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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 396 250 200
Rank change year-on-year -146 -50 +21
Contract jobs citing Derivative 267 330 503
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 1.02% 1.18%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.53% 2.93% 3.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 283 441
10th Percentile £450 £537 £595
25th Percentile £573 £628 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £725 £750 £800
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -6.25% +10.34%
75th Percentile £850 £834 £888
90th Percentile £897 £948 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £500 £638
% change year-on-year +22.50% -21.57% -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 17,477 11,249 13,009
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.21% 34.62% 30.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,713 6,956 8,273
10th Percentile £318 £300 £282
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £627 £649 £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 888 533 862
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.48 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.97 £18.87 £15.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.81 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +42.70% -15.60% +15.87%
75th Percentile £70.23 £58.75 £63.44
90th Percentile £87.64 £77.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £31.49 £36.50
% change year-on-year +39.60% -13.73% -7.57%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -145 245 £725 -3.33% 62
London -79 238 £725 -3.33% 59
Work from Home -138 87 £800 +10.34% 16
UK excluding London -112 24 £613 +22.50% 7
Scotland -7 16 £450 -0.44% 1
Yorkshire -49 5 £725 - 1
North of England -86 5 £725 +20.23% 3
Northern Ireland -7 2 £625 +53.37%
Midlands -61 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 (2.25%) Confluence
2 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.37%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.87%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (4.12%) Aladdin
2 6 (2.25%) Summit
3 4 (1.50%) Loan IQ
4 3 (1.12%) Advent Geneva
4 3 (1.12%) Orchestrade
5 2 (0.75%) Front Arena
5 2 (0.75%) Global One
6 1 (0.37%) Bloomberg AIM
6 1 (0.37%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 42 (15.73%) AWS
2 36 (13.48%) Azure
3 30 (11.24%) GCP
4 11 (4.12%) ChatGPT
5 9 (3.37%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (3.00%) GitHub
6 8 (3.00%) GitHub Copilot
7 7 (2.62%) Power Platform
8 5 (1.87%) Snowflake
9 4 (1.50%) Azure DevOps
10 3 (1.12%) Amazon S3
10 3 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
10 3 (1.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
10 3 (1.12%) Serverless
11 2 (0.75%) Collibra
11 2 (0.75%) SaaS
12 1 (0.37%) npm
12 1 (0.37%) OpenShift
12 1 (0.37%) Yarn
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.74%) FIX Connectivity
2 8 (3.00%) HTTP
3 1 (0.37%) RTMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (9.74%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (8.99%) Relational Database
3 20 (7.49%) Metadata
4 18 (6.74%) MongoDB
5 16 (5.99%) SQL Server
6 13 (4.87%) Redis
7 10 (3.75%) Db2
7 10 (3.75%) RDBMS
8 8 (3.00%) Tableau
9 7 (2.62%) Power BI
10 5 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
11 4 (1.50%) Data Lake
11 4 (1.50%) NoSQL
12 3 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
13 2 (0.75%) Crystal Reports
13 2 (0.75%) KDB
13 2 (0.75%) Kdb+
13 2 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
13 2 (0.75%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 1 (0.37%) PowerPivot
Development Applications
1 17 (6.37%) JIRA
2 10 (3.75%) Octopus Deploy
3 9 (3.37%) Git
4 8 (3.00%) TeamCity
5 4 (1.50%) ER Studio
5 4 (1.50%) ERwin
5 4 (1.50%) PowerDesigner
6 3 (1.12%) VTune
7 2 (0.75%) Jenkins
8 1 (0.37%) GitLab
8 1 (0.37%) GoogleTest
8 1 (0.37%) NUnit
8 1 (0.37%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.37%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.37%) webpack
General
1 174 (65.17%) Finance
2 144 (53.93%) Banking
2 144 (53.93%) Front Office
3 111 (41.57%) Investment Banking
4 70 (26.22%) Social Skills
5 40 (14.98%) Analytical Skills
6 9 (3.37%) Back Office
6 9 (3.37%) Legal
7 8 (3.00%) Financial Institution
8 7 (2.62%) Private Banking
