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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,092 6,365 8,345
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.74% 21.68% 18.76%
As % of the General category 32.89% 34.56% 32.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,133 4,174 5,616
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £450 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £660 £700 £700
90th Percentile £788 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £508
% change year-on-year - -1.57% -3.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 205 103 224
10th Percentile £14.50 £18.26 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.69 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.75 £36.00 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year -34.03% +32.11% -10.66%
75th Percentile £42.38 £73.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £72.50 £82.56 £55.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £52.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -58.10% +75.00% -14.29%

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 24,606 18,417 25,991
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.99% 62.72% 58.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,367 11,703 16,637
10th Percentile £300 £296 £263
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,508 665 1,809
10th Percentile £13.67 £15.23 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.38
Median hourly rate £24.55 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.17% +15.38% -25.71%
75th Percentile £56.97 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £75.85 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £27.70 £25.00
% change year-on-year -16.97% +10.80% -16.67%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 7,156 £537 -10.50% 4,127
London 0 4,327 £575 -8.00% 1,942
UK excluding London 0 3,210 £500 - 2,942
Work from Home -2 2,265 £550 -8.33% 1,700
North of England +4 1,043 £475 -0.21% 711
South East -2 606 £500 -9.09% 1,035
Midlands -2 583 £475 -5.00% 426
North West +6 546 £450 -3.23% 380
Yorkshire 0 450 £500 - 262
West Midlands +1 383 £500 -4.76% 249
Scotland 0 364 £475 - 173
South West -2 329 £525 +4.90% 296
East Midlands 0 195 £450 +5.88% 177
East of England -1 192 £518 -5.91% 246
Wales +26 106 £413 +6.45% 76
North East -9 47 £488 +3.72% 83
Northern Ireland -1 45 £525 +61.54% 46
Channel Islands +5 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
1 331 (4.09%) Confluence
2 207 (2.56%) SharePoint
3 83 (1.03%) Apache Spark
4 58 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
5 50 (0.62%) Apache
6 45 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 31 (0.38%) SAS
8 24 (0.30%) CMS
9 18 (0.22%) Appian
10 17 (0.21%) Ethereum
11 16 (0.20%) CICS
12 14 (0.17%) Hyperledger
12 14 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 13 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 13 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.15%) Camunda
14 12 (0.15%) TPMS
15 11 (0.14%) Mendix
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.099%) IIS
Applications
1 528 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 271 (3.35%) Microsoft Office
3 188 (2.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 181 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
5 137 (1.69%) MS Visio
6 46 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 38 (0.47%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.20%) Trello
9 13 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.11%) Sketch
11 8 (0.099%) InVision
12 6 (0.074%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.062%) Notion
13 5 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
13 5 (0.062%) Photoshop
14 4 (0.049%) Adobe Captivate
14 4 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
15 2 (0.025%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.025%) InDesign
15 2 (0.025%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 336 (4.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 114 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
3 100 (1.24%) Oracle Receivables
4 75 (0.93%) NetSuite
4 75 (0.93%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 70 (0.87%) Oracle EBS
6 66 (0.82%) SAP FI
7 64 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
8 56 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
9 54 (0.67%) SAP CO
10 49 (0.61%) SAP FI/CO
11 43 (0.53%) Oracle Assets
12 41 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
13 39 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
14 38 (0.47%) Oracle Cash Management
15 33 (0.41%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 33 (0.41%) Workday HCM
16 32 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
17 31 (0.38%) Aladdin
