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 11 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,996 7,460 7,738
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.31% 22.59% 20.07%
As % of the General category 32.92% 35.48% 34.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,098 4,872 4,981
10th Percentile £360 £332 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £780 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £495 £513
% change year-on-year +2.65% -3.41% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 134 155
10th Percentile £15.04 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £20.36 £23.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -16.37% +36.13%
75th Percentile - £63.00 £52.75
90th Percentile £75.20 £78.75 £70.11
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £35.00
% change year-on-year +71.18% -26.63% +25.09%

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 30,363 21,028 22,288
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.61% 63.69% 57.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,843 13,030 13,503
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,462 1,194 1,147
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.67
25th Percentile £16.38 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £29.98 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.20% -32.93% +36.36%
75th Percentile £53.87 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £70.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.40 £37.50
% change year-on-year +40.19% -42.93% +44.51%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 11 September 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 8,619 £550 - 8,171
London 0 5,220 £585 -0.43% 4,856
UK excluding London -1 3,911 £508 +2.65% 4,465
Work from Home -1 2,837 £550 -3.51% 3,412
North of England 0 1,336 £507 +10.16% 1,040
South East -2 743 £500 -4.76% 1,325
North West -1 671 £500 +11.11% 567
Midlands -1 619 £500 +6.61% 577
Yorkshire 0 584 £516 +5.83% 350
Scotland 0 536 £465 -3.53% 436
West Midlands 0 463 £514 +1.53% 357
South West -7 354 £550 -4.35% 592
East of England +5 222 £555 -0.22% 372
East Midlands -3 153 £500 +19.05% 220
North East -8 74 £500 +14.29% 138
Northern Ireland -1 66 £510 +4.62% 109
Wales 0 60 £525 +13.51% 98
Channel Islands +3 7 £550 - 4

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
1 336 (3.36%) Confluence
2 263 (2.63%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 82 (0.82%) Apache Spark
5 68 (0.68%) Apache
6 48 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 25 (0.25%) SAS
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 17 (0.17%) Camunda
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.11%) CICS
14 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 7 (0.070%) Ethereum
16 7 (0.070%) WebLogic
17 6 (0.060%) Appian
18 5 (0.050%) JBoss
18 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 536 (5.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 231 (2.31%) Microsoft Office
3 196 (1.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 150 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
5 88 (0.88%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.080%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
10 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.040%) Sketch
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
14 1 (0.010%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 442 (4.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 129 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 108 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
4 106 (1.06%) NetSuite
5 95 (0.95%) Oracle ERP
6 77 (0.77%) Oracle EBS
6 77 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
7 74 (0.74%) SAP FI
8 63 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
9 59 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 53 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
11 51 (0.51%) SAP CO
12 46 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
13 39 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
14 37 (0.37%) Aladdin
15 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
15 35 (0.35%) Workday HCM
16 34 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
17 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
17 26 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,576 (15.77%) Azure
2 1,075 (10.75%) AWS
3 681 (6.81%) Power Platform
4 546 (5.46%) GCP
5 355 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
6 330 (3.30%) SaaS
7 328 (3.28%) GitHub
8 317 (3.17%) Microsoft 365
9 278 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
10 221 (2.21%) Entra ID
11 219 (2.19%) Snowflake
12 156 (1.56%) Serverless
