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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 7,206 6,692 8,248
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 19.49% 21.26% 19.09%
As % of the General category 32.52% 34.43% 32.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,603 4,191 5,607
10th Percentile £350 £355 £363
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -1.88%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £688
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £505 £513
% change year-on-year -0.99% -1.46% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 94 129
10th Percentile £15.00 £18.20 £11.85
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.50 £14.06
Median hourly rate £23.50 £29.00 £22.28
Median % change year-on-year -18.97% +30.19% -10.90%
75th Percentile £40.00 £59.88 £47.50
90th Percentile £66.41 £78.67 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £19.50
% change year-on-year -18.89% +39.10% -41.86%

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 22,156 19,437 25,458
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.92% 61.74% 58.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,937 11,580 16,620
10th Percentile £284 £288 £270
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £727 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,362 653 1,306
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.55 £13.41
25th Percentile £16.48 £20.00 £15.47
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.50 £28.47
Median % change year-on-year -16.36% -3.41% +13.88%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £56.49
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.38 £26.50 £26.50
% change year-on-year -19.32% - +17.78%

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 19 January 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 19 January 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 19 January 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 6,351 £535 -9.32% 5,578
London -1 3,867 £575 -5.74% 1,419
UK excluding London -2 2,852 £500 -0.99% 5,050
Work from Home -1 1,982 £525 -12.50% 2,532
North of England +1 911 £475 -4.26% 950
South East -2 533 £505 -3.81% 1,704
Midlands -3 501 £475 -9.52% 667
North West +1 440 £450 -8.16% 406
Yorkshire 0 424 £500 -2.91% 393
Scotland 0 373 £500 +7.30% 197
West Midlands -6 306 £525 -4.55% 285
South West -6 284 £525 -0.47% 608
East Midlands 0 195 £420 - 370
East of England -3 170 £541 +3.10% 691
Wales +24 74 £413 -12.00% 250
Northern Ireland -1 53 £506 +55.77% 114
North East -5 47 £481 - 165
Channel Islands +1 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
1 301 (4.18%) Confluence
2 204 (2.83%) SharePoint
3 68 (0.94%) Apache Spark
4 62 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
5 60 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
6 58 (0.80%) Apache
7 32 (0.44%) SAS
8 29 (0.40%) CMS
9 23 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.29%) IIS
11 16 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 16 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 13 (0.18%) Appian
12 13 (0.18%) Ethereum
12 13 (0.18%) Mattermost
12 13 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 12 (0.17%) TPMS
13 12 (0.17%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.15%) JBoss
15 10 (0.14%) CICS
Applications
1 500 (6.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 288 (4.00%) Microsoft Office
3 204 (2.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
5 134 (1.86%) MS Visio
6 34 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 19 (0.26%) Sketch
9 18 (0.25%) Trello
10 14 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
12 8 (0.11%) InVision
13 6 (0.083%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.069%) Adobe Captivate
14 5 (0.069%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
15 4 (0.056%) Notion
16 3 (0.042%) Camtasia
16 3 (0.042%) Snagit
17 2 (0.028%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 285 (3.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.71%) Oracle Payables
3 98 (1.36%) Oracle EBS
4 94 (1.30%) Oracle Receivables
5 84 (1.17%) Oracle General Ledger
6 71 (0.99%) SAP FI
7 68 (0.94%) NetSuite
8 62 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
9 60 (0.83%) SAP CO
10 55 (0.76%) Oracle Assets
10 55 (0.76%) Oracle EBS R12
11 54 (0.75%) Oracle Cash Management
11 54 (0.75%) SAP FI/CO
12 52 (0.72%) Oracle Financials
13 50 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 46 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
15 38 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 38 (0.53%) Workday HCM
16 28 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
17 26 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,062 (14.74%) Azure
2 867 (12.03%) AWS
