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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,940 7,297 7,638
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.27% 22.48% 20.03%
As % of the General category 32.86% 35.31% 34.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,067 4,762 4,882
10th Percentile £359 £332 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £530 £575
Median % change year-on-year +3.77% -7.83% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £495 £513
% change year-on-year +2.83% -3.41% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 134 151
10th Percentile £15.01 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £20.36 £23.21
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -11.30% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £59.38 £53.38
90th Percentile £74.75 £78.75 £70.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £33.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -23.79% +23.39%

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 30,249 20,664 22,066
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.59% 63.67% 57.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,774 12,794 13,287
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
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 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,472 1,190 1,117
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.72
25th Percentile £16.38 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £37.28
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -32.54% +35.56%
75th Percentile £54.06 £48.74 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.25 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.39 £37.28
% change year-on-year +40.25% -42.62% +43.38%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 8,566 £550 - 21,664
London 0 5,189 £585 +0.56% 14,389
UK excluding London 0 3,893 £509 +2.83% 9,503
Work from Home -1 2,824 £550 -2.65% 9,105
North of England 0 1,337 £511 +11.01% 2,306
South East -2 733 £500 -2.91% 2,129
North West -1 660 £500 +11.11% 1,364
Midlands -1 613 £500 +6.61% 1,211
Yorkshire 0 595 £518 +5.91% 703
Scotland 0 537 £463 -5.42% 1,347
West Midlands +1 459 £507 -1.07% 777
South West -7 352 £525 -8.70% 1,101
East of England +1 217 £555 +0.91% 726
East Midlands -4 151 £500 +20.48% 434
North East -6 75 £500 +14.29% 267
Northern Ireland -1 67 £510 +2.00% 552
Wales +1 61 £525 +13.51% 229
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 15

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
1 327 (3.29%) Confluence
2 261 (2.63%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
4 81 (0.81%) Apache Spark
5 69 (0.69%) Apache
6 48 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 26 (0.26%) SAS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 17 (0.17%) Camunda
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.12%) CICS
14 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 7 (0.070%) Ethereum
17 6 (0.060%) Appian
17 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
18 5 (0.050%) JBoss
18 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 528 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 194 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 147 (1.48%) Microsoft Project
5 85 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 67 (0.67%) 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%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 1 (0.010%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 443 (4.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 126 (1.27%) Oracle Payables
3 106 (1.07%) NetSuite
4 104 (1.05%) Oracle Receivables
5 93 (0.94%) Oracle ERP
6 75 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
7 74 (0.74%) Oracle General Ledger
8 72 (0.72%) SAP FI
9 66 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 52 (0.52%) Oracle Financials
12 49 (0.49%) SAP CO
13 44 (0.44%) SAP FI/CO
14 38 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
15 36 (0.36%) Workday HCM
16 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
16 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
17 34 (0.34%) Aladdin
18 26 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
19 25 (0.25%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,561 (15.70%) Azure
2 1,080 (10.87%) AWS
3 675 (6.79%) Power Platform
4 547 (5.50%) GCP
5 349 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
6 329 (3.31%) SaaS
7 321 (3.23%) GitHub
8 314 (3.16%) Microsoft 365
9 275 (2.77%) Dynamics 365
10 219 (2.20%) Snowflake
11 218 (2.19%) Entra ID
