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 29 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 393 218 213
Rank change year-on-year -175 -5 +13
Contract jobs citing Derivative 258 358 486
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.53% 1.25% 1.13%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.63% 3.65% 3.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 314 436
10th Percentile £463 £525 £557
25th Percentile £616 £638 £650
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £729 £725 £750
Median % change year-on-year +0.52% -3.33% +3.45%
75th Percentile £850 £875 £850
90th Percentile £973 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £408 £638
% change year-on-year +22.70% -36.08% -20.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £56.25 - -
Median hourly rate £57.50 - -
75th Percentile £58.75 - -
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 15,789 9,819 12,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.28% 34.15% 30.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,745 6,239 8,371
10th Percentile £313 £290 £270
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 767 394 921
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.92 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.93 £19.98 £15.22
Median hourly rate £41.00 £32.43 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.43% -4.62% +54.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.44 £82.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £31.76 £32.12
% change year-on-year +41.69% -1.11% +49.37%

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 29 May 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 7 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 29 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 -172 237 £733 -0.68% 75
London -96 231 £733 -2.33% 71
Work from Home -124 87 £800 +10.34% 21
UK excluding London -120 20 £500 +22.70% 20
Scotland +2 15 £470 +16.34% 1
East of England - 3 £681 -
Northern Ireland -12 2 £625 +92.31% 6

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 (1.94%) Confluence
2 3 (1.16%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 1 (0.39%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.39%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (4.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.55%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (3.49%) Aladdin
2 7 (2.71%) Summit
3 5 (1.94%) Loan IQ
3 5 (1.94%) Temenos T24
4 3 (1.16%) Advent Geneva
5 2 (0.78%) Front Arena
5 2 (0.78%) Global One
5 2 (0.78%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.78%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.39%) Bloomberg AIM
6 1 (0.39%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.39%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.39%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 49 (18.99%) AWS
2 40 (15.50%) Azure
3 27 (10.47%) GCP
4 11 (4.26%) ChatGPT
5 9 (3.49%) Anthropic Claude
5 9 (3.49%) Power Platform
6 8 (3.10%) GitHub
6 8 (3.10%) GitHub Copilot
7 4 (1.55%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (1.55%) SaaS
8 3 (1.16%) Amazon S3
8 3 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
8 3 (1.16%) Serverless
8 3 (1.16%) Snowflake
9 2 (0.78%) Collibra
9 2 (0.78%) npm
9 2 (0.78%) OpenShift
9 2 (0.78%) Yarn
10 1 (0.39%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 20 (7.75%) FIX Connectivity
2 7 (2.71%) HTTP
3 1 (0.39%) RTMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (11.24%) PostgreSQL
2 23 (8.91%) Relational Database
3 20 (7.75%) Metadata
4 15 (5.81%) Redis
5 14 (5.43%) SQL Server
6 13 (5.04%) MongoDB
7 10 (3.88%) DB2
7 10 (3.88%) RDBMS
8 9 (3.49%) Power BI
8 9 (3.49%) Tableau
9 7 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (1.94%) NoSQL
11 4 (1.55%) Data Lake
12 3 (1.16%) Oracle Database
13 2 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
13 2 (0.78%) Big Data
13 2 (0.78%) Crystal Reports
13 2 (0.78%) Power Query
13 2 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
13 2 (0.78%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 14 (5.43%) JIRA
2 13 (5.04%) Git
3 11 (4.26%) Octopus Deploy
4 8 (3.10%) TeamCity
5 4 (1.55%) ER Studio
5 4 (1.55%) ERwin
5 4 (1.55%) PowerDesigner
6 3 (1.16%) Bitbucket
6 3 (1.16%) Jenkins
6 3 (1.16%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.78%) GitLab
7 2 (0.78%) webpack
8 1 (0.39%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.39%) GoogleTest
8 1 (0.39%) Gradle
8 1 (0.39%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.39%) Maven
8 1 (0.39%) NUnit
8 1 (0.39%) REST Assured
General
1 171 (66.28%) Finance
2 132 (51.16%) Banking
3 126 (48.84%) Front Office
4 106 (41.09%) Investment Banking
5 67 (25.97%) Social Skills
6 40 (15.50%) Analytical Skills
7 12 (4.65%) Financial Institution
8 9 (3.49%) Back Office
9 8 (3.10%) Legal
10 4 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
