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 24 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,005 7,291 7,712
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.22% 22.12% 20.24%
As % of the General category 32.61% 34.88% 34.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,073 4,752 4,885
10th Percentile £359 £338 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £536 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.61% -6.78% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £706
90th Percentile £788 £793 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £509
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.72% -3.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 134 136
10th Percentile £14.85 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.31 £19.84 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.11% -13.56% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £57.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £78.75 £74.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £33.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -23.79% +26.92%

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 30,682 20,903 22,166
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.89% 63.41% 58.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,960 12,968 13,178
10th Percentile £313 £275 £282
25th Percentile £420 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £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 2,582 1,209 1,060
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.21
Median hourly rate £29.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.30% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £54.48 £47.12 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.96 £21.30 £35.00
% change year-on-year +40.66% -39.14% +29.63%

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 8,583 £550 - 18,471
London 0 5,203 £591 +0.60% 11,795
UK excluding London -1 3,900 £510 +2.00% 8,420
Work from Home -1 2,833 £550 -2.65% 7,264
North of England 0 1,335 £514 +10.72% 1,924
South East -2 738 £500 -2.72% 2,169
North West -1 641 £502 +11.44% 1,075
Yorkshire 0 615 £525 +5.00% 645
Midlands -3 605 £515 +8.42% 1,162
Scotland 0 553 £463 -7.50% 1,020
West Midlands -2 453 £525 +1.01% 713
South West -5 357 £525 -5.01% 978
East of England +2 207 £550 -3.51% 664
East Midlands -3 149 £500 +19.76% 447
North East -7 72 £538 +22.51% 216
Northern Ireland 0 65 £510 -1.21% 360
Wales +1 62 £525 +20.69% 219
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 17

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
1 323 (3.23%) Confluence
2 257 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 93 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
4 84 (0.84%) Apache Spark
5 75 (0.75%) Apache
6 46 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 36 (0.36%) CMS
8 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
8 26 (0.26%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 16 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 10 (0.100%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.090%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.060%) Appian
16 6 (0.060%) JBoss
16 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
17 5 (0.050%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 534 (5.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
3 200 (2.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 139 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
5 86 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 66 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.27%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
10 4 (0.040%) Windchill
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 442 (4.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.24%) Oracle Payables
3 105 (1.05%) Oracle Receivables
4 103 (1.03%) NetSuite
5 92 (0.92%) Oracle ERP
6 78 (0.78%) Oracle General Ledger
7 77 (0.77%) SAP FI
8 74 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
9 67 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
10 53 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
10 53 (0.53%) SAP CO
11 51 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 48 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
13 44 (0.44%) Workday HCM
14 41 (0.41%) Oracle Assets
15 37 (0.37%) Aladdin
16 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
17 33 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
18 28 (0.28%) SAP BRIM
19 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,570 (15.69%) Azure
2 1,098 (10.97%) AWS
3 661 (6.61%) Power Platform
4 563 (5.63%) GCP
5 340 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
6 325 (3.25%) SaaS
