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 5 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,875 6,457 8,055
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.07% 22.32% 18.77%
As % of the General category 33.53% 35.23% 32.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,535 4,206 5,391
10th Percentile £355 £350 £350
25th Percentile £440 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £715
90th Percentile £800 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 201 116 260
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.80 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.00 £23.89 £15.13
Median hourly rate £29.50 £40.25 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.71% +49.07% +0.58%
75th Percentile £54.23 £65.06 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.48 £57.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.38 £36.00 £29.41
% change year-on-year -10.07% +22.40% -39.04%

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 26,471 18,328 24,630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.90% 63.34% 57.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,017 11,568 15,462
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.36% -2.73% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,759 831 1,979
10th Percentile £13.72 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.73 £16.94 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.75 £27.94 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +10.06% -7.36% -7.20%
75th Percentile £60.35 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.27 £24.42 £28.50
% change year-on-year +23.96% -14.32% +1.21%

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 5 June 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 5 June 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 5 June 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 7,845 £550 -4.35% 5,529
London 0 4,731 £575 -6.12% 3,121
UK excluding London 0 3,552 £500 +2.04% 3,122
Work from Home -2 2,503 £540 -6.09% 2,517
North of England +3 1,223 £492 +5.47% 845
South East -1 650 £500 -4.31% 910
North West +5 645 £465 +3.33% 488
Midlands -1 600 £500 +6.61% 466
Yorkshire +2 535 £525 +9.95% 283
Scotland 0 438 £500 +4.82% 180
West Midlands 0 416 £500 - 290
South West -2 368 £525 - 343
East of England +2 193 £520 -9.57% 231
East Midlands 0 179 £468 +5.87% 176
Wales +8 82 £483 +18.77% 82
Northern Ireland -1 48 £513 +20.59% 110
North East -15 44 £488 +11.11% 82
Channel Islands - 3 £450 -

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
1 314 (3.54%) Confluence
2 213 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 81 (0.91%) Apache Spark
4 61 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
5 53 (0.60%) Apache
6 50 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
7 31 (0.35%) SAS
8 26 (0.29%) CMS
9 19 (0.21%) CICS
9 19 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.18%) IIS
11 13 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 13 (0.15%) Appian
11 13 (0.15%) Camunda
12 10 (0.11%) Ethereum
12 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.090%) HCL Notes
13 8 (0.090%) Mendix
14 7 (0.079%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 503 (5.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 213 (2.40%) Microsoft Office
3 170 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 159 (1.79%) Microsoft Project
5 119 (1.34%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.090%) Sketch
9 6 (0.068%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.068%) Adobe XD
9 6 (0.068%) InVision
9 6 (0.068%) Trello
10 4 (0.045%) Notion
10 4 (0.045%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.011%) UXPin
12 1 (0.011%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 394 (4.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 108 (1.22%) Oracle Payables
3 106 (1.19%) NetSuite
4 89 (1.00%) Oracle Receivables
5 83 (0.94%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 71 (0.80%) Oracle ERP
7 58 (0.65%) SAP FI
8 53 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
9 47 (0.53%) SAP CO
10 46 (0.52%) Oracle General Ledger
11 44 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
11 44 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
12 36 (0.41%) Aladdin
13 34 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
14 32 (0.36%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 29 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
16 25 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
16 25 (0.28%) SAP ERP
17 23 (0.26%) Unit4 Business World
18 22 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,384 (15.59%) Azure
2 993 (11.19%) AWS
3 606 (6.83%) Power Platform
4 423 (4.77%) GCP
5 301 (3.39%) Azure DevOps
6 294 (3.31%) SaaS
7 277 (3.12%) Microsoft 365
8 235 (2.65%) GitHub
9 218 (2.46%) Dynamics 365
