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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,842 7,374 8,184
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.61% 22.72% 19.03%
As % of the General category 33.92% 36.03% 33.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,104 4,846 5,481
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £447 £424 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £719
90th Percentile £800 £813 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £493 £500
% change year-on-year +1.52% -1.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 145 252
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £13.31
25th Percentile £20.45 £22.90 £17.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £32.50 £31.47
Median % change year-on-year +30.15% +3.27% +3.60%
75th Percentile £56.38 £63.75 £38.12
90th Percentile £87.10 £75.75 £69.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.95 £34.21
% change year-on-year +57.28% -18.30% -10.80%

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 29,012 20,465 24,598
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.85% 63.06% 57.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,395 12,853 15,377
10th Percentile £313 £281 £277
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £472 £490
% change year-on-year +5.88% -3.62% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,002 1,036 1,895
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.36 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.38 £16.30 £15.95
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.17 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.63% -16.41% +6.42%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.56 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £71.88 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £31.89
% change year-on-year +41.30% -27.87% +22.63%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 8,600 £550 - 4,440
London 0 5,153 £575 -4.17% 2,393
UK excluding London +1 3,933 £500 +1.52% 2,690
Work from Home -1 2,872 £550 -4.35% 1,737
North of England 0 1,336 £500 +7.18% 707
South East 0 735 £500 -4.76% 866
North West +3 698 £475 +5.56% 359
Midlands +1 671 £500 +11.11% 421
Yorkshire 0 587 £525 +7.69% 261
Scotland 0 499 £475 -3.06% 133
West Midlands +1 496 £500 +1.63% 228
South West -4 384 £525 -4.55% 262
East of England +6 211 £525 -6.67% 220
East Midlands 0 167 £494 +15.16% 191
Wales +4 85 £525 +13.51% 56
Northern Ireland -1 62 £475 +11.76% 70
North East -15 52 £500 +13.96% 94
Channel Islands - 3 £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
1 342 (3.47%) Confluence
2 232 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 86 (0.87%) Apache Spark
4 75 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
5 61 (0.62%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.35%) SAS
8 30 (0.30%) CMS
9 25 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) CICS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 13 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 12 (0.12%) Camunda
12 12 (0.12%) Ethereum
13 11 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.081%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.071%) Appian
16 6 (0.061%) Hyperledger
17 5 (0.051%) WebLogic
18 4 (0.041%) JBoss
Applications
1 524 (5.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (2.32%) Microsoft Office
3 176 (1.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 154 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 120 (1.22%) MS Visio
6 68 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 5 (0.051%) Sketch
8 5 (0.051%) Trello
9 4 (0.041%) Adobe Illustrator
9 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.041%) Notion
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.041%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.020%) Adobe Premiere
10 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
10 2 (0.020%) Final Cut Pro
10 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 452 (4.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 112 (1.14%) NetSuite
4 100 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 81 (0.82%) Oracle ERP
6 78 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
8 60 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
9 55 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
10 54 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
11 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
12 44 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
12 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
13 41 (0.42%) Aladdin
14 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
15 30 (0.30%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.28%) SAP ERP
17 27 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
18 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
