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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Finance 9,843 7,571 7,685
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 18.44% 22.97% 19.74%
As % of the General category 33.50% 36.21% 34.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,062 4,998 5,113
10th Percentile £360 £331 £360
25th Percentile £450 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £545 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.92% -5.22% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £677 £725
90th Percentile £788 £800 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +2.02% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 141 194
10th Percentile £15.89 £16.00 £14.65
25th Percentile £21.93 £21.00 £24.05
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +46.53% -21.30% +46.62%
75th Percentile - £63.25 £43.44
90th Percentile £79.50 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £26.36 £38.12
% change year-on-year +66.80% -30.86% +23.95%

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 29,379 20,909 22,363
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.43% 57.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,437 13,057 14,049
10th Percentile £313 £279 £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 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £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 2,229 1,133 1,375
10th Percentile £13.98 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.30 £17.04
Median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +31.45%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.00 £58.49
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +51.72%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 8,570 £550 - 14,590
London 0 5,171 £588 -2.08% 9,741
UK excluding London -1 3,884 £505 +2.02% 6,656
Work from Home -1 2,830 £550 -4.35% 6,326
North of England 0 1,330 £500 +6.72% 1,696
South East -1 737 £500 -6.32% 1,546
North West 0 688 £500 +9.29% 1,047
Midlands 0 633 £514 +14.22% 795
Yorkshire 0 575 £514 +8.21% 466
Scotland 0 503 £475 -5.00% 854
West Midlands +1 481 £525 +5.85% 485
South West -4 382 £525 -4.55% 806
East of England +5 202 £530 -7.83% 507
East Midlands -3 146 £500 +21.21% 310
Wales +1 67 £530 +14.59% 185
Northern Ireland -1 65 £475 - 355
North East -14 60 £500 +11.11% 202
Channel Islands +4 3 £450 - 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
1 325 (3.30%) Confluence
2 248 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 88 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
4 86 (0.87%) Apache Spark
5 71 (0.72%) Apache
6 50 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 35 (0.36%) CMS
8 33 (0.34%) SAS
9 26 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
10 20 (0.20%) 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%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.081%) Ethereum
14 8 (0.081%) WebLogic
15 6 (0.061%) Appian
16 5 (0.051%) JBoss
16 5 (0.051%) WordPress
Applications
1 525 (5.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
3 167 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 157 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
5 102 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 74 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
7 36 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.10%) Trello
9 7 (0.071%) 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
11 4 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Notion
13 2 (0.020%) EngageOne
13 2 (0.020%) InVision
Business Applications
1 444 (4.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 119 (1.21%) Oracle Payables
3 113 (1.15%) NetSuite
4 100 (1.02%) Oracle Receivables
5 92 (0.93%) Oracle ERP
6 71 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
7 68 (0.69%) SAP FI
8 67 (0.68%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 60 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
10 56 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
11 53 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
12 46 (0.47%) SAP CO
13 45 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
14 40 (0.41%) Aladdin
15 36 (0.37%) Unit4 Business World
16 34 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
17 31 (0.31%) SAP ERP
18 30 (0.30%) Workday HCM
19 28 (0.28%) SAP GRC
20 27 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,544 (15.69%) Azure
2 1,071 (10.88%) AWS
3 657 (6.67%) Power Platform
4 511 (5.19%) GCP
5 344 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
6 329 (3.34%) SaaS
7 295 (3.00%) Microsoft 365
8 290 (2.95%) GitHub
9 257 (2.61%) Dynamics 365
10 215 (2.18%) Snowflake
11 204 (2.07%) Entra ID
12 148 (1.50%) Serverless
13 145 (1.47%) OCI
