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

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,424 6,652 8,364
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.34% 21.25% 18.95%
As % of the General category 32.58% 34.28% 32.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,726 4,160 5,678
10th Percentile £350 £356 £360
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £511
% change year-on-year - -2.20% -2.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 91 152
10th Percentile £14.95 £18.20 £11.77
25th Percentile £17.41 £22.27 £14.04
Median hourly rate £23.50 £27.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.55% +27.91% -14.00%
75th Percentile £40.00 £60.00 £42.75
90th Percentile £66.41 £78.75 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -39.06%

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 22,786 19,403 25,945
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.36% 61.98% 58.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,327 11,564 16,839
10th Percentile £286 £282 £264
25th Percentile £400 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £481 £500
% change year-on-year -1.15% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,382 633 1,489
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.00 £15.32
Median hourly rate £22.85 £27.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.91% +5.77% +4.00%
75th Percentile £47.38 £53.75 £55.47
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.71 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.28 £26.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -19.72% +6.00% +11.56%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 6,524 £538 -9.58% 4,698
London -1 3,982 £575 -5.74% 1,521
UK excluding London -2 2,938 £500 - 4,080
Work from Home -1 2,069 £525 -12.50% 1,949
North of England +2 923 £475 -3.06% 790
South East -1 547 £503 -4.29% 1,513
Midlands -3 528 £492 -6.29% 550
North West +3 453 £450 -5.26% 365
Yorkshire 0 421 £500 -2.68% 317
Scotland 0 386 £500 +7.07% 156
West Midlands -4 323 £525 -4.55% 268
South West -5 289 £525 -1.87% 455
East Midlands 0 203 £447 +5.80% 277
East of England -2 172 £525 - 462
Wales +25 82 £400 -14.67% 169
Northern Ireland -1 59 £500 +42.86% 79
North East -7 50 £488 +1.30% 118
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
1 321 (4.32%) Confluence
2 204 (2.75%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 58 (0.78%) Apache
6 55 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
7 31 (0.42%) SAS
8 29 (0.39%) CMS
9 23 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.27%) IIS
11 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 15 (0.20%) Appian
12 15 (0.20%) Ethereum
12 15 (0.20%) HCL Notes
13 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 13 (0.18%) TPMS
14 12 (0.16%) Camunda
14 12 (0.16%) Hyperledger
14 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 498 (6.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 292 (3.93%) Microsoft Office
3 204 (2.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 166 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
5 132 (1.78%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.36%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 13 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.081%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.067%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.054%) Notion
16 2 (0.027%) Camtasia
16 2 (0.027%) Snagit
16 2 (0.027%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 301 (4.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 125 (1.68%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.29%) Oracle Receivables
4 89 (1.20%) Oracle EBS
5 83 (1.12%) Oracle General Ledger
6 70 (0.94%) SAP FI
7 65 (0.88%) NetSuite
8 62 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
9 59 (0.79%) SAP CO
10 55 (0.74%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 53 (0.71%) Oracle Cash Management
11 53 (0.71%) SAP FI/CO
12 52 (0.70%) Oracle Assets
13 49 (0.66%) Oracle EBS R12
14 48 (0.65%) Oracle ERP
15 46 (0.62%) Oracle Financials
16 39 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 38 (0.51%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
19 27 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,097 (14.78%) Azure
2 888 (11.96%) AWS
3 540 (7.27%) Power Platform
4 344 (4.63%) GCP
5 254 (3.42%) Microsoft 365
6 233 (3.14%) SaaS
7 226 (3.04%) Azure DevOps
8 212 (2.86%) Dynamics 365
9 201 (2.71%) GitHub
10 142 (1.91%) OCI
10 142 (1.91%) Serverless
11 132 (1.78%) Snowflake
