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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,288 6,367 8,303
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.61% 21.90% 18.76%
As % of the General category 33.09% 34.89% 32.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,255 4,215 5,567
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.96% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £673 £700 £700
90th Percentile £789 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 211 110 242
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.48 £12.76
25th Percentile £18.52 £22.27 £15.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £40.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.81% +46.36% -12.36%
75th Percentile £45.39 £73.44 £38.12
90th Percentile £84.00 £83.20 £54.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.32 £52.50 £30.41
% change year-on-year -57.50% +72.63% -22.37%

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 25,049 18,249 25,765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.25% 62.77% 58.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,606 11,703 16,405
10th Percentile £300 £300 £268
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £644 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,562 716 1,848
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.12 £19.00 £15.38
Median hourly rate £25.38 £29.07 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.69% +11.81% -25.71%
75th Percentile £59.00 £58.46 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.13 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £27.57 £25.00
% change year-on-year -12.95% +10.28% -18.71%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 7,332 £538 -6.52% 4,228
London 0 4,463 £575 -8.00% 1,993
UK excluding London 0 3,259 £500 - 2,946
Work from Home -2 2,330 £550 -6.38% 1,715
North of England +3 1,068 £475 - 695
South East -2 628 £503 -7.37% 1,010
Midlands +1 577 £475 -5.00% 423
North West +6 568 £455 -2.26% 371
Yorkshire 0 452 £500 +3.63% 253
West Midlands +2 381 £492 -6.29% 251
Scotland 0 371 £500 +5.26% 161
South West -3 324 £525 +2.94% 302
East of England -2 198 £513 -4.65% 271
East Midlands 0 191 £449 +3.76% 171
Wales +27 106 £413 +3.13% 89
North East -6 48 £488 +6.56% 88
Northern Ireland -1 42 £525 +61.54% 58
Channel Islands - 3 £450 - 4

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
1 336 (4.05%) Confluence
2 209 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.98%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.70%) Microsoft Exchange
5 50 (0.60%) Apache
6 48 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
7 35 (0.42%) SAS
8 28 (0.34%) CMS
9 18 (0.22%) Appian
9 18 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.21%) CICS
11 15 (0.18%) Camunda
12 14 (0.17%) Ethereum
13 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.14%) TPMS
15 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
15 11 (0.13%) Mendix
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.097%) IIS
Applications
1 540 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 249 (3.00%) Microsoft Office
3 189 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 180 (2.17%) Microsoft Project
5 136 (1.64%) MS Visio
6 54 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.43%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.19%) Trello
9 12 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.097%) InVision
12 6 (0.072%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.060%) Notion
13 5 (0.060%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.048%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.036%) Adobe Captivate
16 2 (0.024%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.024%) InDesign
16 2 (0.024%) Oracle Smart View
16 2 (0.024%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 346 (4.17%) SAP S/4HANA
2 120 (1.45%) Oracle Payables
3 104 (1.25%) Oracle Receivables
4 81 (0.98%) NetSuite
5 78 (0.94%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 74 (0.89%) Oracle EBS
7 66 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
7 66 (0.80%) SAP FI
8 57 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
9 52 (0.63%) SAP CO
10 48 (0.58%) Oracle ERP
10 48 (0.58%) SAP FI/CO
11 44 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
12 39 (0.47%) Oracle Cash Management
13 35 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
14 34 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
15 32 (0.39%) Workday HCM
16 31 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
17 29 (0.35%) Aladdin
18 26 (0.31%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,264 (15.25%) Azure
2 976 (11.78%) AWS
3 595 (7.18%) Power Platform
4 387 (4.67%) GCP
