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

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,067 6,409 8,344
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.71% 21.68% 18.76%
As % of the General category 32.82% 34.59% 32.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,109 4,204 5,618
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £662 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £508
% change year-on-year - -1.57% -3.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 204 103 222
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.26 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.75 £36.00 £26.87
Median % change year-on-year -34.03% +34.00% -8.12%
75th Percentile £41.91 £73.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £71.75 £82.56 £56.09
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £52.50 £27.00
% change year-on-year -58.10% +94.44% -22.86%

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 24,581 18,531 25,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.01% 62.68% 58.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,340 11,784 16,637
10th Percentile £300 £295 £263
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,511 663 1,806
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.23 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.38
Median hourly rate £24.19 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.37% +15.38% -24.64%
75th Percentile £56.98 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £76.05 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £27.64 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.33% +10.56% -16.67%

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 16 March 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 16 March 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 16 March 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 7,129 £537 -9.75% 3,696
London 0 4,315 £575 -8.00% 1,665
UK excluding London 0 3,196 £500 - 2,821
Work from Home -2 2,268 £550 -8.33% 1,482
North of England +3 1,039 £475 -0.42% 673
South East -3 604 £500 -9.09% 1,034
Midlands -2 581 £475 -5.00% 406
North West +5 546 £450 -3.23% 364
Yorkshire 0 446 £500 - 243
West Midlands +1 382 £500 -7.41% 231
Scotland 0 365 £475 - 150
South West -3 328 £524 +3.71% 281
East Midlands 0 194 £450 +5.88% 174
East of England -1 189 £513 -6.82% 228
Wales +27 106 £413 +6.45% 71
North East -8 47 £488 +3.72% 80
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +61.54% 43
Channel Islands +5 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
1 332 (4.12%) Confluence
2 204 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.04%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
5 51 (0.63%) Apache
6 46 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 31 (0.38%) SAS
8 24 (0.30%) CMS
9 17 (0.21%) Appian
9 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
10 15 (0.19%) CICS
11 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
11 14 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 13 (0.16%) Camunda
12 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 12 (0.15%) TPMS
14 11 (0.14%) Mendix
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 8 (0.099%) IIS
Applications
1 527 (6.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 267 (3.31%) Microsoft Office
3 188 (2.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 182 (2.26%) Microsoft Project
5 136 (1.69%) MS Visio
6 46 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 13 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.099%) InVision
12 6 (0.074%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.074%) Oracle Smart View
13 5 (0.062%) Notion
13 5 (0.062%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.050%) Adobe Captivate
14 4 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.025%) InDesign
15 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 337 (4.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 114 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 100 (1.24%) Oracle Receivables
4 75 (0.93%) NetSuite
4 75 (0.93%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 72 (0.89%) Oracle EBS
6 66 (0.82%) SAP FI
7 65 (0.81%) Oracle General Ledger
8 56 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
9 54 (0.67%) SAP CO
10 49 (0.61%) SAP FI/CO
11 43 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
12 40 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
13 39 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
14 38 (0.47%) Oracle Cash Management
15 34 (0.42%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 33 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
16 33 (0.41%) Workday HCM
17 31 (0.38%) Aladdin
