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

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,401 6,530 8,162
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.32% 22.29% 18.74%
As % of the General category 33.11% 35.32% 32.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,317 4,312 5,455
10th Percentile £351 £350 £355
25th Percentile £428 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 108 243
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.26 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £39.06 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.00% +44.65% -16.28%
75th Percentile £43.31 £70.63 £38.12
90th Percentile £75.54 £83.20 £55.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £52.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -57.95% +75.00% -33.33%

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 25,372 18,487 25,356
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.33% 63.11% 58.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,738 11,821 16,062
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £642 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,597 765 1,898
10th Percentile £13.67 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £15.39
Median hourly rate £27.50 £28.75 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -21.43%
75th Percentile £59.50 £56.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.10 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -5.29% +1.92% -16.85%

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 15 April 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 15 April 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 15 April 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 7,429 £535 -6.96% 3,267
London 0 4,509 £575 -8.00% 1,503
UK excluding London 0 3,325 £500 - 2,489
Work from Home -2 2,358 £538 -8.86% 1,353
North of England +3 1,082 £475 - 577
South East -1 647 £503 -7.59% 876
North West +5 580 £462 -0.74% 303
Midlands -1 576 £475 -5.00% 348
Yorkshire 0 456 £500 +2.30% 202
Scotland 0 392 £500 +5.26% 129
West Midlands 0 380 £492 -6.29% 200
South West -2 336 £525 +4.90% 279
East of England -3 197 £520 -5.45% 215
East Midlands 0 191 £450 +1.01% 147
Wales +24 104 £413 +10.00% 76
North East -9 46 £488 +6.56% 85
Northern Ireland 0 42 £513 +46.43% 43
Channel Islands - 2 £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
1 330 (3.93%) Confluence
2 216 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.98%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
5 49 (0.58%) Apache
5 49 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
6 37 (0.44%) SAS
7 28 (0.33%) CMS
8 19 (0.23%) CICS
8 19 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
9 18 (0.21%) Appian
10 16 (0.19%) Camunda
11 15 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) TPMS
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.095%) WebLogic
Applications
1 544 (6.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 247 (2.94%) Microsoft Office
3 189 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 173 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
5 130 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.18%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Sketch
10 8 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.095%) InVision
11 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.060%) Notion
13 3 (0.036%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Captivate
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 358 (4.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.37%) Oracle Payables
3 99 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 94 (1.12%) NetSuite
5 84 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 75 (0.89%) Oracle EBS
7 65 (0.77%) SAP FI
8 61 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
9 56 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
11 51 (0.61%) SAP CO
12 47 (0.56%) SAP FI/CO
13 40 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
14 35 (0.42%) Oracle Cash Management
14 35 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
15 33 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
16 31 (0.37%) Aladdin
16 31 (0.37%) Workday HCM
17 28 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 28 (0.33%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,270 (15.12%) Azure
2 960 (11.43%) AWS
3 608 (7.24%) Power Platform
4 380 (4.52%) GCP
5 288 (3.43%) Azure DevOps
6 279 (3.32%) SaaS
7 271 (3.23%) Microsoft 365
8 234 (2.79%) Dynamics 365
9 233 (2.77%) GitHub
10 148 (1.76%) Serverless
11 147 (1.75%) OCI
12 138 (1.64%) Snowflake
13 129 (1.54%) Entra ID
14 120 (1.43%) Amazon S3
15 97 (1.15%) Power Automate
