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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,608 6,527 8,104
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.08% 22.26% 18.78%
As % of the General category 33.41% 35.21% 32.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,396 4,271 5,390
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £435 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £568 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.73% -1.30% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £712
90th Percentile £800 £831 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 110 244
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.79 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.06 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.70% +37.24% +0.58%
75th Percentile £54.00 £69.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.51 £55.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £42.41 £32.12
% change year-on-year -46.94% +32.05% -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 25,766 18,539 25,093
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.11% 63.24% 58.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,810 11,839 15,826
10th Percentile £306 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £766
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +0.21% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,650 792 1,938
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.50 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.56 £56.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.01
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £28.25
% change year-on-year +10.00% -11.50% -2.59%

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 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 6 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 6 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 7,603 £538 -6.52% 5,074
London 0 4,578 £575 -8.00% 2,551
UK excluding London -1 3,450 £500 - 3,299
Work from Home -2 2,420 £525 -12.50% 2,092
North of England +3 1,149 £482 +1.47% 790
South East -1 654 £503 -2.39% 1,083
North West +5 619 £464 -0.27% 429
Midlands -1 592 £475 -5.00% 488
Yorkshire +1 491 £514 +2.80% 271
Scotland +1 425 £500 +2.25% 165
West Midlands 0 394 £492 -6.29% 275
South West -2 346 £503 -4.29% 387
East of England -4 199 £525 -8.70% 283
East Midlands 0 194 £463 +3.47% 211
Wales +19 93 £419 +11.67% 97
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +30.03% 65
North East -13 40 £488 +3.72% 99
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 2

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
1 331 (3.85%) Confluence
2 214 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 93 (1.08%) Apache Spark
4 59 (0.69%) Apache
5 52 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
6 49 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.43%) SAS
8 24 (0.28%) CMS
9 22 (0.26%) CICS
10 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.17%) Appian
11 15 (0.17%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Camunda
12 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
13 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 9 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 9 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 530 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
3 177 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
4 175 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 128 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.58%) 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%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 376 (4.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 117 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 100 (1.16%) NetSuite
3 100 (1.16%) Oracle Receivables
4 86 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 66 (0.77%) Oracle EBS
6 62 (0.72%) SAP FI
7 59 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
7 59 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
8 51 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
8 51 (0.59%) SAP CO
9 47 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
10 40 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
11 34 (0.39%) Oracle Cash Management
12 33 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
12 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
13 31 (0.36%) Aladdin
14 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 28 (0.33%) Workday HCM
16 27 (0.31%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,303 (15.14%) Azure
