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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,005 7,217 7,722
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.34% 21.83% 20.40%
As % of the General category 32.53% 34.51% 34.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,991 4,692 4,844
10th Percentile £360 £338 £356
25th Percentile £450 £418 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £530 £575
Median % change year-on-year +3.77% -7.83% -3.85%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 363 141 128
10th Percentile £14.54 £15.48 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.03 £17.79 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.54 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.62% -16.55% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £53.95 £55.06
90th Percentile £67.25 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +83.17% -27.27% +29.41%

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 30,759 20,913 22,159
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.39% 63.27% 58.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,866 13,017 13,104
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £420 £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 £740 £738 £767
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £483
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.66% -3.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,720 1,230 965
10th Percentile £13.48 £13.57 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.01 £16.19 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.08 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.67% -24.02% +20.00%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £31.97
% change year-on-year +28.56% -33.09% +21.79%

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8,573 £550 - 18,885
London 0 5,202 £600 +2.13% 12,284
UK excluding London 0 3,871 £510 +2.00% 7,912
Work from Home -1 2,787 £550 - 7,463
North of England 0 1,340 £514 +9.36% 1,860
South East -1 740 £500 -2.82% 1,864
North West -2 642 £509 +13.00% 981
Yorkshire +1 620 £515 +3.00% 660
Midlands -2 613 £525 +10.53% 1,087
Scotland 0 540 £463 -6.00% 1,016
West Midlands -2 455 £515 -0.91% 653
South West -6 337 £525 -4.55% 807
East of England +1 199 £550 -3.51% 679
East Midlands -2 152 £525 +25.00% 435
North East -9 71 £538 +22.86% 232
Wales +3 66 £525 +20.34% 206
Northern Ireland 0 60 £486 -7.38% 445
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 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 (3.25%) Confluence
2 258 (2.58%) SharePoint
3 96 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
4 81 (0.81%) Apache
4 81 (0.81%) Apache Spark
5 48 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
6 33 (0.33%) CMS
7 23 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
7 23 (0.23%) SAS
8 19 (0.19%) IIS
9 16 (0.16%) Jupyter
10 15 (0.15%) Camunda
11 11 (0.11%) CICS
11 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
12 9 (0.090%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.060%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 6 (0.060%) Appian
14 6 (0.060%) JBoss
15 5 (0.050%) WebLogic
Applications
1 525 (5.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 191 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 148 (1.48%) Microsoft Project
5 84 (0.84%) MS Visio
6 68 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.080%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.080%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) Windchill
12 3 (0.030%) 1Password
12 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.030%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 447 (4.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 122 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
3 110 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
4 95 (0.95%) NetSuite
5 88 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
5 88 (0.88%) Oracle General Ledger
6 85 (0.85%) SAP FI
7 79 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
8 70 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
9 59 (0.59%) Oracle Financials
10 55 (0.55%) SAP CO
11 52 (0.52%) Workday HCM
12 50 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
13 46 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
13 46 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 42 (0.42%) Aladdin
15 34 (0.34%) SAP GRC
16 33 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
17 31 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
18 26 (0.26%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,606 (16.05%) Azure
2 1,101 (11.00%) AWS
3 658 (6.58%) Power Platform
4 565 (5.65%) GCP
5 370 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 333 (3.33%) GitHub
