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 11 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,628 6,542 8,134
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.12% 22.25% 18.92%
As % of the General category 33.58% 35.15% 32.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,392 4,289 5,428
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £431 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £565 £576
Median % change year-on-year -4.96% -1.87% -4.04%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 112 246
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.93 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £39.06 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -39.00% +44.81% +4.90%
75th Percentile £54.25 £68.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £55.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £48.82 £32.12
% change year-on-year -52.88% +52.00% -26.59%

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 25,696 18,611 24,955
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.96% 63.29% 58.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,715 11,865 15,747
10th Percentile £306 £295 £275
25th Percentile £407 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +1.05% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,652 790 1,935
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.00 £12.76
25th Percentile £17.59 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.82% -11.06%
75th Percentile £61.18 £56.00 £52.89
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.74 £24.66 £28.50
% change year-on-year +12.49% -13.47% -1.72%

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 11 May 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 11 May 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 11 May 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 7,628 £540 -6.13% 4,358
London 0 4,588 £575 -8.00% 2,277
UK excluding London -1 3,459 £500 - 2,777
Work from Home -2 2,427 £533 -11.17% 1,845
North of England +3 1,157 £483 +1.58% 732
South East -1 654 £503 -3.57% 925
North West +5 620 £465 - 414
Midlands -1 594 £475 -2.56% 390
Yorkshire +1 500 £510 +2.05% 246
Scotland +1 419 £500 +4.82% 139
West Midlands 0 394 £492 -6.29% 220
South West -2 351 £520 -0.95% 283
East of England -3 201 £525 -8.70% 225
East Midlands 0 196 £463 +3.47% 168
Wales +21 94 £450 +20.00% 72
Northern Ireland -1 42 £525 +28.05% 61
North East -15 38 £488 +4.84% 78
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 3

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
1 327 (3.79%) Confluence
2 214 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.03%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.66%) Apache
5 52 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
6 51 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
7 36 (0.42%) SAS
8 22 (0.25%) CICS
8 22 (0.25%) CMS
9 20 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 14 (0.16%) Appian
10 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
10 14 (0.16%) IIS
11 13 (0.15%) Camunda
12 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
12 11 (0.13%) Mendix
13 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
14 9 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 9 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 524 (6.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 230 (2.67%) Microsoft Office
3 178 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
4 176 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 127 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 48 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.15%) Trello
9 8 (0.093%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.093%) Sketch
10 7 (0.081%) InVision
10 7 (0.081%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 388 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.38%) Oracle Payables
3 102 (1.18%) NetSuite
4 98 (1.14%) Oracle Receivables
5 86 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 63 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
6 63 (0.73%) Oracle ERP
7 59 (0.68%) SAP FI
8 58 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
9 49 (0.57%) SAP CO
10 46 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
11 45 (0.52%) SAP FI/CO
12 38 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
13 33 (0.38%) Aladdin
13 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
14 32 (0.37%) Oracle Cash Management
15 30 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
16 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 28 (0.32%) Workday HCM
18 26 (0.30%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,316 (15.25%) Azure
2 977 (11.32%) AWS
3 617 (7.15%) Power Platform
4 391 (4.53%) GCP
