Derivative Contract Job Trends

Derivatives
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Derivative in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Derivative over the 6 months leading up to 11 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 405 260 204
Rank change year-on-year -145 -56 +17
Contract jobs citing Derivative 272 337 512
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 1.04% 1.19%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.55% 3.01% 3.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 164 288 450
10th Percentile £450 £533 £588
25th Percentile £569 £625 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £725 £738 £800
Median % change year-on-year -1.69% -7.81% +10.34%
75th Percentile £850 £833 £888
90th Percentile £907 £950 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £459 £638
% change year-on-year +33.59% -28.08% -20.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 0
10th Percentile £59.13 - -
25th Percentile £63.44 £86.25 -
Median hourly rate £71.25 £87.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -18.57% - -
75th Percentile £78.44 £88.75 -
90th Percentile £82.38 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Generic Skills
UK

Derivative falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 17,557 11,206 13,080
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.20% 34.53% 30.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,751 6,959 8,298
10th Percentile £313 £300 £281
25th Percentile £414 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £626 £648 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 881 522 881
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.48 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.87 £15.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £31.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +39.58% -13.71% +32.73%
75th Percentile £70.00 £58.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £87.50 £77.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £31.76 £36.50
% change year-on-year +38.41% -12.99% +4.29%

Derivative
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Derivative job vacancy trend in the UK

Derivative
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Derivative

Derivative
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Derivative over the 6 months to 11 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Derivative in the UK

Derivative
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Derivative

Derivative
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Derivative over the 6 months to 11 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Derivative in the UK

Derivative
Top 10 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Derivative within the UK over the 6 months to 11 July 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 -144 250 £725 -3.33% 57
London -77 243 £725 -3.33% 53
Work from Home -124 90 £800 +10.34% 20
UK excluding London -112 24 £613 +33.59% 9
Scotland -2 16 £450 -0.44% 1
Yorkshire -47 5 £725 - 2
North of England -77 5 £725 +20.23% 4
Northern Ireland -6 2 £625 +50.15% 1
Midlands -59 1 - -
West Midlands - 1 - -

