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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,722 6,334 8,054
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 17.95% 22.14% 18.98%
As % of the General category 33.53% 35.03% 32.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,459 4,131 5,394
10th Percentile £356 £350 £356
25th Percentile £442 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £579
Median % change year-on-year - -5.01% -3.50%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £713
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £501
% change year-on-year +0.05% -0.30% -4.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 193 111 251
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £23.56 £15.08
Median hourly rate £25.00 £40.50 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year -38.27% +50.17% -3.61%
75th Percentile £54.23 £65.00 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.47 £55.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £49.90 £30.41
% change year-on-year -52.25% +64.08% -36.97%

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 26,010 18,084 24,621
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.54% 63.21% 58.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,811 11,495 15,559
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -2.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £491 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +3.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,690 770 1,929
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.78 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.95 £15.46
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.25 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.50 £28.00
% change year-on-year +18.37% -12.50% -3.45%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 7,727 £550 -4.35% 5,027
London 0 4,664 £575 -8.00% 2,787
UK excluding London 0 3,478 £500 +0.05% 2,982
Work from Home -2 2,417 £539 -6.30% 2,147
North of England +3 1,193 £492 +3.58% 794
South East -2 643 £500 -2.85% 915
North West +5 624 £465 - 447
Midlands 0 590 £492 +3.58% 414
Yorkshire +1 528 £519 +8.98% 269
Scotland 0 413 £500 +5.26% 185
West Midlands 0 399 £500 -4.76% 251
South West -2 354 £525 - 311
East of England +2 203 £516 -10.22% 232
East Midlands 0 187 £468 +5.12% 160
Wales +16 89 £463 +19.35% 52
Northern Ireland -1 46 £525 +28.05% 121
North East -16 42 £488 +4.84% 88
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
1 320 (3.67%) Confluence
2 215 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 84 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 55 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
5 53 (0.61%) Apache
6 51 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
7 32 (0.37%) SAS
8 24 (0.28%) CMS
9 21 (0.24%) CICS
10 18 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Appian
13 12 (0.14%) Camunda
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.11%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 9 (0.10%) Ethereum
17 8 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 507 (5.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (2.52%) Microsoft Office
3 169 (1.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 167 (1.91%) Microsoft Project
5 126 (1.44%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.092%) Notion
9 8 (0.092%) Sketch
10 7 (0.080%) InVision
11 6 (0.069%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 6 (0.069%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
14 1 (0.011%) UXPin
14 1 (0.011%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 393 (4.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.33%) Oracle Payables
3 108 (1.24%) NetSuite
4 96 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
5 87 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 66 (0.76%) Oracle ERP
7 60 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
8 56 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
8 56 (0.64%) SAP FI
9 45 (0.52%) SAP CO
10 41 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
11 40 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
12 38 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
13 35 (0.40%) Aladdin
14 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
15 31 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
16 29 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 26 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
18 24 (0.28%) SAP ERP
18 24 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,333 (15.28%) Azure
2 968 (11.10%) AWS
3 595 (6.82%) Power Platform
4 385 (4.41%) GCP
5 303 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
