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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,896 7,492 7,720
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.39% 22.83% 19.88%
As % of the General category 33.40% 35.97% 34.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,078 4,938 5,084
10th Percentile £363 £332 £363
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £541 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.71% -5.96% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £715
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £493 £513
% change year-on-year +1.52% -3.90% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 146 183
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.49 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.90 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +33.33%
75th Percentile - £63.00 £44.40
90th Percentile £75.40 £75.63 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £36.25
% change year-on-year +67.72% -27.70% +8.58%

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 29,628 20,830 22,290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.48% 57.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,566 12,959 13,906
10th Percentile £313 £275 £291
25th Percentile £415 £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 £748 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,273 1,159 1,303
10th Percentile £13.90 £13.37 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.12 £16.21 £16.50
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -29.15% +29.09%
75th Percentile £56.21 £50.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.23 £22.14 £35.03
% change year-on-year +45.55% -36.80% +40.12%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 8,604 £550 - 10,610
London 0 5,187 £589 -1.88% 6,554
UK excluding London 0 3,909 £500 +1.52% 5,734
Work from Home -1 2,828 £550 -4.35% 4,796
North of England 0 1,350 £500 +6.61% 1,407
South East -3 734 £505 -3.81% 1,438
North West 0 698 £500 +10.56% 818
Midlands -1 628 £500 +11.11% 656
Yorkshire 0 573 £514 +5.98% 400
Scotland 0 511 £475 -1.04% 662
West Midlands 0 475 £500 - 398
South West -5 382 £550 -4.35% 769
East of England +4 205 £525 -7.89% 472
East Midlands -4 149 £500 +21.21% 257
North East -7 72 £500 +12.36% 210
Northern Ireland -1 69 £475 -2.56% 289
Wales -2 61 £525 +13.51% 140
Channel Islands +3 4 £500 - 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
1 339 (3.43%) Confluence
2 253 (2.56%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
4 86 (0.87%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.73%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 28 (0.28%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.21%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 6 (0.061%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 5 (0.051%) JBoss
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 525 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 187 (1.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 154 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 99 (1.00%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 31 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 8 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Sketch
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 436 (4.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 128 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.12%) NetSuite
4 106 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 96 (0.97%) Oracle ERP
6 75 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
7 70 (0.71%) Oracle General Ledger
8 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
9 65 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 57 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
12 45 (0.45%) SAP CO
13 42 (0.42%) Aladdin
13 42 (0.42%) SAP FI/CO
14 36 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
15 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
16 33 (0.33%) SAP GRC
17 30 (0.30%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.28%) SAP ERP
19 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,558 (15.74%) Azure
2 1,080 (10.91%) AWS
3 667 (6.74%) Power Platform
4 521 (5.26%) GCP
5 358 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
6 328 (3.31%) SaaS
7 305 (3.08%) Microsoft 365
8 303 (3.06%) GitHub
9 261 (2.64%) Dynamics 365
10 219 (2.21%) Snowflake
11 215 (2.17%) Entra ID
12 151 (1.53%) Serverless
13 147 (1.49%) OCI
14 123 (1.24%) Power Automate
15 120 (1.21%) GitHub Actions
16 115 (1.16%) Amazon S3
17 113 (1.14%) dbt
18 112 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