14 124 (1.26%) Amazon S3
15 120 (1.22%) Power Automate
16 114 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
17 110 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
18 109 (1.11%) dbt
19 106 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
20 100 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 177 (1.80%) Firewall
2 150 (1.52%) Network Security
3 95 (0.97%) VPN
4 92 (0.93%) DNS
5 67 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 58 (0.59%) WAN
7 49 (0.50%) SSL
8 45 (0.46%) BGP
8 45 (0.46%) DHCP
9 42 (0.43%) LAN
10 39 (0.40%) HTTP
11 32 (0.33%) Multicast
12 28 (0.28%) Wireless
13 27 (0.27%) Internet
13 27 (0.27%) OSPF
14 26 (0.26%) VLAN
15 24 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
16 21 (0.21%) SAN
17 20 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
18 19 (0.19%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 538 (5.47%) Power BI
2 279 (2.83%) SQL Server
3 259 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
4 198 (2.01%) Metadata
5 173 (1.76%) Relational Database
6 147 (1.49%) PostgreSQL
7 143 (1.45%) Data Lake
8 137 (1.39%) Tableau
9 86 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
10 81 (0.82%) NoSQL
11 74 (0.75%) BigQuery
12 71 (0.72%) MongoDB
12 71 (0.72%) Oracle Database
13 65 (0.66%) Big Data
14 61 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (0.54%) Power Query
16 51 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 48 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
18 46 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 42 (0.43%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 664 (6.75%) JIRA
2 285 (2.90%) Git
3 161 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 101 (1.03%) GitLab
5 46 (0.47%) Selenium
6 45 (0.46%) JUnit
7 36 (0.37%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.30%) ERwin
8 30 (0.30%) Visual Studio
9 27 (0.27%) Maven
9 27 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 26 (0.26%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.26%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.26%) SonarQube
11 25 (0.25%) Postman
12 24 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.24%) Zephyr
13 22 (0.22%) REST Assured
14 21 (0.21%) TeamCity
15 20 (0.20%) ER Studio
General
1 2,914 (29.60%) Social Skills
2 1,897 (19.27%) Banking
3 1,386 (14.08%) Analytical Skills
4 546 (5.55%) Public Sector
5 534 (5.43%) Legal
6 401 (4.07%) Organisational Skills
7 385 (3.91%) Investment Banking
8 375 (3.81%) Retail
9 361 (3.67%) Financial Institution
10 349 (3.55%) Front Office
11 283 (2.88%) Influencing Skills
12 228 (2.32%) Documentation Skills
13 203 (2.06%) Manufacturing
14 180 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 163 (1.66%) Billing
16 161 (1.64%) General Ledger
17 160 (1.63%) Marketing
18 157 (1.60%) Local Government
19 141 (1.43%) Law
20 137 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,423 (14.46%) Analyst
2 1,068 (10.85%) Lead
3 1,054 (10.71%) Senior
4 972 (9.88%) Developer
5 867 (8.81%) Architect
6 730 (7.42%) Business Analyst
7 710 (7.21%) Project Manager
8 697 (7.08%) Consultant
9 327 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
10 315 (3.20%) Data Engineer
11 252 (2.56%) Financial Analyst
12 227 (2.31%) Senior Manager
13 204 (2.07%) Accountant
14 201 (2.04%) Data Analyst
15 198 (2.01%) Java Developer
16 183 (1.86%) Senior Developer
17 182 (1.85%) Programme Manager
18 180 (1.83%) Finance Manager
19 177 (1.80%) IT Manager
20 172 (1.75%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.33%) REST
2 278 (2.82%) .NET
3 256 (2.60%) Kafka
4 254 (2.58%) Oracle Fusion
5 251 (2.55%) React
6 184 (1.87%) Middleware
7 175 (1.78%) Spring
8 163 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 144 (1.46%) PySpark
10 124 (1.26%) RESTful
11 108 (1.10%) Redux
12 100 (1.02%) Node.js
13 95 (0.97%) JSON
14 94 (0.95%) XML
15 91 (0.92%) AngularJS
16 90 (0.91%) OAuth
17 69 (0.70%) SOAP
18 61 (0.62%) HTML
19 60 (0.61%) Web Services
20 58 (0.59%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 490 (4.98%) Onboarding
2 468 (4.75%) Product Ownership
3 424 (4.31%) Cloud Native
4 265 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
5 244 (2.48%) Data Structures
6 223 (2.27%) Management Information System
7 205 (2.08%) Virtual Team
8 186 (1.89%) Derivative
9 178 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
10 172 (1.75%) Distributed Systems
11 160 (1.63%) Fixed Income
12 156 (1.58%) AI Agents
12 156 (1.58%) Data Centre
13 153 (1.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 134 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
15 121 (1.23%) Equities
16 109 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
17 107 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
