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 17 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,228 6,702 8,141
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.34% 22.58% 18.68%
As % of the General category 33.92% 35.55% 32.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,743 4,377 5,447
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £443 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £695 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 227 129 268
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.79 £12.79
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.66 £15.17
Median hourly rate £35.00 £38.11 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.16% +38.58% -1.72%
75th Percentile £54.00 £65.25 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.50 £58.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.30 £30.79 £29.41
% change year-on-year +37.38% +4.68% -39.08%

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 27,204 18,850 24,852
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.06% 63.51% 57.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,432 11,891 15,566
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% -4.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £488
% change year-on-year +5.82% -3.08% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,828 900 2,007
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.24 £16.67 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.85 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.90% -10.16% +1.51%
75th Percentile £60.71 £53.96 £52.78
90th Percentile £80.07 £75.00 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.48 £24.34 £29.75
% change year-on-year +29.33% -18.18% +12.26%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 17 June 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 8,115 £550 -2.22% 7,052
London 0 4,861 £575 -4.17% 2,629
UK excluding London +1 3,712 £500 +2.56% 6,016
Work from Home -1 2,631 £550 -4.35% 5,139
North of England +2 1,273 £494 +6.81% 1,343
South East -1 675 £500 -4.31% 1,529
North West +4 671 £465 +3.33% 656
Midlands 0 634 £500 +9.29% 810
Yorkshire 0 553 £525 +10.53% 470
Scotland 0 464 £500 +4.11% 560
West Midlands +1 458 £509 +1.85% 416
South West -3 377 £525 -3.00% 545
East of England +3 197 £513 -10.87% 687
East Midlands -1 169 £473 +10.20% 392
Wales +8 91 £525 +19.66% 288
Northern Ireland -1 53 £525 +23.53% 341
North East -14 50 £500 +13.64% 228
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
1 329 (3.57%) Confluence
2 217 (2.35%) SharePoint
3 82 (0.89%) Apache Spark
4 65 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
5 55 (0.60%) Apache
6 53 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
7 32 (0.35%) SAS
8 27 (0.29%) CMS
9 21 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.21%) CICS
11 16 (0.17%) IIS
12 13 (0.14%) Appian
13 12 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 12 (0.13%) Camunda
13 12 (0.13%) Ethereum
14 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.065%) Hyperledger
15 6 (0.065%) Mendix
15 6 (0.065%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 513 (5.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 219 (2.37%) Microsoft Office
3 170 (1.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 157 (1.70%) Microsoft Project
5 116 (1.26%) MS Visio
6 60 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 35 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.098%) Sketch
9 7 (0.076%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.076%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.065%) InVision
11 5 (0.054%) Trello
12 4 (0.043%) Notion
12 4 (0.043%) Oracle Smart View
13 3 (0.033%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.033%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
15 1 (0.011%) Adobe Premiere
15 1 (0.011%) Final Cut Pro
15 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 417 (4.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 109 (1.18%) Oracle Payables
3 106 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 87 (0.94%) Oracle Receivables
5 84 (0.91%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 72 (0.78%) Oracle ERP
7 62 (0.67%) SAP FI
8 48 (0.52%) SAP CO
9 47 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
10 46 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
10 46 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
11 43 (0.47%) Oracle General Ledger
12 38 (0.41%) Aladdin
13 35 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
14 34 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 28 (0.30%) Unit4 Business World
16 26 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
16 26 (0.28%) SAP ERP
17 25 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
18 22 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,444 (15.65%) Azure
2 1,028 (11.14%) AWS
