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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,846 7,575 7,680
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.40% 22.89% 19.82%
As % of the General category 33.42% 36.07% 34.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,049 4,976 5,112
10th Percentile £360 £331 £363
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £544 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.20% -5.48% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £680 £718
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +1.00% -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 304 144 194
10th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £14.65
25th Percentile £21.93 £20.97 £23.87
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.64 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +48.34% -22.26% +46.62%
75th Percentile - £63.38 £43.44
90th Percentile £75.82 £75.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.50 £38.12
% change year-on-year +65.89% -30.48% +18.86%

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 29,460 20,999 22,224
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.06% 63.44% 57.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,463 13,057 13,972
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £749 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,249 1,151 1,349
10th Percentile £13.98 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.25 £17.00
Median hourly rate £31.56 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +25.47% -34.02% +38.62%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.75 £58.49
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.50 £70.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +52.48%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 8,577 £550 - 10,535
London 0 5,150 £588 -2.08% 6,576
UK excluding London -1 3,900 £505 +1.00% 5,576
Work from Home -1 2,811 £550 -4.35% 4,732
North of England 0 1,349 £500 +6.50% 1,379
South East -1 737 £500 -4.76% 1,409
North West 0 695 £500 +11.11% 823
Midlands 0 636 £500 +11.11% 648
Yorkshire 0 581 £514 +6.20% 394
Scotland 0 496 £475 -5.00% 662
West Midlands +1 479 £520 +4.00% 393
South West -4 384 £538 -4.44% 690
East of England +4 200 £525 -8.70% 445
East Midlands -2 151 £500 +21.21% 254
Northern Ireland -1 67 £475 - 276
North East -10 66 £500 +11.11% 181
Wales 0 65 £528 +14.05% 150
Channel Islands +5 4 £500 - 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
1 331 (3.36%) Confluence
2 250 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 91 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 90 (0.91%) Apache Spark
5 73 (0.74%) Apache
6 51 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
7 37 (0.38%) CMS
8 31 (0.31%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.21%) IIS
11 15 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 13 (0.13%) Camunda
12 13 (0.13%) CICS
13 9 (0.091%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 7 (0.071%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 6 (0.061%) Appian
17 5 (0.051%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 522 (5.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
3 178 (1.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 155 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 101 (1.03%) MS Visio
6 71 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 33 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) 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 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
12 3 (0.030%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 439 (4.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 127 (1.29%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 106 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
5 95 (0.96%) Oracle ERP
6 73 (0.74%) Oracle EBS
7 67 (0.68%) SAP FI
8 66 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 64 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 55 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
12 45 (0.46%) SAP CO
13 43 (0.44%) SAP FI/CO
14 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
15 36 (0.37%) Unit4 Business World
16 30 (0.30%) SAP GRC
16 30 (0.30%) Workday HCM
17 29 (0.29%) SAP ERP
18 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,546 (15.70%) Azure
2 1,068 (10.85%) AWS
3 660 (6.70%) Power Platform
4 515 (5.23%) GCP
5 347 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
6 332 (3.37%) SaaS
7 304 (3.09%) Microsoft 365
8 297 (3.02%) GitHub
9 255 (2.59%) Dynamics 365
10 216 (2.19%) Snowflake
11 214 (2.17%) Entra ID
12 149 (1.51%) OCI