5 304 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
6 290 (3.36%) SaaS
7 266 (3.08%) Microsoft 365
8 236 (2.74%) Dynamics 365
8 236 (2.74%) GitHub
9 152 (1.76%) Snowflake
10 141 (1.63%) Serverless
11 133 (1.54%) OCI
12 132 (1.53%) Entra ID
13 117 (1.36%) Amazon S3
14 111 (1.29%) Power Automate
15 96 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
16 91 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
17 85 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 80 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 78 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 158 (1.83%) Firewall
2 113 (1.31%) Network Security
3 75 (0.87%) WAN
4 69 (0.80%) DNS
5 58 (0.67%) VPN
6 51 (0.59%) TCP/IP
7 38 (0.44%) BGP
7 38 (0.44%) SD-WAN
8 37 (0.43%) LAN
9 32 (0.37%) HTTP
10 31 (0.36%) OSPF
11 28 (0.32%) Multicast
11 28 (0.32%) SSL
12 25 (0.29%) DHCP
13 24 (0.28%) MPLS
14 21 (0.24%) Internet
15 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 18 (0.21%) VSAN
17 16 (0.19%) VLAN
18 14 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 527 (6.11%) Power BI
2 215 (2.49%) SQL Server
3 209 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
4 166 (1.92%) Metadata
5 165 (1.91%) PostgreSQL
6 151 (1.75%) Relational Database
7 144 (1.67%) Tableau
8 127 (1.47%) Data Lake
9 87 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
10 86 (1.00%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.90%) Big Data
12 68 (0.79%) Oracle Database
13 59 (0.68%) BigQuery
13 59 (0.68%) MongoDB
14 50 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
15 45 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
16 44 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 43 (0.50%) Delta Lake
18 42 (0.49%) Power Query
19 39 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 683 (7.92%) JIRA
2 207 (2.40%) Git
3 179 (2.07%) Jenkins
4 110 (1.27%) GitLab
5 48 (0.56%) JUnit
6 45 (0.52%) Cucumber
7 37 (0.43%) Selenium
8 31 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.32%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.29%) Postman
11 24 (0.28%) MLflow
12 21 (0.24%) SonarQube
13 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
14 19 (0.22%) Maven
15 18 (0.21%) Hudson
16 17 (0.20%) ERwin
16 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 16 (0.19%) Bitbucket
18 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,573 (29.82%) Social Skills
2 1,566 (18.15%) Banking
3 1,144 (13.26%) Analytical Skills
4 537 (6.22%) Public Sector
5 360 (4.17%) Legal
6 327 (3.79%) Financial Institution
7 294 (3.41%) Investment Banking
8 272 (3.15%) Front Office
9 256 (2.97%) Retail
10 244 (2.83%) Organisational Skills
11 236 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
12 209 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 182 (2.11%) Manufacturing
14 163 (1.89%) Marketing
15 146 (1.69%) Telecoms
16 145 (1.68%) General Ledger
17 128 (1.48%) Local Government
18 125 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
19 122 (1.41%) Law
20 118 (1.37%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,310 (15.18%) Analyst
2 892 (10.34%) Senior
3 878 (10.18%) Lead
4 870 (10.08%) Developer
5 788 (9.13%) Architect
6 701 (8.12%) Business Analyst
7 685 (7.94%) Project Manager
8 596 (6.91%) Consultant
9 318 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
10 280 (3.25%) Data Engineer
11 218 (2.53%) Financial Analyst
12 205 (2.38%) Senior Manager
13 191 (2.21%) Finance Manager
14 185 (2.14%) Programme Manager
15 184 (2.13%) Data Analyst
16 167 (1.94%) Accountant
17 141 (1.63%) Java Developer
18 139 (1.61%) Delivery Manager
19 138 (1.60%) Software Engineer
20 136 (1.58%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (3.05%) Kafka
2 250 (2.90%) REST
3 237 (2.75%) .NET
4 203 (2.35%) React
5 182 (2.11%) Middleware
6 157 (1.82%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (1.70%) Spring
8 143 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 133 (1.54%) RESTful
10 105 (1.22%) PySpark
11 104 (1.21%) Node.js
12 92 (1.07%) AngularJS
13 83 (0.96%) OAuth
14 78 (0.90%) JSON
14 78 (0.90%) Redux
14 78 (0.90%) XML
15 69 (0.80%) HTML
16 68 (0.79%) CSS
17 62 (0.72%) Pandas
18 60 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 356 (4.13%) Onboarding
2 339 (3.93%) Product Ownership
3 308 (3.57%) Cloud Native
4 223 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
5 203 (2.35%) Management Information System
6 185 (2.14%) Data Structures
7 167 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
8 166 (1.92%) Derivative
9 150 (1.74%) Data Centre
10 143 (1.66%) Distributed Systems
11 137 (1.59%) Fixed Income
12 130 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 109 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
14 104 (1.21%) Virtual Team
