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 2 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,355 6,566 8,520
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.14% 21.13% 18.90%
As % of the General category 32.39% 34.08% 32.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,658 4,078 5,814
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £425 £458 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -1.60% -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 90 167
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.11 £11.83
25th Percentile £17.05 £22.27 £14.06
Median hourly rate £22.85 £28.25 £20.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.12% +37.80% -18.00%
75th Percentile £39.50 £60.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £65.03 £78.88 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -40.00%

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 22,707 19,264 26,512
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.09% 62.00% 58.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,252 11,463 17,188
10th Percentile £285 £281 £265
25th Percentile £400 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £730 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £481 £500
% change year-on-year -1.14% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,385 621 1,614
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.62 £13.02
25th Percentile £16.25 £20.12 £15.13
Median hourly rate £22.50 £28.60 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -21.33% +11.24% +2.84%
75th Percentile £47.00 £53.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.75 £67.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.28 £26.50 £24.65
% change year-on-year -19.72% +7.51% +7.91%

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 2 February 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 2 February 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 2 February 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 6,462 £530 -10.92% 4,134
London -1 3,936 £575 -5.74% 2,047
UK excluding London -2 2,912 £492 -1.60% 2,865
Work from Home -1 2,058 £525 -12.50% 1,699
North of England +2 926 £475 -2.56% 658
South East -1 540 £503 -4.29% 1,049
Midlands -3 513 £483 -6.31% 428
North West +3 457 £450 -5.26% 358
Yorkshire 0 420 £500 -2.91% 230
Scotland 0 379 £475 +1.66% 137
West Midlands -6 319 £509 -7.41% 256
South West -7 289 £525 -0.94% 298
East Midlands 0 192 £446 +4.94% 172
East of England -2 171 £525 - 221
Wales +29 87 £413 -12.00% 82
Northern Ireland -1 55 £500 +52.67% 45
North East -6 50 £488 +8.33% 76
Channel Islands +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
1 319 (4.34%) Confluence
2 207 (2.81%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.98%) Apache Spark
4 63 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
5 56 (0.76%) Apache
6 50 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.41%) SAS
8 29 (0.39%) CMS
9 21 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.22%) Ethereum
10 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 15 (0.20%) Appian
11 15 (0.20%) HCL Notes
11 15 (0.20%) IIS
12 13 (0.18%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.18%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
13 12 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 500 (6.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 288 (3.92%) Microsoft Office
3 205 (2.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 166 (2.26%) Microsoft Project
5 132 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 38 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 30 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 13 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.082%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.068%) Notion
14 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
15 4 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
16 2 (0.027%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.027%) InDesign
16 2 (0.027%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 293 (3.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.63%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.31%) Oracle Receivables
4 84 (1.14%) Oracle EBS
5 75 (1.02%) Oracle General Ledger
6 67 (0.91%) SAP FI
7 65 (0.88%) NetSuite
8 62 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
9 58 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 55 (0.75%) SAP CO
11 51 (0.69%) Oracle Cash Management
12 49 (0.67%) SAP FI/CO
13 48 (0.65%) Oracle Assets
14 46 (0.63%) Oracle EBS R12
15 42 (0.57%) Oracle Financials
16 38 (0.52%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 37 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
18 35 (0.48%) Workday HCM
19 30 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