3 626 (6.78%) Power Platform
4 447 (4.84%) GCP
5 313 (3.39%) Azure DevOps
6 308 (3.34%) SaaS
7 283 (3.07%) Microsoft 365
8 234 (2.54%) GitHub
9 216 (2.34%) Dynamics 365
10 182 (1.97%) Snowflake
11 162 (1.76%) Entra ID
12 143 (1.55%) Serverless
13 127 (1.38%) OCI
14 115 (1.25%) Amazon S3
15 113 (1.22%) Power Automate
16 103 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
17 88 (0.95%) dbt
17 88 (0.95%) Microsoft Copilot
18 87 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
19 84 (0.91%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 170 (1.84%) Firewall
2 134 (1.45%) Network Security
3 78 (0.85%) WAN
4 76 (0.82%) DNS
5 68 (0.74%) VPN
6 60 (0.65%) TCP/IP
7 41 (0.44%) BGP
8 38 (0.41%) SD-WAN
9 37 (0.40%) LAN
10 36 (0.39%) HTTP
11 35 (0.38%) SSL
12 30 (0.33%) DHCP
12 30 (0.33%) Multicast
13 29 (0.31%) OSPF
14 24 (0.26%) MPLS
15 21 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.23%) Internet
16 19 (0.21%) VSAN
17 17 (0.18%) VLAN
18 16 (0.17%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 533 (5.78%) Power BI
2 247 (2.68%) SQL Server
3 233 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 184 (1.99%) Metadata
5 172 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
6 169 (1.83%) Relational Database
7 149 (1.61%) Tableau
8 139 (1.51%) Data Lake
9 92 (1.00%) NoSQL
10 85 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
11 73 (0.79%) Big Data
12 70 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 67 (0.73%) MongoDB
14 65 (0.70%) BigQuery
15 55 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
16 48 (0.52%) Power Query
16 48 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 44 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
18 43 (0.47%) Delta Lake
19 37 (0.40%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 678 (7.35%) JIRA
2 227 (2.46%) Git
3 164 (1.78%) Jenkins
4 95 (1.03%) GitLab
5 54 (0.59%) JUnit
6 45 (0.49%) Cucumber
7 36 (0.39%) Selenium
8 31 (0.34%) Visual Studio
9 30 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 27 (0.29%) MLflow
10 27 (0.29%) Postman
11 23 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 20 (0.22%) Maven
13 20 (0.22%) Zephyr
14 19 (0.21%) ERwin
15 18 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
16 16 (0.17%) Hudson
17 15 (0.16%) TeamCity
18 14 (0.15%) Gradle
General
1 2,693 (29.18%) Social Skills
2 1,687 (18.28%) Banking
3 1,189 (12.88%) Analytical Skills
4 515 (5.58%) Public Sector
5 443 (4.80%) Legal
6 363 (3.93%) Investment Banking
7 350 (3.79%) Financial Institution
8 322 (3.49%) Front Office
9 294 (3.19%) Organisational Skills
10 293 (3.18%) Retail
11 236 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
12 227 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
13 165 (1.79%) Manufacturing
14 164 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 148 (1.60%) General Ledger
16 146 (1.58%) Local Government
17 139 (1.51%) Billing
18 136 (1.47%) Law
19 134 (1.45%) Marketing
20 130 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,367 (14.81%) Analyst
2 1,005 (10.89%) Senior
3 959 (10.39%) Lead
4 936 (10.14%) Developer
5 848 (9.19%) Architect
6 714 (7.74%) Project Manager
7 707 (7.66%) Business Analyst
8 616 (6.68%) Consultant
9 351 (3.80%) Solutions Architect
10 305 (3.31%) Data Engineer
11 225 (2.44%) Financial Analyst
12 220 (2.38%) Senior Manager
13 197 (2.13%) Finance Manager
14 193 (2.09%) Java Developer
15 191 (2.07%) Data Analyst
16 190 (2.06%) Accountant
17 176 (1.91%) Programme Manager
18 175 (1.90%) Senior Developer
19 167 (1.81%) Software Engineer
20 162 (1.76%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 277 (3.00%) REST
2 260 (2.82%) .NET
3 258 (2.80%) Kafka
4 253 (2.74%) React
5 200 (2.17%) Oracle Fusion
6 188 (2.04%) Middleware
7 166 (1.80%) Spring
8 161 (1.74%) Spring Boot
9 139 (1.51%) RESTful
10 112 (1.21%) Redux
11 110 (1.19%) PySpark
12 101 (1.09%) Node.js
13 94 (1.02%) AngularJS
14 88 (0.95%) JSON
15 86 (0.93%) OAuth
16 76 (0.82%) XML
17 64 (0.69%) CSS
18 61 (0.66%) OpenID
19 59 (0.64%) HTML
20 58 (0.63%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 412 (4.46%) Onboarding
2 388 (4.20%) Product Ownership
3 373 (4.04%) Cloud Native
4 259 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
5 212 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 203 (2.20%) Data Structures
7 169 (1.83%) Derivative
8 168 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
9 165 (1.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 164 (1.78%) Fixed Income
11 159 (1.72%) Data Centre
12 155 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
13 135 (1.46%) Virtual Team
14 126 (1.37%) Equities
15 125 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
16 111 (1.20%) Public Cloud
17 107 (1.16%) AI Agents
18 101 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
19 95 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
