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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 390 199 211
Rank change year-on-year -191 +12 +28
Contract jobs citing Derivative 249 410 475
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 1.40% 1.10%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.63% 4.14% 3.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 161 360 428
10th Percentile £460 £524 £551
25th Percentile £600 £638 £638
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £733 £725 £750
Median % change year-on-year +1.03% -3.33% +1.35%
75th Percentile £850 £875 £850
90th Percentile £988 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £404 £638
% change year-on-year +20.67% -36.63% -20.31%

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 15,238 9,901 13,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.08% 33.91% 30.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,482 6,317 8,409
10th Percentile £308 £300 £269
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.54% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 726 401 904
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.78 £21.01 £15.17
Median hourly rate £43.60 £32.50 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +34.16% +4.00% +38.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.75 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.77 £31.76 £29.25
% change year-on-year +53.56% +8.58% +32.95%

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 12 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 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 12 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 -201 230 £733 -2.33% 57
London -112 223 £736 -1.83% 57
Work from Home -154 87 £800 +10.34% 19
UK excluding London -124 18 £488 +20.67% 12
Scotland +3 13 £470 +16.34%
East of England - 3 £681 -
Northern Ireland -11 1 £475 +46.15% 2
Yorkshire -54 1 - -
North of England -72 1 - - 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 5 (2.01%) Confluence
2 2 (0.80%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 1 (0.40%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.40%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (5.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.20%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 8 (3.21%) Aladdin
2 7 (2.81%) Summit
3 5 (2.01%) Loan IQ
3 5 (2.01%) Temenos T24
4 3 (1.20%) Advent Geneva
5 2 (0.80%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 2 (0.80%) Front Arena
5 2 (0.80%) Global One
5 2 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.80%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.40%) Bloomberg AIM
6 1 (0.40%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.40%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 48 (19.28%) AWS
2 36 (14.46%) Azure
3 24 (9.64%) GCP
4 9 (3.61%) ChatGPT
4 9 (3.61%) Power Platform
5 7 (2.81%) Anthropic Claude
6 6 (2.41%) GitHub
6 6 (2.41%) GitHub Copilot
7 5 (2.01%) Amazon S3
7 5 (2.01%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (2.01%) Serverless
8 4 (1.61%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.20%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (1.20%) Microsoft Copilot
9 3 (1.20%) npm
9 3 (1.20%) SaaS
9 3 (1.20%) Snowflake
9 3 (1.20%) Yarn
10 2 (0.80%) Collibra
10 2 (0.80%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 19 (7.63%) FIX Connectivity
2 6 (2.41%) HTTP
3 1 (0.40%) RTMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (11.65%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (8.03%) Relational Database
3 17 (6.83%) Metadata
4 11 (4.42%) Redis
5 9 (3.61%) Power BI
5 9 (3.61%) RDBMS
5 9 (3.61%) SQL Server
5 9 (3.61%) Tableau
6 8 (3.21%) DB2
6 8 (3.21%) MongoDB
7 5 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.20%) Data Lake
8 3 (1.20%) NoSQL
8 3 (1.20%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.80%) Crystal Reports
9 2 (0.80%) Data Mart
9 2 (0.80%) Power Query
9 2 (0.80%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 1 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 16 (6.43%) Git
2 12 (4.82%) JIRA
3 8 (3.21%) Octopus Deploy
4 7 (2.81%) TeamCity
5 6 (2.41%) Jenkins
6 3 (1.20%) Bitbucket
6 3 (1.20%) ER Studio
6 3 (1.20%) ERwin
6 3 (1.20%) PowerDesigner
6 3 (1.20%) Visual Studio
6 3 (1.20%) webpack
7 2 (0.80%) Gradle
7 2 (0.80%) Maven
8 1 (0.40%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.40%) GitLab
8 1 (0.40%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.40%) NUnit
8 1 (0.40%) REST Assured
General
1 166 (66.67%) Finance
2 127 (51.00%) Banking
3 118 (47.39%) Front Office
4 94 (37.75%) Investment Banking
5 66 (26.51%) Social Skills
6 40 (16.06%) Analytical Skills
7 17 (6.83%) Financial Institution
8 12 (4.82%) Back Office
9 6 (2.41%) Legal
