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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,312 6,372 8,293
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.70% 21.93% 18.75%
As % of the General category 33.13% 34.87% 32.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,269 4,221 5,564
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 212 110 240
10th Percentile £14.53 £18.48 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.44 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.25 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.81% +38.79% -5.71%
75th Percentile £46.21 £73.44 £38.12
90th Percentile £83.28 £83.20 £54.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £31.47
% change year-on-year -57.95% +66.83% -17.94%

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 25,086 18,273 25,790
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.44% 62.88% 58.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,628 11,727 16,422
10th Percentile £303 £300 £266
25th Percentile £406 £407 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,551 706 1,837
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.13 £19.79 £15.29
Median hourly rate £25.15 £29.53 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.82% +13.56% -25.71%
75th Percentile £58.84 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.75 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £27.97 £25.00
% change year-on-year -14.82% +11.88% -20.97%

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 28 March 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 28 March 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 28 March 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 7,352 £538 -7.33% 4,228
London 0 4,470 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,275 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -2 2,343 £550 -6.38% 1,715
North of England +3 1,069 £475 - 695
South East -2 631 £503 -7.59% 1,010
Midlands +1 582 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +6 570 £456 -1.94% 371
Yorkshire 0 451 £500 +3.63% 253
West Midlands +3 382 £492 -6.29% 251
Scotland 0 371 £488 +2.74% 161
South West -3 326 £525 +2.94% 302
East of England 0 200 £514 -4.42% 271
East Midlands 0 195 £450 +4.05% 171
Wales +26 108 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -3 48 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +61.54% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 4

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
1 343 (4.13%) Confluence
2 212 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.70%) Microsoft Exchange
5 52 (0.63%) Apache
6 50 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.43%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) CMS
9 18 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.20%) CICS
10 17 (0.20%) Ethereum
11 16 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.18%) Camunda
13 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
14 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
15 12 (0.14%) TPMS
16 11 (0.13%) Mendix
17 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 8 (0.096%) IIS
Applications
1 535 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 250 (3.01%) Microsoft Office
3 187 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 184 (2.21%) Microsoft Project
5 138 (1.66%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 12 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.096%) InVision
12 6 (0.072%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.060%) Notion
13 5 (0.060%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.048%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.036%) Adobe Captivate
16 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.024%) InDesign
16 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.024%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 341 (4.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.43%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.25%) Oracle Receivables
4 80 (0.96%) NetSuite
5 79 (0.95%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 72 (0.87%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.81%) Oracle General Ledger
8 66 (0.79%) SAP FI
9 57 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
10 52 (0.63%) SAP CO
11 48 (0.58%) SAP FI/CO
12 47 (0.57%) Oracle ERP
13 45 (0.54%) Oracle Assets
14 40 (0.48%) Oracle Cash Management
15 35 (0.42%) Oracle EBS R12
16 34 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
17 32 (0.38%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 32 (0.38%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.35%) Aladdin
19 24 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,277 (15.36%) Azure
