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

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,371 6,707 8,347
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.40% 21.22% 18.93%
As % of the General category 32.52% 34.32% 32.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,703 4,214 5,667
10th Percentile £350 £356 £360
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £688
90th Percentile £779 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £509
% change year-on-year - -1.77% -3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 89 142
10th Percentile £15.00 £18.01 £11.77
25th Percentile £17.50 £22.27 £14.01
Median hourly rate £23.50 £27.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.55% +27.91% -14.00%
75th Percentile £40.00 £57.25 £43.26
90th Percentile £66.83 £79.00 £52.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -40.00%

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 22,664 19,541 25,907
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.64% 61.81% 58.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,263 11,660 16,840
10th Percentile £284 £285 £266
25th Percentile £401 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.23% -2.36%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,390 642 1,432
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £16.36 £20.00 £15.32
Median hourly rate £22.92 £27.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.65% +5.77% +4.00%
75th Percentile £46.94 £53.44 £55.47
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.46 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.13 £26.23 £25.25
% change year-on-year -19.46% +3.88% +12.67%

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 24 January 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 24 January 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 24 January 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 6,483 £540 -8.47% 5,575
London -1 3,952 £575 -5.12% 1,471
UK excluding London -2 2,922 £500 - 5,095
Work from Home -1 2,051 £537 -10.50% 2,200
North of England +1 920 £475 -3.96% 986
South East -1 544 £503 -4.29% 1,705
Midlands -3 520 £490 -6.67% 689
North West +2 448 £450 -6.49% 426
Yorkshire 0 424 £500 -2.91% 416
Scotland 0 386 £500 +7.07% 224
West Midlands -5 318 £525 -4.55% 283
South West -6 291 £525 -1.87% 612
East Midlands 0 200 £430 +2.38% 396
East of England -2 173 £529 +0.71% 658
Wales +25 80 £413 -12.00% 240
Northern Ireland -1 57 £500 +42.86% 110
North East -7 49 £481 - 158
Channel Islands +1 1 - -

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
1 314 (4.26%) Confluence
2 206 (2.79%) SharePoint
3 73 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 62 (0.84%) Apache
6 60 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.43%) SAS
8 29 (0.39%) CMS
9 24 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.28%) IIS
11 16 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 15 (0.20%) Ethereum
13 14 (0.19%) Appian
14 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
14 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 13 (0.18%) TPMS
15 12 (0.16%) Camunda
15 12 (0.16%) Hyperledger
15 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 503 (6.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 288 (3.91%) Microsoft Office
3 205 (2.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 165 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
5 131 (1.78%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 14 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.081%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.068%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.054%) Notion
16 3 (0.041%) Camtasia
16 3 (0.041%) Snagit
17 2 (0.027%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 295 (4.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 127 (1.72%) Oracle Payables
3 98 (1.33%) Oracle Receivables
4 92 (1.25%) Oracle EBS
5 85 (1.15%) Oracle General Ledger
6 69 (0.94%) SAP FI
7 67 (0.91%) NetSuite
8 62 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
9 58 (0.79%) SAP CO
10 54 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 53 (0.72%) Oracle Assets
11 53 (0.72%) Oracle Cash Management
12 52 (0.71%) SAP FI/CO
13 51 (0.69%) Oracle EBS R12
14 47 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
14 47 (0.64%) Oracle Financials
15 39 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 39 (0.53%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
17 27 (0.37%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,089 (14.77%) Azure
2 894 (12.13%) AWS
3 546 (7.41%) Power Platform
4 348 (4.72%) GCP
5 253 (3.43%) Microsoft 365
6 229 (3.11%) SaaS
