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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,797 7,349 7,727
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.28% 22.59% 20.01%
As % of the General category 33.15% 35.57% 34.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,995 4,832 5,039
10th Percentile £360 £331 £360
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -6.52% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £713
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £492 £513
% change year-on-year +3.56% -4.00% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 323 136 163
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.06 £23.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.53 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.11% -18.50% +36.13%
75th Percentile - £58.13 £49.38
90th Percentile £75.32 £76.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -28.14% +20.73%

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 29,557 20,661 22,222
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.16% 63.52% 57.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,441 12,839 13,661
10th Percentile £313 £275 £291
25th Percentile £418 £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 £741 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.62% -0.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,305 1,166 1,210
10th Percentile £13.77 £13.50 £14.23
25th Percentile £16.80 £16.17 £17.12
Median hourly rate £31.10 £25.15 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.66% -31.10% +32.73%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.20 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.53 £22.05 £36.00
% change year-on-year +42.98% -38.75% +38.46%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 8,471 £550 - 15,932
London 0 5,107 £588 -2.08% 10,639
UK excluding London 0 3,862 £510 +3.56% 7,516
Work from Home -1 2,791 £550 -4.35% 7,122
North of England 0 1,329 £506 +10.60% 1,806
South East -2 738 £500 -4.76% 1,717
North West -1 676 £500 +11.11% 1,096
Midlands -1 613 £514 +11.44% 842
Yorkshire 0 574 £515 +6.40% 496
Scotland 0 523 £470 -3.89% 987
West Midlands +1 457 £525 +5.00% 527
South West -6 359 £550 -0.49% 1,056
East of England +6 208 £550 -1.21% 639
East Midlands -3 153 £500 +20.48% 314
North East -9 72 £500 +13.64% 233
Northern Ireland -1 64 £500 +2.56% 419
Wales -1 58 £525 +18.31% 161
Channel Islands +2 5 £550 - 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
1 337 (3.44%) Confluence
2 255 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 89 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
4 84 (0.86%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.73%) Apache
6 45 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.36%) CMS
8 27 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.28%) SAS
9 21 (0.21%) IIS
10 17 (0.17%) Camunda
11 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.092%) CICS
14 7 (0.071%) Ethereum
14 7 (0.071%) WebLogic
15 6 (0.061%) Appian
15 6 (0.061%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.051%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 526 (5.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 191 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 90 (0.92%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 29 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.082%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.061%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.061%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.051%) Sketch
12 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.031%) Notion
13 3 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
14 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 428 (4.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 126 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 108 (1.10%) NetSuite
4 106 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
5 96 (0.98%) Oracle ERP
6 74 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
7 72 (0.73%) Oracle General Ledger
8 69 (0.70%) SAP FI
9 63 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 61 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
11 51 (0.52%) Oracle Financials
12 47 (0.48%) SAP CO
13 43 (0.44%) Aladdin
13 43 (0.44%) SAP FI/CO
14 38 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
15 35 (0.36%) SAP GRC
16 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
17 32 (0.33%) Workday HCM
18 26 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
19 25 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 1,548 (15.80%) Azure
2 1,058 (10.80%) AWS
3 672 (6.86%) Power Platform
4 521 (5.32%) GCP
5 356 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
6 326 (3.33%) SaaS
