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 5 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,579 6,502 8,103
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.05% 22.20% 18.78%
As % of the General category 33.30% 35.15% 32.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,385 4,255 5,388
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £435 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £570 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.14% -0.87% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £712
90th Percentile £800 £834 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 110 245
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.79 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.82 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £35.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.89% +31.48% +0.58%
75th Percentile £54.00 £69.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.51 £55.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £36.00 £32.12
% change year-on-year -37.50% +12.10% -24.44%

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 25,759 18,500 25,090
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.18% 63.16% 58.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,831 11,804 15,823
10th Percentile £306 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £641 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £766
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,641 792 1,939
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.63 £17.49 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -10.14%
75th Percentile £60.59 £56.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.01
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £28.25
% change year-on-year +10.00% -11.50% -2.59%

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 5 May 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 5 May 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 5 May 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 7,577 £540 -6.13% 4,896
London 0 4,570 £575 -8.00% 2,456
UK excluding London 0 3,430 £500 - 3,172
Work from Home -2 2,403 £525 -12.50% 2,042
North of England +3 1,143 £482 +1.39% 768
South East -1 653 £503 -2.36% 998
North West +5 617 £465 - 403
Midlands -1 587 £475 -4.04% 490
Yorkshire +1 487 £514 +2.80% 279
Scotland +1 422 £497 +1.70% 156
West Midlands 0 391 £492 -6.29% 267
South West -2 342 £505 -3.81% 377
East of England -4 198 £525 -4.55% 281
East Midlands 0 192 £463 +3.47% 221
Wales +21 93 £413 +10.00% 96
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +31.25% 65
North East -14 40 £488 +3.72% 96
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 2

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
1 329 (3.83%) Confluence
2 212 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 92 (1.07%) Apache Spark
4 59 (0.69%) Apache
5 51 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
6 49 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.43%) SAS
8 23 (0.27%) CMS
9 22 (0.26%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.17%) Appian
11 15 (0.17%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Camunda
12 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
13 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 9 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 9 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 527 (6.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
3 175 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
4 173 (2.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 128 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.15%) Trello
9 8 (0.093%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.093%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
10 7 (0.082%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 373 (4.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.35%) Oracle Payables
3 101 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 99 (1.15%) NetSuite
5 86 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 68 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
7 62 (0.72%) SAP FI
8 58 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
8 58 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
9 51 (0.59%) SAP CO
10 49 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 47 (0.55%) SAP FI/CO
12 40 (0.47%) Oracle Assets
13 34 (0.40%) Oracle Cash Management
13 34 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
14 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
15 31 (0.36%) Aladdin
16 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 28 (0.33%) SAP ERP
17 28 (0.33%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,296 (15.11%) Azure