18 22 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,226 (15.20%) Azure
2 975 (12.09%) AWS
3 571 (7.08%) Power Platform
4 392 (4.86%) GCP
5 273 (3.38%) Microsoft 365
6 267 (3.31%) Azure DevOps
7 265 (3.28%) SaaS
8 235 (2.91%) Dynamics 365
9 214 (2.65%) GitHub
10 154 (1.91%) Serverless
11 142 (1.76%) OCI
12 131 (1.62%) Snowflake
13 123 (1.52%) Entra ID
14 109 (1.35%) Amazon S3
15 95 (1.18%) Power Automate
16 89 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
17 86 (1.07%) AWS Lambda
18 79 (0.98%) Azure Data Factory
19 75 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
19 75 (0.93%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 160 (1.98%) Firewall
2 106 (1.31%) Network Security
3 84 (1.04%) WAN
4 62 (0.77%) DNS
5 53 (0.66%) LAN
6 51 (0.63%) VPN
7 45 (0.56%) SD-WAN
8 42 (0.52%) TCP/IP
9 34 (0.42%) Wireless
10 31 (0.38%) BGP
11 28 (0.35%) Internet
12 27 (0.33%) OSPF
13 26 (0.32%) HTTP
13 26 (0.32%) SSL
14 25 (0.31%) Multicast
15 23 (0.29%) MPLS
16 19 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
16 19 (0.24%) DHCP
17 18 (0.22%) Skype
18 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 503 (6.24%) Power BI
2 218 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
3 199 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 193 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
5 147 (1.82%) Tableau
6 145 (1.80%) Metadata
7 116 (1.44%) Relational Database
8 115 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 108 (1.34%) NoSQL
10 90 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (0.93%) Big Data
12 71 (0.88%) MongoDB
13 65 (0.81%) Oracle Database
14 64 (0.79%) BigQuery
15 47 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
17 42 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
18 37 (0.46%) Power Query
19 36 (0.45%) MySQL
20 35 (0.43%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 671 (8.32%) JIRA
2 232 (2.88%) Jenkins
3 215 (2.67%) Git
4 150 (1.86%) GitLab
5 66 (0.82%) JUnit
6 62 (0.77%) Cucumber
7 46 (0.57%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.53%) Selenium
9 34 (0.42%) Bitbucket
9 34 (0.42%) Postman
10 31 (0.38%) Visual Studio
11 24 (0.30%) MLflow
12 21 (0.26%) Gradle
12 21 (0.26%) REST Assured
13 18 (0.22%) Maven
13 18 (0.22%) SonarQube
14 16 (0.20%) ERwin
14 16 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 15 (0.19%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,645 (32.79%) Social Skills
2 1,554 (19.26%) Banking
3 1,064 (13.19%) Analytical Skills
4 642 (7.96%) Public Sector
5 347 (4.30%) Financial Institution
6 312 (3.87%) Legal
7 291 (3.61%) Front Office
8 279 (3.46%) Investment Banking
9 277 (3.43%) Marketing
10 268 (3.32%) Manufacturing
11 243 (3.01%) Organisational Skills
12 240 (2.98%) Telecoms
13 237 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
14 187 (2.32%) Retail
15 179 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
16 141 (1.75%) Electronics
17 132 (1.64%) General Ledger
18 124 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
19 119 (1.48%) Local Government
20 117 (1.45%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,242 (15.40%) Analyst
2 853 (10.57%) Developer
3 826 (10.24%) Senior
4 729 (9.04%) Lead
5 701 (8.69%) Architect
6 663 (8.22%) Business Analyst
7 661 (8.19%) Project Manager
8 597 (7.40%) Consultant
9 282 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
10 206 (2.55%) Data Engineer
11 191 (2.37%) Data Analyst
12 178 (2.21%) Senior Manager
13 176 (2.18%) Financial Analyst
13 176 (2.18%) Programme Manager
14 158 (1.96%) Finance Manager
15 140 (1.74%) Java Developer
16 130 (1.61%) Delivery Manager
17 129 (1.60%) Senior Analyst
17 129 (1.60%) Senior Developer
18 128 (1.59%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (3.33%) REST
2 266 (3.30%) Kafka
3 207 (2.57%) .NET
4 200 (2.48%) React
5 161 (2.00%) Oracle Fusion
6 149 (1.85%) Middleware
7 141 (1.75%) Spring
8 139 (1.72%) RESTful
9 122 (1.51%) Spring Boot
10 116 (1.44%) Node.js
11 107 (1.33%) AngularJS
12 92 (1.14%) PySpark
13 86 (1.07%) XML
14 82 (1.02%) HTML
15 77 (0.95%) CSS
15 77 (0.95%) JSON
16 76 (0.94%) OAuth
17 74 (0.92%) Pandas
18 68 (0.84%) SOAP
19 67 (0.83%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 347 (4.30%) Onboarding
2 304 (3.77%) Product Ownership
3 253 (3.14%) Cloud Native
4 201 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
5 185 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 171 (2.12%) Derivative
7 158 (1.96%) Data Centre
8 147 (1.82%) Fixed Income
9 143 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
9 143 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
10 141 (1.75%) Data Structures
10 141 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 128 (1.59%) Equities