15 101 (1.17%) Equities
15 101 (1.17%) Public Cloud
16 94 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
17 85 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
18 72 (0.83%) Mainframe
19 71 (0.82%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 272 (3.15%) Windows
2 260 (3.01%) Linux
3 133 (1.54%) Unix
4 70 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 44 (0.51%) Windows 10
6 32 (0.37%) Apple iOS
7 30 (0.35%) Solaris
8 29 (0.34%) zOS
9 26 (0.30%) Android
10 22 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 18 (0.21%) AIX
12 17 (0.20%) Mac OS
13 7 (0.081%) VMS
14 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
15 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
15 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
16 4 (0.046%) HPUX
16 4 (0.046%) MVS
16 4 (0.046%) SUSE
16 4 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,815 (21.04%) Agile
2 1,726 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,218 (14.12%) Problem-Solving
4 1,154 (13.38%) Migration
5 956 (11.08%) Continuous Improvement
6 947 (10.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 918 (10.64%) DevOps
8 913 (10.58%) ERP
9 857 (9.93%) CI/CD
10 840 (9.74%) AI
11 819 (9.49%) Analytics
12 804 (9.32%) Project Management
13 723 (8.38%) Decision-Making
14 718 (8.32%) Business Intelligence
15 700 (8.11%) Data Modelling
16 681 (7.89%) Roadmaps
17 672 (7.79%) Validation
18 652 (7.56%) User Acceptance Testing
19 597 (6.92%) Change Management
20 580 (6.72%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,197 (13.87%) SQL
2 1,017 (11.79%) Python
3 553 (6.41%) Java
4 335 (3.88%) C#
5 217 (2.52%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.33%) TypeScript
7 163 (1.89%) PowerShell
8 107 (1.24%) C++
9 77 (0.89%) PL/SQL
10 70 (0.81%) Bash
10 70 (0.81%) Go
11 64 (0.74%) T-SQL
12 52 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 47 (0.54%) VBA
15 45 (0.52%) Scala
16 33 (0.38%) R
17 26 (0.30%) Bicep
18 25 (0.29%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.29%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 737 (8.54%) Degree
2 706 (8.18%) Security Cleared
3 500 (5.80%) SC Cleared
4 213 (2.47%) PMP
5 209 (2.42%) ACCA
6 200 (2.32%) PMI Certification
7 192 (2.23%) CIMA
8 143 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
9 139 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
10 124 (1.44%) CISSP
11 111 (1.29%) Master's Degree
12 86 (1.00%) DV Cleared
13 85 (0.99%) CISM
14 64 (0.74%) Azure Certification
15 56 (0.65%) AWS Certification
16 51 (0.59%) Cisco Certification
17 38 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 34 (0.39%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) CBAP
20 30 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 498 (5.77%) Data Quality
2 415 (4.81%) QA
3 335 (3.88%) PMO
4 291 (3.37%) GDPR
5 157 (1.82%) NIST
6 126 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 102 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 102 (1.18%) SLA
8 101 (1.17%) IFRS
9 88 (1.02%) GRC
10 77 (0.89%) Accessibility
11 66 (0.76%) PCI DSS
12 62 (0.72%) ISO 20022
13 52 (0.60%) GAAP
14 39 (0.45%) SEPA
15 38 (0.44%) PSD2
16 35 (0.41%) NCSC
17 29 (0.34%) MiFID
18 28 (0.32%) EMIR
19 25 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 280 (3.25%) Docker
2 145 (1.68%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 25 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.10%) GPFS
11 6 (0.070%) RACF
12 5 (0.058%) HDFS
12 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.046%) ACF2
13 4 (0.046%) Firmware
13 4 (0.046%) KVM
14 3 (0.035%) GridGain
14 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.035%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 397 (4.60%) Kubernetes
2 247 (2.86%) Terraform
3 120 (1.39%) Ansible
4 86 (1.00%) Grafana
5 68 (0.79%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
7 46 (0.53%) SCCM
8 36 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 17 (0.20%) Control-M
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
11 16 (0.19%) vRealize
12 14 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
13 13 (0.15%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 10 (0.12%) Progress Chef
17 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,107 (12.83%) Microsoft
2 782 (9.06%) SAP
3 718 (8.32%) Oracle
4 307 (3.56%) ServiceNow
5 234 (2.71%) Databricks
6 184 (2.13%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.03%) Google
8 137 (1.59%) Workday
9 116 (1.34%) Splunk
10 115 (1.33%) Cisco
11 99 (1.15%) VMware
12 96 (1.11%) IBM
13 76 (0.88%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.86%) Citrix
15 73 (0.85%) Ariba
16 68 (0.79%) Sage
17 57 (0.66%) Informatica
18 56 (0.65%) OpenAI
19 52 (0.60%) Palo Alto
20 50 (0.58%) IFS