12 117 (1.58%) Entra ID
13 97 (1.31%) GitHub Actions
14 88 (1.19%) Power Automate
15 87 (1.17%) Amazon S3
16 73 (0.98%) OpenShift
17 72 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
18 68 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
18 68 (0.92%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 115 (1.55%) Firewall
2 71 (0.96%) Network Security
3 65 (0.88%) WAN
4 43 (0.58%) DNS
5 41 (0.55%) VPN
6 39 (0.53%) SD-WAN
7 38 (0.51%) LAN
8 35 (0.47%) TCP/IP
9 32 (0.43%) Wireless
10 29 (0.39%) HTTP
11 28 (0.38%) Skype
12 25 (0.34%) SSL
13 24 (0.32%) SSH
14 23 (0.31%) DHCP
15 19 (0.26%) Internet
16 17 (0.23%) BGP
16 17 (0.23%) Kerberos
16 17 (0.23%) OSPF
17 14 (0.19%) VLAN
18 13 (0.18%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 470 (6.33%) Power BI
2 198 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
3 192 (2.59%) SQL Server
4 151 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (1.71%) Tableau
6 124 (1.67%) NoSQL
7 119 (1.60%) Relational Database
8 116 (1.56%) Data Lake
9 109 (1.47%) Metadata
10 87 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (1.00%) Oracle Database
12 73 (0.98%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.89%) Big Data
14 51 (0.69%) BigQuery
15 42 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 40 (0.54%) Hadoop
17 37 (0.50%) MySQL
18 36 (0.48%) Power Query
18 36 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 32 (0.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 593 (7.99%) JIRA
2 264 (3.56%) Jenkins
3 213 (2.87%) Git
4 154 (2.07%) GitLab
5 78 (1.05%) JUnit
6 59 (0.79%) Cucumber
7 54 (0.73%) Selenium
8 50 (0.67%) Bitbucket
8 50 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
9 38 (0.51%) Postman
10 34 (0.46%) Visual Studio
11 26 (0.35%) Gradle
12 24 (0.32%) Liquibase
13 23 (0.31%) Maven
14 22 (0.30%) Cypress.io
14 22 (0.30%) MLflow
15 21 (0.28%) REST Assured
16 18 (0.24%) JMeter
16 18 (0.24%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.22%) ERwin
General
1 2,597 (34.98%) Social Skills
2 1,511 (20.35%) Banking
3 980 (13.20%) Analytical Skills
4 604 (8.14%) Public Sector
5 339 (4.57%) Financial Institution
6 315 (4.24%) Marketing
7 299 (4.03%) Manufacturing
8 283 (3.81%) Investment Banking
9 280 (3.77%) Telecoms
10 270 (3.64%) Legal
11 266 (3.58%) Front Office
12 215 (2.90%) Organisational Skills
13 213 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
14 186 (2.51%) Electronics
15 166 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
16 150 (2.02%) Retail
17 137 (1.85%) General Ledger
18 128 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
19 126 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 110 (1.48%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,177 (15.85%) Analyst
2 836 (11.26%) Developer
3 728 (9.81%) Senior
4 616 (8.30%) Business Analyst
5 594 (8.00%) Project Manager
6 588 (7.92%) Architect
7 577 (7.77%) Consultant
8 547 (7.37%) Lead
9 243 (3.27%) Solutions Architect
10 183 (2.46%) Data Analyst
11 164 (2.21%) Data Engineer
12 162 (2.18%) Programme Manager
13 158 (2.13%) Financial Analyst
14 145 (1.95%) Java Developer
15 143 (1.93%) Senior Developer
16 138 (1.86%) Senior Manager
17 136 (1.83%) Software Engineer
18 115 (1.55%) IT Manager
19 113 (1.52%) Finance Manager
20 112 (1.51%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (3.72%) REST
2 227 (3.06%) Kafka
3 210 (2.83%) .NET
4 165 (2.22%) React
5 162 (2.18%) Oracle Fusion
6 158 (2.13%) RESTful
7 149 (2.01%) Spring
8 122 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 115 (1.55%) Middleware
10 106 (1.43%) AngularJS
11 91 (1.23%) Pandas
12 90 (1.21%) XML
13 87 (1.17%) HTML
14 80 (1.08%) Node.js
14 80 (1.08%) NumPy
15 76 (1.02%) CSS
16 75 (1.01%) PySpark
17 73 (0.98%) OAuth
18 72 (0.97%) JSON
19 70 (0.94%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 320 (4.31%) Onboarding
2 300 (4.04%) Product Ownership
3 224 (3.02%) Cloud Native
4 171 (2.30%) Derivative
5 169 (2.28%) Management Information System
6 162 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
7 152 (2.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 134 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
9 132 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
10 131 (1.76%) Data Structures
11 126 (1.70%) Data Centre
12 125 (1.68%) Equities
13 124 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
14 112 (1.51%) Fixed Income
15 106 (1.43%) Public Cloud
16 92 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
17 90 (1.21%) Hedge funds
18 77 (1.04%) Virtual Team
19 74 (1.00%) Credit Risk
