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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,857 7,509 7,774
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.61% 22.88% 19.51%
As % of the General category 33.87% 36.30% 34.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,077 4,958 5,209
10th Percentile £358 £337 £356
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 £687 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £492 £503
% change year-on-year +1.83% -2.04% -4.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 145 204
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.69 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.00 £22.56
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +44.13% -19.99% +27.07%
75th Percentile £52.81 £63.75 £42.31
90th Percentile £84.10 £75.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £27.29 £38.12
% change year-on-year +61.07% -28.40% +14.18%

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 29,103 20,685 22,826
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.94% 63.03% 57.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,345 12,965 14,402
10th Percentile £313 £280 £288
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 £472 £494
% change year-on-year +5.88% -4.40% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,097 1,090 1,492
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.34 £13.86
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.16 £16.50
Median hourly rate £33.00 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +31.21% -32.93% +22.79%
75th Percentile £60.46 £51.21 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.11 £70.02 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.98 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +53.48% -41.92% +41.19%

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 30 July 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 30 July 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 30 July 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 8,602 £550 - 5,261
London 0 5,187 £585 -2.50% 3,056
UK excluding London -1 3,889 £501 +1.83% 2,971
Work from Home -1 2,852 £550 -4.35% 2,000
North of England 0 1,332 £500 +6.38% 757
South East -2 745 £503 -5.19% 932
North West 0 705 £495 +10.00% 398
Midlands 0 633 £514 +14.22% 436
Yorkshire 0 571 £519 +7.23% 263
Scotland 0 490 £475 -5.00% 181
West Midlands +1 489 £525 +10.53% 268
South West -4 383 £525 -4.55% 342
East of England +6 212 £528 -8.26% 217
East Midlands -2 139 £500 +19.05% 168
Wales +3 76 £525 +13.51% 90
Northern Ireland -1 63 £488 +3.72% 71
North East -16 56 £500 +13.96% 105
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 3

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
1 321 (3.26%) Confluence
2 245 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 85 (0.86%) Apache Spark
4 78 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 65 (0.66%) Apache
6 45 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.36%) CMS
8 32 (0.32%) SAS
9 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) IIS
11 19 (0.19%) CICS
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.081%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
13 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
13 8 (0.081%) WebSphere
14 7 (0.071%) Appian
15 5 (0.051%) JBoss
15 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 519 (5.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 219 (2.22%) Microsoft Office
3 162 (1.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 161 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
5 106 (1.08%) MS Visio
6 72 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
7 37 (0.38%) 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%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
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
3 116 (1.18%) NetSuite
4 101 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 88 (0.89%) Oracle ERP
6 70 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 69 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
8 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
9 58 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
12 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
13 44 (0.45%) SAP FI/CO
14 42 (0.43%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.37%) Unit4 Business World
16 35 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
17 31 (0.31%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
19 28 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
20 27 (0.27%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 1,538 (15.60%) Azure
2 1,104 (11.20%) AWS
3 668 (6.78%) Power Platform
4 527 (5.35%) GCP