18 26 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,525 (15.49%) Azure
2 1,117 (11.35%) AWS
3 648 (6.58%) Power Platform
4 507 (5.15%) GCP
5 332 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
6 325 (3.30%) SaaS
7 284 (2.89%) Microsoft 365
8 274 (2.78%) GitHub
9 231 (2.35%) Dynamics 365
10 206 (2.09%) Snowflake
11 191 (1.94%) Entra ID
12 147 (1.49%) Serverless
13 130 (1.32%) Amazon S3
13 130 (1.32%) OCI
14 108 (1.10%) Power Automate
15 106 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
16 101 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
17 100 (1.02%) dbt
17 100 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
18 94 (0.96%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 189 (1.92%) Firewall
2 148 (1.50%) Network Security
3 87 (0.88%) DNS
4 83 (0.84%) VPN
5 65 (0.66%) WAN
6 63 (0.64%) TCP/IP
7 46 (0.47%) BGP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 41 (0.42%) LAN
10 36 (0.37%) DHCP
11 35 (0.36%) HTTP
12 34 (0.35%) Multicast
13 32 (0.33%) OSPF
14 26 (0.26%) Internet
15 24 (0.24%) MPLS
15 24 (0.24%) SD-WAN
16 22 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
17 20 (0.20%) Wireless
18 18 (0.18%) SAN
18 18 (0.18%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 546 (5.55%) Power BI
2 277 (2.81%) SQL Server
3 254 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
4 208 (2.11%) Metadata
5 186 (1.89%) Relational Database
6 181 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
7 155 (1.57%) Tableau
8 144 (1.46%) Data Lake
9 92 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
10 88 (0.89%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 72 (0.73%) MongoDB
13 70 (0.71%) Big Data
14 69 (0.70%) BigQuery
15 66 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
16 49 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
17 48 (0.49%) Power Query
18 45 (0.46%) Delta Lake
19 42 (0.43%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 694 (7.05%) JIRA
2 263 (2.67%) Git
3 178 (1.81%) Jenkins
4 100 (1.02%) GitLab
5 56 (0.57%) JUnit
6 47 (0.48%) Cucumber
7 45 (0.46%) Selenium
8 31 (0.31%) Postman
9 30 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.26%) ERwin
10 26 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
10 26 (0.26%) Visual Studio
11 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 23 (0.23%) Maven
12 23 (0.23%) SonarQube
13 21 (0.21%) MLflow
14 19 (0.19%) Zephyr
15 18 (0.18%) Bitbucket
16 17 (0.17%) Hudson
16 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,885 (29.31%) Social Skills
2 1,824 (18.53%) Banking
3 1,334 (13.55%) Analytical Skills
4 561 (5.70%) Public Sector
5 492 (5.00%) Legal
6 382 (3.88%) Investment Banking
7 366 (3.72%) Financial Institution
8 345 (3.51%) Front Office
9 331 (3.36%) Organisational Skills
10 325 (3.30%) Retail
11 259 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
12 245 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
13 186 (1.89%) Manufacturing
14 168 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 166 (1.69%) Local Government
16 163 (1.66%) Billing
17 160 (1.63%) General Ledger
18 148 (1.50%) Marketing
19 133 (1.35%) Law
20 132 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,455 (14.78%) Analyst
2 1,049 (10.66%) Lead
3 1,048 (10.65%) Senior
4 991 (10.07%) Developer
5 905 (9.20%) Architect
6 757 (7.69%) Business Analyst
7 719 (7.31%) Project Manager
8 671 (6.82%) Consultant
9 345 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 325 (3.30%) Data Engineer
11 239 (2.43%) Financial Analyst
12 233 (2.37%) Senior Manager
13 212 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 206 (2.09%) Accountant
14 206 (2.09%) Data Analyst
15 190 (1.93%) Programme Manager
16 187 (1.90%) Finance Manager
17 180 (1.83%) Senior Developer
17 180 (1.83%) Software Engineer
18 177 (1.80%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 308 (3.13%) REST
2 272 (2.76%) .NET
2 272 (2.76%) React
3 270 (2.74%) Kafka
4 212 (2.15%) Oracle Fusion
5 201 (2.04%) Middleware
6 183 (1.86%) Spring
7 170 (1.73%) Spring Boot
8 138 (1.40%) RESTful
9 118 (1.20%) PySpark
10 117 (1.19%) Redux
11 113 (1.15%) Node.js
12 94 (0.96%) AngularJS
12 94 (0.96%) JSON
13 93 (0.94%) OAuth
14 80 (0.81%) XML
15 68 (0.69%) CSS
16 66 (0.67%) HTML
17 65 (0.66%) SOAP
18 64 (0.65%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 464 (4.71%) Onboarding
2 432 (4.39%) Product Ownership
3 418 (4.25%) Cloud Native
4 272 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
5 223 (2.27%) Data Structures
6 222 (2.26%) Management Information System
7 181 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
8 176 (1.79%) Derivative
9 175 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
10 173 (1.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 171 (1.74%) Fixed Income
12 166 (1.69%) Data Centre
13 163 (1.66%) Virtual Team
