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

6 months to
9 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,928 7,612 7,672
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.53% 22.97% 19.75%
As % of the General category 33.59% 36.26% 34.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,112 5,024 5,119
10th Percentile £360 £331 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% -5.22% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £504 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +1.82% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 300 143 195
10th Percentile £16.23 £16.00 £14.70
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.13 £24.09
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +45.22%
75th Percentile £48.19 £63.75 £43.13
90th Percentile £83.33 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.86 £38.12
% change year-on-year +63.69% -29.55% +23.95%

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 29,553 20,991 22,307
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.15% 63.35% 57.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,547 13,106 14,060
10th Percentile £313 £279 £290
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 £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,218 1,127 1,379
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.42 £16.28 £17.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £58.75 £50.25 £57.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +48.91%

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 9 August 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 9 August 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 9 August 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 8,647 £550 - 7,923
London 0 5,223 £590 -1.67% 4,867
UK excluding London -1 3,922 £504 +1.82% 3,920
Work from Home -1 2,848 £550 -4.35% 3,019
North of England 0 1,345 £500 +6.61% 1,069
South East -1 743 £500 -5.66% 1,117
North West 0 705 £500 +9.29% 600
Midlands 0 642 £525 +16.67% 547
Yorkshire 0 573 £517 +8.80% 343
Scotland 0 510 £475 -5.00% 298
West Midlands +1 485 £525 +5.00% 335
South West -5 376 £525 -4.55% 430
East of England +6 208 £525 -8.70% 295
East Midlands -1 151 £500 +21.21% 212
Wales +1 69 £530 +14.59% 113
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 - 116
North East -15 60 £500 +11.11% 135
Channel Islands +4 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
1 331 (3.33%) Confluence
2 249 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 89 (0.90%) Apache Spark
4 87 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
5 70 (0.71%) Apache
6 50 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) CICS
11 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
13 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 7 (0.071%) Appian
16 5 (0.050%) JBoss
16 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 540 (5.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 169 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.06%) MS Visio
6 74 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 35 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 7 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.060%) Sketch
11 5 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.050%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.050%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.050%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.030%) Notion
14 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
14 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 453 (4.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.20%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.14%) NetSuite
4 100 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
5 93 (0.94%) Oracle ERP
6 71 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.68%) SAP FI
8 67 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 61 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
10 55 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 46 (0.46%) SAP CO
13 45 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 43 (0.43%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.36%) Unit4 Business World
16 35 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
17 32 (0.32%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
19 28 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
19 28 (0.28%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,565 (15.76%) Azure
2 1,081 (10.89%) AWS
3 673 (6.78%) Power Platform
4 519 (5.23%) GCP
5 346 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
6 335 (3.37%) SaaS
7 300 (3.02%) Microsoft 365
8 295 (2.97%) GitHub
9 255 (2.57%) Dynamics 365
10 218 (2.20%) Snowflake
11 209 (2.11%) Entra ID
12 147 (1.48%) OCI
12 147 (1.48%) Serverless