5 333 (3.38%) SaaS
6 329 (3.34%) Azure DevOps
7 290 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
8 279 (2.83%) GitHub
9 252 (2.56%) Dynamics 365
10 213 (2.16%) Snowflake
11 203 (2.06%) Entra ID
12 142 (1.44%) Serverless
13 137 (1.39%) OCI
14 123 (1.25%) Amazon S3
15 120 (1.22%) Power Automate
16 112 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
17 106 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
18 103 (1.04%) dbt
18 103 (1.04%) GitHub Actions
19 101 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 188 (1.91%) Firewall
2 143 (1.45%) Network Security
3 94 (0.95%) DNS
3 94 (0.95%) VPN
4 65 (0.66%) TCP/IP
5 55 (0.56%) WAN
6 48 (0.49%) SSL
7 47 (0.48%) BGP
8 43 (0.44%) DHCP
9 37 (0.38%) LAN
10 36 (0.37%) HTTP
11 34 (0.34%) Multicast
12 29 (0.29%) OSPF
13 27 (0.27%) Wireless
14 26 (0.26%) VLAN
15 25 (0.25%) Internet
16 22 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
17 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
17 20 (0.20%) SAN
18 19 (0.19%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 552 (5.60%) Power BI
2 282 (2.86%) SQL Server
3 259 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.05%) Metadata
5 183 (1.86%) Relational Database
6 168 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
7 150 (1.52%) Tableau
8 143 (1.45%) Data Lake
9 85 (0.86%) Oracle Reports
10 80 (0.81%) NoSQL
11 74 (0.75%) Oracle Database
12 73 (0.74%) MongoDB
13 72 (0.73%) BigQuery
14 67 (0.68%) Big Data
15 66 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
16 54 (0.55%) Power Query
17 51 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
18 49 (0.50%) Delta Lake
18 49 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 44 (0.45%) Db2
Development Applications
1 664 (6.74%) JIRA
2 272 (2.76%) Git
3 159 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 95 (0.96%) GitLab
5 47 (0.48%) JUnit
6 39 (0.40%) Cucumber
6 39 (0.40%) Selenium
7 29 (0.29%) ERwin
7 29 (0.29%) Visual Studio
8 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
9 26 (0.26%) Bitbucket
9 26 (0.26%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
11 23 (0.23%) Maven
11 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.23%) Postman
11 23 (0.23%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
13 19 (0.19%) ER Studio
13 19 (0.19%) MLflow
General
1 2,870 (29.12%) Social Skills
2 1,860 (18.87%) Banking
3 1,356 (13.76%) Analytical Skills
4 552 (5.60%) Public Sector
5 515 (5.22%) Legal
6 380 (3.86%) Investment Banking
7 379 (3.84%) Organisational Skills
8 361 (3.66%) Financial Institution
9 351 (3.56%) Retail
10 350 (3.55%) Front Office
11 273 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
12 231 (2.34%) Documentation Skills
13 192 (1.95%) Manufacturing
14 172 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 163 (1.65%) Billing
16 160 (1.62%) Local Government
16 160 (1.62%) Marketing
17 155 (1.57%) General Ledger
18 137 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
19 136 (1.38%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,450 (14.71%) Analyst
2 1,070 (10.86%) Lead
3 1,064 (10.79%) Senior
4 998 (10.12%) Developer
5 887 (9.00%) Architect
6 747 (7.58%) Business Analyst
7 709 (7.19%) Project Manager
8 661 (6.71%) Consultant
9 338 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
10 319 (3.24%) Data Engineer
11 247 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 224 (2.27%) Senior Manager
13 213 (2.16%) Java Developer
14 208 (2.11%) Accountant
15 205 (2.08%) Data Analyst
16 191 (1.94%) Senior Developer
17 186 (1.89%) Programme Manager
18 182 (1.85%) Finance Manager
18 182 (1.85%) Software Engineer
19 175 (1.78%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (3.30%) REST
2 278 (2.82%) .NET
3 276 (2.80%) React
4 270 (2.74%) Kafka
5 233 (2.36%) Oracle Fusion
6 195 (1.98%) Middleware
7 179 (1.82%) Spring
8 169 (1.71%) Spring Boot
9 133 (1.35%) PySpark
10 131 (1.33%) RESTful
11 121 (1.23%) Redux
12 117 (1.19%) Node.js
13 98 (0.99%) JSON
14 95 (0.96%) AngularJS
15 93 (0.94%) OAuth
16 88 (0.89%) XML
17 68 (0.69%) SOAP
18 67 (0.68%) Web Services
19 63 (0.64%) CSS
19 63 (0.64%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 472 (4.79%) Onboarding
2 452 (4.59%) Product Ownership
3 426 (4.32%) Cloud Native
4 268 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
5 241 (2.44%) Data Structures
6 221 (2.24%) Management Information System
7 198 (2.01%) Virtual Team
8 182 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
9 180 (1.83%) Derivative
10 175 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
11 171 (1.73%) Fixed Income
12 166 (1.68%) Data Centre
13 157 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 146 (1.48%) AI Agents
15 137 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