3 537 (7.45%) Power Platform
4 346 (4.80%) GCP
5 244 (3.39%) Microsoft 365
6 220 (3.05%) SaaS
7 213 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
8 208 (2.89%) Dynamics 365
9 185 (2.57%) GitHub
10 138 (1.92%) OCI
11 137 (1.90%) Serverless
12 134 (1.86%) Snowflake
13 115 (1.60%) Entra ID
14 98 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
15 86 (1.19%) Power Automate
16 85 (1.18%) Amazon S3
17 73 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
18 72 (1.00%) PowerApps
19 68 (0.94%) Figma
20 65 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 116 (1.61%) Firewall
2 68 (0.94%) Network Security
3 62 (0.86%) WAN
4 41 (0.57%) DNS
5 40 (0.56%) SD-WAN
6 37 (0.51%) VPN
7 34 (0.47%) LAN
8 32 (0.44%) TCP/IP
8 32 (0.44%) Wireless
9 27 (0.37%) HTTP
9 27 (0.37%) Skype
10 26 (0.36%) SSL
11 23 (0.32%) SSH
12 21 (0.29%) DHCP
13 18 (0.25%) BGP
13 18 (0.25%) OSPF
14 16 (0.22%) Kerberos
15 15 (0.21%) Cisco IOS
15 15 (0.21%) Internet
16 14 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 471 (6.54%) Power BI
2 195 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
3 188 (2.61%) SQL Server
4 148 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
5 128 (1.78%) NoSQL
6 125 (1.73%) Tableau
7 120 (1.67%) Relational Database
8 113 (1.57%) Data Lake
9 108 (1.50%) Metadata
10 89 (1.24%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (1.04%) MongoDB
12 69 (0.96%) Big Data
12 69 (0.96%) Oracle Database
13 50 (0.69%) BigQuery
14 44 (0.61%) Hadoop
15 41 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.54%) Power Query
17 36 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
18 35 (0.49%) MySQL
19 33 (0.46%) DB2
Development Applications
1 558 (7.74%) JIRA
2 253 (3.51%) Jenkins
3 206 (2.86%) Git
4 148 (2.05%) GitLab
5 74 (1.03%) JUnit
6 56 (0.78%) Cucumber
7 55 (0.76%) Selenium
8 50 (0.69%) Bitbucket
9 46 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
10 34 (0.47%) Postman
11 32 (0.44%) Visual Studio
12 24 (0.33%) Gradle
12 24 (0.33%) Liquibase
13 23 (0.32%) Cypress.io
14 20 (0.28%) Maven
14 20 (0.28%) MLflow
14 20 (0.28%) REST Assured
15 19 (0.26%) JMeter
16 17 (0.24%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.22%) webpack
General
1 2,505 (34.76%) Social Skills
2 1,498 (20.79%) Banking
3 984 (13.66%) Analytical Skills
4 580 (8.05%) Public Sector
5 335 (4.65%) Financial Institution
6 319 (4.43%) Marketing
7 298 (4.14%) Manufacturing
8 285 (3.96%) Investment Banking
9 275 (3.82%) Telecoms
10 268 (3.72%) Front Office
10 268 (3.72%) Legal
11 207 (2.87%) Organisational Skills
12 195 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
13 187 (2.60%) Electronics
14 155 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
15 141 (1.96%) Retail
16 131 (1.82%) General Ledger
16 131 (1.82%) Presentation Skills
17 123 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 107 (1.48%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,156 (16.04%) Analyst
2 808 (11.21%) Developer
3 697 (9.67%) Senior
4 591 (8.20%) Business Analyst
5 578 (8.02%) Consultant
6 574 (7.97%) Project Manager
7 557 (7.73%) Architect
8 518 (7.19%) Lead
9 229 (3.18%) Solutions Architect
10 192 (2.66%) Data Analyst
11 163 (2.26%) Data Engineer
12 157 (2.18%) Financial Analyst
13 147 (2.04%) Programme Manager
14 141 (1.96%) Java Developer
15 138 (1.92%) Senior Developer
15 138 (1.92%) Software Engineer
16 122 (1.69%) Senior Manager
17 112 (1.55%) Oracle Consultant
18 111 (1.54%) IT Manager
19 107 (1.48%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (3.72%) REST
2 225 (3.12%) Kafka
3 210 (2.91%) .NET
4 161 (2.23%) React
5 156 (2.16%) Oracle Fusion
6 155 (2.15%) RESTful
7 143 (1.98%) Spring
8 118 (1.64%) Spring Boot
9 101 (1.40%) Middleware
10 98 (1.36%) AngularJS
11 92 (1.28%) Pandas
12 90 (1.25%) XML
13 86 (1.19%) HTML
14 81 (1.12%) Node.js
14 81 (1.12%) NumPy
15 76 (1.05%) CSS
16 75 (1.04%) PySpark
17 71 (0.99%) SOAP
18 69 (0.96%) OAuth
19 67 (0.93%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 318 (4.41%) Onboarding
2 286 (3.97%) Product Ownership
3 211 (2.93%) Cloud Native
4 175 (2.43%) Derivative
5 168 (2.33%) Management Information System
6 149 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
7 147 (2.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 132 (1.83%) Data Centre
9 131 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
10 126 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
11 124 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
11 124 (1.72%) Equities
12 120 (1.67%) Data Structures
13 118 (1.64%) Fixed Income
14 105 (1.46%) Public Cloud
15 93 (1.29%) Hedge funds
16 90 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
17 72 (1.00%) Virtual Team
18 71 (0.99%) Credit Risk
18 71 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 342 (4.75%) Linux