20 81 (0.88%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 313 (3.39%) Windows
2 271 (2.94%) Linux
3 147 (1.59%) Unix
4 71 (0.77%) Windows Server
5 38 (0.41%) Solaris
6 37 (0.40%) Windows 10
7 33 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 31 (0.34%) Apple iOS
8 31 (0.34%) zOS
9 27 (0.29%) Android
10 20 (0.22%) Mac OS
11 19 (0.21%) AIX
12 7 (0.076%) Oracle Linux
12 7 (0.076%) Ubuntu
12 7 (0.076%) VMS
13 6 (0.065%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.054%) HPUX
14 5 (0.054%) SUSE
14 5 (0.054%) Windows Server 2019
15 4 (0.043%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,943 (21.06%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,854 (20.09%) Agile
3 1,277 (13.84%) Migration
4 1,219 (13.21%) Problem-Solving
5 1,044 (11.31%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,003 (10.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 974 (10.55%) ERP
8 970 (10.51%) AI
9 968 (10.49%) DevOps
10 934 (10.12%) CI/CD
11 892 (9.67%) Analytics
12 790 (8.56%) Decision-Making
13 786 (8.52%) Project Management
14 765 (8.29%) Data Modelling
14 765 (8.29%) Validation
15 751 (8.14%) Roadmaps
16 726 (7.87%) User Acceptance Testing
17 674 (7.30%) Business Intelligence
18 659 (7.14%) Change Management
19 592 (6.42%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,240 (13.44%) SQL
2 1,115 (12.08%) Python
3 626 (6.78%) Java
4 384 (4.16%) C#
5 248 (2.69%) JavaScript
6 242 (2.62%) TypeScript
7 201 (2.18%) PowerShell
8 99 (1.07%) C++
9 84 (0.91%) Bash
10 82 (0.89%) PL/SQL
11 73 (0.79%) Go
12 71 (0.77%) T-SQL
13 57 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 55 (0.60%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.47%) Scala
15 43 (0.47%) VBA
16 31 (0.34%) Apex Code
17 30 (0.33%) Bicep
17 30 (0.33%) Rust
18 29 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 742 (8.04%) Degree
2 685 (7.42%) Security Cleared
3 494 (5.35%) SC Cleared
4 233 (2.52%) ACCA
5 221 (2.39%) PMP
6 209 (2.26%) CIMA
7 195 (2.11%) PMI Certification
8 180 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
9 151 (1.64%) CISSP
10 135 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
11 93 (1.01%) CISM
12 89 (0.96%) Master's Degree
13 88 (0.95%) DV Cleared
14 81 (0.88%) Azure Certification
15 71 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
16 49 (0.53%) AWS Certification
17 46 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
18 39 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 35 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
20 34 (0.37%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 561 (6.08%) Data Quality
2 414 (4.49%) QA
3 322 (3.49%) PMO
4 301 (3.26%) GDPR
5 167 (1.81%) NIST
6 133 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 115 (1.25%) IFRS
8 110 (1.19%) SLA
9 108 (1.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 106 (1.15%) GRC
11 90 (0.98%) Accessibility
12 66 (0.72%) PCI DSS
13 64 (0.69%) GAAP
14 63 (0.68%) ISO 20022
15 37 (0.40%) SEPA
16 35 (0.38%) Solvency II
17 34 (0.37%) NCSC
17 34 (0.37%) PSD2
18 30 (0.33%) IFRS 17
19 29 (0.31%) SOC 2
System Software
1 280 (3.03%) Docker
2 180 (1.95%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.33%) vSphere
5 28 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
6 25 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
7 15 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.13%) RACF
10 11 (0.12%) Hyper-V
11 10 (0.11%) NFS
12 6 (0.065%) GPFS
12 6 (0.065%) KVM
13 5 (0.054%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.054%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.043%) Firmware
15 3 (0.033%) GridGain
15 3 (0.033%) SRDF
16 2 (0.022%) ACF2
16 2 (0.022%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 415 (4.50%) Kubernetes
2 272 (2.95%) Terraform
3 145 (1.57%) Ansible
4 90 (0.98%) Grafana
5 77 (0.83%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.54%) SCCM
8 43 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 32 (0.35%) FortiGate
10 26 (0.28%) Control-M
11 18 (0.20%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.20%) vRealize
12 15 (0.16%) Argo
13 14 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (0.15%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.15%) Nessus
14 13 (0.14%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.14%) Puppet
15 12 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
16 11 (0.12%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,166 (12.64%) Microsoft
2 821 (8.90%) SAP
3 773 (8.38%) Oracle
4 309 (3.35%) ServiceNow
5 276 (2.99%) Databricks
6 212 (2.30%) Salesforce
7 204 (2.21%) Google
8 129 (1.40%) Workday
9 120 (1.30%) Cisco
10 113 (1.22%) Splunk
11 112 (1.21%) VMware
12 108 (1.17%) IBM
13 91 (0.99%) CyberArk
14 85 (0.92%) Ariba
15 70 (0.76%) OpenAI
16 67 (0.73%) Sage
17 64 (0.69%) Citrix
18 53 (0.57%) Bloomberg
18 53 (0.57%) Palo Alto
19 51 (0.55%) Informatica