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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Finance 8,578 6,501 8,166
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.13% 22.17% 18.77%
As % of the General category 33.31% 35.10% 32.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,390 4,259 5,431
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £430 £437 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £570 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.14% -0.87% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £700
90th Percentile £800 £834 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 110 245
10th Percentile £14.82 £17.79 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.12 £21.82 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.83 £35.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.89% +31.48% -11.48%
75th Percentile £54.00 £69.38 £38.12
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.51 £54.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £36.00 £32.12
% change year-on-year -37.50% +12.10% -26.59%

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 25,755 18,523 25,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.44% 63.16% 58.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,873 11,818 15,958
10th Percentile £305 £300 £275
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 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,642 787 1,948
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.64 £17.47 £15.49
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -14.29%
75th Percentile £60.56 £56.00 £51.91
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.01
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.24 £24.71 £28.00
% change year-on-year +10.24% -11.75% -8.32%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 7,582 £539 -6.35% 4,655
London 0 4,573 £575 -8.00% 2,436
UK excluding London 0 3,425 £500 - 2,863
Work from Home -2 2,403 £525 -12.50% 2,015
North of England +3 1,139 £480 +1.05% 723
South East -2 656 £503 -2.30% 947
North West +5 617 £465 - 395
Midlands -1 590 £475 -5.00% 442
Yorkshire +1 483 £510 +2.05% 256
Scotland +1 414 £500 +2.15% 141
West Midlands 0 394 £492 -9.14% 258
South West -2 342 £503 -4.29% 323
East of England -4 197 £525 -4.55% 244
East Midlands 0 192 £463 +3.47% 182
Wales +24 95 £413 +10.00% 54
Northern Ireland -1 44 £525 +31.25% 48
North East -11 40 £488 +3.72% 82
Channel Islands - 2 £450 - 2

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
1 328 (3.82%) Confluence
2 216 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 57 (0.66%) Apache
5 53 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
6 48 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.43%) SAS
8 24 (0.28%) CMS
9 22 (0.26%) CICS
10 19 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.17%) Appian
11 15 (0.17%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 14 (0.16%) Camunda
12 14 (0.16%) Ethereum
13 12 (0.14%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.13%) Hyperledger
14 11 (0.13%) Mendix
15 10 (0.12%) TPMS
16 9 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 530 (6.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (2.66%) Microsoft Office
3 176 (2.05%) Microsoft Project
4 175 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 129 (1.50%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 32 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.15%) Trello
9 8 (0.093%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.093%) Sketch
10 7 (0.082%) InVision
10 7 (0.082%) Notion
11 6 (0.070%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe After Effects
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe Illustrator
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 374 (4.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 116 (1.35%) Oracle Payables
3 101 (1.18%) Oracle Receivables
4 99 (1.15%) NetSuite
5 86 (1.00%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 67 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
7 63 (0.73%) SAP FI
8 59 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
9 58 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
10 52 (0.61%) SAP CO
11 51 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
12 48 (0.56%) SAP FI/CO
13 41 (0.48%) Oracle Assets
14 34 (0.40%) Oracle Cash Management
15 33 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
15 33 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
16 29 (0.34%) Aladdin
16 29 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
16 29 (0.34%) SAP ERP
16 29 (0.34%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,292 (15.06%) Azure
2 981 (11.44%) AWS