16 90 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
17 89 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
18 88 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
19 87 (1.04%) OpenShift
20 76 (0.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 163 (1.94%) Firewall
2 106 (1.26%) Network Security
3 77 (0.92%) WAN
4 65 (0.77%) DNS
5 58 (0.69%) VPN
6 45 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 44 (0.52%) LAN
8 42 (0.50%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.40%) BGP
10 32 (0.38%) HTTP
11 29 (0.35%) OSPF
11 29 (0.35%) SSL
12 27 (0.32%) Multicast
13 24 (0.29%) Internet
14 23 (0.27%) MPLS
15 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
16 19 (0.23%) DHCP
17 18 (0.21%) Skype
17 18 (0.21%) Wireless
18 17 (0.20%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 528 (6.28%) Power BI
2 220 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
3 204 (2.43%) SQL Server
4 168 (2.00%) Metadata
5 165 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
6 150 (1.79%) Tableau
7 125 (1.49%) Relational Database
8 120 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 104 (1.24%) Oracle Reports
10 88 (1.05%) NoSQL
11 76 (0.90%) Big Data
12 63 (0.75%) BigQuery
12 63 (0.75%) Oracle Database
13 56 (0.67%) MongoDB
14 45 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.50%) Power Query
16 42 (0.50%) Snowflake Schema
17 39 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
17 39 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 671 (7.99%) JIRA
2 211 (2.51%) Git
3 201 (2.39%) Jenkins
4 118 (1.40%) GitLab
5 59 (0.70%) JUnit
6 56 (0.67%) Cucumber
7 42 (0.50%) Selenium
7 42 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
8 30 (0.36%) Postman
9 26 (0.31%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.30%) Visual Studio
11 23 (0.27%) MLflow
12 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
12 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
13 18 (0.21%) ERwin
13 18 (0.21%) Maven
14 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
16 14 (0.17%) Hudson
17 12 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 2,626 (31.26%) Social Skills
2 1,564 (18.62%) Banking
3 1,144 (13.62%) Analytical Skills
4 598 (7.12%) Public Sector
5 326 (3.88%) Financial Institution
6 322 (3.83%) Legal
7 283 (3.37%) Front Office
8 275 (3.27%) Investment Banking
9 241 (2.87%) Organisational Skills
10 236 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
11 232 (2.76%) Manufacturing
12 228 (2.71%) Marketing
13 225 (2.68%) Retail
14 205 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
15 196 (2.33%) Telecoms
16 138 (1.64%) General Ledger
17 129 (1.54%) Local Government
18 125 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
19 122 (1.45%) Law
20 112 (1.33%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,297 (15.44%) Analyst
2 852 (10.14%) Developer
3 850 (10.12%) Senior
4 829 (9.87%) Lead
5 748 (8.90%) Architect
6 703 (8.37%) Business Analyst
7 669 (7.96%) Project Manager
8 622 (7.40%) Consultant
9 294 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
10 256 (3.05%) Data Engineer
11 201 (2.39%) Financial Analyst
12 191 (2.27%) Data Analyst
13 190 (2.26%) Senior Manager
14 187 (2.23%) Finance Manager
15 166 (1.98%) Programme Manager
16 154 (1.83%) Java Developer
17 150 (1.79%) Accountant
18 137 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
19 131 (1.56%) Senior Analyst
20 126 (1.50%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (3.14%) Kafka
2 255 (3.04%) REST
3 212 (2.52%) .NET
4 201 (2.39%) React
5 168 (2.00%) Middleware
6 156 (1.86%) Oracle Fusion
7 146 (1.74%) Spring
8 134 (1.60%) Spring Boot
9 129 (1.54%) RESTful
10 117 (1.39%) Node.js
11 98 (1.17%) AngularJS
12 95 (1.13%) PySpark
13 83 (0.99%) OAuth
14 80 (0.95%) XML
15 76 (0.90%) JSON
16 74 (0.88%) HTML
17 73 (0.87%) Redux
18 71 (0.85%) CSS
19 65 (0.77%) Pandas
20 61 (0.73%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 350 (4.17%) Onboarding
2 312 (3.71%) Product Ownership
3 274 (3.26%) Cloud Native
4 220 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
5 184 (2.19%) Management Information System
6 161 (1.92%) Data Structures
7 160 (1.90%) Derivative
8 158 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
9 145 (1.73%) Data Centre
10 143 (1.70%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 142 (1.69%) Fixed Income
12 133 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
13 112 (1.33%) Equities
14 102 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
15 99 (1.18%) Public Cloud
16 98 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
17 96 (1.14%) Virtual Team
18 80 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
19 63 (0.75%) CMDB
