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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,216 7,226 7,645
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.49% 21.78% 20.40%
As % of the General category 32.62% 34.42% 34.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,117 4,709 4,787
10th Percentile £363 £337 £356
25th Percentile £450 £419 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £573
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -8.30% -2.97%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £786 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.20% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 151 124
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.48 £15.37
25th Percentile £19.03 £17.67 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -16.67% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £53.85 £55.00
90th Percentile £69.25 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £21.38 £31.91
% change year-on-year +105.66% -33.02% +25.15%

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 31,316 20,992 21,990
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.66% 63.27% 58.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,212 13,093 12,972
10th Percentile £313 £275 £280
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £646
90th Percentile £738 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £477
% change year-on-year +5.26% -0.42% -4.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,802 1,249 919
10th Percentile £13.48 £13.51 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.01 £16.17 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -21.88% +7.56%
75th Percentile £53.84 £44.75 £59.98
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £30.00
% change year-on-year +28.56% -28.70% +11.11%

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 14 October 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 14 October 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 14 October 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 8,723 £550 +0.92% 10,767
London 0 5,305 £600 +2.13% 7,244
UK excluding London 0 3,939 £506 +1.20% 4,245
Work from Home -1 2,831 £550 - 4,532
North of England 0 1,370 £513 +9.10% 1,082
South East -1 748 £500 -2.20% 1,009
North West -2 653 £502 +11.44% 568
Yorkshire +1 638 £514 +2.80% 387
Midlands -3 611 £515 +8.32% 526
Scotland +1 554 £463 -7.50% 560
West Midlands -2 451 £500 -4.28% 333
South West -6 343 £525 -4.55% 405
East of England +1 202 £530 -5.99% 323
East Midlands -2 154 £525 +25.00% 193
Wales +3 72 £525 +16.67% 113
North East -10 72 £538 +22.86% 132
Northern Ireland 0 63 £463 -11.90% 267
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 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
1 335 (3.28%) Confluence
2 264 (2.58%) SharePoint
3 97 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
4 84 (0.82%) Apache Spark
5 83 (0.81%) Apache
6 52 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.33%) CMS
8 23 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
8 23 (0.23%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 15 (0.15%) Camunda
11 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.11%) CICS
12 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
13 10 (0.098%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.078%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.059%) Appian
15 6 (0.059%) WebLogic
16 5 (0.049%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 5 (0.049%) WordPress
Applications
1 541 (5.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (2.15%) Microsoft Office
3 195 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 152 (1.49%) Microsoft Project
5 88 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 72 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.23%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.098%) Trello
9 9 (0.088%) Adobe Illustrator
9 9 (0.088%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.069%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.049%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.039%) Adobe Premiere
12 4 (0.039%) Sketch
12 4 (0.039%) Windchill
13 3 (0.029%) 1Password
13 3 (0.029%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.029%) Notion
13 3 (0.029%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.020%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 448 (4.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 123 (1.20%) Oracle Payables
3 111 (1.09%) Oracle Receivables
4 93 (0.91%) NetSuite
5 91 (0.89%) Oracle General Ledger
6 89 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
7 87 (0.85%) SAP FI
8 82 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
9 74 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
10 60 (0.59%) Oracle Financials
11 56 (0.55%) SAP CO
12 53 (0.52%) Workday HCM
13 51 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
