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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 416 287 193
Rank change year-on-year -129 -94 +20
Contract jobs citing Derivative 267 283 486
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.86% 1.27%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.45% 2.41% 4.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 158 240 416
10th Percentile £409 £525 £600
25th Percentile £563 £623 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £725 £750 £800
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -6.25% +14.29%
75th Percentile £788 £825 £888
90th Percentile £900 £988 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £538 £563
% change year-on-year -12.09% -4.44% +12.50%
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 18,469 11,725 11,622
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.89% 35.54% 30.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,102 7,189 7,187
10th Percentile £320 £300 £300
25th Percentile £424 £406 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £745 £763 £820
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,141 579 500
10th Percentile £14.15 £15.13 £14.06
25th Percentile £18.00 £18.87 £21.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -36.84% +8.35%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £30.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +33.33% -47.69% +25.00%

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 September 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 10 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Derivative in the UK

Derivative
Top 11 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 September 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 -139 239 £725 -3.33% 144
London -86 231 £725 -3.33% 141
Work from Home -115 74 £755 +0.67% 50
UK excluding London -106 30 £473 -12.09% 35
Scotland -28 20 £402 -23.43% 7
North of England -69 6 £725 +18.46% 1
Yorkshire -41 5 £725 -
Northern Ireland +1 3 £510 +2.00% 9
Midlands -55 1 - -
North West -56 1 £198 -67.65% 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 4 (1.50%) Confluence
2 1 (0.37%) Apache
2 1 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 4 (1.50%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 10 (3.75%) Aladdin
2 4 (1.50%) Summit
3 3 (1.12%) Orchestrade
4 2 (0.75%) Front Arena
4 2 (0.75%) Global One
4 2 (0.75%) Oracle FAH
4 2 (0.75%) Oracle Financials
4 2 (0.75%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.75%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.75%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.37%) Bloomberg AIM
5 1 (0.37%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.37%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.37%) MultiFonds
5 1 (0.37%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 19 (7.12%) Azure
2 17 (6.37%) AWS
3 14 (5.24%) GCP
4 11 (4.12%) ChatGPT
5 9 (3.37%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (3.00%) GitHub
6 8 (3.00%) GitHub Copilot
7 5 (1.87%) Power Platform
8 4 (1.50%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
9 3 (1.12%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.75%) Amazon S3
10 2 (0.75%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (0.75%) Serverless
11 1 (0.37%) Collibra
11 1 (0.37%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 14 (5.24%) FIX Connectivity
2 8 (3.00%) HTTP
3 2 (0.75%) Multicast
4 1 (0.37%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (8.24%) Relational Database
2 19 (7.12%) Metadata
3 18 (6.74%) MongoDB
4 14 (5.24%) SQL Server
5 10 (3.75%) Db2
6 9 (3.37%) Redis
7 8 (3.00%) RDBMS
8 7 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
9 6 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
9 6 (2.25%) Tableau
10 5 (1.87%) Data Lake
10 5 (1.87%) Power BI
11 4 (1.50%) KDB
12 3 (1.12%) Kdb+
12 3 (1.12%) NoSQL
13 2 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
13 2 (0.75%) Crystal Reports
13 2 (0.75%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 1 (0.37%) Data Mining
14 1 (0.37%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 17 (6.37%) JIRA
2 9 (3.37%) Git
3 7 (2.62%) Octopus Deploy
4 5 (1.87%) ER Studio
4 5 (1.87%) ERwin
4 5 (1.87%) PowerDesigner
4 5 (1.87%) TeamCity
5 3 (1.12%) Jenkins
5 3 (1.12%) VTune
6 1 (0.37%) GitLab
6 1 (0.37%) GoogleTest
6 1 (0.37%) Visual Studio
General
1 182 (68.16%) Finance
2 150 (56.18%) Banking
3 140 (52.43%) Front Office
4 108 (40.45%) Investment Banking
5 71 (26.59%) Social Skills
6 40 (14.98%) Analytical Skills
7 18 (6.74%) Financial Institution
8 11 (4.12%) Private Banking
9 10 (3.75%) Back Office