16 125 (1.27%) Equities
17 111 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 102 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
18 102 (1.03%) Public Cloud
19 99 (1.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 353 (3.58%) Windows
2 290 (2.94%) Linux
3 157 (1.59%) Unix
4 80 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 45 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 40 (0.41%) Apple iOS
7 39 (0.40%) Solaris
8 38 (0.39%) zOS
9 36 (0.37%) Windows 10
10 31 (0.31%) Android
11 26 (0.26%) Mac OS
12 20 (0.20%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 9 (0.091%) VMS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 5 (0.051%) MVS
18 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2012
19 2 (0.020%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,240 (22.72%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,017 (20.46%) Agile
3 1,362 (13.82%) Migration
4 1,307 (13.26%) Problem-Solving
5 1,170 (11.87%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,137 (11.53%) AI
7 1,127 (11.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,032 (10.47%) ERP
9 1,023 (10.38%) CI/CD
10 1,001 (10.16%) DevOps
11 996 (10.10%) Analytics
12 902 (9.15%) Decision-Making
13 815 (8.27%) Validation
14 807 (8.19%) Roadmaps
15 793 (8.05%) Data Modelling
16 763 (7.74%) User Acceptance Testing
17 756 (7.67%) Project Management
18 709 (7.19%) Change Management
19 680 (6.90%) Business Intelligence
20 643 (6.52%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,269 (12.87%) SQL
2 1,215 (12.33%) Python
3 653 (6.62%) Java
4 386 (3.92%) C#
5 271 (2.75%) JavaScript
6 253 (2.57%) TypeScript
7 234 (2.37%) PowerShell
8 113 (1.15%) Bash
9 93 (0.94%) PL/SQL
10 80 (0.81%) Go
11 79 (0.80%) C++
12 77 (0.78%) Shell Script
13 72 (0.73%) T-SQL
14 67 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 49 (0.50%) Bicep
16 48 (0.49%) VBA
17 41 (0.42%) Kotlin
18 37 (0.38%) Scala
19 34 (0.34%) Apex Code
20 32 (0.32%) Korn
Qualifications
1 767 (7.78%) Security Cleared
2 723 (7.33%) Degree
3 547 (5.55%) SC Cleared
4 238 (2.41%) PMP
5 212 (2.15%) PMI Certification
6 204 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
7 201 (2.04%) ACCA
8 178 (1.81%) CIMA
9 150 (1.52%) CISSP
10 134 (1.36%) DV Cleared
11 122 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 98 (0.99%) Azure Certification
13 86 (0.87%) CISM
14 79 (0.80%) Master's Degree
15 77 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
16 60 (0.61%) AWS Certification
17 54 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
18 49 (0.50%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 39 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 33 (0.33%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 631 (6.40%) Data Quality
2 426 (4.32%) QA
3 359 (3.64%) PMO
4 277 (2.81%) GDPR
5 150 (1.52%) NIST
6 120 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 109 (1.11%) SLA
8 107 (1.09%) GRC
9 106 (1.08%) Accessibility
10 102 (1.03%) IFRS
11 99 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 63 (0.64%) GAAP
13 58 (0.59%) ISO 20022
14 50 (0.51%) PCI DSS
15 37 (0.38%) SEPA
16 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
17 30 (0.30%) COBIT
17 30 (0.30%) MiFID
17 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 29 (0.29%) EMIR
System Software
1 271 (2.75%) Docker
2 221 (2.24%) Active Directory
3 68 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (0.25%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 22 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
9 12 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.071%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) KVM
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
14 3 (0.030%) SRDF
14 3 (0.030%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 439 (4.45%) Kubernetes
2 332 (3.37%) Terraform
3 158 (1.60%) Ansible
4 92 (0.93%) Grafana
5 75 (0.76%) Prometheus
6 74 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
7 53 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 51 (0.52%) 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
15 13 (0.13%) Istio
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 11 (0.11%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,298 (13.17%) Microsoft
2 846 (8.58%) Oracle
3 836 (8.48%) SAP
4 357 (3.62%) ServiceNow
5 310 (3.14%) Databricks
6 225 (2.28%) Salesforce
7 214 (2.17%) Google
8 156 (1.58%) IBM
9 139 (1.41%) Workday
10 129 (1.31%) VMware
11 108 (1.10%) Cisco
12 105 (1.07%) Splunk
13 93 (0.94%) Ariba
14 87 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 72 (0.73%) OpenAI
16 66 (0.67%) Sage
17 61 (0.62%) Citrix
18 53 (0.54%) Informatica
19 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
20 44 (0.45%) F5