7 321 (3.21%) GitHub
8 315 (3.15%) Microsoft 365
9 263 (2.63%) Dynamics 365
10 229 (2.29%) Entra ID
11 226 (2.26%) Snowflake
12 158 (1.58%) Serverless
13 144 (1.44%) OCI
14 133 (1.33%) Amazon S3
15 130 (1.30%) dbt
15 130 (1.30%) GitHub Actions
16 128 (1.28%) Power Automate
17 121 (1.21%) Microsoft Copilot
18 109 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
19 103 (1.03%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.73%) Firewall
2 154 (1.54%) Network Security
3 103 (1.03%) VPN
4 84 (0.84%) DNS
5 58 (0.58%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.56%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 46 (0.46%) BGP
9 43 (0.43%) SSL
10 33 (0.33%) Multicast
11 32 (0.32%) HTTP
11 32 (0.32%) LAN
11 32 (0.32%) VLAN
12 31 (0.31%) Wireless
13 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
14 26 (0.26%) OSPF
15 25 (0.25%) SAN
16 24 (0.24%) Internet
17 18 (0.18%) Broadband
17 18 (0.18%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 529 (5.29%) Power BI
2 281 (2.81%) SQL Server
3 252 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 206 (2.06%) Metadata
5 177 (1.77%) Relational Database
6 142 (1.42%) Data Lake
7 139 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
8 125 (1.25%) Tableau
9 87 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 85 (0.85%) BigQuery
11 81 (0.81%) Oracle Database
12 78 (0.78%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
14 59 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (0.54%) Power Query
16 53 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 47 (0.47%) Big Data
18 45 (0.45%) Db2
19 43 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
19 43 (0.43%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 643 (6.43%) JIRA
2 323 (3.23%) Git
3 171 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 108 (1.08%) GitLab
5 65 (0.65%) Selenium
6 48 (0.48%) JUnit
7 40 (0.40%) Claude Code
8 36 (0.36%) Bitbucket
8 36 (0.36%) Maven
9 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
10 33 (0.33%) Cucumber
11 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 30 (0.30%) Gradle
13 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
14 28 (0.28%) ERwin
15 25 (0.25%) Cypress.io
15 25 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
16 24 (0.24%) Postman
17 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
18 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 3,112 (31.10%) Social Skills
2 2,086 (20.85%) Banking
3 1,415 (14.14%) Analytical Skills
4 541 (5.41%) Legal
5 540 (5.40%) Public Sector
6 454 (4.54%) Organisational Skills
7 392 (3.92%) Investment Banking
8 379 (3.79%) Retail
9 347 (3.47%) Influencing Skills
10 343 (3.43%) Front Office
11 309 (3.09%) Financial Institution
12 214 (2.14%) Manufacturing
13 212 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
14 196 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 181 (1.81%) Marketing
16 175 (1.75%) General Ledger
17 173 (1.73%) Billing
18 162 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
19 150 (1.50%) Local Government
20 141 (1.41%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,414 (14.13%) Analyst
2 1,115 (11.14%) Senior
3 1,000 (10.00%) Developer
4 990 (9.90%) Lead
5 871 (8.71%) Architect
6 730 (7.30%) Business Analyst
6 730 (7.30%) Consultant
7 683 (6.83%) Project Manager
8 335 (3.35%) Solutions Architect
9 303 (3.03%) Data Engineer
10 263 (2.63%) Financial Analyst
11 218 (2.18%) Senior Manager
12 215 (2.15%) Java Developer
13 211 (2.11%) Senior Developer
14 203 (2.03%) Data Analyst
15 189 (1.89%) Programme Manager
16 179 (1.79%) IT Manager
17 177 (1.77%) Accountant
18 169 (1.69%) Finance Manager
19 150 (1.50%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 408 (4.08%) Terraform
2 397 (3.97%) REST
3 275 (2.75%) Kafka
4 268 (2.68%) .NET
5 261 (2.61%) Oracle Fusion
6 245 (2.45%) React
7 200 (2.00%) Spring
8 193 (1.93%) Spring Boot
9 192 (1.92%) Middleware
10 145 (1.45%) PySpark
10 145 (1.45%) RESTful
11 111 (1.11%) OAuth
12 110 (1.10%) JSON
13 107 (1.07%) XML
14 99 (0.99%) SOAP
15 88 (0.88%) Web Services
16 87 (0.87%) Redux
17 79 (0.79%) AngularJS
18 76 (0.76%) Node.js
19 75 (0.75%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 529 (5.29%) Onboarding
2 515 (5.15%) Product Ownership
3 470 (4.70%) Cloud Native
4 258 (2.58%) Management Information System
5 253 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 234 (2.34%) Data Structures
7 230 (2.30%) Virtual Team
8 211 (2.11%) AI Agents
8 211 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
9 199 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
10 192 (1.92%) Derivative
11 172 (1.72%) Data Centre
12 161 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
