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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,980 7,306 7,770
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.19% 22.09% 20.28%
As % of the General category 32.52% 34.81% 34.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,040 4,770 4,900
10th Percentile £359 £338 £360
25th Percentile £450 £416 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -6.61% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £711
90th Percentile £788 £790 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £507
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.38% -3.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 134 133
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.19 £19.84 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.25% -13.64% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £57.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £69.10 £78.75 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.08 £29.91
% change year-on-year +75.31% -16.17% +15.05%

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 30,691 20,987 22,323
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.94% 63.45% 58.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,938 13,037 13,227
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £419 £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 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,607 1,219 1,051
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £29.01 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.35% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £53.95 £47.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.50 £21.40 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.85% -38.86% +29.63%

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 26 September 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 26 September 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 26 September 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 8,562 £550 - 18,700
London 0 5,179 £600 - 11,902
UK excluding London -1 3,895 £510 +2.00% 8,703
Work from Home -1 2,811 £550 -4.35% 7,567
North of England 0 1,338 £514 +10.72% 2,027
South East -1 744 £500 -2.72% 2,178
North West -1 641 £503 +11.78% 1,154
Yorkshire 0 619 £525 +5.00% 668
Midlands -3 606 £500 +5.26% 1,165
Scotland 0 547 £463 -6.00% 1,063
West Midlands -2 453 £515 -0.91% 722
South West -5 351 £525 -4.55% 1,007
East of England +3 204 £553 -3.91% 658
East Midlands -2 150 £500 +20.48% 441
North East -7 71 £538 +22.51% 217
Northern Ireland 0 66 £510 -1.21% 461
Wales 0 61 £525 +20.69% 227
Channel Islands +2 7 £550 - 14

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
1 325 (3.26%) Confluence
2 261 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 89 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
4 84 (0.84%) Apache Spark
5 74 (0.74%) Apache
6 46 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
8 26 (0.26%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 16 (0.16%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.15%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.090%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.060%) Appian
16 6 (0.060%) JBoss
16 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
17 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 534 (5.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
3 199 (1.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 138 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
5 85 (0.85%) MS Visio
6 62 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
10 4 (0.040%) Windchill
11 3 (0.030%) 1Password
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 443 (4.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.24%) Oracle Payables
3 106 (1.06%) Oracle Receivables
4 103 (1.03%) NetSuite
5 89 (0.89%) Oracle ERP
6 80 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
7 77 (0.77%) Oracle EBS
7 77 (0.77%) SAP FI
8 66 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
9 56 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
10 52 (0.52%) SAP CO
11 49 (0.49%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 47 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
12 47 (0.47%) Workday HCM
13 39 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
14 37 (0.37%) Aladdin
15 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
16 33 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
17 28 (0.28%) SAP BRIM
18 25 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,570 (15.73%) Azure
2 1,094 (10.96%) AWS
3 660 (6.61%) Power Platform
4 563 (5.64%) GCP
5 345 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
6 329 (3.30%) GitHub
7 318 (3.19%) Microsoft 365
8 316 (3.17%) SaaS
9 265 (2.66%) Dynamics 365
10 227 (2.27%) Entra ID
