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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 423 302 204
Rank change year-on-year -121 -98 +2
Contract jobs citing Derivative 265 282 462
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.86% 1.20%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.43% 2.40% 3.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 156 235 390
10th Percentile £415 £525 £600
25th Percentile £564 £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 £897 £988 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £550 £650
% change year-on-year -14.09% -15.38% +30.00%
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 18,529 11,757 11,731
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.94% 35.73% 30.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,112 7,198 7,156
10th Percentile £320 £296 £294
25th Percentile £425 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £540
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -4.63% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £674
90th Percentile £750 £750 £807
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,198 587 473
10th Percentile £14.03 £15.08 £14.62
25th Percentile £18.00 £18.87 £21.25
Median hourly rate £38.25 £30.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.50% -40.00% +12.36%
75th Percentile £67.89 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.28 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £30.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +33.33% -47.69% +18.58%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -137 237 £725 -3.33% 430
London -92 229 £725 -3.33% 410
Work from Home -120 71 £753 +0.33% 113
UK excluding London -96 31 £473 -14.09% 58
Scotland -9 21 £402 -23.43% 12
North of England -65 6 £725 +18.46% 6
Yorkshire -42 5 £725 -
Northern Ireland +3 3 £510 -2.86% 19
North West -49 1 £198 -67.65% 5
Midlands -52 1 - - 3
West Midlands - 1 - - 2

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 (1.89%) Confluence
2 2 (0.75%) Apache
2 2 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.38%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 4 (1.51%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 10 (3.77%) Aladdin
2 3 (1.13%) Orchestrade
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle FAH
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.38%) Actimize
4 1 (0.38%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.38%) Front Arena
4 1 (0.38%) Global One
4 1 (0.38%) Markit EDM
4 1 (0.38%) MultiFonds
4 1 (0.38%) SimCorp Dimension
4 1 (0.38%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 19 (7.17%) Azure
2 17 (6.42%) AWS
3 15 (5.66%) GCP
4 11 (4.15%) ChatGPT
5 9 (3.40%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (3.02%) GitHub
6 8 (3.02%) GitHub Copilot
7 4 (1.51%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (1.51%) Power Platform
7 4 (1.51%) Snowflake
8 3 (1.13%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 3 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
9 2 (0.75%) Amazon S3
9 2 (0.75%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (0.75%) Serverless
10 1 (0.38%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (4.91%) FIX Connectivity
2 7 (2.64%) HTTP
3 2 (0.75%) Multicast
4 1 (0.38%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (7.17%) Relational Database
2 17 (6.42%) MongoDB
3 16 (6.04%) Metadata
4 14 (5.28%) SQL Server
5 10 (3.77%) Db2
6 9 (3.40%) Redis
7 7 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (2.26%) Data Lake
8 6 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
9 5 (1.89%) RDBMS
9 5 (1.89%) Tableau
10 4 (1.51%) KDB
10 4 (1.51%) NoSQL
10 4 (1.51%) Power BI
11 3 (1.13%) Kdb+
12 2 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
13 1 (0.38%) Big Data
13 1 (0.38%) Snowflake Schema
13 1 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.38%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 18 (6.79%) JIRA
2 8 (3.02%) Git
3 7 (2.64%) Octopus Deploy
4 5 (1.89%) ER Studio
4 5 (1.89%) ERwin
4 5 (1.89%) PowerDesigner
4 5 (1.89%) TeamCity
5 3 (1.13%) Jenkins
5 3 (1.13%) VTune
6 1 (0.38%) GitLab
6 1 (0.38%) GoogleTest
6 1 (0.38%) Visual Studio
General
1 188 (70.94%) Finance
2 150 (56.60%) Banking
3 140 (52.83%) Front Office
4 105 (39.62%) Investment Banking
5 72 (27.17%) Social Skills
6 39 (14.72%) Analytical Skills
7 18 (6.79%) Financial Institution
8 11 (4.15%) Back Office
8 11 (4.15%) Private Banking
9 10 (3.77%) Legal
10 4 (1.51%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.13%) General Ledger
