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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,503 6,447 8,092
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.01% 22.25% 18.93%
As % of the General category 33.55% 35.11% 32.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,312 4,195 5,411
10th Percentile £355 £350 £356
25th Percentile £436 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £555 £582
Median % change year-on-year -3.15% -4.64% -3.00%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 112 245
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.71 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £37.57 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -36.58% +39.28% +4.90%
75th Percentile £54.00 £66.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £55.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £37.02 £31.06
% change year-on-year -36.52% +19.20% -29.01%

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 25,341 18,360 24,809
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.69% 63.35% 58.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,487 11,672 15,642
10th Percentile £306 £289 £275
25th Percentile £408 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.37% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +1.68% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,622 780 1,929
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.00 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.39 £17.31 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.30 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.89% -9.48% -10.82%
75th Percentile £60.94 £56.00 £52.78
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £24.50 £28.50
% change year-on-year +14.29% -14.04% -1.72%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 7,521 £550 -4.35% 4,596
London 0 4,519 £575 -8.00% 2,352
UK excluding London -1 3,411 £500 - 2,955
Work from Home -2 2,386 £530 -10.09% 1,925
North of England +3 1,150 £485 +2.11% 784
South East -1 642 £503 -2.24% 949
North West +5 613 £466 +0.11% 430
Midlands -1 583 £488 -0.51% 415
Yorkshire +1 501 £514 +5.44% 278
Scotland +1 408 £500 +4.06% 157
West Midlands 0 393 £494 -6.00% 235
South West -2 347 £520 -0.95% 330
East of England 0 199 £525 -4.55% 228
East Midlands 0 186 £465 +4.03% 177
Wales +22 92 £450 +20.00% 80
Northern Ireland -1 43 £525 +28.05% 64
North East -16 37 £488 +4.84% 82
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 322 (3.79%) Confluence
2 214 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 54 (0.64%) Apache
5 51 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
5 51 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
6 35 (0.41%) SAS
7 22 (0.26%) CMS
8 20 (0.24%) CICS
9 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 14 (0.16%) Appian
10 14 (0.16%) IIS
11 12 (0.14%) Camunda
11 12 (0.14%) Ethereum
12 11 (0.13%) Mendix
13 10 (0.12%) HCL Notes
14 9 (0.11%) Hyperledger
14 9 (0.11%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.094%) Jupyter
Applications
1 512 (6.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (2.66%) Microsoft Office
3 173 (2.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 169 (1.99%) Microsoft Project
5 124 (1.46%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
7 32 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 8 (0.094%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
10 7 (0.082%) Notion
11 6 (0.071%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
13 3 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.035%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 383 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.36%) Oracle Payables
3 101 (1.19%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.13%) Oracle Receivables
5 85 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 63 (0.74%) Oracle ERP
7 61 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
8 57 (0.67%) SAP FI
9 56 (0.66%) Oracle General Ledger
10 48 (0.56%) SAP CO
11 46 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
12 44 (0.52%) SAP FI/CO
13 37 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
14 33 (0.39%) Aladdin
14 33 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
15 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
16 28 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
16 28 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 27 (0.32%) Workday HCM
18 25 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,291 (15.18%) Azure
2 949 (11.16%) AWS
3 598 (7.03%) Power Platform
4 385 (4.53%) GCP
5 297 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
6 284 (3.34%) SaaS
7 259 (3.05%) Microsoft 365
8 233 (2.74%) Dynamics 365
