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 28 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,534 6,507 8,120
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.17% 22.17% 18.75%
As % of the General category 33.29% 35.09% 32.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,369 4,277 5,405
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £700
90th Percentile £800 £832 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 202 110 246
10th Percentile £14.82 £18.16 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.51 £22.27 £15.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £35.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.89% +31.48% -12.21%
75th Percentile £50.00 £67.13 £38.12
90th Percentile £83.30 £83.20 £55.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £36.00 £32.12
% change year-on-year -38.68% +12.10% -28.63%

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 25,635 18,544 25,217
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.57% 63.17% 58.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,828 11,863 15,921
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £496
% change year-on-year - -4.23% -0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,648 796 1,927
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.67 £18.13 £15.48
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.17 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.96% -2.88% -17.14%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.75
90th Percentile £79.30 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.64 £25.43 £27.51
% change year-on-year +0.81% -7.55% -9.93%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 28 April 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 7,558 £538 -6.52% 4,331
London 0 4,570 £575 -8.00% 2,210
UK excluding London 0 3,395 £500 - 3,253
Work from Home -2 2,390 £537 -10.46% 1,856
North of England +3 1,132 £475 - 759
South East -1 648 £503 -3.83% 1,306
North West +6 615 £465 - 446
Midlands -1 580 £475 -5.00% 407
Yorkshire +1 477 £500 - 231
Scotland 0 403 £500 +2.25% 151
West Midlands 0 387 £492 -6.29% 254
South West -2 342 £510 +2.00% 335
East of England -3 200 £525 -4.55% 211
East Midlands 0 188 £450 +0.67% 148
Wales +24 98 £413 +10.00% 78
Northern Ireland -1 42 £513 +28.13% 77
North East -13 41 £488 +8.33% 93
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 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
1 330 (3.87%) Confluence
2 217 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 88 (1.03%) Apache Spark
4 56 (0.66%) Apache
4 56 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
5 54 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
6 40 (0.47%) SAS
7 24 (0.28%) CMS
8 20 (0.23%) CICS
9 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.19%) Appian
11 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 14 (0.16%) Camunda
11 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
12 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
12 12 (0.14%) IIS
13 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
13 11 (0.13%) Mendix
14 10 (0.12%) TPMS
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 540 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 236 (2.77%) Microsoft Office
3 182 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 174 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
5 127 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 34 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.16%) Trello
9 8 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.094%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.059%) Notion
13 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 363 (4.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 115 (1.35%) Oracle Payables
3 103 (1.21%) Oracle Receivables
4 98 (1.15%) NetSuite
5 84 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 72 (0.84%) Oracle EBS
7 64 (0.75%) SAP FI
8 61 (0.71%) Oracle General Ledger
9 59 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
10 56 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.62%) SAP CO
12 49 (0.57%) SAP FI/CO
13 40 (0.47%) Oracle Assets
14 35 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
15 34 (0.40%) Oracle Cash Management
15 34 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
16 31 (0.36%) Aladdin
17 30 (0.35%) SAP ERP
17 30 (0.35%) Workday HCM
18 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,284 (15.05%) Azure
2 982 (11.51%) AWS
3 616 (7.22%) Power Platform
4 389 (4.56%) GCP
5 291 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
6 280 (3.28%) SaaS
7 268 (3.14%) Microsoft 365
8 247 (2.89%) Dynamics 365
9 237 (2.78%) GitHub
10 146 (1.71%) Serverless
11 145 (1.70%) Snowflake