20 24 (0.33%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,094 (14.87%) Azure
2 879 (11.95%) AWS
3 524 (7.12%) Power Platform
4 342 (4.65%) GCP
5 260 (3.54%) Microsoft 365
6 240 (3.26%) SaaS
7 225 (3.06%) Azure DevOps
8 212 (2.88%) Dynamics 365
9 193 (2.62%) GitHub
10 141 (1.92%) OCI
10 141 (1.92%) Serverless
11 126 (1.71%) Snowflake
12 120 (1.63%) Entra ID
13 91 (1.24%) GitHub Actions
14 87 (1.18%) Amazon S3
14 87 (1.18%) Power Automate
15 74 (1.01%) OpenShift
16 72 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
17 68 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
18 66 (0.90%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 122 (1.66%) Firewall
2 74 (1.01%) Network Security
3 67 (0.91%) WAN
4 42 (0.57%) DNS
5 41 (0.56%) VPN
6 39 (0.53%) LAN
6 39 (0.53%) SD-WAN
7 32 (0.44%) Wireless
8 30 (0.41%) TCP/IP
9 29 (0.39%) Skype
10 27 (0.37%) HTTP
11 22 (0.30%) DHCP
11 22 (0.30%) SSL
12 20 (0.27%) SSH
13 19 (0.26%) Internet
13 19 (0.26%) Kerberos
14 17 (0.23%) BGP
14 17 (0.23%) OSPF
15 13 (0.18%) SNMP
15 13 (0.18%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 455 (6.19%) Power BI
2 197 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
3 191 (2.60%) SQL Server
4 149 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (1.73%) Tableau
6 123 (1.67%) NoSQL
7 117 (1.59%) Relational Database
8 114 (1.55%) Metadata
9 109 (1.48%) Data Lake
10 86 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
11 73 (0.99%) Oracle Database
12 70 (0.95%) MongoDB
13 65 (0.88%) Big Data
14 50 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 42 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.53%) Hadoop
17 35 (0.48%) MySQL
17 35 (0.48%) Power Query
18 34 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 31 (0.42%) KDB
Development Applications
1 595 (8.09%) JIRA
2 257 (3.49%) Jenkins
3 210 (2.86%) Git
4 152 (2.07%) GitLab
5 72 (0.98%) JUnit
6 56 (0.76%) Cucumber
7 49 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
8 48 (0.65%) Selenium
9 45 (0.61%) Bitbucket
10 39 (0.53%) Postman
11 32 (0.44%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.33%) Gradle
13 22 (0.30%) Maven
14 21 (0.29%) Liquibase
14 21 (0.29%) MLflow
15 20 (0.27%) REST Assured
16 18 (0.24%) Cypress.io
16 18 (0.24%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.22%) JMeter
18 15 (0.20%) ERwin
General
1 2,564 (34.86%) Social Skills
2 1,492 (20.29%) Banking
3 965 (13.12%) Analytical Skills
4 601 (8.17%) Public Sector
5 331 (4.50%) Financial Institution
6 316 (4.30%) Marketing
7 292 (3.97%) Manufacturing
8 273 (3.71%) Telecoms
9 271 (3.68%) Investment Banking
10 266 (3.62%) Legal
11 262 (3.56%) Front Office
12 220 (2.99%) Organisational Skills
13 208 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
14 181 (2.46%) Electronics
15 163 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
16 150 (2.04%) Retail
17 133 (1.81%) General Ledger
18 126 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
19 122 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 111 (1.51%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,177 (16.00%) Analyst
2 829 (11.27%) Developer
3 713 (9.69%) Senior
4 625 (8.50%) Business Analyst
5 590 (8.02%) Architect
6 580 (7.89%) Project Manager
7 561 (7.63%) Consultant
8 560 (7.61%) Lead
9 246 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
10 183 (2.49%) Data Analyst
11 163 (2.22%) Data Engineer
12 161 (2.19%) Financial Analyst
13 157 (2.13%) Programme Manager
14 142 (1.93%) Java Developer
15 140 (1.90%) Senior Developer
16 135 (1.84%) Senior Manager
17 128 (1.74%) Software Engineer
18 113 (1.54%) Finance Manager
19 111 (1.51%) IT Manager
20 109 (1.48%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (3.73%) REST
2 223 (3.03%) Kafka
3 212 (2.88%) .NET
4 159 (2.16%) React
5 155 (2.11%) RESTful
6 153 (2.08%) Oracle Fusion
7 147 (2.00%) Spring
8 121 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 115 (1.56%) Middleware
10 100 (1.36%) AngularJS
11 86 (1.17%) HTML
11 86 (1.17%) XML
12 85 (1.16%) Pandas
13 78 (1.06%) Node.js
14 75 (1.02%) CSS
14 75 (1.02%) NumPy
15 73 (0.99%) PySpark
16 72 (0.98%) JSON
17 71 (0.97%) OAuth
18 69 (0.94%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 321 (4.36%) Onboarding
2 302 (4.11%) Product Ownership
3 221 (3.00%) Cloud Native
4 172 (2.34%) Management Information System
5 167 (2.27%) Derivative
6 163 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
7 151 (2.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 134 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
8 134 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
9 129 (1.75%) Data Centre
10 128 (1.74%) Data Structures
11 119 (1.62%) Equities
12 118 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
13 110 (1.50%) Fixed Income
14 103 (1.40%) Public Cloud
15 93 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