2 982 (11.45%) AWS
3 621 (7.24%) Power Platform
4 391 (4.56%) GCP
5 294 (3.43%) Azure DevOps
6 289 (3.37%) SaaS
7 269 (3.14%) Microsoft 365
8 236 (2.75%) Dynamics 365
9 235 (2.74%) GitHub
10 149 (1.74%) Snowflake
11 147 (1.71%) Serverless
12 135 (1.57%) OCI
13 131 (1.53%) Entra ID
14 118 (1.38%) Amazon S3
15 107 (1.25%) Power Automate
16 92 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
17 90 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
18 87 (1.01%) OpenShift
19 86 (1.00%) AWS Lambda
20 81 (0.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 161 (1.88%) Firewall
2 113 (1.32%) Network Security
3 77 (0.90%) WAN
4 70 (0.82%) DNS
5 61 (0.71%) VPN
6 49 (0.57%) TCP/IP
7 41 (0.48%) SD-WAN
8 39 (0.45%) LAN
9 36 (0.42%) BGP
10 33 (0.38%) HTTP
11 30 (0.35%) OSPF
12 28 (0.33%) SSL
13 27 (0.31%) Multicast
14 24 (0.28%) DHCP
14 24 (0.28%) MPLS
15 21 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.24%) Internet
16 18 (0.21%) VSAN
17 16 (0.19%) VLAN
18 14 (0.16%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 534 (6.22%) Power BI
2 217 (2.53%) SQL Server
3 211 (2.46%) Data Warehouse
4 166 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
5 163 (1.90%) Metadata
6 145 (1.69%) Tableau
7 143 (1.67%) Relational Database
8 128 (1.49%) Data Lake
9 88 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 88 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
10 79 (0.92%) Big Data
11 68 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 61 (0.71%) MongoDB
13 58 (0.68%) BigQuery
14 49 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
15 44 (0.51%) Delta Lake
16 42 (0.49%) DynamoDB
16 42 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
16 42 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 41 (0.48%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 685 (7.98%) JIRA
2 218 (2.54%) Git
3 182 (2.12%) Jenkins
4 114 (1.33%) GitLab
5 51 (0.59%) Cucumber
5 51 (0.59%) JUnit
6 38 (0.44%) Selenium
7 35 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
8 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.31%) Postman
10 25 (0.29%) MLflow
11 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
11 21 (0.24%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 19 (0.22%) Bitbucket
14 18 (0.21%) Maven
15 17 (0.20%) ERwin
15 17 (0.20%) Hudson
15 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,591 (30.20%) Social Skills
2 1,571 (18.31%) Banking
3 1,153 (13.44%) Analytical Skills
4 550 (6.41%) Public Sector
5 355 (4.14%) Legal
6 337 (3.93%) Financial Institution
7 285 (3.32%) Investment Banking
8 282 (3.29%) Front Office
9 246 (2.87%) Retail
10 245 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
11 232 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
12 208 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 190 (2.21%) Manufacturing
14 178 (2.07%) Marketing
15 153 (1.78%) Telecoms
16 143 (1.67%) General Ledger
17 126 (1.47%) Local Government
18 125 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
19 121 (1.41%) Law
20 118 (1.38%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,304 (15.20%) Analyst
2 895 (10.43%) Senior
3 879 (10.25%) Developer
4 859 (10.01%) Lead
5 774 (9.02%) Architect
6 703 (8.19%) Business Analyst
7 684 (7.97%) Project Manager
8 595 (6.94%) Consultant
9 309 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
10 274 (3.19%) Data Engineer
11 211 (2.46%) Financial Analyst
12 204 (2.38%) Senior Manager
13 188 (2.19%) Finance Manager
14 181 (2.11%) Data Analyst
15 175 (2.04%) Programme Manager
16 162 (1.89%) Accountant
17 147 (1.71%) Java Developer
18 142 (1.66%) Delivery Manager
19 139 (1.62%) Senior Analyst
20 131 (1.53%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (3.14%) Kafka
2 252 (2.94%) REST
3 236 (2.75%) .NET
4 201 (2.34%) React
5 178 (2.07%) Middleware
6 152 (1.77%) Oracle Fusion
7 149 (1.74%) Spring
8 143 (1.67%) Spring Boot
9 133 (1.55%) RESTful
10 107 (1.25%) Node.js
10 107 (1.25%) PySpark
11 93 (1.08%) AngularJS
12 85 (0.99%) OAuth
13 79 (0.92%) JSON
14 77 (0.90%) Redux
15 76 (0.89%) XML
16 70 (0.82%) HTML
17 69 (0.80%) CSS
18 64 (0.75%) Pandas
19 60 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 355 (4.14%) Onboarding
2 330 (3.85%) Product Ownership
3 303 (3.53%) Cloud Native
4 223 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
5 197 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 182 (2.12%) Data Structures
7 167 (1.95%) Derivative
8 165 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
9 147 (1.71%) Data Centre
10 142 (1.66%) Distributed Systems
11 139 (1.62%) Fixed Income
12 134 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 113 (1.32%) Analytical Mindset
14 104 (1.21%) Equities