12 159 (1.60%) Serverless
13 143 (1.44%) OCI
14 129 (1.30%) GitHub Actions
15 125 (1.26%) dbt
15 125 (1.26%) Power Automate
16 124 (1.25%) Amazon S3
17 121 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
18 115 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
19 104 (1.05%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 170 (1.71%) Firewall
2 146 (1.47%) Network Security
3 103 (1.04%) VPN
4 86 (0.87%) DNS
5 62 (0.62%) TCP/IP
6 53 (0.53%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 44 (0.44%) BGP
8 44 (0.44%) SSL
9 36 (0.36%) HTTP
10 34 (0.34%) VLAN
11 33 (0.33%) Multicast
12 31 (0.31%) LAN
13 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.30%) Wireless
14 25 (0.25%) OSPF
14 25 (0.25%) SAN
15 24 (0.24%) Internet
16 17 (0.17%) Broadband
17 16 (0.16%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 542 (5.45%) Power BI
2 294 (2.96%) SQL Server
3 253 (2.55%) Data Warehouse
4 204 (2.05%) Metadata
5 182 (1.83%) Relational Database
6 143 (1.44%) Data Lake
7 135 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
8 121 (1.22%) Tableau
9 84 (0.85%) NoSQL
10 82 (0.82%) BigQuery
11 79 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 76 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 75 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
14 56 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (0.55%) Delta Lake
16 54 (0.54%) Power Query
17 51 (0.51%) Big Data
18 46 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
18 46 (0.46%) Db2
19 44 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 655 (6.59%) JIRA
2 311 (3.13%) Git
3 175 (1.76%) Jenkins
4 106 (1.07%) GitLab
5 57 (0.57%) Selenium
6 47 (0.47%) JUnit
7 38 (0.38%) Maven
8 36 (0.36%) Claude Code
9 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
10 34 (0.34%) Bitbucket
11 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 30 (0.30%) Gradle
12 30 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
13 29 (0.29%) ERwin
13 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.27%) Cucumber
15 23 (0.23%) Cypress.io
16 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
17 20 (0.20%) Postman
17 20 (0.20%) Zephyr
General
1 3,088 (31.07%) Social Skills
2 2,032 (20.44%) Banking
3 1,402 (14.10%) Analytical Skills
4 541 (5.44%) Legal
5 533 (5.36%) Public Sector
6 445 (4.48%) Organisational Skills
7 392 (3.94%) Investment Banking
8 384 (3.86%) Retail
9 340 (3.42%) Front Office
10 337 (3.39%) Influencing Skills
11 316 (3.18%) Financial Institution
12 216 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
13 206 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 198 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 174 (1.75%) General Ledger
16 170 (1.71%) Marketing
17 163 (1.64%) Billing
18 161 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
19 150 (1.51%) Local Government
20 139 (1.40%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,434 (14.43%) Analyst
2 1,089 (10.96%) Senior
3 998 (10.04%) Lead
4 981 (9.87%) Developer
5 877 (8.82%) Architect
6 734 (7.38%) Business Analyst
7 714 (7.18%) Consultant
8 691 (6.95%) Project Manager
9 335 (3.37%) Solutions Architect
10 305 (3.07%) Data Engineer
11 264 (2.66%) Financial Analyst
12 222 (2.23%) Senior Manager
13 210 (2.11%) Java Developer
14 203 (2.04%) Data Analyst
15 202 (2.03%) Senior Developer
16 189 (1.90%) Programme Manager
17 179 (1.80%) IT Manager
18 176 (1.77%) Accountant
18 176 (1.77%) Finance Manager
19 154 (1.55%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 393 (3.95%) Terraform
2 384 (3.86%) REST
3 270 (2.72%) .NET
4 267 (2.69%) Kafka
5 261 (2.63%) Oracle Fusion
6 238 (2.39%) React
7 194 (1.95%) Spring
8 190 (1.91%) Spring Boot
9 182 (1.83%) Middleware
10 146 (1.47%) PySpark
11 141 (1.42%) RESTful
12 105 (1.06%) JSON
12 105 (1.06%) OAuth
13 104 (1.05%) XML
14 88 (0.89%) SOAP
15 83 (0.84%) Redux
16 78 (0.78%) AngularJS
17 76 (0.76%) Node.js
17 76 (0.76%) Web Services
18 70 (0.70%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 514 (5.17%) Onboarding
2 512 (5.15%) Product Ownership
3 451 (4.54%) Cloud Native
4 252 (2.54%) Management Information System
5 248 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
6 237 (2.38%) Data Structures
7 228 (2.29%) Virtual Team
8 202 (2.03%) Distributed Systems
9 201 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
10 198 (1.99%) AI Agents
11 186 (1.87%) Derivative
12 162 (1.63%) Data Centre
13 160 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 149 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
15 133 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
