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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 362 210 238
Rank change year-on-year -152 +28 +7
Contract jobs citing Derivative 231 380 427
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.21% 0.99%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.81% 3.77% 3.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 169 293 401
10th Percentile £504 £504 £550
25th Percentile £600 £638 £609
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £725 £725 £700
Median % change year-on-year - +3.57% -3.45%
75th Percentile £988 £888 £800
90th Percentile £1,000 £938 £869
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £325 £513
% change year-on-year +61.54% -36.59% -16.33%
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 12,770 10,086 13,371
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.26% 32.25% 30.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,073 5,954 8,762
10th Percentile £278 £263 £258
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £533 £540
Median % change year-on-year -6.23% -1.26% -3.57%
75th Percentile £625 £663 £656
90th Percentile £738 £775 £760
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 616 313 645
10th Percentile £14.43 £18.66 £14.54
25th Percentile £18.27 £23.80 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.63 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.07% - +55.56%
75th Percentile £61.19 £65.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £74.84 £80.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.52 £32.50 £35.83
% change year-on-year -15.32% -9.28% +79.13%

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 January 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 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 January 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 -137 222 £733 +1.03% 34
London -84 213 £750 +3.45% 25
Work from Home -123 67 £750 -3.23% 17
UK excluding London -55 13 £525 +61.54% 13
Scotland +11 4 £448 -
Northern Ireland -12 3 £320 -1.54%
North of England -52 3 £525 -12.50% 2
East of England - 3 £681 -
Yorkshire - 3 £525 -
Midlands - 2 £525 -
West Midlands - 2 £525 -

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 14 (6.06%) Apache
1 14 (6.06%) Apache Airflow
2 9 (3.90%) Apache Spark
3 8 (3.46%) Confluence
4 3 (1.30%) HCL Notes
4 3 (1.30%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.87%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 25 (10.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.87%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (2.60%) Aladdin
2 5 (2.16%) Temenos T24
3 3 (1.30%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 2 (0.87%) Algo Collateral
4 2 (0.87%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.87%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.87%) Summit
5 1 (0.43%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.43%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.43%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.43%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.43%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.43%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.43%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 47 (20.35%) AWS
2 24 (10.39%) Azure
3 17 (7.36%) Snowflake
4 14 (6.06%) dbt
5 13 (5.63%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.60%) GCP
6 6 (2.60%) Serverless
7 5 (2.16%) Amazon S3
7 5 (2.16%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (2.16%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (2.16%) SaaS
8 3 (1.30%) Amazon ECS
8 3 (1.30%) Power Automate
8 3 (1.30%) PowerApps
9 2 (0.87%) npm
9 2 (0.87%) OpenShift
9 2 (0.87%) Yarn
10 1 (0.43%) AWS CodePipeline
10 1 (0.43%) Figma
10 1 (0.43%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 7 (3.03%) FIX Connectivity
2 4 (1.73%) Multicast
3 1 (0.43%) RTMP
3 1 (0.43%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (7.79%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (6.93%) SQL Server
3 15 (6.49%) Data Lake
4 14 (6.06%) Amazon Athena
4 14 (6.06%) Apache Arrow
4 14 (6.06%) Apache Iceberg
4 14 (6.06%) Apache Ignite
4 14 (6.06%) Dremio
5 13 (5.63%) Power BI
6 8 (3.46%) Redis
7 4 (1.73%) Big Data
7 4 (1.73%) KDB
7 4 (1.73%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.73%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.73%) Tableau
8 3 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.87%) Data Mart
9 2 (0.87%) Metadata
9 2 (0.87%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.87%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 17 (7.36%) Git
2 12 (5.19%) JIRA
3 9 (3.90%) Jenkins
4 7 (3.03%) Octopus Deploy
5 6 (2.60%) Visual Studio
6 5 (2.16%) Maven
7 4 (1.73%) GitLab
7 4 (1.73%) IntelliJ
8 3 (1.30%) Bitbucket
8 3 (1.30%) Gradle
9 2 (0.87%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.87%) Eclipse
9 2 (0.87%) webpack
10 1 (0.43%) Crucible
10 1 (0.43%) NUnit
10 1 (0.43%) TeamCity
General
1 176 (76.19%) Finance
2 130 (56.28%) Banking