2 316 (4.39%) Windows
3 148 (2.05%) Unix
4 66 (0.92%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.89%) Android
6 63 (0.87%) Mac OS
7 61 (0.85%) Windows Server
8 34 (0.47%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.14%) zOS
11 7 (0.097%) CentOS
12 6 (0.083%) VMS
13 4 (0.056%) Solaris
13 4 (0.056%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.042%) AIX
14 3 (0.042%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.042%) Windows Server 2019
15 2 (0.028%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.028%) Windows 8
15 2 (0.028%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,670 (23.18%) Agile
2 1,314 (18.23%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,180 (16.38%) Problem-Solving
4 814 (11.30%) Migration
5 774 (10.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 769 (10.67%) DevOps
7 752 (10.44%) CI/CD
8 749 (10.39%) Business Intelligence
9 707 (9.81%) Analytics
10 705 (9.78%) Project Management
11 623 (8.65%) ERP
12 601 (8.34%) Continuous Improvement
13 521 (7.23%) Decision-Making
14 511 (7.09%) Risk Management
15 506 (7.02%) Change Management
16 505 (7.01%) AI
17 488 (6.77%) Roadmaps
18 465 (6.45%) Data Modelling
19 458 (6.36%) Project Delivery
20 452 (6.27%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,065 (14.78%) SQL
2 935 (12.98%) Python
3 502 (6.97%) Java
4 306 (4.25%) C#
5 208 (2.89%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.69%) PowerShell
7 152 (2.11%) C++
8 145 (2.01%) TypeScript
9 85 (1.18%) PL/SQL
10 69 (0.96%) Bash
10 69 (0.96%) Go
11 53 (0.74%) Shell Script
12 51 (0.71%) VBA
13 45 (0.62%) R
14 40 (0.56%) Kotlin
15 37 (0.51%) Groovy
16 32 (0.44%) Perl
16 32 (0.44%) Rust
16 32 (0.44%) T-SQL
17 29 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 779 (10.81%) Degree
2 542 (7.52%) Security Cleared
3 391 (5.43%) SC Cleared
4 186 (2.58%) PMI Certification
5 180 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 173 (2.40%) PMP
7 166 (2.30%) Master's Degree
8 146 (2.03%) ACCA
9 127 (1.76%) CIMA
10 101 (1.40%) BPSS Clearance
11 94 (1.30%) CISSP
12 92 (1.28%) AWS Certification
13 64 (0.89%) DV Cleared
14 63 (0.87%) CISM
15 61 (0.85%) Azure Certification
16 45 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
17 35 (0.49%) CBAP
17 35 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
18 27 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 27 (0.37%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (5.16%) QA
2 328 (4.55%) Data Quality
3 268 (3.72%) PMO
4 249 (3.46%) GDPR
5 118 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 111 (1.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 110 (1.53%) NIST
8 97 (1.35%) Accessibility
9 95 (1.32%) SLA
10 75 (1.04%) IFRS
10 75 (1.04%) PCI DSS
11 54 (0.75%) GRC
12 44 (0.61%) ISO 20022
12 44 (0.61%) PSD2
13 39 (0.54%) MiFID
14 32 (0.44%) Basel III
15 28 (0.39%) GAAP
15 28 (0.39%) SEPA
16 27 (0.37%) COBIT
17 26 (0.36%) NCSC
System Software
1 325 (4.51%) Docker
2 189 (2.62%) Active Directory
3 50 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (0.26%) vSphere
6 10 (0.14%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.12%) GPFS
7 9 (0.12%) HDFS
7 9 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.11%) NFS
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
8 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 6 (0.083%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.069%) Firmware
10 5 (0.069%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.056%) BitLocker
11 4 (0.056%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.042%) RACF
12 3 (0.042%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.028%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 363 (5.04%) Kubernetes
2 264 (3.66%) Terraform
3 173 (2.40%) Ansible
4 85 (1.18%) Grafana
5 76 (1.05%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.86%) SCCM
7 56 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
8 34 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.35%) Progress Chef
10 22 (0.31%) SCOM
11 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.29%) HP SiteScope
12 17 (0.24%) Argo
13 16 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.22%) Kibana
13 16 (0.22%) vRealize
14 14 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
15 13 (0.18%) Control-M
15 13 (0.18%) Puppet
16 9 (0.12%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 998 (13.85%) Microsoft
2 780 (10.82%) SAP
3 700 (9.71%) Oracle
4 263 (3.65%) ServiceNow
5 175 (2.43%) Salesforce
6 158 (2.19%) Databricks
7 154 (2.14%) Splunk
8 152 (2.11%) Google
9 145 (2.01%) Cisco
10 143 (1.98%) Workday
11 96 (1.33%) VMware
12 88 (1.22%) IBM
13 69 (0.96%) Citrix
14 62 (0.86%) Ariba
15 58 (0.80%) CyberArk
16 55 (0.76%) Bloomberg
17 53 (0.74%) HP
18 48 (0.67%) Murex
19 47 (0.65%) Apple
20 46 (0.64%) Informatica