Investment Banking Contract Job Trends

Investment Banking
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Investment Banking in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Investment Banking over the 6 months leading up to 16 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 231 138 170
Rank change year-on-year -93 +32 -51
Contract jobs citing Investment Banking 526 605 596
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 2.08% 1.40%
As % of the General category 2.04% 3.28% 2.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 243 360 440
10th Percentile £403 £400 £500
25th Percentile £476 £527 £600
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £725 £725
Median % change year-on-year -13.79% - +3.57%
75th Percentile £763 £850 £850
90th Percentile £888 £882 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £473 £550
% change year-on-year +8.99% -14.09% +6.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 1
10th Percentile £56.01 - -
25th Percentile £62.10 - £18.25
Median hourly rate £74.73 £100.00 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.27% +412.82% -70.70%
75th Percentile £87.37 - £20.75
90th Percentile £93.45 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £95.00 - £19.50
% change year-on-year - - -70.70%

All General Skills
UK

Investment Banking 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 25,828 18,431 24,707
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.78% 63.27% 58.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,786 11,716 15,592
10th Percentile £310 £286 £275
25th Percentile £410 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.88% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.11% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,651 789 1,917
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.98 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.33 £17.25 £15.46
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -10.72%
75th Percentile £60.68 £55.93 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.09 £24.50 £28.25
% change year-on-year +14.65% -13.27% -2.59%

Investment Banking
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Investment Banking relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Investment Banking job vacancy trend in the UK

Investment Banking
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Investment Banking.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Investment Banking

Investment Banking
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Investment Banking over the 6 months to 16 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Investment Banking in the UK

Investment Banking
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Investment Banking.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Investment Banking

Investment Banking
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Investment Banking over the 6 months to 16 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Investment Banking in the UK

Investment Banking
Top 13 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Investment Banking within the UK over the 6 months to 16 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 -85 466 £650 -13.33% 104
London -64 386 £650 -13.33% 88
Work from Home -65 176 £638 -15.00% 38
UK excluding London -88 132 £515 +8.99% 40
North of England -10 71 £428 -10.00% 8
North West +23 68 £450 -37.93% 5
West Midlands -10 56 - - 4
Midlands -15 56 - - 4
Scotland -31 43 £525 +16.67% 4
Northern Ireland -4 10 £550 +17.02% 3
South West - 6 £515 -
Yorkshire -59 3 £405 +5.19% 3
South East - 2 £159 - 21