5 290 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
6 271 (3.27%) Microsoft 365
7 267 (3.22%) SaaS
8 244 (2.94%) Dynamics 365
9 221 (2.67%) GitHub
10 156 (1.88%) Serverless
11 135 (1.63%) OCI
12 133 (1.60%) Snowflake
13 121 (1.46%) Entra ID
14 113 (1.36%) Amazon S3
15 93 (1.12%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
17 87 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
18 85 (1.03%) Azure Data Factory
19 78 (0.94%) OpenShift
20 74 (0.89%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 159 (1.92%) Firewall
2 102 (1.23%) Network Security
3 83 (1.00%) WAN
4 66 (0.80%) DNS
5 58 (0.70%) VPN
6 50 (0.60%) LAN
7 46 (0.56%) TCP/IP
8 44 (0.53%) SD-WAN
9 34 (0.41%) BGP
10 31 (0.37%) HTTP
11 30 (0.36%) SSL
12 29 (0.35%) OSPF
13 28 (0.34%) Multicast
14 26 (0.31%) Internet
15 25 (0.30%) Wireless
16 23 (0.28%) MPLS
17 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
18 18 (0.22%) DHCP
18 18 (0.22%) Skype
19 16 (0.19%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 521 (6.29%) Power BI
2 217 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
3 206 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 184 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
5 153 (1.85%) Metadata
6 144 (1.74%) Tableau
7 123 (1.48%) Data Lake
7 123 (1.48%) Relational Database
8 100 (1.21%) NoSQL
8 100 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
9 77 (0.93%) Big Data
10 63 (0.76%) Oracle Database
11 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
12 56 (0.68%) MongoDB
13 49 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 44 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
15 42 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
16 39 (0.47%) Power Query
17 38 (0.46%) Delta Lake
17 38 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 680 (8.20%) JIRA
2 223 (2.69%) Jenkins
3 211 (2.55%) Git
4 139 (1.68%) GitLab
5 61 (0.74%) JUnit
6 59 (0.71%) Cucumber
7 44 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
8 42 (0.51%) Selenium
9 33 (0.40%) Postman
10 30 (0.36%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.35%) Visual Studio
12 23 (0.28%) MLflow
13 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
14 20 (0.24%) Maven
15 17 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
15 17 (0.21%) SonarQube
16 16 (0.19%) ERwin
16 16 (0.19%) Zephyr
17 13 (0.16%) Gradle
17 13 (0.16%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,626 (31.68%) Social Skills
2 1,590 (19.18%) Banking
3 1,106 (13.34%) Analytical Skills
4 629 (7.59%) Public Sector
5 347 (4.19%) Financial Institution
6 320 (3.86%) Legal
7 282 (3.40%) Front Office
8 280 (3.38%) Investment Banking
9 248 (2.99%) Marketing
10 245 (2.96%) Manufacturing
11 243 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
12 241 (2.91%) Organisational Skills
13 228 (2.75%) Telecoms
14 205 (2.47%) Retail
15 189 (2.28%) Influencing Skills
16 139 (1.68%) General Ledger
17 124 (1.50%) Law
17 124 (1.50%) Local Government
18 122 (1.47%) Electronics
19 121 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,278 (15.42%) Analyst
2 845 (10.20%) Developer
3 843 (10.17%) Senior
4 782 (9.44%) Lead
5 742 (8.95%) Architect
6 684 (8.25%) Business Analyst
7 666 (8.04%) Project Manager
8 616 (7.43%) Consultant
9 291 (3.51%) Solutions Architect
10 231 (2.79%) Data Engineer
11 189 (2.28%) Financial Analyst
12 187 (2.26%) Senior Manager
13 184 (2.22%) Data Analyst
14 181 (2.18%) Finance Manager
15 175 (2.11%) Programme Manager
16 142 (1.71%) Java Developer
17 140 (1.69%) Delivery Manager
18 136 (1.64%) Accountant
19 132 (1.59%) Senior Analyst
19 132 (1.59%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (3.26%) REST
2 267 (3.22%) Kafka
3 205 (2.47%) .NET
4 194 (2.34%) React
5 157 (1.89%) Oracle Fusion
6 156 (1.88%) Middleware
7 142 (1.71%) Spring
8 137 (1.65%) RESTful
9 125 (1.51%) Spring Boot
10 115 (1.39%) Node.js
11 101 (1.22%) AngularJS
12 95 (1.15%) PySpark
13 83 (1.00%) XML
14 76 (0.92%) JSON
14 76 (0.92%) OAuth
15 75 (0.90%) HTML
16 71 (0.86%) CSS
16 71 (0.86%) Redux
17 67 (0.81%) Pandas
18 65 (0.78%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 352 (4.25%) Onboarding
2 309 (3.73%) Product Ownership
3 262 (3.16%) Cloud Native
4 202 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
5 184 (2.22%) Management Information System
6 164 (1.98%) Derivative
7 153 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
8 151 (1.82%) Data Structures
8 151 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
9 149 (1.80%) Data Centre
10 146 (1.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 141 (1.70%) Fixed Income
12 119 (1.44%) Equities
13 109 (1.32%) Public Cloud
14 102 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
15 100 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