3 92 (39.83%) Front Office
4 86 (37.23%) Investment Banking
5 71 (30.74%) Social Skills
6 34 (14.72%) Analytical Skills
7 27 (11.69%) Financial Institution
8 9 (3.90%) Back Office
9 4 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.73%) Legal
9 4 (1.73%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.30%) Spanish Language
10 3 (1.30%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.87%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.87%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.43%) Japanese Language
12 1 (0.43%) Law
12 1 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 106 (45.89%) Developer
2 59 (25.54%) Senior
3 44 (19.05%) Analyst
4 36 (15.58%) Java Developer
5 30 (12.99%) Senior Developer
6 28 (12.12%) Business Analyst
7 20 (8.66%) Senior Java Developer
8 17 (7.36%) Analytics Developer
8 17 (7.36%) AWS Developer
8 17 (7.36%) Kafka Developer
8 17 (7.36%) PostgreSQL Developer
9 16 (6.93%) Java Engineer
10 15 (6.49%) Java Software Engineer
10 15 (6.49%) Python Engineer
10 15 (6.49%) Quantitative Developer
10 15 (6.49%) Software Engineer
11 14 (6.06%) AWS Engineer
11 14 (6.06%) AWS Software Engineer
11 14 (6.06%) C# Developer
11 14 (6.06%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (9.52%) Kafka
2 18 (7.79%) NumPy
2 18 (7.79%) Pandas
3 17 (7.36%) FIX Protocol
3 17 (7.36%) SciPy
4 15 (6.49%) Protocol Buffers
5 14 (6.06%) .NET
5 14 (6.06%) gRPC
6 13 (5.63%) React
7 12 (5.19%) RESTful
8 9 (3.90%) Dask
8 9 (3.90%) HTML
9 7 (3.03%) REST
9 7 (3.03%) Spring
10 6 (2.60%) CSS
11 5 (2.16%) WebSockets
12 4 (1.73%) HTML5
12 4 (1.73%) XML
13 3 (1.30%) scikit-learn
13 3 (1.30%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 84 (36.36%) Equities
2 58 (25.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 57 (24.68%) Fixed Income
4 33 (14.29%) Equity Derivative
5 24 (10.39%) Market Risk
6 23 (9.96%) Hedge funds
7 20 (8.66%) Algorithms
8 17 (7.36%) Distributed Systems
8 17 (7.36%) Management Information System
9 14 (6.06%) Data Protection Act
9 14 (6.06%) Pricing Data
10 11 (4.76%) Cloud Native
10 11 (4.76%) Product Ownership
11 10 (4.33%) Distributed Computing
11 10 (4.33%) Interest Rate Derivative
11 10 (4.33%) TWAP
11 10 (4.33%) VWAP
12 9 (3.90%) Credit Risk
12 9 (3.90%) Onboarding
13 7 (3.03%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 16 (6.93%) Linux
2 9 (3.90%) Unix
3 7 (3.03%) Windows
4 3 (1.30%) Debian
4 3 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.30%) Ubuntu
4 3 (1.30%) VMS
5 1 (0.43%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 69 (29.87%) Agile
2 64 (27.71%) Risk Management
3 42 (18.18%) Mathematics
4 38 (16.45%) Analytics
4 38 (16.45%) Problem-Solving
5 34 (14.72%) CI/CD
6 32 (13.85%) TDD
7 26 (11.26%) Low Latency
7 26 (11.26%) Software Engineering
7 26 (11.26%) Stakeholder Management
8 24 (10.39%) DevOps
9 23 (9.96%) Computer Science
9 23 (9.96%) Data Pipeline
9 23 (9.96%) Design Patterns
10 21 (9.09%) Asset Management
10 21 (9.09%) Electronic Trading
11 20 (8.66%) Physics
11 20 (8.66%) Quantitative Finance
12 19 (8.23%) Multithreading
12 19 (8.23%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 94 (40.69%) Python
2 65 (28.14%) SQL
3 63 (27.27%) Java
4 39 (16.88%) C++
5 33 (14.29%) C#
6 23 (9.96%) JavaScript
7 22 (9.52%) TypeScript
8 6 (2.60%) VBA
9 3 (1.30%) PowerShell
9 3 (1.30%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.87%) Perl
10 2 (0.87%) Rust
10 2 (0.87%) Scala
11 1 (0.43%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.43%) R
11 1 (0.43%) VC++
Qualifications
1 45 (19.48%) Degree
2 18 (7.79%) Master's Degree
3 15 (6.49%) Numerate Degree
4 11 (4.76%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.33%) PhD
6 3 (1.30%) PMI Certification
6 3 (1.30%) PMP
7 2 (0.87%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.43%) CBAP
8 1 (0.43%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.19%) EMIR
2 11 (4.76%) QA
3 8 (3.46%) IFRS
4 7 (3.03%) Data Quality
4 7 (3.03%) MiFID
5 4 (1.73%) IFRS 9
5 4 (1.73%) SLA
6 3 (1.30%) Basel III
6 3 (1.30%) IAS 32
6 3 (1.30%) IAS 39
7 2 (0.87%) GAAP
7 2 (0.87%) PMO
7 2 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.43%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.43%) FINRA
8 1 (0.43%) GDPR
8 1 (0.43%) IFRS 17
8 1 (0.43%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 8 (3.46%) Docker
2 3 (1.30%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 8 (3.46%) Kubernetes
2 7 (3.03%) Ansible
3 3 (1.30%) Grafana
3 3 (1.30%) Podman
3 3 (1.30%) Thomson Reuters DACS
4 2 (0.87%) ITRS Geneos
4 2 (0.87%) Prometheus
4 2 (0.87%) Terraform
5 1 (0.43%) Control-M
Vendors
1 17 (7.36%) Bloomberg
2 16 (6.93%) Murex
3 13 (5.63%) Oracle
4 11 (4.76%) Microsoft
5 7 (3.03%) ION Trading
6 6 (2.60%) Tradeweb
7 5 (2.16%) Calypso
7 5 (2.16%) jBASE
7 5 (2.16%) Sophis
7 5 (2.16%) Temenos
8 4 (1.73%) Charles River
9 3 (1.30%) Databricks
9 3 (1.30%) IBM
9 3 (1.30%) Lotus
9 3 (1.30%) NVIDIA
9 3 (1.30%) NYFIX
9 3 (1.30%) Refinitiv
10 2 (0.87%) Apple
10 2 (0.87%) Reuters
10 2 (0.87%) SmartStream