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 30 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,893 6,432 8,058
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.10% 22.28% 18.78%
As % of the General category 33.60% 35.16% 32.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,559 4,199 5,395
10th Percentile £355 £350 £350
25th Percentile £441 £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 £497 £500
% change year-on-year +0.69% -0.69% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 113 257
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.88 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.13 £24.22 £15.00
Median hourly rate £25.38 £41.50 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -38.84% +53.87% -3.61%
75th Percentile £56.68 £65.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.90 £81.69 £56.25
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 26,471 18,293 24,727
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.86% 63.36% 57.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,041 11,592 15,561
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 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,748 810 1,973
10th Percentile £13.72 £13.50 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.67 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.85 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.72% -7.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.74
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.34 £28.00
% change year-on-year +19.15% -13.07% +0.57%

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 30 May 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 30 May 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 30 May 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 7,881 £550 -4.35% 4,489
London 0 4,765 £575 -6.12% 2,510
UK excluding London 0 3,543 £500 +0.69% 2,704
Work from Home -2 2,489 £540 -6.09% 1,817
North of England +3 1,209 £492 +4.90% 697
South East 0 657 £500 -4.31% 800
North West +5 640 £465 - 408
Midlands -1 607 £492 +3.58% 419
Yorkshire +1 531 £519 +9.16% 228
Scotland 0 429 £500 +5.26% 172
West Midlands 0 415 £500 -2.13% 261
South West -2 363 £525 - 305
East of England +1 198 £520 -9.57% 202
East Midlands 0 187 £468 +5.87% 158
Wales +10 86 £475 +16.92% 68
Northern Ireland -1 45 £500 +19.76% 79
North East -14 39 £488 +7.73% 70
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
1 322 (3.62%) Confluence
2 221 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.92%) Apache Spark
4 62 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
5 56 (0.63%) Apache
6 50 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.35%) SAS
8 24 (0.27%) CMS
9 20 (0.22%) CICS
9 20 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.17%) IIS
11 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.16%) Appian
11 14 (0.16%) Camunda
12 10 (0.11%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 10 (0.11%) Mendix
12 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
14 7 (0.079%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 512 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
3 170 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 166 (1.87%) Microsoft Project
5 127 (1.43%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 34 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.10%) Sketch
9 8 (0.090%) Notion
10 7 (0.079%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.079%) InVision
11 6 (0.067%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.067%) Trello
12 4 (0.045%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.022%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.022%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
14 1 (0.011%) UXPin
14 1 (0.011%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 400 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 108 (1.21%) NetSuite
2 108 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 89 (1.00%) Oracle Receivables
4 82 (0.92%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 66 (0.74%) Oracle ERP
6 57 (0.64%) SAP FI
7 53 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
8 48 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
9 46 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
10 45 (0.51%) SAP CO
11 42 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
12 36 (0.40%) Aladdin
13 32 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
14 31 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
