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

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,839 6,481 8,052
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.06% 22.24% 18.73%
As % of the General category 33.56% 35.14% 32.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,527 4,232 5,391
10th Percentile £355 £350 £350
25th Percentile £440 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £496 £500
% change year-on-year +0.89% -0.89% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 196 115 259
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.96 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £24.44 £15.08
Median hourly rate £25.38 £43.08 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.08% +59.54% +5.02%
75th Percentile £57.62 £65.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £86.50 £82.92 £58.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £44.00 £28.00
% change year-on-year -45.86% +57.15% -41.05%

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 26,337 18,442 24,728
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.81% 63.30% 57.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,946 11,681 15,547
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £764
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,748 823 1,981
10th Percentile £13.72 £13.50 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.94 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.37% -6.87% -7.12%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.07 £24.34 £28.34
% change year-on-year +19.43% -14.10% +3.04%

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 1 June 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 1 June 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 1 June 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 7,825 £550 -4.35% 6,044
London 0 4,725 £575 -6.12% 3,521
UK excluding London 0 3,529 £500 +0.89% 3,265
Work from Home -2 2,472 £538 -6.52% 2,530
North of England +3 1,207 £492 +5.47% 874
South East -1 647 £500 -4.31% 914
North West +5 637 £465 +3.33% 512
Midlands -1 604 £492 +3.58% 495
Yorkshire +2 530 £519 +9.16% 283
Scotland 0 432 £500 +5.26% 208
West Midlands 0 415 £500 -2.13% 301
South West -2 362 £525 - 353
East of England +1 198 £520 -9.57% 246
East Midlands 0 184 £468 +6.36% 194
Wales +12 85 £475 +16.92% 86
Northern Ireland -1 45 £500 +17.65% 133
North East -16 41 £488 +7.73% 87
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 316 (3.58%) Confluence
2 219 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.92%) Apache Spark
4 62 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
5 55 (0.62%) Apache
6 50 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
7 30 (0.34%) SAS
8 24 (0.27%) CMS
9 20 (0.23%) CICS
9 20 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.17%) IIS
11 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 13 (0.15%) Appian
12 13 (0.15%) Camunda
13 10 (0.11%) HCL Notes
13 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.11%) Mendix
13 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
15 7 (0.079%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 509 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.51%) Microsoft Office
3 169 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 164 (1.86%) Microsoft Project
5 126 (1.43%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 34 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.10%) Sketch
9 7 (0.079%) Adobe XD
9 7 (0.079%) InVision
10 6 (0.068%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.068%) Notion
10 6 (0.068%) Trello
11 4 (0.045%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
13 1 (0.011%) UXPin
13 1 (0.011%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 398 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 108 (1.22%) NetSuite
2 108 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
3 89 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
4 82 (0.93%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 66 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
6 57 (0.64%) SAP FI
7 53 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
8 48 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
9 45 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
9 45 (0.51%) SAP CO
10 42 (0.48%) SAP FI/CO
11 36 (0.41%) Aladdin
12 32 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
13 31 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
13 31 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 26 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
15 25 (0.28%) SAP ERP
16 23 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
16 23 (0.26%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,375 (15.56%) Azure
2 992 (11.22%) AWS
3 604 (6.83%) Power Platform
4 414 (4.68%) GCP
