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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,429 6,521 8,514
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.18% 21.12% 18.88%
As % of the General category 32.46% 34.06% 32.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,708 4,047 5,813
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £425 £459 £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 £781 £825 £794
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -1.58% -2.44% -1.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 90 167
10th Percentile £14.53 £18.11 £11.83
25th Percentile £17.09 £22.27 £14.06
Median hourly rate £23.25 £28.25 £20.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.70% +37.80% -18.00%
75th Percentile £40.00 £60.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £68.94 £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 22,890 19,143 26,494
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.11% 62.01% 58.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,371 11,392 17,167
10th Percentile £288 £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 1,391 618 1,623
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.62 £13.01
25th Percentile £16.30 £20.12 £15.14
Median hourly rate £22.50 £29.00 £25.79
Median % change year-on-year -22.41% +12.45% +3.16%
75th Percentile £47.63 £53.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.79 £68.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.30 £26.75 £25.00
% change year-on-year -20.37% +7.00% +10.66%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 6,533 £530 -10.55% 4,080
London -1 3,975 £575 -5.35% 1,995
UK excluding London -2 2,942 £492 -1.58% 2,869
Work from Home -1 2,076 £525 -12.50% 1,776
North of England +2 941 £475 -2.56% 667
South East -1 546 £500 -4.76% 1,074
Midlands -3 521 £480 -6.80% 414
North West +3 462 £450 -5.26% 366
Yorkshire 0 430 £500 -2.91% 239
Scotland 0 379 £475 +1.33% 137
West Midlands -4 326 £509 -7.41% 253
South West -7 291 £525 - 292
East Midlands 0 193 £447 +5.80% 161
East of England -2 171 £525 - 231
Wales +29 87 £413 -12.00% 75
Northern Ireland -1 55 £500 +52.67% 37
North East -6 50 £488 +8.33% 70
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
1 320 (4.31%) Confluence
2 210 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 72 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 64 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
5 56 (0.75%) Apache
6 50 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.40%) SAS
8 29 (0.39%) CMS
9 22 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.22%) Appian
10 16 (0.22%) Ethereum
10 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 15 (0.20%) HCL Notes
11 15 (0.20%) IIS
12 13 (0.17%) CICS
12 13 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 13 (0.17%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.17%) TPMS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
Applications
1 502 (6.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 290 (3.90%) Microsoft Office
3 207 (2.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 167 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
5 133 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 38 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 30 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.24%) Trello
10 13 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.081%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.067%) Notion
14 5 (0.067%) 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
1 295 (3.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.62%) Oracle Payables
3 96 (1.29%) Oracle Receivables
4 84 (1.13%) Oracle EBS
5 75 (1.01%) Oracle General Ledger
6 68 (0.92%) SAP FI
7 65 (0.87%) NetSuite
8 62 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
9 59 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 56 (0.75%) SAP CO
11 51 (0.69%) Oracle Cash Management
12 50 (0.67%) SAP FI/CO
13 48 (0.65%) Oracle Assets
14 46 (0.62%) Oracle EBS R12
15 42 (0.57%) Oracle Financials
16 40 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
17 38 (0.51%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
18 35 (0.47%) Workday HCM
19 30 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
20 24 (0.32%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,106 (14.89%) Azure
2 890 (11.98%) AWS
3 525 (7.07%) Power Platform
4 350 (4.71%) GCP
5 263 (3.54%) Microsoft 365