13 125 (1.26%) Amazon S3
13 125 (1.26%) Power Automate
14 113 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
15 112 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
16 108 (1.09%) dbt
17 107 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
18 103 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 181 (1.82%) Firewall
2 149 (1.50%) Network Security
3 96 (0.97%) VPN
4 92 (0.93%) DNS
5 67 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.56%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) SSL
8 46 (0.46%) BGP
9 45 (0.45%) DHCP
10 40 (0.40%) LAN
11 38 (0.38%) HTTP
12 32 (0.32%) Multicast
13 28 (0.28%) OSPF
13 28 (0.28%) Wireless
14 27 (0.27%) Internet
15 26 (0.26%) VLAN
16 24 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
17 22 (0.22%) SAN
18 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
19 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 553 (5.57%) Power BI
2 283 (2.85%) SQL Server
3 263 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
4 198 (1.99%) Metadata
5 178 (1.79%) Relational Database
6 155 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
7 146 (1.47%) Data Lake
8 145 (1.46%) Tableau
9 87 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
10 84 (0.85%) NoSQL
11 75 (0.76%) MongoDB
12 73 (0.74%) BigQuery
13 72 (0.73%) Oracle Database
14 66 (0.66%) Big Data
15 61 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
16 54 (0.54%) Power Query
17 52 (0.52%) Delta Lake
18 50 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
19 47 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
20 43 (0.43%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 677 (6.82%) JIRA
2 287 (2.89%) Git
3 163 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 102 (1.03%) GitLab
5 46 (0.46%) JUnit
6 45 (0.45%) Selenium
7 37 (0.37%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 29 (0.29%) ERwin
10 27 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.27%) Maven
10 27 (0.27%) SonarQube
10 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 25 (0.25%) Claude Code
12 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.24%) Postman
12 24 (0.24%) REST Assured
12 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
14 19 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,929 (29.50%) Social Skills
2 1,909 (19.23%) Banking
3 1,398 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
4 549 (5.53%) Public Sector
5 534 (5.38%) Legal
6 400 (4.03%) Organisational Skills
7 388 (3.91%) Investment Banking
8 377 (3.80%) Retail
9 364 (3.67%) Financial Institution
10 347 (3.50%) Front Office
11 282 (2.84%) Influencing Skills
12 231 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
13 200 (2.01%) Manufacturing
14 180 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 162 (1.63%) Billing
16 160 (1.61%) General Ledger
17 159 (1.60%) Marketing
18 158 (1.59%) Local Government
19 143 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
20 141 (1.42%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,442 (14.52%) Analyst
2 1,071 (10.79%) Senior
3 1,070 (10.78%) Lead
4 985 (9.92%) Developer
5 888 (8.94%) Architect
6 741 (7.46%) Business Analyst
7 709 (7.14%) Project Manager
8 693 (6.98%) Consultant
9 337 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
10 321 (3.23%) Data Engineer
11 251 (2.53%) Financial Analyst
12 228 (2.30%) Senior Manager
13 205 (2.06%) Accountant
14 204 (2.05%) Data Analyst
15 201 (2.02%) Java Developer
16 190 (1.91%) Senior Developer
17 185 (1.86%) Programme Manager
18 184 (1.85%) Finance Manager
19 176 (1.77%) IT Manager
20 173 (1.74%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (3.34%) REST
2 277 (2.79%) .NET
3 260 (2.62%) Kafka
4 258 (2.60%) React
5 256 (2.58%) Oracle Fusion
6 193 (1.94%) Middleware
7 175 (1.76%) Spring
8 163 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 139 (1.40%) PySpark
10 128 (1.29%) RESTful
11 110 (1.11%) Redux
12 102 (1.03%) Node.js
13 97 (0.98%) JSON
14 95 (0.96%) XML
15 92 (0.93%) AngularJS
15 92 (0.93%) OAuth
16 68 (0.68%) SOAP
17 64 (0.64%) Web Services
18 62 (0.62%) HTML
19 60 (0.60%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 487 (4.91%) Onboarding
2 471 (4.74%) Product Ownership
3 427 (4.30%) Cloud Native
4 267 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
5 243 (2.45%) Data Structures
6 224 (2.26%) Management Information System
7 206 (2.07%) Virtual Team
8 188 (1.89%) Derivative
9 175 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
10 172 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
11 160 (1.61%) Fixed Income
12 159 (1.60%) Data Centre
13 155 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 152 (1.53%) AI Agents
15 137 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
16 121 (1.22%) Equities