7 310 (3.16%) GitHub
8 308 (3.14%) Microsoft 365
9 273 (2.79%) Dynamics 365
10 222 (2.27%) Snowflake
11 219 (2.24%) Entra ID
12 155 (1.58%) Serverless
13 144 (1.47%) OCI
14 122 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
14 122 (1.25%) Power Automate
15 119 (1.21%) dbt
16 117 (1.19%) Amazon S3
17 116 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
18 113 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
19 104 (1.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.77%) Firewall
2 153 (1.56%) Network Security
3 103 (1.05%) VPN
4 89 (0.91%) DNS
5 64 (0.65%) TCP/IP
6 62 (0.63%) WAN
7 51 (0.52%) DHCP
8 44 (0.45%) BGP
8 44 (0.45%) SSL
9 39 (0.40%) LAN
10 36 (0.37%) HTTP
11 34 (0.35%) VLAN
12 33 (0.34%) Multicast
13 31 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
14 29 (0.30%) Wireless
15 28 (0.29%) Internet
16 25 (0.26%) OSPF
17 24 (0.24%) SAN
18 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
19 15 (0.15%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 548 (5.59%) Power BI
2 280 (2.86%) SQL Server
3 262 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
4 207 (2.11%) Metadata
5 178 (1.82%) Relational Database
6 147 (1.50%) Data Lake
7 129 (1.32%) Tableau
8 124 (1.27%) PostgreSQL
9 78 (0.80%) NoSQL
10 77 (0.79%) Oracle Database
11 76 (0.78%) BigQuery
12 74 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
13 65 (0.66%) MongoDB
14 57 (0.58%) Delta Lake
14 57 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (0.54%) Power Query
16 50 (0.51%) Big Data
17 45 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
18 44 (0.45%) Data Vault
18 44 (0.45%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 668 (6.82%) JIRA
2 292 (2.98%) Git
3 169 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 103 (1.05%) GitLab
5 57 (0.58%) Selenium
6 48 (0.49%) JUnit
7 32 (0.33%) Bitbucket
7 32 (0.33%) Maven
7 32 (0.33%) SonarQube
7 32 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
8 30 (0.31%) ERwin
8 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
9 29 (0.30%) Claude Code
10 28 (0.29%) REST Assured
11 27 (0.28%) Cucumber
12 24 (0.24%) Gradle
12 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 22 (0.22%) Postman
14 21 (0.21%) ER Studio
14 21 (0.21%) Zephyr
General
1 3,021 (30.84%) Social Skills
2 1,968 (20.09%) Banking
3 1,379 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
4 542 (5.53%) Legal
5 513 (5.24%) Public Sector
6 426 (4.35%) Organisational Skills
7 395 (4.03%) Investment Banking
8 379 (3.87%) Retail
9 333 (3.40%) Financial Institution
10 330 (3.37%) Front Office
11 317 (3.24%) Influencing Skills
12 222 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
13 203 (2.07%) Manufacturing
14 187 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 170 (1.74%) General Ledger
16 165 (1.68%) Billing
17 164 (1.67%) Marketing
18 153 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
19 148 (1.51%) Local Government
20 142 (1.45%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,418 (14.47%) Analyst
2 1,054 (10.76%) Senior
3 1,009 (10.30%) Lead
4 957 (9.77%) Developer
5 871 (8.89%) Architect
6 739 (7.54%) Business Analyst
7 703 (7.18%) Consultant
8 691 (7.05%) Project Manager
9 328 (3.35%) Solutions Architect
10 306 (3.12%) Data Engineer
11 259 (2.64%) Financial Analyst
12 225 (2.30%) Senior Manager
13 204 (2.08%) Java Developer
14 203 (2.07%) Data Analyst
15 190 (1.94%) Senior Developer
16 185 (1.89%) Programme Manager
17 180 (1.84%) Accountant
18 176 (1.80%) Finance Manager
19 172 (1.76%) IT Manager
20 150 (1.53%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 371 (3.79%) Terraform
2 356 (3.63%) REST
3 269 (2.75%) .NET
4 266 (2.72%) Oracle Fusion
5 243 (2.48%) Kafka
6 227 (2.32%) React
7 187 (1.91%) Spring
8 183 (1.87%) Middleware
9 182 (1.86%) Spring Boot
10 148 (1.51%) PySpark
11 137 (1.40%) RESTful
12 102 (1.04%) XML
13 99 (1.01%) OAuth
14 97 (0.99%) JSON
15 78 (0.80%) AngularJS
15 78 (0.80%) SOAP
16 77 (0.79%) Redux
17 73 (0.75%) Node.js
18 67 (0.68%) HTML
18 67 (0.68%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 512 (5.23%) Onboarding
2 488 (4.98%) Product Ownership
3 424 (4.33%) Cloud Native
4 248 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
5 243 (2.48%) Management Information System
6 236 (2.41%) Data Structures
7 220 (2.25%) Virtual Team
8 192 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
9 183 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
10 182 (1.86%) Derivative
11 176 (1.80%) AI Agents
12 156 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 152 (1.55%) Data Centre
14 132 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
15 126 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
16 125 (1.28%) Fixed Income
17 115 (1.17%) Equities
18 114 (1.16%) Podcast