6 242 (3.26%) SaaS
7 226 (3.04%) Azure DevOps
8 213 (2.87%) Dynamics 365
9 194 (2.61%) GitHub
10 141 (1.90%) OCI
10 141 (1.90%) Serverless
11 126 (1.70%) Snowflake
12 122 (1.64%) Entra ID
13 91 (1.22%) GitHub Actions
14 89 (1.20%) Power Automate
15 87 (1.17%) Amazon S3
16 75 (1.01%) OpenShift
17 72 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
18 68 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
19 66 (0.89%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 124 (1.67%) Firewall
2 74 (1.00%) Network Security
3 67 (0.90%) WAN
4 44 (0.59%) DNS
5 42 (0.57%) VPN
6 39 (0.52%) LAN
6 39 (0.52%) SD-WAN
7 32 (0.43%) Wireless
8 30 (0.40%) TCP/IP
9 29 (0.39%) Skype
10 27 (0.36%) 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 (0.17%) SNMP
15 13 (0.17%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 456 (6.14%) Power BI
2 198 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
3 192 (2.58%) SQL Server
4 152 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (1.71%) Tableau
6 124 (1.67%) NoSQL
7 118 (1.59%) Relational Database
8 115 (1.55%) Metadata
9 110 (1.48%) Data Lake
10 86 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (1.01%) Oracle Database
12 70 (0.94%) MongoDB
13 66 (0.89%) Big Data
14 54 (0.73%) BigQuery
15 42 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.52%) Hadoop
17 37 (0.50%) MySQL
18 35 (0.47%) Power Query
19 34 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
20 32 (0.43%) KDB
Development Applications
1 599 (8.06%) JIRA
2 258 (3.47%) Jenkins
3 212 (2.85%) Git
4 154 (2.07%) GitLab
5 72 (0.97%) JUnit
6 57 (0.77%) Cucumber
7 50 (0.67%) Selenium
8 49 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
9 45 (0.61%) Bitbucket
10 39 (0.52%) Postman
11 33 (0.44%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.32%) Gradle
13 22 (0.30%) Maven
13 22 (0.30%) MLflow
14 21 (0.28%) Liquibase
14 21 (0.28%) REST Assured
15 18 (0.24%) Cypress.io
15 18 (0.24%) SonarQube
16 16 (0.22%) JMeter
16 16 (0.22%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,578 (34.70%) Social Skills
2 1,509 (20.31%) Banking
3 972 (13.08%) Analytical Skills
4 609 (8.20%) Public Sector
5 335 (4.51%) Financial Institution
6 317 (4.27%) Marketing
7 292 (3.93%) Manufacturing
8 274 (3.69%) Investment Banking
8 274 (3.69%) Telecoms
9 271 (3.65%) Legal
10 261 (3.51%) Front Office
11 221 (2.97%) Organisational Skills
12 211 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
13 181 (2.44%) Electronics
14 166 (2.23%) Influencing Skills
15 150 (2.02%) Retail
16 133 (1.79%) General Ledger
17 126 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
18 123 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 111 (1.49%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,189 (16.00%) Analyst
2 838 (11.28%) Developer
3 720 (9.69%) Senior
4 634 (8.53%) Business Analyst
5 598 (8.05%) Architect
6 583 (7.85%) Project Manager
7 566 (7.62%) Lead
8 562 (7.56%) Consultant
9 249 (3.35%) Solutions Architect
10 185 (2.49%) Data Analyst
11 166 (2.23%) Data Engineer
12 162 (2.18%) Programme Manager
13 161 (2.17%) Financial Analyst
14 145 (1.95%) Java Developer
15 143 (1.92%) Senior Developer
16 135 (1.82%) Senior Manager
17 128 (1.72%) Software Engineer
18 114 (1.53%) IT Manager
19 113 (1.52%) Finance Manager
20 110 (1.48%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (3.74%) REST
2 225 (3.03%) Kafka
3 214 (2.88%) .NET
4 162 (2.18%) React
5 158 (2.13%) RESTful
6 153 (2.06%) Oracle Fusion
7 148 (1.99%) Spring
8 123 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 118 (1.59%) Middleware
10 100 (1.35%) AngularJS
11 89 (1.20%) XML
12 86 (1.16%) HTML
12 86 (1.16%) Pandas
13 79 (1.06%) Node.js
14 76 (1.02%) NumPy
15 75 (1.01%) CSS
16 74 (1.00%) JSON
16 74 (1.00%) PySpark
17 73 (0.98%) OAuth
18 71 (0.96%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 321 (4.32%) Onboarding
2 303 (4.08%) Product Ownership
3 222 (2.99%) Cloud Native
4 176 (2.37%) Management Information System
5 168 (2.26%) Derivative
6 165 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
7 152 (2.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 138 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
9 135 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
10 132 (1.78%) Data Centre
11 128 (1.72%) Data Structures
12 120 (1.62%) Equities
13 118 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
14 110 (1.48%) Fixed Income
15 105 (1.41%) Public Cloud