14 136 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
15 130 (1.32%) AI Agents
16 127 (1.29%) Equities
17 119 (1.21%) Public Cloud
18 111 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
18 111 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
19 96 (0.98%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 326 (3.31%) Windows
2 283 (2.88%) Linux
3 162 (1.65%) Unix
4 73 (0.74%) Windows Server
5 39 (0.40%) Solaris
5 39 (0.40%) zOS
6 37 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
8 35 (0.36%) Apple iOS
9 29 (0.29%) Android
10 26 (0.26%) Mac OS
11 20 (0.20%) AIX
12 9 (0.091%) Ubuntu
12 9 (0.091%) VMS
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,144 (21.78%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,983 (20.15%) Agile
3 1,362 (13.84%) Migration
4 1,317 (13.38%) Problem-Solving
5 1,140 (11.58%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,120 (11.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 1,084 (11.01%) AI
8 1,037 (10.54%) DevOps
9 1,023 (10.39%) CI/CD
10 1,013 (10.29%) ERP
11 979 (9.95%) Analytics
12 875 (8.89%) Decision-Making
13 828 (8.41%) Validation
14 813 (8.26%) Roadmaps
15 809 (8.22%) Data Modelling
16 780 (7.93%) Project Management
17 777 (7.89%) User Acceptance Testing
18 710 (7.21%) Change Management
19 685 (6.96%) Business Intelligence
20 633 (6.43%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,303 (13.24%) SQL
2 1,194 (12.13%) Python
3 657 (6.68%) Java
4 385 (3.91%) C#
5 267 (2.71%) TypeScript
6 263 (2.67%) JavaScript
7 223 (2.27%) PowerShell
8 98 (1.00%) Bash
9 92 (0.93%) PL/SQL
10 86 (0.87%) C++
11 83 (0.84%) Go
12 75 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 71 (0.72%) Shell Script
14 59 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 51 (0.52%) VBA
16 49 (0.50%) Scala
17 40 (0.41%) Bicep
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
19 33 (0.34%) Kotlin
20 29 (0.29%) R
Qualifications
1 757 (7.69%) Degree
2 744 (7.56%) Security Cleared
3 534 (5.43%) SC Cleared
4 228 (2.32%) PMP
5 212 (2.15%) ACCA
6 208 (2.11%) PMI Certification
7 193 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
8 191 (1.94%) CIMA
9 160 (1.63%) CISSP
10 134 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
11 106 (1.08%) DV Cleared
12 94 (0.96%) CISM
13 93 (0.94%) Azure Certification
14 91 (0.92%) Master's Degree
15 75 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
16 60 (0.61%) AWS Certification
17 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 45 (0.46%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 38 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.35%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 613 (6.23%) Data Quality
2 428 (4.35%) QA
3 347 (3.53%) PMO
4 301 (3.06%) GDPR
5 163 (1.66%) NIST
6 128 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.15%) SLA
8 111 (1.13%) GRC
8 111 (1.13%) IFRS
9 102 (1.04%) Accessibility
10 100 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 68 (0.69%) ISO 20022
12 63 (0.64%) GAAP
13 58 (0.59%) PCI DSS
14 43 (0.44%) SEPA
15 38 (0.39%) Solvency II
16 34 (0.35%) NCSC
17 31 (0.31%) PSD2
18 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
19 29 (0.29%) MiFID
System Software
1 285 (2.90%) Docker
2 204 (2.07%) Active Directory
3 63 (0.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (0.28%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
7 21 (0.21%) RACF
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 13 (0.13%) NFS
11 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.061%) GPFS
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.041%) IAG
15 3 (0.030%) ACF2
15 3 (0.030%) GridGain
15 3 (0.030%) SRDF
16 2 (0.020%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 449 (4.56%) Kubernetes
2 324 (3.29%) Terraform
3 160 (1.63%) Ansible
4 96 (0.98%) Grafana
5 81 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 68 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 52 (0.53%) SCCM
7 52 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 27 (0.27%) Control-M
9 21 (0.21%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.19%) Progress Chef
11 17 (0.17%) Argo
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.17%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) vRealize
12 16 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.14%) Nessus
13 14 (0.14%) Puppet
14 13 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,257 (12.77%) Microsoft
2 849 (8.63%) SAP
3 833 (8.46%) Oracle
4 349 (3.55%) ServiceNow
5 300 (3.05%) Databricks
6 222 (2.26%) Salesforce
7 216 (2.19%) Google
8 138 (1.40%) Workday
9 137 (1.39%) IBM
10 126 (1.28%) VMware
11 121 (1.23%) Splunk
12 112 (1.14%) Cisco
13 97 (0.99%) CyberArk
14 93 (0.94%) Ariba
15 66 (0.67%) Citrix
15 66 (0.67%) OpenAI
15 66 (0.67%) Sage
16 59 (0.60%) Informatica
17 54 (0.55%) Bloomberg
18 50 (0.51%) Murex