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 6 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,879 7,554 7,692
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.53% 22.95% 19.67%
As % of the General category 33.70% 36.27% 34.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,103 4,988 5,137
10th Percentile £358 £335 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% -5.22% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £725
90th Percentile £792 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £494 £500
% change year-on-year +1.82% -1.25% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 288 145 193
10th Percentile £16.25 £16.00 £15.04
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.25 £24.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +39.94%
75th Percentile £50.00 £63.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £38.12
% change year-on-year +60.58% -28.19% +17.29%

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 29,316 20,829 22,431
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.00% 63.29% 57.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,434 13,018 14,116
10th Percentile £313 £278 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £627 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,170 1,117 1,403
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.64 £16.25 £17.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £60.00 £50.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.06 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +46.62%

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 6 August 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 6 August 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 6 August 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 8,614 £550 - 7,861
London 0 5,209 £590 -1.67% 4,816
UK excluding London 0 3,894 £503 +1.82% 3,884
Work from Home -1 2,834 £550 -4.35% 3,010
North of England 0 1,331 £500 +6.84% 1,053
South East -1 746 £505 -6.05% 1,110
North West 0 703 £500 +10.01% 592
Midlands 0 636 £525 +16.67% 541
Yorkshire 0 564 £517 +8.80% 338
Scotland 0 505 £475 -5.00% 293
West Midlands +1 483 £525 +6.71% 322
South West -4 377 £525 -5.47% 435
East of England +6 206 £525 -7.89% 298
East Midlands -2 147 £500 +21.21% 219
Wales +1 68 £530 +14.59% 108
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +1.06% 114
North East -13 57 £500 +11.11% 132
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 -

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
1 328 (3.32%) Confluence
2 250 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 87 (0.88%) Apache Spark
4 85 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 67 (0.68%) Apache
6 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 16 (0.16%) CICS
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.13%) Camunda
14 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
16 7 (0.071%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 533 (5.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 165 (1.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 163 (1.65%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.06%) MS Visio
6 74 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.061%) Sketch
11 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 448 (4.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.14%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 90 (0.91%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
9 60 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 55 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
12 45 (0.46%) SAP CO
13 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.36%) Unit4 Business World
16 35 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
17 32 (0.32%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
19 28 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
19 28 (0.28%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,552 (15.71%) Azure
2 1,089 (11.02%) AWS
3 667 (6.75%) Power Platform
4 516 (5.22%) GCP
5 341 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
6 333 (3.37%) SaaS
7 295 (2.99%) Microsoft 365
8 293 (2.97%) GitHub
9 253 (2.56%) Dynamics 365
10 216 (2.19%) Snowflake
11 206 (2.09%) Entra ID
12 146 (1.48%) Serverless
13 143 (1.45%) OCI
14 126 (1.28%) Amazon S3
15 121 (1.22%) Power Automate
16 110 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
16 110 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
17 108 (1.09%) dbt