12 139 (1.63%) OCI
13 129 (1.51%) Entra ID
14 118 (1.38%) Amazon S3
15 108 (1.27%) Power Automate
16 91 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
16 91 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
17 88 (1.03%) OpenShift
18 87 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
19 79 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 165 (1.93%) Firewall
2 111 (1.30%) Network Security
3 77 (0.90%) WAN
4 69 (0.81%) DNS
5 62 (0.73%) VPN
6 47 (0.55%) TCP/IP
7 42 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 41 (0.48%) LAN
9 35 (0.41%) BGP
10 31 (0.36%) HTTP
11 30 (0.35%) OSPF
12 29 (0.34%) SSL
13 27 (0.32%) Multicast
14 24 (0.28%) MPLS
15 23 (0.27%) Internet
16 22 (0.26%) DHCP
17 21 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
18 18 (0.21%) Skype
19 17 (0.20%) VSAN
20 16 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 532 (6.23%) Power BI
2 216 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
3 211 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 164 (1.92%) Metadata
4 164 (1.92%) PostgreSQL
5 146 (1.71%) Tableau
6 135 (1.58%) Relational Database
7 124 (1.45%) Data Lake
8 94 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
9 90 (1.05%) NoSQL
10 79 (0.93%) Big Data
11 66 (0.77%) Oracle Database
12 59 (0.69%) MongoDB
13 58 (0.68%) BigQuery
14 45 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
15 42 (0.49%) Power Query
15 42 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
16 41 (0.48%) DynamoDB
16 41 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 40 (0.47%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 682 (7.99%) JIRA
2 214 (2.51%) Git
3 191 (2.24%) Jenkins
4 115 (1.35%) GitLab
5 55 (0.64%) Cucumber
5 55 (0.64%) JUnit
6 44 (0.52%) Selenium
7 39 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
8 30 (0.35%) Postman
9 29 (0.34%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.29%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.29%) MLflow
11 22 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 21 (0.25%) REST Assured
13 18 (0.21%) ERwin
13 18 (0.21%) Maven
13 18 (0.21%) Zephyr
14 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 16 (0.19%) Hudson
16 15 (0.18%) TeamCity
General
1 2,613 (30.62%) Social Skills
2 1,567 (18.36%) Banking
3 1,158 (13.57%) Analytical Skills
4 573 (6.71%) Public Sector
5 336 (3.94%) Legal
6 326 (3.82%) Financial Institution
7 282 (3.30%) Investment Banking
8 281 (3.29%) Front Office
9 241 (2.82%) Organisational Skills
10 240 (2.81%) Retail
11 235 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
12 214 (2.51%) Manufacturing
13 209 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
14 202 (2.37%) Marketing
15 174 (2.04%) Telecoms
16 144 (1.69%) General Ledger
17 126 (1.48%) Local Government
18 124 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
19 121 (1.42%) Billing
19 121 (1.42%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,300 (15.23%) Analyst
2 874 (10.24%) Developer
3 869 (10.18%) Senior
4 851 (9.97%) Lead
5 772 (9.05%) Architect
6 695 (8.14%) Business Analyst
7 681 (7.98%) Project Manager
8 604 (7.08%) Consultant
9 309 (3.62%) Solutions Architect
10 264 (3.09%) Data Engineer
11 209 (2.45%) Financial Analyst
12 201 (2.36%) Senior Manager
13 192 (2.25%) Finance Manager
14 185 (2.17%) Data Analyst
15 169 (1.98%) Programme Manager
16 157 (1.84%) Accountant
17 156 (1.83%) Java Developer
18 139 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
19 138 (1.62%) Senior Analyst
20 127 (1.49%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (3.15%) Kafka
2 248 (2.91%) REST
3 227 (2.66%) .NET
4 196 (2.30%) React
5 174 (2.04%) Middleware
6 152 (1.78%) Oracle Fusion
7 150 (1.76%) Spring
8 139 (1.63%) Spring Boot
9 132 (1.55%) RESTful
10 109 (1.28%) Node.js
11 99 (1.16%) PySpark
12 95 (1.11%) AngularJS
13 83 (0.97%) OAuth
14 77 (0.90%) XML
15 75 (0.88%) JSON
16 73 (0.86%) Redux
17 72 (0.84%) HTML
18 68 (0.80%) CSS
19 66 (0.77%) Pandas
20 58 (0.68%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 358 (4.19%) Onboarding
2 326 (3.82%) Product Ownership
3 292 (3.42%) Cloud Native
4 229 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
5 199 (2.33%) Management Information System
6 174 (2.04%) Data Structures
7 168 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
8 166 (1.95%) Derivative
9 140 (1.64%) Data Centre
10 139 (1.63%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 138 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
11 138 (1.62%) Fixed Income
12 108 (1.27%) Equities
13 107 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
14 99 (1.16%) Public Cloud
14 99 (1.16%) Virtual Team
15 95 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
