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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,781 7,452 7,978
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.55% 22.84% 19.31%
As % of the General category 33.84% 36.32% 33.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,031 4,892 5,356
10th Percentile £358 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £719
90th Percentile £793 £813 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 148 221
10th Percentile £16.03 £15.84 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.97 £18.35
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -12.86% +28.49%
75th Percentile £56.38 £63.38 £40.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.38 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.38 £35.00
% change year-on-year +60.58% -21.79% +6.25%

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 28,900 20,520 23,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.80% 62.89% 57.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,224 12,854 14,870
10th Percentile £313 £279 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.80% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £635 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,022 1,061 1,661
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.25 £13.31
25th Percentile £18.32 £16.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £32.81 £25.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.65% -27.14% +14.60%
75th Percentile £61.50 £51.50 £56.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +46.67% -35.71% +34.62%

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 22 July 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 22 July 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 22 July 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 8,525 £550 - 5,647
London 0 5,139 £583 -2.92% 3,310
UK excluding London -1 3,863 £500 +2.04% 2,964
Work from Home -1 2,843 £550 -4.35% 2,175
North of England 0 1,305 £500 +6.50% 822
South East 0 735 £503 -4.29% 880
North West +1 687 £492 +9.33% 438
Midlands +1 646 £500 +11.11% 444
Yorkshire 0 567 £522 +7.08% 286
West Midlands +1 495 £500 +4.17% 249
Scotland 0 491 £475 -2.46% 190
South West -4 380 £525 -4.55% 309
East of England +8 208 £530 -3.64% 225
East Midlands -1 145 £500 +19.05% 193
Wales +4 84 £525 +18.31% 74
Northern Ireland -1 61 £475 +5.56% 63
North East -17 51 £500 +13.96% 104
Channel Islands +4 3 £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
1 326 (3.33%) Confluence
2 239 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.83%) Apache Spark
4 77 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 61 (0.62%) Apache
6 46 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) CMS
8 32 (0.33%) SAS
9 28 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.12%) Camunda
14 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 10 (0.10%) Ethereum
16 8 (0.082%) WebLogic
16 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.061%) Appian
18 5 (0.051%) JBoss
18 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 515 (5.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 217 (2.22%) Microsoft Office
3 166 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 158 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.10%) MS Visio
6 72 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.092%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.041%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 447 (4.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.23%) Oracle Payables
3 115 (1.18%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
6 73 (0.75%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 70 (0.72%) SAP FI
8 64 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
9 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
9 56 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
10 49 (0.50%) Oracle Financials
11 48 (0.49%) SAP CO
12 46 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
13 41 (0.42%) Aladdin
14 35 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
15 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
16 29 (0.30%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
17 28 (0.29%) SAP GRC
18 25 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,528 (15.62%) Azure
2 1,098 (11.23%) AWS
3 651 (6.66%) Power Platform
4 511 (5.22%) GCP
5 330 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
6 325 (3.32%) SaaS
7 289 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
8 273 (2.79%) GitHub
9 245 (2.50%) Dynamics 365