13 148 (1.50%) Serverless
14 122 (1.24%) Power Automate
15 119 (1.21%) Amazon S3
16 116 (1.18%) GitHub Actions
17 112 (1.14%) dbt
18 111 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
19 107 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
20 102 (1.04%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 173 (1.76%) Firewall
2 152 (1.54%) Network Security
3 99 (1.01%) VPN
4 96 (0.98%) DNS
5 66 (0.67%) TCP/IP
6 57 (0.58%) WAN
7 47 (0.48%) DHCP
8 45 (0.46%) SSL
9 43 (0.44%) BGP
9 43 (0.44%) LAN
10 39 (0.40%) HTTP
11 29 (0.29%) Multicast
11 29 (0.29%) Wireless
12 28 (0.28%) Internet
12 28 (0.28%) VLAN
13 27 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
14 26 (0.26%) OSPF
15 25 (0.25%) SAN
16 20 (0.20%) SD-WAN
17 19 (0.19%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 542 (5.50%) Power BI
2 280 (2.84%) SQL Server
3 259 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (2.04%) Metadata
5 177 (1.80%) Relational Database
6 142 (1.44%) Data Lake
6 142 (1.44%) PostgreSQL
7 131 (1.33%) Tableau
8 82 (0.83%) NoSQL
8 82 (0.83%) Oracle Reports
9 77 (0.78%) BigQuery
10 74 (0.75%) MongoDB
11 71 (0.72%) Oracle Database
12 63 (0.64%) Big Data
13 62 (0.63%) Snowflake Schema
14 52 (0.53%) Power Query
15 51 (0.52%) Delta Lake
16 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
17 47 (0.48%) Data Vault
18 44 (0.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 668 (6.78%) JIRA
2 288 (2.93%) Git
3 161 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 101 (1.03%) GitLab
5 49 (0.50%) Selenium
6 47 (0.48%) JUnit
7 35 (0.36%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.27%) Bitbucket
9 27 (0.27%) Claude Code
9 27 (0.27%) Maven
9 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
11 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
11 24 (0.24%) Postman
12 22 (0.22%) REST Assured
12 22 (0.22%) Zephyr
13 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
14 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,921 (29.67%) Social Skills
2 1,900 (19.30%) Banking
3 1,386 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
4 541 (5.49%) Legal
5 538 (5.46%) Public Sector
6 411 (4.17%) Organisational Skills
7 383 (3.89%) Investment Banking
8 376 (3.82%) Retail
9 357 (3.63%) Financial Institution
10 338 (3.43%) Front Office
11 295 (3.00%) Influencing Skills
12 230 (2.34%) Documentation Skills
13 203 (2.06%) Manufacturing
14 188 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 166 (1.69%) Billing
16 163 (1.66%) General Ledger
17 158 (1.60%) Marketing
18 151 (1.53%) Local Government
19 142 (1.44%) Law
20 140 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,416 (14.38%) Analyst
2 1,062 (10.79%) Senior
3 1,054 (10.70%) Lead
4 962 (9.77%) Developer
5 862 (8.75%) Architect
6 731 (7.42%) Business Analyst
7 708 (7.19%) Consultant
8 705 (7.16%) Project Manager
9 318 (3.23%) Solutions Architect
10 312 (3.17%) Data Engineer
11 251 (2.55%) Financial Analyst
12 231 (2.35%) Senior Manager
13 197 (2.00%) Java Developer
14 196 (1.99%) Accountant
15 193 (1.96%) Data Analyst
16 185 (1.88%) Finance Manager
16 185 (1.88%) Programme Manager
17 182 (1.85%) IT Manager
17 182 (1.85%) Senior Developer
18 164 (1.67%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 340 (3.45%) REST
2 275 (2.79%) .NET
3 264 (2.68%) Oracle Fusion
4 254 (2.58%) Kafka
5 238 (2.42%) React
6 186 (1.89%) Middleware
7 179 (1.82%) Spring
8 168 (1.71%) Spring Boot
9 142 (1.44%) PySpark
10 127 (1.29%) RESTful
11 97 (0.99%) JSON
11 97 (0.99%) XML
12 96 (0.98%) Redux
13 91 (0.92%) OAuth
14 90 (0.91%) Node.js
15 88 (0.89%) AngularJS
16 75 (0.76%) SOAP
17 64 (0.65%) Web Services
18 61 (0.62%) HTML
19 57 (0.58%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 501 (5.09%) Onboarding
2 468 (4.75%) Product Ownership
3 426 (4.33%) Cloud Native
4 260 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
5 243 (2.47%) Data Structures
6 227 (2.31%) Management Information System
7 214 (2.17%) Virtual Team
8 184 (1.87%) Derivative
9 182 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
10 173 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
11 159 (1.61%) Data Centre
12 157 (1.59%) AI Agents
13 150 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 148 (1.50%) Fixed Income
15 136 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
16 117 (1.19%) Equities
17 110 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
18 109 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
18 109 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
19 103 (1.05%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 366 (3.72%) Windows
2 300 (3.05%) Linux
3 152 (1.54%) Unix