10 172 (1.94%) Snowflake
11 154 (1.74%) Entra ID
12 136 (1.53%) Serverless
13 124 (1.40%) OCI
14 110 (1.24%) Power Automate
15 109 (1.23%) Amazon S3
16 96 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
17 92 (1.04%) OpenShift
18 87 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
19 82 (0.92%) dbt
20 81 (0.91%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 170 (1.92%) Firewall
2 128 (1.44%) Network Security
3 76 (0.86%) WAN
4 75 (0.85%) DNS
5 67 (0.75%) VPN
6 60 (0.68%) TCP/IP
7 41 (0.46%) BGP
8 37 (0.42%) SD-WAN
9 36 (0.41%) LAN
10 35 (0.39%) SSL
11 34 (0.38%) HTTP
12 29 (0.33%) Multicast
12 29 (0.33%) OSPF
13 28 (0.32%) DHCP
14 25 (0.28%) MPLS
15 21 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
16 20 (0.23%) Internet
17 19 (0.21%) VSAN
18 18 (0.20%) VLAN
19 16 (0.18%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 514 (5.79%) Power BI
2 235 (2.65%) SQL Server
3 223 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
4 174 (1.96%) Metadata
5 163 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
6 162 (1.83%) Relational Database
7 146 (1.65%) Tableau
8 127 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 93 (1.05%) NoSQL
10 79 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
11 73 (0.82%) Big Data
12 70 (0.79%) Oracle Database
13 62 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 60 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 53 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
16 48 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 46 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
18 42 (0.47%) Power Query
19 41 (0.46%) Delta Lake
20 35 (0.39%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 667 (7.52%) JIRA
2 211 (2.38%) Git
3 158 (1.78%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.09%) GitLab
5 50 (0.56%) JUnit
6 46 (0.52%) Cucumber
7 36 (0.41%) Selenium
8 30 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
9 29 (0.33%) Postman
9 29 (0.33%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.28%) MLflow
10 25 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
11 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
12 19 (0.21%) ERwin
13 18 (0.20%) Maven
14 16 (0.18%) Hudson
14 16 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
15 15 (0.17%) Bitbucket
15 15 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,592 (29.21%) Social Skills
2 1,631 (18.38%) Banking
3 1,160 (13.07%) Analytical Skills
4 502 (5.66%) Public Sector
5 406 (4.57%) Legal
6 338 (3.81%) Investment Banking
7 336 (3.79%) Financial Institution
8 306 (3.45%) Front Office
9 275 (3.10%) Retail
10 264 (2.97%) Organisational Skills
11 230 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
12 218 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
13 166 (1.87%) Manufacturing
14 145 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 141 (1.59%) General Ledger
16 138 (1.55%) Marketing
17 135 (1.52%) Law
18 134 (1.51%) Local Government
19 128 (1.44%) Billing
20 122 (1.37%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,336 (15.05%) Analyst
2 964 (10.86%) Senior
3 917 (10.33%) Lead
4 889 (10.02%) Developer
5 806 (9.08%) Architect
6 705 (7.94%) Business Analyst
7 694 (7.82%) Project Manager
8 589 (6.64%) Consultant
9 336 (3.79%) Solutions Architect
10 292 (3.29%) Data Engineer
11 216 (2.43%) Senior Manager
12 214 (2.41%) Financial Analyst
13 189 (2.13%) Finance Manager
14 187 (2.11%) Data Analyst
15 178 (2.01%) Accountant
16 173 (1.95%) Programme Manager
17 165 (1.86%) Java Developer
18 163 (1.84%) Software Engineer
19 161 (1.81%) Senior Developer
20 148 (1.67%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (2.99%) REST
2 253 (2.85%) .NET
3 247 (2.78%) Kafka
4 229 (2.58%) React
5 186 (2.10%) Middleware
6 181 (2.04%) Oracle Fusion
7 155 (1.75%) Spring
8 151 (1.70%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.53%) RESTful
10 104 (1.17%) PySpark
11 102 (1.15%) Node.js
12 95 (1.07%) AngularJS
13 92 (1.04%) Redux
14 83 (0.94%) OAuth
15 79 (0.89%) JSON
16 73 (0.82%) XML
17 68 (0.77%) CSS
18 65 (0.73%) HTML
19 62 (0.70%) OpenID
20 59 (0.66%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 390 (4.39%) Onboarding
2 371 (4.18%) Product Ownership
3 355 (4.00%) Cloud Native
4 243 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
5 203 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 185 (2.08%) Data Structures
7 166 (1.87%) Derivative
8 165 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
9 157 (1.77%) Data Centre
10 151 (1.70%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 145 (1.63%) Fixed Income
12 140 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
13 112 (1.26%) Equities
14 109 (1.23%) Virtual Team
15 108 (1.22%) Public Cloud
16 107 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
17 99 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