10 202 (2.07%) Snowflake
11 201 (2.06%) Entra ID
12 139 (1.42%) Serverless
13 131 (1.34%) OCI
14 124 (1.27%) Amazon S3
15 115 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 110 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
17 105 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
18 101 (1.03%) GitHub Actions
19 99 (1.01%) dbt
20 93 (0.95%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 193 (1.97%) Firewall
2 142 (1.45%) Network Security
3 93 (0.95%) DNS
4 88 (0.90%) VPN
5 65 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 54 (0.55%) WAN
7 50 (0.51%) BGP
8 47 (0.48%) SSL
9 41 (0.42%) DHCP
10 37 (0.38%) HTTP
10 37 (0.38%) LAN
10 37 (0.38%) Multicast
11 32 (0.33%) OSPF
12 26 (0.27%) Internet
13 25 (0.26%) VLAN
13 25 (0.26%) Wireless
14 22 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
14 22 (0.22%) MPLS
15 21 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
16 20 (0.20%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 541 (5.53%) Power BI
2 274 (2.80%) SQL Server
3 249 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
4 204 (2.09%) Metadata
5 175 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 168 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
7 151 (1.54%) Tableau
8 142 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 88 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
10 81 (0.83%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 71 (0.73%) MongoDB
13 70 (0.72%) BigQuery
14 65 (0.66%) Big Data
14 65 (0.66%) Snowflake Schema
15 50 (0.51%) Power Query
16 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
17 47 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 46 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 42 (0.43%) Db2
Development Applications
1 674 (6.89%) JIRA
2 260 (2.66%) Git
3 161 (1.65%) Jenkins
4 91 (0.93%) GitLab
5 51 (0.52%) JUnit
6 41 (0.42%) Cucumber
6 41 (0.42%) Selenium
7 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 28 (0.29%) ERwin
9 27 (0.28%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
10 25 (0.26%) Postman
11 23 (0.24%) Bitbucket
11 23 (0.24%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.24%) SonarQube
11 23 (0.24%) Zephyr
12 22 (0.22%) Maven
13 19 (0.19%) MLflow
14 18 (0.18%) ER Studio
15 17 (0.17%) Hudson
General
1 2,848 (29.12%) Social Skills
2 1,815 (18.56%) Banking
3 1,339 (13.69%) Analytical Skills
4 553 (5.65%) Public Sector
5 496 (5.07%) Legal
6 368 (3.76%) Investment Banking
7 359 (3.67%) Financial Institution
8 352 (3.60%) Organisational Skills
9 344 (3.52%) Front Office
10 336 (3.44%) Retail
11 269 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
12 236 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
13 188 (1.92%) Manufacturing
14 168 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 161 (1.65%) Billing
16 157 (1.61%) Local Government
17 155 (1.58%) General Ledger
18 154 (1.57%) Marketing
19 138 (1.41%) Law
20 134 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,456 (14.89%) Analyst
2 1,060 (10.84%) Senior
3 1,052 (10.76%) Lead
4 989 (10.11%) Developer
5 880 (9.00%) Architect
6 745 (7.62%) Business Analyst
7 704 (7.20%) Project Manager
8 648 (6.63%) Consultant
9 329 (3.36%) Solutions Architect
10 309 (3.16%) Data Engineer
11 245 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 232 (2.37%) Senior Manager
13 211 (2.16%) Java Developer
14 208 (2.13%) Accountant
14 208 (2.13%) Data Analyst
15 191 (1.95%) Programme Manager
16 186 (1.90%) Senior Developer
17 182 (1.86%) Finance Manager
18 178 (1.82%) Software Engineer
19 175 (1.79%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 314 (3.21%) REST
2 273 (2.79%) .NET
3 269 (2.75%) Kafka
3 269 (2.75%) React
4 218 (2.23%) Oracle Fusion
5 195 (1.99%) Middleware
6 181 (1.85%) Spring
7 172 (1.76%) Spring Boot
8 133 (1.36%) RESTful
9 124 (1.27%) PySpark
10 119 (1.22%) Redux
11 112 (1.15%) Node.js
12 96 (0.98%) JSON
13 93 (0.95%) OAuth
14 91 (0.93%) AngularJS
15 88 (0.90%) XML
16 67 (0.69%) SOAP
17 65 (0.66%) CSS
18 63 (0.64%) HTML
18 63 (0.64%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 463 (4.73%) Onboarding
2 442 (4.52%) Product Ownership
3 414 (4.23%) Cloud Native
4 273 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
5 234 (2.39%) Data Structures
6 223 (2.28%) Management Information System
7 183 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
8 179 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
9 177 (1.81%) Virtual Team
10 174 (1.78%) Derivative
11 170 (1.74%) Fixed Income
12 167 (1.71%) Data Centre