18 112 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
19 107 (1.08%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 176 (1.78%) Firewall
2 153 (1.55%) Network Security
3 100 (1.01%) VPN
4 98 (0.99%) DNS
5 66 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 61 (0.62%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.45%) SSL
9 43 (0.43%) BGP
10 40 (0.40%) HTTP
10 40 (0.40%) LAN
11 33 (0.33%) Multicast
11 33 (0.33%) VLAN
12 30 (0.30%) Internet
13 29 (0.29%) Wireless
14 28 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
15 25 (0.25%) SAN
16 24 (0.24%) OSPF
17 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 548 (5.54%) Power BI
2 287 (2.90%) SQL Server
3 265 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (2.03%) Metadata
5 180 (1.82%) Relational Database
6 145 (1.47%) Data Lake
7 142 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
8 131 (1.32%) Tableau
9 86 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 81 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
11 78 (0.79%) BigQuery
12 75 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 74 (0.75%) Oracle Database
14 59 (0.60%) Big Data
14 59 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (0.54%) Power Query
16 50 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 47 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
18 45 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
18 45 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 680 (6.87%) JIRA
2 292 (2.95%) Git
3 167 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 99 (1.00%) GitLab
5 56 (0.57%) Selenium
6 44 (0.44%) JUnit
7 32 (0.32%) Bitbucket
8 30 (0.30%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.27%) Claude Code
9 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.26%) Maven
10 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
11 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
11 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 23 (0.23%) Postman
12 23 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
14 20 (0.20%) TeamCity
General
1 2,980 (30.11%) Social Skills
2 1,948 (19.68%) Banking
3 1,398 (14.13%) Analytical Skills
4 561 (5.67%) Legal
5 530 (5.36%) Public Sector
6 420 (4.24%) Organisational Skills
7 392 (3.96%) Investment Banking
8 382 (3.86%) Retail
9 352 (3.56%) Financial Institution
10 349 (3.53%) Front Office
11 303 (3.06%) Influencing Skills
12 230 (2.32%) Documentation Skills
13 206 (2.08%) Manufacturing
14 189 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 168 (1.70%) Billing
16 167 (1.69%) General Ledger
17 158 (1.60%) Marketing
18 148 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
19 146 (1.48%) Local Government
20 145 (1.47%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,414 (14.29%) Analyst
2 1,059 (10.70%) Senior
3 1,057 (10.68%) Lead
4 975 (9.85%) Developer
5 871 (8.80%) Architect
6 734 (7.42%) Business Analyst
7 713 (7.20%) Project Manager
8 708 (7.15%) Consultant
9 324 (3.27%) Solutions Architect
10 305 (3.08%) Data Engineer
11 250 (2.53%) Financial Analyst
12 231 (2.33%) Senior Manager
13 199 (2.01%) Java Developer
14 191 (1.93%) Data Analyst
15 190 (1.92%) Accountant
16 184 (1.86%) Finance Manager
16 184 (1.86%) Programme Manager
16 184 (1.86%) Senior Developer
17 178 (1.80%) IT Manager
18 164 (1.66%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 363 (3.67%) Terraform
2 353 (3.57%) REST
3 281 (2.84%) .NET
4 268 (2.71%) Oracle Fusion
5 254 (2.57%) Kafka
6 237 (2.39%) React
7 190 (1.92%) Middleware
8 180 (1.82%) Spring
9 170 (1.72%) Spring Boot
10 142 (1.43%) PySpark
11 136 (1.37%) RESTful
12 103 (1.04%) XML
13 99 (1.00%) JSON
14 97 (0.98%) OAuth
14 97 (0.98%) Redux
15 91 (0.92%) AngularJS
16 90 (0.91%) Node.js
17 78 (0.79%) SOAP
18 67 (0.68%) Web Services
19 65 (0.66%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 506 (5.11%) Onboarding
2 488 (4.93%) Product Ownership
3 420 (4.24%) Cloud Native
4 252 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
5 237 (2.39%) Management Information System
6 236 (2.38%) Data Structures
7 223 (2.25%) Virtual Team
8 191 (1.93%) Derivative
9 185 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
10 179 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
11 166 (1.68%) Data Centre
12 161 (1.63%) AI Agents
13 153 (1.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 150 (1.52%) Fixed Income
15 134 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
16 121 (1.22%) Equities
17 114 (1.15%) Podcast
18 113 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
19 112 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
