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 16 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,932 7,386 7,673
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.30% 22.42% 20.06%
As % of the General category 32.86% 35.26% 34.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,053 4,824 4,886
10th Percentile £359 £333 £363
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £535 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.80% -6.96% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £494 £515
% change year-on-year +3.09% -4.13% -1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 133 147
10th Percentile £15.02 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.15 £21.00 £23.21
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.27 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.19% -11.30% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £60.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.75 £70.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.68 £33.00
% change year-on-year +71.18% -22.18% +24.53%

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 30,223 20,950 22,148
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.69% 63.60% 57.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,737 12,987 13,281
10th Percentile £313 £275 £283
25th Percentile £419 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,489 1,199 1,107
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.70
25th Percentile £16.38 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -30.14% +30.91%
75th Percentile £55.00 £48.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.50 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.22 £21.39 £35.36
% change year-on-year +41.28% -39.51% +34.70%

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 16 September 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 8,545 £550 - 22,545
London 0 5,172 £588 +0.13% 14,726
UK excluding London 0 3,896 £509 +3.09% 10,068
Work from Home -1 2,818 £550 -2.22% 9,435
North of England 0 1,338 £513 +11.41% 2,439
South East -2 734 £500 -2.82% 2,382
North West -1 661 £500 +11.11% 1,434
Midlands -1 606 £500 +6.61% 1,264
Yorkshire 0 595 £519 +6.14% 752
Scotland 0 545 £465 -4.91% 1,380
West Midlands -1 452 £515 +2.90% 810
South West -7 356 £525 -8.70% 1,140
East of England +3 214 £553 +0.45% 769
East Midlands -4 151 £500 +19.76% 454
North East -6 75 £500 +14.29% 284
Northern Ireland -1 67 £510 +2.00% 553
Wales +1 61 £525 +13.51% 241
Channel Islands +1 7 £550 - 16

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
1 329 (3.31%) Confluence
2 258 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 93 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 81 (0.82%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.72%) Apache
6 48 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.35%) CMS
8 28 (0.28%) SAS
9 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.19%) IIS
11 17 (0.17%) Camunda
12 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.12%) CICS
14 10 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.060%) WebLogic
17 5 (0.050%) Appian
17 5 (0.050%) JBoss
17 5 (0.050%) WordPress
Applications
1 530 (5.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 223 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 194 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 145 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
5 85 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 67 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.070%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.040%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.040%) Sketch
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Notion
11 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
12 2 (0.020%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 445 (4.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 126 (1.27%) Oracle Payables
3 106 (1.07%) NetSuite
4 104 (1.05%) Oracle Receivables
5 92 (0.93%) Oracle ERP
6 75 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
7 74 (0.75%) Oracle General Ledger
8 72 (0.72%) SAP FI
9 66 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
10 54 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 53 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 49 (0.49%) SAP CO
13 44 (0.44%) SAP FI/CO
14 38 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
15 36 (0.36%) Workday HCM
16 35 (0.35%) SAP GRC
16 35 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
17 34 (0.34%) Aladdin
18 26 (0.26%) SAP BRIM
19 25 (0.25%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,547 (15.58%) Azure
2 1,084 (10.91%) AWS
3 676 (6.81%) Power Platform
4 549 (5.53%) GCP
5 340 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