13 162 (1.66%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 142 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
15 141 (1.44%) AI Agents
16 123 (1.26%) Equities
17 113 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
18 108 (1.10%) Public Cloud
19 104 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
20 98 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 336 (3.44%) Windows
2 290 (2.96%) Linux
3 162 (1.66%) Unix
4 76 (0.78%) Windows Server
5 41 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (0.40%) Solaris
7 37 (0.38%) Apple iOS
7 37 (0.38%) zOS
8 35 (0.36%) Windows 10
9 30 (0.31%) Android
10 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
11 20 (0.20%) AIX
12 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.092%) VMS
14 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 5 (0.051%) MVS
16 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
17 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,178 (22.27%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,982 (20.26%) Agile
3 1,357 (13.87%) Migration
4 1,294 (13.23%) Problem-Solving
5 1,158 (11.84%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,124 (11.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,094 (11.18%) AI
8 1,013 (10.36%) DevOps
8 1,013 (10.36%) ERP
9 992 (10.14%) CI/CD
10 972 (9.94%) Analytics
11 882 (9.02%) Decision-Making
12 815 (8.33%) Validation
13 813 (8.31%) Roadmaps
14 784 (8.02%) Data Modelling
15 759 (7.76%) User Acceptance Testing
16 749 (7.66%) Project Management
17 708 (7.24%) Change Management
18 677 (6.92%) Business Intelligence
19 630 (6.44%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,271 (12.99%) SQL
2 1,187 (12.14%) Python
3 650 (6.65%) Java
4 384 (3.93%) C#
5 261 (2.67%) JavaScript
6 257 (2.63%) TypeScript
7 230 (2.35%) PowerShell
8 106 (1.08%) Bash
9 93 (0.95%) PL/SQL
10 83 (0.85%) C++
10 83 (0.85%) Go
11 75 (0.77%) Shell Script
12 74 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 62 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 49 (0.50%) VBA
15 47 (0.48%) Bicep
16 38 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.38%) Scala
18 33 (0.34%) Apex Code
19 28 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 749 (7.66%) Security Cleared
2 735 (7.51%) Degree
3 539 (5.51%) SC Cleared
4 228 (2.33%) PMP
5 206 (2.11%) PMI Certification
6 202 (2.07%) ACCA
7 186 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
8 180 (1.84%) CIMA
9 156 (1.59%) CISSP
10 122 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
11 118 (1.21%) DV Cleared
12 97 (0.99%) Azure Certification
13 88 (0.90%) CISM
14 80 (0.82%) Master's Degree
15 75 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 62 (0.63%) AWS Certification
17 51 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 616 (6.30%) Data Quality
2 423 (4.32%) QA
3 358 (3.66%) PMO
4 283 (2.89%) GDPR
5 158 (1.62%) NIST
6 129 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.12%) GRC
8 107 (1.09%) IFRS
9 105 (1.07%) SLA
10 104 (1.06%) Accessibility
11 100 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 64 (0.65%) GAAP
13 62 (0.63%) ISO 20022
14 51 (0.52%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.38%) SEPA
16 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
17 31 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 29 (0.30%) EMIR
18 29 (0.30%) MiFID
19 27 (0.28%) COBIT
System Software
1 272 (2.78%) Docker
2 215 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 65 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 27 (0.28%) vSphere
6 23 (0.24%) RACF
7 21 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (0.13%) NFS
9 13 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.072%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
14 3 (0.031%) SRDF
15 2 (0.020%) zsh
Systems Management
1 437 (4.47%) Kubernetes
2 327 (3.34%) Terraform
3 159 (1.63%) Ansible
4 96 (0.98%) Grafana
5 79 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 72 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
7 54 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.50%) SCCM
9 27 (0.28%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,274 (13.03%) Microsoft
2 835 (8.54%) SAP
3 834 (8.53%) Oracle
4 346 (3.54%) ServiceNow
5 297 (3.04%) Databricks
6 219 (2.24%) Salesforce
7 214 (2.19%) Google
8 151 (1.54%) IBM
9 135 (1.38%) Workday
10 129 (1.32%) VMware
11 113 (1.16%) Splunk
12 109 (1.11%) Cisco
13 90 (0.92%) Ariba
14 88 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 69 (0.71%) OpenAI
16 67 (0.69%) Sage
17 64 (0.65%) Citrix
18 54 (0.55%) Informatica
19 51 (0.52%) Bloomberg
20 48 (0.49%) F5