13 156 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 136 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
15 131 (1.31%) Fixed Income
16 120 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
17 116 (1.16%) Equities
18 114 (1.14%) Podcast
19 113 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 384 (3.84%) Windows
2 333 (3.33%) Linux
3 170 (1.70%) Unix
4 94 (0.94%) Windows Server
5 60 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 48 (0.48%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.41%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 38 (0.38%) zOS
10 34 (0.34%) Mac OS
11 33 (0.33%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 13 (0.13%) VMS
14 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
15 7 (0.070%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 5 (0.050%) CentOS
18 4 (0.040%) MVS
18 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,720 (27.19%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,032 (20.31%) Agile
3 1,343 (13.42%) Migration
4 1,322 (13.21%) Problem-Solving
5 1,319 (13.18%) AI
6 1,151 (11.50%) CI/CD
7 1,139 (11.38%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,132 (11.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,029 (10.28%) Analytics
10 1,002 (10.01%) DevOps
11 983 (9.83%) ERP
12 928 (9.28%) Decision-Making
13 878 (8.78%) Validation
14 871 (8.71%) Roadmaps
15 781 (7.81%) Data Modelling
16 780 (7.80%) Project Management
17 748 (7.48%) User Acceptance Testing
18 722 (7.22%) Change Management
19 717 (7.17%) Risk Management
20 683 (6.83%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,360 (13.59%) SQL
2 1,280 (12.79%) Python
3 664 (6.64%) Java
4 361 (3.61%) C#
5 284 (2.84%) PowerShell
6 255 (2.55%) JavaScript
7 223 (2.23%) TypeScript
8 159 (1.59%) Bash
9 113 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.77%) C++
12 68 (0.68%) Go
12 68 (0.68%) T-SQL
13 59 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 56 (0.56%) Bicep
15 52 (0.52%) Korn
16 44 (0.44%) Scala
17 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
18 35 (0.35%) VBA
Qualifications
1 770 (7.70%) Security Cleared
2 741 (7.41%) Degree
3 547 (5.47%) SC Cleared
4 261 (2.61%) PMP
5 260 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
6 229 (2.29%) PMI Certification
7 194 (1.94%) ACCA
8 170 (1.70%) CIMA
9 139 (1.39%) DV Cleared
10 134 (1.34%) CISSP
11 133 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
12 115 (1.15%) Azure Certification
13 82 (0.82%) AWS Certification
14 81 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
15 78 (0.78%) Master's Degree
16 70 (0.70%) CISM
17 52 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 49 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 39 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 39 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 709 (7.09%) Data Quality
2 426 (4.26%) QA
3 354 (3.54%) PMO
4 213 (2.13%) GDPR
5 137 (1.37%) NIST
6 127 (1.27%) GRC
7 119 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 106 (1.06%) Accessibility
9 97 (0.97%) SLA
10 96 (0.96%) IFRS
11 75 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.46%) GAAP
14 43 (0.43%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.37%) SEPA
16 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) COBIT
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) EMIR
19 24 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 267 (2.67%) Docker
2 241 (2.41%) Active Directory
3 95 (0.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) RACF
5 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.25%) vSphere
7 16 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 9 (0.090%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
13 5 (0.050%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 494 (4.94%) Kubernetes
2 193 (1.93%) Ansible
3 97 (0.97%) Grafana
4 84 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
5 68 (0.68%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.63%) SCCM
7 61 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
8 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 20 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
13 13 (0.13%) Istio
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.100%) Packer
15 10 (0.100%) Puppet
16 9 (0.090%) Tivoli
16 9 (0.090%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,426 (14.25%) Microsoft
2 879 (8.79%) Oracle
3 874 (8.74%) SAP
4 376 (3.76%) ServiceNow
5 369 (3.69%) Databricks
6 241 (2.41%) Salesforce
7 236 (2.36%) Google
8 200 (2.00%) IBM
9 150 (1.50%) Workday
10 148 (1.48%) VMware
11 128 (1.28%) Cisco
12 118 (1.18%) Splunk
13 107 (1.07%) Ariba
14 90 (0.90%) CyberArk
14 90 (0.90%) OpenAI
15 57 (0.57%) Citrix
16 55 (0.55%) Bloomberg
17 52 (0.52%) Sage
18 50 (0.50%) Murex
18 50 (0.50%) Red Hat