20 62 (0.74%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 285 (3.39%) Linux
2 272 (3.24%) Windows
3 138 (1.64%) Unix
4 67 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 50 (0.60%) Windows 10
6 32 (0.38%) Android
7 27 (0.32%) Mac OS
8 23 (0.27%) Apple iOS
8 23 (0.27%) zOS
9 19 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 19 (0.23%) Solaris
10 15 (0.18%) AIX
11 7 (0.083%) VMS
12 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.036%) MVS
13 3 (0.036%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
14 2 (0.024%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,726 (20.55%) Agile
2 1,651 (19.65%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,247 (14.84%) Problem-Solving
4 1,130 (13.45%) Migration
5 940 (11.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 906 (10.78%) Continuous Improvement
7 898 (10.69%) DevOps
8 876 (10.43%) ERP
9 834 (9.93%) CI/CD
10 818 (9.74%) Analytics
11 813 (9.68%) Project Management
12 777 (9.25%) Business Intelligence
13 752 (8.95%) AI
14 671 (7.99%) Decision-Making
15 667 (7.94%) Data Modelling
16 642 (7.64%) Roadmaps
17 622 (7.40%) Validation
18 606 (7.21%) User Acceptance Testing
19 602 (7.17%) Change Management
20 583 (6.94%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,183 (14.08%) SQL
2 979 (11.65%) Python
3 560 (6.67%) Java
4 305 (3.63%) C#
5 225 (2.68%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.33%) TypeScript
7 164 (1.95%) PowerShell
8 108 (1.29%) C++
9 71 (0.85%) Bash
10 67 (0.80%) Go
10 67 (0.80%) PL/SQL
11 58 (0.69%) T-SQL
12 54 (0.64%) VBA
13 50 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 44 (0.52%) Shell Script
15 38 (0.45%) Scala
16 37 (0.44%) R
17 30 (0.36%) Kotlin
18 28 (0.33%) Perl
19 27 (0.32%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 756 (9.00%) Degree
2 705 (8.39%) Security Cleared
3 500 (5.95%) SC Cleared
4 210 (2.50%) PMP
5 201 (2.39%) PMI Certification
6 193 (2.30%) ACCA
7 183 (2.18%) CIMA
8 146 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
9 144 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
10 128 (1.52%) Master's Degree
11 121 (1.44%) CISSP
12 87 (1.04%) DV Cleared
13 82 (0.98%) CISM
14 69 (0.82%) Azure Certification
15 65 (0.77%) AWS Certification
16 46 (0.55%) Cisco Certification
17 38 (0.45%) ISTQB
18 35 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
19 34 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 30 (0.36%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 468 (5.57%) Data Quality
2 402 (4.79%) QA
3 336 (4.00%) PMO
4 301 (3.58%) GDPR
5 150 (1.79%) NIST
6 126 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 109 (1.30%) SLA
8 97 (1.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 93 (1.11%) IFRS
10 75 (0.89%) Accessibility
11 72 (0.86%) PCI DSS
12 69 (0.82%) GRC
13 59 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 50 (0.60%) GAAP
15 39 (0.46%) PSD2
16 35 (0.42%) SEPA
17 34 (0.40%) NCSC
18 29 (0.35%) MiFID
19 27 (0.32%) Basel III
20 24 (0.29%) COBIT
System Software
1 299 (3.56%) Docker
2 150 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 60 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.40%) vSphere
5 25 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 17 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.15%) NFS
8 12 (0.14%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.095%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.071%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.060%) HDFS
13 4 (0.048%) ISA Server
13 4 (0.048%) KVM
13 4 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.048%) RACF
14 3 (0.036%) ACF2
14 3 (0.036%) GridGain
14 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 394 (4.69%) Kubernetes
2 254 (3.02%) Terraform
3 129 (1.54%) Ansible
4 86 (1.02%) Grafana
5 68 (0.81%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.60%) SCCM
8 35 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) vRealize
11 17 (0.20%) Argo
12 16 (0.19%) Control-M
12 16 (0.19%) Progress Chef
13 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
13 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
13 13 (0.15%) Puppet
13 13 (0.15%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 10 (0.12%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,104 (13.14%) Microsoft
2 805 (9.58%) SAP
3 733 (8.73%) Oracle
4 331 (3.94%) ServiceNow
5 221 (2.63%) Databricks
6 194 (2.31%) Salesforce
7 177 (2.11%) Google
8 147 (1.75%) Workday
9 140 (1.67%) Cisco
10 114 (1.36%) Splunk
10 114 (1.36%) VMware
11 103 (1.23%) IBM
12 79 (0.94%) Ariba
13 77 (0.92%) Citrix
14 74 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 72 (0.86%) Sage
16 55 (0.65%) Informatica
17 54 (0.64%) OpenAI
18 48 (0.57%) Bloomberg
18 48 (0.57%) Murex