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 15 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 10,240 7,224 7,674
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.52% 21.76% 20.38%
As % of the General category 32.63% 34.38% 34.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,139 4,716 4,809
10th Percentile £363 £337 £356
25th Percentile £450 £419 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £573
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -8.30% -2.97%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £788 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.80% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 385 153 124
10th Percentile £14.42 £15.48 £15.37
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.79 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -16.67% +28.35%
75th Percentile - £53.95 £55.00
90th Percentile £69.40 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.75 £31.91
% change year-on-year +93.23% -28.71% +25.15%

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 31,386 21,013 22,089
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.76% 63.28% 58.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,231 13,114 13,043
10th Percentile £313 £275 £280
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £649
90th Percentile £740 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £478
% change year-on-year +5.26% -0.52% -4.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,837 1,247 919
10th Percentile £13.46 £13.59 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.01 £16.30 £17.08
Median hourly rate £27.38 £25.00 £32.28
Median % change year-on-year +9.52% -22.55% +8.50%
75th Percentile £53.75 £44.42 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.10 £71.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.08 £21.39 £30.00
% change year-on-year +26.59% -28.70% +11.11%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 8,738 £550 +0.92% 11,015
London +1 5,310 £600 +2.13% 7,306
UK excluding London 0 3,949 £509 +1.80% 4,447
Work from Home -1 2,846 £550 - 4,897
North of England 0 1,381 £514 +9.36% 1,125
South East -1 751 £500 -1.96% 1,050
North West -2 654 £503 +11.78% 604
Yorkshire +1 644 £515 +3.00% 388
Midlands -3 610 £507 +6.74% 577
Scotland +1 554 £463 -7.50% 579
West Midlands -2 453 £500 -4.76% 366
South West -6 341 £525 -4.55% 439
East of England +1 199 £530 -4.72% 333
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +19.05% 211
North East -7 76 £575 +31.05% 138
Wales +4 73 £525 +16.67% 107
Northern Ireland 0 64 £463 -11.90% 277
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 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
1 338 (3.30%) Confluence
2 263 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 96 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
4 87 (0.85%) Apache Spark
5 84 (0.82%) Apache
6 54 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.33%) CMS
8 23 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
8 23 (0.22%) SAS
9 19 (0.19%) IIS
10 14 (0.14%) Camunda
10 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
11 11 (0.11%) CICS
11 11 (0.11%) Ethereum
12 10 (0.098%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.078%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.068%) Appian
15 6 (0.059%) WebLogic
16 5 (0.049%) JBoss
16 5 (0.049%) WordPress
Applications
1 542 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 224 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
3 196 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 153 (1.49%) Microsoft Project
5 88 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 73 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.23%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.098%) Trello
9 9 (0.088%) Adobe Illustrator
9 9 (0.088%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.068%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.049%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.039%) Adobe Premiere
12 4 (0.039%) Sketch
12 4 (0.039%) Windchill
13 3 (0.029%) 1Password
13 3 (0.029%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.029%) Notion
13 3 (0.029%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.020%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 447 (4.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 124 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 112 (1.09%) Oracle Receivables
4 91 (0.89%) Oracle General Ledger
5 89 (0.87%) Oracle ERP
6 88 (0.86%) NetSuite
7 87 (0.85%) SAP FI
8 81 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
9 74 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
10 60 (0.59%) Oracle Financials
11 56 (0.55%) SAP CO
12 53 (0.52%) Workday HCM
13 51 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
14 50 (0.49%) Oracle Assets
15 46 (0.45%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
