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 16 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,260 7,225 7,656
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.55% 21.72% 20.35%
As % of the General category 32.61% 34.35% 34.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,152 4,727 4,797
10th Percentile £363 £338 £356
25th Percentile £450 £419 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £528 £573
Median % change year-on-year +4.27% -7.86% -2.97%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 392 154 122
10th Percentile £14.37 £15.48 £15.27
25th Percentile £18.69 £17.79 £23.82
Median hourly rate £42.48 £27.45 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.74% -16.82% +28.35%
75th Percentile £43.96 £53.90 £55.00
90th Percentile £68.38 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £21.50 £30.83
% change year-on-year +104.47% -30.25% +20.88%

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 31,467 21,032 22,075
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.89% 63.22% 58.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,284 13,119 13,034
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £647
90th Percentile £740 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,870 1,259 912
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.57 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.28 £17.06
Median hourly rate £26.84 £25.00 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.36% -21.88% +7.56%
75th Percentile £53.75 £44.42 £59.96
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.25 £71.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.50 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +24.41% -29.00% +11.11%

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 16 October 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 16 October 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 16 October 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 8,743 £550 - 1,823
London +1 5,313 £600 +2.13% 834
UK excluding London 0 3,956 £508 +1.50% 1,306
Work from Home -1 2,851 £550 - 989
North of England 0 1,384 £513 +9.73% 314
South East -1 750 £500 -1.23% 426
North West -2 655 £500 +11.11% 152
Yorkshire +1 646 £514 +2.80% 122
Midlands -3 611 £515 +8.42% 195
Scotland +1 556 £463 -6.57% 70
West Midlands -1 453 £515 -1.01% 127
South West -6 342 £525 -4.55% 208
East of England +1 197 £530 -5.78% 78
East Midlands -2 152 £500 +19.05% 68
Wales +3 76 £525 +13.51% 24
North East -7 76 £575 +31.05% 45
Northern Ireland 0 65 £463 -11.90% 26
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 5

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
1 341 (3.32%) Confluence
2 264 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 96 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 87 (0.85%) Apache Spark
5 84 (0.82%) Apache
6 56 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.34%) CMS
8 23 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
8 23 (0.22%) SAS
9 18 (0.18%) IIS
10 14 (0.14%) Camunda
11 12 (0.12%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.11%) CICS
12 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
13 10 (0.097%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.078%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 7 (0.068%) Appian
16 6 (0.058%) WebLogic
17 5 (0.049%) JBoss
17 5 (0.049%) OpenEdge
Applications
1 538 (5.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 227 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
3 196 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 154 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
5 88 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 74 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.23%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.097%) Trello
9 9 (0.088%) Adobe Illustrator
9 9 (0.088%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.068%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.049%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.039%) Adobe Premiere
12 4 (0.039%) Sketch
12 4 (0.039%) Windchill
13 3 (0.029%) 1Password
13 3 (0.029%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.029%) Notion
13 3 (0.029%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.019%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 446 (4.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 125 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
4 92 (0.90%) Oracle ERP
4 92 (0.90%) Oracle General Ledger
5 88 (0.86%) NetSuite
6 86 (0.84%) SAP FI
7 82 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
8 77 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
9 61 (0.59%) Oracle Financials
10 56 (0.55%) SAP CO
11 54 (0.53%) Workday HCM
12 51 (0.50%) Oracle Assets
12 51 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
13 47 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 44 (0.43%) Aladdin