16 79 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
17 68 (0.80%) Mainframe
18 66 (0.77%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 279 (3.27%) Linux
1 279 (3.27%) Windows
2 145 (1.70%) Unix
3 73 (0.86%) Windows Server
4 50 (0.59%) Windows 10
5 28 (0.33%) Android
6 27 (0.32%) Apple iOS
7 26 (0.30%) Solaris
7 26 (0.30%) zOS
8 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.25%) Mac OS
10 18 (0.21%) AIX
11 8 (0.094%) VMS
12 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.059%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.059%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.047%) HPUX
14 4 (0.047%) MVS
14 4 (0.047%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,784 (20.90%) Agile
2 1,681 (19.70%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,239 (14.52%) Problem-Solving
4 1,169 (13.70%) Migration
5 952 (11.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 940 (11.01%) Continuous Improvement
7 916 (10.73%) DevOps
8 907 (10.63%) ERP
9 861 (10.09%) CI/CD
10 830 (9.73%) Analytics
11 805 (9.43%) Project Management
12 797 (9.34%) AI
13 756 (8.86%) Business Intelligence
14 709 (8.31%) Decision-Making
15 680 (7.97%) Data Modelling
16 668 (7.83%) Roadmaps
17 656 (7.69%) Validation
18 634 (7.43%) User Acceptance Testing
19 602 (7.05%) Change Management
20 577 (6.76%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,185 (13.89%) SQL
2 1,008 (11.81%) Python
3 572 (6.70%) Java
4 324 (3.80%) C#
5 215 (2.52%) JavaScript
6 193 (2.26%) TypeScript
7 165 (1.93%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.23%) C++
9 73 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 71 (0.83%) Bash
11 67 (0.79%) Go
12 61 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 52 (0.61%) VBA
14 51 (0.60%) Shell Script
15 49 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 42 (0.49%) Scala
17 37 (0.43%) R
18 31 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.32%) Bicep
20 25 (0.29%) Korn
Qualifications
1 755 (8.85%) Degree
2 700 (8.20%) Security Cleared
3 494 (5.79%) SC Cleared
4 211 (2.47%) PMP
5 205 (2.40%) ACCA
6 202 (2.37%) PMI Certification
7 194 (2.27%) CIMA
8 148 (1.73%) Computer Science Degree
9 147 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
10 124 (1.45%) Master's Degree
11 122 (1.43%) CISSP
12 82 (0.96%) CISM
13 81 (0.95%) DV Cleared
14 67 (0.79%) Azure Certification
15 61 (0.71%) AWS Certification
16 46 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
17 40 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
18 39 (0.46%) ISTQB
19 34 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 31 (0.36%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 483 (5.66%) Data Quality
2 421 (4.93%) QA
3 337 (3.95%) PMO
4 306 (3.59%) GDPR
5 148 (1.73%) NIST
6 121 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 103 (1.21%) SLA
8 96 (1.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 95 (1.11%) IFRS
10 75 (0.88%) Accessibility
11 71 (0.83%) GRC
11 71 (0.83%) PCI DSS
12 57 (0.67%) ISO 20022
13 49 (0.57%) GAAP
14 38 (0.45%) PSD2
15 36 (0.42%) SEPA
16 34 (0.40%) NCSC
17 27 (0.32%) Basel III
18 26 (0.30%) MiFID
19 24 (0.28%) EMIR
System Software
1 295 (3.46%) Docker
2 151 (1.77%) Active Directory
3 58 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.36%) vSphere
5 24 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.13%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) Hyper-V
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 5 (0.059%) HDFS
10 5 (0.059%) RACF
11 4 (0.047%) ACF2
11 4 (0.047%) Firmware
11 4 (0.047%) KVM
11 4 (0.047%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.035%) SRDF
12 3 (0.035%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 397 (4.65%) Kubernetes
2 254 (2.98%) Terraform
3 124 (1.45%) Ansible
4 89 (1.04%) Grafana
5 70 (0.82%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 49 (0.57%) SCCM
8 35 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.21%) Control-M
10 18 (0.21%) vRealize
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
12 14 (0.16%) AirWatch
12 14 (0.16%) HP ALM
12 14 (0.16%) Progress Chef
12 14 (0.16%) Puppet
13 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 12 (0.14%) CASB
14 11 (0.13%) Nessus
14 11 (0.13%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,111 (13.02%) Microsoft
2 784 (9.19%) SAP
3 717 (8.40%) Oracle
4 321 (3.76%) ServiceNow
5 221 (2.59%) Databricks
6 190 (2.23%) Salesforce
7 177 (2.07%) Google
8 148 (1.73%) Workday
9 122 (1.43%) Cisco
10 114 (1.34%) Splunk
11 107 (1.25%) VMware
12 102 (1.20%) IBM
13 79 (0.93%) Citrix
14 77 (0.90%) Ariba
15 74 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 74 (0.87%) Sage
16 55 (0.64%) Informatica
17 54 (0.63%) OpenAI
18 51 (0.60%) Bloomberg
19 49 (0.57%) Palo Alto