10 4 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.20%) Spanish Language
11 3 (1.20%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.80%) General Ledger
12 2 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.40%) Japanese Language
13 1 (0.40%) Private Banking
13 1 (0.40%) Retail
Job Titles
1 123 (49.40%) Developer
2 57 (22.89%) Analyst
3 47 (18.88%) Business Analyst
4 42 (16.87%) Java Developer
5 41 (16.47%) Senior
6 34 (13.65%) Python Developer
7 25 (10.04%) Lead
8 24 (9.64%) Electronic Trading Developer
9 22 (8.84%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
9 22 (8.84%) Senior Developer
10 20 (8.03%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
10 20 (8.03%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
10 20 (8.03%) Software Engineer
11 19 (7.63%) Low Latency Java Developer
12 16 (6.43%) Lead Developer
13 14 (5.62%) C# Developer
13 14 (5.62%) Senior Java Developer
14 13 (5.22%) Lead Software Engineer
15 12 (4.82%) Lead Software Developer
15 12 (4.82%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (14.86%) React
2 31 (12.45%) FIX Protocol
3 20 (8.03%) Redux
4 16 (6.43%) Node.js
5 14 (5.62%) Kafka
5 14 (5.62%) WebSockets
6 11 (4.42%) .NET
7 9 (3.61%) HTML
8 7 (2.81%) AngularJS
8 7 (2.81%) HTML5
8 7 (2.81%) RESTful
8 7 (2.81%) XML
9 6 (2.41%) CSS
9 6 (2.41%) NumPy
9 6 (2.41%) Pandas
9 6 (2.41%) REST
10 4 (1.61%) RxJava
10 4 (1.61%) RxJS
10 4 (1.61%) SciPy
10 4 (1.61%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 88 (35.34%) Equities
2 55 (22.09%) Fixed Income
3 41 (16.47%) Equity Derivative
3 41 (16.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 24 (9.64%) Market Risk
5 21 (8.43%) TWAP
5 21 (8.43%) VWAP
6 19 (7.63%) Credit Risk
7 18 (7.23%) Distributed Systems
8 17 (6.83%) Algorithms
9 16 (6.43%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (5.62%) Management Information System
11 12 (4.82%) Data Structures
11 12 (4.82%) OTC Derivatives
12 11 (4.42%) Hedge funds
13 7 (2.81%) Product Ownership
13 7 (2.81%) Reference Data
14 5 (2.01%) Analytical Mindset
14 5 (2.01%) Cloud Native
14 5 (2.01%) Credit Derivative
Operating Systems
1 15 (6.02%) Unix
2 8 (3.21%) Linux
3 3 (1.20%) Debian
3 3 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.20%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.20%) VMS
4 1 (0.40%) Windows
4 1 (0.40%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (25.70%) Agile
2 52 (20.88%) Risk Management
3 44 (17.67%) Electronic Trading
4 43 (17.27%) Low Latency
5 42 (16.87%) Problem-Solving
6 41 (16.47%) TDD
7 34 (13.65%) CI/CD
8 33 (13.25%) Multithreading
9 31 (12.45%) Asset Management
10 30 (12.05%) User Acceptance Testing
11 29 (11.65%) Analytics
11 29 (11.65%) Software Engineering
12 28 (11.24%) DevOps
13 27 (10.84%) Algorithmic Trading
14 25 (10.04%) Design Patterns
15 24 (9.64%) Mentoring
16 23 (9.24%) Quantitative Trading
16 23 (9.24%) Stakeholder Management
17 22 (8.84%) AI
17 22 (8.84%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 109 (43.78%) Python
2 86 (34.54%) SQL
3 71 (28.51%) Java
4 37 (14.86%) C#
5 35 (14.06%) TypeScript
6 34 (13.65%) C++
7 25 (10.04%) JavaScript
8 9 (3.61%) Rust
9 7 (2.81%) Perl
10 5 (2.01%) PowerShell
10 5 (2.01%) Scala
11 4 (1.61%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.61%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.80%) F#
12 2 (0.80%) R
12 2 (0.80%) VBA
13 1 (0.40%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 31 (12.45%) Degree
2 13 (5.22%) Computer Science Degree
3 9 (3.61%) Numerate Degree
4 7 (2.81%) Master's Degree
5 4 (1.61%) PhD
6 2 (0.80%) PMI Certification
6 2 (0.80%) PMP
7 1 (0.40%) CBAP
7 1 (0.40%) FFIEC
7 1 (0.40%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.43%) QA
2 14 (5.62%) Data Quality
3 12 (4.82%) EMIR
4 8 (3.21%) MiFID
5 7 (2.81%) IFRS
6 4 (1.61%) Basel III
6 4 (1.61%) IFRS 9
7 3 (1.20%) IAS 32
7 3 (1.20%) IAS 39
7 3 (1.20%) SLA
8 2 (0.80%) GAAP
9 1 (0.40%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.40%) Dodd-Frank
9 1 (0.40%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.40%) PMO
9 1 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 13 (5.22%) Docker
2 3 (1.20%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 6 (2.41%) Kubernetes
2 5 (2.01%) Ansible
3 4 (1.61%) Grafana
3 4 (1.61%) ITRS Geneos
4 3 (1.20%) Control-M
4 3 (1.20%) Podman
4 3 (1.20%) Prometheus
4 3 (1.20%) Terraform
Vendors
1 22 (8.84%) Murex
2 18 (7.23%) Oracle
3 15 (6.02%) Bloomberg
4 8 (3.21%) Sybase
5 7 (2.81%) Calypso
6 6 (2.41%) Charles River
6 6 (2.41%) IBM
7 5 (2.01%) jBASE
7 5 (2.01%) Temenos
8 4 (1.61%) Google
9 3 (1.20%) Advent
9 3 (1.20%) Apple
9 3 (1.20%) NVIDIA
10 2 (0.80%) AppDynamics
10 2 (0.80%) ION Trading
10 2 (0.80%) MarketAxess
10 2 (0.80%) Microsoft
10 2 (0.80%) Reuters
10 2 (0.80%) Splunk
10 2 (0.80%) Tradeweb