14 49 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
15 44 (0.43%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
16 43 (0.42%) Aladdin
17 35 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
18 34 (0.33%) SAP GRC
19 31 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
20 26 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,637 (16.02%) Azure
2 1,116 (10.92%) AWS
3 658 (6.44%) Power Platform
4 577 (5.65%) GCP
5 383 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
6 355 (3.47%) GitHub
7 335 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
8 317 (3.10%) SaaS
9 273 (2.67%) Dynamics 365
10 232 (2.27%) Entra ID
11 228 (2.23%) Snowflake
12 165 (1.62%) Serverless
13 147 (1.44%) GitHub Actions
14 140 (1.37%) OCI
15 130 (1.27%) Microsoft Copilot
16 129 (1.26%) Power Automate
17 128 (1.25%) Amazon S3
18 126 (1.23%) dbt
19 117 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
20 109 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 182 (1.78%) Firewall
2 174 (1.70%) Network Security
3 110 (1.08%) VPN
4 98 (0.96%) DNS
5 67 (0.66%) TCP/IP
6 60 (0.59%) WAN
7 54 (0.53%) BGP
8 51 (0.50%) DHCP
9 40 (0.39%) SSL
10 39 (0.38%) Multicast
11 38 (0.37%) VLAN
12 34 (0.33%) HTTP
12 34 (0.33%) LAN
12 34 (0.33%) OSPF
12 34 (0.33%) SAN
13 31 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
14 30 (0.29%) Internet
15 29 (0.28%) Wireless
16 23 (0.23%) SD-WAN
17 20 (0.20%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 517 (5.06%) Power BI
2 298 (2.92%) SQL Server
3 269 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (1.99%) Metadata
5 170 (1.66%) Relational Database
6 151 (1.48%) Data Lake
7 137 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
8 129 (1.26%) Tableau
9 88 (0.86%) NoSQL
10 87 (0.85%) Oracle Database
11 86 (0.84%) BigQuery
12 83 (0.81%) MongoDB
13 59 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
14 58 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
15 54 (0.53%) Delta Lake
15 54 (0.53%) Power Query
16 47 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
17 46 (0.45%) Db2
18 44 (0.43%) Big Data
19 42 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 684 (6.70%) JIRA
2 360 (3.52%) Git
3 200 (1.96%) Jenkins
4 130 (1.27%) GitLab
5 70 (0.69%) Selenium
6 54 (0.53%) JUnit
7 51 (0.50%) Claude Code
8 44 (0.43%) Maven
9 41 (0.40%) Gradle
10 40 (0.39%) Bitbucket
10 40 (0.39%) Cucumber
11 35 (0.34%) REST Assured
12 32 (0.31%) SonarQube
12 32 (0.31%) Visual Studio
13 31 (0.30%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.28%) Postman
15 26 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
16 25 (0.24%) ERwin
17 22 (0.22%) Mockito
17 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
General
1 3,219 (31.51%) Social Skills
2 2,227 (21.80%) Banking
3 1,467 (14.36%) Analytical Skills
4 558 (5.46%) Public Sector
5 546 (5.34%) Legal
6 478 (4.68%) Organisational Skills
7 407 (3.98%) Investment Banking
8 362 (3.54%) Retail
9 359 (3.51%) Influencing Skills
10 346 (3.39%) Front Office
11 314 (3.07%) Financial Institution
12 228 (2.23%) Manufacturing
13 214 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
14 200 (1.96%) Marketing
15 198 (1.94%) General Ledger
16 192 (1.88%) Billing
17 191 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 159 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
19 156 (1.53%) Local Government
20 150 (1.47%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,411 (13.81%) Analyst
2 1,165 (11.40%) Senior
3 1,004 (9.83%) Developer
4 981 (9.60%) Lead
5 895 (8.76%) Architect
6 742 (7.26%) Consultant
7 722 (7.07%) Business Analyst
8 690 (6.75%) Project Manager
9 364 (3.56%) Solutions Architect
10 294 (2.88%) Data Engineer
11 256 (2.51%) Financial Analyst
12 226 (2.21%) Senior Manager
13 216 (2.11%) Senior Developer
14 209 (2.05%) Programme Manager
15 204 (2.00%) Data Analyst
15 204 (2.00%) Java Developer
16 186 (1.82%) IT Manager
17 184 (1.80%) Accountant
18 166 (1.62%) Finance Manager
19 153 (1.50%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 441 (4.32%) Terraform
2 438 (4.29%) REST
3 291 (2.85%) Kafka
4 282 (2.76%) .NET
5 274 (2.68%) Oracle Fusion
6 251 (2.46%) React
7 206 (2.02%) Spring
8 202 (1.98%) Spring Boot
9 198 (1.94%) Middleware
10 151 (1.48%) PySpark
11 147 (1.44%) RESTful
12 121 (1.18%) JSON
13 115 (1.13%) XML
14 113 (1.11%) OAuth
15 101 (0.99%) SOAP
16 96 (0.94%) Web Services
17 87 (0.85%) AngularJS
18 86 (0.84%) Redux
19 84 (0.82%) HTML
20 81 (0.79%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 547 (5.35%) Onboarding
2 540 (5.29%) Product Ownership
3 502 (4.91%) Cloud Native
4 285 (2.79%) Management Information System
5 266 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
6 251 (2.46%) AI Agents
7 237 (2.32%) Virtual Team
8 236 (2.31%) Data Structures
9 233 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
10 212 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