4 86 (0.87%) Windows Server
5 52 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 45 (0.46%) Apple iOS
7 41 (0.42%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) zOS
9 34 (0.35%) Solaris
10 33 (0.34%) Android
11 28 (0.28%) Mac OS
12 15 (0.15%) AIX
13 11 (0.11%) Ubuntu
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
15 7 (0.071%) VMS
16 6 (0.061%) HPUX
16 6 (0.061%) SUSE
17 5 (0.051%) MVS
18 3 (0.030%) CentOS
18 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,384 (24.21%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,018 (20.50%) Agile
3 1,348 (13.69%) Migration
4 1,302 (13.22%) Problem-Solving
5 1,179 (11.97%) AI
6 1,160 (11.78%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,136 (11.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,050 (10.66%) CI/CD
9 1,041 (10.57%) ERP
10 1,013 (10.29%) DevOps
11 996 (10.12%) Analytics
12 898 (9.12%) Decision-Making
13 799 (8.11%) Validation
14 790 (8.02%) Roadmaps
15 786 (7.98%) Data Modelling
16 760 (7.72%) User Acceptance Testing
17 745 (7.57%) Project Management
18 717 (7.28%) Change Management
19 667 (6.77%) Business Intelligence
20 655 (6.65%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,272 (12.92%) SQL
2 1,199 (12.18%) Python
3 629 (6.39%) Java
4 375 (3.81%) C#
5 257 (2.61%) PowerShell
6 250 (2.54%) JavaScript
7 223 (2.26%) TypeScript
8 136 (1.38%) Bash
9 102 (1.04%) PL/SQL
10 87 (0.88%) Shell Script
11 76 (0.77%) C++
12 68 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 66 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 62 (0.63%) Go
15 54 (0.55%) Bicep
16 45 (0.46%) VBA
17 39 (0.40%) Scala
18 38 (0.39%) Korn
18 38 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 37 (0.38%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 778 (7.90%) Security Cleared
2 716 (7.27%) Degree
3 554 (5.63%) SC Cleared
4 245 (2.49%) PMP
5 217 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
6 213 (2.16%) PMI Certification
7 197 (2.00%) ACCA
8 173 (1.76%) CIMA
9 149 (1.51%) CISSP
10 134 (1.36%) DV Cleared
11 122 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 104 (1.06%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.88%) CISM
14 81 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
15 67 (0.68%) Master's Degree
16 64 (0.65%) AWS Certification
17 49 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 44 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.38%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 632 (6.42%) Data Quality
2 415 (4.21%) QA
3 359 (3.65%) PMO
4 258 (2.62%) GDPR
5 156 (1.58%) NIST
6 130 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 111 (1.13%) GRC
8 109 (1.11%) SLA
9 107 (1.09%) Accessibility
10 98 (1.00%) IFRS
11 95 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.58%) GAAP
13 55 (0.56%) ISO 20022
14 44 (0.45%) PCI DSS
15 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
16 34 (0.35%) SEPA
17 30 (0.30%) COBIT
18 28 (0.28%) MiFID
18 28 (0.28%) SOC 2
19 27 (0.27%) EMIR
System Software
1 263 (2.67%) Docker
2 238 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 76 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
6 24 (0.24%) vSphere
7 23 (0.23%) RACF
8 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.12%) NFS
11 11 (0.11%) Hyper-V
12 8 (0.081%) IAG
13 5 (0.051%) ACF2
13 5 (0.051%) GPFS
13 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.041%) KVM
14 4 (0.041%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.041%) zsh
15 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 442 (4.49%) Kubernetes
2 358 (3.64%) Terraform
3 164 (1.67%) Ansible
4 93 (0.94%) Grafana
5 83 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
6 72 (0.73%) Prometheus
7 58 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
8 57 (0.58%) SCCM
9 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
10 26 (0.26%) Control-M
11 18 (0.18%) OMEGAMON
12 17 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.16%) Argo
13 16 (0.16%) FortiGate
13 16 (0.16%) Puppet
13 16 (0.16%) vRealize
14 14 (0.14%) HP ALM
14 14 (0.14%) Istio
15 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 11 (0.11%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,374 (13.95%) Microsoft
2 883 (8.97%) Oracle
3 841 (8.54%) SAP
4 380 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 324 (3.29%) Databricks
6 229 (2.33%) Salesforce
7 228 (2.32%) Google
8 169 (1.72%) IBM
9 141 (1.43%) VMware
10 131 (1.33%) Workday
11 112 (1.14%) Cisco
12 111 (1.13%) Splunk
13 89 (0.90%) Ariba
13 89 (0.90%) CyberArk
14 72 (0.73%) OpenAI
15 62 (0.63%) Sage
16 59 (0.60%) Citrix
17 53 (0.54%) Informatica
18 49 (0.50%) Bloomberg
19 46 (0.47%) Adobe