6 329 (3.31%) SaaS
7 318 (3.20%) GitHub
8 311 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
9 272 (2.74%) Dynamics 365
10 219 (2.20%) Entra ID
10 219 (2.20%) Snowflake
11 159 (1.60%) Serverless
12 144 (1.45%) OCI
13 129 (1.30%) Amazon S3
13 129 (1.30%) GitHub Actions
13 129 (1.30%) Power Automate
14 125 (1.26%) dbt
15 121 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
16 112 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
17 106 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 171 (1.72%) Firewall
2 148 (1.49%) Network Security
3 103 (1.04%) VPN
4 87 (0.88%) DNS
5 62 (0.62%) TCP/IP
6 55 (0.55%) WAN
7 49 (0.49%) DHCP
8 44 (0.44%) BGP
8 44 (0.44%) SSL
9 36 (0.36%) HTTP
10 35 (0.35%) VLAN
11 34 (0.34%) Multicast
12 31 (0.31%) LAN
13 30 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
13 30 (0.30%) Wireless
14 25 (0.25%) OSPF
14 25 (0.25%) SAN
15 24 (0.24%) Internet
16 18 (0.18%) Broadband
17 16 (0.16%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 543 (5.47%) Power BI
2 292 (2.94%) SQL Server
3 254 (2.56%) Data Warehouse
4 205 (2.06%) Metadata
5 181 (1.82%) Relational Database
6 141 (1.42%) Data Lake
7 136 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
8 123 (1.24%) Tableau
9 84 (0.85%) NoSQL
10 83 (0.84%) BigQuery
11 80 (0.81%) Oracle Database
12 76 (0.77%) MongoDB
13 74 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
14 56 (0.56%) Power Query
14 56 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (0.53%) Delta Lake
16 51 (0.51%) Big Data
17 46 (0.46%) Db2
18 44 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 43 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 656 (6.60%) JIRA
2 314 (3.16%) Git
3 177 (1.78%) Jenkins
4 107 (1.08%) GitLab
5 58 (0.58%) Selenium
6 47 (0.47%) JUnit
7 38 (0.38%) Maven
8 36 (0.36%) Claude Code
9 35 (0.35%) Bitbucket
9 35 (0.35%) SonarQube
10 31 (0.31%) Visual Studio
11 30 (0.30%) Gradle
11 30 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
12 29 (0.29%) ERwin
13 28 (0.28%) Cucumber
13 28 (0.28%) REST Assured
14 23 (0.23%) Cypress.io
15 22 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
16 20 (0.20%) Postman
16 20 (0.20%) Zephyr
General
1 3,089 (31.10%) Social Skills
2 2,033 (20.47%) Banking
3 1,404 (14.14%) Analytical Skills
4 546 (5.50%) Legal
5 531 (5.35%) Public Sector
6 443 (4.46%) Organisational Skills
7 393 (3.96%) Investment Banking
8 384 (3.87%) Retail
9 341 (3.43%) Front Office
9 341 (3.43%) Influencing Skills
10 314 (3.16%) Financial Institution
11 214 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
12 208 (2.09%) Manufacturing
13 196 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 174 (1.75%) General Ledger
15 173 (1.74%) Marketing
16 168 (1.69%) Billing
17 159 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
18 150 (1.51%) Local Government
19 141 (1.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,434 (14.44%) Analyst
2 1,080 (10.87%) Senior
3 991 (9.98%) Lead
4 984 (9.91%) Developer
5 878 (8.84%) Architect
6 737 (7.42%) Business Analyst
7 708 (7.13%) Consultant
8 687 (6.92%) Project Manager
9 338 (3.40%) Solutions Architect
10 304 (3.06%) Data Engineer
11 262 (2.64%) Financial Analyst
12 221 (2.23%) Senior Manager
13 213 (2.14%) Java Developer
14 204 (2.05%) Data Analyst
15 200 (2.01%) Senior Developer
16 192 (1.93%) Programme Manager
17 181 (1.82%) IT Manager
18 174 (1.75%) Accountant
18 174 (1.75%) Finance Manager
19 154 (1.55%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 395 (3.98%) Terraform
2 387 (3.90%) REST
3 270 (2.72%) .NET
4 266 (2.68%) Kafka
5 261 (2.63%) Oracle Fusion
6 236 (2.38%) React
7 197 (1.98%) Spring
8 191 (1.92%) Spring Boot
9 187 (1.88%) Middleware
10 146 (1.47%) PySpark
11 139 (1.40%) RESTful
12 104 (1.05%) OAuth
12 104 (1.05%) XML
13 103 (1.04%) JSON
14 92 (0.93%) SOAP
15 81 (0.82%) Redux
16 80 (0.81%) AngularJS
17 79 (0.80%) Web Services
18 76 (0.77%) Node.js
19 70 (0.70%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 517 (5.21%) Onboarding
2 510 (5.13%) Product Ownership
3 450 (4.53%) Cloud Native
4 251 (2.53%) Management Information System
5 249 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
6 237 (2.39%) Data Structures
7 230 (2.32%) Virtual Team
8 202 (2.03%) Distributed Systems
9 201 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
10 199 (2.00%) AI Agents
11 189 (1.90%) Derivative
12 162 (1.63%) Data Centre
13 158 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 151 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
15 132 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
16 125 (1.26%) Fixed Income
17 115 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
18 114 (1.15%) Podcast
19 113 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