7 222 (3.01%) Azure DevOps
8 210 (2.85%) Dynamics 365
9 196 (2.66%) GitHub
10 142 (1.93%) Serverless
11 140 (1.90%) OCI
12 136 (1.85%) Snowflake
13 119 (1.61%) Entra ID
14 97 (1.32%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (1.21%) Power Automate
16 88 (1.19%) Amazon S3
17 73 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
18 72 (0.98%) OpenShift
19 70 (0.95%) PowerApps
20 69 (0.94%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 116 (1.57%) Firewall
2 72 (0.98%) Network Security
3 64 (0.87%) WAN
4 43 (0.58%) DNS
5 39 (0.53%) SD-WAN
5 39 (0.53%) VPN
6 37 (0.50%) LAN
7 35 (0.47%) TCP/IP
8 32 (0.43%) Wireless
9 29 (0.39%) HTTP
10 27 (0.37%) Skype
11 25 (0.34%) SSL
12 24 (0.33%) SSH
13 23 (0.31%) DHCP
14 17 (0.23%) Internet
15 16 (0.22%) BGP
15 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
15 16 (0.22%) OSPF
16 14 (0.19%) VLAN
17 13 (0.18%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 477 (6.47%) Power BI
2 198 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
3 192 (2.60%) SQL Server
4 151 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
5 126 (1.71%) NoSQL
5 126 (1.71%) Tableau
6 121 (1.64%) Relational Database
7 116 (1.57%) Data Lake
8 109 (1.48%) Metadata
9 88 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
10 73 (0.99%) MongoDB
11 68 (0.92%) Big Data
11 68 (0.92%) Oracle Database
12 52 (0.71%) BigQuery
13 42 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
13 42 (0.57%) Hadoop
14 38 (0.52%) Power Query
15 37 (0.50%) MySQL
16 36 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
16 36 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 581 (7.88%) JIRA
2 262 (3.55%) Jenkins
3 214 (2.90%) Git
4 155 (2.10%) GitLab
5 79 (1.07%) JUnit
6 59 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 55 (0.75%) Selenium
8 50 (0.68%) Bitbucket
9 47 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
10 37 (0.50%) Postman
11 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 26 (0.35%) Gradle
13 24 (0.33%) Liquibase
14 23 (0.31%) Cypress.io
15 22 (0.30%) Maven
16 21 (0.28%) MLflow
16 21 (0.28%) REST Assured
17 19 (0.26%) JMeter
18 17 (0.23%) SonarQube
19 16 (0.22%) ERwin
General
1 2,575 (34.93%) Social Skills
2 1,511 (20.50%) Banking
3 984 (13.35%) Analytical Skills
4 596 (8.09%) Public Sector
5 336 (4.56%) Financial Institution
6 312 (4.23%) Marketing
7 299 (4.06%) Manufacturing
8 284 (3.85%) Investment Banking
9 279 (3.79%) Telecoms
10 269 (3.65%) Front Office
11 267 (3.62%) Legal
12 211 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
12 211 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
13 186 (2.52%) Electronics
14 165 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
15 145 (1.97%) Retail
16 136 (1.85%) General Ledger
17 132 (1.79%) Presentation Skills
18 125 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 111 (1.51%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,169 (15.86%) Analyst
2 832 (11.29%) Developer
3 717 (9.73%) Senior
4 601 (8.15%) Business Analyst
5 590 (8.00%) Project Manager
6 584 (7.92%) Architect
7 578 (7.84%) Consultant
8 541 (7.34%) Lead
9 238 (3.23%) Solutions Architect
10 187 (2.54%) Data Analyst
11 165 (2.24%) Data Engineer
12 158 (2.14%) Financial Analyst
13 156 (2.12%) Programme Manager
14 145 (1.97%) Java Developer
15 141 (1.91%) Software Engineer
16 139 (1.89%) Senior Developer
17 131 (1.78%) Senior Manager
18 116 (1.57%) IT Manager
19 113 (1.53%) Senior Analyst
20 108 (1.47%) Finance Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 273 (3.70%) REST
2 229 (3.11%) Kafka
3 210 (2.85%) .NET
4 166 (2.25%) React
5 159 (2.16%) Oracle Fusion
6 157 (2.13%) RESTful
7 147 (1.99%) Spring
8 120 (1.63%) Spring Boot
9 111 (1.51%) Middleware
10 107 (1.45%) AngularJS
11 94 (1.28%) Pandas
12 90 (1.22%) XML
13 87 (1.18%) HTML
14 83 (1.13%) NumPy
15 82 (1.11%) Node.js
16 76 (1.03%) CSS
17 75 (1.02%) PySpark
18 74 (1.00%) OAuth
19 71 (0.96%) JSON
20 70 (0.95%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 317 (4.30%) Onboarding
2 296 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 225 (3.05%) Cloud Native
4 175 (2.37%) Derivative
5 167 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 158 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
7 153 (2.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 135 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
9 132 (1.79%) Data Centre
9 132 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
10 127 (1.72%) Equities
11 126 (1.71%) Data Structures
12 123 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
13 115 (1.56%) Fixed Income
14 113 (1.53%) Public Cloud
15 95 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
16 93 (1.26%) Hedge funds
