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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,832 7,450 7,709
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.33% 22.77% 19.85%
As % of the General category 33.32% 35.87% 34.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,018 4,913 5,056
10th Percentile £363 £327 £360
25th Percentile £450 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £540 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -6.09% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £714
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £494 £513
% change year-on-year +2.28% -3.66% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 319 142 178
10th Percentile £15.64 £15.48 £14.50
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.45 £23.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £28.91 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.06% -17.40% +34.62%
75th Percentile - £63.00 £44.76
90th Percentile £75.40 £76.13 £70.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £35.00
% change year-on-year +67.72% -25.11% +13.80%

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 29,505 20,771 22,278
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.01% 63.48% 57.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,438 12,920 13,838
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £415 £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 £745 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.89% -1.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,281 1,174 1,263
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.46 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.11 £16.17 £16.80
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -28.87% +27.47%
75th Percentile £56.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £69.90 £70.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £22.14 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.53% -36.74% +34.62%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 8,531 £550 - 4,110
London 0 5,124 £586 -2.29% 2,307
UK excluding London 0 3,900 £505 +2.28% 2,366
Work from Home -1 2,793 £550 -4.35% 1,780
North of England 0 1,342 £500 +6.38% 552
South East -2 738 £505 -3.81% 527
North West -1 693 £500 +9.89% 303
Midlands -1 624 £500 +11.11% 278
Yorkshire 0 570 £514 +5.71% 177
Scotland 0 514 £475 -0.52% 213
West Midlands +1 467 £500 - 178
South West -5 374 £550 -4.35% 555
East of England +6 210 £530 -6.19% 210
East Midlands -2 153 £500 +21.21% 99
North East -4 72 £500 +13.64% 82
Northern Ireland -1 69 £475 -2.56% 43
Wales -1 60 £525 +13.51% 63
Channel Islands +2 4 £500 - 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
1 336 (3.42%) Confluence
2 255 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 91 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
4 83 (0.84%) Apache Spark
5 72 (0.73%) Apache
6 48 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
7 34 (0.35%) CMS
8 27 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
9 26 (0.26%) SAS
10 21 (0.21%) IIS
11 16 (0.16%) Camunda
12 14 (0.14%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.11%) CICS
13 11 (0.11%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 6 (0.061%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 5 (0.051%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 528 (5.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
3 187 (1.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
5 94 (0.96%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 31 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.092%) Trello
9 8 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Sketch
11 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.031%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.031%) Notion
12 3 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 433 (4.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 127 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 109 (1.11%) NetSuite
4 105 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 97 (0.99%) Oracle ERP
6 73 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
7 71 (0.72%) Oracle General Ledger
8 66 (0.67%) SAP FI
9 64 (0.65%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 59 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
11 52 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 45 (0.46%) SAP CO
13 42 (0.43%) SAP FI/CO
14 41 (0.42%) Aladdin
15 37 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
16 34 (0.35%) Unit4 Business World
17 33 (0.34%) SAP GRC
18 31 (0.32%) Workday HCM
19 28 (0.28%) SAP ERP
20 26 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,550 (15.76%) Azure
2 1,067 (10.85%) AWS
3 664 (6.75%) Power Platform
4 518 (5.27%) GCP
5 354 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
6 325 (3.31%) SaaS
7 305 (3.10%) GitHub