20 112 (1.13%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 378 (3.81%) Windows
2 321 (3.23%) Linux
3 168 (1.69%) Unix
4 89 (0.90%) Windows Server
5 57 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.49%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 39 (0.39%) Android
9 37 (0.37%) zOS
10 34 (0.34%) Solaris
11 30 (0.30%) Mac OS
12 14 (0.14%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.060%) HPUX
16 6 (0.060%) SUSE
17 4 (0.040%) CentOS
17 4 (0.040%) MVS
17 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,636 (26.54%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,034 (20.48%) Agile
3 1,338 (13.47%) Migration
4 1,317 (13.26%) Problem-Solving
5 1,293 (13.02%) AI
6 1,154 (11.62%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,143 (11.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,134 (11.42%) CI/CD
9 1,025 (10.32%) Analytics
10 995 (10.02%) DevOps
11 990 (9.97%) ERP
12 921 (9.27%) Decision-Making
13 862 (8.68%) Validation
14 855 (8.61%) Roadmaps
15 776 (7.81%) Data Modelling
16 772 (7.77%) Project Management
17 756 (7.61%) User Acceptance Testing
18 737 (7.42%) Change Management
19 701 (7.06%) Risk Management
20 665 (6.70%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,349 (13.58%) SQL
2 1,257 (12.66%) Python
3 656 (6.60%) Java
4 361 (3.63%) C#
5 282 (2.84%) PowerShell
6 248 (2.50%) JavaScript
7 214 (2.15%) TypeScript
8 151 (1.52%) Bash
9 113 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 96 (0.97%) Shell Script
11 80 (0.81%) C++
12 69 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 64 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 62 (0.62%) Go
15 57 (0.57%) Bicep
16 50 (0.50%) Korn
17 42 (0.42%) Scala
18 37 (0.37%) VBA
19 36 (0.36%) Apex Code
20 35 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 777 (7.82%) Security Cleared
2 735 (7.40%) Degree
3 559 (5.63%) SC Cleared
4 253 (2.55%) PMP
5 251 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
6 224 (2.26%) PMI Certification
7 190 (1.91%) ACCA
8 165 (1.66%) CIMA
9 140 (1.41%) DV Cleared
10 134 (1.35%) CISSP
10 134 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 112 (1.13%) Azure Certification
12 86 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
13 75 (0.76%) CISM
14 73 (0.73%) AWS Certification
14 73 (0.73%) Master's Degree
15 53 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
16 49 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 43 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 36 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 693 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 432 (4.35%) QA
3 354 (3.56%) PMO
4 217 (2.18%) GDPR
5 135 (1.36%) NIST
6 122 (1.23%) GRC
7 117 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 104 (1.05%) Accessibility
9 94 (0.95%) IFRS
9 94 (0.95%) SLA
10 79 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 68 (0.68%) ISO 20022
12 47 (0.47%) GAAP
13 41 (0.41%) PCI DSS
14 38 (0.38%) SEPA
15 34 (0.34%) Solvency II
16 29 (0.29%) MiFID
17 28 (0.28%) COBIT
17 28 (0.28%) EMIR
18 24 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 278 (2.80%) Docker
2 234 (2.36%) Active Directory
3 89 (0.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.27%) RACF
5 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
6 19 (0.19%) vSphere
7 15 (0.15%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.12%) NFS
10 9 (0.091%) IAG
11 6 (0.060%) ACF2
11 6 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.050%) GPFS
12 5 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.050%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.040%) zsh
14 3 (0.030%) GridGain
14 3 (0.030%) KVM
Systems Management
1 494 (4.97%) Kubernetes
2 183 (1.84%) Ansible
3 100 (1.01%) Grafana
4 79 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
5 70 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 62 (0.62%) SCCM
7 60 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
8 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.27%) Control-M
10 19 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.18%) Argo
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 13 (0.13%) FortiGate
12 13 (0.13%) Istio
12 13 (0.13%) Puppet
13 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
14 10 (0.10%) Packer
14 10 (0.10%) vRealize
15 9 (0.091%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,420 (14.30%) Microsoft
2 889 (8.95%) Oracle
3 866 (8.72%) SAP
4 373 (3.76%) ServiceNow
5 362 (3.64%) Databricks
6 240 (2.42%) Salesforce
7 233 (2.35%) Google
8 189 (1.90%) IBM
9 143 (1.44%) VMware
10 134 (1.35%) Workday
11 125 (1.26%) Cisco
12 118 (1.19%) Splunk
13 104 (1.05%) Ariba
14 88 (0.89%) OpenAI
15 86 (0.87%) CyberArk
16 57 (0.57%) Citrix
17 56 (0.56%) Bloomberg
18 52 (0.52%) Sage
19 51 (0.51%) Murex
20 47 (0.47%) Red Hat