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 14 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,373 6,519 8,157
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.31% 22.26% 18.74%
As % of the General category 33.08% 35.30% 32.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,313 4,310 5,454
10th Percentile £350 £350 £352
25th Percentile £428 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.48% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 202 108 243
10th Percentile £14.53 £18.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.32 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £39.06 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.00% +44.65% -16.28%
75th Percentile £44.44 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £76.62 £83.20 £55.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.32 £52.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -57.50% +75.00% -33.33%

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 25,315 18,465 25,338
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.36% 63.06% 58.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,702 11,819 16,054
10th Percentile £304 £300 £271
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £644 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,588 761 1,894
10th Percentile £13.68 £14.41 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.20 £15.39
Median hourly rate £27.00 £28.75 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.09% +4.55% -21.43%
75th Percentile £59.00 £56.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -5.66% +1.92% -15.80%

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 14 April 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 14 April 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 14 April 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 7,407 £537 -6.61% 4,081
London 0 4,490 £575 -8.00% 2,012
UK excluding London 0 3,318 £500 - 2,731
Work from Home -2 2,360 £538 -9.20% 1,687
North of England +2 1,082 £475 - 670
South East -1 648 £503 -6.73% 917
North West +5 578 £461 -0.94% 331
Midlands -1 574 £475 -5.00% 395
Yorkshire 0 457 £500 +2.30% 253
Scotland 0 388 £500 +5.26% 147
West Midlands 0 382 £492 -6.29% 227
South West -2 335 £525 +4.90% 296
East of England -2 196 £518 -5.91% 234
East Midlands 0 187 £449 +1.07% 168
Wales +23 104 £413 +10.00% 77
North East -9 47 £488 +6.56% 99
Northern Ireland 0 42 £513 +46.43% 49
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 334 (3.99%) Confluence
2 215 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.98%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.59%) Apache
6 48 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.43%) SAS
8 28 (0.33%) CMS
9 19 (0.23%) CICS
9 19 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.21%) Appian
11 15 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 15 (0.18%) Camunda
12 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) TPMS
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.096%) WebLogic
Applications
1 542 (6.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 247 (2.95%) Microsoft Office
3 188 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 175 (2.09%) Microsoft Project
5 130 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.18%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.11%) Sketch
10 8 (0.096%) InVision
11 6 (0.072%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.060%) Notion
13 3 (0.036%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.024%) Adobe Illustrator
14 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.024%) InDesign
14 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
15 1 (0.012%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 360 (4.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.39%) Oracle Payables
3 99 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 89 (1.06%) NetSuite
5 84 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 74 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
7 65 (0.78%) SAP FI
8 61 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
9 55 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
11 51 (0.61%) SAP CO
12 47 (0.56%) SAP FI/CO
13 40 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
14 35 (0.42%) Oracle Cash Management
14 35 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
16 31 (0.37%) Aladdin
17 30 (0.36%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 28 (0.33%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,277 (15.25%) Azure
2 966 (11.54%) AWS
3 606 (7.24%) Power Platform
4 381 (4.55%) GCP
5 289 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
6 278 (3.32%) SaaS
7 271 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
8 232 (2.77%) Dynamics 365
8 232 (2.77%) GitHub
9 147 (1.76%) Serverless
10 145 (1.73%) OCI