18 102 (1.04%) Enterprise Software
19 100 (1.02%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 361 (3.67%) Windows
2 297 (3.02%) Linux
3 151 (1.53%) Unix
4 82 (0.83%) Windows Server
5 49 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 44 (0.45%) Apple iOS
7 39 (0.40%) Windows 10
8 36 (0.37%) zOS
9 34 (0.35%) Solaris
10 33 (0.34%) Android
11 27 (0.27%) Mac OS
12 15 (0.15%) AIX
13 10 (0.10%) Ubuntu
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 8 (0.081%) VMS
15 6 (0.061%) HPUX
15 6 (0.061%) SUSE
16 5 (0.051%) MVS
17 3 (0.030%) Windows Server 2012
18 2 (0.020%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,354 (23.92%) Stakeholder Management
2 2,017 (20.49%) Agile
3 1,347 (13.68%) Migration
4 1,304 (13.25%) Problem-Solving
5 1,169 (11.88%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,161 (11.80%) AI
7 1,132 (11.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,042 (10.59%) CI/CD
9 1,027 (10.43%) ERP
10 1,011 (10.27%) DevOps
11 993 (10.09%) Analytics
12 909 (9.23%) Decision-Making
13 807 (8.20%) Validation
14 787 (8.00%) Roadmaps
15 785 (7.98%) Data Modelling
16 756 (7.68%) User Acceptance Testing
17 745 (7.57%) Project Management
18 718 (7.29%) Change Management
19 659 (6.70%) Business Intelligence
20 647 (6.57%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,271 (12.91%) SQL
2 1,204 (12.23%) Python
3 634 (6.44%) Java
4 382 (3.88%) C#
5 262 (2.66%) JavaScript
6 246 (2.50%) PowerShell
7 230 (2.34%) TypeScript
8 129 (1.31%) Bash
9 99 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 83 (0.84%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.79%) C++
12 71 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 69 (0.70%) Go
14 67 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 52 (0.53%) Bicep
16 45 (0.46%) VBA
17 38 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 36 (0.37%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.36%) Korn
20 34 (0.35%) Scala
Qualifications
1 769 (7.81%) Security Cleared
2 717 (7.28%) Degree
3 553 (5.62%) SC Cleared
4 241 (2.45%) PMP
5 213 (2.16%) PMI Certification
6 206 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
7 197 (2.00%) ACCA
8 174 (1.77%) CIMA
9 154 (1.56%) CISSP
10 135 (1.37%) DV Cleared
11 121 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 100 (1.02%) Azure Certification
13 87 (0.88%) CISM
14 79 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
15 71 (0.72%) Master's Degree
16 62 (0.63%) AWS Certification
17 52 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
18 47 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 42 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 35 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 635 (6.45%) Data Quality
2 408 (4.15%) QA
3 361 (3.67%) PMO
4 268 (2.72%) GDPR
5 156 (1.58%) NIST
6 125 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 112 (1.14%) GRC
8 110 (1.12%) SLA
9 101 (1.03%) Accessibility
9 101 (1.03%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 100 (1.02%) IFRS
11 60 (0.61%) ISO 20022
12 59 (0.60%) GAAP
13 46 (0.47%) PCI DSS
14 36 (0.37%) SEPA
14 36 (0.37%) Solvency II
15 32 (0.33%) COBIT
16 30 (0.30%) SOC 2
17 28 (0.28%) MiFID
18 27 (0.27%) EMIR
System Software
1 267 (2.71%) Docker
2 233 (2.37%) Active Directory
3 70 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
5 24 (0.24%) vSphere
6 23 (0.23%) RACF
7 15 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.12%) NFS
8 12 (0.12%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.10%) Hyper-V
10 7 (0.071%) IAG
11 5 (0.051%) ACF2
11 5 (0.051%) GPFS
11 5 (0.051%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
12 4 (0.041%) KVM
12 4 (0.041%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.041%) zsh
13 3 (0.030%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 434 (4.41%) Kubernetes
2 344 (3.49%) Terraform
3 158 (1.61%) Ansible
4 88 (0.89%) Grafana
5 77 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
6 70 (0.71%) Prometheus
7 56 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (0.54%) SCCM
9 26 (0.26%) Control-M
10 25 (0.25%) Progress Chef
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%) vRealize
14 15 (0.15%) Puppet
15 13 (0.13%) CASB
15 13 (0.13%) HP ALM
15 13 (0.13%) Istio
16 12 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 1,334 (13.55%) Microsoft
2 859 (8.73%) Oracle
3 836 (8.49%) SAP
4 371 (3.77%) ServiceNow
5 324 (3.29%) Databricks
6 230 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 218 (2.21%) Google
8 161 (1.64%) IBM
9 134 (1.36%) Workday
10 132 (1.34%) VMware
11 111 (1.13%) Cisco
12 107 (1.09%) Splunk
13 92 (0.93%) Ariba
14 90 (0.91%) CyberArk
15 71 (0.72%) OpenAI
16 65 (0.66%) Sage
17 60 (0.61%) Citrix
18 51 (0.52%) Informatica
19 50 (0.51%) Bloomberg
20 44 (0.45%) Murex