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

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,856 7,596 7,674
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.55% 22.94% 19.66%
As % of the General category 33.74% 36.31% 34.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,073 5,015 5,146
10th Percentile £360 £338 £359
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 146 192
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.74 £15.02
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.06 £24.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +39.94%
75th Percentile £50.00 £63.75 £43.82
90th Percentile £84.00 £75.63 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.39 £38.12
% change year-on-year +60.51% -28.15% +20.53%

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 29,208 20,921 22,381
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.96% 63.18% 57.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,355 13,077 14,145
10th Percentile £313 £280 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,145 1,118 1,399
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £16.25 £16.96
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £60.00 £51.07 £57.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.81 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +48.17% -41.92% +46.62%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 8,596 £550 - 7,157
London 0 5,188 £588 -2.08% 4,265
UK excluding London 0 3,888 £500 +1.01% 3,760
Work from Home -1 2,845 £550 -4.35% 2,987
North of England 0 1,327 £500 +6.38% 959
South East -1 751 £501 -5.42% 1,107
North West 0 698 £495 +7.61% 507
Midlands -1 634 £514 +14.22% 530
Yorkshire 0 566 £515 +7.85% 342
Scotland 0 495 £475 -5.00% 262
West Midlands 0 487 £525 +6.71% 325
South West -4 379 £525 -5.01% 436
East of England +7 211 £525 -8.70% 275
East Midlands -3 142 £500 +19.05% 204
Wales +3 72 £525 +13.51% 102
Northern Ireland -1 63 £488 +3.72% 148
North East -12 56 £500 +13.64% 120
Channel Islands +4 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
1 324 (3.29%) Confluence
2 244 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 88 (0.89%) Apache Spark
4 84 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
5 67 (0.68%) Apache
6 46 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.34%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 16 (0.16%) CICS
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.13%) Camunda
14 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.081%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 5 (0.051%) JBoss
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 521 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
3 162 (1.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 160 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.07%) MS Visio
6 73 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Sketch
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
12 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 449 (4.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 115 (1.17%) NetSuite
4 100 (1.01%) Oracle Receivables
5 87 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
6 72 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
9 59 (0.60%) Oracle General Ledger
10 57 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
11 55 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
12 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
13 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
15 37 (0.38%) Unit4 Business World
16 35 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
17 33 (0.33%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
19 28 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
20 27 (0.27%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,539 (15.61%) Azure
2 1,098 (11.14%) AWS
3 673 (6.83%) Power Platform
4 518 (5.26%) GCP
5 332 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
6 331 (3.36%) SaaS
7 288 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
8 287 (2.91%) GitHub
9 255 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
10 217 (2.20%) Snowflake
11 201 (2.04%) Entra ID
12 144 (1.46%) Serverless
13 139 (1.41%) OCI
14 124 (1.26%) Amazon S3
15 120 (1.22%) Power Automate
16 113 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
17 109 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
18 105 (1.07%) dbt
18 105 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