6 294 (3.37%) SaaS
7 271 (3.11%) Microsoft 365
8 233 (2.67%) GitHub
9 232 (2.66%) Dynamics 365
10 159 (1.82%) Snowflake
11 151 (1.73%) Entra ID
12 139 (1.59%) Serverless
13 126 (1.44%) OCI
14 114 (1.31%) Power Automate
15 113 (1.30%) Amazon S3
16 95 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
17 86 (0.99%) OpenShift
18 82 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
19 78 (0.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 77 (0.88%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 158 (1.81%) Firewall
2 118 (1.35%) Network Security
3 78 (0.89%) WAN
4 72 (0.83%) DNS
5 60 (0.69%) VPN
6 54 (0.62%) TCP/IP
7 40 (0.46%) BGP
8 39 (0.45%) LAN
9 38 (0.44%) SD-WAN
10 34 (0.39%) HTTP
11 30 (0.34%) OSPF
12 29 (0.33%) Multicast
13 28 (0.32%) SSL
14 27 (0.31%) DHCP
15 24 (0.28%) MPLS
16 20 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
16 20 (0.23%) VSAN
17 19 (0.22%) VLAN
18 18 (0.21%) Internet
19 12 (0.14%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 503 (5.77%) Power BI
2 216 (2.48%) SQL Server
3 214 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
4 175 (2.01%) Metadata
5 161 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
6 152 (1.74%) Relational Database
7 151 (1.73%) Tableau
8 124 (1.42%) Data Lake
9 88 (1.01%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
11 75 (0.86%) Big Data
12 66 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.71%) MongoDB
14 59 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 48 (0.55%) Snowflake Schema
16 45 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
17 44 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 41 (0.47%) Delta Lake
19 38 (0.44%) DynamoDB
20 37 (0.42%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 678 (7.77%) JIRA
2 206 (2.36%) Git
3 164 (1.88%) Jenkins
4 96 (1.10%) GitLab
5 46 (0.53%) Cucumber
5 46 (0.53%) JUnit
6 38 (0.44%) Selenium
7 31 (0.36%) Visual Studio
8 30 (0.34%) Postman
9 28 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 22 (0.25%) MLflow
10 22 (0.25%) SonarQube
11 21 (0.24%) REST Assured
11 21 (0.24%) Zephyr
12 18 (0.21%) ERwin
12 18 (0.21%) Maven
13 17 (0.19%) Hudson
13 17 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
14 14 (0.16%) TeamCity
15 13 (0.15%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,540 (29.12%) Social Skills
2 1,596 (18.30%) Banking
3 1,149 (13.17%) Analytical Skills
4 507 (5.81%) Public Sector
5 373 (4.28%) Legal
6 328 (3.76%) Financial Institution
7 314 (3.60%) Investment Banking
8 278 (3.19%) Front Office
9 269 (3.08%) Retail
10 244 (2.80%) Organisational Skills
11 234 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
12 212 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
13 172 (1.97%) Manufacturing
14 153 (1.75%) Marketing
15 143 (1.64%) General Ledger
16 132 (1.51%) Telecoms
17 125 (1.43%) Law
17 125 (1.43%) Local Government
18 120 (1.38%) Billing
18 120 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1,329 (15.24%) Analyst
2 924 (10.59%) Senior
3 880 (10.09%) Lead
4 878 (10.07%) Developer
5 802 (9.20%) Architect
6 720 (8.25%) Business Analyst
7 686 (7.87%) Project Manager
8 588 (6.74%) Consultant
9 335 (3.84%) Solutions Architect
10 282 (3.23%) Data Engineer
11 218 (2.50%) Financial Analyst
12 211 (2.42%) Senior Manager
13 194 (2.22%) Data Analyst
14 184 (2.11%) Finance Manager
15 175 (2.01%) Programme Manager
16 174 (1.99%) Accountant
17 153 (1.75%) Software Engineer
18 150 (1.72%) Java Developer
19 141 (1.62%) Delivery Manager
19 141 (1.62%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 254 (2.91%) Kafka
2 253 (2.90%) REST
3 238 (2.73%) .NET
4 210 (2.41%) React
5 186 (2.13%) Middleware
6 167 (1.91%) Oracle Fusion
7 152 (1.74%) Spring
8 147 (1.69%) Spring Boot
9 135 (1.55%) RESTful
10 104 (1.19%) Node.js
11 103 (1.18%) PySpark
12 95 (1.09%) AngularJS
13 84 (0.96%) OAuth
14 78 (0.89%) Redux
15 77 (0.88%) JSON
16 70 (0.80%) XML
17 69 (0.79%) HTML
18 68 (0.78%) CSS
19 61 (0.70%) OpenID
19 61 (0.70%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 380 (4.36%) Onboarding
2 362 (4.15%) Product Ownership
3 321 (3.68%) Cloud Native
4 237 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
5 196 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 189 (2.17%) Data Structures
7 171 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
8 170 (1.95%) Derivative
9 155 (1.78%) Data Centre
10 136 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
11 133 (1.52%) Fixed Income
12 131 (1.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 104 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
14 102 (1.17%) Equities
15 99 (1.14%) Public Cloud
16 98 (1.12%) Virtual Team
17 91 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