13 147 (1.47%) OCI
14 133 (1.33%) GitHub Actions
15 125 (1.25%) dbt
16 121 (1.21%) Power Automate
17 119 (1.19%) Microsoft Copilot
18 118 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
19 117 (1.17%) Amazon S3
20 102 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 171 (1.71%) Firewall
2 155 (1.55%) Network Security
3 103 (1.03%) VPN
4 87 (0.87%) DNS
5 62 (0.62%) TCP/IP
6 56 (0.56%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 44 (0.44%) SSL
9 43 (0.43%) BGP
10 36 (0.36%) HTTP
11 34 (0.34%) LAN
11 34 (0.34%) VLAN
12 33 (0.33%) Multicast
13 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.30%) Wireless
14 26 (0.26%) Internet
15 25 (0.25%) SAN
16 24 (0.24%) OSPF
17 18 (0.18%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.16%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 553 (5.53%) Power BI
2 291 (2.91%) SQL Server
3 256 (2.56%) Data Warehouse
4 206 (2.06%) Metadata
5 178 (1.78%) Relational Database
6 145 (1.45%) Data Lake
7 129 (1.29%) PostgreSQL
8 124 (1.24%) Tableau
9 82 (0.82%) Oracle Database
10 80 (0.80%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.79%) BigQuery
12 76 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
13 74 (0.74%) MongoDB
14 59 (0.59%) Delta Lake
15 57 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
16 56 (0.56%) Power Query
17 51 (0.51%) Big Data
18 48 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
19 46 (0.46%) Db2
20 44 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 669 (6.69%) JIRA
2 303 (3.03%) Git
3 173 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 107 (1.07%) GitLab
5 57 (0.57%) Selenium
6 50 (0.50%) JUnit
7 36 (0.36%) SonarQube
8 34 (0.34%) Claude Code
9 33 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 33 (0.33%) Maven
10 31 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 30 (0.30%) ERwin
11 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
12 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
13 27 (0.27%) Gradle
14 26 (0.26%) Cucumber
15 23 (0.23%) Cypress.io
16 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
17 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
17 21 (0.21%) Postman
General
1 3,104 (31.05%) Social Skills
2 2,039 (20.40%) Banking
3 1,404 (14.05%) Analytical Skills
4 544 (5.44%) Legal
5 529 (5.29%) Public Sector
6 442 (4.42%) Organisational Skills
7 398 (3.98%) Investment Banking
8 389 (3.89%) Retail
9 339 (3.39%) Front Office
10 332 (3.32%) Influencing Skills
11 324 (3.24%) Financial Institution
12 219 (2.19%) Documentation Skills
13 207 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 197 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 177 (1.77%) General Ledger
16 170 (1.70%) Marketing
17 165 (1.65%) Billing
18 159 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
19 152 (1.52%) Local Government
20 143 (1.43%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,446 (14.47%) Analyst
2 1,073 (10.73%) Senior
3 1,013 (10.13%) Lead
4 983 (9.83%) Developer
5 882 (8.82%) Architect
6 742 (7.42%) Business Analyst
7 721 (7.21%) Consultant
8 701 (7.01%) Project Manager
9 332 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
10 309 (3.09%) Data Engineer
11 260 (2.60%) Financial Analyst
12 220 (2.20%) Senior Manager
13 210 (2.10%) Java Developer
14 205 (2.05%) Data Analyst
15 196 (1.96%) Senior Developer
16 187 (1.87%) Programme Manager
17 180 (1.80%) IT Manager
18 179 (1.79%) Accountant
19 178 (1.78%) Finance Manager
20 152 (1.52%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 385 (3.85%) Terraform
2 372 (3.72%) REST
3 269 (2.69%) .NET
4 266 (2.66%) Oracle Fusion
5 262 (2.62%) Kafka
6 237 (2.37%) React
7 194 (1.94%) Spring
8 189 (1.89%) Spring Boot
9 181 (1.81%) Middleware
10 149 (1.49%) PySpark
11 139 (1.39%) RESTful
12 104 (1.04%) XML
13 103 (1.03%) JSON
14 102 (1.02%) OAuth
15 88 (0.88%) SOAP
16 83 (0.83%) Redux
17 77 (0.77%) AngularJS
18 76 (0.76%) Web Services
19 75 (0.75%) Node.js
20 71 (0.71%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 521 (5.21%) Onboarding
2 510 (5.10%) Product Ownership
3 447 (4.47%) Cloud Native
4 253 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
4 253 (2.53%) Management Information System
5 238 (2.38%) Data Structures
6 227 (2.27%) Virtual Team
7 202 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
8 195 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
9 191 (1.91%) AI Agents
10 183 (1.83%) Derivative
11 161 (1.61%) Data Centre
11 161 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 143 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
13 136 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
14 127 (1.27%) Fixed Income
15 114 (1.14%) Podcast
16 113 (1.13%) Equities
