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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 426 305 215
Rank change year-on-year -121 -90 +5
Contract jobs citing Derivative 260 276 417
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.84% 1.11%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.36% 2.33% 3.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 151 221 340
10th Percentile £416 £520 £600
25th Percentile £572 £613 £667
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £700 £750 £800
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% -6.25% +14.29%
75th Percentile £788 £825 £888
90th Percentile £888 £988 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £525 £650
% change year-on-year -10.48% -19.23% +20.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 1
10th Percentile £59.13 - -
25th Percentile £63.44 £86.25 £76.25
Median hourly rate £71.25 £87.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.57% +12.90% -
75th Percentile £78.44 £88.75 £78.75
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 19,056 11,857 11,463
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.70% 36.01% 30.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,378 7,277 6,831
10th Percentile £323 £293 £281
25th Percentile £425 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £530
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% -2.36% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £668
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.75% -1.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,332 623 402
10th Percentile £13.92 £14.33 £15.95
25th Percentile £17.55 £18.50 £22.70
Median hourly rate £36.00 £27.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +30.91% -40.45% +2.38%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £75.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.50 £26.75 £52.50
% change year-on-year +28.95% -49.05% +3.90%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -142 233 £710 -5.33% 182
London -96 225 £700 -6.67% 174
Work from Home -110 68 £738 -1.67% 62
UK excluding London -81 27 £470 -10.48% 28
Scotland -16 18 £402 -23.43% 7
North of England -59 6 £725 +22.05% 5
Yorkshire -33 5 £725 +38.10%
Northern Ireland +1 2 £643 +22.38% 13
Midlands -45 1 - - 1
West Midlands -50 1 - -
North West -51 1 £198 -67.65% 4

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 4 (1.54%) Confluence
2 2 (0.77%) Apache
2 2 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (0.77%) CMS
3 1 (0.38%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 4 (1.54%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.77%) LaTeX
2 2 (0.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 10 (3.85%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.77%) Oracle FAH
2 2 (0.77%) Oracle Financials
2 2 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
2 2 (0.77%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (0.77%) Oracle Receivables
2 2 (0.77%) Orchestrade
3 1 (0.38%) Actimize
3 1 (0.38%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 1 (0.38%) Markit EDM
3 1 (0.38%) MultiFonds
3 1 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.38%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 20 (7.69%) Azure
2 15 (5.77%) AWS
2 15 (5.77%) GCP
3 8 (3.08%) ChatGPT
4 6 (2.31%) Anthropic Claude
4 6 (2.31%) GitHub
5 5 (1.92%) GitHub Copilot
5 5 (1.92%) Snowflake
6 3 (1.15%) Amazon S3
6 3 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (1.15%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (1.15%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 3 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
6 3 (1.15%) Power Platform
6 3 (1.15%) Serverless
7 1 (0.38%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (0.38%) npm
7 1 (0.38%) OpenShift
7 1 (0.38%) SaaS
7 1 (0.38%) Yarn
Communications & Networking
1 10 (3.85%) FIX Connectivity
2 6 (2.31%) HTTP
3 2 (0.77%) Multicast
4 1 (0.38%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (6.15%) Relational Database
2 15 (5.77%) MongoDB
2 15 (5.77%) SQL Server
3 12 (4.62%) Metadata
4 8 (3.08%) Db2
4 8 (3.08%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
5 7 (2.69%) Redis
6 6 (2.31%) Data Lake
7 4 (1.54%) KDB
7 4 (1.54%) RDBMS
8 3 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (1.15%) Kdb+
8 3 (1.15%) NoSQL
8 3 (1.15%) Power BI
9 2 (0.77%) Snowflake Schema
10 1 (0.38%) Data Mining
10 1 (0.38%) PowerCenter
10 1 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.38%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 18 (6.92%) JIRA
2 8 (3.08%) Git
3 6 (2.31%) Octopus Deploy
4 5 (1.92%) ER Studio
4 5 (1.92%) ERwin
4 5 (1.92%) PowerDesigner
4 5 (1.92%) TeamCity
5 4 (1.54%) Jenkins
6 3 (1.15%) 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
7 1 (0.38%) webpack
General
1 192 (73.85%) Finance