18 22 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 1,232 (15.22%) Azure
2 964 (11.91%) AWS
3 573 (7.08%) Power Platform
4 384 (4.75%) GCP
5 277 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
6 276 (3.41%) Microsoft 365
7 263 (3.25%) SaaS
8 236 (2.92%) Dynamics 365
9 216 (2.67%) GitHub
10 156 (1.93%) Serverless
11 141 (1.74%) OCI
12 129 (1.59%) Snowflake
13 120 (1.48%) Entra ID
14 110 (1.36%) Amazon S3
15 95 (1.17%) Power Automate
16 89 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
17 87 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
18 82 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
19 76 (0.94%) OpenShift
20 75 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 160 (1.98%) Firewall
2 106 (1.31%) Network Security
3 84 (1.04%) WAN
4 61 (0.75%) DNS
5 53 (0.65%) LAN
6 51 (0.63%) VPN
7 45 (0.56%) SD-WAN
8 41 (0.51%) TCP/IP
9 34 (0.42%) Wireless
10 31 (0.38%) BGP
11 28 (0.35%) Internet
12 27 (0.33%) OSPF
13 25 (0.31%) HTTP
13 25 (0.31%) Multicast
13 25 (0.31%) SSL
14 23 (0.28%) MPLS
15 19 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
15 19 (0.23%) DHCP
16 18 (0.22%) Skype
17 16 (0.20%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 505 (6.24%) Power BI
2 220 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
3 200 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 191 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
5 147 (1.82%) Metadata
6 146 (1.80%) Tableau
7 118 (1.46%) Data Lake
8 115 (1.42%) Relational Database
9 108 (1.33%) NoSQL
10 89 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
11 74 (0.91%) Big Data
12 67 (0.83%) MongoDB
13 65 (0.80%) Oracle Database
14 63 (0.78%) BigQuery
15 47 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
17 45 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
18 37 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 37 (0.46%) Power Query
19 36 (0.44%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 670 (8.28%) JIRA
2 230 (2.84%) Jenkins
3 214 (2.64%) Git
4 150 (1.85%) GitLab
5 64 (0.79%) JUnit
6 62 (0.77%) Cucumber
7 45 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
8 43 (0.53%) Selenium
9 34 (0.42%) Bitbucket
9 34 (0.42%) Postman
10 31 (0.38%) Visual Studio
11 24 (0.30%) MLflow
12 22 (0.27%) REST Assured
13 21 (0.26%) Gradle
14 18 (0.22%) Maven
15 17 (0.21%) SonarQube
16 16 (0.20%) ERwin
16 16 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
17 15 (0.19%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.19%) TeamCity
General
1 2,650 (32.75%) Social Skills
2 1,557 (19.24%) Banking
3 1,066 (13.17%) Analytical Skills
4 642 (7.93%) Public Sector
5 344 (4.25%) Financial Institution
6 310 (3.83%) Legal
7 288 (3.56%) Front Office
8 276 (3.41%) Investment Banking
9 275 (3.40%) Marketing
10 267 (3.30%) Manufacturing
11 247 (3.05%) Organisational Skills
12 240 (2.97%) Telecoms
13 238 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
14 187 (2.31%) Retail
15 179 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
16 140 (1.73%) Electronics
17 130 (1.61%) General Ledger
18 125 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
19 119 (1.47%) Local Government
20 117 (1.45%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,243 (15.36%) Analyst
2 846 (10.45%) Developer
3 828 (10.23%) Senior
4 732 (9.05%) Lead
5 703 (8.69%) Architect
6 668 (8.26%) Project Manager
7 665 (8.22%) Business Analyst
8 603 (7.45%) Consultant
9 282 (3.48%) Solutions Architect
10 209 (2.58%) Data Engineer
11 190 (2.35%) Data Analyst
12 178 (2.20%) Programme Manager
13 177 (2.19%) Financial Analyst
14 175 (2.16%) Senior Manager
15 158 (1.95%) Finance Manager
16 136 (1.68%) Java Developer
17 130 (1.61%) Delivery Manager
17 130 (1.61%) Senior Analyst
18 129 (1.59%) Senior Developer
19 126 (1.56%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (3.34%) REST
2 264 (3.26%) Kafka
3 205 (2.53%) .NET
4 200 (2.47%) React
5 161 (1.99%) Oracle Fusion
6 148 (1.83%) Middleware
7 140 (1.73%) Spring
8 137 (1.69%) RESTful
9 123 (1.52%) Spring Boot
10 114 (1.41%) Node.js
11 104 (1.29%) AngularJS
12 92 (1.14%) PySpark
13 84 (1.04%) XML
14 80 (0.99%) HTML
15 78 (0.96%) JSON
16 76 (0.94%) CSS
16 76 (0.94%) OAuth
17 73 (0.90%) Pandas
18 69 (0.85%) Redux
19 68 (0.84%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 346 (4.28%) Onboarding
2 311 (3.84%) Product Ownership
3 253 (3.13%) Cloud Native
4 200 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
5 185 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 169 (2.09%) Derivative
7 161 (1.99%) Data Centre
8 147 (1.82%) Fixed Income
9 145 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
10 143 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
11 141 (1.74%) Data Structures
12 140 (1.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 125 (1.54%) Equities
