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 10 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 401 189 228
Rank change year-on-year -212 +39 +29
Contract jobs citing Derivative 239 396 447
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 1.36% 1.02%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.60% 4.00% 3.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 165 335 400
10th Percentile £463 £500 £550
25th Percentile £613 £638 £625
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £740 £725 £725
Median % change year-on-year +2.07% - -3.33%
75th Percentile £875 £875 £850
90th Percentile £995 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £578 £350 £475
% change year-on-year +65.14% -26.32% -40.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £77.50 -
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 14,911 9,889 13,388
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.51% 33.85% 30.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,350 6,341 8,588
10th Percentile £300 £290 £263
25th Percentile £412 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.07% -2.53%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 708 379 901
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.00 £22.27 £15.39
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +16.07% +24.53%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.24 £67.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £31.76 £26.00
% change year-on-year +49.56% +22.15% +18.18%

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 10 April 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 9 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 10 April 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 -187 228 £745 -0.67% 45
London -115 221 £750 - 44
Work from Home -141 81 £800 +10.34% 11
UK excluding London -131 10 £578 +65.14% 5
Scotland +6 4 £470 +16.34%
East of England - 3 £681 -
Northern Ireland -17 2 £395 +21.54%
North of England -81 1 - - 1
Yorkshire - 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 8 (3.35%) Confluence
2 7 (2.93%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.84%) Apache
3 2 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.42%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.42%) WebSphere
Applications
1 17 (7.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (1.26%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 7 (2.93%) Aladdin
1 7 (2.93%) Summit
2 5 (2.09%) Loan IQ
2 5 (2.09%) Temenos T24
3 3 (1.26%) Advent Geneva
4 2 (0.84%) Algo Collateral
4 2 (0.84%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 2 (0.84%) Front Arena
4 2 (0.84%) Global One
4 2 (0.84%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.84%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.42%) Bloomberg AIM
5 1 (0.42%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.42%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.42%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.42%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 52 (21.76%) AWS
2 36 (15.06%) Azure
3 23 (9.62%) GCP
4 9 (3.77%) Power Platform
5 6 (2.51%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (2.09%) Amazon S3
6 5 (2.09%) AWS Lambda
6 5 (2.09%) Serverless
6 5 (2.09%) Snowflake
7 3 (1.26%) Amazon ECS
7 3 (1.26%) npm
7 3 (1.26%) OpenShift
7 3 (1.26%) SaaS
7 3 (1.26%) Yarn
8 2 (0.84%) Anthropic Claude
8 2 (0.84%) ChatGPT
8 2 (0.84%) Collibra
8 2 (0.84%) dbt
8 2 (0.84%) GitHub
8 2 (0.84%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 17 (7.11%) FIX Connectivity
2 2 (0.84%) HTTP
3 1 (0.42%) RTMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (12.97%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (4.18%) Redis
2 10 (4.18%) Relational Database
3 9 (3.77%) Metadata
3 9 (3.77%) Power BI
3 9 (3.77%) Tableau
4 8 (3.35%) SQL Server
5 6 (2.51%) RDBMS
6 4 (1.67%) MongoDB
6 4 (1.67%) NoSQL
7 3 (1.26%) Big Data
7 3 (1.26%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.84%) Apache Arrow
8 2 (0.84%) Apache Cassandra
8 2 (0.84%) Apache Iceberg
8 2 (0.84%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.84%) Data Mart
8 2 (0.84%) Power Query
8 2 (0.84%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 17 (7.11%) Git
2 14 (5.86%) JIRA
3 7 (2.93%) Octopus Deploy
4 6 (2.51%) Jenkins
5 5 (2.09%) TeamCity
6 4 (1.67%) Visual Studio
7 3 (1.26%) Bitbucket
7 3 (1.26%) webpack
8 2 (0.84%) Gradle
8 2 (0.84%) Maven
9 1 (0.42%) Crucible
9 1 (0.42%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.42%) GitLab
9 1 (0.42%) IntelliJ
9 1 (0.42%) NUnit
9 1 (0.42%) REST Assured
General
1 162 (67.78%) Finance
2 118 (49.37%) Banking
3 102 (42.68%) Front Office
4 86 (35.98%) Investment Banking
5 65 (27.20%) Social Skills
6 41 (17.15%) Analytical Skills
7 21 (8.79%) Financial Institution