11 222 (2.22%) Snowflake
12 158 (1.58%) Serverless
13 138 (1.38%) OCI
14 135 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
15 132 (1.32%) Power Automate
16 131 (1.31%) Amazon S3
17 127 (1.27%) dbt
18 122 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
19 110 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
20 105 (1.05%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.73%) Firewall
2 156 (1.56%) Network Security
3 103 (1.03%) VPN
4 83 (0.83%) DNS
5 57 (0.57%) TCP/IP
6 55 (0.55%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 45 (0.45%) BGP
9 43 (0.43%) SSL
10 32 (0.32%) LAN
10 32 (0.32%) Multicast
11 31 (0.31%) HTTP
11 31 (0.31%) VLAN
12 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
12 30 (0.30%) Wireless
13 26 (0.26%) OSPF
13 26 (0.26%) SAN
14 24 (0.24%) Internet
15 18 (0.18%) Broadband
15 18 (0.18%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 525 (5.26%) Power BI
2 282 (2.83%) SQL Server
3 251 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 209 (2.09%) Metadata
5 177 (1.77%) Relational Database
6 143 (1.43%) Data Lake
7 137 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
8 126 (1.26%) Tableau
9 89 (0.89%) NoSQL
10 81 (0.81%) BigQuery
10 81 (0.81%) Oracle Database
11 78 (0.78%) MongoDB
12 64 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
13 58 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
14 54 (0.54%) Power Query
15 53 (0.53%) Delta Lake
16 47 (0.47%) Big Data
17 44 (0.44%) Db2
18 43 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
19 42 (0.42%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 643 (6.44%) JIRA
2 330 (3.31%) Git
3 177 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 112 (1.12%) GitLab
5 65 (0.65%) Selenium
6 50 (0.50%) JUnit
7 40 (0.40%) Claude Code
8 38 (0.38%) Maven
9 36 (0.36%) Bitbucket
9 36 (0.36%) SonarQube
10 34 (0.34%) Cucumber
11 32 (0.32%) Gradle
12 31 (0.31%) REST Assured
12 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
13 28 (0.28%) ERwin
14 26 (0.26%) Cypress.io
14 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
15 24 (0.24%) Postman
16 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
17 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 3,119 (31.25%) Social Skills
2 2,092 (20.96%) Banking
3 1,409 (14.12%) Analytical Skills
4 541 (5.42%) Legal
5 537 (5.38%) Public Sector
6 454 (4.55%) Organisational Skills
7 392 (3.93%) Investment Banking
8 372 (3.73%) Retail
9 352 (3.53%) Influencing Skills
10 343 (3.44%) Front Office
11 310 (3.11%) Financial Institution
12 220 (2.20%) Manufacturing
13 210 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
14 194 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 185 (1.85%) Marketing
16 181 (1.81%) Billing
17 179 (1.79%) General Ledger
18 162 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
19 148 (1.48%) Local Government
20 140 (1.40%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,397 (14.00%) Analyst
2 1,124 (11.26%) Senior
3 995 (9.97%) Developer
4 982 (9.84%) Lead
5 863 (8.65%) Architect
6 731 (7.32%) Consultant
7 723 (7.24%) Business Analyst
8 683 (6.84%) Project Manager
9 333 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
10 300 (3.01%) Data Engineer
11 259 (2.60%) Financial Analyst
12 216 (2.16%) Senior Manager
13 215 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 213 (2.13%) Senior Developer
15 205 (2.05%) Data Analyst
16 190 (1.90%) Programme Manager
17 179 (1.79%) IT Manager
18 174 (1.74%) Accountant
19 167 (1.67%) Finance Manager
20 151 (1.51%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 410 (4.11%) Terraform
2 400 (4.01%) REST
3 275 (2.76%) Kafka
4 266 (2.67%) .NET
5 262 (2.63%) Oracle Fusion
6 245 (2.45%) React
7 199 (1.99%) Spring
8 198 (1.98%) Middleware
9 194 (1.94%) Spring Boot
10 146 (1.46%) PySpark
11 145 (1.45%) RESTful
12 112 (1.12%) JSON
13 109 (1.09%) OAuth
13 109 (1.09%) XML
14 97 (0.97%) SOAP
15 89 (0.89%) Web Services
16 88 (0.88%) Redux
17 78 (0.78%) AngularJS
18 77 (0.77%) Node.js
19 76 (0.76%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 529 (5.30%) Onboarding
2 517 (5.18%) Product Ownership
3 474 (4.75%) Cloud Native
4 257 (2.58%) Management Information System
5 255 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
6 233 (2.33%) Data Structures
7 229 (2.29%) Virtual Team
8 218 (2.18%) AI Agents
9 213 (2.13%) Distributed Systems
10 201 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
11 192 (1.92%) Derivative
12 169 (1.69%) Data Centre
13 165 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
14 154 (1.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 135 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
16 131 (1.31%) Fixed Income
17 120 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
18 115 (1.15%) Equities
19 114 (1.14%) Podcast