2 989 (11.49%) AWS
3 620 (7.20%) Power Platform
4 392 (4.55%) GCP
5 298 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
6 289 (3.36%) SaaS
7 270 (3.14%) Microsoft 365
8 238 (2.76%) Dynamics 365
9 236 (2.74%) GitHub
10 149 (1.73%) Snowflake
11 147 (1.71%) Serverless
12 135 (1.57%) OCI
13 132 (1.53%) Entra ID
14 120 (1.39%) Amazon S3
15 108 (1.25%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
16 91 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
17 86 (1.00%) AWS Lambda
17 86 (1.00%) OpenShift
18 80 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.89%) Firewall
2 116 (1.35%) Network Security
3 77 (0.89%) WAN
4 70 (0.81%) DNS
5 61 (0.71%) VPN
6 50 (0.58%) TCP/IP
7 41 (0.48%) SD-WAN
8 39 (0.45%) LAN
9 37 (0.43%) BGP
10 34 (0.39%) HTTP
11 31 (0.36%) OSPF
12 29 (0.34%) SSL
13 27 (0.31%) Multicast
14 25 (0.29%) MPLS
15 24 (0.28%) DHCP
16 21 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
16 21 (0.24%) Internet
17 18 (0.21%) VSAN
18 16 (0.19%) VLAN
19 14 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 533 (6.19%) Power BI
2 218 (2.53%) SQL Server
3 209 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
4 169 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
5 164 (1.91%) Metadata
6 148 (1.72%) Relational Database
7 145 (1.68%) Tableau
8 127 (1.48%) Data Lake
9 88 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
10 87 (1.01%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.92%) Big Data
12 69 (0.80%) Oracle Database
13 61 (0.71%) MongoDB
14 58 (0.67%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
16 44 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 43 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 42 (0.49%) DynamoDB
18 42 (0.49%) Power Query
18 42 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 684 (7.95%) JIRA
2 217 (2.52%) Git
3 182 (2.11%) Jenkins
4 114 (1.32%) GitLab
5 51 (0.59%) JUnit
6 50 (0.58%) Cucumber
7 38 (0.44%) Selenium
8 35 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
10 27 (0.31%) Postman
11 25 (0.29%) MLflow
12 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.24%) SonarQube
13 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
14 19 (0.22%) Bitbucket
15 18 (0.21%) Maven
16 17 (0.20%) ERwin
16 17 (0.20%) Hudson
16 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,594 (30.13%) Social Skills
2 1,569 (18.23%) Banking
3 1,161 (13.49%) Analytical Skills
4 550 (6.39%) Public Sector
5 359 (4.17%) Legal
6 335 (3.89%) Financial Institution
7 282 (3.28%) Investment Banking
8 279 (3.24%) Front Office
9 247 (2.87%) Retail
10 246 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
11 234 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
12 208 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 188 (2.18%) Manufacturing
14 176 (2.04%) Marketing
15 154 (1.79%) Telecoms
16 143 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 127 (1.48%) Local Government
18 126 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
19 121 (1.41%) Law
20 119 (1.38%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,301 (15.11%) Analyst
2 893 (10.37%) Senior
3 880 (10.22%) Developer
4 869 (10.10%) Lead
5 775 (9.00%) Architect
6 699 (8.12%) Business Analyst
7 684 (7.95%) Project Manager
8 595 (6.91%) Consultant
9 309 (3.59%) Solutions Architect
10 277 (3.22%) Data Engineer
11 214 (2.49%) Financial Analyst
12 203 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 189 (2.20%) Finance Manager
14 180 (2.09%) Data Analyst
15 176 (2.04%) Programme Manager
16 165 (1.92%) Accountant
17 147 (1.71%) Java Developer
18 143 (1.66%) Delivery Manager
19 137 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
20 133 (1.55%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (3.14%) Kafka
2 251 (2.92%) REST
3 237 (2.75%) .NET
4 203 (2.36%) React
5 179 (2.08%) Middleware
6 156 (1.81%) Oracle Fusion
7 149 (1.73%) Spring
8 143 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 133 (1.55%) RESTful
10 107 (1.24%) PySpark
11 106 (1.23%) Node.js
12 94 (1.09%) AngularJS
13 84 (0.98%) OAuth
14 78 (0.91%) JSON
15 77 (0.89%) Redux
16 76 (0.88%) XML
17 71 (0.82%) HTML
18 69 (0.80%) CSS
19 63 (0.73%) Pandas
20 60 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 357 (4.15%) Onboarding
2 335 (3.89%) Product Ownership
3 306 (3.55%) Cloud Native
4 226 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
5 195 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 182 (2.11%) Data Structures
7 167 (1.94%) Derivative
8 165 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
9 147 (1.71%) Data Centre
10 142 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