3 622 (7.25%) Power Platform
4 391 (4.56%) GCP
5 296 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
6 290 (3.38%) SaaS
7 272 (3.17%) Microsoft 365
8 238 (2.77%) Dynamics 365
9 237 (2.76%) GitHub
10 147 (1.71%) Snowflake
11 145 (1.69%) Serverless
12 136 (1.59%) OCI
13 132 (1.54%) Entra ID
14 116 (1.35%) Amazon S3
15 110 (1.28%) Power Automate
16 92 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
16 92 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
17 86 (1.00%) OpenShift
18 84 (0.98%) AWS Lambda
19 81 (0.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 162 (1.89%) Firewall
2 112 (1.31%) Network Security
3 77 (0.90%) WAN
4 70 (0.82%) DNS
5 61 (0.71%) VPN
6 48 (0.56%) TCP/IP
7 42 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 39 (0.45%) LAN
9 36 (0.42%) BGP
10 33 (0.38%) HTTP
11 31 (0.36%) OSPF
12 28 (0.33%) SSL
13 27 (0.31%) Multicast
14 24 (0.28%) DHCP
14 24 (0.28%) MPLS
15 21 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
15 21 (0.24%) Internet
16 17 (0.20%) VSAN
17 16 (0.19%) Skype
17 16 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 534 (6.23%) Power BI
2 215 (2.51%) SQL Server
3 210 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
4 165 (1.92%) PostgreSQL
5 162 (1.89%) Metadata
6 143 (1.67%) Tableau
7 142 (1.66%) Relational Database
8 127 (1.48%) Data Lake
9 89 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
10 88 (1.03%) NoSQL
11 77 (0.90%) Big Data
12 67 (0.78%) Oracle Database
13 60 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 58 (0.68%) BigQuery
15 49 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.49%) DynamoDB
17 41 (0.48%) Delta Lake
17 41 (0.48%) Power Query
17 41 (0.48%) Snowflake Schema
17 41 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 686 (8.00%) JIRA
2 220 (2.56%) Git
3 184 (2.15%) Jenkins
4 115 (1.34%) GitLab
5 54 (0.63%) JUnit
6 53 (0.62%) Cucumber
7 40 (0.47%) Selenium
8 37 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
9 28 (0.33%) Postman
9 28 (0.33%) Visual Studio
10 25 (0.29%) MLflow
11 21 (0.24%) Bitbucket
11 21 (0.24%) SonarQube
12 20 (0.23%) REST Assured
12 20 (0.23%) Zephyr
13 18 (0.21%) Maven
14 17 (0.20%) ERwin
14 17 (0.20%) Hudson
14 17 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 15 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 2,603 (30.35%) Social Skills
2 1,567 (18.27%) Banking
3 1,155 (13.46%) Analytical Skills
4 559 (6.52%) Public Sector
5 354 (4.13%) Legal
6 336 (3.92%) Financial Institution
7 285 (3.32%) Investment Banking
8 280 (3.26%) Front Office
9 244 (2.84%) Organisational Skills
10 243 (2.83%) Retail
11 234 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
12 208 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 201 (2.34%) Manufacturing
14 189 (2.20%) Marketing
15 164 (1.91%) Telecoms
16 142 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 127 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
18 124 (1.45%) Local Government
19 120 (1.40%) Law
20 118 (1.38%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,309 (15.26%) Analyst
2 888 (10.35%) Senior
3 887 (10.34%) Developer
4 859 (10.01%) Lead
5 769 (8.96%) Architect
6 704 (8.21%) Business Analyst
7 688 (8.02%) Project Manager
8 595 (6.94%) Consultant
9 308 (3.59%) Solutions Architect
10 267 (3.11%) Data Engineer
11 211 (2.46%) Financial Analyst
12 202 (2.35%) Senior Manager
13 189 (2.20%) Finance Manager
14 181 (2.11%) Data Analyst
15 173 (2.02%) Programme Manager
16 162 (1.89%) Accountant
17 155 (1.81%) Java Developer
18 140 (1.63%) Delivery Manager
19 137 (1.60%) Senior Analyst
20 131 (1.53%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (3.10%) Kafka
2 256 (2.98%) REST
3 236 (2.75%) .NET
4 201 (2.34%) React
5 176 (2.05%) Middleware
6 151 (1.76%) Spring
7 149 (1.74%) Oracle Fusion
8 142 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 138 (1.61%) RESTful
10 108 (1.26%) Node.js
11 104 (1.21%) PySpark
12 93 (1.08%) AngularJS
13 85 (0.99%) OAuth
14 79 (0.92%) JSON
15 77 (0.90%) XML
16 75 (0.87%) Redux
17 71 (0.83%) HTML
18 68 (0.79%) CSS
19 64 (0.75%) Pandas
20 60 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 354 (4.13%) Onboarding
2 330 (3.85%) Product Ownership
3 301 (3.51%) Cloud Native
4 224 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
5 197 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 183 (2.13%) Data Structures
7 166 (1.94%) Derivative
8 165 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
9 144 (1.68%) Data Centre
10 143 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
11 138 (1.61%) Fixed Income
12 136 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 112 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