Derivative
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 6 (2.21%) Confluence
2 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.37%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.84%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (4.04%) Aladdin
2 6 (2.21%) Summit
3 4 (1.47%) Loan IQ
4 3 (1.10%) Advent Geneva
4 3 (1.10%) Orchestrade
5 2 (0.74%) Front Arena
5 2 (0.74%) Global One
6 1 (0.37%) Bloomberg AIM
6 1 (0.37%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 43 (15.81%) AWS
2 37 (13.60%) Azure
3 30 (11.03%) GCP
4 11 (4.04%) ChatGPT
5 9 (3.31%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (2.94%) GitHub
6 8 (2.94%) GitHub Copilot
6 8 (2.94%) Power Platform
7 5 (1.84%) Snowflake
8 4 (1.47%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.10%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (1.10%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 3 (1.10%) Microsoft Copilot
9 3 (1.10%) SaaS
9 3 (1.10%) Serverless
10 2 (0.74%) Collibra
11 1 (0.37%) npm
11 1 (0.37%) OpenShift
11 1 (0.37%) Yarn
Communications & Networking
1 19 (6.99%) FIX Connectivity
2 8 (2.94%) HTTP
3 1 (0.37%) RTMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (9.93%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (9.19%) Relational Database
3 20 (7.35%) Metadata
4 18 (6.62%) MongoDB
5 17 (6.25%) SQL Server
6 13 (4.78%) Redis
7 10 (3.68%) Db2
7 10 (3.68%) RDBMS
8 8 (2.94%) Power BI
8 8 (2.94%) Tableau
9 5 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (1.47%) Data Lake
10 4 (1.47%) NoSQL
11 3 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
12 2 (0.74%) Crystal Reports
12 2 (0.74%) KDB
12 2 (0.74%) Kdb+
12 2 (0.74%) Power Query
12 2 (0.74%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (0.74%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 17 (6.25%) JIRA
2 11 (4.04%) Octopus Deploy
3 10 (3.68%) Git
4 8 (2.94%) TeamCity
5 4 (1.47%) ER Studio
5 4 (1.47%) ERwin
5 4 (1.47%) PowerDesigner
6 3 (1.10%) VTune
7 2 (0.74%) Jenkins
8 1 (0.37%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.37%) GitLab
8 1 (0.37%) GoogleTest
8 1 (0.37%) Gradle
8 1 (0.37%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.37%) Maven
8 1 (0.37%) NUnit
8 1 (0.37%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.37%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.37%) webpack
General
1 176 (64.71%) Finance
2 146 (53.68%) Banking
2 146 (53.68%) Front Office
3 114 (41.91%) Investment Banking
4 73 (26.84%) Social Skills
5 42 (15.44%) Analytical Skills
6 9 (3.31%) Back Office
6 9 (3.31%) Legal
7 8 (2.94%) Financial Institution
8 6 (2.21%) Private Banking
9 4 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.10%) Public Sector
11 2 (0.74%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.37%) Agriculture
12 1 (0.37%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.37%) Legal Technology
12 1 (0.37%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 139 (51.10%) Developer
2 69 (25.37%) Analyst
3 62 (22.79%) Business Analyst
4 40 (14.71%) Python Developer
5 39 (14.34%) Java Developer
5 39 (14.34%) Senior
6 31 (11.40%) C# Developer
7 28 (10.29%) Front Office Developer
8 25 (9.19%) Lead
9 24 (8.82%) Software Engineer
10 21 (7.72%) Electronic Trading Developer
11 20 (7.35%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
11 20 (7.35%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
12 19 (6.99%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
12 19 (6.99%) Lead Developer
12 19 (6.99%) Low Latency Java Developer
13 14 (5.15%) Lead Software Engineer
13 14 (5.15%) Senior Developer
14 13 (4.78%) Derivatives Business Analyst
14 13 (4.78%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (14.71%) React
2 35 (12.87%) FIX Protocol
3 18 (6.62%) Redux
4 16 (5.88%) Node.js
5 15 (5.51%) .NET
6 14 (5.15%) WebSockets
7 12 (4.41%) Kafka
8 10 (3.68%) NumPy
9 8 (2.94%) AngularJS
9 8 (2.94%) RxJava
9 8 (2.94%) Spring
10 7 (2.57%) Django
10 7 (2.57%) FastAPI
10 7 (2.57%) Pandas
10 7 (2.57%) REST
10 7 (2.57%) XML
11 6 (2.21%) HTML
11 6 (2.21%) HTML5
11 6 (2.21%) Middleware
11 6 (2.21%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 82 (30.15%) Equities
2 64 (23.53%) Fixed Income
3 60 (22.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 40 (14.71%) Equity Derivative
5 21 (7.72%) Market Risk
6 20 (7.35%) TWAP
6 20 (7.35%) VWAP
7 18 (6.62%) Credit Risk
7 18 (6.62%) OTC Derivatives
8 17 (6.25%) Data Structures
9 16 (5.88%) Algorithms
9 16 (5.88%) Distributed Systems
10 15 (5.51%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (5.15%) Hedge funds
12 13 (4.78%) Management Information System
13 11 (4.04%) Exotic Derivative
14 8 (2.94%) Cloud Native
14 8 (2.94%) Product Ownership
14 8 (2.94%) Reference Data
15 7 (2.57%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 19 (6.99%) Unix
2 8 (2.94%) Linux
3 1 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (27.21%) Agile
2 58 (21.32%) Problem-Solving
3 48 (17.65%) Low Latency
4 42 (15.44%) Electronic Trading
5 41 (15.07%) Multithreading
6 39 (14.34%) Risk Management
7 37 (13.60%) CI/CD
8 36 (13.24%) Asset Management
8 36 (13.24%) Software Engineering
8 36 (13.24%) TDD
8 36 (13.24%) User Acceptance Testing
9 30 (11.03%) Algorithmic Trading
9 30 (11.03%) Analytics
10 29 (10.66%) DevOps
10 29 (10.66%) Stakeholder Management
11 28 (10.29%) Microservices
12 27 (9.93%) Data Analysis
12 27 (9.93%) Full-Stack Development
12 27 (9.93%) Validation
13 26 (9.56%) AI
Programming Languages
1 113 (41.54%) Python
2 98 (36.03%) SQL
3 83 (30.51%) Java
4 55 (20.22%) C#
5 37 (13.60%) TypeScript
6 35 (12.87%) C++
7 22 (8.09%) JavaScript
8 12 (4.41%) Rust
9 7 (2.57%) PowerShell
9 7 (2.57%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.84%) Perl
11 4 (1.47%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.47%) Scala
12 2 (0.74%) F#
12 2 (0.74%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.37%) Bash
13 1 (0.37%) C
13 1 (0.37%) Korn
13 1 (0.37%) R
13 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 29 (10.66%) Degree
2 16 (5.88%) Computer Science Degree
3 11 (4.04%) Master's Degree
4 9 (3.31%) PhD
5 1 (0.37%) FFIEC
5 1 (0.37%) ISTQB
5 1 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.88%) Data Quality
2 12 (4.41%) QA
3 9 (3.31%) EMIR
4 8 (2.94%) MiFID
5 4 (1.47%) IFRS
6 3 (1.10%) Basel III
7 2 (0.74%) COREP
7 2 (0.74%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.74%) FINREP
7 2 (0.74%) GAAP
8 1 (0.37%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.37%) PMO
8 1 (0.37%) SLA
System Software
1 18 (6.62%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (2.57%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.74%) Control-M
2 2 (0.74%) ITRS Geneos
3 1 (0.37%) Grafana
3 1 (0.37%) Prometheus
3 1 (0.37%) Terraform
Vendors
1 26 (9.56%) Murex
2 16 (5.88%) Bloomberg
3 14 (5.15%) Oracle
4 10 (3.68%) Sybase
5 8 (2.94%) Charles River
6 7 (2.57%) Calypso
6 7 (2.57%) IBM
7 4 (1.47%) Microsoft
8 3 (1.10%) Advent
8 3 (1.10%) Databricks
8 3 (1.10%) Google
9 2 (0.74%) Reuters
9 2 (0.74%) SimCorp
10 1 (0.37%) Ab Initio
10 1 (0.37%) Alteryx
10 1 (0.37%) Apple
10 1 (0.37%) CA Agile Central
10 1 (0.37%) ION Trading
10 1 (0.37%) Solace