8 12 (5.02%) Back Office
9 6 (2.51%) Legal
10 4 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.26%) Spanish Language
11 3 (1.26%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.84%) General Ledger
12 2 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.42%) Japanese Language
13 1 (0.42%) Private Banking
13 1 (0.42%) Retail
Job Titles
1 113 (47.28%) Developer
2 52 (21.76%) Analyst
3 44 (18.41%) Java Developer
4 43 (17.99%) Business Analyst
5 42 (17.57%) Senior
6 26 (10.88%) Senior Developer
7 24 (10.04%) Lead
7 24 (10.04%) Python Developer
8 21 (8.79%) Electronic Trading Developer
9 20 (8.37%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
10 18 (7.53%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
10 18 (7.53%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
11 17 (7.11%) Low Latency Java Developer
11 17 (7.11%) Senior Java Developer
11 17 (7.11%) Software Engineer
12 16 (6.69%) Lead Developer
13 13 (5.44%) Analytics Developer
13 13 (5.44%) AWS Developer
13 13 (5.44%) Kafka Developer
13 13 (5.44%) PostgreSQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (14.23%) React
2 26 (10.88%) FIX Protocol
3 21 (8.79%) Redux
4 20 (8.37%) Kafka
5 16 (6.69%) Node.js
6 12 (5.02%) RESTful
7 11 (4.60%) .NET
8 10 (4.18%) WebSockets
9 9 (3.77%) HTML
10 8 (3.35%) NumPy
10 8 (3.35%) Pandas
10 8 (3.35%) REST
10 8 (3.35%) XML
11 7 (2.93%) Dask
11 7 (2.93%) HTML5
12 6 (2.51%) CSS
12 6 (2.51%) SciPy
12 6 (2.51%) Spring
13 5 (2.09%) AngularJS
14 4 (1.67%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 91 (38.08%) Equities
2 60 (25.10%) Fixed Income
3 41 (17.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 34 (14.23%) Equity Derivative
5 27 (11.30%) Market Risk
6 19 (7.95%) TWAP
6 19 (7.95%) VWAP
7 18 (7.53%) Algorithms
8 16 (6.69%) Credit Risk
9 15 (6.28%) Distributed Systems
9 15 (6.28%) Hedge funds
10 14 (5.86%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (5.86%) Management Information System
11 10 (4.18%) Data Structures
12 9 (3.77%) OTC Derivatives
13 8 (3.35%) Cloud Native
13 8 (3.35%) Product Ownership
14 6 (2.51%) Analytical Mindset
14 6 (2.51%) Distributed Computing
15 5 (2.09%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.86%) Unix
2 7 (2.93%) Linux
3 3 (1.26%) Debian
3 3 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.26%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.26%) VMS
4 1 (0.42%) Windows
4 1 (0.42%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (30.13%) Agile
2 61 (25.52%) Risk Management
3 42 (17.57%) Problem-Solving
4 40 (16.74%) Low Latency
5 38 (15.90%) Electronic Trading
5 38 (15.90%) TDD
6 32 (13.39%) Asset Management
7 31 (12.97%) Analytics
8 30 (12.55%) CI/CD
8 30 (12.55%) Mathematics
8 30 (12.55%) Multithreading
8 30 (12.55%) Software Engineering
9 28 (11.72%) Design Patterns
9 28 (11.72%) User Acceptance Testing
10 26 (10.88%) DevOps
10 26 (10.88%) Mentoring
11 25 (10.46%) Stakeholder Management
12 22 (9.21%) Computer Science
13 21 (8.79%) Algorithmic Trading
13 21 (8.79%) OO
Programming Languages
1 102 (42.68%) Python
2 79 (33.05%) SQL
3 63 (26.36%) Java
4 32 (13.39%) TypeScript
5 30 (12.55%) C++
6 28 (11.72%) C#
7 26 (10.88%) JavaScript
8 5 (2.09%) Rust
9 4 (1.67%) Perl
9 4 (1.67%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.67%) Scala
9 4 (1.67%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.84%) F#
10 2 (0.84%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.84%) VBA
11 1 (0.42%) R
11 1 (0.42%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 41 (17.15%) Degree
2 14 (5.86%) Computer Science Degree
3 13 (5.44%) Master's Degree
4 12 (5.02%) Numerate Degree
5 8 (3.35%) PhD
6 3 (1.26%) ISTQB
6 3 (1.26%) PMI Certification
6 3 (1.26%) PMP
7 1 (0.42%) CBAP
7 1 (0.42%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (7.11%) QA
2 10 (4.18%) EMIR
3 9 (3.77%) Data Quality
4 7 (2.93%) IFRS
5 5 (2.09%) MiFID
6 4 (1.67%) Basel III
6 4 (1.67%) IFRS 9
7 3 (1.26%) IAS 32
7 3 (1.26%) IAS 39
7 3 (1.26%) SLA
8 2 (0.84%) GAAP
8 2 (0.84%) PMO
9 1 (0.42%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.42%) FINRA
9 1 (0.42%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 11 (4.60%) Docker
2 3 (1.26%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 8 (3.35%) Kubernetes
2 5 (2.09%) Ansible
3 4 (1.67%) Grafana
3 4 (1.67%) ITRS Geneos
4 3 (1.26%) Control-M
4 3 (1.26%) Podman
4 3 (1.26%) Prometheus
4 3 (1.26%) Terraform
Vendors
1 21 (8.79%) Murex
2 18 (7.53%) Bloomberg
3 17 (7.11%) Oracle
4 6 (2.51%) ION Trading
5 5 (2.09%) Charles River
5 5 (2.09%) jBASE
5 5 (2.09%) Temenos
5 5 (2.09%) Tradeweb
6 4 (1.67%) Calypso
6 4 (1.67%) IBM
7 3 (1.26%) Advent
7 3 (1.26%) Apple
7 3 (1.26%) Google
7 3 (1.26%) Microsoft
7 3 (1.26%) NVIDIA
8 2 (0.84%) AppDynamics
8 2 (0.84%) MarketAxess
8 2 (0.84%) Reuters
8 2 (0.84%) SmartStream
8 2 (0.84%) Splunk