5 304 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
6 293 (3.31%) SaaS
7 273 (3.09%) Microsoft 365
8 237 (2.68%) GitHub
9 230 (2.60%) Dynamics 365
10 175 (1.98%) Snowflake
11 151 (1.71%) Entra ID
12 142 (1.61%) Serverless
13 121 (1.37%) OCI
14 113 (1.28%) Power Automate
15 111 (1.26%) Amazon S3
16 96 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
17 91 (1.03%) OpenShift
18 87 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
19 83 (0.94%) dbt
20 80 (0.91%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 169 (1.91%) Firewall
2 124 (1.40%) Network Security
3 79 (0.89%) WAN
4 74 (0.84%) DNS
5 64 (0.72%) VPN
6 56 (0.63%) TCP/IP
7 40 (0.45%) BGP
8 39 (0.44%) LAN
8 39 (0.44%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.38%) HTTP
10 32 (0.36%) SSL
11 30 (0.34%) OSPF
12 29 (0.33%) Multicast
13 28 (0.32%) DHCP
14 25 (0.28%) MPLS
15 21 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.24%) VSAN
16 19 (0.21%) VLAN
17 17 (0.19%) Internet
18 14 (0.16%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 511 (5.78%) Power BI
2 233 (2.64%) SQL Server
3 223 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 172 (1.95%) Metadata
5 161 (1.82%) PostgreSQL
6 158 (1.79%) Relational Database
7 153 (1.73%) Tableau
8 126 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 92 (1.04%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
11 72 (0.81%) Big Data
12 69 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 60 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 53 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
16 48 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 46 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
18 42 (0.48%) Power Query
19 41 (0.46%) Delta Lake
20 37 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 672 (7.60%) JIRA
2 206 (2.33%) Git
3 156 (1.76%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.10%) GitLab
5 46 (0.52%) Cucumber
5 46 (0.52%) JUnit
6 37 (0.42%) Selenium
7 30 (0.34%) Postman
7 30 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
7 30 (0.34%) Visual Studio
8 25 (0.28%) MLflow
9 24 (0.27%) SonarQube
10 22 (0.25%) Zephyr
11 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
12 19 (0.21%) Maven
13 18 (0.20%) ERwin
14 17 (0.19%) Hudson
15 16 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
16 14 (0.16%) Bitbucket
16 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,578 (29.17%) Social Skills
2 1,627 (18.41%) Banking
3 1,152 (13.03%) Analytical Skills
4 502 (5.68%) Public Sector
5 386 (4.37%) Legal
6 335 (3.79%) Financial Institution
7 334 (3.78%) Investment Banking
8 300 (3.39%) Front Office
9 275 (3.11%) Retail
10 255 (2.88%) Organisational Skills
11 237 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
12 216 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
13 168 (1.90%) Manufacturing
14 143 (1.62%) Marketing
15 141 (1.60%) General Ledger
15 141 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 132 (1.49%) Law
16 132 (1.49%) Local Government
17 127 (1.44%) Billing
18 124 (1.40%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,340 (15.16%) Analyst
2 949 (10.74%) Senior
3 912 (10.32%) Lead
4 892 (10.09%) Developer
5 810 (9.16%) Architect
6 719 (8.13%) Business Analyst
7 692 (7.83%) Project Manager
8 591 (6.69%) Consultant
9 336 (3.80%) Solutions Architect
10 291 (3.29%) Data Engineer
11 222 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 213 (2.41%) Senior Manager
13 189 (2.14%) Data Analyst
14 184 (2.08%) Finance Manager
15 177 (2.00%) Accountant
16 173 (1.96%) Programme Manager
17 163 (1.84%) Java Developer
18 158 (1.79%) Software Engineer
19 156 (1.76%) Senior Developer
20 146 (1.65%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (2.98%) REST
2 249 (2.82%) Kafka
3 247 (2.79%) .NET
4 230 (2.60%) React
5 184 (2.08%) Middleware
6 174 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
7 148 (1.67%) Spring
8 142 (1.61%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.54%) RESTful
10 103 (1.17%) Node.js
10 103 (1.17%) PySpark
11 97 (1.10%) AngularJS
12 92 (1.04%) Redux
13 82 (0.93%) OAuth
14 79 (0.89%) JSON
15 73 (0.83%) XML
16 66 (0.75%) CSS
17 65 (0.74%) HTML
18 62 (0.70%) OpenID
19 61 (0.69%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 384 (4.34%) Onboarding
2 378 (4.28%) Product Ownership
3 347 (3.93%) Cloud Native
4 242 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
5 204 (2.31%) Management Information System
6 189 (2.14%) Data Structures
7 170 (1.92%) Derivative
8 168 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
9 160 (1.81%) Data Centre
10 148 (1.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 145 (1.64%) Fixed Income
12 138 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
13 117 (1.32%) Equities
14 109 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