15 101 (1.18%) Public Cloud
15 101 (1.18%) Virtual Team
16 94 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
17 84 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 72 (0.84%) Mainframe
19 69 (0.80%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 277 (3.23%) Windows
2 273 (3.18%) Linux
3 139 (1.62%) Unix
4 70 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 48 (0.56%) Windows 10
6 31 (0.36%) Apple iOS
7 29 (0.34%) zOS
8 28 (0.33%) Android
8 28 (0.33%) Solaris
9 23 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.22%) Mac OS
11 18 (0.21%) AIX
12 8 (0.093%) VMS
13 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.047%) HPUX
15 4 (0.047%) MVS
15 4 (0.047%) SUSE
15 4 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,798 (20.96%) Agile
2 1,696 (19.77%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,229 (14.33%) Problem-Solving
4 1,171 (13.65%) Migration
5 956 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 949 (11.06%) Continuous Improvement
7 923 (10.76%) DevOps
8 899 (10.48%) ERP
9 867 (10.11%) CI/CD
10 832 (9.70%) Analytics
11 822 (9.58%) AI
12 797 (9.29%) Project Management
13 740 (8.63%) Business Intelligence
14 706 (8.23%) Decision-Making
15 682 (7.95%) Data Modelling
16 677 (7.89%) Roadmaps
17 666 (7.76%) Validation
18 653 (7.61%) User Acceptance Testing
19 596 (6.95%) Change Management
20 576 (6.71%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,196 (13.94%) SQL
2 1,020 (11.89%) Python
3 563 (6.56%) Java
4 331 (3.86%) C#
5 214 (2.49%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.33%) TypeScript
7 163 (1.90%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.22%) C++
9 74 (0.86%) Bash
9 74 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 68 (0.79%) Go
11 63 (0.73%) T-SQL
12 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
13 50 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 50 (0.58%) VBA
14 43 (0.50%) Scala
15 34 (0.40%) R
16 31 (0.36%) Kotlin
17 27 (0.31%) Bicep
18 25 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 745 (8.68%) Degree
2 695 (8.10%) Security Cleared
3 494 (5.76%) SC Cleared
4 211 (2.46%) PMP
5 206 (2.40%) ACCA
6 200 (2.33%) PMI Certification
7 189 (2.20%) CIMA
8 145 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
8 145 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
9 122 (1.42%) CISSP
10 119 (1.39%) Master's Degree
11 84 (0.98%) CISM
12 81 (0.94%) DV Cleared
13 63 (0.73%) Azure Certification
14 58 (0.68%) AWS Certification
15 50 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
16 41 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
17 36 (0.42%) ISTQB
18 32 (0.37%) CBAP
19 30 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 492 (5.73%) Data Quality
2 419 (4.88%) QA
3 336 (3.92%) PMO
4 305 (3.56%) GDPR
5 151 (1.76%) NIST
6 126 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 103 (1.20%) SLA
8 100 (1.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 98 (1.14%) IFRS
10 80 (0.93%) Accessibility
11 78 (0.91%) GRC
12 72 (0.84%) PCI DSS
13 59 (0.69%) ISO 20022
14 52 (0.61%) GAAP
15 38 (0.44%) PSD2
15 38 (0.44%) SEPA
16 34 (0.40%) NCSC
17 30 (0.35%) MiFID
18 28 (0.33%) EMIR
19 26 (0.30%) Basel III
System Software
1 291 (3.39%) Docker
2 144 (1.68%) Active Directory
3 55 (0.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 25 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.10%) GPFS
11 7 (0.082%) RACF
12 5 (0.058%) HDFS
12 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.047%) ACF2
13 4 (0.047%) Firmware
13 4 (0.047%) KVM
14 3 (0.035%) GridGain
14 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.035%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 402 (4.69%) Kubernetes
2 254 (2.96%) Terraform
3 122 (1.42%) Ansible
4 89 (1.04%) Grafana
5 69 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.57%) SCCM
8 36 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.30%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
11 16 (0.19%) vRealize
12 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
12 14 (0.16%) Puppet
13 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
13 13 (0.15%) Progress Chef
14 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 10 (0.12%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,108 (12.92%) Microsoft
2 773 (9.01%) SAP
3 715 (8.33%) Oracle
4 310 (3.61%) ServiceNow
5 230 (2.68%) Databricks
6 191 (2.23%) Salesforce
7 175 (2.04%) Google
8 137 (1.60%) Workday
9 118 (1.38%) Cisco
10 116 (1.35%) Splunk
11 102 (1.19%) VMware
12 97 (1.13%) IBM
13 78 (0.91%) Citrix
14 76 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 74 (0.86%) Ariba
16 72 (0.84%) Sage
17 58 (0.68%) Informatica
18 57 (0.66%) OpenAI
19 51 (0.59%) Murex
20 50 (0.58%) Palo Alto