2 982 (11.81%) AWS
3 594 (7.15%) Power Platform
4 395 (4.75%) GCP
5 293 (3.53%) Azure DevOps
6 273 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
7 267 (3.21%) SaaS
8 247 (2.97%) Dynamics 365
9 224 (2.69%) GitHub
10 156 (1.88%) Serverless
11 139 (1.67%) OCI
12 135 (1.62%) Snowflake
13 124 (1.49%) Entra ID
14 114 (1.37%) Amazon S3
15 93 (1.12%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
17 86 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
18 85 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
19 75 (0.90%) OpenShift
20 74 (0.89%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.95%) Firewall
2 104 (1.25%) Network Security
3 84 (1.01%) WAN
4 67 (0.81%) DNS
5 58 (0.70%) VPN
6 51 (0.61%) LAN
7 46 (0.55%) TCP/IP
8 44 (0.53%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.41%) BGP
10 31 (0.37%) HTTP
11 29 (0.35%) OSPF
11 29 (0.35%) SSL
12 28 (0.34%) Multicast
13 26 (0.31%) Internet
14 25 (0.30%) Wireless
15 23 (0.28%) MPLS
16 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
17 18 (0.22%) DHCP
17 18 (0.22%) Skype
18 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 520 (6.26%) Power BI
2 223 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
3 208 (2.50%) SQL Server
4 183 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
5 151 (1.82%) Metadata
6 146 (1.76%) Tableau
7 124 (1.49%) Data Lake
7 124 (1.49%) Relational Database
8 100 (1.20%) NoSQL
9 97 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
10 78 (0.94%) Big Data
11 63 (0.76%) Oracle Database
12 62 (0.75%) BigQuery
13 56 (0.67%) MongoDB
14 49 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
16 43 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
17 38 (0.46%) Delta Lake
17 38 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
18 37 (0.45%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 689 (8.29%) JIRA
2 230 (2.77%) Jenkins
3 209 (2.51%) Git
4 147 (1.77%) GitLab
5 61 (0.73%) JUnit
6 60 (0.72%) Cucumber
7 44 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.52%) Selenium
9 33 (0.40%) Postman
10 31 (0.37%) Bitbucket
11 30 (0.36%) Visual Studio
12 23 (0.28%) MLflow
13 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
14 20 (0.24%) Maven
15 18 (0.22%) Gradle
16 17 (0.20%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.19%) ERwin
17 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
18 15 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
18 15 (0.18%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,653 (31.92%) Social Skills
2 1,599 (19.24%) Banking
3 1,111 (13.37%) Analytical Skills
4 632 (7.60%) Public Sector
5 346 (4.16%) Financial Institution
6 321 (3.86%) Legal
7 281 (3.38%) Front Office
8 277 (3.33%) Investment Banking
9 252 (3.03%) Marketing
10 249 (3.00%) Manufacturing
11 247 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
12 242 (2.91%) Organisational Skills
13 232 (2.79%) Telecoms
14 206 (2.48%) Retail
15 191 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
16 141 (1.70%) General Ledger
17 124 (1.49%) Electronics
17 124 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
18 123 (1.48%) Local Government
19 120 (1.44%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,281 (15.41%) Analyst
2 853 (10.26%) Developer
3 852 (10.25%) Senior
4 774 (9.31%) Lead
5 738 (8.88%) Architect
6 683 (8.22%) Business Analyst
7 676 (8.13%) Project Manager
8 618 (7.44%) Consultant
9 291 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
10 231 (2.78%) Data Engineer
11 189 (2.27%) Senior Manager
12 187 (2.25%) Financial Analyst
13 186 (2.24%) Data Analyst
14 179 (2.15%) Programme Manager
15 178 (2.14%) Finance Manager
16 140 (1.68%) Delivery Manager
17 139 (1.67%) Java Developer
18 135 (1.62%) Accountant
19 133 (1.60%) Senior Analyst
20 131 (1.58%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (3.32%) REST
2 265 (3.19%) Kafka
3 208 (2.50%) .NET
4 195 (2.35%) React
5 157 (1.89%) Oracle Fusion
6 153 (1.84%) Middleware
7 141 (1.70%) Spring
8 138 (1.66%) RESTful
9 126 (1.52%) Spring Boot
10 115 (1.38%) Node.js
11 102 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 98 (1.18%) PySpark
13 82 (0.99%) XML
14 81 (0.97%) OAuth
15 77 (0.93%) HTML
15 77 (0.93%) JSON
16 73 (0.88%) CSS
17 69 (0.83%) Pandas
17 69 (0.83%) Redux
18 66 (0.79%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 358 (4.31%) Onboarding
2 311 (3.74%) Product Ownership
3 262 (3.15%) Cloud Native
4 202 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
5 189 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 163 (1.96%) Derivative
7 156 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
8 153 (1.84%) Data Structures
9 151 (1.82%) Data Centre
9 151 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
