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 17 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,434 6,565 8,233
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.33% 22.37% 18.77%
As % of the General category 33.20% 35.41% 32.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,334 4,327 5,501
10th Percentile £351 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £571 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.78% -0.78% -4.17%
75th Percentile £669 £700 £700
90th Percentile £800 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 107 248
10th Percentile £14.79 £18.51 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.26 £22.39 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.00 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.44% +48.15% -15.63%
75th Percentile £45.20 £71.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £77.48 £83.20 £55.14
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.32 £53.75 £30.83
% change year-on-year -58.48% +74.37% -31.50%

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 25,401 18,541 25,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.20% 63.17% 58.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,764 11,857 16,167
10th Percentile £305 £296 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £640 £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 1,588 771 1,917
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.46 £18.17 £15.39
Median hourly rate £27.80 £28.75 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.30% +4.55% -21.43%
75th Percentile £59.63 £56.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.31 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -4.49% +1.92% -15.46%

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 17 April 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 17 April 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 17 April 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 7,459 £536 -6.78% 3,955
London 0 4,526 £575 -8.00% 1,932
UK excluding London 0 3,339 £500 - 2,650
Work from Home -2 2,367 £538 -9.20% 1,631
North of England +3 1,090 £475 - 633
South East -2 647 £503 -4.29% 896
North West +6 585 £464 -0.27% 336
Midlands -1 581 £475 -5.00% 382
Yorkshire 0 459 £500 +3.63% 225
Scotland 0 396 £500 +4.06% 130
West Midlands 0 384 £491 -6.48% 221
South West -3 332 £525 +4.95% 297
East of England -1 201 £525 -4.55% 234
East Midlands 0 192 £450 +0.67% 158
Wales +23 101 £413 +10.00% 75
North East -9 46 £488 +6.56% 85
Northern Ireland 0 42 £513 +46.43% 51
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 327 (3.88%) Confluence
2 214 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 50 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
6 49 (0.58%) Apache
7 39 (0.46%) SAS
8 28 (0.33%) CMS
9 20 (0.24%) CICS
10 19 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
11 17 (0.20%) Appian
12 15 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 15 (0.18%) Camunda
13 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
14 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
15 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
15 11 (0.13%) Mendix
16 10 (0.12%) TPMS
17 9 (0.11%) IIS
17 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 540 (6.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 247 (2.93%) Microsoft Office
3 186 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 172 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
5 131 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.17%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.11%) Sketch
10 8 (0.095%) InVision
11 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.059%) Notion
13 3 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Captivate
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 362 (4.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.38%) Oracle Payables
3 100 (1.19%) Oracle Receivables
4 97 (1.15%) NetSuite
5 85 (1.01%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 76 (0.90%) Oracle EBS
7 63 (0.75%) SAP FI
8 62 (0.74%) Oracle General Ledger
9 57 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
10 56 (0.66%) Oracle ERP
11 48 (0.57%) SAP CO
12 44 (0.52%) SAP FI/CO
13 41 (0.49%) Oracle Assets
14 36 (0.43%) Oracle Financials
15 35 (0.41%) Oracle Cash Management
16 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
17 32 (0.38%) Aladdin
18 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
19 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
19 29 (0.34%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,271 (15.07%) Azure
2 965 (11.44%) AWS
3 609 (7.22%) Power Platform
4 381 (4.52%) GCP
5 288 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
6 277 (3.28%) SaaS
7 274 (3.25%) Microsoft 365