11 139 (1.66%) Snowflake
12 130 (1.55%) Entra ID
13 119 (1.42%) Amazon S3
14 97 (1.16%) Power Automate
15 91 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
16 89 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
17 88 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
18 86 (1.03%) OpenShift
19 76 (0.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 164 (1.96%) Firewall
2 106 (1.27%) Network Security
3 77 (0.92%) WAN
4 65 (0.78%) DNS
5 59 (0.70%) VPN
6 45 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 44 (0.53%) LAN
8 42 (0.50%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.41%) BGP
10 33 (0.39%) HTTP
11 29 (0.35%) OSPF
11 29 (0.35%) SSL
12 26 (0.31%) Multicast
13 24 (0.29%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
16 19 (0.23%) DHCP
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
17 18 (0.21%) Wireless
18 17 (0.20%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 526 (6.28%) Power BI
2 221 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
3 203 (2.42%) SQL Server
4 166 (1.98%) PostgreSQL
5 163 (1.95%) Metadata
6 150 (1.79%) Tableau
7 122 (1.46%) Relational Database
8 121 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 103 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
10 88 (1.05%) NoSQL
11 77 (0.92%) Big Data
12 62 (0.74%) Oracle Database
13 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
14 54 (0.64%) MongoDB
15 45 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
17 43 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
18 41 (0.49%) Power Query
19 40 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
20 39 (0.47%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 674 (8.05%) JIRA
2 214 (2.56%) Git
3 202 (2.41%) Jenkins
4 118 (1.41%) GitLab
5 59 (0.70%) JUnit
6 56 (0.67%) Cucumber
7 42 (0.50%) Selenium
7 42 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
8 31 (0.37%) Postman
9 26 (0.31%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.30%) Visual Studio
11 23 (0.27%) MLflow
12 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
13 19 (0.23%) ERwin
14 18 (0.21%) Maven
15 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
16 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
17 14 (0.17%) Hudson
18 12 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 2,628 (31.39%) Social Skills
2 1,561 (18.64%) Banking
3 1,135 (13.56%) Analytical Skills
4 603 (7.20%) Public Sector
5 327 (3.91%) Financial Institution
6 323 (3.86%) Legal
7 282 (3.37%) Front Office
8 276 (3.30%) Investment Banking
9 241 (2.88%) Organisational Skills
10 234 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
11 231 (2.76%) Manufacturing
12 228 (2.72%) Marketing
13 221 (2.64%) Retail
14 202 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
15 198 (2.36%) Telecoms
16 136 (1.62%) General Ledger
17 128 (1.53%) Local Government
18 122 (1.46%) Law
18 122 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
19 113 (1.35%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,292 (15.43%) Analyst
2 849 (10.14%) Developer
2 849 (10.14%) Senior
3 820 (9.79%) Lead
4 750 (8.96%) Architect
5 700 (8.36%) Business Analyst
6 667 (7.97%) Project Manager
7 627 (7.49%) Consultant
8 294 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
9 252 (3.01%) Data Engineer
10 198 (2.36%) Financial Analyst
11 191 (2.28%) Senior Manager
12 190 (2.27%) Data Analyst
13 186 (2.22%) Finance Manager
14 166 (1.98%) Programme Manager
15 152 (1.82%) Java Developer
16 150 (1.79%) Accountant
17 137 (1.64%) Delivery Manager
18 130 (1.55%) Senior Analyst
19 128 (1.53%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (3.16%) Kafka
2 255 (3.05%) REST
3 212 (2.53%) .NET
4 200 (2.39%) React
5 167 (1.99%) Middleware
6 154 (1.84%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (1.74%) Spring
8 134 (1.60%) Spring Boot
9 128 (1.53%) RESTful
10 117 (1.40%) Node.js
11 98 (1.17%) AngularJS
12 95 (1.13%) PySpark
13 84 (1.00%) OAuth
14 80 (0.96%) XML
15 76 (0.91%) JSON
16 75 (0.90%) HTML
17 73 (0.87%) Redux
18 72 (0.86%) CSS
19 65 (0.78%) Pandas
20 62 (0.74%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 352 (4.20%) Onboarding
2 310 (3.70%) Product Ownership
3 273 (3.26%) Cloud Native
4 219 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
5 185 (2.21%) Management Information System
6 162 (1.93%) Data Structures
7 160 (1.91%) Derivative
8 158 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
9 145 (1.73%) Data Centre
10 144 (1.72%) Fixed Income
10 144 (1.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 135 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
12 113 (1.35%) Equities
13 102 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
14 99 (1.18%) Public Cloud
15 98 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
16 97 (1.16%) Virtual Team