17 74 (1.00%) Credit Risk
17 74 (1.00%) Virtual Team
18 72 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 348 (4.72%) Linux
2 319 (4.33%) Windows
3 150 (2.04%) Unix
4 68 (0.92%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.87%) Windows Server
6 62 (0.84%) Android
6 62 (0.84%) Mac OS
7 32 (0.43%) Apple iOS
8 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 10 (0.14%) zOS
10 7 (0.095%) CentOS
11 6 (0.081%) VMS
12 4 (0.054%) Solaris
12 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.041%) AIX
13 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.041%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.027%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,713 (23.24%) Agile
2 1,377 (18.68%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,196 (16.23%) Problem-Solving
4 850 (11.53%) Migration
5 805 (10.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 802 (10.88%) DevOps
7 781 (10.60%) CI/CD
8 753 (10.22%) Business Intelligence
9 724 (9.82%) Project Management
10 714 (9.69%) Analytics
11 645 (8.75%) ERP
12 631 (8.56%) Continuous Improvement
13 535 (7.26%) AI
14 530 (7.19%) Decision-Making
15 522 (7.08%) Change Management
16 518 (7.03%) Risk Management
17 510 (6.92%) Roadmaps
18 490 (6.65%) Data Modelling
19 483 (6.55%) Project Delivery
20 469 (6.36%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,096 (14.87%) SQL
2 950 (12.89%) Python
3 518 (7.03%) Java
4 312 (4.23%) C#
5 217 (2.94%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.73%) PowerShell
7 156 (2.12%) C++
8 155 (2.10%) TypeScript
9 88 (1.19%) PL/SQL
10 71 (0.96%) Bash
11 70 (0.95%) Go
12 53 (0.72%) Shell Script
13 51 (0.69%) VBA
14 42 (0.57%) R
15 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
16 34 (0.46%) Groovy
17 33 (0.45%) T-SQL
18 32 (0.43%) Rust
18 32 (0.43%) Scala
19 31 (0.42%) Perl
Qualifications
1 795 (10.79%) Degree
2 565 (7.67%) Security Cleared
3 416 (5.64%) SC Cleared
4 191 (2.59%) PMI Certification
5 182 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 179 (2.43%) PMP
7 168 (2.28%) Master's Degree
8 149 (2.02%) ACCA
9 132 (1.79%) CIMA
10 109 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
11 95 (1.29%) CISSP
12 93 (1.26%) AWS Certification
13 64 (0.87%) CISM
13 64 (0.87%) DV Cleared
14 61 (0.83%) Azure Certification
15 45 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
16 39 (0.53%) CBAP
17 33 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 29 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
19 27 (0.37%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (5.18%) QA
2 330 (4.48%) Data Quality
3 274 (3.72%) PMO
4 255 (3.46%) GDPR
5 129 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 123 (1.67%) NIST
7 111 (1.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 97 (1.32%) SLA
9 95 (1.29%) Accessibility
10 79 (1.07%) PCI DSS
11 73 (0.99%) IFRS
12 57 (0.77%) GRC
13 49 (0.66%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.62%) PSD2
15 38 (0.52%) MiFID
16 35 (0.47%) NCSC
17 34 (0.46%) SEPA
18 32 (0.43%) Basel III
19 30 (0.41%) GAAP
20 28 (0.38%) COBIT
System Software
1 334 (4.53%) Docker
2 193 (2.62%) Active Directory
3 52 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
5 20 (0.27%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) HDFS
7 9 (0.12%) NFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
8 8 (0.11%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.068%) Firmware
9 5 (0.068%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 4 (0.054%) BitLocker
10 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
11 3 (0.041%) RACF
11 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
12 2 (0.027%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 380 (5.16%) Kubernetes
2 260 (3.53%) Terraform
3 175 (2.37%) Ansible
4 86 (1.17%) Grafana
5 79 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 65 (0.88%) SCCM
7 58 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 36 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.28%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 13 (0.18%) Control-M
14 13 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
14 13 (0.18%) Puppet
15 10 (0.14%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,009 (13.69%) Microsoft
2 795 (10.79%) SAP
3 703 (9.54%) Oracle
4 272 (3.69%) ServiceNow
5 176 (2.39%) Salesforce
6 168 (2.28%) Splunk
7 158 (2.14%) Databricks
8 157 (2.13%) Google
9 147 (1.99%) Cisco
10 146 (1.98%) Workday
11 102 (1.38%) VMware
12 93 (1.26%) IBM
13 70 (0.95%) Citrix
14 69 (0.94%) CyberArk
15 63 (0.85%) Ariba
16 54 (0.73%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.72%) HP
18 49 (0.66%) Informatica
19 48 (0.65%) OpenAI
20 47 (0.64%) Dell