8 237 (2.81%) Dynamics 365
9 234 (2.77%) GitHub
10 146 (1.73%) OCI
11 144 (1.71%) Serverless
12 142 (1.68%) Snowflake
13 129 (1.53%) Entra ID
14 120 (1.42%) Amazon S3
15 98 (1.16%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 87 (1.03%) OpenShift
18 86 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
18 86 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
19 75 (0.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.92%) Firewall
2 108 (1.28%) Network Security
3 76 (0.90%) WAN
4 65 (0.77%) DNS
5 60 (0.71%) VPN
6 46 (0.55%) TCP/IP
7 42 (0.50%) LAN
7 42 (0.50%) SD-WAN
8 33 (0.39%) BGP
9 31 (0.37%) HTTP
10 29 (0.34%) SSL
11 28 (0.33%) OSPF
12 27 (0.32%) Multicast
13 24 (0.28%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
16 19 (0.23%) DHCP
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
18 17 (0.20%) VSAN
18 17 (0.20%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 527 (6.25%) Power BI
2 214 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
3 209 (2.48%) SQL Server
4 172 (2.04%) Metadata
5 165 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
6 149 (1.77%) Tableau
7 128 (1.52%) Relational Database
8 118 (1.40%) Data Lake
9 104 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
10 87 (1.03%) NoSQL
11 75 (0.89%) Big Data
12 64 (0.76%) BigQuery
12 64 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 56 (0.66%) MongoDB
14 45 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
16 43 (0.51%) Power Query
17 42 (0.50%) Snowflake Schema
18 40 (0.47%) DynamoDB
19 38 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 669 (7.93%) JIRA
2 208 (2.47%) Git
3 196 (2.32%) Jenkins
4 117 (1.39%) GitLab
5 59 (0.70%) JUnit
6 56 (0.66%) Cucumber
7 43 (0.51%) Selenium
8 36 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
9 29 (0.34%) Postman
10 26 (0.31%) Visual Studio
11 24 (0.28%) Bitbucket
12 23 (0.27%) MLflow
13 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
14 20 (0.24%) REST Assured
15 18 (0.21%) ERwin
15 18 (0.21%) Zephyr
16 17 (0.20%) Maven
16 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 14 (0.17%) Hudson
18 12 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 2,630 (31.18%) Social Skills
2 1,567 (18.58%) Banking
3 1,139 (13.50%) Analytical Skills
4 583 (6.91%) Public Sector
5 323 (3.83%) Financial Institution
6 322 (3.82%) Legal
7 285 (3.38%) Front Office
8 281 (3.33%) Investment Banking
9 241 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
10 237 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
11 232 (2.75%) Retail
12 226 (2.68%) Manufacturing
13 221 (2.62%) Marketing
14 206 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
15 189 (2.24%) Telecoms
16 140 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 128 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
18 127 (1.51%) Local Government
19 121 (1.43%) Law
20 110 (1.30%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,296 (15.37%) Analyst
2 854 (10.13%) Developer
3 851 (10.09%) Senior
4 844 (10.01%) Lead
5 752 (8.92%) Architect
6 700 (8.30%) Business Analyst
7 671 (7.96%) Project Manager
8 620 (7.35%) Consultant
9 296 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 257 (3.05%) Data Engineer
11 203 (2.41%) Financial Analyst
12 192 (2.28%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.23%) Data Analyst
14 186 (2.21%) Finance Manager
15 167 (1.98%) Programme Manager
16 155 (1.84%) Accountant
17 150 (1.78%) Java Developer
18 135 (1.60%) Delivery Manager
19 131 (1.55%) Senior Analyst
20 125 (1.48%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (3.15%) Kafka
2 249 (2.95%) REST
3 215 (2.55%) .NET
4 199 (2.36%) React
5 165 (1.96%) Middleware
6 157 (1.86%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (1.73%) Spring
8 134 (1.59%) Spring Boot
9 132 (1.57%) RESTful
10 112 (1.33%) Node.js
11 96 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 95 (1.13%) PySpark
13 85 (1.01%) OAuth
14 77 (0.91%) XML
15 76 (0.90%) JSON
16 73 (0.87%) HTML
17 72 (0.85%) Redux
18 70 (0.83%) CSS
19 67 (0.79%) Pandas
20 58 (0.69%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 352 (4.17%) Onboarding
2 316 (3.75%) Product Ownership
3 274 (3.25%) Cloud Native
4 226 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
5 190 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 165 (1.96%) Data Structures
7 161 (1.91%) Derivative
8 158 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
9 145 (1.72%) Data Centre
10 144 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 143 (1.70%) Fixed Income
12 135 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
13 113 (1.34%) Equities
14 101 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
14 101 (1.20%) Public Cloud
15 98 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
16 96 (1.14%) Virtual Team