17 91 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
18 73 (0.84%) AI Agents
19 66 (0.76%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 270 (3.10%) Windows
2 256 (2.94%) Linux
3 137 (1.57%) Unix
4 71 (0.81%) Windows Server
5 40 (0.46%) Windows 10
6 34 (0.39%) Solaris
7 31 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 28 (0.32%) Android
9 26 (0.30%) zOS
10 22 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 17 (0.19%) AIX
11 17 (0.19%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.080%) Windows Server 2012
13 6 (0.069%) VMS
13 6 (0.069%) Windows Server 2019
14 5 (0.057%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.046%) HPUX
15 4 (0.046%) MVS
15 4 (0.046%) SUSE
16 3 (0.034%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,797 (20.60%) Agile
2 1,749 (20.05%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,199 (13.75%) Problem-Solving
4 1,192 (13.67%) Migration
5 961 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
6 941 (10.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 919 (10.54%) ERP
8 918 (10.53%) DevOps
9 863 (9.89%) CI/CD
10 855 (9.80%) AI
11 826 (9.47%) Analytics
12 785 (9.00%) Project Management
13 728 (8.35%) Decision-Making
14 723 (8.29%) Data Modelling
15 694 (7.96%) Roadmaps
16 687 (7.88%) Validation
17 681 (7.81%) Business Intelligence
18 673 (7.72%) User Acceptance Testing
19 622 (7.13%) Change Management
20 572 (6.56%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,173 (13.45%) SQL
2 1,033 (11.84%) Python
3 565 (6.48%) Java
4 339 (3.89%) C#
5 218 (2.50%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.34%) TypeScript
7 167 (1.91%) PowerShell
8 107 (1.23%) C++
9 72 (0.83%) Go
10 69 (0.79%) PL/SQL
11 68 (0.78%) Bash
12 62 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 51 (0.58%) Shell Script
14 44 (0.50%) Scala
15 41 (0.47%) VBA
16 29 (0.33%) Kotlin
16 29 (0.33%) R
17 28 (0.32%) Bicep
18 27 (0.31%) Rust
Qualifications
1 736 (8.44%) Degree
2 688 (7.89%) Security Cleared
3 489 (5.61%) SC Cleared
4 216 (2.48%) ACCA
5 204 (2.34%) PMP
6 198 (2.27%) CIMA
7 184 (2.11%) PMI Certification
8 142 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 129 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
10 124 (1.42%) CISSP
11 99 (1.14%) Master's Degree
12 84 (0.96%) CISM
13 80 (0.92%) DV Cleared
14 64 (0.73%) Azure Certification
15 57 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
16 45 (0.52%) AWS Certification
17 38 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
18 33 (0.38%) ISTQB
19 30 (0.34%) CBAP
19 30 (0.34%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 515 (5.90%) Data Quality
2 407 (4.67%) QA
3 315 (3.61%) PMO
4 281 (3.22%) GDPR
5 160 (1.83%) NIST
6 126 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.26%) SLA
8 109 (1.25%) IFRS
9 107 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 92 (1.05%) GRC
11 85 (0.97%) Accessibility
12 66 (0.76%) PCI DSS
13 60 (0.69%) ISO 20022
14 58 (0.66%) GAAP
15 38 (0.44%) NCSC
16 37 (0.42%) SEPA
17 35 (0.40%) PSD2
18 27 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
18 27 (0.31%) IFRS 17
18 27 (0.31%) MiFID
System Software
1 273 (3.13%) Docker
2 153 (1.75%) Active Directory
3 52 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.34%) vSphere
5 28 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
7 17 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.16%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.14%) Hyper-V
9 12 (0.14%) NFS
10 8 (0.092%) GPFS
11 6 (0.069%) KVM
12 5 (0.057%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.046%) Firmware
13 4 (0.046%) HDFS
13 4 (0.046%) RACF
14 3 (0.034%) GridGain
14 3 (0.034%) ISA Server
14 3 (0.034%) SRDF
15 2 (0.023%) IAG
Systems Management
1 393 (4.51%) Kubernetes
2 253 (2.90%) Terraform
3 127 (1.46%) Ansible
4 89 (1.02%) Grafana
5 72 (0.83%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
7 43 (0.49%) SCCM
8 37 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
10 18 (0.21%) vRealize
11 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 15 (0.17%) Argo
11 15 (0.17%) Puppet
12 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
14 12 (0.14%) Nessus
15 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
16 8 (0.092%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 1,106 (12.68%) Microsoft
2 782 (8.97%) SAP
3 719 (8.24%) Oracle
4 318 (3.65%) ServiceNow
5 239 (2.74%) Databricks
6 193 (2.21%) Salesforce
7 170 (1.95%) Google
8 130 (1.49%) Workday
9 117 (1.34%) Cisco
10 115 (1.32%) Splunk
11 104 (1.19%) VMware
12 95 (1.09%) IBM
13 80 (0.92%) CyberArk
14 72 (0.83%) Ariba
15 68 (0.78%) Citrix
16 66 (0.76%) Sage
17 59 (0.68%) OpenAI
18 51 (0.58%) IFS
18 51 (0.58%) Palo Alto
19 50 (0.57%) Informatica