8 302 (3.07%) Microsoft 365
9 265 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
10 221 (2.25%) Snowflake
11 215 (2.19%) Entra ID
12 148 (1.51%) Serverless
13 143 (1.45%) OCI
14 123 (1.25%) Power Automate
15 121 (1.23%) GitHub Actions
16 114 (1.16%) dbt
17 112 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
18 111 (1.13%) Amazon S3
18 111 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
19 106 (1.08%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 176 (1.79%) Firewall
2 149 (1.52%) Network Security
3 105 (1.07%) VPN
4 99 (1.01%) DNS
5 67 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 62 (0.63%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) DHCP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 44 (0.45%) BGP
10 41 (0.42%) HTTP
11 40 (0.41%) LAN
12 34 (0.35%) Multicast
12 34 (0.35%) VLAN
13 31 (0.32%) Internet
14 29 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
15 28 (0.28%) Wireless
16 24 (0.24%) OSPF
16 24 (0.24%) SAN
17 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.16%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 543 (5.52%) Power BI
2 283 (2.88%) SQL Server
3 262 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.06%) Metadata
5 181 (1.84%) Relational Database
6 147 (1.50%) Data Lake
7 134 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
8 131 (1.33%) Tableau
9 83 (0.84%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
11 76 (0.77%) BigQuery
12 74 (0.75%) MongoDB
13 72 (0.73%) Oracle Database
14 58 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (0.56%) Big Data
16 52 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 51 (0.52%) Power Query
18 47 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
19 45 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
20 43 (0.44%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 674 (6.86%) JIRA
2 287 (2.92%) Git
3 168 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 102 (1.04%) GitLab
5 56 (0.57%) Selenium
6 47 (0.48%) JUnit
7 32 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 31 (0.32%) ERwin
9 30 (0.31%) Maven
9 30 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
9 30 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 29 (0.29%) SonarQube
11 28 (0.28%) Claude Code
11 28 (0.28%) Cucumber
12 27 (0.27%) REST Assured
13 23 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
14 22 (0.22%) ER Studio
14 22 (0.22%) Gradle
14 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
15 21 (0.21%) Postman
General
1 2,985 (30.36%) Social Skills
2 1,954 (19.87%) Banking
3 1,385 (14.09%) Analytical Skills
4 550 (5.59%) Legal
5 524 (5.33%) Public Sector
6 425 (4.32%) Organisational Skills
7 392 (3.99%) Investment Banking
8 382 (3.89%) Retail
9 345 (3.51%) Financial Institution
10 336 (3.42%) Front Office
11 305 (3.10%) Influencing Skills
12 226 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
13 210 (2.14%) Manufacturing
14 188 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 168 (1.71%) General Ledger
16 166 (1.69%) Billing
17 160 (1.63%) Marketing
18 148 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
19 144 (1.46%) Local Government
20 143 (1.45%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,413 (14.37%) Analyst
2 1,052 (10.70%) Senior
3 1,039 (10.57%) Lead
4 962 (9.78%) Developer
5 866 (8.81%) Architect
6 732 (7.45%) Business Analyst
7 700 (7.12%) Consultant
8 699 (7.11%) Project Manager
9 324 (3.30%) Solutions Architect
10 303 (3.08%) Data Engineer
11 257 (2.61%) Financial Analyst
12 229 (2.33%) Senior Manager
13 203 (2.06%) Java Developer
14 193 (1.96%) Data Analyst
15 185 (1.88%) Programme Manager
15 185 (1.88%) Senior Developer
16 184 (1.87%) Accountant
16 184 (1.87%) Finance Manager
17 175 (1.78%) IT Manager
18 159 (1.62%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 367 (3.73%) Terraform
2 352 (3.58%) REST
3 273 (2.78%) .NET
4 267 (2.72%) Oracle Fusion
5 246 (2.50%) Kafka
6 227 (2.31%) React
7 190 (1.93%) Middleware
8 183 (1.86%) Spring
9 177 (1.80%) Spring Boot
10 139 (1.41%) PySpark
11 135 (1.37%) RESTful
12 103 (1.05%) XML
13 99 (1.01%) JSON
14 98 (1.00%) OAuth
15 86 (0.87%) Redux
16 84 (0.85%) AngularJS
17 79 (0.80%) Node.js
18 77 (0.78%) SOAP
19 67 (0.68%) Web Services
20 64 (0.65%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 510 (5.19%) Onboarding
2 485 (4.93%) Product Ownership
3 411 (4.18%) Cloud Native
4 251 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
5 236 (2.40%) Data Structures
6 232 (2.36%) Management Information System
7 219 (2.23%) Virtual Team
8 189 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
9 186 (1.89%) Derivative
10 179 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
11 168 (1.71%) AI Agents
12 165 (1.68%) Data Centre
13 155 (1.58%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 137 (1.39%) Fixed Income
15 131 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