19 101 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 182 (1.85%) Firewall
2 144 (1.46%) Network Security
3 92 (0.93%) VPN
4 91 (0.92%) DNS
5 65 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 55 (0.56%) WAN
7 48 (0.49%) SSL
8 47 (0.48%) BGP
9 42 (0.43%) DHCP
10 38 (0.39%) LAN
11 37 (0.38%) HTTP
12 35 (0.36%) Multicast
13 29 (0.29%) OSPF
14 27 (0.27%) Wireless
15 26 (0.26%) VLAN
16 25 (0.25%) Internet
17 22 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
18 21 (0.21%) SAN
19 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
20 18 (0.18%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 556 (5.64%) Power BI
2 282 (2.86%) SQL Server
3 259 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (2.04%) Metadata
5 179 (1.82%) Relational Database
6 163 (1.65%) PostgreSQL
7 152 (1.54%) Tableau
8 140 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 87 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
10 82 (0.83%) NoSQL
11 74 (0.75%) MongoDB
12 72 (0.73%) Oracle Database
13 70 (0.71%) BigQuery
14 67 (0.68%) Big Data
15 66 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.56%) Power Query
17 50 (0.51%) Delta Lake
18 49 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
18 49 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 668 (6.78%) JIRA
2 275 (2.79%) Git
3 161 (1.63%) Jenkins
4 96 (0.97%) GitLab
5 47 (0.48%) JUnit
6 39 (0.40%) Selenium
7 38 (0.39%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
9 28 (0.28%) Visual Studio
10 27 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 26 (0.26%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.24%) Maven
12 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 23 (0.23%) Postman
14 22 (0.22%) Claude Code
15 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
16 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,893 (29.35%) Social Skills
2 1,866 (18.93%) Banking
3 1,375 (13.95%) Analytical Skills
4 550 (5.58%) Public Sector
5 518 (5.26%) Legal
6 381 (3.87%) Investment Banking
6 381 (3.87%) Organisational Skills
7 361 (3.66%) Financial Institution
8 355 (3.60%) Front Office
8 355 (3.60%) Retail
9 276 (2.80%) Influencing Skills
10 226 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
11 194 (1.97%) Manufacturing
12 176 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 164 (1.66%) Billing
14 160 (1.62%) Local Government
14 160 (1.62%) Marketing
15 154 (1.56%) General Ledger
16 139 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
17 138 (1.40%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,440 (14.61%) Analyst
2 1,078 (10.94%) Lead
3 1,069 (10.85%) Senior
4 995 (10.10%) Developer
5 882 (8.95%) Architect
6 739 (7.50%) Business Analyst
7 705 (7.15%) Project Manager
8 677 (6.87%) Consultant
9 340 (3.45%) Solutions Architect
10 322 (3.27%) Data Engineer
11 248 (2.52%) Financial Analyst
12 227 (2.30%) Senior Manager
13 209 (2.12%) Java Developer
14 206 (2.09%) Accountant
15 204 (2.07%) Data Analyst
16 189 (1.92%) Senior Developer
17 184 (1.87%) Finance Manager
18 183 (1.86%) Programme Manager
18 183 (1.86%) Software Engineer
19 174 (1.77%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (3.29%) REST
2 276 (2.80%) .NET
3 273 (2.77%) React
4 270 (2.74%) Kafka
5 238 (2.41%) Oracle Fusion
6 192 (1.95%) Middleware
7 180 (1.83%) Spring
8 169 (1.71%) Spring Boot
9 138 (1.40%) PySpark
10 129 (1.31%) RESTful
11 121 (1.23%) Redux
12 117 (1.19%) Node.js
13 97 (0.98%) JSON
14 95 (0.96%) AngularJS
15 91 (0.92%) OAuth
16 86 (0.87%) XML
17 66 (0.67%) SOAP
17 66 (0.67%) Web Services
18 62 (0.63%) CSS
18 62 (0.63%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 481 (4.88%) Onboarding
2 466 (4.73%) Product Ownership
3 427 (4.33%) Cloud Native
4 268 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
5 243 (2.47%) Data Structures
6 219 (2.22%) Management Information System
7 197 (2.00%) Virtual Team
8 182 (1.85%) Derivative
9 179 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
10 174 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
11 171 (1.73%) Fixed Income
12 160 (1.62%) Data Centre
13 157 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 151 (1.53%) AI Agents
15 137 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
16 124 (1.26%) Equities
17 107 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
18 104 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
19 99 (1.00%) Security Posture
20 98 (0.99%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 354 (3.59%) Windows
2 290 (2.94%) Linux
