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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,807 7,456 7,928
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.58% 22.81% 19.41%
As % of the General category 33.86% 36.27% 33.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,040 4,898 5,319
10th Percentile £357 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £416 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £723
90th Percentile £788 £807 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 278 148 219
10th Percentile £16.18 £15.84 £14.45
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.97 £20.49
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -18.67% +37.67%
75th Percentile £54.00 £63.38 £43.13
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.38 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.39 £38.12
% change year-on-year +60.51% -28.15% +15.72%

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 28,964 20,559 23,426
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.88% 62.90% 57.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,254 12,873 14,752
10th Percentile £313 £280 £282
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.67% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,043 1,074 1,616
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.36 £13.51
25th Percentile £18.38 £16.26 £16.29
Median hourly rate £33.00 £25.50 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +29.41% -27.88% +15.78%
75th Percentile £61.18 £51.73 £57.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.92 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £22.63 £35.36
% change year-on-year +48.03% -36.00% +36.00%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 8,557 £550 - 5,691
London 0 5,156 £583 -2.92% 3,239
UK excluding London -1 3,874 £500 +2.04% 3,225
Work from Home -1 2,853 £550 -4.35% 2,117
North of England 0 1,323 £500 +6.38% 859
South East -1 732 £503 -4.06% 937
North West 0 699 £492 +9.33% 473
Midlands +1 641 £500 +11.11% 463
Yorkshire 0 571 £516 +5.83% 285
West Midlands +1 492 £500 +2.67% 265
Scotland 0 489 £475 -2.86% 249
South West -4 382 £525 -4.55% 359
East of England +8 211 £530 -7.83% 242
East Midlands -3 144 £500 +19.05% 197
Wales +3 80 £525 +18.31% 87
Northern Ireland -1 63 £475 +1.06% 69
North East -15 53 £500 +14.29% 107
Channel Islands +4 3 £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
1 326 (3.32%) Confluence
2 241 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 83 (0.85%) Apache Spark
4 76 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
5 61 (0.62%) Apache
6 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 33 (0.34%) CMS
8 32 (0.33%) SAS
9 27 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 18 (0.18%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.12%) Camunda
14 9 (0.092%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.082%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.082%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) JBoss
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 521 (5.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 171 (1.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (1.65%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.10%) MS Visio
6 73 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 39 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.092%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.041%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 449 (4.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 117 (1.19%) Oracle Payables
3 116 (1.18%) NetSuite
4 99 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
5 86 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 70 (0.71%) SAP FI
8 67 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
9 58 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
10 56 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
11 49 (0.50%) Oracle Financials
12 48 (0.49%) SAP CO
13 46 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
14 42 (0.43%) Aladdin
15 35 (0.36%) Unit4 Business World
16 33 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
17 31 (0.32%) Workday HCM
18 28 (0.29%) SAP GRC
19 27 (0.28%) SAP ERP
20 26 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,530 (15.60%) Azure
2 1,102 (11.24%) AWS
3 654 (6.67%) Power Platform
4 516 (5.26%) GCP
5 331 (3.38%) SaaS
6 328 (3.34%) Azure DevOps
7 288 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
8 273 (2.78%) GitHub
9 255 (2.60%) Dynamics 365
10 202 (2.06%) Snowflake
11 199 (2.03%) Entra ID