14 105 (1.22%) Equities
15 102 (1.19%) Virtual Team
16 101 (1.18%) Public Cloud
17 94 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 82 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
19 70 (0.82%) Mainframe
20 68 (0.79%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 278 (3.24%) Windows
2 275 (3.21%) Linux
3 145 (1.69%) Unix
4 70 (0.82%) Windows Server
5 49 (0.57%) Windows 10
6 30 (0.35%) Apple iOS
7 29 (0.34%) Android
8 28 (0.33%) zOS
9 27 (0.31%) Solaris
10 22 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.24%) Mac OS
12 18 (0.21%) AIX
13 8 (0.093%) VMS
14 6 (0.070%) Windows Server 2012
15 5 (0.058%) Oracle Linux
15 5 (0.058%) Windows Server 2019
16 4 (0.047%) HPUX
16 4 (0.047%) MVS
16 4 (0.047%) SUSE
16 4 (0.047%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,809 (21.09%) Agile
2 1,698 (19.79%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,235 (14.40%) Problem-Solving
4 1,176 (13.71%) Migration
5 954 (11.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 947 (11.04%) Continuous Improvement
7 922 (10.75%) DevOps
8 903 (10.53%) ERP
9 866 (10.10%) CI/CD
10 832 (9.70%) Analytics
11 817 (9.52%) AI
12 799 (9.31%) Project Management
13 749 (8.73%) Business Intelligence
14 704 (8.21%) Decision-Making
15 679 (7.92%) Roadmaps
16 676 (7.88%) Data Modelling
17 663 (7.73%) Validation
18 648 (7.55%) User Acceptance Testing
19 596 (6.95%) Change Management
20 576 (6.71%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,194 (13.92%) SQL
2 1,014 (11.82%) Python
3 574 (6.69%) Java
4 334 (3.89%) C#
5 217 (2.53%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.32%) TypeScript
7 163 (1.90%) PowerShell
8 105 (1.22%) C++
9 73 (0.85%) PL/SQL
10 72 (0.84%) Bash
11 68 (0.79%) Go
12 61 (0.71%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 50 (0.58%) VBA
15 42 (0.49%) Scala
16 34 (0.40%) R
17 31 (0.36%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.31%) Bicep
19 26 (0.30%) Korn
Qualifications
1 751 (8.75%) Degree
2 702 (8.18%) Security Cleared
3 498 (5.81%) SC Cleared
4 211 (2.46%) PMP
5 206 (2.40%) ACCA
6 199 (2.32%) PMI Certification
7 189 (2.20%) CIMA
8 146 (1.70%) Computer Science Degree
9 145 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
10 122 (1.42%) CISSP
11 120 (1.40%) Master's Degree
12 85 (0.99%) CISM
13 83 (0.97%) DV Cleared
14 64 (0.75%) Azure Certification
15 59 (0.69%) AWS Certification
16 48 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
17 41 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
18 36 (0.42%) ISTQB
19 31 (0.36%) CBAP
20 30 (0.35%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 489 (5.70%) Data Quality
2 422 (4.92%) QA
3 338 (3.94%) PMO
4 307 (3.58%) GDPR
5 151 (1.76%) NIST
6 125 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 102 (1.19%) SLA
8 100 (1.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 99 (1.15%) IFRS
10 80 (0.93%) Accessibility
11 78 (0.91%) GRC
12 73 (0.85%) PCI DSS
13 58 (0.68%) ISO 20022
14 52 (0.61%) GAAP
15 38 (0.44%) PSD2
16 37 (0.43%) SEPA
17 34 (0.40%) NCSC
18 28 (0.33%) MiFID
19 27 (0.31%) Basel III
19 27 (0.31%) EMIR
System Software
1 293 (3.42%) Docker
2 150 (1.75%) Active Directory
3 56 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (0.36%) vSphere
5 25 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.13%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.13%) NFS
9 10 (0.12%) GPFS
9 10 (0.12%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.070%) RACF
11 5 (0.058%) HDFS
11 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.047%) ACF2
12 4 (0.047%) Firmware
12 4 (0.047%) KVM
13 3 (0.035%) GridGain
13 3 (0.035%) ISA Server
13 3 (0.035%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 405 (4.72%) Kubernetes
2 254 (2.96%) Terraform
3 122 (1.42%) Ansible
4 89 (1.04%) Grafana
5 69 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 56 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
7 50 (0.58%) SCCM
8 35 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.31%) 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%) Progress Chef
12 14 (0.16%) Puppet
13 13 (0.15%) HP ALM
14 12 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.14%) CASB
15 11 (0.13%) Nessus
15 11 (0.13%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,114 (12.99%) Microsoft
2 779 (9.08%) SAP
3 713 (8.31%) Oracle
4 315 (3.67%) ServiceNow
5 227 (2.65%) Databricks
6 189 (2.20%) Salesforce
7 176 (2.05%) Google
8 140 (1.63%) Workday
9 121 (1.41%) Cisco
10 114 (1.33%) Splunk
11 105 (1.22%) VMware
12 96 (1.12%) IBM
13 78 (0.91%) Citrix
14 76 (0.89%) CyberArk
15 74 (0.86%) Ariba
15 74 (0.86%) Sage
16 58 (0.68%) Informatica
17 56 (0.65%) OpenAI
18 50 (0.58%) Murex
19 49 (0.57%) Bloomberg