14 31 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 26 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
16 25 (0.28%) SAP ERP
17 23 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
17 23 (0.26%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,381 (15.53%) Azure
2 1,002 (11.27%) AWS
3 608 (6.84%) Power Platform
4 415 (4.67%) GCP
5 306 (3.44%) Azure DevOps
6 291 (3.27%) SaaS
7 276 (3.10%) Microsoft 365
8 238 (2.68%) GitHub
9 233 (2.62%) Dynamics 365
10 175 (1.97%) Snowflake
11 158 (1.78%) Entra ID
12 142 (1.60%) Serverless
13 122 (1.37%) OCI
14 115 (1.29%) Power Automate
15 111 (1.25%) Amazon S3
16 96 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 91 (1.02%) OpenShift
18 87 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
19 83 (0.93%) dbt
20 81 (0.91%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 169 (1.90%) Firewall
2 125 (1.41%) Network Security
3 79 (0.89%) WAN
4 74 (0.83%) 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 (0.31%) 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
1 515 (5.79%) Power BI
2 233 (2.62%) SQL Server
3 225 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
4 175 (1.97%) Metadata
5 162 (1.82%) PostgreSQL
6 158 (1.78%) Relational Database
7 154 (1.73%) Tableau
8 126 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 92 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 79 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
11 72 (0.81%) Big Data
12 69 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.70%) BigQuery
13 62 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 53 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
15 48 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
17 41 (0.46%) Delta Lake
17 41 (0.46%) Power Query
18 37 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 678 (7.62%) JIRA
2 207 (2.33%) Git
3 158 (1.78%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.09%) GitLab
5 47 (0.53%) Cucumber
5 47 (0.53%) JUnit
6 39 (0.44%) Selenium
7 31 (0.35%) Postman
7 31 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
8 30 (0.34%) Visual Studio
9 25 (0.28%) MLflow
10 24 (0.27%) SonarQube
11 22 (0.25%) Zephyr
12 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 19 (0.21%) Maven
14 18 (0.20%) ERwin
14 18 (0.20%) Hudson
15 16 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.17%) Bitbucket
17 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,595 (29.18%) Social Skills
2 1,628 (18.31%) Banking
3 1,157 (13.01%) Analytical Skills
4 511 (5.75%) Public Sector
5 389 (4.37%) Legal
6 341 (3.83%) Financial Institution
7 330 (3.71%) Investment Banking
8 294 (3.31%) Front Office
9 276 (3.10%) Retail
10 255 (2.87%) Organisational Skills
11 240 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
12 216 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
13 173 (1.95%) Manufacturing
14 147 (1.65%) Marketing
15 141 (1.59%) General Ledger
15 141 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 132 (1.48%) Law
17 131 (1.47%) Local Government
18 128 (1.44%) Billing
19 127 (1.43%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,352 (15.20%) Analyst
2 947 (10.65%) Senior
3 916 (10.30%) Lead
4 894 (10.05%) Developer
5 816 (9.18%) Architect
6 722 (8.12%) Business Analyst
7 694 (7.80%) Project Manager
8 596 (6.70%) Consultant
9 336 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
10 293 (3.29%) Data Engineer
11 223 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 214 (2.41%) Senior Manager
13 195 (2.19%) Data Analyst
14 185 (2.08%) Finance Manager
15 176 (1.98%) Accountant
16 175 (1.97%) Programme Manager
17 158 (1.78%) Java Developer
17 158 (1.78%) Software Engineer
18 149 (1.68%) Senior Developer
19 146 (1.64%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (2.99%) REST
2 253 (2.84%) Kafka
3 248 (2.79%) .NET
4 222 (2.50%) React
5 184 (2.07%) Middleware
6 175 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
7 151 (1.70%) Spring
8 146 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.53%) RESTful
10 103 (1.16%) Node.js
10 103 (1.16%) PySpark
11 97 (1.09%) AngularJS
12 85 (0.96%) OAuth
13 84 (0.94%) Redux
14 79 (0.89%) JSON
15 73 (0.82%) XML
16 66 (0.74%) CSS
17 65 (0.73%) HTML
18 63 (0.71%) OpenID
19 61 (0.69%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 383 (4.31%) Product Ownership
2 382 (4.30%) Onboarding
3 347 (3.90%) Cloud Native
4 245 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
5 203 (2.28%) Management Information System
6 190 (2.14%) Data Structures
7 171 (1.92%) Derivative