16 84 (1.14%) Hedge funds
17 78 (1.06%) Virtual Team
18 74 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
19 71 (0.97%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 334 (4.54%) Linux
2 310 (4.21%) Windows
3 144 (1.96%) Unix
4 67 (0.91%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.87%) Windows Server
6 62 (0.84%) Mac OS
7 59 (0.80%) Android
8 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.14%) zOS
11 7 (0.095%) VMS
12 6 (0.082%) CentOS
13 5 (0.068%) Solaris
13 5 (0.068%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.054%) AIX
14 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.041%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.027%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,681 (22.86%) Agile
2 1,382 (18.79%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,193 (16.22%) Problem-Solving
4 862 (11.72%) Migration
5 819 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 798 (10.85%) DevOps
7 767 (10.43%) CI/CD
8 736 (10.01%) Business Intelligence
9 718 (9.76%) Project Management
10 716 (9.73%) Analytics
11 654 (8.89%) ERP
12 642 (8.73%) Continuous Improvement
13 551 (7.49%) AI
14 527 (7.17%) Change Management
15 523 (7.11%) Decision-Making
16 520 (7.07%) Roadmaps
17 511 (6.95%) Risk Management
18 502 (6.83%) Data Modelling
19 488 (6.63%) User Acceptance Testing
20 474 (6.44%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,097 (14.92%) SQL
2 921 (12.52%) Python
3 514 (6.99%) Java
4 304 (4.13%) C#
5 204 (2.77%) PowerShell
6 199 (2.71%) JavaScript
7 153 (2.08%) C++
8 146 (1.99%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 66 (0.90%) Bash
11 64 (0.87%) Go
12 50 (0.68%) Shell Script
13 49 (0.67%) VBA
14 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
15 39 (0.53%) R
16 38 (0.52%) T-SQL
17 33 (0.45%) Rust
18 32 (0.44%) Scala
19 31 (0.42%) Groovy
20 29 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 804 (10.93%) Degree
2 570 (7.75%) Security Cleared
3 426 (5.79%) SC Cleared
4 188 (2.56%) PMI Certification
5 185 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
6 178 (2.42%) PMP
7 166 (2.26%) Master's Degree
8 150 (2.04%) ACCA
9 139 (1.89%) CIMA
10 115 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
11 89 (1.21%) AWS Certification
12 86 (1.17%) CISSP
13 62 (0.84%) CISM
14 60 (0.82%) DV Cleared
15 58 (0.79%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 39 (0.53%) CBAP
18 33 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
19 31 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
20 29 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (5.06%) QA
2 337 (4.58%) Data Quality
3 275 (3.74%) PMO
4 249 (3.39%) GDPR
5 125 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 121 (1.65%) NIST
7 107 (1.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 94 (1.28%) SLA
9 90 (1.22%) Accessibility
10 74 (1.01%) PCI DSS
11 73 (0.99%) IFRS
12 62 (0.84%) GRC
13 54 (0.73%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.63%) PSD2
15 37 (0.50%) MiFID
15 37 (0.50%) SEPA
16 35 (0.48%) NCSC
17 31 (0.42%) Basel III
18 30 (0.41%) GAAP
19 29 (0.39%) COBIT
System Software
1 331 (4.50%) Docker
2 194 (2.64%) Active Directory
3 53 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
5 23 (0.31%) vSphere
6 12 (0.16%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.12%) GPFS
8 9 (0.12%) NFS
9 8 (0.11%) HDFS
9 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 8 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.068%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.041%) Firmware
12 3 (0.041%) KVM
12 3 (0.041%) RACF
12 3 (0.041%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.027%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 383 (5.21%) Kubernetes
2 250 (3.40%) Terraform
3 162 (2.20%) Ansible
4 85 (1.16%) Grafana
5 79 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.86%) SCCM
7 59 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
8 37 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.35%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.30%) FortiGate
10 22 (0.30%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.23%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Control-M
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
14 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
14 14 (0.19%) vRealize
15 11 (0.15%) Puppet
16 10 (0.14%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,010 (13.73%) Microsoft
2 785 (10.67%) SAP
3 687 (9.34%) Oracle
4 282 (3.83%) ServiceNow
5 181 (2.46%) Salesforce
6 167 (2.27%) Splunk
7 163 (2.22%) Databricks
8 161 (2.19%) Google
9 150 (2.04%) Cisco
10 136 (1.85%) Workday
11 103 (1.40%) VMware
12 92 (1.25%) IBM
13 72 (0.98%) Citrix
14 71 (0.97%) CyberArk
15 61 (0.83%) Ariba
16 55 (0.75%) HP
17 50 (0.68%) Bloomberg
18 49 (0.67%) Dell
18 49 (0.67%) Informatica
18 49 (0.67%) OpenAI