Investment Banking
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 13 (2.47%) Confluence
2 5 (0.95%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 5 (0.95%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.76%) Apache
3 4 (0.76%) IIS
3 4 (0.76%) SAS
4 3 (0.57%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.19%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.19%) CICS
6 1 (0.19%) Jupyter
Applications
1 29 (5.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (3.61%) Microsoft Office
3 16 (3.04%) MS Visio
4 14 (2.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.57%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.38%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.38%) UserZoom
8 1 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 14 (2.66%) Oracle Payables
2 13 (2.47%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 13 (2.47%) Oracle Receivables
3 9 (1.71%) Payment Gateway
4 7 (1.33%) Aladdin
5 6 (1.14%) Summit
6 4 (0.76%) Fidessa
7 3 (0.57%) Loan IQ
7 3 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
8 2 (0.38%) Bloomberg TOMS
8 2 (0.38%) Front Arena
8 2 (0.38%) Global One
9 1 (0.19%) Actimize
9 1 (0.19%) Adobe Campaign
9 1 (0.19%) Bloomberg AIM
9 1 (0.19%) IntelliMatch
9 1 (0.19%) Markit EDM
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
9 1 (0.19%) Orchestrade
9 1 (0.19%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 66 (12.55%) Azure
2 60 (11.41%) AWS
3 27 (5.13%) Power Platform
4 24 (4.56%) Snowflake
5 20 (3.80%) GCP
6 19 (3.61%) GitHub
7 16 (3.04%) Microsoft 365
8 14 (2.66%) OCI
9 9 (1.71%) Anthropic Claude
9 9 (1.71%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (1.71%) ChatGPT
9 9 (1.71%) GitHub Copilot
10 8 (1.52%) Entra ID
11 6 (1.14%) Figma
11 6 (1.14%) Google Workspace
12 5 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
12 5 (0.95%) npm
12 5 (0.95%) Serverless
12 5 (0.95%) Yarn
13 4 (0.76%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 37 (7.03%) DNS
2 25 (4.75%) HTTP
3 23 (4.37%) Multicast
3 23 (4.37%) TCP/IP
3 23 (4.37%) VPN
4 22 (4.18%) DMZ
5 20 (3.80%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 20 (3.80%) FIX Connectivity
5 20 (3.80%) Wireshark
6 19 (3.61%) BGP
6 19 (3.61%) BIG-IP
6 19 (3.61%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
6 19 (3.61%) SSL
7 8 (1.52%) Firewall
8 3 (0.57%) SAN
9 2 (0.38%) DWDM
9 2 (0.38%) Internet
9 2 (0.38%) MPLS
9 2 (0.38%) OSPF
9 2 (0.38%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (5.13%) Relational Database
2 24 (4.56%) Power BI
2 24 (4.56%) SQL Server
3 23 (4.37%) Metadata
4 19 (3.61%) Tableau
5 15 (2.85%) PostgreSQL
6 13 (2.47%) Snowflake Schema
7 10 (1.90%) Big Data
7 10 (1.90%) Data Vault
7 10 (1.90%) Pinecone
7 10 (1.90%) Weaviate
8 8 (1.52%) MongoDB
9 7 (1.33%) Data Warehouse
10 6 (1.14%) DB2
10 6 (1.14%) KDB
10 6 (1.14%) RDBMS
10 6 (1.14%) Redis
11 4 (0.76%) Flink
11 4 (0.76%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.76%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 40 (7.60%) JIRA
2 18 (3.42%) Fiddler
3 14 (2.66%) Git
4 11 (2.09%) TeamCity
5 9 (1.71%) GitLab
6 8 (1.52%) Jenkins
7 6 (1.14%) Octopus Deploy
7 6 (1.14%) webpack
8 5 (0.95%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.95%) Selenium
9 4 (0.76%) ER Studio
9 4 (0.76%) ERwin
9 4 (0.76%) PowerDesigner
10 3 (0.57%) JUnit
10 3 (0.57%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.38%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.38%) Maven
11 2 (0.38%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.38%) Vite
General
1 526 (100.00%) Banking
2 297 (56.46%) Finance
3 134 (25.48%) Front Office
4 121 (23.00%) Social Skills
5 77 (14.64%) Analytical Skills
6 48 (9.13%) Retail Banking
7 40 (7.60%) Retail
8 39 (7.41%) Corporate Banking
9 29 (5.51%) Financial Institution
10 20 (3.80%) Documentation Skills
10 20 (3.80%) Legal
11 11 (2.09%) Organisational Skills
12 10 (1.90%) Back Office
12 10 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
13 8 (1.52%) Aviation
13 8 (1.52%) French Language
14 6 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.95%) Spanish Language
16 3 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.57%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 139 (26.43%) Developer
2 93 (17.68%) Analyst
3 71 (13.50%) Business Analyst
4 67 (12.74%) Senior
5 63 (11.98%) Java Developer
6 39 (7.41%) Network Engineer
6 39 (7.41%) Senior Developer
7 36 (6.84%) Architect
8 30 (5.70%) Senior Java Developer
9 29 (5.51%) Banking Analyst
9 29 (5.51%) Solutions Architect
10 28 (5.32%) Data Engineer
11 26 (4.94%) Payments Architect
11 26 (4.94%) Payments Solutions Architect
12 24 (4.56%) Electronic Trading Developer
13 23 (4.37%) Security Engineer
14 22 (4.18%) C# Developer
15 20 (3.80%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