12 138 (1.41%) Serverless
13 134 (1.37%) OCI
14 124 (1.26%) Amazon S3
15 115 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 110 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
17 105 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
18 100 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
19 98 (1.00%) dbt
20 95 (0.97%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 190 (1.94%) Firewall
2 140 (1.43%) Network Security
3 92 (0.94%) DNS
4 90 (0.92%) VPN
5 64 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 54 (0.55%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) BGP
8 47 (0.48%) SSL
9 40 (0.41%) DHCP
10 37 (0.38%) HTTP
10 37 (0.38%) LAN
11 35 (0.36%) Multicast
12 31 (0.32%) OSPF
13 25 (0.25%) Internet
13 25 (0.25%) VLAN
13 25 (0.25%) Wireless
14 21 (0.21%) Cisco ASA
14 21 (0.21%) MPLS
14 21 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
15 18 (0.18%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 541 (5.52%) Power BI
2 272 (2.77%) SQL Server
3 249 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.07%) Metadata
5 177 (1.80%) Relational Database
6 167 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
7 154 (1.57%) Tableau
8 142 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 87 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
10 82 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 80 (0.82%) Oracle Database
12 70 (0.71%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.70%) BigQuery
14 66 (0.67%) Big Data
15 64 (0.65%) Snowflake Schema
16 50 (0.51%) Power Query
17 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 48 (0.49%) Delta Lake
19 47 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
20 42 (0.43%) Db2
Development Applications
1 674 (6.87%) JIRA
2 262 (2.67%) Git
3 158 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 89 (0.91%) GitLab
5 49 (0.50%) JUnit
6 41 (0.42%) Cucumber
6 41 (0.42%) Selenium
7 29 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 28 (0.29%) ERwin
8 28 (0.29%) Visual Studio
9 25 (0.25%) Postman
10 24 (0.24%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.23%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.23%) SonarQube
11 23 (0.23%) Zephyr
12 21 (0.21%) Maven
13 20 (0.20%) MLflow
14 18 (0.18%) ER Studio
15 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,868 (29.24%) Social Skills
2 1,839 (18.75%) Banking
3 1,348 (13.75%) Analytical Skills
4 557 (5.68%) Public Sector
5 505 (5.15%) Legal
6 370 (3.77%) Investment Banking
7 369 (3.76%) Organisational Skills
8 361 (3.68%) Financial Institution
9 345 (3.52%) Front Office
10 341 (3.48%) Retail
11 264 (2.69%) Influencing Skills
12 231 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
13 190 (1.94%) Manufacturing
14 170 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 161 (1.64%) Billing
16 157 (1.60%) Local Government
16 157 (1.60%) Marketing
17 155 (1.58%) General Ledger
18 138 (1.41%) Law
18 138 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,451 (14.80%) Analyst
2 1,061 (10.82%) Lead
3 1,052 (10.73%) Senior
4 991 (10.11%) Developer
5 874 (8.91%) Architect
6 748 (7.63%) Business Analyst
7 709 (7.23%) Project Manager
8 650 (6.63%) Consultant
9 328 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
10 310 (3.16%) Data Engineer
11 248 (2.53%) Financial Analyst
12 227 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 213 (2.17%) Java Developer
14 209 (2.13%) Accountant
15 206 (2.10%) Data Analyst
16 191 (1.95%) Programme Manager
17 189 (1.93%) Senior Developer
18 183 (1.87%) Finance Manager
19 177 (1.80%) Software Engineer
20 174 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 319 (3.25%) REST
2 272 (2.77%) .NET
2 272 (2.77%) React
3 268 (2.73%) Kafka
4 224 (2.28%) Oracle Fusion
5 199 (2.03%) Middleware
6 183 (1.87%) Spring
7 173 (1.76%) Spring Boot
8 135 (1.38%) RESTful
9 127 (1.29%) PySpark
10 120 (1.22%) Redux
11 113 (1.15%) Node.js
12 97 (0.99%) JSON
13 92 (0.94%) OAuth
14 89 (0.91%) AngularJS
15 88 (0.90%) XML
16 67 (0.68%) SOAP
17 65 (0.66%) CSS
17 65 (0.66%) Web Services
18 63 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 467 (4.76%) Onboarding
2 442 (4.51%) Product Ownership
3 409 (4.17%) Cloud Native
4 272 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
5 238 (2.43%) Data Structures
6 227 (2.31%) Management Information System
7 187 (1.91%) Virtual Team
8 183 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
9 176 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
9 176 (1.79%) Derivative
10 171 (1.74%) Fixed Income
11 167 (1.70%) Data Centre