16 93 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
17 84 (1.13%) Hedge funds
18 78 (1.05%) Virtual Team
19 76 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
20 70 (0.94%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 337 (4.54%) Linux
2 310 (4.17%) Windows
3 148 (1.99%) Unix
4 67 (0.90%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.86%) Windows Server
6 62 (0.83%) Mac OS
7 59 (0.79%) Android
8 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 16 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 11 (0.15%) zOS
11 7 (0.094%) VMS
12 6 (0.081%) CentOS
12 6 (0.081%) Solaris
13 5 (0.067%) AIX
13 5 (0.067%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.040%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.027%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,694 (22.80%) Agile
2 1,395 (18.78%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,203 (16.19%) Problem-Solving
4 870 (11.71%) Migration
5 823 (11.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 804 (10.82%) DevOps
7 774 (10.42%) CI/CD
8 740 (9.96%) Business Intelligence
9 725 (9.76%) Analytics
10 724 (9.75%) Project Management
11 660 (8.88%) ERP
12 646 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
13 557 (7.50%) AI
14 533 (7.17%) Change Management
15 528 (7.11%) Roadmaps
16 525 (7.07%) Decision-Making
17 516 (6.95%) Risk Management
18 511 (6.88%) Data Modelling
19 494 (6.65%) User Acceptance Testing
20 482 (6.49%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,105 (14.87%) SQL
2 932 (12.55%) Python
3 522 (7.03%) Java
4 306 (4.12%) C#
5 206 (2.77%) PowerShell
6 200 (2.69%) JavaScript
7 154 (2.07%) C++
8 148 (1.99%) TypeScript
9 83 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 66 (0.89%) Bash
11 64 (0.86%) Go
12 51 (0.69%) Shell Script
13 50 (0.67%) VBA
14 40 (0.54%) Kotlin
15 39 (0.52%) R
16 38 (0.51%) T-SQL
17 33 (0.44%) Rust
17 33 (0.44%) Scala
18 31 (0.42%) Groovy
19 29 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 805 (10.84%) Degree
2 582 (7.83%) Security Cleared
3 433 (5.83%) SC Cleared
4 189 (2.54%) PMI Certification
5 185 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 179 (2.41%) PMP
7 166 (2.23%) Master's Degree
8 149 (2.01%) ACCA
9 138 (1.86%) CIMA
10 116 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
11 89 (1.20%) AWS Certification
12 86 (1.16%) CISSP
13 62 (0.83%) CISM
14 60 (0.81%) DV Cleared
15 58 (0.78%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 39 (0.52%) CBAP
18 33 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
19 31 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
20 30 (0.40%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (5.06%) QA
2 341 (4.59%) Data Quality
3 277 (3.73%) PMO
4 252 (3.39%) GDPR
5 125 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 121 (1.63%) NIST
7 107 (1.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 94 (1.27%) SLA
9 90 (1.21%) Accessibility
10 74 (1.00%) PCI DSS
11 73 (0.98%) IFRS
12 63 (0.85%) GRC
13 54 (0.73%) ISO 20022
14 46 (0.62%) PSD2
15 37 (0.50%) MiFID
15 37 (0.50%) SEPA
16 35 (0.47%) NCSC
17 31 (0.42%) Basel III
18 30 (0.40%) GAAP
19 29 (0.39%) COBIT
System Software
1 333 (4.48%) Docker
2 194 (2.61%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
5 23 (0.31%) vSphere
6 12 (0.16%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.13%) 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 (0.067%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.054%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.040%) Firmware
12 3 (0.040%) KVM
12 3 (0.040%) RACF
12 3 (0.040%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.027%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 386 (5.20%) Kubernetes
2 251 (3.38%) Terraform
3 162 (2.18%) Ansible
4 85 (1.14%) Grafana
5 79 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.85%) SCCM
7 59 (0.79%) 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 (0.28%) 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 (0.13%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 1,020 (13.73%) Microsoft
2 788 (10.61%) SAP
3 693 (9.33%) Oracle
4 288 (3.88%) ServiceNow
5 182 (2.45%) Salesforce
6 168 (2.26%) Splunk
7 165 (2.22%) Google
8 164 (2.21%) Databricks
9 150 (2.02%) Cisco
10 136 (1.83%) Workday
11 104 (1.40%) VMware
12 94 (1.27%) IBM
13 72 (0.97%) Citrix
13 72 (0.97%) CyberArk
14 61 (0.82%) Ariba
15 55 (0.74%) HP
16 51 (0.69%) OpenAI
17 50 (0.67%) Bloomberg
18 49 (0.66%) Dell
18 49 (0.66%) Informatica