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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 433 289 209
Rank change year-on-year -144 -80 -3
Contract jobs citing Derivative 266 274 439
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.83% 1.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.41% 2.30% 3.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 220 364
10th Percentile £419 £520 £600
25th Percentile £572 £613 £670
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £710 £750 £800
Median % change year-on-year -5.33% -6.25% +14.29%
75th Percentile £788 £825 £888
90th Percentile £883 £988 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £550 £650
% change year-on-year -14.55% -15.38% +10.64%
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 18,812 11,937 11,605
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.43% 35.97% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,229 7,315 6,972
10th Percentile £320 £300 £275
25th Percentile £425 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £671
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,294 615 424
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.87 £15.54
25th Percentile £17.72 £18.85 £22.50
Median hourly rate £36.00 £29.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.14% -42.00% +11.73%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £75.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £29.27 £57.35
% change year-on-year +28.12% -48.96% +14.70%

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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 -139 238 £725 -3.33% 451
London -95 230 £710 -5.33% 429
Work from Home -125 68 £753 +0.33% 109
UK excluding London -95 28 £470 -14.55% 72
Scotland -13 19 £402 -23.43% 21
North of England -65 6 £725 +18.46% 7
Yorkshire -37 5 £725 -
Northern Ireland +1 2 £643 +22.38% 19
Midlands -43 1 - - 1
North West -45 1 £198 -67.65% 6
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 (2.26%) Confluence
2 2 (0.75%) Apache
2 2 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.38%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.38%) CMS
Applications
1 5 (1.88%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.38%) LaTeX
3 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 10 (3.76%) 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%) Markit EDM
4 1 (0.38%) MultiFonds
4 1 (0.38%) SimCorp Dimension
4 1 (0.38%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 24 (9.02%) Azure
2 18 (6.77%) AWS
3 16 (6.02%) GCP
4 9 (3.38%) ChatGPT
5 7 (2.63%) Anthropic Claude
5 7 (2.63%) GitHub
6 6 (2.26%) GitHub Copilot
7 5 (1.88%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (1.88%) Snowflake
8 4 (1.50%) Power Platform
9 3 (1.13%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (1.13%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 3 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
9 3 (1.13%) Serverless
10 1 (0.38%) Amazon ECS
10 1 (0.38%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (4.14%) FIX Connectivity
2 7 (2.63%) HTTP
3 2 (0.75%) Multicast
4 1 (0.38%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (6.77%) Relational Database
2 16 (6.02%) MongoDB
3 15 (5.64%) SQL Server
4 14 (5.26%) Metadata
5 9 (3.38%) Db2
6 8 (3.01%) PostgreSQL
6 8 (3.01%) Redis
7 7 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
8 6 (2.26%) Data Lake
9 5 (1.88%) RDBMS
10 4 (1.50%) KDB
10 4 (1.50%) NoSQL
10 4 (1.50%) Power BI
11 3 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
11 3 (1.13%) Kdb+
12 2 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (0.75%) Tableau
13 1 (0.38%) PowerCenter
13 1 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 1 (0.38%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 21 (7.89%) JIRA
2 9 (3.38%) Git
3 6 (2.26%) Octopus Deploy
4 5 (1.88%) ER Studio
4 5 (1.88%) ERwin
4 5 (1.88%) PowerDesigner
4 5 (1.88%) TeamCity
5 4 (1.50%) Jenkins
6 3 (1.13%) VTune
7 1 (0.38%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.38%) GitLab
7 1 (0.38%) GoogleTest
7 1 (0.38%) Gradle
7 1 (0.38%) Maven
7 1 (0.38%) Visual Studio
General
1 194 (72.93%) Finance
2 152 (57.14%) Banking
3 134 (50.38%) Front Office
4 100 (37.59%) Investment Banking
5 76 (28.57%) Social Skills
6 40 (15.04%) Analytical Skills
7 20 (7.52%) Financial Institution
8 12 (4.51%) Private Banking
9 10 (3.76%) Back Office
10 8 (3.01%) Legal
11 5 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (1.13%) General Ledger
