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 30 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 401 234 205
Rank change year-on-year -167 -29 +11
Contract jobs citing Derivative 262 346 502
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 1.13% 1.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.55% 3.27% 3.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 300 445
10th Percentile £450 £537 £588
25th Percentile £575 £638 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £725 £725 £800
Median % change year-on-year - -9.38% +10.34%
75th Percentile £850 £861 £875
90th Percentile £918 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £425 £638
% change year-on-year +44.12% -33.33% -20.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £56.25 £86.25 -
Median hourly rate £57.50 £87.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -34.29% - -
75th Percentile £58.75 £88.75 -
90th Percentile - - -
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 16,850 10,570 13,038
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.83% 34.54% 30.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,306 6,585 8,276
10th Percentile £313 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £539
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.64% -1.95%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £663
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 860 488 927
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.54 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.97 £15.32
Median hourly rate £42.15 £31.29 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +34.73% -12.24% +58.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.52 £62.25
90th Percentile £86.34 £79.13 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £35.58
% change year-on-year +44.13% -14.27% +58.11%

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 30 June 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
Top 8 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 30 June 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 -160 241 £725 -3.33% 51
London -95 235 £725 -3.33% 47
Work from Home -127 87 £800 +10.34% 23
UK excluding London -110 21 £613 +44.12% 11
Scotland -7 15 £460 +13.86% 1
Yorkshire -50 4 £725 - 2
North of England -81 4 £725 +20.23% 4
Northern Ireland -10 2 £625 +53.37% 3

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 5 (1.91%) Confluence
2 1 (0.38%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.38%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (2.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.91%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (3.44%) Aladdin
2 6 (2.29%) Summit
3 5 (1.91%) Loan IQ
4 3 (1.15%) Advent Geneva
4 3 (1.15%) Orchestrade
5 2 (0.76%) Front Arena
5 2 (0.76%) Global One
5 2 (0.76%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.38%) Bloomberg AIM
6 1 (0.38%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.38%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 43 (16.41%) AWS
2 37 (14.12%) Azure
3 30 (11.45%) GCP
4 11 (4.20%) ChatGPT
5 9 (3.44%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (3.05%) GitHub
6 8 (3.05%) GitHub Copilot
7 7 (2.67%) Power Platform
8 3 (1.15%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (1.15%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 3 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
8 3 (1.15%) SaaS
8 3 (1.15%) Snowflake
9 2 (0.76%) Collibra
10 1 (0.38%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.38%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (0.38%) npm
10 1 (0.38%) OpenShift
10 1 (0.38%) Serverless
10 1 (0.38%) Yarn
Communications & Networking
1 19 (7.25%) FIX Connectivity
2 8 (3.05%) HTTP
3 1 (0.38%) RTMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (10.69%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (9.54%) Relational Database
3 20 (7.63%) Metadata
4 18 (6.87%) MongoDB
5 17 (6.49%) SQL Server
6 14 (5.34%) Redis
7 10 (3.82%) Db2
7 10 (3.82%) RDBMS
8 8 (3.05%) Tableau
9 7 (2.67%) Power BI
10 5 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
11 4 (1.53%) Data Lake
11 4 (1.53%) NoSQL
12 2 (0.76%) Crystal Reports
12 2 (0.76%) KDB
12 2 (0.76%) Kdb+
12 2 (0.76%) Power Query
12 2 (0.76%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (0.76%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.38%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 16 (6.11%) JIRA
2 11 (4.20%) Octopus Deploy
3 10 (3.82%) Git
4 8 (3.05%) TeamCity
5 4 (1.53%) ER Studio
5 4 (1.53%) ERwin
5 4 (1.53%) PowerDesigner
6 3 (1.15%) VTune
7 2 (0.76%) Jenkins
8 1 (0.38%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.38%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.38%) GitLab
8 1 (0.38%) GoogleTest
8 1 (0.38%) Gradle
8 1 (0.38%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.38%) Maven
8 1 (0.38%) NUnit