20 73 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 354 (4.77%) Linux
2 318 (4.28%) Windows
3 154 (2.07%) Unix
4 68 (0.92%) Windows 10
5 65 (0.88%) Windows Server
6 62 (0.84%) Android
7 61 (0.82%) Mac OS
8 32 (0.43%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.13%) zOS
11 7 (0.094%) CentOS
12 6 (0.081%) VMS
13 4 (0.054%) Solaris
13 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.040%) AIX
14 3 (0.040%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.040%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,714 (23.09%) Agile
2 1,394 (18.78%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,212 (16.33%) Problem-Solving
4 864 (11.64%) Migration
5 827 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 812 (10.94%) DevOps
7 783 (10.55%) CI/CD
8 751 (10.12%) Business Intelligence
9 723 (9.74%) Project Management
10 720 (9.70%) Analytics
11 660 (8.89%) ERP
12 641 (8.63%) Continuous Improvement
13 549 (7.39%) AI
14 541 (7.29%) Decision-Making
15 532 (7.17%) Change Management
16 528 (7.11%) Risk Management
17 512 (6.90%) Roadmaps
18 498 (6.71%) Data Modelling
19 483 (6.51%) Project Delivery
19 483 (6.51%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,103 (14.86%) SQL
2 945 (12.73%) Python
3 525 (7.07%) Java
4 311 (4.19%) C#
5 212 (2.86%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.68%) PowerShell
7 156 (2.10%) C++
8 154 (2.07%) TypeScript
9 86 (1.16%) PL/SQL
10 68 (0.92%) Bash
10 68 (0.92%) Go
11 53 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 49 (0.66%) VBA
13 42 (0.57%) R
14 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
15 34 (0.46%) Groovy
15 34 (0.46%) Rust
15 34 (0.46%) T-SQL
16 32 (0.43%) Scala
17 31 (0.42%) Perl
Qualifications
1 811 (10.92%) Degree
2 578 (7.79%) Security Cleared
3 427 (5.75%) SC Cleared
4 190 (2.56%) PMI Certification
5 183 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
6 179 (2.41%) PMP
7 170 (2.29%) Master's Degree
8 153 (2.06%) ACCA
9 138 (1.86%) CIMA
10 112 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
11 91 (1.23%) CISSP
12 89 (1.20%) AWS Certification
13 64 (0.86%) CISM
13 64 (0.86%) DV Cleared
14 58 (0.78%) Azure Certification
15 46 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
16 39 (0.53%) CBAP
17 33 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 31 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
19 30 (0.40%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (5.16%) QA
2 332 (4.47%) Data Quality
3 278 (3.74%) PMO
4 251 (3.38%) GDPR
5 129 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 127 (1.71%) NIST
7 111 (1.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 98 (1.32%) SLA
9 94 (1.27%) Accessibility
10 77 (1.04%) IFRS
11 75 (1.01%) PCI DSS
12 61 (0.82%) GRC
13 49 (0.66%) ISO 20022
14 42 (0.57%) PSD2
15 38 (0.51%) MiFID
16 37 (0.50%) NCSC
17 34 (0.46%) SEPA
18 31 (0.42%) Basel III
18 31 (0.42%) GAAP
19 29 (0.39%) COBIT
System Software
1 332 (4.47%) Docker
2 195 (2.63%) Active Directory
3 52 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
5 21 (0.28%) vSphere
6 10 (0.13%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) NFS
7 9 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (0.12%) VMware NSX
8 8 (0.11%) HDFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.067%) Firmware
9 5 (0.067%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.054%) BitLocker
10 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.040%) RACF
11 3 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.027%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 384 (5.17%) Kubernetes
2 262 (3.53%) Terraform
3 174 (2.34%) Ansible
4 89 (1.20%) Grafana
5 82 (1.10%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.86%) SCCM
7 58 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
8 36 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.35%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.28%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 15 (0.20%) Control-M
15 13 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
15 13 (0.18%) Puppet
16 10 (0.13%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,015 (13.67%) Microsoft
2 802 (10.80%) SAP
3 710 (9.56%) Oracle
4 281 (3.79%) ServiceNow
5 179 (2.41%) Salesforce
6 174 (2.34%) Splunk
7 163 (2.20%) Google
8 162 (2.18%) Databricks
9 148 (1.99%) Cisco
10 142 (1.91%) Workday
11 104 (1.40%) VMware
12 94 (1.27%) IBM
13 72 (0.97%) Citrix
14 71 (0.96%) CyberArk
15 62 (0.84%) Ariba
16 54 (0.73%) HP
17 50 (0.67%) Informatica
17 50 (0.67%) OpenAI
18 49 (0.66%) Bloomberg
18 49 (0.66%) Dell