16 43 (0.42%) Aladdin
17 35 (0.34%) Unit4 Business World
18 34 (0.33%) SAP GRC
19 31 (0.30%) SAP BRIM
20 26 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,649 (16.10%) Azure
2 1,120 (10.94%) AWS
3 657 (6.42%) Power Platform
4 579 (5.65%) GCP
5 384 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
6 357 (3.49%) GitHub
7 337 (3.29%) Microsoft 365
8 321 (3.13%) SaaS
9 273 (2.67%) Dynamics 365
10 236 (2.30%) Entra ID
11 229 (2.24%) Snowflake
12 165 (1.61%) Serverless
13 150 (1.46%) GitHub Actions
14 139 (1.36%) OCI
15 130 (1.27%) Microsoft Copilot
15 130 (1.27%) Power Automate
16 128 (1.25%) Amazon S3
17 124 (1.21%) dbt
18 117 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
19 110 (1.07%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 181 (1.77%) Firewall
2 174 (1.70%) Network Security
3 110 (1.07%) VPN
4 98 (0.96%) DNS
5 67 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 60 (0.59%) WAN
7 54 (0.53%) BGP
8 51 (0.50%) DHCP
9 40 (0.39%) SSL
10 38 (0.37%) Multicast
10 38 (0.37%) VLAN
11 35 (0.34%) SAN
12 34 (0.33%) HTTP
12 34 (0.33%) LAN
12 34 (0.33%) OSPF
13 32 (0.31%) Wi-Fi
14 30 (0.29%) Internet
15 29 (0.28%) Wireless
16 23 (0.22%) SD-WAN
17 20 (0.20%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 515 (5.03%) Power BI
2 299 (2.92%) SQL Server
3 269 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
4 197 (1.92%) Metadata
5 168 (1.64%) Relational Database
6 153 (1.49%) Data Lake
7 138 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
8 130 (1.27%) Tableau
9 88 (0.86%) NoSQL
10 86 (0.84%) Oracle Database
11 83 (0.81%) BigQuery
12 82 (0.80%) MongoDB
13 59 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
14 57 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
15 54 (0.53%) Delta Lake
16 53 (0.52%) Power Query
17 48 (0.47%) Azure SQL Database
18 45 (0.44%) Big Data
19 44 (0.43%) Db2
20 42 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 687 (6.71%) JIRA
2 363 (3.54%) Git
3 199 (1.94%) Jenkins
4 131 (1.28%) GitLab
5 70 (0.68%) Selenium
6 54 (0.53%) JUnit
7 52 (0.51%) Claude Code
8 44 (0.43%) Maven
9 41 (0.40%) Cucumber
9 41 (0.40%) Gradle
10 40 (0.39%) Bitbucket
11 36 (0.35%) REST Assured
12 33 (0.32%) Visual Studio
13 32 (0.31%) SonarQube
14 31 (0.30%) Cypress.io
15 30 (0.29%) Postman
16 26 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
17 25 (0.24%) ERwin
18 22 (0.21%) Mockito
18 22 (0.21%) Zephyr
General
1 3,238 (31.62%) Social Skills
2 2,235 (21.83%) Banking
3 1,468 (14.34%) Analytical Skills
4 559 (5.46%) Public Sector
5 551 (5.38%) Legal
6 481 (4.70%) Organisational Skills
7 408 (3.98%) Investment Banking
8 360 (3.52%) Retail
9 359 (3.51%) Influencing Skills
10 344 (3.36%) Front Office
11 317 (3.10%) Financial Institution
12 235 (2.29%) Manufacturing
13 214 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
14 202 (1.97%) Marketing
15 199 (1.94%) General Ledger
16 193 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 192 (1.88%) Billing
18 157 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
19 156 (1.52%) Local Government
20 149 (1.46%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 1,408 (13.75%) Analyst
2 1,172 (11.45%) Senior
3 1,008 (9.84%) Developer
4 979 (9.56%) Lead
5 906 (8.85%) Architect
6 744 (7.27%) Consultant
7 724 (7.07%) Business Analyst
8 695 (6.79%) Project Manager
9 369 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
10 292 (2.85%) Data Engineer
11 254 (2.48%) Financial Analyst
12 229 (2.24%) Senior Manager
13 218 (2.13%) Senior Developer
14 211 (2.06%) Programme Manager
15 204 (1.99%) Data Analyst
16 202 (1.97%) Java Developer
17 187 (1.83%) IT Manager
18 183 (1.79%) Accountant
19 165 (1.61%) Finance Manager
20 152 (1.48%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 443 (4.33%) Terraform
2 442 (4.32%) REST
3 291 (2.84%) Kafka
4 284 (2.77%) .NET
5 274 (2.68%) Oracle Fusion
6 253 (2.47%) React
7 206 (2.01%) Spring
8 202 (1.97%) Spring Boot
9 199 (1.94%) Middleware
10 152 (1.48%) PySpark
11 148 (1.45%) RESTful
12 122 (1.19%) JSON
13 117 (1.14%) OAuth
14 115 (1.12%) XML
15 101 (0.99%) SOAP
16 99 (0.97%) Web Services
17 87 (0.85%) AngularJS
18 86 (0.84%) Redux
19 85 (0.83%) HTML
20 82 (0.80%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 549 (5.36%) Onboarding
2 544 (5.31%) Product Ownership
3 508 (4.96%) Cloud Native
4 287 (2.80%) Management Information System
5 266 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
6 255 (2.49%) AI Agents
7 238 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
8 237 (2.31%) Virtual Team
9 236 (2.30%) Data Structures
10 214 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
11 207 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
12 192 (1.88%) Derivative
13 182 (1.78%) Data Centre
14 155 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 136 (1.33%) Fixed Income
15 136 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