10 4 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.16%) General Ledger
11 3 (1.16%) Spanish Language
11 3 (1.16%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.78%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.78%) Private Banking
13 1 (0.39%) Japanese Language
13 1 (0.39%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 134 (51.94%) Developer
2 57 (22.09%) Analyst
3 52 (20.16%) Business Analyst
4 43 (16.67%) Senior
5 40 (15.50%) Java Developer
6 39 (15.12%) Python Developer
7 25 (9.69%) Lead
8 24 (9.30%) Software Engineer
9 23 (8.91%) Electronic Trading Developer
10 21 (8.14%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
10 21 (8.14%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
10 21 (8.14%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
11 20 (7.75%) C# Developer
11 20 (7.75%) Low Latency Java Developer
11 20 (7.75%) Senior Developer
12 17 (6.59%) Front Office Developer
13 16 (6.20%) Lead Developer
14 14 (5.43%) Lead Software Engineer
15 13 (5.04%) Python Engineer
16 12 (4.65%) Developer/Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (15.12%) React
2 35 (13.57%) FIX Protocol
3 19 (7.36%) Redux
4 16 (6.20%) Node.js
4 16 (6.20%) WebSockets
5 15 (5.81%) Kafka
6 14 (5.43%) .NET
7 8 (3.10%) AngularJS
7 8 (3.10%) HTML
7 8 (3.10%) REST
7 8 (3.10%) RESTful
8 7 (2.71%) HTML5
8 7 (2.71%) NumPy
8 7 (2.71%) XML
9 6 (2.33%) Pandas
10 5 (1.94%) CSS
11 4 (1.55%) RxJava
11 4 (1.55%) Spring
12 3 (1.16%) Loki
12 3 (1.16%) RxJS
Miscellaneous
1 86 (33.33%) Equities
2 55 (21.32%) Fixed Income
3 44 (17.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 43 (16.67%) Equity Derivative
5 25 (9.69%) Market Risk
6 21 (8.14%) TWAP
6 21 (8.14%) VWAP
7 20 (7.75%) Credit Risk
7 20 (7.75%) Distributed Systems
8 19 (7.36%) Algorithms
9 17 (6.59%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (5.81%) Management Information System
11 14 (5.43%) Data Structures
11 14 (5.43%) OTC Derivatives
12 13 (5.04%) Hedge funds
13 8 (3.10%) Exotic Derivative
13 8 (3.10%) Reference Data
14 7 (2.71%) Product Ownership
15 6 (2.33%) Cloud Native
15 6 (2.33%) Credit Derivative
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.81%) Unix
2 7 (2.71%) Linux
3 3 (1.16%) Debian
3 3 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.16%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.16%) VMS
4 2 (0.78%) Windows
5 1 (0.39%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (25.97%) Agile
2 52 (20.16%) Risk Management
3 49 (18.99%) Problem-Solving
4 46 (17.83%) Low Latency
5 42 (16.28%) TDD
6 41 (15.89%) Electronic Trading
7 37 (14.34%) CI/CD
7 37 (14.34%) Multithreading
8 36 (13.95%) Software Engineering
9 34 (13.18%) Asset Management
10 30 (11.63%) User Acceptance Testing
11 29 (11.24%) Algorithmic Trading
11 29 (11.24%) Analytics
12 26 (10.08%) Computer Science
13 25 (9.69%) AI
14 24 (9.30%) Data Analysis
14 24 (9.30%) Design Patterns
14 24 (9.30%) DevOps
14 24 (9.30%) Quantitative Trading
15 23 (8.91%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 116 (44.96%) Python
2 93 (36.05%) SQL
3 76 (29.46%) Java
4 45 (17.44%) C#
5 36 (13.95%) C++
5 36 (13.95%) TypeScript
6 25 (9.69%) JavaScript
7 10 (3.88%) Rust
8 6 (2.33%) PowerShell
9 5 (1.94%) Perl
9 5 (1.94%) Scala
9 5 (1.94%) Shell Script
10 4 (1.55%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.78%) F#
11 2 (0.78%) VBA
12 1 (0.39%) Bash
12 1 (0.39%) C
12 1 (0.39%) R
12 1 (0.39%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 34 (13.18%) Degree
2 17 (6.59%) Computer Science Degree
3 10 (3.88%) Master's Degree
4 8 (3.10%) Numerate Degree
5 7 (2.71%) PhD
6 2 (0.78%) PMI Certification
6 2 (0.78%) PMP
7 1 (0.39%) CBAP
7 1 (0.39%) FFIEC
7 1 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.20%) Data Quality
2 15 (5.81%) QA
3 10 (3.88%) EMIR
4 9 (3.49%) MiFID
5 6 (2.33%) IFRS
6 4 (1.55%) Basel III
7 3 (1.16%) GAAP
8 2 (0.78%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.78%) SLA
9 1 (0.39%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.39%) Dodd-Frank
9 1 (0.39%) IAS 32
9 1 (0.39%) IAS 39
9 1 (0.39%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.39%) PMO
9 1 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 14 (5.43%) Docker
2 3 (1.16%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 6 (2.33%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.55%) Grafana
3 3 (1.16%) Ansible
3 3 (1.16%) Control-M
3 3 (1.16%) Podman
3 3 (1.16%) Prometheus
3 3 (1.16%) Terraform
4 2 (0.78%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 18 (6.98%) Murex
1 18 (6.98%) Oracle
2 12 (4.65%) Bloomberg
3 10 (3.88%) Sybase
4 8 (3.10%) IBM
5 6 (2.33%) Calypso
5 6 (2.33%) Charles River
6 5 (1.94%) Google
6 5 (1.94%) jBASE
6 5 (1.94%) Temenos
7 4 (1.55%) Microsoft
8 3 (1.16%) Advent
8 3 (1.16%) Apple
8 3 (1.16%) Databricks
8 3 (1.16%) NVIDIA
9 2 (0.78%) Reuters
10 1 (0.39%) Ab Initio
10 1 (0.39%) Informatica
10 1 (0.39%) ION Trading
10 1 (0.39%) Red Hat