2 146 (56.15%) Banking
3 130 (50.00%) Front Office
4 95 (36.54%) Investment Banking
5 72 (27.69%) Social Skills
6 39 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
7 19 (7.31%) Financial Institution
8 11 (4.23%) Private Banking
9 9 (3.46%) Back Office
10 6 (2.31%) Legal
11 5 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
11 5 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.54%) General Ledger
13 3 (1.15%) Public Sector
14 2 (0.77%) Corporate Banking
14 2 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
15 1 (0.38%) German Language
15 1 (0.38%) International Banking
15 1 (0.38%) Marketing
15 1 (0.38%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 117 (45.00%) Developer
2 59 (22.69%) Analyst
3 50 (19.23%) Business Analyst
4 44 (16.92%) Senior
5 35 (13.46%) Python Developer
6 30 (11.54%) Front Office Developer
7 27 (10.38%) C# Developer
8 21 (8.08%) Java Developer
9 19 (7.31%) Quantitative Developer
10 13 (5.00%) Project Manager
11 12 (4.62%) Electronic Trading Developer
11 12 (4.62%) Senior Developer
12 10 (3.85%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
12 10 (3.85%) Data Engineer
12 10 (3.85%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
12 10 (3.85%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
12 10 (3.85%) Low Latency Java Developer
12 10 (3.85%) Pricing Developer
13 9 (3.46%) Python Engineer
13 9 (3.46%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (8.85%) FIX Protocol
2 16 (6.15%) React
3 13 (5.00%) NumPy
4 12 (4.62%) Django
4 12 (4.62%) FastAPI
4 12 (4.62%) Pandas
5 11 (4.23%) REST
6 10 (3.85%) .NET
6 10 (3.85%) PySpark
6 10 (3.85%) Spring
6 10 (3.85%) WebSockets
7 9 (3.46%) Flask
8 8 (3.08%) Kafka
8 8 (3.08%) RxJava
9 7 (2.69%) AngularJS
10 5 (1.92%) RESTful
11 4 (1.54%) Middleware
12 3 (1.15%) HTML
12 3 (1.15%) JSON
12 3 (1.15%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 72 (27.69%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 66 (25.38%) Equities
3 57 (21.92%) Fixed Income
4 35 (13.46%) Equity Derivative
5 21 (8.08%) Distributed Systems
6 17 (6.54%) Exotic Derivative
6 17 (6.54%) Market Risk
7 16 (6.15%) OTC Derivatives
8 15 (5.77%) Algorithms
9 13 (5.00%) Credit Risk
9 13 (5.00%) Data Protection Act
9 13 (5.00%) Onboarding
10 12 (4.62%) Data Structures
10 12 (4.62%) Hedge funds
11 10 (3.85%) Management Information System
11 10 (3.85%) TWAP
11 10 (3.85%) VWAP
12 9 (3.46%) Reference Data
13 8 (3.08%) Cloud Native
14 6 (2.31%) Interest Rate Derivative
Operating Systems
1 17 (6.54%) Unix
2 16 (6.15%) Linux
3 2 (0.77%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (19.23%) Problem-Solving
2 44 (16.92%) Agile
2 44 (16.92%) Stakeholder Management
3 40 (15.38%) Analytics
4 34 (13.08%) CI/CD
4 34 (13.08%) User Acceptance Testing
5 33 (12.69%) Data Analysis
5 33 (12.69%) Low Latency
5 33 (12.69%) Software Engineering
6 31 (11.92%) Validation
7 28 (10.77%) Business Analysis
7 28 (10.77%) Risk Management
8 27 (10.38%) Electronic Trading
8 27 (10.38%) Microservices
9 26 (10.00%) Multithreading
9 26 (10.00%) Performance Optimisation
10 25 (9.62%) Data Modelling
11 24 (9.23%) AI
11 24 (9.23%) DevOps
11 24 (9.23%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 99 (38.08%) Python
2 82 (31.54%) SQL
3 66 (25.38%) Java
4 51 (19.62%) C#
5 33 (12.69%) C++
6 16 (6.15%) TypeScript
7 11 (4.23%) Shell Script
8 8 (3.08%) Rust
9 6 (2.31%) JavaScript
9 6 (2.31%) PowerShell
10 4 (1.54%) PL/SQL
11 3 (1.15%) Perl
11 3 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.77%) Bash
12 2 (0.77%) C
12 2 (0.77%) Scala
13 1 (0.38%) ABAP
13 1 (0.38%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.38%) R
13 1 (0.38%) VBA
Qualifications
1 24 (9.23%) Degree
2 12 (4.62%) Master's Degree
3 10 (3.85%) PhD
4 6 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.15%) PMI Certification
5 3 (1.15%) PMP
6 2 (0.77%) CFA
6 2 (0.77%) Numerate Degree
6 2 (0.77%) PRINCE2 Certification
6 2 (0.77%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.77%) Data Quality
2 9 (3.46%) MiFID
3 7 (2.69%) EMIR
4 4 (1.54%) QA
5 3 (1.15%) SLA
6 2 (0.77%) Basel III
6 2 (0.77%) COREP
6 2 (0.77%) Dodd-Frank
6 2 (0.77%) FINREP
6 2 (0.77%) GAAP
6 2 (0.77%) IFRS
7 1 (0.38%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 15 (5.77%) Docker
2 1 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 5 (1.92%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.77%) 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 (7.31%) Murex
2 17 (6.54%) Bloomberg
3 8 (3.08%) Sybase
4 7 (2.69%) Calypso
5 6 (2.31%) Databricks
5 6 (2.31%) Oracle
6 4 (1.54%) Charles River
6 4 (1.54%) IBM
7 3 (1.15%) Google
7 3 (1.15%) Microsoft
7 3 (1.15%) SimCorp
8 2 (0.77%) NYFIX
8 2 (0.77%) Refinitiv
8 2 (0.77%) SAP
8 2 (0.77%) Tradeweb
9 1 (0.38%) Alteryx
9 1 (0.38%) eFront
9 1 (0.38%) FIS
9 1 (0.38%) Splunk
9 1 (0.38%) Talend