12 106 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
13 105 (1.30%) Public Cloud
14 95 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
15 91 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
16 87 (1.08%) Virtual Team
17 73 (0.90%) Hedge funds
18 63 (0.78%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 306 (3.79%) Linux
2 275 (3.41%) Windows
3 139 (1.72%) Unix
4 64 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 60 (0.74%) Windows 10
6 56 (0.69%) Android
7 45 (0.56%) Mac OS
8 26 (0.32%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.20%) zOS
10 15 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.14%) AIX
12 7 (0.087%) Solaris
12 7 (0.087%) VMS
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.037%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.012%) CentOS
15 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.012%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,755 (21.76%) Agile
2 1,577 (19.55%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,231 (15.26%) Problem-Solving
4 1,042 (12.92%) Migration
5 891 (11.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 889 (11.02%) DevOps
7 813 (10.08%) CI/CD
8 795 (9.85%) Continuous Improvement
9 785 (9.73%) Project Management
10 783 (9.71%) Analytics
11 781 (9.68%) Business Intelligence
12 764 (9.47%) ERP
13 649 (8.05%) AI
14 619 (7.67%) Decision-Making
15 613 (7.60%) Data Modelling
16 608 (7.54%) Roadmaps
17 561 (6.95%) Project Delivery
18 559 (6.93%) Validation
19 555 (6.88%) Change Management
20 552 (6.84%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,148 (14.23%) SQL
2 1,022 (12.67%) Python
3 556 (6.89%) Java
4 298 (3.69%) C#
5 244 (3.02%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.43%) TypeScript
7 168 (2.08%) PowerShell
8 118 (1.46%) C++
9 80 (0.99%) Go
10 69 (0.86%) Bash
11 65 (0.81%) PL/SQL
12 52 (0.64%) VBA
13 51 (0.63%) T-SQL
14 45 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 41 (0.51%) Scala
15 41 (0.51%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.46%) R
18 29 (0.36%) Rust
19 27 (0.33%) Perl
Qualifications
1 793 (9.83%) Degree
2 688 (8.53%) Security Cleared
3 489 (6.06%) SC Cleared
4 198 (2.45%) PMI Certification
5 195 (2.42%) PMP
6 171 (2.12%) ACCA
7 169 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
8 161 (2.00%) CIMA
9 160 (1.98%) Master's Degree
10 131 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
11 111 (1.38%) CISSP
12 79 (0.98%) DV Cleared
13 77 (0.95%) CISM
14 72 (0.89%) Azure Certification
15 71 (0.88%) AWS Certification
16 38 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
17 37 (0.46%) ITIL Certification
18 35 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
19 34 (0.42%) ISTQB
20 33 (0.41%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 416 (5.16%) Data Quality
2 409 (5.07%) QA
3 327 (4.05%) PMO
4 291 (3.61%) GDPR
5 141 (1.75%) NIST
6 123 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.38%) SLA
8 110 (1.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 86 (1.07%) IFRS
10 80 (0.99%) Accessibility
11 76 (0.94%) PCI DSS
12 68 (0.84%) GRC
13 56 (0.69%) ISO 20022
14 44 (0.55%) GAAP
15 42 (0.52%) PSD2
16 37 (0.46%) MiFID
16 37 (0.46%) SEPA
17 36 (0.45%) NCSC
18 29 (0.36%) COBIT
19 28 (0.35%) Basel III
System Software
1 317 (3.93%) Docker
2 156 (1.93%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 26 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.14%) GPFS
7 11 (0.14%) NFS
8 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.11%) Hyper-V
10 8 (0.099%) Virtual Servers
11 6 (0.074%) HDFS
12 4 (0.050%) Firmware
12 4 (0.050%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.037%) KVM
13 3 (0.037%) RACF
13 3 (0.037%) SRDF
13 3 (0.037%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.025%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 402 (4.98%) Kubernetes
2 252 (3.12%) Terraform
3 152 (1.88%) Ansible
4 94 (1.17%) Grafana
5 85 (1.05%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.61%) SCCM
8 40 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) vRealize
11 17 (0.21%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.20%) Argo
12 16 (0.20%) Control-M
13 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.15%) Kibana
16 11 (0.14%) Nessus
16 11 (0.14%) Puppet
17 9 (0.11%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,044 (12.94%) Microsoft
2 805 (9.98%) SAP
3 685 (8.49%) Oracle
4 307 (3.81%) ServiceNow
5 193 (2.39%) Databricks
6 192 (2.38%) Salesforce
7 176 (2.18%) Google
8 157 (1.95%) Cisco
9 140 (1.74%) Workday
10 126 (1.56%) Splunk
11 110 (1.36%) VMware
12 94 (1.17%) IBM
13 72 (0.89%) Ariba
13 72 (0.89%) CyberArk
14 71 (0.88%) Citrix
15 62 (0.77%) Sage
16 54 (0.67%) HP
17 53 (0.66%) Informatica
18 50 (0.62%) Bloomberg
18 50 (0.62%) Dell