16 113 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
16 113 (1.13%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 380 (3.80%) Windows
2 313 (3.13%) Linux
3 164 (1.64%) Unix
4 88 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 57 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 50 (0.50%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.42%) Windows 10
8 40 (0.40%) Android
9 36 (0.36%) zOS
10 34 (0.34%) Solaris
11 30 (0.30%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.080%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 4 (0.040%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,609 (26.10%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,039 (20.40%) Agile
3 1,354 (13.55%) Migration
4 1,321 (13.22%) Problem-Solving
5 1,273 (12.74%) AI
6 1,183 (11.83%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,160 (11.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,118 (11.18%) CI/CD
9 1,020 (10.20%) Analytics
10 1,009 (10.09%) DevOps
11 1,003 (10.03%) ERP
12 922 (9.22%) Decision-Making
13 851 (8.51%) Validation
14 849 (8.49%) Roadmaps
15 782 (7.82%) Project Management
16 779 (7.79%) Data Modelling
17 771 (7.71%) User Acceptance Testing
18 739 (7.39%) Change Management
19 694 (6.94%) Risk Management
20 670 (6.70%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,342 (13.43%) SQL
2 1,248 (12.48%) Python
3 649 (6.49%) Java
4 360 (3.60%) C#
5 285 (2.85%) PowerShell
6 250 (2.50%) JavaScript
7 215 (2.15%) TypeScript
8 148 (1.48%) Bash
9 113 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.97%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.80%) C++
12 72 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 67 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 61 (0.61%) Go
15 57 (0.57%) Bicep
16 47 (0.47%) Korn
17 39 (0.39%) Scala
18 37 (0.37%) Kotlin
18 37 (0.37%) VBA
19 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 775 (7.75%) Security Cleared
2 730 (7.30%) Degree
3 560 (5.60%) SC Cleared
4 258 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 254 (2.54%) PMP
6 224 (2.24%) PMI Certification
7 193 (1.93%) ACCA
8 168 (1.68%) CIMA
9 146 (1.46%) CISSP
10 136 (1.36%) DV Cleared
11 133 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
12 110 (1.10%) Azure Certification
13 85 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
13 85 (0.85%) CISM
14 74 (0.74%) Master's Degree
15 67 (0.67%) AWS Certification
16 53 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
17 48 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 45 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 38 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 691 (6.91%) Data Quality
2 431 (4.31%) QA
3 361 (3.61%) PMO
4 229 (2.29%) GDPR
5 139 (1.39%) NIST
6 121 (1.21%) GRC
7 118 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.07%) Accessibility
9 94 (0.94%) IFRS
10 91 (0.91%) SLA
11 81 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 67 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 49 (0.49%) GAAP
14 42 (0.42%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.37%) SEPA
16 36 (0.36%) Solvency II
17 30 (0.30%) MiFID
18 29 (0.29%) EMIR
19 28 (0.28%) COBIT
20 22 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 271 (2.71%) Docker
2 237 (2.37%) Active Directory
3 85 (0.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.25%) RACF
7 18 (0.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 9 (0.090%) IAG
12 6 (0.060%) ACF2
12 6 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.050%) GPFS
13 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.040%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) GridGain
15 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 484 (4.84%) Kubernetes
2 173 (1.73%) Ansible
3 97 (0.97%) Grafana
4 78 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
5 68 (0.68%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.64%) SCCM
7 57 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.28%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 19 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 13 (0.13%) Istio
13 12 (0.12%) FortiGate
13 12 (0.12%) Puppet
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
15 10 (0.10%) Packer
15 10 (0.10%) vRealize
16 9 (0.090%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,434 (14.35%) Microsoft
2 895 (8.95%) Oracle
3 867 (8.67%) SAP
4 374 (3.74%) ServiceNow
5 364 (3.64%) Databricks
6 239 (2.39%) Salesforce
7 229 (2.29%) Google
8 182 (1.82%) IBM
9 139 (1.39%) VMware
10 128 (1.28%) Workday
11 122 (1.22%) Cisco
12 117 (1.17%) Splunk
13 102 (1.02%) Ariba
14 86 (0.86%) OpenAI
15 85 (0.85%) CyberArk
16 58 (0.58%) Citrix
17 56 (0.56%) Bloomberg
18 52 (0.52%) Informatica
18 52 (0.52%) Sage
19 50 (0.50%) Murex