9 228 (2.68%) GitHub
10 151 (1.78%) Snowflake
11 137 (1.61%) Serverless
12 136 (1.60%) Entra ID
13 130 (1.53%) OCI
14 116 (1.36%) Amazon S3
15 109 (1.28%) Power Automate
16 93 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
17 85 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
18 83 (0.98%) OpenShift
19 79 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 74 (0.87%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 154 (1.81%) Firewall
2 114 (1.34%) Network Security
3 73 (0.86%) WAN
4 70 (0.82%) DNS
5 58 (0.68%) VPN
6 52 (0.61%) TCP/IP
7 38 (0.45%) BGP
8 37 (0.44%) SD-WAN
9 35 (0.41%) LAN
10 30 (0.35%) HTTP
11 29 (0.34%) OSPF
12 28 (0.33%) SSL
13 27 (0.32%) Multicast
14 26 (0.31%) DHCP
15 24 (0.28%) MPLS
16 20 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
16 20 (0.24%) Internet
17 19 (0.22%) VSAN
18 16 (0.19%) VLAN
19 13 (0.15%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 510 (6.00%) Power BI
2 209 (2.46%) SQL Server
3 207 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
4 165 (1.94%) Metadata
5 160 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
6 149 (1.75%) Relational Database
7 145 (1.71%) Tableau
8 122 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 85 (1.00%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
11 77 (0.91%) Big Data
12 65 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 59 (0.69%) BigQuery
13 59 (0.69%) MongoDB
14 49 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
15 45 (0.53%) Snowflake Schema
16 42 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 41 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 39 (0.46%) DynamoDB
19 38 (0.45%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 670 (7.88%) JIRA
2 199 (2.34%) Git
3 170 (2.00%) Jenkins
4 105 (1.23%) GitLab
5 43 (0.51%) JUnit
6 41 (0.48%) Cucumber
7 36 (0.42%) Selenium
8 29 (0.34%) Visual Studio
9 26 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 25 (0.29%) Postman
11 23 (0.27%) MLflow
12 21 (0.25%) SonarQube
13 20 (0.24%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.24%) Zephyr
14 19 (0.22%) Maven
15 18 (0.21%) Hudson
16 17 (0.20%) ERwin
17 15 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
18 14 (0.16%) Bitbucket
18 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 2,496 (29.35%) Social Skills
2 1,532 (18.02%) Banking
3 1,126 (13.24%) Analytical Skills
4 520 (6.12%) Public Sector
5 352 (4.14%) Legal
6 320 (3.76%) Financial Institution
7 290 (3.41%) Investment Banking
8 266 (3.13%) Front Office
9 258 (3.03%) Retail
10 237 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
11 231 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
12 206 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 178 (2.09%) Manufacturing
14 159 (1.87%) Marketing
15 145 (1.71%) General Ledger
16 138 (1.62%) Telecoms
17 126 (1.48%) Local Government
18 121 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
19 118 (1.39%) Law
20 113 (1.33%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,308 (15.38%) Analyst
2 881 (10.36%) Senior
3 860 (10.11%) Lead
4 850 (10.00%) Developer
5 773 (9.09%) Architect
6 699 (8.22%) Business Analyst
7 675 (7.94%) Project Manager
8 586 (6.89%) Consultant
9 314 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
10 275 (3.23%) Data Engineer
11 213 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 200 (2.35%) Senior Manager
13 185 (2.18%) Data Analyst
13 185 (2.18%) Finance Manager
14 182 (2.14%) Programme Manager
15 168 (1.98%) Accountant
16 141 (1.66%) Software Engineer
17 140 (1.65%) Java Developer
18 138 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
18 138 (1.62%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (3.00%) Kafka
2 239 (2.81%) REST
3 230 (2.70%) .NET
4 202 (2.38%) React
5 180 (2.12%) Middleware
6 154 (1.81%) Oracle Fusion
7 145 (1.71%) Spring
8 141 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 131 (1.54%) RESTful
10 100 (1.18%) Node.js
10 100 (1.18%) PySpark
11 91 (1.07%) AngularJS
12 81 (0.95%) OAuth
13 78 (0.92%) Redux
14 77 (0.91%) JSON
15 75 (0.88%) XML
16 69 (0.81%) HTML
17 68 (0.80%) CSS
18 61 (0.72%) Pandas
19 59 (0.69%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 355 (4.17%) Onboarding
2 335 (3.94%) Product Ownership
3 307 (3.61%) Cloud Native
4 219 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
5 198 (2.33%) Management Information System
6 182 (2.14%) Data Structures
7 167 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
7 167 (1.96%) Derivative
8 152 (1.79%) Data Centre
9 139 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
10 134 (1.58%) Fixed Income
11 129 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 106 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
13 103 (1.21%) Virtual Team