9 4 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.12%) Public Sector
11 2 (0.75%) 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
1 136 (50.94%) Developer
2 69 (25.84%) Analyst
3 62 (23.22%) Business Analyst
4 42 (15.73%) Python Developer
5 38 (14.23%) Senior
6 36 (13.48%) Java Developer
7 30 (11.24%) C# Developer
8 28 (10.49%) Front Office Developer
9 25 (9.36%) Lead
10 24 (8.99%) Software Engineer
11 20 (7.49%) Electronic Trading Developer
12 19 (7.12%) Lead Developer
13 18 (6.74%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
13 18 (6.74%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
13 18 (6.74%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
13 18 (6.74%) Low Latency Java Developer
14 14 (5.24%) Lead Software Engineer
14 14 (5.24%) Senior Developer
15 13 (4.87%) Derivatives Business Analyst
16 12 (4.49%) Developer/Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (14.98%) React
2 33 (12.36%) FIX Protocol
3 18 (6.74%) Redux
4 16 (5.99%) Node.js
5 14 (5.24%) .NET
5 14 (5.24%) WebSockets
6 11 (4.12%) Kafka
7 10 (3.75%) NumPy
8 8 (3.00%) AngularJS
8 8 (3.00%) Django
8 8 (3.00%) FastAPI
8 8 (3.00%) REST
8 8 (3.00%) RxJava
8 8 (3.00%) Spring
9 7 (2.62%) Pandas
9 7 (2.62%) XML
10 6 (2.25%) HTML
10 6 (2.25%) HTML5
10 6 (2.25%) Middleware
10 6 (2.25%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 78 (29.21%) Equities
2 63 (23.60%) Fixed Income
3 60 (22.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 40 (14.98%) Equity Derivative
5 21 (7.87%) Market Risk
6 18 (6.74%) OTC Derivatives
6 18 (6.74%) TWAP
6 18 (6.74%) VWAP
7 17 (6.37%) Credit Risk
7 17 (6.37%) Data Structures
8 16 (5.99%) Distributed Systems
9 15 (5.62%) Algorithms
9 15 (5.62%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (5.24%) Hedge funds
11 12 (4.49%) Management Information System
12 10 (3.75%) Exotic Derivative
13 8 (3.00%) Cloud Native
13 8 (3.00%) Product Ownership
14 7 (2.62%) Onboarding
14 7 (2.62%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 20 (7.49%) Unix
2 9 (3.37%) Linux
3 1 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (27.34%) Agile
2 56 (20.97%) Problem-Solving
3 45 (16.85%) Low Latency
4 40 (14.98%) Electronic Trading
5 39 (14.61%) Multithreading
6 37 (13.86%) CI/CD
6 37 (13.86%) Software Engineering
7 36 (13.48%) Risk Management
8 35 (13.11%) Asset Management
8 35 (13.11%) User Acceptance Testing
9 33 (12.36%) TDD
10 29 (10.86%) Analytics
10 29 (10.86%) DevOps
11 28 (10.49%) Algorithmic Trading
11 28 (10.49%) Data Analysis
12 27 (10.11%) Microservices
12 27 (10.11%) Stakeholder Management
13 26 (9.74%) AI
13 26 (9.74%) Full-Stack Development
13 26 (9.74%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 113 (42.32%) Python
2 96 (35.96%) SQL
3 79 (29.59%) Java
4 53 (19.85%) C#
5 37 (13.86%) TypeScript
6 34 (12.73%) C++
7 22 (8.24%) JavaScript
8 12 (4.49%) Rust
9 8 (3.00%) Shell Script
10 7 (2.62%) PowerShell
11 5 (1.87%) Perl
12 4 (1.50%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.50%) Scala
13 2 (0.75%) F#
13 2 (0.75%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.37%) Bash
14 1 (0.37%) C
14 1 (0.37%) Korn
14 1 (0.37%) R
14 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 29 (10.86%) Degree
2 16 (5.99%) Computer Science Degree
3 11 (4.12%) Master's Degree
4 9 (3.37%) PhD
5 1 (0.37%) FFIEC
5 1 (0.37%) ISTQB
5 1 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.62%) Data Quality
2 12 (4.49%) QA
3 9 (3.37%) EMIR
4 8 (3.00%) MiFID
5 3 (1.12%) Basel III
5 3 (1.12%) IFRS
6 2 (0.75%) COREP
6 2 (0.75%) Dodd-Frank
6 2 (0.75%) FINREP
6 2 (0.75%) GAAP
7 1 (0.37%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.37%) PMO
7 1 (0.37%) SLA
System Software
1 18 (6.74%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (2.62%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.75%) Control-M
2 2 (0.75%) ITRS Geneos
3 1 (0.37%) Grafana
3 1 (0.37%) Prometheus
3 1 (0.37%) Terraform
Vendors
1 25 (9.36%) Murex
2 14 (5.24%) Bloomberg
2 14 (5.24%) Oracle
3 10 (3.75%) Sybase
4 8 (3.00%) Charles River
5 7 (2.62%) Calypso
5 7 (2.62%) IBM
6 3 (1.12%) Advent
6 3 (1.12%) Databricks
6 3 (1.12%) Google
6 3 (1.12%) Microsoft
7 2 (0.75%) SimCorp
8 1 (0.37%) Ab Initio
8 1 (0.37%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.37%) Apple
8 1 (0.37%) CA Agile Central
8 1 (0.37%) ION Trading
8 1 (0.37%) Reuters
8 1 (0.37%) Solace