17 82 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 62 (0.74%) CMDB
18 62 (0.74%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 286 (3.42%) Linux
2 273 (3.26%) Windows
3 139 (1.66%) Unix
4 67 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 50 (0.60%) Windows 10
6 33 (0.39%) Android
7 27 (0.32%) Mac OS
8 24 (0.29%) Apple iOS
9 23 (0.27%) zOS
10 19 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 18 (0.21%) Solaris
12 15 (0.18%) AIX
13 7 (0.084%) VMS
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) MVS
15 3 (0.036%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.024%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,724 (20.59%) Agile
2 1,645 (19.65%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,238 (14.79%) Problem-Solving
4 1,121 (13.39%) Migration
5 937 (11.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 904 (10.80%) DevOps
7 900 (10.75%) Continuous Improvement
8 869 (10.38%) ERP
9 836 (9.98%) CI/CD
10 821 (9.81%) Analytics
11 812 (9.70%) Project Management
12 776 (9.27%) Business Intelligence
13 743 (8.87%) AI
14 666 (7.95%) Decision-Making
15 665 (7.94%) Data Modelling
16 637 (7.61%) Roadmaps
17 618 (7.38%) Validation
18 601 (7.18%) User Acceptance Testing
19 597 (7.13%) Change Management
20 581 (6.94%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,172 (14.00%) SQL
2 976 (11.66%) Python
3 560 (6.69%) Java
4 303 (3.62%) C#
5 225 (2.69%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.34%) TypeScript
7 165 (1.97%) PowerShell
8 108 (1.29%) C++
9 71 (0.85%) Bash
10 67 (0.80%) Go
11 65 (0.78%) PL/SQL
12 58 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 54 (0.64%) VBA
14 50 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 44 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 38 (0.45%) Scala
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 31 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.33%) Bicep
20 25 (0.30%) Perl
Qualifications
1 762 (9.10%) Degree
2 709 (8.47%) Security Cleared
3 503 (6.01%) SC Cleared
4 211 (2.52%) PMP
5 202 (2.41%) PMI Certification
6 190 (2.27%) ACCA
7 180 (2.15%) CIMA
8 148 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
9 146 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
10 132 (1.58%) Master's Degree
11 122 (1.46%) CISSP
12 87 (1.04%) DV Cleared
13 83 (0.99%) CISM
14 70 (0.84%) Azure Certification
15 64 (0.76%) AWS Certification
16 45 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
17 37 (0.44%) ISTQB
18 36 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
19 35 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
20 30 (0.36%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 465 (5.55%) Data Quality
2 402 (4.80%) QA
3 334 (3.99%) PMO
4 298 (3.56%) GDPR
5 152 (1.82%) NIST
6 128 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.31%) SLA
8 97 (1.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 91 (1.09%) IFRS
10 76 (0.91%) Accessibility
11 72 (0.86%) PCI DSS
12 69 (0.82%) GRC
13 59 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 48 (0.57%) GAAP
15 39 (0.47%) PSD2
16 35 (0.42%) SEPA
17 34 (0.41%) NCSC
18 29 (0.35%) MiFID
19 27 (0.32%) Basel III
20 26 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 299 (3.57%) Docker
2 152 (1.82%) Active Directory
3 60 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.41%) vSphere
5 25 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
8 13 (0.16%) NFS
9 12 (0.14%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 8 (0.096%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.060%) HDFS
14 4 (0.048%) ISA Server
14 4 (0.048%) KVM
14 4 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.048%) RACF
15 3 (0.036%) ACF2
15 3 (0.036%) Firmware
15 3 (0.036%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 394 (4.71%) Kubernetes
2 257 (3.07%) Terraform
3 128 (1.53%) Ansible
4 85 (1.02%) Grafana
5 67 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.60%) SCCM
8 36 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) vRealize
11 17 (0.20%) Argo
11 17 (0.20%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.19%) Control-M
13 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.16%) Puppet
13 13 (0.16%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
14 12 (0.14%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.12%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,104 (13.19%) Microsoft
2 809 (9.66%) SAP
3 730 (8.72%) Oracle
4 329 (3.93%) ServiceNow
5 222 (2.65%) Databricks
6 190 (2.27%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.09%) Google
8 146 (1.74%) Workday
9 139 (1.66%) Cisco
10 114 (1.36%) Splunk
10 114 (1.36%) VMware
11 104 (1.24%) IBM
12 78 (0.93%) Ariba
13 77 (0.92%) Citrix
14 74 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 72 (0.86%) Sage
16 55 (0.66%) Informatica
17 54 (0.64%) OpenAI
18 48 (0.57%) Bloomberg
18 48 (0.57%) Murex