3 152 (1.54%) Unix
4 80 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 46 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 42 (0.43%) Apple iOS
7 37 (0.38%) Solaris
7 37 (0.38%) zOS
8 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
9 33 (0.33%) Android
10 25 (0.25%) Mac OS
11 18 (0.18%) AIX
12 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
13 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
13 8 (0.081%) VMS
14 6 (0.061%) HPUX
14 6 (0.061%) SUSE
15 5 (0.051%) MVS
16 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
17 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,278 (23.11%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,027 (20.57%) Agile
3 1,361 (13.81%) Migration
4 1,315 (13.34%) Problem-Solving
5 1,173 (11.90%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,151 (11.68%) AI
7 1,128 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,028 (10.43%) CI/CD
8 1,028 (10.43%) ERP
9 1,006 (10.21%) Analytics
10 1,001 (10.16%) DevOps
11 910 (9.23%) Decision-Making
12 813 (8.25%) Validation
13 801 (8.13%) Roadmaps
14 793 (8.05%) Data Modelling
15 762 (7.73%) User Acceptance Testing
16 744 (7.55%) Project Management
17 709 (7.19%) Change Management
18 685 (6.95%) Business Intelligence
19 636 (6.45%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,277 (12.96%) SQL
2 1,218 (12.36%) Python
3 643 (6.52%) Java
4 385 (3.91%) C#
5 273 (2.77%) JavaScript
6 251 (2.55%) TypeScript
7 233 (2.36%) PowerShell
8 118 (1.20%) Bash
9 95 (0.96%) PL/SQL
10 78 (0.79%) C++
10 78 (0.79%) Go
11 77 (0.78%) Shell Script
12 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 68 (0.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 50 (0.51%) Bicep
15 48 (0.49%) VBA
16 41 (0.42%) Kotlin
17 36 (0.37%) Scala
18 34 (0.34%) Apex Code
19 32 (0.32%) Korn
Qualifications
1 764 (7.75%) Security Cleared
2 727 (7.38%) Degree
3 547 (5.55%) SC Cleared
4 236 (2.39%) PMP
5 211 (2.14%) PMI Certification
6 205 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
7 200 (2.03%) ACCA
8 176 (1.79%) CIMA
9 153 (1.55%) CISSP
10 136 (1.38%) DV Cleared
11 122 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 97 (0.98%) Azure Certification
13 89 (0.90%) CISM
14 79 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
15 78 (0.79%) Master's Degree
16 61 (0.62%) AWS Certification
17 54 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 33 (0.33%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 634 (6.43%) Data Quality
2 426 (4.32%) QA
3 359 (3.64%) PMO
4 274 (2.78%) GDPR
5 158 (1.60%) NIST
6 124 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.15%) SLA
8 111 (1.13%) GRC
9 108 (1.10%) Accessibility
10 102 (1.03%) IFRS
11 99 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 63 (0.64%) GAAP
13 58 (0.59%) ISO 20022
14 49 (0.50%) PCI DSS
15 36 (0.37%) SEPA
16 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
17 31 (0.31%) COBIT
17 31 (0.31%) MiFID
18 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
19 29 (0.29%) EMIR
System Software
1 271 (2.75%) Docker
2 223 (2.26%) Active Directory
3 66 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (0.23%) RACF
5 23 (0.23%) vSphere
6 22 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
8 12 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
10 7 (0.071%) IAG
11 5 (0.051%) ACF2
11 5 (0.051%) GPFS
11 5 (0.051%) KVM
11 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.030%) GridGain
12 3 (0.030%) SRDF
12 3 (0.030%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 435 (4.41%) Kubernetes
2 333 (3.38%) Terraform
3 158 (1.60%) Ansible
4 92 (0.93%) Grafana
5 75 (0.76%) Prometheus
6 74 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
7 54 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 50 (0.51%) SCCM
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 22 (0.22%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 15 (0.15%) Puppet
15 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.12%) Istio
17 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,299 (13.18%) Microsoft
2 848 (8.60%) Oracle
3 841 (8.53%) SAP
4 358 (3.63%) ServiceNow
5 317 (3.22%) Databricks
6 229 (2.32%) Salesforce
7 208 (2.11%) Google
8 158 (1.60%) IBM
9 141 (1.43%) Workday
10 126 (1.28%) VMware
11 108 (1.10%) Cisco
12 105 (1.07%) Splunk
13 95 (0.96%) Ariba
14 88 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 73 (0.74%) OpenAI
16 64 (0.65%) Sage
17 61 (0.62%) Citrix
18 52 (0.53%) Informatica
19 51 (0.52%) Bloomberg
20 43 (0.44%) Red Hat