16 94 (1.13%) Virtual Team
17 86 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
18 65 (0.78%) Hedge funds
19 62 (0.75%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 303 (3.66%) Linux
2 271 (3.27%) Windows
3 137 (1.65%) Unix
4 65 (0.78%) Windows Server
5 54 (0.65%) Windows 10
6 42 (0.51%) Android
7 35 (0.42%) Mac OS
8 25 (0.30%) Apple iOS
9 20 (0.24%) zOS
10 17 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.13%) AIX
12 9 (0.11%) Solaris
13 7 (0.084%) VMS
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.060%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.036%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Oracle Linux
16 1 (0.012%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,757 (21.20%) Agile
2 1,614 (19.47%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,236 (14.91%) Problem-Solving
4 1,097 (13.24%) Migration
5 935 (11.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 911 (10.99%) DevOps
7 876 (10.57%) Continuous Improvement
8 820 (9.89%) ERP
9 814 (9.82%) CI/CD
10 812 (9.80%) Analytics
11 792 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
11 792 (9.56%) Project Management
12 712 (8.59%) AI
13 656 (7.92%) Decision-Making
14 639 (7.71%) Data Modelling
15 630 (7.60%) Roadmaps
16 596 (7.19%) Validation
17 594 (7.17%) Change Management
18 588 (7.09%) User Acceptance Testing
19 577 (6.96%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,163 (14.03%) SQL
2 999 (12.05%) Python
3 548 (6.61%) Java
4 300 (3.62%) C#
5 228 (2.75%) JavaScript
6 189 (2.28%) TypeScript
7 168 (2.03%) PowerShell
8 114 (1.38%) C++
9 81 (0.98%) Go
10 69 (0.83%) Bash
11 68 (0.82%) PL/SQL
12 57 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 55 (0.66%) VBA
14 48 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.47%) Scala
17 37 (0.45%) R
18 30 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.34%) Bicep
20 25 (0.30%) Rust
Qualifications
1 781 (9.42%) Degree
2 709 (8.55%) Security Cleared
3 503 (6.07%) SC Cleared
4 202 (2.44%) PMI Certification
5 201 (2.43%) PMP
6 181 (2.18%) ACCA
7 170 (2.05%) CIMA
8 165 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
9 149 (1.80%) Master's Degree
10 143 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
11 119 (1.44%) CISSP
12 84 (1.01%) CISM
12 84 (1.01%) DV Cleared
13 70 (0.84%) Azure Certification
14 63 (0.76%) AWS Certification
15 43 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
16 37 (0.45%) ISTQB
16 37 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
17 34 (0.41%) Microsoft Certification
18 29 (0.35%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (5.42%) Data Quality
2 402 (4.85%) QA
3 345 (4.16%) PMO
4 295 (3.56%) GDPR
5 149 (1.80%) NIST
6 128 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (1.33%) SLA
8 104 (1.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 91 (1.10%) IFRS
10 77 (0.93%) Accessibility
11 75 (0.90%) PCI DSS
12 71 (0.86%) GRC
13 59 (0.71%) ISO 20022
14 47 (0.57%) GAAP
15 40 (0.48%) PSD2
16 37 (0.45%) SEPA
17 36 (0.43%) NCSC
18 35 (0.42%) MiFID
19 28 (0.34%) Basel III
20 26 (0.31%) COBIT
System Software
1 312 (3.76%) Docker
2 150 (1.81%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.40%) vSphere
5 24 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 15 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.14%) NFS
8 11 (0.13%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.097%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.060%) HDFS
13 4 (0.048%) Firmware
13 4 (0.048%) ISA Server
13 4 (0.048%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.036%) GridGain
14 3 (0.036%) KVM
14 3 (0.036%) RACF
14 3 (0.036%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 402 (4.85%) Kubernetes
2 260 (3.14%) Terraform
3 139 (1.68%) Ansible
4 95 (1.15%) Grafana
5 83 (1.00%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
7 51 (0.62%) SCCM
8 35 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.24%) vRealize
11 19 (0.23%) Progress Chef
12 15 (0.18%) Argo
12 15 (0.18%) Control-M
13 14 (0.17%) Puppet
13 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.16%) HP ALM
15 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.14%) CASB
16 11 (0.13%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,095 (13.21%) Microsoft
2 798 (9.63%) SAP
3 703 (8.48%) Oracle
4 320 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 203 (2.45%) Databricks
6 196 (2.36%) Salesforce
7 179 (2.16%) Google
8 150 (1.81%) Cisco
9 142 (1.71%) Workday
10 131 (1.58%) Splunk
11 111 (1.34%) VMware
12 99 (1.19%) IBM
13 75 (0.90%) Citrix
14 74 (0.89%) Ariba
14 74 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 66 (0.80%) Sage
16 59 (0.71%) Informatica
17 52 (0.63%) Bloomberg
17 52 (0.63%) OpenAI
18 48 (0.58%) Palo Alto