11 3 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.13%) Public Sector
12 2 (0.75%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.38%) Agriculture
13 1 (0.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.38%) International Banking
13 1 (0.38%) Legal Technology
Job Titles
1 118 (44.53%) Developer
2 67 (25.28%) Analyst
3 58 (21.89%) Business Analyst
4 42 (15.85%) Senior
5 33 (12.45%) Python Developer
6 30 (11.32%) Front Office Developer
7 27 (10.19%) C# Developer
7 27 (10.19%) Java Developer
8 18 (6.79%) Quantitative Developer
9 14 (5.28%) Electronic Trading Developer
10 13 (4.91%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
10 13 (4.91%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
10 13 (4.91%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
10 13 (4.91%) Low Latency Java Developer
11 12 (4.53%) Project Manager
11 12 (4.53%) Senior Developer
11 12 (4.53%) Software Engineer
12 11 (4.15%) Pricing Developer
13 10 (3.77%) Banking Analyst
14 9 (3.40%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (10.19%) FIX Protocol
2 17 (6.42%) React
3 12 (4.53%) WebSockets
4 10 (3.77%) .NET
4 10 (3.77%) NumPy
5 9 (3.40%) Django
5 9 (3.40%) FastAPI
5 9 (3.40%) Pandas
5 9 (3.40%) REST
6 8 (3.02%) Spring
7 7 (2.64%) Kafka
7 7 (2.64%) RxJava
8 6 (2.26%) Flask
9 5 (1.89%) AngularJS
9 5 (1.89%) Middleware
9 5 (1.89%) PySpark
10 4 (1.51%) Next.js
10 4 (1.51%) RESTful
11 3 (1.13%) Web Services
11 3 (1.13%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 70 (26.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 67 (25.28%) Equities
3 53 (20.00%) Fixed Income
4 40 (15.09%) Equity Derivative
5 19 (7.17%) Distributed Systems
6 17 (6.42%) Exotic Derivative
7 16 (6.04%) OTC Derivatives
8 15 (5.66%) Algorithms
8 15 (5.66%) Credit Risk
8 15 (5.66%) Market Risk
9 14 (5.28%) Hedge funds
10 13 (4.91%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (4.91%) TWAP
10 13 (4.91%) VWAP
11 11 (4.15%) Data Structures
11 11 (4.15%) Onboarding
12 10 (3.77%) Management Information System
13 8 (3.02%) Credit Derivative
13 8 (3.02%) Interest Rate Derivative
14 7 (2.64%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.66%) Unix
2 13 (4.91%) Linux
3 1 (0.38%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
2 43 (16.23%) Agile
3 42 (15.85%) Stakeholder Management
4 37 (13.96%) CI/CD
5 36 (13.58%) Low Latency
6 35 (13.21%) Data Analysis
7 34 (12.83%) Analytics
8 33 (12.45%) User Acceptance Testing
9 32 (12.08%) Electronic Trading
9 32 (12.08%) Software Engineering
10 31 (11.70%) Business Analysis
11 30 (11.32%) Validation
12 29 (10.94%) Multithreading
13 28 (10.57%) Risk Management
14 26 (9.81%) Microservices
15 25 (9.43%) Requirements Gathering
15 25 (9.43%) TDD
16 24 (9.06%) AI
16 24 (9.06%) Algorithmic Trading
16 24 (9.06%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 98 (36.98%) Python
2 85 (32.08%) SQL
3 71 (26.79%) Java
4 52 (19.62%) C#
5 36 (13.58%) C++
6 18 (6.79%) TypeScript
7 10 (3.77%) Rust
8 8 (3.02%) PowerShell
9 7 (2.64%) Shell Script
10 4 (1.51%) JavaScript
10 4 (1.51%) Perl
10 4 (1.51%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.75%) Bash
11 2 (0.75%) C
11 2 (0.75%) Scala
11 2 (0.75%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.38%) Korn
12 1 (0.38%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.38%) R
12 1 (0.38%) VBA
Qualifications
1 24 (9.06%) Degree
2 12 (4.53%) Master's Degree
3 10 (3.77%) PhD
4 7 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (0.75%) CFA
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 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.04%) Data Quality
2 10 (3.77%) MiFID
3 9 (3.40%) EMIR
4 7 (2.64%) QA
5 3 (1.13%) Basel III
5 3 (1.13%) SLA
6 2 (0.75%) COREP
6 2 (0.75%) Dodd-Frank
6 2 (0.75%) FINREP
6 2 (0.75%) GAAP
6 2 (0.75%) IFRS
7 1 (0.38%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 14 (5.28%) Docker
2 1 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 6 (2.26%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.75%) ITRS Geneos
2 2 (0.75%) Thomson Reuters DACS
3 1 (0.38%) Control-M
3 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 20 (7.55%) Murex
2 16 (6.04%) Bloomberg
3 10 (3.77%) Sybase
4 9 (3.40%) Calypso
5 7 (2.64%) IBM
5 7 (2.64%) Oracle
6 5 (1.89%) Charles River
7 4 (1.51%) Databricks
8 3 (1.13%) Google
8 3 (1.13%) Microsoft
8 3 (1.13%) SimCorp
9 2 (0.75%) NYFIX
9 2 (0.75%) Refinitiv
9 2 (0.75%) Tradeweb
10 1 (0.38%) Alteryx
10 1 (0.38%) Dynatrace
10 1 (0.38%) eFront
10 1 (0.38%) FIS
10 1 (0.38%) Solace
10 1 (0.38%) Splunk