17 109 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 106 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
19 103 (1.04%) Public Cloud
20 101 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 360 (3.63%) Windows
2 299 (3.01%) Linux
3 153 (1.54%) Unix
4 83 (0.84%) Windows Server
5 49 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 45 (0.45%) Apple iOS
7 39 (0.39%) Windows 10
8 37 (0.37%) zOS
9 36 (0.36%) Solaris
10 34 (0.34%) Android
11 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
12 17 (0.17%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 8 (0.081%) VMS
15 6 (0.060%) HPUX
15 6 (0.060%) SUSE
16 5 (0.050%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.020%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,339 (23.56%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,039 (20.54%) Agile
3 1,362 (13.72%) Migration
4 1,317 (13.27%) Problem-Solving
5 1,175 (11.84%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,164 (11.72%) AI
7 1,137 (11.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,038 (10.46%) CI/CD
9 1,034 (10.41%) ERP
10 1,017 (10.24%) DevOps
11 1,009 (10.16%) Analytics
12 910 (9.17%) Decision-Making
13 810 (8.16%) Validation
14 806 (8.12%) Data Modelling
15 799 (8.05%) Roadmaps
16 766 (7.72%) User Acceptance Testing
17 745 (7.50%) Project Management
18 714 (7.19%) Change Management
19 680 (6.85%) Business Intelligence
20 647 (6.52%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,289 (12.98%) SQL
2 1,222 (12.31%) Python
3 635 (6.40%) Java
4 386 (3.89%) C#
5 266 (2.68%) JavaScript
6 242 (2.44%) PowerShell
7 233 (2.35%) TypeScript
8 125 (1.26%) Bash
9 100 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 82 (0.83%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.78%) C++
12 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 69 (0.70%) Go
14 68 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 51 (0.51%) Bicep
16 47 (0.47%) VBA
17 40 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 37 (0.37%) Scala
19 35 (0.35%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.35%) Korn
Qualifications
1 771 (7.77%) Security Cleared
2 734 (7.39%) Degree
3 552 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 241 (2.43%) PMP
5 215 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 215 (2.17%) PMI Certification
6 201 (2.02%) ACCA
7 178 (1.79%) CIMA
8 154 (1.55%) CISSP
9 139 (1.40%) DV Cleared
10 121 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
11 99 (1.00%) Azure Certification
12 86 (0.87%) CISM
13 78 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
14 72 (0.73%) Master's Degree
15 60 (0.60%) AWS Certification
16 53 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
17 46 (0.46%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 40 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 643 (6.48%) Data Quality
2 412 (4.15%) QA
3 366 (3.69%) PMO
4 273 (2.75%) GDPR
5 156 (1.57%) NIST
6 127 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.16%) SLA
8 113 (1.14%) GRC
9 103 (1.04%) Accessibility
10 102 (1.03%) IFRS
11 100 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 62 (0.62%) ISO 20022
13 60 (0.60%) GAAP
14 49 (0.49%) PCI DSS
15 36 (0.36%) SEPA
15 36 (0.36%) Solvency II
16 31 (0.31%) COBIT
17 30 (0.30%) MiFID
17 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 29 (0.29%) EMIR
System Software
1 273 (2.75%) Docker
2 235 (2.37%) Active Directory
3 67 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
6 23 (0.23%) vSphere
7 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
9 11 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 5 (0.050%) ACF2
12 5 (0.050%) GPFS
12 5 (0.050%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.040%) KVM
13 4 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 439 (4.42%) Kubernetes
2 339 (3.41%) Terraform
3 159 (1.60%) Ansible
4 88 (0.89%) Grafana
5 78 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
6 72 (0.73%) Prometheus
7 55 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (0.53%) SCCM
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 24 (0.24%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 16 (0.16%) Argo
12 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
12 16 (0.16%) Puppet
12 16 (0.16%) vRealize
13 13 (0.13%) CASB
13 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
14 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,336 (13.46%) Microsoft
2 863 (8.69%) Oracle
3 842 (8.48%) SAP
4 368 (3.71%) ServiceNow
5 327 (3.29%) Databricks
6 230 (2.32%) Salesforce
7 219 (2.21%) Google
8 161 (1.62%) IBM
9 138 (1.39%) Workday
10 130 (1.31%) VMware
11 108 (1.09%) Cisco
12 105 (1.06%) Splunk
13 93 (0.94%) Ariba
14 89 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 75 (0.76%) OpenAI
16 64 (0.64%) Sage
17 60 (0.60%) Citrix
18 50 (0.50%) Bloomberg
18 50 (0.50%) Informatica
19 46 (0.46%) Murex