11 138 (1.60%) Fixed Income
12 132 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 113 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
14 103 (1.20%) Equities
15 101 (1.17%) Virtual Team
16 100 (1.16%) Public Cloud
17 95 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 84 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
19 71 (0.82%) Mainframe
20 67 (0.78%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 277 (3.22%) Windows
2 271 (3.15%) Linux
3 138 (1.60%) Unix
4 70 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 47 (0.55%) Windows 10
6 31 (0.36%) Apple iOS
7 29 (0.34%) zOS
8 28 (0.33%) Android
8 28 (0.33%) Solaris
9 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 18 (0.21%) AIX
10 18 (0.21%) Mac OS
11 8 (0.093%) VMS
12 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.046%) HPUX
14 4 (0.046%) MVS
14 4 (0.046%) SUSE
14 4 (0.046%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,810 (21.03%) Agile
2 1,711 (19.88%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,229 (14.28%) Problem-Solving
4 1,171 (13.60%) Migration
5 961 (11.16%) Continuous Improvement
6 953 (11.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 924 (10.73%) DevOps
8 903 (10.49%) ERP
9 869 (10.10%) CI/CD
10 829 (9.63%) AI
11 828 (9.62%) Analytics
12 798 (9.27%) Project Management
13 736 (8.55%) Business Intelligence
14 717 (8.33%) Decision-Making
15 685 (7.96%) Data Modelling
16 683 (7.93%) Roadmaps
17 667 (7.75%) Validation
18 656 (7.62%) User Acceptance Testing
19 598 (6.95%) Change Management
20 575 (6.68%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,192 (13.85%) SQL
2 1,020 (11.85%) Python
3 564 (6.55%) Java
4 331 (3.85%) C#
5 215 (2.50%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.35%) TypeScript
7 165 (1.92%) PowerShell
8 104 (1.21%) C++
9 75 (0.87%) PL/SQL
10 73 (0.85%) Bash
11 68 (0.79%) Go
12 65 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 50 (0.58%) Shell Script
15 49 (0.57%) VBA
16 43 (0.50%) Scala
17 34 (0.39%) R
18 31 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 26 (0.30%) Bicep
20 24 (0.28%) Korn
Qualifications
1 746 (8.67%) Degree
2 697 (8.10%) Security Cleared
3 497 (5.77%) SC Cleared
4 212 (2.46%) ACCA
4 212 (2.46%) PMP
5 200 (2.32%) PMI Certification
6 195 (2.27%) CIMA
7 144 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 143 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
9 126 (1.46%) CISSP
10 117 (1.36%) Master's Degree
11 86 (1.00%) CISM
12 81 (0.94%) DV Cleared
13 63 (0.73%) Azure Certification
14 59 (0.69%) AWS Certification
15 52 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
16 39 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
17 35 (0.41%) ISTQB
18 32 (0.37%) CBAP
19 30 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 494 (5.74%) Data Quality
2 417 (4.84%) QA
3 340 (3.95%) PMO
4 304 (3.53%) GDPR
5 154 (1.79%) NIST
6 128 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 103 (1.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 103 (1.20%) SLA
8 101 (1.17%) IFRS
9 81 (0.94%) GRC
10 79 (0.92%) Accessibility
11 72 (0.84%) PCI DSS
12 59 (0.69%) ISO 20022
13 53 (0.62%) GAAP
14 38 (0.44%) PSD2
15 37 (0.43%) SEPA
16 34 (0.39%) NCSC
17 30 (0.35%) MiFID
18 28 (0.33%) EMIR
19 26 (0.30%) Basel III
System Software
1 289 (3.36%) Docker
2 146 (1.70%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.64%) 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 11 (0.13%) 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%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 401 (4.66%) Kubernetes
2 255 (2.96%) Terraform
3 121 (1.41%) Ansible
4 89 (1.03%) Grafana
5 69 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 59 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.57%) SCCM
8 36 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.30%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
11 16 (0.19%) vRealize
12 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
13 13 (0.15%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
14 12 (0.14%) Progress Chef
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 10 (0.12%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,110 (12.89%) Microsoft
2 778 (9.04%) SAP
3 720 (8.36%) Oracle
4 311 (3.61%) ServiceNow
5 232 (2.70%) Databricks
6 190 (2.21%) Salesforce
7 176 (2.04%) Google
8 136 (1.58%) Workday
9 119 (1.38%) Cisco
10 116 (1.35%) Splunk
11 102 (1.18%) VMware
12 97 (1.13%) IBM
13 77 (0.89%) CyberArk
14 76 (0.88%) Citrix
15 74 (0.86%) Ariba
16 71 (0.82%) Sage
17 57 (0.66%) Informatica
18 54 (0.63%) OpenAI
19 51 (0.59%) Palo Alto
20 50 (0.58%) Murex