8 1 (0.38%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.38%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.38%) webpack
General
1 166 (63.36%) Finance
2 139 (53.05%) Banking
3 138 (52.67%) Front Office
4 115 (43.89%) Investment Banking
5 68 (25.95%) Social Skills
6 40 (15.27%) Analytical Skills
7 9 (3.44%) Back Office
8 8 (3.05%) Legal
9 6 (2.29%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
10 4 (1.53%) Private Banking
11 3 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.15%) Public Sector
12 2 (0.76%) General Ledger
13 1 (0.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.38%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 137 (52.29%) Developer
2 66 (25.19%) Analyst
3 60 (22.90%) Business Analyst
4 42 (16.03%) Senior
5 40 (15.27%) Java Developer
6 38 (14.50%) Python Developer
7 31 (11.83%) C# Developer
8 26 (9.92%) Front Office Developer
9 25 (9.54%) Lead
10 24 (9.16%) Software Engineer
11 21 (8.02%) Electronic Trading Developer
12 20 (7.63%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
12 20 (7.63%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
13 19 (7.25%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
13 19 (7.25%) Lead Developer
13 19 (7.25%) Low Latency Java Developer
14 15 (5.73%) Senior Developer
15 14 (5.34%) Lead Software Engineer
16 13 (4.96%) Derivatives Business Analyst
16 13 (4.96%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (15.65%) React
2 35 (13.36%) FIX Protocol
3 18 (6.87%) Redux
4 16 (6.11%) .NET
4 16 (6.11%) Node.js
5 15 (5.73%) WebSockets
6 14 (5.34%) Kafka
7 9 (3.44%) NumPy
8 8 (3.05%) AngularJS
8 8 (3.05%) RxJava
8 8 (3.05%) Spring
9 7 (2.67%) REST
9 7 (2.67%) RESTful
9 7 (2.67%) XML
10 6 (2.29%) Django
10 6 (2.29%) FastAPI
10 6 (2.29%) HTML
10 6 (2.29%) HTML5
10 6 (2.29%) Middleware
10 6 (2.29%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 79 (30.15%) Equities
2 58 (22.14%) Fixed Income
3 54 (20.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 40 (15.27%) Equity Derivative
5 21 (8.02%) Market Risk
6 20 (7.63%) TWAP
6 20 (7.63%) VWAP
7 18 (6.87%) Credit Risk
8 17 (6.49%) Data Structures
8 17 (6.49%) Distributed Systems
9 16 (6.11%) OTC Derivatives
10 14 (5.34%) Algorithms
10 14 (5.34%) Hedge funds
11 13 (4.96%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (4.96%) Management Information System
12 10 (3.82%) Exotic Derivative
13 8 (3.05%) Reference Data
14 7 (2.67%) Credit Derivative
14 7 (2.67%) Product Ownership
15 6 (2.29%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 18 (6.87%) Unix
2 7 (2.67%) Linux
3 1 (0.38%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (27.10%) Agile
2 54 (20.61%) Problem-Solving
3 48 (18.32%) Low Latency
4 43 (16.41%) Electronic Trading
5 41 (15.65%) Multithreading
6 40 (15.27%) Risk Management
7 37 (14.12%) CI/CD
7 37 (14.12%) TDD
8 36 (13.74%) Software Engineering
9 33 (12.60%) Asset Management
9 33 (12.60%) User Acceptance Testing
10 29 (11.07%) Algorithmic Trading
11 28 (10.69%) Full-Stack Development
12 27 (10.31%) Analytics
12 27 (10.31%) DevOps
12 27 (10.31%) Microservices
13 25 (9.54%) Data Analysis
13 25 (9.54%) Validation
14 24 (9.16%) Computer Science
14 24 (9.16%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 108 (41.22%) Python
2 94 (35.88%) SQL
3 82 (31.30%) Java
4 55 (20.99%) C#
5 38 (14.50%) TypeScript
6 35 (13.36%) C++
7 23 (8.78%) JavaScript
8 13 (4.96%) Rust
9 7 (2.67%) PowerShell
10 6 (2.29%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.91%) Perl
12 4 (1.53%) Scala
13 3 (1.15%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.76%) F#
15 1 (0.38%) Bash
15 1 (0.38%) C
15 1 (0.38%) Korn
15 1 (0.38%) R
15 1 (0.38%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.38%) VBA
Qualifications
1 28 (10.69%) Degree
2 17 (6.49%) Computer Science Degree
3 9 (3.44%) Master's Degree
4 7 (2.67%) PhD
5 2 (0.76%) Numerate Degree
6 1 (0.38%) FFIEC
6 1 (0.38%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.73%) Data Quality
2 13 (4.96%) QA
3 8 (3.05%) EMIR
4 7 (2.67%) MiFID
5 5 (1.91%) IFRS
6 3 (1.15%) GAAP
7 2 (0.76%) Basel III
7 2 (0.76%) COREP
7 2 (0.76%) FINREP
8 1 (0.38%) Dodd-Frank
8 1 (0.38%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.38%) PMO
System Software
1 18 (6.87%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (2.67%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.76%) Control-M
2 2 (0.76%) Grafana
2 2 (0.76%) ITRS Geneos
2 2 (0.76%) Prometheus
2 2 (0.76%) Terraform
Vendors
1 22 (8.40%) Murex
2 15 (5.73%) Oracle
3 14 (5.34%) Bloomberg
4 10 (3.82%) Sybase
5 7 (2.67%) IBM
6 6 (2.29%) Calypso
6 6 (2.29%) Charles River
7 4 (1.53%) Google
7 4 (1.53%) Microsoft
8 3 (1.15%) Advent
8 3 (1.15%) Databricks
9 2 (0.76%) Apple
9 2 (0.76%) jBASE
9 2 (0.76%) Reuters
9 2 (0.76%) Temenos
10 1 (0.38%) Ab Initio
10 1 (0.38%) Alteryx
10 1 (0.38%) CA Agile Central
10 1 (0.38%) ION Trading
10 1 (0.38%) Solace