15 35 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
16 34 (0.33%) SAP GRC
17 31 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
18 26 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,656 (16.14%) Azure
2 1,121 (10.93%) AWS
3 660 (6.43%) Power Platform
4 580 (5.65%) GCP
5 386 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
6 356 (3.47%) GitHub
7 340 (3.31%) Microsoft 365
8 323 (3.15%) SaaS
9 275 (2.68%) Dynamics 365
10 234 (2.28%) Entra ID
11 229 (2.23%) Snowflake
12 166 (1.62%) Serverless
13 151 (1.47%) GitHub Actions
14 141 (1.37%) OCI
15 131 (1.28%) Microsoft Copilot
15 131 (1.28%) Power Automate
16 128 (1.25%) Amazon S3
17 125 (1.22%) dbt
18 118 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
19 110 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 182 (1.77%) Firewall
2 176 (1.72%) Network Security
3 110 (1.07%) VPN
4 99 (0.96%) DNS
5 67 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 61 (0.59%) WAN
7 55 (0.54%) BGP
8 51 (0.50%) DHCP
9 40 (0.39%) SSL
10 39 (0.38%) Multicast
11 38 (0.37%) VLAN
12 35 (0.34%) LAN
12 35 (0.34%) OSPF
12 35 (0.34%) SAN
13 34 (0.33%) HTTP
14 32 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
15 31 (0.30%) Internet
16 29 (0.28%) Wireless
17 23 (0.22%) SD-WAN
18 20 (0.19%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 517 (5.04%) Power BI
2 300 (2.92%) SQL Server
3 271 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
4 194 (1.89%) Metadata
5 166 (1.62%) Relational Database
6 153 (1.49%) Data Lake
7 138 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
8 130 (1.27%) Tableau
9 88 (0.86%) NoSQL
10 84 (0.82%) Oracle Database
11 82 (0.80%) BigQuery
12 81 (0.79%) MongoDB
13 59 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
14 56 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
15 54 (0.53%) Delta Lake
16 53 (0.52%) Power Query
17 48 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
18 46 (0.45%) Big Data
19 43 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
20 42 (0.41%) Db2
Development Applications
1 693 (6.75%) JIRA
2 363 (3.54%) Git
3 197 (1.92%) Jenkins
4 133 (1.30%) GitLab
5 69 (0.67%) Selenium
6 54 (0.53%) JUnit
7 52 (0.51%) Claude Code
8 44 (0.43%) Maven
9 42 (0.41%) Gradle
10 40 (0.39%) Bitbucket
10 40 (0.39%) Cucumber
11 37 (0.36%) REST Assured
12 33 (0.32%) Visual Studio
13 32 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 31 (0.30%) Cypress.io
15 30 (0.29%) Postman
16 26 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
17 25 (0.24%) ERwin
18 22 (0.21%) Mockito
18 22 (0.21%) Zephyr
General
1 3,246 (31.64%) Social Skills
2 2,244 (21.87%) Banking
3 1,478 (14.41%) Analytical Skills
4 565 (5.51%) Public Sector
5 553 (5.39%) Legal
6 486 (4.74%) Organisational Skills
7 406 (3.96%) Investment Banking
8 365 (3.56%) Influencing Skills
9 359 (3.50%) Retail
10 343 (3.34%) Front Office
11 320 (3.12%) Financial Institution
12 237 (2.31%) Manufacturing
13 213 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
14 205 (2.00%) Marketing
15 201 (1.96%) General Ledger
16 194 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 193 (1.88%) Billing
18 158 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
19 157 (1.53%) Local Government
20 149 (1.45%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,411 (13.75%) Analyst
2 1,172 (11.42%) Senior
3 1,005 (9.80%) Developer
4 981 (9.56%) Lead
5 908 (8.85%) Architect
6 745 (7.26%) Consultant
7 724 (7.06%) Business Analyst
8 695 (6.77%) Project Manager
9 367 (3.58%) Solutions Architect
10 289 (2.82%) Data Engineer
11 256 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 229 (2.23%) Senior Manager
13 220 (2.14%) Senior Developer
14 213 (2.08%) Programme Manager
15 206 (2.01%) Data Analyst
16 203 (1.98%) Java Developer
17 191 (1.86%) IT Manager
18 182 (1.77%) Accountant
19 165 (1.61%) Finance Manager
20 150 (1.46%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 445 (4.34%) Terraform
2 444 (4.33%) REST
3 289 (2.82%) Kafka
4 283 (2.76%) .NET
5 274 (2.67%) Oracle Fusion
6 254 (2.48%) React
7 208 (2.03%) Spring
8 203 (1.98%) Spring Boot
9 202 (1.97%) Middleware
10 151 (1.47%) PySpark
10 151 (1.47%) RESTful
11 121 (1.18%) JSON
12 116 (1.13%) OAuth
12 116 (1.13%) XML
13 102 (0.99%) Web Services
14 101 (0.98%) SOAP
15 88 (0.86%) AngularJS
16 86 (0.84%) Redux
17 85 (0.83%) HTML
18 84 (0.82%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 549 (5.35%) Onboarding
2 546 (5.32%) Product Ownership
3 511 (4.98%) Cloud Native
4 288 (2.81%) Management Information System
5 262 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
6 258 (2.51%) AI Agents
7 238 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
7 238 (2.32%) Virtual Team
8 234 (2.28%) Data Structures
9 216 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
10 210 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
11 190 (1.85%) Derivative
12 183 (1.78%) Data Centre
13 154 (1.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 137 (1.34%) Fixed Income