15 105 (1.19%) Public Cloud
16 98 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
16 98 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 93 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
18 83 (0.94%) AI Agents
19 72 (0.81%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 290 (3.28%) Windows
2 267 (3.02%) Linux
3 138 (1.56%) Unix
4 72 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.48%) Windows 10
6 37 (0.42%) Solaris
7 32 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 30 (0.34%) Apple iOS
9 29 (0.33%) zOS
10 27 (0.31%) Android
11 18 (0.20%) AIX
12 17 (0.19%) Mac OS
13 7 (0.079%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.068%) Oracle Linux
14 6 (0.068%) VMS
14 6 (0.068%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.045%) HPUX
15 4 (0.045%) MVS
15 4 (0.045%) SUSE
15 4 (0.045%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,811 (20.49%) Agile
2 1,773 (20.06%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,221 (13.81%) Migration
4 1,202 (13.60%) Problem-Solving
5 977 (11.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 960 (10.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 931 (10.53%) DevOps
7 931 (10.53%) ERP
8 895 (10.13%) CI/CD
9 883 (9.99%) AI
10 846 (9.57%) Analytics
11 780 (8.82%) Project Management
12 737 (8.34%) Decision-Making
13 736 (8.33%) Data Modelling
14 718 (8.12%) Validation
15 711 (8.04%) Roadmaps
16 679 (7.68%) User Acceptance Testing
17 676 (7.65%) Business Intelligence
18 618 (6.99%) Change Management
19 578 (6.54%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,204 (13.62%) SQL
2 1,067 (12.07%) Python
3 591 (6.69%) Java
4 359 (4.06%) C#
5 233 (2.64%) JavaScript
6 219 (2.48%) TypeScript
7 183 (2.07%) PowerShell
8 108 (1.22%) C++
9 82 (0.93%) Bash
10 75 (0.85%) Go
11 68 (0.77%) PL/SQL
12 65 (0.74%) T-SQL
13 52 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 52 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 42 (0.48%) Scala
15 41 (0.46%) VBA
16 30 (0.34%) R
17 29 (0.33%) Apex Code
17 29 (0.33%) Bicep
18 28 (0.32%) Rust
Qualifications
1 749 (8.47%) Degree
2 671 (7.59%) Security Cleared
3 480 (5.43%) SC Cleared
4 221 (2.50%) ACCA
5 206 (2.33%) PMP
6 202 (2.29%) CIMA
7 181 (2.05%) PMI Certification
8 146 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
9 136 (1.54%) CISSP
10 132 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
11 93 (1.05%) Master's Degree
12 86 (0.97%) CISM
13 76 (0.86%) DV Cleared
14 72 (0.81%) Azure Certification
15 63 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
16 47 (0.53%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 33 (0.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 32 (0.36%) DBS Check
19 32 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 533 (6.03%) Data Quality
2 408 (4.62%) QA
3 313 (3.54%) PMO
4 280 (3.17%) GDPR
5 159 (1.80%) NIST
6 127 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.28%) IFRS
8 108 (1.22%) SLA
9 107 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 100 (1.13%) GRC
11 84 (0.95%) Accessibility
12 64 (0.72%) PCI DSS
13 59 (0.67%) GAAP
13 59 (0.67%) ISO 20022
14 35 (0.40%) SEPA
15 34 (0.38%) PSD2
16 33 (0.37%) NCSC
17 28 (0.32%) IFRS 17
18 27 (0.31%) SOC 2
19 26 (0.29%) EMIR
System Software
1 284 (3.21%) Docker
2 162 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.34%) vSphere
5 26 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (0.17%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
10 11 (0.12%) NFS
11 8 (0.091%) RACF
12 7 (0.079%) GPFS
13 6 (0.068%) KVM
14 5 (0.057%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.045%) Firmware
15 4 (0.045%) HDFS
15 4 (0.045%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.045%) SRDF
16 3 (0.034%) GridGain
17 2 (0.023%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 409 (4.63%) Kubernetes
2 262 (2.96%) Terraform
3 129 (1.46%) Ansible
4 91 (1.03%) Grafana
5 75 (0.85%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 42 (0.48%) SCCM
8 38 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.35%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.20%) Control-M
11 17 (0.19%) vRealize
12 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 15 (0.17%) Progress Chef
13 14 (0.16%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 13 (0.15%) Nessus
15 11 (0.12%) CASB
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,126 (12.74%) Microsoft
2 789 (8.93%) SAP
3 726 (8.21%) Oracle
4 301 (3.41%) ServiceNow
5 255 (2.88%) Databricks
6 197 (2.23%) Salesforce
7 187 (2.12%) Google
8 131 (1.48%) Workday
9 120 (1.36%) Cisco
10 113 (1.28%) Splunk
11 108 (1.22%) VMware
12 99 (1.12%) IBM
13 82 (0.93%) Ariba
13 82 (0.93%) CyberArk
14 67 (0.76%) Sage
15 65 (0.74%) Citrix
16 61 (0.69%) OpenAI
17 54 (0.61%) Palo Alto
18 50 (0.57%) IFS
19 47 (0.53%) Informatica