7 324 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
8 313 (3.13%) SaaS
9 265 (2.65%) Dynamics 365
10 232 (2.32%) Entra ID
11 221 (2.21%) Snowflake
12 160 (1.60%) Serverless
13 138 (1.38%) OCI
14 136 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
15 129 (1.29%) dbt
16 128 (1.28%) Power Automate
17 125 (1.25%) Amazon S3
18 123 (1.23%) Microsoft Copilot
19 115 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
20 107 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 177 (1.77%) Firewall
2 170 (1.70%) Network Security
3 104 (1.04%) VPN
4 90 (0.90%) DNS
5 61 (0.61%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.56%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 47 (0.47%) BGP
9 39 (0.39%) SSL
10 35 (0.35%) Multicast
11 33 (0.33%) LAN
12 32 (0.32%) VLAN
13 31 (0.31%) HTTP
14 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
14 30 (0.30%) Wireless
15 29 (0.29%) SAN
16 28 (0.28%) OSPF
17 25 (0.25%) Internet
18 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
19 19 (0.19%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 522 (5.22%) Power BI
2 288 (2.88%) SQL Server
3 260 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
4 199 (1.99%) Metadata
5 173 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 146 (1.46%) Data Lake
7 134 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
8 126 (1.26%) Tableau
9 87 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.83%) BigQuery
11 82 (0.82%) Oracle Database
12 81 (0.81%) MongoDB
13 59 (0.59%) Oracle Reports
13 59 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
14 53 (0.53%) Delta Lake
14 53 (0.53%) Power Query
15 47 (0.47%) Db2
16 45 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
17 43 (0.43%) Big Data
18 42 (0.42%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 660 (6.60%) JIRA
2 350 (3.50%) Git
3 190 (1.90%) Jenkins
4 118 (1.18%) GitLab
5 67 (0.67%) Selenium
6 50 (0.50%) JUnit
7 43 (0.43%) Claude Code
8 40 (0.40%) Maven
9 39 (0.39%) Cucumber
10 38 (0.38%) Bitbucket
11 35 (0.35%) Gradle
11 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
12 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
13 32 (0.32%) Visual Studio
14 29 (0.29%) Cypress.io
15 28 (0.28%) Postman
16 27 (0.27%) ERwin
17 26 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
18 21 (0.21%) Mockito
18 21 (0.21%) Zephyr
General
1 3,146 (31.44%) Social Skills
2 2,154 (21.53%) Banking
3 1,429 (14.28%) Analytical Skills
4 542 (5.42%) Public Sector
5 533 (5.33%) Legal
6 469 (4.69%) Organisational Skills
7 403 (4.03%) Investment Banking
8 363 (3.63%) Retail
9 347 (3.47%) Influencing Skills
10 341 (3.41%) Front Office
11 305 (3.05%) Financial Institution
12 226 (2.26%) Manufacturing
13 207 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
14 194 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 190 (1.90%) Billing
16 189 (1.89%) Marketing
17 186 (1.86%) General Ledger
18 155 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
19 153 (1.53%) Local Government
20 147 (1.47%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,376 (13.75%) Analyst
2 1,146 (11.45%) Senior
3 993 (9.93%) Developer
4 966 (9.66%) Lead
5 870 (8.70%) Architect
6 735 (7.35%) Consultant
7 705 (7.05%) Business Analyst
8 678 (6.78%) Project Manager
9 350 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
10 291 (2.91%) Data Engineer
11 248 (2.48%) Financial Analyst
12 219 (2.19%) Senior Manager
13 213 (2.13%) Senior Developer
14 204 (2.04%) Java Developer
15 202 (2.02%) Programme Manager
16 200 (2.00%) Data Analyst
17 185 (1.85%) IT Manager
18 178 (1.78%) Accountant
19 165 (1.65%) Finance Manager
20 154 (1.54%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 420 (4.20%) Terraform
2 418 (4.18%) REST
3 284 (2.84%) Kafka
4 273 (2.73%) Oracle Fusion
5 270 (2.70%) .NET
6 246 (2.46%) React
7 199 (1.99%) Spring
8 194 (1.94%) Spring Boot
9 192 (1.92%) Middleware
10 149 (1.49%) PySpark
11 143 (1.43%) RESTful
12 115 (1.15%) JSON
13 111 (1.11%) OAuth
14 110 (1.10%) XML
15 100 (1.00%) SOAP
16 92 (0.92%) Web Services
17 86 (0.86%) AngularJS
17 86 (0.86%) Redux
18 85 (0.85%) HTML
19 74 (0.74%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 536 (5.36%) Onboarding
2 514 (5.14%) Product Ownership
3 487 (4.87%) Cloud Native
4 274 (2.74%) Management Information System
5 253 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 237 (2.37%) Data Structures
7 228 (2.28%) Virtual Team
8 226 (2.26%) AI Agents
9 223 (2.23%) Distributed Systems
10 206 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
11 194 (1.94%) Derivative
12 190 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
13 176 (1.76%) Data Centre
14 149 (1.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 137 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