15 136 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
16 123 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
17 119 (1.16%) Equities
18 114 (1.11%) Web Conferencing
19 113 (1.10%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 393 (3.83%) Windows
2 355 (3.46%) Linux
3 172 (1.68%) Unix
4 103 (1.00%) Windows Server
5 62 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 51 (0.50%) Apple iOS
7 45 (0.44%) Android
8 42 (0.41%) Windows 10
9 40 (0.39%) macOS
10 33 (0.32%) zOS
11 21 (0.20%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.097%) AIX
15 5 (0.049%) CentOS
16 4 (0.039%) Oracle Linux
16 4 (0.039%) Windows Server 2019
17 3 (0.029%) HPUX
17 3 (0.029%) SUSE
17 3 (0.029%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,967 (28.92%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,143 (20.89%) Agile
3 1,432 (13.96%) AI
4 1,405 (13.69%) Problem-Solving
5 1,403 (13.67%) Migration
6 1,228 (11.97%) CI/CD
7 1,163 (11.34%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,144 (11.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,087 (10.59%) DevOps
10 1,066 (10.39%) Analytics
11 982 (9.57%) Decision-Making
12 968 (9.43%) ERP
13 958 (9.34%) Roadmaps
14 942 (9.18%) Validation
15 789 (7.69%) Project Management
15 789 (7.69%) Risk Management
16 787 (7.67%) Data Modelling
17 771 (7.51%) User Acceptance Testing
18 739 (7.20%) Project Delivery
19 716 (6.98%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,389 (13.54%) SQL
2 1,339 (13.05%) Python
3 678 (6.61%) Java
4 366 (3.57%) C#
5 315 (3.07%) PowerShell
6 285 (2.78%) JavaScript
7 230 (2.24%) TypeScript
8 183 (1.78%) Bash
9 101 (0.98%) PL/SQL
10 96 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 76 (0.74%) C++
11 76 (0.74%) Go
12 66 (0.64%) T-SQL
13 65 (0.63%) Bicep
14 62 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 52 (0.51%) Korn
16 48 (0.47%) Scala
17 39 (0.38%) Kotlin
18 31 (0.30%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.29%) VBA
Qualifications
1 815 (7.94%) Security Cleared
2 744 (7.25%) Degree
3 585 (5.70%) SC Cleared
4 274 (2.67%) PMP
5 267 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
6 252 (2.46%) PMI Certification
7 183 (1.78%) ACCA
8 162 (1.58%) CIMA
9 152 (1.48%) DV Cleared
10 143 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
11 126 (1.23%) CISSP
12 117 (1.14%) Azure Certification
13 89 (0.87%) AWS Certification
14 80 (0.78%) Master's Degree
15 77 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
16 71 (0.69%) CISM
17 50 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
18 46 (0.45%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.39%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 754 (7.35%) Data Quality
2 422 (4.11%) QA
3 369 (3.60%) PMO
4 198 (1.93%) GDPR
5 132 (1.29%) NIST
6 125 (1.22%) GRC
7 117 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 115 (1.12%) Accessibility
9 92 (0.90%) SLA
10 89 (0.87%) IFRS
11 72 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 68 (0.66%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.43%) PCI DSS
14 43 (0.42%) SEPA
15 39 (0.38%) GAAP
16 34 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 30 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 28 (0.27%) COBIT
19 27 (0.26%) NCSC
20 26 (0.25%) WCAG
System Software
1 285 (2.78%) Docker
2 250 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 107 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 31 (0.30%) vSphere
6 26 (0.25%) RACF
6 26 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
10 13 (0.13%) NFS
11 7 (0.068%) IAG
12 6 (0.058%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.049%) GPFS
13 5 (0.049%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.039%) ACF2
14 4 (0.039%) Firmware
14 4 (0.039%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.039%) zsh
15 3 (0.029%) KVM
Systems Management
1 536 (5.22%) Kubernetes
2 202 (1.97%) Ansible
3 102 (0.99%) Grafana
4 85 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 75 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 65 (0.63%) SCCM
7 61 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.26%) Control-M
10 22 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.19%) Argo
12 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
13 16 (0.16%) Istio
14 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
15 11 (0.11%) Puppet
15 11 (0.11%) Tivoli
16 10 (0.097%) Cisco Prime
16 10 (0.097%) Packer
17 9 (0.088%) HP ALM
17 9 (0.088%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,534 (14.95%) Microsoft
2 916 (8.93%) SAP
3 881 (8.59%) Oracle
4 367 (3.58%) Databricks
5 365 (3.56%) ServiceNow
6 257 (2.50%) Salesforce
7 253 (2.47%) Google
8 205 (2.00%) IBM
9 164 (1.60%) VMware
9 164 (1.60%) Workday
10 138 (1.35%) Cisco
11 131 (1.28%) Splunk
12 124 (1.21%) Ariba
13 95 (0.93%) CyberArk
14 91 (0.89%) OpenAI
15 66 (0.64%) Bloomberg
16 60 (0.58%) Citrix
17 59 (0.58%) Murex
17 59 (0.58%) Sage
18 55 (0.54%) Red Hat