20 113 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 384 (3.85%) Windows
2 338 (3.39%) Linux
3 172 (1.72%) Unix
4 95 (0.95%) Windows Server
5 62 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.42%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 38 (0.38%) zOS
10 35 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 33 (0.33%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 13 (0.13%) VMS
14 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
15 7 (0.070%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 5 (0.050%) CentOS
18 4 (0.040%) MVS
18 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,739 (27.44%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,037 (20.41%) Agile
3 1,344 (13.47%) Migration
4 1,323 (13.26%) Problem-Solving
5 1,322 (13.25%) AI
6 1,166 (11.68%) CI/CD
7 1,130 (11.32%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,115 (11.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,021 (10.23%) Analytics
10 1,010 (10.12%) DevOps
11 976 (9.78%) ERP
12 926 (9.28%) Decision-Making
13 888 (8.90%) Validation
14 878 (8.80%) Roadmaps
15 778 (7.80%) Project Management
16 776 (7.78%) Data Modelling
17 750 (7.52%) User Acceptance Testing
18 722 (7.23%) Change Management
19 721 (7.22%) Risk Management
20 685 (6.86%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,368 (13.71%) SQL
2 1,284 (12.87%) Python
3 663 (6.64%) Java
4 358 (3.59%) C#
5 284 (2.85%) PowerShell
6 256 (2.57%) JavaScript
7 221 (2.21%) TypeScript
8 162 (1.62%) Bash
9 113 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 93 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 73 (0.73%) C++
12 71 (0.71%) Go
13 69 (0.69%) T-SQL
14 59 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 56 (0.56%) Bicep
16 52 (0.52%) Korn
17 45 (0.45%) Scala
18 36 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 34 (0.34%) Apex Code
19 34 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 766 (7.68%) Security Cleared
2 737 (7.38%) Degree
3 546 (5.47%) SC Cleared
4 258 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
4 258 (2.59%) PMP
5 225 (2.25%) PMI Certification
6 188 (1.88%) ACCA
7 165 (1.65%) CIMA
8 139 (1.39%) DV Cleared
9 133 (1.33%) CISSP
9 133 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
10 113 (1.13%) Azure Certification
11 82 (0.82%) AWS Certification
12 80 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
13 78 (0.78%) Master's Degree
14 69 (0.69%) CISM
15 52 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
16 48 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
18 39 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 711 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 428 (4.29%) QA
3 352 (3.53%) PMO
4 212 (2.12%) GDPR
5 134 (1.34%) NIST
6 126 (1.26%) GRC
7 119 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 108 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 97 (0.97%) SLA
10 94 (0.94%) IFRS
11 75 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 66 (0.66%) ISO 20022
13 46 (0.46%) GAAP
14 45 (0.45%) PCI DSS
15 39 (0.39%) SEPA
16 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) COBIT
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) EMIR
19 24 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 265 (2.66%) Docker
2 239 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 98 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) RACF
5 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 26 (0.26%) vSphere
7 16 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.11%) NFS
11 8 (0.080%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
12 6 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
13 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
15 3 (0.030%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 498 (4.99%) Kubernetes
2 193 (1.93%) Ansible
3 97 (0.97%) Grafana
4 84 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
5 69 (0.69%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
7 61 (0.61%) SCCM
8 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.20%) Argo
12 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
13 15 (0.15%) Istio
14 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
15 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 11 (0.11%) Puppet
16 10 (0.10%) Packer
16 10 (0.10%) Tivoli
17 9 (0.090%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 8 (0.080%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 1,433 (14.36%) Microsoft
2 877 (8.79%) SAP
3 872 (8.74%) Oracle
4 372 (3.73%) ServiceNow
5 362 (3.63%) Databricks
6 241 (2.41%) Google
7 235 (2.35%) Salesforce
8 202 (2.02%) IBM
9 153 (1.53%) Workday
10 150 (1.50%) VMware
11 128 (1.28%) Cisco
12 118 (1.18%) Splunk
13 110 (1.10%) Ariba
14 91 (0.91%) OpenAI
15 88 (0.88%) CyberArk
16 56 (0.56%) Citrix
17 55 (0.55%) Bloomberg
18 54 (0.54%) Sage
19 53 (0.53%) Murex
19 53 (0.53%) Red Hat