15 20 (3.80%) Lead
16 19 (3.61%) Low Latency Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (7.22%) .NET
2 35 (6.65%) FIX Protocol
3 33 (6.27%) Kafka
4 32 (6.08%) React
5 22 (4.18%) Middleware
6 15 (2.85%) CSS
6 15 (2.85%) HTML
6 15 (2.85%) Redux
6 15 (2.85%) Spring
7 14 (2.66%) XML
8 13 (2.47%) AngularJS
9 11 (2.09%) LangChain
10 10 (1.90%) LlamaIndex
10 10 (1.90%) REST
10 10 (1.90%) RESTful
11 9 (1.71%) HTML5
12 8 (1.52%) Node.js
13 7 (1.33%) WebSockets
14 6 (1.14%) Reactive Extensions
14 6 (1.14%) Ultra Messaging
Miscellaneous
1 96 (18.25%) Derivative
2 59 (11.22%) Management Information System
3 53 (10.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 47 (8.94%) Equities
5 41 (7.79%) Fixed Income
6 24 (4.56%) Market Risk
7 22 (4.18%) Data Structures
8 21 (3.99%) Credit Risk
9 20 (3.80%) Distributed Systems
10 19 (3.61%) Product Ownership
11 18 (3.42%) Algorithms
11 18 (3.42%) Cloud Native
11 18 (3.42%) TWAP
11 18 (3.42%) VWAP
12 17 (3.23%) Onboarding
13 12 (2.28%) AI Agents
14 9 (1.71%) Equity Derivative
15 8 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
15 8 (1.52%) Greenfield Project
15 8 (1.52%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 30 (5.70%) Windows
2 25 (4.75%) Unix
3 21 (3.99%) Linux
4 8 (1.52%) Windows 10
5 6 (1.14%) Windows 7
6 4 (0.76%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.38%) AIX
7 2 (0.38%) Android
7 2 (0.38%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.19%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 114 (21.67%) Agile
2 80 (15.21%) Problem-Solving
3 63 (11.98%) AI
3 63 (11.98%) Analytics
4 58 (11.03%) Stakeholder Management
5 55 (10.46%) CI/CD
5 55 (10.46%) Low Latency
6 52 (9.89%) Electronic Trading
7 46 (8.75%) User Acceptance Testing
8 45 (8.56%) TDD
9 44 (8.37%) Asset Management
10 43 (8.17%) Business Analysis
10 43 (8.17%) Multithreading
11 42 (7.98%) SDLC
12 39 (7.41%) Project Management
12 39 (7.41%) Wealth Management
13 37 (7.03%) Continuous Improvement
13 37 (7.03%) DevOps
13 37 (7.03%) Risk Management
13 37 (7.03%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 120 (22.81%) SQL
2 116 (22.05%) Java
3 110 (20.91%) Python
4 56 (10.65%) C#
5 38 (7.22%) TypeScript
6 29 (5.51%) JavaScript
7 22 (4.18%) C++
7 22 (4.18%) PowerShell
8 10 (1.90%) Shell Script
9 7 (1.33%) Scala
10 6 (1.14%) Rust
11 5 (0.95%) Bash
11 5 (0.95%) VBA
12 4 (0.76%) Perl
13 3 (0.57%) Go
13 3 (0.57%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.38%) F#
14 2 (0.38%) Kotlin
15 1 (0.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 35 (6.65%) Degree
2 18 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
3 11 (2.09%) Master's Degree
4 10 (1.90%) Azure Certification
5 7 (1.33%) PMP
6 5 (0.95%) PMI Certification
7 4 (0.76%) CISSP
7 4 (0.76%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 4 (0.76%) MCSA
7 4 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (0.57%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.57%) CFA
9 2 (0.38%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.38%) CCNP
9 2 (0.38%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.38%) MBA
9 2 (0.38%) Security Cleared
9 2 (0.38%) Six Sigma Black Belt
9 2 (0.38%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (4.18%) Data Quality
1 22 (4.18%) QA
2 15 (2.85%) PMO
3 14 (2.66%) MiFID
4 8 (1.52%) SLA
5 7 (1.33%) EMIR
6 6 (1.14%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.57%) WCAG
8 2 (0.38%) Basel III
8 2 (0.38%) GDPR
8 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.38%) NIST
9 1 (0.19%) EU AI Act
9 1 (0.19%) GRC
9 1 (0.19%) IFRS
9 1 (0.19%) ITGC
9 1 (0.19%) PSD2
9 1 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
9 1 (0.19%) Solvency II
System Software
1 19 (3.61%) Docker
1 19 (3.61%) VMware Infrastructure
2 18 (3.42%) Firmware
3 8 (1.52%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.19%) GridGain
4 1 (0.19%) Varnish
4 1 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.19%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 17 (3.23%) Kubernetes
2 7 (1.33%) SCCM
2 7 (1.33%) Terraform
3 6 (1.14%) WSUS
4 5 (0.95%) Grafana
5 4 (0.76%) Ansible
5 4 (0.76%) Control-M
5 4 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.38%) ITRS Geneos
6 2 (0.38%) Puppet
6 2 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.19%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.19%) WMI
Vendors
1 54 (10.27%) Microsoft
2 42 (7.98%) Oracle
3 37 (7.03%) F5
4 19 (3.61%) Blue Coat
4 19 (3.61%) Cisco
4 19 (3.61%) VMware
5 18 (3.42%) McAfee
5 18 (3.42%) NetApp
6 14 (2.66%) Murex
7 12 (2.28%) Bloomberg
7 12 (2.28%) Sybase
8 9 (1.71%) ION Trading
8 9 (1.71%) OpenAI
9 8 (1.52%) Adobe
9 8 (1.52%) Charles River
9 8 (1.52%) Citrix
9 8 (1.52%) Databricks
10 7 (1.33%) IBM
10 7 (1.33%) Reuters
10 7 (1.33%) ServiceNow