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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 381 198 215
Rank change year-on-year -183 +17 +16
Contract jobs citing Derivative 254 400 477
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.53% 1.38% 1.12%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.67% 4.08% 3.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 167 353 429
10th Percentile £450 £520 £551
25th Percentile £588 £638 £638
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £733 £725 £750
Median % change year-on-year +1.03% -3.33% +2.56%
75th Percentile £850 £875 £850
90th Percentile £988 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £404 £638
% change year-on-year +23.76% -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 15,247 9,813 12,980
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.05% 33.86% 30.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,479 6,263 8,356
10th Percentile £313 £300 £269
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.24% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -0.62% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 724 386 900
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.85 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.00 £20.81 £15.17
Median hourly rate £42.50 £31.91 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +33.21% +2.10% +38.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.50 £83.31 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £30.00 £29.25
% change year-on-year +58.47% +2.56% +33.71%

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 14 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 7 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 14 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 -183 235 £733 -2.33% 68
London -102 229 £733 -2.33% 64
Work from Home -144 86 £800 +10.34% 30
UK excluding London -119 18 £500 +23.76% 17
Scotland +10 13 £470 +16.34%
East of England - 3 £681 -
Northern Ireland -14 2 £625 +92.31% 6

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 (1.97%) Confluence
2 2 (0.79%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 1 (0.39%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.39%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (5.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.57%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (3.15%) Aladdin
2 7 (2.76%) Summit
3 5 (1.97%) Loan IQ
3 5 (1.97%) Temenos T24
4 3 (1.18%) Advent Geneva
5 2 (0.79%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 2 (0.79%) Front Arena
5 2 (0.79%) Global One
5 2 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.79%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.39%) Bloomberg AIM
6 1 (0.39%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.39%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 48 (18.90%) AWS
2 35 (13.78%) Azure
3 24 (9.45%) GCP
4 9 (3.54%) ChatGPT
4 9 (3.54%) Power Platform
5 7 (2.76%) Anthropic Claude
6 6 (2.36%) GitHub
6 6 (2.36%) GitHub Copilot
7 5 (1.97%) Amazon S3
7 5 (1.97%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (1.97%) Serverless
8 3 (1.18%) Amazon ECS
8 3 (1.18%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
8 3 (1.18%) SaaS
8 3 (1.18%) Snowflake
9 2 (0.79%) Collibra
9 2 (0.79%) npm
9 2 (0.79%) OpenShift
9 2 (0.79%) Yarn
Communications & Networking
1 19 (7.48%) FIX Connectivity
2 6 (2.36%) HTTP
3 1 (0.39%) RTMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (11.42%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (7.87%) Relational Database
3 17 (6.69%) Metadata
4 12 (4.72%) Redis
5 10 (3.94%) SQL Server
6 9 (3.54%) Power BI
6 9 (3.54%) RDBMS
6 9 (3.54%) Tableau
7 8 (3.15%) DB2
7 8 (3.15%) MongoDB
8 5 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.18%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.18%) NoSQL
9 3 (1.18%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.79%) Crystal Reports
10 2 (0.79%) Power Query
10 2 (0.79%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.39%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.39%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 16 (6.30%) Git
2 12 (4.72%) JIRA
3 9 (3.54%) Octopus Deploy
4 7 (2.76%) TeamCity
5 6 (2.36%) Jenkins
6 4 (1.57%) Visual Studio
7 3 (1.18%) Bitbucket
7 3 (1.18%) ER Studio
7 3 (1.18%) ERwin
7 3 (1.18%) PowerDesigner
8 2 (0.79%) Gradle
8 2 (0.79%) Maven
8 2 (0.79%) webpack
9 1 (0.39%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.39%) GitLab
9 1 (0.39%) IntelliJ
9 1 (0.39%) NUnit
9 1 (0.39%) REST Assured
General
1 170 (66.93%) Finance
2 128 (50.39%) Banking
3 121 (47.64%) Front Office
4 96 (37.80%) Investment Banking
5 66 (25.98%) Social Skills
6 39 (15.35%) Analytical Skills
7 15 (5.91%) Financial Institution
8 11 (4.33%) Back Office
9 7 (2.76%) Legal