14 100 (1.18%) Equities
15 97 (1.14%) Public Cloud
16 92 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
17 85 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
18 67 (0.79%) AI Agents
19 66 (0.78%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 266 (3.13%) Windows
2 253 (2.98%) Linux
3 131 (1.54%) Unix
4 68 (0.80%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.49%) Windows 10
6 30 (0.35%) Solaris
7 28 (0.33%) Apple iOS
8 26 (0.31%) Android
9 25 (0.29%) zOS
10 21 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 18 (0.21%) Mac OS
12 16 (0.19%) AIX
13 6 (0.071%) VMS
13 6 (0.071%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.059%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.047%) HPUX
15 4 (0.047%) MVS
15 4 (0.047%) SUSE
15 4 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,773 (20.85%) Agile
2 1,701 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,196 (14.07%) Problem-Solving
4 1,146 (13.48%) Migration
5 940 (11.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 931 (10.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 905 (10.64%) ERP
8 895 (10.53%) DevOps
9 834 (9.81%) CI/CD
10 818 (9.62%) AI
11 803 (9.44%) Analytics
12 799 (9.40%) Project Management
13 719 (8.46%) Decision-Making
14 697 (8.20%) Business Intelligence
15 684 (8.04%) Data Modelling
16 672 (7.90%) Roadmaps
17 654 (7.69%) Validation
18 649 (7.63%) User Acceptance Testing
19 593 (6.97%) Change Management
20 564 (6.63%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,171 (13.77%) SQL
2 997 (11.73%) Python
3 541 (6.36%) Java
4 332 (3.90%) C#
5 214 (2.52%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.33%) TypeScript
7 157 (1.85%) PowerShell
8 108 (1.27%) C++
9 74 (0.87%) PL/SQL
10 70 (0.82%) Bash
11 69 (0.81%) Go
12 65 (0.76%) T-SQL
13 50 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 49 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 45 (0.53%) VBA
16 42 (0.49%) Scala
17 33 (0.39%) R
18 26 (0.31%) Bicep
19 24 (0.28%) Apex Code
19 24 (0.28%) Rust
Qualifications
1 721 (8.48%) Degree
2 690 (8.11%) Security Cleared
3 490 (5.76%) SC Cleared
4 211 (2.48%) PMP
5 209 (2.46%) ACCA
6 197 (2.32%) PMI Certification
7 192 (2.26%) CIMA
8 144 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
9 133 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
10 125 (1.47%) CISSP
11 104 (1.22%) Master's Degree
12 85 (1.00%) CISM
13 84 (0.99%) DV Cleared
14 62 (0.73%) Azure Certification
15 54 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
16 51 (0.60%) AWS Certification
17 37 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 33 (0.39%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
20 30 (0.35%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 490 (5.76%) Data Quality
2 406 (4.77%) QA
3 326 (3.83%) PMO
4 280 (3.29%) GDPR
5 157 (1.85%) NIST
6 125 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 104 (1.22%) SLA
8 100 (1.18%) IFRS
9 98 (1.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 89 (1.05%) GRC
11 78 (0.92%) Accessibility
12 65 (0.76%) PCI DSS
13 61 (0.72%) ISO 20022
14 52 (0.61%) GAAP
15 38 (0.45%) SEPA
16 37 (0.44%) PSD2
17 35 (0.41%) NCSC
18 30 (0.35%) EMIR
19 29 (0.34%) MiFID
20 25 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 276 (3.25%) Docker
2 144 (1.69%) Active Directory
3 52 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.35%) vSphere
5 26 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 9 (0.11%) GPFS
11 5 (0.059%) HDFS
11 5 (0.059%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.047%) Firmware
12 4 (0.047%) KVM
12 4 (0.047%) RACF
13 3 (0.035%) GridGain
13 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.035%) SRDF
14 2 (0.024%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 387 (4.55%) Kubernetes
2 241 (2.83%) Terraform
3 118 (1.39%) Ansible
4 84 (0.99%) Grafana
5 66 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 58 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 43 (0.51%) SCCM
8 37 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 17 (0.20%) Control-M
11 16 (0.19%) vRealize
12 15 (0.18%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
13 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
16 9 (0.11%) vCenter Server
17 8 (0.094%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,082 (12.72%) Microsoft
2 770 (9.06%) SAP
3 707 (8.31%) Oracle
4 304 (3.58%) ServiceNow
5 231 (2.72%) Databricks
6 182 (2.14%) Salesforce
7 170 (2.00%) Google
8 133 (1.56%) Workday
9 117 (1.38%) Cisco
10 114 (1.34%) Splunk
11 96 (1.13%) VMware
12 90 (1.06%) IBM
13 75 (0.88%) CyberArk
14 73 (0.86%) Ariba
15 71 (0.83%) Citrix
16 66 (0.78%) Sage
17 55 (0.65%) OpenAI
18 54 (0.64%) Palo Alto
19 52 (0.61%) IFS
19 52 (0.61%) Informatica