8 169 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
9 160 (1.80%) Data Centre
10 140 (1.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 138 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
11 138 (1.55%) Fixed Income
12 110 (1.24%) Equities
13 105 (1.18%) Public Cloud
14 102 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
15 100 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
16 99 (1.11%) Virtual Team
17 92 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
18 82 (0.92%) AI Agents
19 72 (0.81%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 290 (3.26%) Windows
2 269 (3.02%) Linux
3 138 (1.55%) Unix
4 72 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.47%) 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 (0.30%) Android
11 18 (0.20%) AIX
12 17 (0.19%) Mac OS
13 7 (0.079%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
14 6 (0.067%) VMS
14 6 (0.067%) 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 1,829 (20.57%) Agile
2 1,784 (20.06%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,229 (13.82%) Migration
4 1,218 (13.70%) Problem-Solving
5 987 (11.10%) Continuous Improvement
6 969 (10.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 935 (10.51%) DevOps
8 930 (10.46%) ERP
9 897 (10.09%) CI/CD
10 890 (10.01%) AI
11 857 (9.64%) Analytics
12 784 (8.82%) Project Management
13 743 (8.35%) Data Modelling
14 738 (8.30%) Decision-Making
15 721 (8.11%) Validation
16 718 (8.07%) Roadmaps
17 687 (7.73%) User Acceptance Testing
18 685 (7.70%) Business Intelligence
19 623 (7.01%) Change Management
20 577 (6.49%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,211 (13.62%) SQL
2 1,075 (12.09%) Python
3 591 (6.65%) Java
4 352 (3.96%) C#
5 227 (2.55%) JavaScript
6 211 (2.37%) TypeScript
7 185 (2.08%) PowerShell
8 110 (1.24%) C++
9 82 (0.92%) Bash
10 76 (0.85%) Go
11 69 (0.78%) PL/SQL
12 65 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 52 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 52 (0.58%) Shell Script
14 43 (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 (0.31%) Rust
Qualifications
1 754 (8.48%) Degree
2 680 (7.65%) Security Cleared
3 486 (5.46%) SC Cleared
4 221 (2.49%) ACCA
5 207 (2.33%) PMP
6 202 (2.27%) CIMA
7 183 (2.06%) PMI Certification
8 145 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 137 (1.54%) CISSP
10 132 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
11 95 (1.07%) Master's Degree
12 86 (0.97%) CISM
13 79 (0.89%) DV Cleared
14 72 (0.81%) Azure Certification
15 62 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
16 52 (0.58%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
18 32 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 32 (0.36%) DBS Check
18 32 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 537 (6.04%) Data Quality
2 413 (4.64%) QA
3 313 (3.52%) PMO
4 284 (3.19%) GDPR
5 162 (1.82%) NIST
6 129 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.26%) IFRS
8 107 (1.20%) SLA
9 106 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 99 (1.11%) GRC
11 86 (0.97%) Accessibility
12 65 (0.73%) PCI DSS
13 59 (0.66%) ISO 20022
14 58 (0.65%) GAAP
15 38 (0.43%) NCSC
16 35 (0.39%) SEPA
17 34 (0.38%) PSD2
18 29 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
19 28 (0.31%) IFRS 17
20 27 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 285 (3.20%) Docker
2 163 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
4 30 (0.34%) vSphere
5 23 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.17%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 11 (0.12%) NFS
10 8 (0.090%) RACF
11 7 (0.079%) GPFS
12 6 (0.067%) KVM
13 5 (0.056%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.045%) Firmware
14 4 (0.045%) HDFS
14 4 (0.045%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.045%) SRDF
15 3 (0.034%) GridGain
16 2 (0.022%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 412 (4.63%) Kubernetes
2 267 (3.00%) Terraform
3 129 (1.45%) Ansible
4 91 (1.02%) Grafana
5 75 (0.84%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 42 (0.47%) SCCM
8 39 (0.44%) 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 1,133 (12.74%) Microsoft
2 795 (8.94%) SAP
3 729 (8.20%) Oracle
4 304 (3.42%) ServiceNow
5 255 (2.87%) Databricks
6 196 (2.20%) Salesforce
7 186 (2.09%) Google
8 131 (1.47%) Workday
9 120 (1.35%) Cisco
10 114 (1.28%) Splunk
11 108 (1.21%) VMware
12 99 (1.11%) IBM
13 84 (0.94%) Ariba
14 82 (0.92%) CyberArk
15 70 (0.79%) Citrix
16 67 (0.75%) Sage
17 62 (0.70%) OpenAI
18 54 (0.61%) Palo Alto
19 51 (0.57%) IFS
20 50 (0.56%) Informatica