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 17 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 353 228 240
Rank change year-on-year -125 +12 +17
Contract jobs citing Derivative 245 390 441
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 1.13% 1.01%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.90% 3.55% 3.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 186 303 402
10th Percentile £484 £555 £550
25th Percentile £581 £639 £613
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £750 £750 £700
Median % change year-on-year - +7.14% -
75th Percentile £957 £888 £824
90th Percentile £1,000 £928 £913
UK excluding London median daily rate £448 £323 £575
% change year-on-year +38.76% -43.91% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £77.50 -
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 12,902 10,988 13,895
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.07% 31.94% 31.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,059 6,574 9,251
10th Percentile £275 £270 £263
25th Percentile £406 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.88% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £660 £668
90th Percentile £738 £775 £770
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 649 344 493
10th Percentile £13.84 £17.25 £16.51
25th Percentile £17.98 £22.72 £20.50
Median hourly rate £27.00 £33.27 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.85% -21.72% +21.43%
75th Percentile £58.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.45 £77.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.00 £32.50 £45.21
% change year-on-year -16.92% -28.11% +53.25%

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 17 December 2025.

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 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 17 December 2025. 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 -120 235 £750 -1.96% 41
London -66 230 £750 -3.23% 39
Work from Home -113 81 £750 -6.25% 23
UK excluding London -53 12 £448 +38.76% 17
Scotland +10 5 £470 -
Northern Ireland -11 3 £320 +3.23%
North of England -45 3 £525 -12.50% 1
Yorkshire - 3 £525 -
Midlands - 3 £525 -
West Midlands - 2 £525 -
East Midlands - 1 £375 -