16 117 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
16 117 (1.19%) Equities
17 114 (1.16%) Podcast
18 112 (1.14%) Web Conferencing
19 111 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 375 (3.81%) Windows
2 304 (3.09%) Linux
3 159 (1.62%) Unix
4 88 (0.90%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 46 (0.47%) Apple iOS
7 43 (0.44%) Windows 10
8 35 (0.36%) Android
8 35 (0.36%) Solaris
9 34 (0.35%) zOS
10 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
11 16 (0.16%) AIX
12 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.092%) VMS
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 4 (0.041%) CentOS
16 4 (0.041%) MVS
17 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,471 (25.13%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,020 (20.55%) Agile
3 1,325 (13.48%) Migration
4 1,296 (13.18%) Problem-Solving
5 1,183 (12.03%) AI
6 1,170 (11.90%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,144 (11.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,057 (10.75%) CI/CD
9 1,030 (10.48%) ERP
10 1,006 (10.23%) DevOps
11 995 (10.12%) Analytics
12 895 (9.10%) Decision-Making
13 814 (8.28%) Validation
14 802 (8.16%) Roadmaps
15 774 (7.87%) Data Modelling
16 764 (7.77%) User Acceptance Testing
17 756 (7.69%) Project Management
18 727 (7.39%) Change Management
19 665 (6.76%) Project Delivery
20 663 (6.74%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,289 (13.11%) SQL
2 1,191 (12.11%) Python
3 630 (6.41%) Java
4 365 (3.71%) C#
5 262 (2.66%) PowerShell
6 242 (2.46%) JavaScript
7 210 (2.14%) TypeScript
8 141 (1.43%) Bash
9 105 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.90%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 66 (0.67%) T-SQL
13 62 (0.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 58 (0.59%) Bicep
14 58 (0.59%) Go
15 41 (0.42%) VBA
16 40 (0.41%) Korn
17 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.40%) Scala
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 776 (7.89%) Security Cleared
2 726 (7.38%) Degree
3 555 (5.64%) SC Cleared
4 244 (2.48%) PMP
5 235 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
6 218 (2.22%) PMI Certification
7 196 (1.99%) ACCA
8 172 (1.75%) CIMA
9 140 (1.42%) CISSP
10 137 (1.39%) DV Cleared
11 130 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
12 107 (1.09%) Azure Certification
13 84 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
14 83 (0.84%) CISM
15 69 (0.70%) Master's Degree
16 64 (0.65%) AWS Certification
17 51 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 44 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.38%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 653 (6.64%) Data Quality
2 424 (4.31%) QA
3 361 (3.67%) PMO
4 243 (2.47%) GDPR
5 148 (1.51%) NIST
6 128 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 116 (1.18%) GRC
8 109 (1.11%) Accessibility
9 105 (1.07%) SLA
10 97 (0.99%) IFRS
11 89 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 56 (0.57%) ISO 20022
13 53 (0.54%) GAAP
14 46 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
16 32 (0.33%) SEPA
17 28 (0.28%) EMIR
17 28 (0.28%) MiFID
18 27 (0.27%) COBIT
19 24 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 260 (2.64%) Docker
2 240 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 81 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.24%) RACF
7 23 (0.23%) vSphere
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) Hyper-V
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 8 (0.081%) IAG
12 6 (0.061%) ACF2
12 6 (0.061%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.051%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.041%) KVM
14 4 (0.041%) zsh
15 3 (0.031%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 450 (4.58%) Kubernetes
2 168 (1.71%) Ansible
3 97 (0.99%) Grafana
4 81 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 70 (0.71%) Prometheus
6 60 (0.61%) SCCM
7 56 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 26 (0.26%) Progress Chef
9 25 (0.25%) Control-M
10 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
11 17 (0.17%) Argo
11 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
12 15 (0.15%) vRealize
13 14 (0.14%) FortiGate
13 14 (0.14%) HP ALM
13 14 (0.14%) Istio
13 14 (0.14%) Puppet
14 11 (0.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.11%) Packer
15 9 (0.092%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 1,388 (14.12%) Microsoft
2 886 (9.01%) Oracle
3 843 (8.57%) SAP
4 372 (3.78%) ServiceNow
5 338 (3.44%) Databricks
6 231 (2.35%) Salesforce
7 218 (2.22%) Google
8 175 (1.78%) IBM
9 139 (1.41%) VMware
10 127 (1.29%) Workday
11 116 (1.18%) Cisco
12 112 (1.14%) Splunk
13 99 (1.01%) Ariba
14 88 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 75 (0.76%) OpenAI
16 59 (0.60%) Citrix
17 58 (0.59%) Sage
18 54 (0.55%) Bloomberg
18 54 (0.55%) Informatica
19 46 (0.47%) Adobe