18 106 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
19 101 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 183 (1.85%) Firewall
2 148 (1.50%) Network Security
3 94 (0.95%) VPN
4 90 (0.91%) DNS
5 66 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 58 (0.59%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) SSL
8 47 (0.48%) BGP
9 43 (0.44%) DHCP
10 41 (0.42%) LAN
11 38 (0.38%) HTTP
12 34 (0.34%) Multicast
13 29 (0.29%) OSPF
14 27 (0.27%) Wireless
15 26 (0.26%) Internet
15 26 (0.26%) VLAN
16 24 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
17 21 (0.21%) Cisco ASA
17 21 (0.21%) SAN
18 19 (0.19%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 549 (5.56%) Power BI
2 283 (2.86%) SQL Server
3 260 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
4 199 (2.01%) Metadata
5 178 (1.80%) Relational Database
6 154 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
7 144 (1.46%) Data Lake
7 144 (1.46%) Tableau
8 88 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
9 84 (0.85%) NoSQL
10 76 (0.77%) MongoDB
11 73 (0.74%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.72%) BigQuery
13 66 (0.67%) Big Data
14 62 (0.63%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.55%) Power Query
16 50 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 48 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 673 (6.81%) JIRA
2 284 (2.87%) Git
3 158 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 100 (1.01%) GitLab
5 46 (0.47%) JUnit
6 39 (0.39%) Selenium
7 36 (0.36%) Cucumber
8 29 (0.29%) ERwin
9 28 (0.28%) Visual Studio
10 27 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 25 (0.25%) Claude Code
12 25 (0.25%) Maven
13 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
14 23 (0.23%) Postman
15 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
15 20 (0.20%) TeamCity
General
1 2,904 (29.40%) Social Skills
2 1,885 (19.08%) Banking
3 1,378 (13.95%) Analytical Skills
4 549 (5.56%) Public Sector
5 523 (5.29%) Legal
6 387 (3.92%) Investment Banking
7 385 (3.90%) Organisational Skills
8 370 (3.75%) Retail
9 362 (3.66%) Financial Institution
10 352 (3.56%) Front Office
11 282 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
12 229 (2.32%) Documentation Skills
13 195 (1.97%) Manufacturing
14 177 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 162 (1.64%) Billing
16 159 (1.61%) Local Government
16 159 (1.61%) Marketing
17 158 (1.60%) General Ledger
18 141 (1.43%) Law
18 141 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,435 (14.53%) Analyst
2 1,069 (10.82%) Senior
3 1,065 (10.78%) Lead
4 991 (10.03%) Developer
5 882 (8.93%) Architect
6 737 (7.46%) Business Analyst
7 710 (7.19%) Project Manager
8 680 (6.88%) Consultant
9 338 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
10 322 (3.26%) Data Engineer
11 247 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 228 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 208 (2.11%) Accountant
14 205 (2.08%) Java Developer
15 202 (2.04%) Data Analyst
16 190 (1.92%) Senior Developer
17 186 (1.88%) Finance Manager
17 186 (1.88%) Programme Manager
18 180 (1.82%) Software Engineer
19 176 (1.78%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (3.29%) REST
2 277 (2.80%) .NET
3 266 (2.69%) React
4 262 (2.65%) Kafka
5 247 (2.50%) Oracle Fusion
6 191 (1.93%) Middleware
7 174 (1.76%) Spring
8 162 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 137 (1.39%) PySpark
10 130 (1.32%) RESTful
11 119 (1.20%) Redux
12 111 (1.12%) Node.js
13 97 (0.98%) JSON
14 93 (0.94%) AngularJS
15 91 (0.92%) XML
16 90 (0.91%) OAuth
17 67 (0.68%) SOAP
18 63 (0.64%) Web Services
19 62 (0.63%) GraphQL
20 61 (0.62%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 481 (4.87%) Onboarding
2 466 (4.72%) Product Ownership
3 423 (4.28%) Cloud Native
4 267 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
5 244 (2.47%) Data Structures
6 223 (2.26%) Management Information System
7 194 (1.96%) Virtual Team
8 183 (1.85%) Derivative
9 175 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
10 174 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
11 166 (1.68%) Fixed Income
12 156 (1.58%) Data Centre
12 156 (1.58%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 152 (1.54%) AI Agents
14 135 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
15 120 (1.21%) Equities
16 109 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
17 105 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
18 102 (1.03%) Public Cloud