20 111 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 376 (3.80%) Windows
2 304 (3.07%) Linux
3 159 (1.61%) Unix
4 90 (0.91%) Windows Server
5 54 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 46 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.36%) Solaris
9 35 (0.35%) Android
9 35 (0.35%) zOS
10 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
11 17 (0.17%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.091%) VMS
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) CentOS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,461 (24.87%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,040 (20.61%) Agile
3 1,340 (13.54%) Migration
4 1,306 (13.20%) Problem-Solving
5 1,191 (12.04%) AI
6 1,168 (11.80%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,144 (11.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,065 (10.76%) CI/CD
9 1,030 (10.41%) ERP
10 1,019 (10.30%) DevOps
11 996 (10.06%) Analytics
12 901 (9.10%) Decision-Making
13 806 (8.14%) Roadmaps
14 805 (8.13%) Validation
15 781 (7.89%) Data Modelling
16 775 (7.83%) User Acceptance Testing
17 760 (7.68%) Project Management
18 728 (7.36%) Change Management
19 676 (6.83%) Business Intelligence
20 666 (6.73%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,294 (13.08%) SQL
2 1,211 (12.24%) Python
3 630 (6.37%) Java
4 381 (3.85%) C#
5 264 (2.67%) PowerShell
6 255 (2.58%) JavaScript
7 224 (2.26%) TypeScript
8 140 (1.41%) Bash
9 106 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 91 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 69 (0.70%) T-SQL
13 64 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 63 (0.64%) Go
15 57 (0.58%) Bicep
16 43 (0.43%) VBA
17 40 (0.40%) Korn
18 39 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 39 (0.39%) Scala
19 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 784 (7.92%) Security Cleared
2 730 (7.38%) Degree
3 564 (5.70%) SC Cleared
4 247 (2.50%) PMP
5 230 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
6 217 (2.19%) PMI Certification
7 198 (2.00%) ACCA
8 174 (1.76%) CIMA
9 148 (1.50%) CISSP
10 137 (1.38%) DV Cleared
11 128 (1.29%) Computer Science Degree
12 106 (1.07%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.88%) CISM
14 84 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
15 69 (0.70%) Master's Degree
16 66 (0.67%) AWS Certification
17 51 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 44 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 39 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 648 (6.55%) Data Quality
2 428 (4.32%) QA
3 365 (3.69%) PMO
4 246 (2.49%) GDPR
5 154 (1.56%) NIST
6 130 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 117 (1.18%) GRC
8 107 (1.08%) Accessibility
8 107 (1.08%) SLA
9 99 (1.00%) IFRS
10 90 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 56 (0.57%) ISO 20022
12 55 (0.56%) GAAP
13 45 (0.45%) PCI DSS
14 35 (0.35%) Solvency II
15 33 (0.33%) SEPA
16 29 (0.29%) COBIT
17 28 (0.28%) EMIR
17 28 (0.28%) MiFID
18 26 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 265 (2.68%) Docker
2 241 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 81 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
6 23 (0.23%) vSphere
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.081%) IAG
11 5 (0.051%) ACF2
11 5 (0.051%) GPFS
11 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
11 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.040%) KVM
12 4 (0.040%) zsh
13 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 449 (4.54%) Kubernetes
2 169 (1.71%) Ansible
3 99 (1.00%) Grafana
4 82 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.59%) SCCM
6 58 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
7 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
8 25 (0.25%) Control-M
9 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
10 17 (0.17%) Argo
10 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 15 (0.15%) Puppet
11 15 (0.15%) vRealize
12 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
12 14 (0.14%) Istio
13 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
14 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
16 9 (0.091%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,384 (13.99%) Microsoft
2 889 (8.98%) Oracle
3 840 (8.49%) SAP
4 375 (3.79%) ServiceNow
5 335 (3.39%) Databricks
6 233 (2.35%) Salesforce
7 223 (2.25%) Google
8 168 (1.70%) IBM
9 140 (1.41%) VMware
10 127 (1.28%) Workday
11 118 (1.19%) Cisco
12 110 (1.11%) Splunk
13 92 (0.93%) Ariba
14 90 (0.91%) CyberArk
15 77 (0.78%) OpenAI
16 61 (0.62%) Citrix
17 60 (0.61%) Sage
18 53 (0.54%) Bloomberg
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 47 (0.47%) Adobe