures
7 167 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
8 166 (1.93%) Derivative
9 149 (1.73%) Data Centre
10 143 (1.66%) Distributed Systems
11 137 (1.59%) Fixed Income
12 130 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 109 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
14 102 (1.19%) Equities
14 102 (1.19%) Virtual Team
15 101 (1.17%) Public Cloud
16 94 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
17 85 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
18 71 (0.83%) AI Agents
18 71 (0.83%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 276 (3.21%) Windows
2 269 (3.13%) Linux
3 138 (1.60%) Unix
4 70 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 44 (0.51%) Windows 10
6 32 (0.37%) Apple iOS
7 29 (0.34%) Solaris
7 29 (0.34%) zOS
8 26 (0.30%) Android
9 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 18 (0.21%) AIX
11 17 (0.20%) Mac OS
12 8 (0.093%) VMS
13 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.046%) HPUX
15 4 (0.046%) MVS
15 4 (0.046%) SUSE
15 4 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,814 (21.08%) Agile
2 1,717 (19.95%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,217 (14.14%) Problem-Solving
4 1,158 (13.46%) Migration
5 957 (11.12%) Continuous Improvement
6 943 (10.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 918 (10.67%) DevOps
8 906 (10.53%) ERP
9 864 (10.04%) CI/CD
10 830 (9.64%) AI
11 816 (9.48%) Analytics
12 799 (9.28%) Project Management
13 720 (8.37%) Business Intelligence
13 720 (8.37%) Decision-Making
14 690 (8.02%) Data Modelling
15 684 (7.95%) Roadmaps
16 671 (7.80%) Validation
17 656 (7.62%) User Acceptance Testing
18 597 (6.94%) Change Management
19 580 (6.74%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,189 (13.82%) SQL
2 1,021 (11.86%) Python
3 556 (6.46%) Java
4 336 (3.90%) C#
5 216 (2.51%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.35%) TypeScript
7 164 (1.91%) PowerShell
8 104 (1.21%) C++
9 75 (0.87%) PL/SQL
10 70 (0.81%) Bash
10 70 (0.81%) Go
11 64 (0.74%) T-SQL
12 51 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
13 47 (0.55%) VBA
14 45 (0.52%) Scala
15 32 (0.37%) R
16 26 (0.30%) Bicep
16 26 (0.30%) Kotlin
17 24 (0.28%) Korn
Qualifications
1 734 (8.53%) Degree
2 703 (8.17%) Security Cleared
3 499 (5.80%) SC Cleared
4 212 (2.46%) PMP
5 211 (2.45%) ACCA
6 199 (2.31%) PMI Certification
7 194 (2.25%) CIMA
8 144 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
9 141 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
10 124 (1.44%) CISSP
11 112 (1.30%) Master's Degree
12 85 (0.99%) CISM
12 85 (0.99%) DV Cleared
13 63 (0.73%) Azure Certification
14 58 (0.67%) AWS Certification
15 51 (0.59%) Cisco Certification
16 38 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
17 34 (0.40%) ISTQB
18 32 (0.37%) CBAP
19 30 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 496 (5.76%) Data Quality
2 415 (4.82%) QA
3 335 (3.89%) PMO
4 293 (3.40%) GDPR
5 156 (1.81%) NIST
6 126 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 102 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 102 (1.19%) SLA
8 101 (1.17%) IFRS
9 87 (1.01%) GRC
10 77 (0.89%) Accessibility
11 68 (0.79%) PCI DSS
12 61 (0.71%) ISO 20022
13 52 (0.60%) GAAP
14 39 (0.45%) PSD2
15 38 (0.44%) SEPA
16 34 (0.40%) NCSC
17 29 (0.34%) MiFID
18 28 (0.33%) EMIR
19 25 (0.29%) Basel III
System Software
1 287 (3.33%) Docker
2 144 (1.67%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 24 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.10%) GPFS
11 6 (0.070%) RACF
12 5 (0.058%) HDFS
12 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.046%) ACF2
13 4 (0.046%) Firmware
13 4 (0.046%) KVM
14 3 (0.035%) GridGain
14 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.035%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 405 (4.71%) Kubernetes
2 247 (2.87%) Terraform
3 122 (1.42%) Ansible
4 90 (1.05%) Grafana
5 68 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 57 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 46 (0.53%) SCCM
8 36 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
11 16 (0.19%) vRealize
12 14 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.15%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
14 12 (0.14%) HP ALM
14 12 (0.14%) Progress Chef
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,107 (12.86%) Microsoft
2 780 (9.06%) SAP
3 713 (8.28%) Oracle
4 305 (3.54%) ServiceNow
5 235 (2.73%) Databricks
6 182 (2.11%) Salesforce
7 174 (2.02%) Google
8 135 (1.57%) Workday
9 117 (1.36%) Splunk
10 114 (1.32%) Cisco
11 101 (1.17%) VMware
12 96 (1.12%) IBM
13 77 (0.89%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.86%) Citrix
15 72 (0.84%) Ariba
16 70 (0.81%) Sage
17 57 (0.66%) Informatica
18 56 (0.65%) OpenAI
19 52 (0.60%) Palo Alto
20 50 (0.58%) IFS