19 99 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 357 (3.61%) Windows
2 296 (3.00%) Linux
3 153 (1.55%) Unix
4 82 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 48 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 43 (0.44%) Apple iOS
7 39 (0.39%) Windows 10
8 37 (0.37%) Solaris
8 37 (0.37%) zOS
9 33 (0.33%) Android
10 26 (0.26%) Mac OS
11 18 (0.18%) AIX
12 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
13 8 (0.081%) VMS
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 5 (0.051%) MVS
16 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
17 2 (0.020%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,318 (23.46%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,035 (20.60%) Agile
3 1,356 (13.73%) Migration
4 1,300 (13.16%) Problem-Solving
5 1,170 (11.84%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,153 (11.67%) AI
7 1,139 (11.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,032 (10.45%) ERP
9 1,025 (10.38%) CI/CD
10 1,006 (10.18%) DevOps
11 1,003 (10.15%) Analytics
12 909 (9.20%) Decision-Making
13 803 (8.13%) Validation
14 800 (8.10%) Roadmaps
15 798 (8.08%) Data Modelling
16 763 (7.72%) User Acceptance Testing
17 749 (7.58%) Project Management
18 715 (7.24%) Change Management
19 679 (6.87%) Business Intelligence
20 648 (6.56%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,279 (12.95%) SQL
2 1,211 (12.26%) Python
3 636 (6.44%) Java
4 384 (3.89%) C#
5 270 (2.73%) JavaScript
6 243 (2.46%) TypeScript
7 238 (2.41%) PowerShell
8 123 (1.25%) Bash
9 98 (0.99%) PL/SQL
10 82 (0.83%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.78%) C++
11 77 (0.78%) Go
12 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 51 (0.52%) Bicep
15 47 (0.48%) VBA
16 40 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.37%) Scala
18 35 (0.35%) Apex Code
19 34 (0.34%) Korn
Qualifications
1 770 (7.79%) Security Cleared
2 722 (7.31%) Degree
3 549 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 243 (2.46%) PMP
5 215 (2.18%) PMI Certification
6 202 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
7 201 (2.03%) ACCA
8 178 (1.80%) CIMA
9 153 (1.55%) CISSP
10 140 (1.42%) DV Cleared
11 117 (1.18%) Computer Science Degree
12 99 (1.00%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.88%) CISM
14 79 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
15 73 (0.74%) Master's Degree
16 60 (0.61%) AWS Certification
17 53 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 637 (6.45%) Data Quality
2 414 (4.19%) QA
3 368 (3.73%) PMO
4 275 (2.78%) GDPR
5 156 (1.58%) NIST
6 124 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.16%) SLA
8 111 (1.12%) GRC
9 103 (1.04%) Accessibility
10 100 (1.01%) IFRS
10 100 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 61 (0.62%) GAAP
12 59 (0.60%) ISO 20022
13 50 (0.51%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.36%) Solvency II
15 35 (0.35%) SEPA
16 31 (0.31%) COBIT
17 30 (0.30%) MiFID
17 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 29 (0.29%) EMIR
System Software
1 268 (2.71%) Docker
2 229 (2.32%) Active Directory
3 65 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.23%) RACF
6 22 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
6 22 (0.22%) vSphere
7 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
9 11 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 5 (0.051%) ACF2
12 5 (0.051%) GPFS
12 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.040%) KVM
13 4 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 433 (4.38%) Kubernetes
2 337 (3.41%) Terraform
3 159 (1.61%) Ansible
4 87 (0.88%) Grafana
5 76 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
6 71 (0.72%) Prometheus
7 54 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 51 (0.52%) SCCM
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 24 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.16%) Argo
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 16 (0.16%) Puppet
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 13 (0.13%) CASB
14 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,316 (13.32%) Microsoft
2 855 (8.65%) Oracle
3 835 (8.45%) SAP
4 365 (3.69%) ServiceNow
5 320 (3.24%) Databricks
6 229 (2.32%) Salesforce
7 215 (2.18%) Google
8 160 (1.62%) IBM
9 139 (1.41%) Workday
10 127 (1.29%) VMware
11 110 (1.11%) Cisco
12 105 (1.06%) Splunk
13 93 (0.94%) Ariba
14 89 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 74 (0.75%) OpenAI
16 64 (0.65%) Sage
17 60 (0.61%) Citrix
18 51 (0.52%) Bloomberg
18 51 (0.52%) Informatica
19 45 (0.46%) Murex