17 80 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
18 64 (0.76%) Credit Risk
18 64 (0.76%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 284 (3.37%) Linux
2 277 (3.28%) Windows
3 140 (1.66%) Unix
4 69 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 49 (0.58%) Windows 10
6 33 (0.39%) Android
7 28 (0.33%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.31%) zOS
9 25 (0.30%) Apple iOS
10 20 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.24%) Solaris
11 16 (0.19%) AIX
12 8 (0.095%) VMS
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.047%) MVS
14 4 (0.047%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.036%) SUSE
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,738 (20.61%) Agile
2 1,653 (19.60%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,244 (14.75%) Problem-Solving
4 1,140 (13.52%) Migration
5 947 (11.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 918 (10.88%) Continuous Improvement
7 894 (10.60%) DevOps
8 883 (10.47%) ERP
9 837 (9.92%) CI/CD
10 820 (9.72%) Analytics
11 813 (9.64%) Project Management
12 772 (9.15%) Business Intelligence
13 768 (9.11%) AI
14 683 (8.10%) Decision-Making
15 668 (7.92%) Data Modelling
16 652 (7.73%) Roadmaps
17 632 (7.49%) Validation
18 621 (7.36%) User Acceptance Testing
19 601 (7.13%) Change Management
20 578 (6.85%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,182 (14.01%) SQL
2 990 (11.74%) Python
3 561 (6.65%) Java
4 312 (3.70%) C#
5 222 (2.63%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.30%) TypeScript
7 166 (1.97%) PowerShell
8 108 (1.28%) C++
9 73 (0.87%) Bash
10 70 (0.83%) PL/SQL
11 68 (0.81%) Go
12 61 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 55 (0.65%) VBA
14 50 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 38 (0.45%) Scala
17 36 (0.43%) R
18 29 (0.34%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.32%) Bicep
20 24 (0.28%) Korn
Qualifications
1 755 (8.95%) Degree
2 695 (8.24%) Security Cleared
3 495 (5.87%) SC Cleared
4 208 (2.47%) PMP
5 202 (2.40%) ACCA
6 200 (2.37%) PMI Certification
7 191 (2.26%) CIMA
8 147 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
9 143 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
10 125 (1.48%) Master's Degree
11 123 (1.46%) CISSP
12 83 (0.98%) DV Cleared
13 81 (0.96%) CISM
14 70 (0.83%) Azure Certification
15 62 (0.74%) AWS Certification
16 46 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
17 38 (0.45%) ISTQB
17 38 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 35 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
19 30 (0.36%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 471 (5.58%) Data Quality
2 408 (4.84%) QA
3 339 (4.02%) PMO
4 303 (3.59%) GDPR
5 148 (1.75%) NIST
6 124 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 108 (1.28%) SLA
8 93 (1.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 92 (1.09%) IFRS
10 79 (0.94%) Accessibility
11 72 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 69 (0.82%) GRC
13 59 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 50 (0.59%) GAAP
15 39 (0.46%) PSD2
16 35 (0.41%) SEPA
17 34 (0.40%) NCSC
18 27 (0.32%) Basel III
18 27 (0.32%) MiFID
19 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 294 (3.49%) Docker
2 149 (1.77%) Active Directory
3 60 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.41%) vSphere
5 25 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
7 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
8 13 (0.15%) NFS
9 12 (0.14%) GPFS
10 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 8 (0.095%) Hyper-V
12 5 (0.059%) HDFS
12 5 (0.059%) RACF
13 4 (0.047%) ACF2
13 4 (0.047%) Firmware
13 4 (0.047%) ISA Server
13 4 (0.047%) KVM
13 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.036%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 389 (4.61%) Kubernetes
2 253 (3.00%) Terraform
3 128 (1.52%) Ansible
4 87 (1.03%) Grafana
5 68 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.59%) SCCM
8 35 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) vRealize
11 18 (0.21%) Control-M
12 17 (0.20%) Argo
13 16 (0.19%) Progress Chef
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 13 (0.15%) Puppet
15 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 12 (0.14%) vCenter Server
16 11 (0.13%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,115 (13.22%) Microsoft
2 798 (9.46%) SAP
3 737 (8.74%) Oracle
4 330 (3.91%) ServiceNow
5 219 (2.60%) Databricks
6 191 (2.26%) Salesforce
7 174 (2.06%) Google
8 147 (1.74%) Workday
9 136 (1.61%) Cisco
10 112 (1.33%) Splunk
10 112 (1.33%) VMware
11 105 (1.24%) IBM
12 80 (0.95%) Citrix
13 78 (0.92%) Ariba
14 74 (0.88%) CyberArk
14 74 (0.88%) Sage
15 55 (0.65%) Informatica
16 54 (0.64%) OpenAI
17 49 (0.58%) Bloomberg
18 48 (0.57%) Murex