9 10 (3.75%) Legal
10 3 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.12%) General Ledger
10 3 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.12%) Public Sector
11 2 (0.75%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.37%) Agriculture
12 1 (0.37%) International Banking
12 1 (0.37%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 121 (45.32%) Developer
2 73 (27.34%) Analyst
3 64 (23.97%) Business Analyst
4 42 (15.73%) Senior
5 36 (13.48%) Python Developer
6 30 (11.24%) Front Office Developer
7 29 (10.86%) Java Developer
8 27 (10.11%) C# Developer
9 18 (6.74%) Quantitative Developer
10 15 (5.62%) Electronic Trading Developer
11 14 (5.24%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
11 14 (5.24%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
11 14 (5.24%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
11 14 (5.24%) Low Latency Java Developer
12 13 (4.87%) Senior Developer
13 12 (4.49%) Software Engineer
14 11 (4.12%) Pricing Developer
14 11 (4.12%) Project Manager
15 10 (3.75%) Banking Analyst
16 9 (3.37%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (11.61%) FIX Protocol
2 16 (5.99%) React
3 12 (4.49%) WebSockets
4 11 (4.12%) NumPy
5 10 (3.75%) .NET
5 10 (3.75%) Django
5 10 (3.75%) FastAPI
6 8 (3.00%) Pandas
6 8 (3.00%) REST
7 7 (2.62%) Kafka
7 7 (2.62%) RxJava
7 7 (2.62%) Spring
8 6 (2.25%) Flask
8 6 (2.25%) Middleware
9 5 (1.87%) AngularJS
9 5 (1.87%) PySpark
9 5 (1.87%) XML
10 4 (1.50%) Next.js
10 4 (1.50%) Polars
10 4 (1.50%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 69 (25.84%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 66 (24.72%) Equities
3 54 (20.22%) Fixed Income
4 41 (15.36%) Equity Derivative
5 20 (7.49%) Distributed Systems
6 18 (6.74%) Market Risk
7 17 (6.37%) Algorithms
7 17 (6.37%) Credit Risk
7 17 (6.37%) Exotic Derivative
7 17 (6.37%) OTC Derivatives
8 16 (5.99%) Data Protection Act
9 15 (5.62%) Hedge funds
10 14 (5.24%) TWAP
10 14 (5.24%) VWAP
11 12 (4.49%) Data Structures
12 10 (3.75%) Management Information System
13 9 (3.37%) Onboarding
14 8 (3.00%) Credit Derivative
14 8 (3.00%) Interest Rate Derivative
15 7 (2.62%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 18 (6.74%) Unix
2 13 (4.87%) Linux
3 1 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (20.97%) Problem-Solving
2 42 (15.73%) Agile
3 39 (14.61%) Low Latency
4 38 (14.23%) Stakeholder Management
5 36 (13.48%) CI/CD
5 36 (13.48%) Data Analysis
6 34 (12.73%) User Acceptance Testing
7 33 (12.36%) Analytics
7 33 (12.36%) Electronic Trading
8 32 (11.99%) Multithreading
8 32 (11.99%) Software Engineering
9 30 (11.24%) Business Analysis
9 30 (11.24%) Risk Management
10 28 (10.49%) Requirements Gathering
10 28 (10.49%) Validation
11 26 (9.74%) Algorithmic Trading
11 26 (9.74%) TDD
12 25 (9.36%) DevOps
12 25 (9.36%) Microservices
13 23 (8.61%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 103 (38.58%) Python
2 88 (32.96%) SQL
3 71 (26.59%) Java
4 52 (19.48%) C#
5 38 (14.23%) C++
6 18 (6.74%) TypeScript
7 11 (4.12%) Rust
8 9 (3.37%) PowerShell
9 7 (2.62%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.87%) Perl
10 5 (1.87%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.50%) JavaScript
12 2 (0.75%) Bash
12 2 (0.75%) C
12 2 (0.75%) Scala
12 2 (0.75%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.37%) Korn
13 1 (0.37%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 25 (9.36%) Degree
2 12 (4.49%) Master's Degree
3 10 (3.75%) PhD
4 7 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (0.75%) Numerate Degree
5 2 (0.75%) PMI Certification
5 2 (0.75%) PMP
5 2 (0.75%) Security Cleared
6 1 (0.37%) CFA
6 1 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.62%) Data Quality
2 9 (3.37%) EMIR
2 9 (3.37%) MiFID
3 7 (2.62%) QA
4 3 (1.12%) Basel III
5 2 (0.75%) COREP
5 2 (0.75%) Dodd-Frank
5 2 (0.75%) FINREP
5 2 (0.75%) GAAP
5 2 (0.75%) IFRS
5 2 (0.75%) SLA
6 1 (0.37%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 15 (5.62%) Docker
2 1 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 6 (2.25%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.12%) ITRS Geneos
3 2 (0.75%) Control-M
3 2 (0.75%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 22 (8.24%) Murex
2 15 (5.62%) Bloomberg
3 10 (3.75%) Oracle
3 10 (3.75%) Sybase
4 9 (3.37%) Calypso
5 7 (2.62%) IBM
6 5 (1.87%) Charles River
7 3 (1.12%) Databricks
7 3 (1.12%) SimCorp
8 2 (0.75%) Google
8 2 (0.75%) Microsoft
8 2 (0.75%) NYFIX
8 2 (0.75%) Refinitiv
8 2 (0.75%) Tradeweb
9 1 (0.37%) Avaloq
9 1 (0.37%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.37%) FIS
9 1 (0.37%) ION Trading
9 1 (0.37%) Splunk
9 1 (0.37%) Temenos