12 161 (1.64%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 144 (1.47%) AI Agents
14 140 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
15 124 (1.26%) Equities
16 112 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
17 104 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
17 104 (1.06%) Public Cloud
18 98 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 340 (3.47%) Windows
2 288 (2.94%) Linux
3 160 (1.63%) Unix
4 76 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 41 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (0.40%) Solaris
7 37 (0.38%) Apple iOS
7 37 (0.38%) zOS
8 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
9 30 (0.31%) Android
10 26 (0.27%) Mac OS
11 20 (0.20%) AIX
12 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.092%) VMS
14 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 5 (0.051%) MVS
17 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.020%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,202 (22.45%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,997 (20.36%) Agile
3 1,365 (13.92%) Migration
4 1,298 (13.24%) Problem-Solving
5 1,160 (11.83%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,127 (11.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,107 (11.29%) AI
8 1,037 (10.57%) ERP
9 1,010 (10.30%) DevOps
10 995 (10.15%) CI/CD
11 984 (10.03%) Analytics
12 893 (9.11%) Decision-Making
13 818 (8.34%) Validation
14 817 (8.33%) Roadmaps
15 781 (7.96%) Data Modelling
16 766 (7.81%) User Acceptance Testing
17 756 (7.71%) Project Management
18 713 (7.27%) Change Management
19 674 (6.87%) Business Intelligence
20 634 (6.46%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,268 (12.93%) SQL
2 1,189 (12.12%) Python
3 655 (6.68%) Java
4 381 (3.88%) C#
5 263 (2.68%) JavaScript
6 255 (2.60%) TypeScript
7 226 (2.30%) PowerShell
8 106 (1.08%) Bash
9 94 (0.96%) PL/SQL
10 80 (0.82%) Go
11 79 (0.81%) C++
12 76 (0.77%) Shell Script
13 73 (0.74%) T-SQL
14 62 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 49 (0.50%) VBA
16 47 (0.48%) Bicep
17 38 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 37 (0.38%) Scala
19 33 (0.34%) Apex Code
20 28 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 758 (7.73%) Security Cleared
2 735 (7.49%) Degree
3 544 (5.55%) SC Cleared
4 233 (2.38%) PMP
5 212 (2.16%) PMI Certification
6 203 (2.07%) ACCA
7 198 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
8 181 (1.85%) CIMA
9 154 (1.57%) CISSP
10 124 (1.26%) DV Cleared
11 123 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
12 96 (0.98%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.88%) CISM
14 80 (0.82%) Master's Degree
15 75 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
16 62 (0.63%) AWS Certification
17 54 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 618 (6.30%) Data Quality
2 423 (4.31%) QA
3 362 (3.69%) PMO
4 282 (2.88%) GDPR
5 153 (1.56%) NIST
6 125 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.13%) GRC
8 107 (1.09%) IFRS
9 106 (1.08%) SLA
10 105 (1.07%) Accessibility
11 101 (1.03%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 64 (0.65%) GAAP
13 61 (0.62%) ISO 20022
14 51 (0.52%) PCI DSS
15 36 (0.37%) SEPA
16 34 (0.35%) Solvency II
17 31 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 29 (0.30%) EMIR
18 29 (0.30%) MiFID
19 27 (0.28%) COBIT
System Software
1 272 (2.77%) Docker
2 215 (2.19%) Active Directory
3 64 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (0.27%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 20 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.031%) GridGain
14 3 (0.031%) SRDF
15 2 (0.020%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 434 (4.43%) Kubernetes
2 329 (3.35%) Terraform
3 160 (1.63%) Ansible
4 96 (0.98%) Grafana
5 78 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 69 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (0.50%) SCCM
9 27 (0.28%) Control-M
10 21 (0.21%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 15 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Nessus
15 13 (0.13%) Puppet
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,288 (13.13%) Microsoft
2 848 (8.65%) Oracle
3 839 (8.56%) SAP
4 350 (3.57%) ServiceNow
5 297 (3.03%) Databricks
6 222 (2.26%) Salesforce
7 213 (2.17%) Google
8 152 (1.55%) IBM
9 137 (1.40%) Workday
10 126 (1.28%) VMware
11 110 (1.12%) Splunk
12 108 (1.10%) Cisco
13 90 (0.92%) Ariba
14 86 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 72 (0.73%) OpenAI
16 66 (0.67%) Sage
17 63 (0.64%) Citrix
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 52 (0.53%) Bloomberg
20 45 (0.46%) F5