16 124 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
17 120 (1.17%) Equities
18 114 (1.11%) Web Conferencing
19 113 (1.10%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 394 (3.85%) Windows
2 355 (3.47%) Linux
3 171 (1.67%) Unix
4 104 (1.02%) Windows Server
5 63 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 52 (0.51%) Apple iOS
7 46 (0.45%) Android
8 42 (0.41%) Windows 10
9 38 (0.37%) macOS
10 35 (0.34%) zOS
11 22 (0.21%) Solaris
12 14 (0.14%) VMS
13 11 (0.11%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.049%) CentOS
14 5 (0.049%) Oracle Linux
15 4 (0.039%) HPUX
15 4 (0.039%) SUSE
15 4 (0.039%) Windows Server 2019
16 3 (0.029%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,944 (28.75%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,134 (20.84%) Agile
3 1,422 (13.89%) AI
4 1,400 (13.67%) Migration
5 1,397 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
6 1,229 (12.00%) CI/CD
7 1,159 (11.32%) Continuous Improvement
8 1,140 (11.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 1,085 (10.60%) DevOps
10 1,064 (10.39%) Analytics
11 976 (9.53%) Decision-Making
12 958 (9.36%) ERP
13 956 (9.34%) Roadmaps
14 944 (9.22%) Validation
15 785 (7.67%) Data Modelling
16 784 (7.66%) Project Management
17 783 (7.65%) Risk Management
18 771 (7.53%) User Acceptance Testing
19 730 (7.13%) Project Delivery
20 719 (7.02%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 1,392 (13.59%) SQL
2 1,347 (13.15%) Python
3 679 (6.63%) Java
4 371 (3.62%) C#
5 315 (3.08%) PowerShell
6 286 (2.79%) JavaScript
7 229 (2.24%) TypeScript
8 183 (1.79%) Bash
9 105 (1.03%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.76%) Go
12 77 (0.75%) C++
13 69 (0.67%) T-SQL
14 65 (0.63%) Bicep
15 62 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 52 (0.51%) Korn
17 48 (0.47%) Scala
18 38 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 31 (0.30%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.29%) VBA
Qualifications
1 808 (7.89%) Security Cleared
2 740 (7.23%) Degree
3 578 (5.64%) SC Cleared
4 270 (2.64%) PMP
5 264 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
6 248 (2.42%) PMI Certification
7 185 (1.81%) ACCA
8 165 (1.61%) CIMA
9 152 (1.48%) DV Cleared
10 144 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
11 128 (1.25%) CISSP
12 116 (1.13%) Azure Certification
13 89 (0.87%) AWS Certification
14 79 (0.77%) Master's Degree
15 77 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
16 71 (0.69%) CISM
17 51 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
18 46 (0.45%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.39%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 749 (7.31%) Data Quality
2 427 (4.17%) QA
3 366 (3.57%) PMO
4 200 (1.95%) GDPR
5 132 (1.29%) NIST
6 124 (1.21%) GRC
7 117 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 115 (1.12%) Accessibility
9 93 (0.91%) SLA
10 89 (0.87%) IFRS
11 72 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 68 (0.66%) ISO 20022
13 44 (0.43%) PCI DSS
14 43 (0.42%) SEPA
15 39 (0.38%) GAAP
16 34 (0.33%) Solvency II
17 29 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 28 (0.27%) COBIT
19 27 (0.26%) NCSC
20 25 (0.24%) MiFID
System Software
1 286 (2.79%) Docker
2 250 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 107 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
5 31 (0.30%) vSphere
6 27 (0.26%) RACF
7 26 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (0.18%) Hyper-V
9 15 (0.15%) VMware NSX
10 14 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
11 13 (0.13%) NFS
12 7 (0.068%) IAG
13 6 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.049%) ACF2
14 5 (0.049%) GPFS
14 5 (0.049%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.039%) Firmware
15 4 (0.039%) Time Sharing Option
15 4 (0.039%) zsh
16 3 (0.029%) KVM
Systems Management
1 533 (5.21%) Kubernetes
2 203 (1.98%) Ansible
3 103 (1.01%) Grafana
4 84 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 76 (0.74%) Prometheus
6 65 (0.63%) SCCM
7 62 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.27%) Progress Chef
9 27 (0.26%) Control-M
10 22 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.20%) Argo
12 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
13 15 (0.15%) FortiGate
13 15 (0.15%) Istio
14 11 (0.11%) Puppet
14 11 (0.11%) Tivoli
15 10 (0.098%) Cisco Prime
15 10 (0.098%) Packer
16 9 (0.088%) HP ALM
16 9 (0.088%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,527 (14.91%) Microsoft
2 909 (8.88%) SAP
3 879 (8.58%) Oracle
4 366 (3.57%) Databricks
5 362 (3.54%) ServiceNow
6 252 (2.46%) Google
6 252 (2.46%) Salesforce
7 208 (2.03%) IBM
8 164 (1.60%) VMware
9 163 (1.59%) Workday
10 137 (1.34%) Cisco
11 130 (1.27%) Splunk
12 121 (1.18%) Ariba
13 96 (0.94%) CyberArk
14 90 (0.88%) OpenAI
15 63 (0.62%) Bloomberg
16 59 (0.58%) Citrix
17 58 (0.57%) Murex
17 58 (0.57%) Sage
18 56 (0.55%) Red Hat