11 202 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
12 195 (1.91%) Derivative
13 182 (1.78%) Data Centre
14 155 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 136 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
16 135 (1.32%) Fixed Income
17 124 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
18 119 (1.16%) Equities
19 114 (1.12%) Web Conferencing
20 113 (1.11%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 392 (3.84%) Windows
2 351 (3.44%) Linux
3 169 (1.65%) Unix
4 103 (1.01%) Windows Server
5 62 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 51 (0.50%) Apple iOS
7 46 (0.45%) Android
8 41 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 38 (0.37%) macOS
10 35 (0.34%) zOS
11 23 (0.23%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.049%) CentOS
14 5 (0.049%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.039%) HPUX
15 4 (0.039%) SUSE
15 4 (0.039%) Windows Server 2019
16 3 (0.029%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,935 (28.73%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,128 (20.83%) Agile
3 1,414 (13.84%) AI
4 1,396 (13.66%) Problem-Solving
5 1,393 (13.64%) Migration
6 1,220 (11.94%) CI/CD
7 1,156 (11.32%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,138 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,073 (10.50%) DevOps
10 1,057 (10.35%) Analytics
11 973 (9.52%) Decision-Making
12 959 (9.39%) ERP
13 948 (9.28%) Roadmaps
14 940 (9.20%) Validation
15 784 (7.67%) Data Modelling
16 782 (7.65%) Project Management
17 777 (7.61%) Risk Management
18 774 (7.58%) User Acceptance Testing
19 726 (7.11%) Project Delivery
20 720 (7.05%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,396 (13.66%) SQL
2 1,345 (13.17%) Python
3 677 (6.63%) Java
4 369 (3.61%) C#
5 316 (3.09%) PowerShell
6 282 (2.76%) JavaScript
7 226 (2.21%) TypeScript
8 184 (1.80%) Bash
9 107 (1.05%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 79 (0.77%) C++
12 76 (0.74%) Go
13 69 (0.68%) T-SQL
14 65 (0.64%) Bicep
15 62 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 53 (0.52%) Korn
17 47 (0.46%) Scala
18 38 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.31%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.29%) VBA
Qualifications
1 803 (7.86%) Security Cleared
2 735 (7.19%) Degree
3 574 (5.62%) SC Cleared
4 267 (2.61%) PMP
5 264 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
6 245 (2.40%) PMI Certification
7 187 (1.83%) ACCA
8 167 (1.63%) CIMA
9 152 (1.49%) DV Cleared
10 141 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 128 (1.25%) CISSP
12 116 (1.14%) Azure Certification
13 89 (0.87%) AWS Certification
14 78 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
14 78 (0.76%) Master's Degree
15 70 (0.69%) CISM
16 51 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
17 46 (0.45%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 41 (0.40%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 742 (7.26%) Data Quality
2 426 (4.17%) QA
3 369 (3.61%) PMO
4 202 (1.98%) GDPR
5 132 (1.29%) NIST
6 123 (1.20%) GRC
7 118 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 113 (1.11%) Accessibility
9 92 (0.90%) SLA
10 91 (0.89%) IFRS
11 74 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 68 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.43%) PCI DSS
14 42 (0.41%) SEPA
15 41 (0.40%) GAAP
16 34 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 28 (0.27%) COBIT
19 27 (0.26%) NCSC
20 25 (0.24%) MiFID
System Software
1 285 (2.79%) Docker
2 248 (2.43%) Active Directory
3 107 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
5 31 (0.30%) vSphere
6 27 (0.26%) RACF
6 27 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
7 18 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 7 (0.069%) IAG
12 6 (0.059%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.049%) ACF2
14 4 (0.039%) Firmware
14 4 (0.039%) GPFS
14 4 (0.039%) Time Sharing Option
14 4 (0.039%) zsh
15 3 (0.029%) KVM
Systems Management
1 527 (5.16%) Kubernetes
2 205 (2.01%) Ansible
3 104 (1.02%) Grafana
4 84 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 77 (0.75%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.63%) SCCM
7 61 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.26%) Control-M
10 22 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
12 15 (0.15%) Istio
13 11 (0.11%) Puppet
13 11 (0.11%) Tivoli
14 10 (0.098%) Cisco Prime
14 10 (0.098%) HP ALM
14 10 (0.098%) Packer
15 9 (0.088%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,515 (14.83%) Microsoft
2 907 (8.88%) SAP
3 881 (8.62%) Oracle
4 363 (3.55%) ServiceNow
5 360 (3.52%) Databricks
6 252 (2.47%) Google
6 252 (2.47%) Salesforce
7 205 (2.01%) IBM
8 164 (1.61%) VMware
9 161 (1.58%) Workday
10 138 (1.35%) Cisco
11 129 (1.26%) Splunk
12 122 (1.19%) Ariba
13 90 (0.88%) CyberArk
13 90 (0.88%) OpenAI
14 63 (0.62%) Bloomberg
15 58 (0.57%) Citrix
15 58 (0.57%) Sage
16 57 (0.56%) Murex
17 53 (0.52%) F5