14 106 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
15 105 (1.30%) Public Cloud
16 95 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
17 92 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
18 87 (1.08%) Virtual Team
19 70 (0.87%) Hedge funds
20 63 (0.78%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 302 (3.73%) Linux
2 275 (3.40%) Windows
3 138 (1.71%) Unix
4 64 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 60 (0.74%) Windows 10
6 55 (0.68%) Android
7 43 (0.53%) Mac OS
8 25 (0.31%) Apple iOS
9 17 (0.21%) zOS
10 15 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 11 (0.14%) AIX
12 7 (0.087%) Solaris
12 7 (0.087%) VMS
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.062%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.037%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.012%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.012%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,751 (21.64%) Agile
2 1,582 (19.55%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,232 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
4 1,048 (12.95%) Migration
5 899 (11.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 891 (11.01%) DevOps
7 804 (9.94%) Continuous Improvement
8 802 (9.91%) CI/CD
9 787 (9.73%) Project Management
10 782 (9.66%) Analytics
10 782 (9.66%) Business Intelligence
11 763 (9.43%) ERP
12 652 (8.06%) AI
13 625 (7.72%) Decision-Making
14 617 (7.62%) Data Modelling
15 610 (7.54%) Roadmaps
16 566 (6.99%) Validation
17 563 (6.96%) Project Delivery
18 556 (6.87%) Change Management
19 549 (6.78%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 1,149 (14.20%) SQL
2 1,011 (12.49%) Python
3 546 (6.75%) Java
4 297 (3.67%) C#
5 236 (2.92%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.41%) TypeScript
7 169 (2.09%) PowerShell
8 115 (1.42%) C++
9 80 (0.99%) Go
10 69 (0.85%) Bash
11 65 (0.80%) PL/SQL
12 53 (0.65%) T-SQL
13 52 (0.64%) VBA
14 45 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 41 (0.51%) Scala
16 40 (0.49%) Shell Script
17 37 (0.46%) Kotlin
17 37 (0.46%) R
18 28 (0.35%) Rust
19 26 (0.32%) Korn
Qualifications
1 795 (9.82%) Degree
2 690 (8.53%) Security Cleared
3 489 (6.04%) SC Cleared
4 198 (2.45%) PMI Certification
5 197 (2.43%) PMP
6 171 (2.11%) ACCA
7 168 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
8 161 (1.99%) CIMA
9 159 (1.96%) Master's Degree
10 137 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
11 111 (1.37%) CISSP
12 79 (0.98%) DV Cleared
13 78 (0.96%) CISM
14 71 (0.88%) Azure Certification
15 70 (0.87%) AWS Certification
16 37 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
17 36 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
18 34 (0.42%) ISTQB
18 34 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 427 (5.28%) Data Quality
2 407 (5.03%) QA
3 332 (4.10%) PMO
4 292 (3.61%) GDPR
5 141 (1.74%) NIST
6 122 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 110 (1.36%) SLA
9 86 (1.06%) IFRS
10 79 (0.98%) Accessibility
11 76 (0.94%) PCI DSS
12 68 (0.84%) GRC
13 57 (0.70%) ISO 20022
14 45 (0.56%) GAAP
15 43 (0.53%) PSD2
16 38 (0.47%) SEPA
17 37 (0.46%) MiFID
18 36 (0.44%) NCSC
19 29 (0.36%) COBIT
20 28 (0.35%) Basel III
System Software
1 311 (3.84%) Docker
2 155 (1.92%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.41%) vSphere
5 26 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
6 14 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.14%) GPFS
7 11 (0.14%) NFS
8 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 8 (0.099%) Hyper-V
9 8 (0.099%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.062%) HDFS
11 4 (0.049%) Firmware
11 4 (0.049%) ISA Server
12 3 (0.037%) KVM
12 3 (0.037%) RACF
12 3 (0.037%) SRDF
12 3 (0.037%) Time Sharing Option
13 2 (0.025%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 397 (4.91%) Kubernetes
2 251 (3.10%) Terraform
3 150 (1.85%) Ansible
4 94 (1.16%) Grafana
5 85 (1.05%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.62%) SCCM
8 40 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.23%) vRealize
11 17 (0.21%) Progress Chef
12 16 (0.20%) Argo
13 15 (0.19%) Control-M
14 14 (0.17%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.16%) AirWatch
16 12 (0.15%) HP ALM
17 11 (0.14%) Kibana
17 11 (0.14%) Nessus
17 11 (0.14%) Puppet
18 9 (0.11%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,052 (13.00%) Microsoft
2 800 (9.89%) SAP
3 681 (8.42%) Oracle
4 303 (3.74%) ServiceNow
5 193 (2.39%) Salesforce
6 192 (2.37%) Databricks
7 175 (2.16%) Google
8 156 (1.93%) Cisco
9 141 (1.74%) Workday
10 126 (1.56%) Splunk
11 110 (1.36%) VMware
12 94 (1.16%) IBM
13 72 (0.89%) Ariba
13 72 (0.89%) CyberArk
14 71 (0.88%) Citrix
15 62 (0.77%) Sage
16 57 (0.70%) Informatica
17 54 (0.67%) HP
18 51 (0.63%) Bloomberg
19 50 (0.62%) Dell