16 125 (1.26%) Fixed Income
17 114 (1.15%) Podcast
18 113 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
19 111 (1.12%) Equities
19 111 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 375 (3.77%) Windows
2 316 (3.18%) Linux
3 167 (1.68%) Unix
4 88 (0.89%) Windows Server
5 57 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 39 (0.39%) Android
9 37 (0.37%) zOS
10 34 (0.34%) Solaris
11 30 (0.30%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 4 (0.040%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,623 (26.39%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,030 (20.42%) Agile
3 1,341 (13.49%) Migration
4 1,316 (13.24%) Problem-Solving
5 1,290 (12.98%) AI
6 1,160 (11.67%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,148 (11.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,129 (11.36%) CI/CD
9 1,020 (10.26%) Analytics
10 1,004 (10.10%) DevOps
11 990 (9.96%) ERP
12 917 (9.23%) Decision-Making
13 860 (8.65%) Validation
14 851 (8.56%) Roadmaps
15 775 (7.80%) Data Modelling
16 770 (7.75%) Project Management
17 759 (7.64%) User Acceptance Testing
18 738 (7.42%) Change Management
19 700 (7.04%) Risk Management
20 664 (6.68%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,344 (13.52%) SQL
2 1,254 (12.62%) Python
3 651 (6.55%) Java
4 365 (3.67%) C#
5 285 (2.87%) PowerShell
6 248 (2.49%) JavaScript
7 218 (2.19%) TypeScript
8 151 (1.52%) Bash
9 113 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.98%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.80%) C++
12 71 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 64 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 61 (0.61%) Go
15 57 (0.57%) Bicep
16 49 (0.49%) Korn
17 42 (0.42%) Scala
18 37 (0.37%) VBA
19 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
20 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 773 (7.78%) Security Cleared
2 737 (7.41%) Degree
3 558 (5.61%) SC Cleared
4 258 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 249 (2.51%) PMP
6 219 (2.20%) PMI Certification
7 192 (1.93%) ACCA
8 167 (1.68%) CIMA
9 135 (1.36%) CISSP
9 135 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
9 135 (1.36%) DV Cleared
10 111 (1.12%) Azure Certification
11 86 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
12 76 (0.76%) CISM
13 74 (0.74%) Master's Degree
14 69 (0.69%) AWS Certification
15 53 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
16 47 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 44 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 36 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 694 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 432 (4.35%) QA
3 356 (3.58%) PMO
4 219 (2.20%) GDPR
5 135 (1.36%) NIST
6 120 (1.21%) GRC
7 117 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 95 (0.96%) IFRS
10 93 (0.94%) SLA
11 81 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 68 (0.68%) ISO 20022
13 49 (0.49%) GAAP
14 41 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 38 (0.38%) SEPA
16 35 (0.35%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.29%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) COBIT
18 28 (0.28%) EMIR
19 23 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 277 (2.79%) Docker
2 234 (2.35%) Active Directory
3 88 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 26 (0.26%) RACF
7 18 (0.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 9 (0.091%) IAG
11 6 (0.060%) ACF2
11 6 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.050%) GPFS
12 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
14 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 492 (4.95%) Kubernetes
2 181 (1.82%) Ansible
3 100 (1.01%) Grafana
4 79 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 70 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.63%) SCCM
7 60 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 19 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 13 (0.13%) Istio
12 13 (0.13%) Puppet
13 12 (0.12%) FortiGate
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
15 10 (0.10%) vRealize
16 9 (0.091%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,429 (14.38%) Microsoft
2 888 (8.93%) Oracle
3 864 (8.69%) SAP
4 373 (3.75%) ServiceNow
5 362 (3.64%) Databricks
6 238 (2.39%) Salesforce
7 229 (2.30%) Google
8 184 (1.85%) IBM
9 142 (1.43%) VMware
10 136 (1.37%) Workday
11 123 (1.24%) Cisco
12 119 (1.20%) Splunk
13 101 (1.02%) Ariba
14 87 (0.88%) OpenAI
15 86 (0.87%) CyberArk
16 57 (0.57%) Bloomberg
16 57 (0.57%) Citrix
17 51 (0.51%) Informatica
17 51 (0.51%) Murex
18 50 (0.50%) Sage