18 94 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
19 88 (0.99%) AI Agents
20 74 (0.83%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 300 (3.38%) Windows
2 267 (3.01%) Linux
3 145 (1.63%) Unix
4 70 (0.79%) Windows Server
5 42 (0.47%) Windows 10
6 37 (0.42%) Solaris
7 32 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 31 (0.35%) Apple iOS
8 31 (0.35%) zOS
9 27 (0.30%) Android
10 18 (0.20%) AIX
10 18 (0.20%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.079%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.068%) Oracle Linux
12 6 (0.068%) VMS
12 6 (0.068%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.045%) HPUX
13 4 (0.045%) MVS
13 4 (0.045%) SUSE
14 3 (0.034%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,808 (20.37%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,807 (20.36%) Agile
3 1,227 (13.83%) Migration
4 1,203 (13.55%) Problem-Solving
5 983 (11.08%) Continuous Improvement
6 962 (10.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 936 (10.55%) ERP
8 931 (10.49%) DevOps
9 900 (10.14%) CI/CD
10 895 (10.08%) AI
11 846 (9.53%) Analytics
12 775 (8.73%) Project Management
13 740 (8.34%) Decision-Making
14 737 (8.30%) Data Modelling
15 718 (8.09%) Validation
16 705 (7.94%) Roadmaps
17 683 (7.70%) User Acceptance Testing
18 672 (7.57%) Business Intelligence
19 625 (7.04%) Change Management
20 571 (6.43%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,214 (13.68%) SQL
2 1,078 (12.15%) Python
3 596 (6.72%) Java
4 363 (4.09%) C#
5 236 (2.66%) JavaScript
6 218 (2.46%) TypeScript
7 191 (2.15%) PowerShell
8 106 (1.19%) C++
9 81 (0.91%) Bash
10 75 (0.85%) Go
11 72 (0.81%) PL/SQL
12 65 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 56 (0.63%) Shell Script
14 52 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 43 (0.48%) Scala
16 39 (0.44%) VBA
17 28 (0.32%) Apex Code
17 28 (0.32%) R
17 28 (0.32%) Rust
18 27 (0.30%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 739 (8.33%) Degree
2 671 (7.56%) Security Cleared
3 481 (5.42%) SC Cleared
4 225 (2.54%) ACCA
5 210 (2.37%) PMP
6 205 (2.31%) CIMA
7 185 (2.08%) PMI Certification
8 156 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
9 142 (1.60%) CISSP
10 132 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
11 89 (1.00%) CISM
12 88 (0.99%) Master's Degree
13 78 (0.88%) DV Cleared
14 72 (0.81%) Azure Certification
15 66 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
16 46 (0.52%) AWS Certification
17 41 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
18 36 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 32 (0.36%) ISTQB
20 31 (0.35%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 536 (6.04%) Data Quality
2 406 (4.57%) QA
3 313 (3.53%) PMO
4 287 (3.23%) GDPR
5 162 (1.83%) NIST
6 132 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 113 (1.27%) IFRS
8 108 (1.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 106 (1.19%) SLA
10 101 (1.14%) GRC
11 85 (0.96%) Accessibility
12 67 (0.75%) PCI DSS
13 60 (0.68%) GAAP
13 60 (0.68%) ISO 20022
14 36 (0.41%) SEPA
15 35 (0.39%) NCSC
16 34 (0.38%) PSD2
17 29 (0.33%) IFRS 17
18 27 (0.30%) EMIR
18 27 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 283 (3.19%) Docker
2 165 (1.86%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (0.32%) vSphere
5 25 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
7 15 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.16%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.14%) RACF
10 11 (0.12%) Hyper-V
11 10 (0.11%) NFS
12 6 (0.068%) GPFS
12 6 (0.068%) KVM
13 5 (0.056%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.045%) Firmware
14 4 (0.045%) Oracle RAC
15 3 (0.034%) GridGain
15 3 (0.034%) HDFS
15 3 (0.034%) SRDF
16 2 (0.023%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 410 (4.62%) Kubernetes
2 259 (2.92%) Terraform
3 137 (1.54%) Ansible
4 91 (1.03%) Grafana
5 76 (0.86%) Prometheus
6 64 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
7 46 (0.52%) SCCM
8 40 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.35%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.24%) Control-M
11 17 (0.19%) vRealize
12 15 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 15 (0.17%) Progress Chef
13 14 (0.16%) Argo
13 14 (0.16%) Nessus
13 14 (0.16%) Puppet
14 13 (0.15%) AirWatch
14 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
15 11 (0.12%) CASB
16 9 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,129 (12.72%) Microsoft
2 773 (8.71%) SAP
3 738 (8.32%) Oracle
4 301 (3.39%) ServiceNow
5 259 (2.92%) Databricks
6 195 (2.20%) Salesforce
7 192 (2.16%) Google
8 125 (1.41%) Workday
9 119 (1.34%) Cisco
10 114 (1.28%) Splunk
11 106 (1.19%) VMware
12 100 (1.13%) IBM
13 84 (0.95%) CyberArk
14 82 (0.92%) Ariba
15 66 (0.74%) Sage
16 65 (0.73%) Citrix
17 61 (0.69%) OpenAI
18 51 (0.57%) Bloomberg
18 51 (0.57%) Palo Alto
19 49 (0.55%) Murex