13 3 (1.13%) Public Sector
14 2 (0.75%) Corporate Banking
14 2 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
15 1 (0.38%) International Banking
15 1 (0.38%) Marketing
15 1 (0.38%) Presentation Skills
15 1 (0.38%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 119 (44.74%) Developer
2 63 (23.68%) Analyst
3 55 (20.68%) Business Analyst
4 45 (16.92%) Senior
5 34 (12.78%) Python Developer
6 30 (11.28%) Front Office Developer
7 27 (10.15%) C# Developer
8 24 (9.02%) Java Developer
9 19 (7.14%) Quantitative Developer
10 13 (4.89%) Project Manager
10 13 (4.89%) Senior Developer
11 12 (4.51%) Electronic Trading Developer
12 11 (4.14%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
12 11 (4.14%) Data Engineer
12 11 (4.14%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
12 11 (4.14%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
12 11 (4.14%) Low Latency Java Developer
12 11 (4.14%) Pricing Developer
13 10 (3.76%) Python Engineer
13 10 (3.76%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (9.77%) FIX Protocol
2 17 (6.39%) React
3 12 (4.51%) WebSockets
4 11 (4.14%) .NET
4 11 (4.14%) NumPy
5 10 (3.76%) Django
5 10 (3.76%) FastAPI
5 10 (3.76%) Pandas
5 10 (3.76%) REST
6 9 (3.38%) Spring
7 8 (3.01%) Kafka
7 8 (3.01%) PySpark
8 7 (2.63%) AngularJS
8 7 (2.63%) Flask
8 7 (2.63%) RxJava
9 5 (1.88%) RESTful
10 4 (1.50%) Middleware
10 4 (1.50%) Next.js
11 3 (1.13%) Web Services
11 3 (1.13%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 71 (26.69%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 68 (25.56%) Equities
3 55 (20.68%) Fixed Income
4 37 (13.91%) Equity Derivative
5 21 (7.89%) Distributed Systems
6 17 (6.39%) Exotic Derivative
7 16 (6.02%) Algorithms
7 16 (6.02%) Market Risk
8 15 (5.64%) OTC Derivatives
9 14 (5.26%) Credit Risk
10 13 (4.89%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (4.89%) Data Structures
10 13 (4.89%) Hedge funds
11 12 (4.51%) Onboarding
12 11 (4.14%) TWAP
12 11 (4.14%) VWAP
13 10 (3.76%) Management Information System
14 8 (3.01%) Cloud Native
14 8 (3.01%) Reference Data
15 7 (2.63%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 17 (6.39%) Unix
2 15 (5.64%) Linux
3 2 (0.75%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (19.55%) Problem-Solving
2 46 (17.29%) Agile
3 45 (16.92%) Stakeholder Management
4 39 (14.66%) Analytics
5 36 (13.53%) CI/CD
5 36 (13.53%) Low Latency
6 35 (13.16%) Data Analysis
7 34 (12.78%) User Acceptance Testing
8 33 (12.41%) Software Engineering
9 30 (11.28%) Business Analysis
9 30 (11.28%) Validation
10 28 (10.53%) Electronic Trading
10 28 (10.53%) Multithreading
11 27 (10.15%) Data Modelling
11 27 (10.15%) Microservices
11 27 (10.15%) Risk Management
12 26 (9.77%) AI
13 25 (9.40%) DevOps
13 25 (9.40%) Performance Optimisation
13 25 (9.40%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 101 (37.97%) Python
2 85 (31.95%) SQL
3 68 (25.56%) Java
4 55 (20.68%) C#
5 36 (13.53%) C++
6 18 (6.77%) TypeScript
7 9 (3.38%) Rust
7 9 (3.38%) Shell Script
8 7 (2.63%) PowerShell
9 5 (1.88%) JavaScript
9 5 (1.88%) PL/SQL
10 4 (1.50%) T-SQL
11 3 (1.13%) Perl
11 3 (1.13%) Scala
12 2 (0.75%) Bash
12 2 (0.75%) C
13 1 (0.38%) Korn
13 1 (0.38%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.38%) R
13 1 (0.38%) VBA
Qualifications
1 25 (9.40%) Degree
2 12 (4.51%) Master's Degree
3 10 (3.76%) PhD
4 7 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.13%) PMI Certification
5 3 (1.13%) PMP
6 2 (0.75%) CFA
6 2 (0.75%) Numerate Degree
6 2 (0.75%) PRINCE2 Certification
6 2 (0.75%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.02%) Data Quality
2 10 (3.76%) MiFID
3 9 (3.38%) EMIR
4 5 (1.88%) QA
5 3 (1.13%) SLA
6 2 (0.75%) Basel III
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 15 (5.64%) Docker
2 1 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 6 (2.26%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.75%) Thomson Reuters DACS
3 1 (0.38%) Control-M
3 1 (0.38%) ITRS Geneos
3 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 19 (7.14%) Murex
2 16 (6.02%) Bloomberg
3 9 (3.38%) Sybase
4 8 (3.01%) Calypso
4 8 (3.01%) Oracle
5 7 (2.63%) Databricks
6 5 (1.88%) Charles River
6 5 (1.88%) IBM
7 3 (1.13%) Google
7 3 (1.13%) Microsoft
7 3 (1.13%) SimCorp
8 2 (0.75%) NYFIX
8 2 (0.75%) Refinitiv
8 2 (0.75%) Tradeweb
9 1 (0.38%) BEA
9 1 (0.38%) BMC
9 1 (0.38%) GoldenSource
9 1 (0.38%) Informatica
9 1 (0.38%) ION Trading
9 1 (0.38%) TIBCO