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 26 (10.61%) Apache
1 26 (10.61%) Apache Airflow
2 9 (3.67%) Apache Spark
2 9 (3.67%) Confluence
3 4 (1.63%) HCL Notes
3 4 (1.63%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.82%) IIS
5 1 (0.41%) MQSeries
5 1 (0.41%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.41%) WebSphere
Applications
1 23 (9.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.41%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (3.27%) Aladdin
2 4 (1.63%) Fidessa
2 4 (1.63%) thinkFolio
3 3 (1.22%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 2 (0.82%) Algo Collateral
5 1 (0.41%) Endur
5 1 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.41%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.41%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.41%) Orchestrade
5 1 (0.41%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 61 (24.90%) AWS
2 30 (12.24%) Azure
3 29 (11.84%) Snowflake
4 26 (10.61%) dbt
5 15 (6.12%) Power Platform
6 9 (3.67%) Serverless
7 6 (2.45%) GCP
8 5 (2.04%) Amazon S3
8 5 (2.04%) AWS Lambda
8 5 (2.04%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (2.04%) npm
8 5 (2.04%) Yarn
9 4 (1.63%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 4 (1.63%) Azure Logic Apps
9 4 (1.63%) Azure Service Bus
9 4 (1.63%) Power Automate
9 4 (1.63%) PowerApps
10 3 (1.22%) Amazon ECS
11 2 (0.82%) OpenShift
11 2 (0.82%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.63%) FIX Connectivity
1 4 (1.63%) Multicast
2 1 (0.41%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (11.02%) Data Lake
2 26 (10.61%) Amazon Athena
2 26 (10.61%) Apache Arrow
2 26 (10.61%) Apache Iceberg
2 26 (10.61%) Apache Ignite
2 26 (10.61%) Dremio
3 22 (8.98%) SQL Server
4 20 (8.16%) PostgreSQL
5 15 (6.12%) Power BI
6 6 (2.45%) NoSQL
6 6 (2.45%) Redis
6 6 (2.45%) Tableau
7 4 (1.63%) Big Data
7 4 (1.63%) KDB
8 3 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.82%) Data Mart
9 2 (0.82%) Metadata
9 2 (0.82%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.41%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 14 (5.71%) Git
2 10 (4.08%) Jenkins
2 10 (4.08%) JIRA
3 7 (2.86%) Octopus Deploy
4 6 (2.45%) Visual Studio
5 5 (2.04%) GitLab
5 5 (2.04%) webpack
6 4 (1.63%) Maven
7 3 (1.22%) Gradle
7 3 (1.22%) IntelliJ
8 2 (0.82%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.41%) Crucible
9 1 (0.41%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.41%) JUnit
9 1 (0.41%) TeamCity
General
1 195 (79.59%) Finance
2 151 (61.63%) Banking
3 109 (44.49%) Front Office
4 107 (43.67%) Investment Banking
5 77 (31.43%) Social Skills
6 37 (15.10%) Analytical Skills
7 25 (10.20%) Financial Institution
8 9 (3.67%) Back Office
9 5 (2.04%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.22%) Law
11 3 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.82%) Legal
13 1 (0.41%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.41%) Prime Brokerage
13 1 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 97 (39.59%) Developer
2 68 (27.76%) Senior
3 50 (20.41%) Analyst
4 35 (14.29%) Java Developer
5 33 (13.47%) Business Analyst
6 32 (13.06%) Senior Developer
7 28 (11.43%) Java Engineer
8 27 (11.02%) Java Software Engineer
8 27 (11.02%) Software Engineer
9 26 (10.61%) AWS Engineer
9 26 (10.61%) AWS Software Engineer
9 26 (10.61%) Python Engineer
9 26 (10.61%) Python Software Engineer
10 25 (10.20%) Senior Java Engineer
10 25 (10.20%) Senior Java Software Engineer
10 25 (10.20%) Senior Software Engineer
11 21 (8.57%) Senior Java Developer
12 18 (7.35%) Analytics Developer
12 18 (7.35%) AWS Developer
12 18 (7.35%) PostgreSQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (11.84%) NumPy
1 29 (11.84%) Pandas
1 29 (11.84%) SciPy
2 27 (11.02%) Protocol Buffers
3 26 (10.61%) gRPC
4 22 (8.98%) Kafka
5 17 (6.94%) FIX Protocol
6 16 (6.53%) .NET
7 12 (4.90%) React
8 9 (3.67%) Dask
8 9 (3.67%) Spring
9 8 (3.27%) CSS
9 8 (3.27%) REST
9 8 (3.27%) RESTful
10 6 (2.45%) HTML
11 5 (2.04%) RabbitMQ
12 4 (1.63%) .NET Core
12 4 (1.63%) .NET Framework
12 4 (1.63%) XML
13 3 (1.22%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 85 (34.69%) Equities
2 75 (30.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 70 (28.57%) Fixed Income
4 37 (15.10%) Hedge funds
5 27 (11.02%) Equity Derivative
6 26 (10.61%) Pricing Data
7 23 (9.39%) Market Risk
8 18 (7.35%) Distributed Systems
8 18 (7.35%) Management Information System
8 18 (7.35%) Product Ownership
9 16 (6.53%) Algorithms
10 14 (5.71%) Cloud Native
11 13 (5.31%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (4.49%) Interest Rate Derivative
13 10 (4.08%) Distributed Computing
13 10 (4.08%) Onboarding
14 9 (3.67%) Analytical Mindset
14 9 (3.67%) Credit Risk
14 9 (3.67%) OTC Derivatives
15 6 (2.45%) TWAP
Operating Systems
1 15 (6.12%) Linux
2 8 (3.27%) Unix
3 7 (2.86%) Windows
4 1 (0.41%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 89 (36.33%) Agile
2 60 (24.49%) Risk Management
3 47 (19.18%) Analytics
4 41 (16.73%) Mathematics
5 40 (16.33%) Software Engineering
6 36 (14.69%) Problem-Solving
7 35 (14.29%) CI/CD
8 31 (12.65%) Asset Management
9 28 (11.43%) TDD
10 27 (11.02%) DevOps
11 26 (10.61%) Investment Management
12 25 (10.20%) Stakeholder Management
13 23 (9.39%) Computer Science
14 21 (8.57%) Design Patterns
14 21 (8.57%) Physics
15 20 (8.16%) Data Pipeline
15 20 (8.16%) Low Latency
16 19 (7.76%) Multithreading
16 19 (7.76%) User Acceptance Testing
17 18 (7.35%) Electronic Trading
Programming Languages
1 102 (41.63%) Python
2 75 (30.61%) Java
3 68 (27.76%) SQL
4 35 (14.29%) C#
4 35 (14.29%) JavaScript
5 34 (13.88%) TypeScript
6 33 (13.47%) C++
7 7 (2.86%) VBA
8 4 (1.63%) PowerShell
9 3 (1.22%) Perl
10 2 (0.82%) Scala
11 1 (0.41%) Bash
11 1 (0.41%) R
11 1 (0.41%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.41%) VC++
Qualifications
1 45 (18.37%) Degree
2 20 (8.16%) Master's Degree
3 12 (4.90%) Numerate Degree
4 11 (4.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.08%) PhD
6 4 (1.63%) PMI Certification
6 4 (1.63%) PMP
7 2 (0.82%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.41%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.31%) EMIR
1 13 (5.31%) MiFID
2 11 (4.49%) QA
3 8 (3.27%) Data Quality
4 7 (2.86%) SLA
5 4 (1.63%) IFRS
6 3 (1.22%) Basel III
6 3 (1.22%) GDPR
6 3 (1.22%) IAS 32
6 3 (1.22%) IAS 39
6 3 (1.22%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.41%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.41%) Dodd-Frank
7 1 (0.41%) FINRA
7 1 (0.41%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.41%) PMO
7 1 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.41%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 7 (2.86%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (2.86%) Kubernetes
2 5 (2.04%) Ansible
3 3 (1.22%) Thomson Reuters DACS
4 2 (0.82%) Grafana
4 2 (0.82%) ITRS Geneos
5 1 (0.41%) Terraform
5 1 (0.41%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 17 (6.94%) Bloomberg
2 15 (6.12%) Murex
3 12 (4.90%) Microsoft
4 9 (3.67%) Oracle
5 7 (2.86%) Calypso
5 7 (2.86%) ION Trading
6 6 (2.45%) Databricks
6 6 (2.45%) Sophis
6 6 (2.45%) Tradeweb
7 4 (1.63%) Lotus
7 4 (1.63%) Portware
8 3 (1.22%) Atlassian
8 3 (1.22%) Charles River
8 3 (1.22%) NYFIX
8 3 (1.22%) Refinitiv
8 3 (1.22%) Reuters
8 3 (1.22%) Splunk
9 2 (0.82%) AppDynamics
9 2 (0.82%) IBM
9 2 (0.82%) SmartStream