19 112 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
20 109 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 370 (3.78%) Windows
2 305 (3.11%) Linux
3 164 (1.67%) Unix
4 86 (0.88%) Windows Server
5 56 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 49 (0.50%) Apple iOS
7 40 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 37 (0.38%) Android
9 34 (0.35%) Solaris
10 32 (0.33%) zOS
11 28 (0.29%) Mac OS
12 15 (0.15%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.10%) VMS
15 8 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 4 (0.041%) CentOS
17 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,514 (25.66%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,023 (20.65%) Agile
3 1,321 (13.48%) Migration
4 1,292 (13.19%) Problem-Solving
5 1,222 (12.47%) AI
6 1,164 (11.88%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,143 (11.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,079 (11.01%) CI/CD
9 1,008 (10.29%) ERP
10 1,005 (10.26%) Analytics
11 996 (10.17%) DevOps
12 904 (9.23%) Decision-Making
13 818 (8.35%) Roadmaps
13 818 (8.35%) Validation
14 778 (7.94%) Data Modelling
15 770 (7.86%) Project Management
16 762 (7.78%) User Acceptance Testing
17 719 (7.34%) Change Management
18 665 (6.79%) Business Intelligence
18 665 (6.79%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 1,301 (13.28%) SQL
2 1,214 (12.39%) Python
3 635 (6.48%) Java
4 358 (3.65%) C#
5 275 (2.81%) PowerShell
6 239 (2.44%) JavaScript
7 205 (2.09%) TypeScript
8 141 (1.44%) Bash
9 109 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 92 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.80%) C++
12 67 (0.68%) T-SQL
13 66 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 57 (0.58%) Bicep
15 53 (0.54%) Go
16 43 (0.44%) Korn
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 38 (0.39%) Scala
18 38 (0.39%) VBA
19 35 (0.36%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 760 (7.76%) Security Cleared
2 726 (7.41%) Degree
3 553 (5.64%) SC Cleared
4 244 (2.49%) PMP
5 239 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
6 219 (2.24%) PMI Certification
7 194 (1.98%) ACCA
8 169 (1.73%) CIMA
9 146 (1.49%) CISSP
10 137 (1.40%) DV Cleared
11 133 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
12 107 (1.09%) Azure Certification
13 85 (0.87%) CISM
14 84 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
15 69 (0.70%) Master's Degree
16 68 (0.69%) AWS Certification
17 52 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
18 48 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 45 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 664 (6.78%) Data Quality
2 422 (4.31%) QA
3 354 (3.61%) PMO
4 238 (2.43%) GDPR
5 143 (1.46%) NIST
6 120 (1.22%) GRC
6 120 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 106 (1.08%) Accessibility
8 98 (1.00%) SLA
9 95 (0.97%) IFRS
10 88 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 57 (0.58%) ISO 20022
12 50 (0.51%) GAAP
13 44 (0.45%) PCI DSS
14 37 (0.38%) Solvency II
15 32 (0.33%) SEPA
16 29 (0.30%) EMIR
17 28 (0.29%) COBIT
17 28 (0.29%) MiFID
18 24 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 261 (2.66%) Docker
2 232 (2.37%) Active Directory
3 81 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
5 27 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.24%) RACF
7 18 (0.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.13%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.11%) NFS
11 8 (0.082%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) ACF2
12 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.041%) GPFS
14 4 (0.041%) KVM
14 4 (0.041%) zsh
15 3 (0.031%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 457 (4.66%) Kubernetes
2 167 (1.70%) Ansible
3 97 (0.99%) Grafana
4 78 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
5 70 (0.71%) Prometheus
6 61 (0.62%) SCCM
7 54 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.29%) Progress Chef
9 25 (0.26%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) Argo
10 18 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 14 (0.14%) Istio
11 14 (0.14%) Puppet
12 12 (0.12%) FortiGate
13 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 11 (0.11%) HP ALM
13 11 (0.11%) Packer
14 10 (0.10%) vRealize
15 9 (0.092%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,406 (14.35%) Microsoft
2 884 (9.02%) Oracle
3 836 (8.53%) SAP
4 371 (3.79%) ServiceNow
5 351 (3.58%) Databricks
6 233 (2.38%) Salesforce
7 221 (2.26%) Google
8 172 (1.76%) IBM
9 135 (1.38%) VMware
10 126 (1.29%) Workday
11 117 (1.19%) Cisco
12 114 (1.16%) Splunk
13 98 (1.00%) Ariba
14 88 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 80 (0.82%) OpenAI
16 55 (0.56%) Bloomberg
16 55 (0.56%) Citrix
16 55 (0.56%) Sage
17 52 (0.53%) Informatica
18 47 (0.48%) Red Hat