10 4 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.18%) Spanish Language
11 3 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.79%) General Ledger
12 2 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.39%) Japanese Language
13 1 (0.39%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.39%) Private Banking
13 1 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 126 (49.61%) Developer
2 59 (23.23%) Analyst
3 49 (19.29%) Business Analyst
4 41 (16.14%) Java Developer
4 41 (16.14%) Senior
5 35 (13.78%) Python Developer
6 25 (9.84%) Lead
7 23 (9.06%) Electronic Trading Developer
8 21 (8.27%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
8 21 (8.27%) Senior Developer
9 20 (7.87%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
9 20 (7.87%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
9 20 (7.87%) Software Engineer
10 19 (7.48%) Low Latency Java Developer
11 16 (6.30%) C# Developer
11 16 (6.30%) Lead Developer
12 13 (5.12%) Lead Software Engineer
12 13 (5.12%) Senior Java Developer
13 12 (4.72%) Lead Software Developer
13 12 (4.72%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (14.17%) React
2 31 (12.20%) FIX Protocol
3 19 (7.48%) Redux
4 16 (6.30%) Node.js
5 14 (5.51%) Kafka
5 14 (5.51%) WebSockets
6 11 (4.33%) .NET
7 8 (3.15%) HTML
7 8 (3.15%) RESTful
8 7 (2.76%) AngularJS
8 7 (2.76%) HTML5
8 7 (2.76%) NumPy
8 7 (2.76%) Pandas
8 7 (2.76%) REST
8 7 (2.76%) XML
9 5 (1.97%) CSS
10 4 (1.57%) RxJava
10 4 (1.57%) SciPy
10 4 (1.57%) Spring
11 3 (1.18%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 88 (34.65%) Equities
2 53 (20.87%) Fixed Income
3 41 (16.14%) Equity Derivative
4 40 (15.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 26 (10.24%) Market Risk
6 21 (8.27%) TWAP
6 21 (8.27%) VWAP
7 20 (7.87%) Credit Risk
8 19 (7.48%) Distributed Systems
9 18 (7.09%) Algorithms
10 17 (6.69%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (5.51%) Management Information System
12 13 (5.12%) Data Structures
12 13 (5.12%) OTC Derivatives
13 11 (4.33%) Hedge funds
14 7 (2.76%) Product Ownership
14 7 (2.76%) Reference Data
15 6 (2.36%) Credit Derivative
15 6 (2.36%) Exotic Derivative
16 5 (1.97%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 17 (6.69%) Unix
2 9 (3.54%) Linux
3 3 (1.18%) Debian
3 3 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.18%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.18%) VMS
4 2 (0.79%) Windows
5 1 (0.39%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (25.59%) Agile
2 53 (20.87%) Risk Management
3 44 (17.32%) Low Latency
4 43 (16.93%) Electronic Trading
4 43 (16.93%) Problem-Solving
5 41 (16.14%) TDD
6 35 (13.78%) CI/CD
7 33 (12.99%) Multithreading
8 31 (12.20%) Asset Management
9 30 (11.81%) Analytics
9 30 (11.81%) User Acceptance Testing
10 29 (11.42%) Software Engineering
11 27 (10.63%) Algorithmic Trading
11 27 (10.63%) DevOps
12 25 (9.84%) Mentoring
13 24 (9.45%) Design Patterns
13 24 (9.45%) Mathematics
13 24 (9.45%) Stakeholder Management
14 23 (9.06%) Quantitative Trading
14 23 (9.06%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 112 (44.09%) Python
2 89 (35.04%) SQL
3 71 (27.95%) Java
4 39 (15.35%) C#
5 36 (14.17%) C++
6 34 (13.39%) TypeScript
7 24 (9.45%) JavaScript
8 9 (3.54%) Rust
9 7 (2.76%) Perl
10 5 (1.97%) PowerShell
10 5 (1.97%) Scala
10 5 (1.97%) Shell Script
11 4 (1.57%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.79%) F#
12 2 (0.79%) R
12 2 (0.79%) VBA
13 1 (0.39%) Bash
13 1 (0.39%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 32 (12.60%) Degree
2 13 (5.12%) Computer Science Degree
3 10 (3.94%) Numerate Degree
4 9 (3.54%) Master's Degree
5 5 (1.97%) PhD
6 2 (0.79%) PMI Certification
6 2 (0.79%) PMP
7 1 (0.39%) CBAP
7 1 (0.39%) FFIEC
7 1 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.30%) QA
2 14 (5.51%) Data Quality
3 13 (5.12%) EMIR
4 8 (3.15%) MiFID
5 7 (2.76%) IFRS
6 4 (1.57%) Basel III
6 4 (1.57%) IFRS 9
7 3 (1.18%) IAS 32
7 3 (1.18%) IAS 39
7 3 (1.18%) SLA
8 2 (0.79%) GAAP
9 1 (0.39%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.39%) Dodd-Frank
9 1 (0.39%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.39%) PMO
9 1 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 13 (5.12%) Docker
2 3 (1.18%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 6 (2.36%) Kubernetes
2 5 (1.97%) Ansible
3 4 (1.57%) Grafana
3 4 (1.57%) ITRS Geneos
4 3 (1.18%) Control-M
4 3 (1.18%) Podman
4 3 (1.18%) Prometheus
4 3 (1.18%) Terraform
Vendors
1 20 (7.87%) Murex
2 18 (7.09%) Oracle
3 15 (5.91%) Bloomberg
4 8 (3.15%) Sybase
5 7 (2.76%) Calypso
6 6 (2.36%) Charles River
6 6 (2.36%) IBM
7 5 (1.97%) jBASE
7 5 (1.97%) Temenos
8 4 (1.57%) Google
9 3 (1.18%) Advent
9 3 (1.18%) Apple
9 3 (1.18%) Microsoft
9 3 (1.18%) NVIDIA
10 2 (0.79%) Databricks
10 2 (0.79%) ION Trading
10 2 (0.79%) MarketAxess
10 2 (0.79%) Reuters
10 2 (0.79%) Splunk
10 2 (0.79%) Tradeweb