16 132 (1.32%) Fixed Income
17 123 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
18 116 (1.16%) Equities
19 114 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
20 113 (1.13%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 388 (3.88%) Windows
2 347 (3.47%) Linux
3 171 (1.71%) Unix
4 102 (1.02%) Windows Server
5 61 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 48 (0.48%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.42%) Android
8 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 37 (0.37%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.37%) zOS
10 29 (0.29%) Solaris
11 14 (0.14%) VMS
12 13 (0.13%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 7 (0.070%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.060%) HPUX
15 6 (0.060%) SUSE
16 5 (0.050%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,824 (28.23%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,076 (20.75%) Agile
3 1,360 (13.59%) Migration
4 1,359 (13.58%) AI
5 1,347 (13.46%) Problem-Solving
6 1,184 (11.83%) CI/CD
7 1,129 (11.28%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,111 (11.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,041 (10.40%) Analytics
10 1,037 (10.36%) DevOps
11 949 (9.49%) ERP
12 943 (9.43%) Decision-Making
13 919 (9.19%) Roadmaps
14 906 (9.06%) Validation
15 778 (7.78%) Project Management
16 768 (7.68%) Data Modelling
17 758 (7.58%) User Acceptance Testing
18 752 (7.52%) Risk Management
19 707 (7.07%) Project Delivery
20 705 (7.05%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,376 (13.75%) SQL
2 1,311 (13.10%) Python
3 657 (6.57%) Java
4 359 (3.59%) C#
5 304 (3.04%) PowerShell
6 272 (2.72%) JavaScript
7 222 (2.22%) TypeScript
8 177 (1.77%) Bash
9 107 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.80%) C++
12 73 (0.73%) Go
13 69 (0.69%) T-SQL
14 61 (0.61%) Bicep
14 61 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 54 (0.54%) Korn
16 45 (0.45%) Scala
17 34 (0.34%) Kotlin
18 33 (0.33%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.30%) VBA
Qualifications
1 784 (7.84%) Security Cleared
2 731 (7.31%) Degree
3 562 (5.62%) SC Cleared
4 258 (2.58%) PMP
5 256 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
6 234 (2.34%) PMI Certification
7 185 (1.85%) ACCA
8 164 (1.64%) CIMA
9 144 (1.44%) DV Cleared
10 139 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
11 130 (1.30%) CISSP
12 114 (1.14%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.87%) AWS Certification
14 79 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
15 77 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 68 (0.68%) CISM
17 52 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 46 (0.46%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 37 (0.37%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 728 (7.28%) Data Quality
2 423 (4.23%) QA
3 356 (3.56%) PMO
4 201 (2.01%) GDPR
5 131 (1.31%) NIST
6 127 (1.27%) GRC
7 118 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.07%) Accessibility
9 90 (0.90%) IFRS
9 90 (0.90%) SLA
10 75 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
12 45 (0.45%) PCI DSS
13 42 (0.42%) GAAP
14 41 (0.41%) SEPA
15 33 (0.33%) Solvency II
16 28 (0.28%) COBIT
17 26 (0.26%) MiFID
18 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
18 25 (0.25%) NCSC
System Software
1 270 (2.70%) Docker
2 248 (2.48%) Active Directory
3 104 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 30 (0.30%) vSphere
6 28 (0.28%) RACF
7 26 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.11%) NFS
12 8 (0.080%) IAG
13 6 (0.060%) ACF2
13 6 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) GPFS
14 4 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 2 (0.020%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.020%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 510 (5.10%) Kubernetes
2 196 (1.96%) Ansible
3 98 (0.98%) Grafana
4 83 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.62%) SCCM
7 60 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
9 28 (0.28%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.14%) Istio
14 11 (0.11%) Puppet
15 10 (0.100%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.100%) Packer
15 10 (0.100%) Tivoli
16 8 (0.080%) Kustomize
16 8 (0.080%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,468 (14.67%) Microsoft
2 898 (8.98%) SAP
3 865 (8.65%) Oracle
4 360 (3.60%) ServiceNow
5 355 (3.55%) Databricks
6 239 (2.39%) Google
7 238 (2.38%) Salesforce
8 202 (2.02%) IBM
9 160 (1.60%) VMware
10 159 (1.59%) Workday
11 135 (1.35%) Cisco
12 122 (1.22%) Splunk
13 121 (1.21%) Ariba
14 91 (0.91%) CyberArk
15 90 (0.90%) OpenAI
16 58 (0.58%) Bloomberg
17 57 (0.57%) Citrix
18 56 (0.56%) Murex
19 55 (0.55%) Sage
20 53 (0.53%) Red Hat