10 143 (1.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 140 (1.68%) Fixed Income
12 121 (1.46%) Equities
13 110 (1.32%) Public Cloud
14 105 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
15 99 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
16 93 (1.12%) Virtual Team
17 87 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
18 65 (0.78%) Hedge funds
19 62 (0.75%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 305 (3.67%) Linux
2 277 (3.33%) Windows
3 140 (1.68%) Unix
4 65 (0.78%) Windows Server
5 54 (0.65%) Windows 10
6 44 (0.53%) Android
7 35 (0.42%) Mac OS
8 25 (0.30%) Apple iOS
9 18 (0.22%) zOS
10 16 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.13%) AIX
12 8 (0.096%) Solaris
13 7 (0.084%) VMS
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,772 (21.32%) Agile
2 1,619 (19.48%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,247 (15.00%) Problem-Solving
4 1,096 (13.19%) Migration
5 940 (11.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 919 (11.06%) DevOps
7 874 (10.51%) Continuous Improvement
8 825 (9.93%) CI/CD
9 817 (9.83%) ERP
10 811 (9.76%) Analytics
11 798 (9.60%) Project Management
12 794 (9.55%) Business Intelligence
13 709 (8.53%) AI
14 661 (7.95%) Decision-Making
15 640 (7.70%) Data Modelling
16 633 (7.62%) Roadmaps
17 594 (7.15%) Validation
18 591 (7.11%) Change Management
19 587 (7.06%) User Acceptance Testing
20 581 (6.99%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,170 (14.08%) SQL
2 1,017 (12.24%) Python
3 551 (6.63%) Java
4 302 (3.63%) C#
5 230 (2.77%) JavaScript
6 191 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 172 (2.07%) PowerShell
8 115 (1.38%) C++
9 82 (0.99%) Go
10 73 (0.88%) Bash
11 67 (0.81%) PL/SQL
12 57 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 56 (0.67%) VBA
14 47 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 40 (0.48%) Scala
17 38 (0.46%) R
18 31 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.34%) Bicep
20 27 (0.32%) Rust
Qualifications
1 789 (9.49%) Degree
2 712 (8.57%) Security Cleared
3 503 (6.05%) SC Cleared
4 205 (2.47%) PMI Certification
5 202 (2.43%) PMP
6 181 (2.18%) ACCA
7 170 (2.05%) CIMA
8 167 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
9 151 (1.82%) Master's Degree
10 141 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
11 124 (1.49%) CISSP
12 88 (1.06%) CISM
13 84 (1.01%) DV Cleared
14 72 (0.87%) Azure Certification
15 64 (0.77%) AWS Certification
16 43 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
17 37 (0.45%) ISTQB
17 37 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
18 36 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
19 32 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 453 (5.45%) Data Quality
2 408 (4.91%) QA
3 347 (4.17%) PMO
4 294 (3.54%) GDPR
5 149 (1.79%) NIST
6 129 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.34%) SLA
8 110 (1.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 91 (1.09%) IFRS
10 77 (0.93%) Accessibility
11 76 (0.91%) PCI DSS
12 70 (0.84%) GRC
13 59 (0.71%) ISO 20022
14 47 (0.57%) GAAP
15 42 (0.51%) PSD2
16 38 (0.46%) SEPA
17 36 (0.43%) NCSC
18 35 (0.42%) MiFID
19 28 (0.34%) Basel III
20 27 (0.32%) COBIT
System Software
1 315 (3.79%) Docker
2 153 (1.84%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.40%) vSphere
5 24 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
8 12 (0.14%) NFS
9 11 (0.13%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 8 (0.096%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.060%) HDFS
14 4 (0.048%) Firmware
14 4 (0.048%) ISA Server
14 4 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.036%) GridGain
15 3 (0.036%) KVM
15 3 (0.036%) RACF
15 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 405 (4.87%) Kubernetes
2 265 (3.19%) Terraform
3 148 (1.78%) Ansible
4 99 (1.19%) Grafana
5 87 (1.05%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.61%) SCCM
8 41 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.24%) vRealize
11 19 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.19%) Argo
13 15 (0.18%) Control-M
14 14 (0.17%) Puppet
14 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
15 13 (0.16%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.14%) CASB
17 11 (0.13%) Kibana
17 11 (0.13%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,097 (13.20%) Microsoft
2 796 (9.58%) SAP
3 702 (8.45%) Oracle
4 318 (3.83%) ServiceNow
5 202 (2.43%) Databricks
6 195 (2.35%) Salesforce
7 181 (2.18%) Google
8 151 (1.82%) Cisco
9 142 (1.71%) Workday
10 131 (1.58%) Splunk
11 111 (1.34%) VMware
12 97 (1.17%) IBM
13 75 (0.90%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.89%) Citrix
15 70 (0.84%) Ariba
16 66 (0.79%) Sage
17 58 (0.70%) Informatica
18 52 (0.63%) Bloomberg
18 52 (0.63%) OpenAI
19 48 (0.58%) Palo Alto