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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 382 200 243
Rank change year-on-year -182 +43 +19
Contract jobs citing Derivative 241 384 425
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 1.31% 0.96%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.67% 3.89% 3.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 168 315 381
10th Percentile £510 £495 £550
25th Percentile £613 £638 £619
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £750 £725 £715
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +1.40% -4.67%
75th Percentile £925 £875 £838
90th Percentile £1,000 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £343 £613
% change year-on-year +53.28% -44.08% -23.44%
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 14,428 9,863 13,430
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.17% 33.71% 30.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,080 6,264 8,612
10th Percentile £300 £287 £255
25th Percentile £408 £409 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.71% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 675 368 862
10th Percentile £15.54 £16.95 £12.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.26 £15.45
Median hourly rate £36.70 £32.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.92% +18.18% +22.22%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £31.08 £26.00
% change year-on-year +34.94% +19.54% +16.80%

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 March 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 March 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 -165 232 £750 +1.69% 38
London -97 223 £750 +1.69% 37
Work from Home -141 80 £800 +10.34% 10
UK excluding London -104 9 £525 +53.28% 4
North of England -74 3 £525 -10.64% 1
East of England - 3 £681 -
Yorkshire - 3 £525 -
Scotland +3 2 £470 +16.34%
Midlands - 2 £525 -
West Midlands - 2 £525 -
Northern Ireland -19 1 £315 -3.08%

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 9 (3.73%) Apache Spark
2 6 (2.49%) Confluence
3 2 (0.83%) Apache
3 2 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.83%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.41%) SharePoint
Applications
1 20 (8.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.83%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 9 (3.73%) Aladdin
2 6 (2.49%) Summit
3 5 (2.07%) Loan IQ
3 5 (2.07%) Temenos T24
4 3 (1.24%) Advent Geneva
5 2 (0.83%) Algo Collateral
5 2 (0.83%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 2 (0.83%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.83%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.41%) Bloomberg AIM
6 1 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.41%) Front Arena
6 1 (0.41%) Global One
6 1 (0.41%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.41%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 55 (22.82%) AWS
2 34 (14.11%) Azure
3 23 (9.54%) GCP
4 8 (3.32%) Power Platform
4 8 (3.32%) Snowflake
5 6 (2.49%) Amazon S3
5 6 (2.49%) AWS Lambda
5 6 (2.49%) Serverless
6 4 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (1.24%) Amazon ECS
7 3 (1.24%) npm
7 3 (1.24%) OpenShift
7 3 (1.24%) SaaS
7 3 (1.24%) Yarn
8 2 (0.83%) Collibra
8 2 (0.83%) dbt
9 1 (0.41%) AWS CloudFormation
9 1 (0.41%) AWS CodePipeline
9 1 (0.41%) AWS Step Functions
9 1 (0.41%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 14 (5.81%) FIX Connectivity
2 4 (1.66%) Multicast
3 1 (0.41%) HTTP
3 1 (0.41%) RTMP
3 1 (0.41%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (13.69%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (3.73%) Redis
3 8 (3.32%) Power BI
3 8 (3.32%) SQL Server
4 7 (2.90%) Relational Database
5 6 (2.49%) Metadata
6 5 (2.07%) RDBMS
6 5 (2.07%) Tableau
7 4 (1.66%) Big Data
7 4 (1.66%) KDB
7 4 (1.66%) NoSQL
8 3 (1.24%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (1.24%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.83%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (0.83%) Apache Arrow
9 2 (0.83%) Apache Iceberg
9 2 (0.83%) Apache Ignite
9 2 (0.83%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.83%) Dremio
9 2 (0.83%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 18 (7.47%) Git
2 10 (4.15%) JIRA
3 9 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.90%) Octopus Deploy
5 5 (2.07%) Visual Studio
6 4 (1.66%) GitLab
6 4 (1.66%) Maven
6 4 (1.66%) TeamCity
7 3 (1.24%) Bitbucket
7 3 (1.24%) IntelliJ
7 3 (1.24%) webpack
8 2 (0.83%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.83%) Gradle
9 1 (0.41%) Crucible
9 1 (0.41%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.41%) NUnit
9 1 (0.41%) REST Assured
General
1 168 (69.71%) Finance
2 115 (47.72%) Banking
3 106 (43.98%) Front Office
4 81 (33.61%) Investment Banking
5 69 (28.63%) Social Skills
6 39 (16.18%) Analytical Skills
7 21 (8.71%) Financial Institution
8 9 (3.73%) Back Office
9 4 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.66%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.24%) Legal
10 3 (1.24%) Spanish Language
10 3 (1.24%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.83%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.41%) Japanese Language
12 1 (0.41%) Law
12 1 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 116 (48.13%) Developer
2 47 (19.50%) Analyst
2 47 (19.50%) Senior
3 42 (17.43%) Java Developer
4 36 (14.94%) Business Analyst
5 28 (11.62%) Senior Developer
6 25 (10.37%) Python Developer
7 24 (9.96%) Lead
8 18 (7.47%) Electronic Trading Developer
8 18 (7.47%) Senior Java Developer
9 17 (7.05%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
10 16 (6.64%) Lead Developer
10 16 (6.64%) Software Engineer
11 15 (6.22%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
11 15 (6.22%) Analytics Developer
11 15 (6.22%) AWS Developer
11 15 (6.22%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
11 15 (6.22%) Kafka Developer
11 15 (6.22%) Low Latency Java Developer
11 15 (6.22%) PostgreSQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (14.11%) React
2 24 (9.96%) FIX Protocol
3 21 (8.71%) Kafka
3 21 (8.71%) Redux
4 16 (6.64%) Node.js
5 13 (5.39%) RESTful
6 10 (4.15%) .NET
7 9 (3.73%) Dask
7 9 (3.73%) HTML
8 8 (3.32%) NumPy
8 8 (3.32%) Pandas
8 8 (3.32%) REST
8 8 (3.32%) Spring
8 8 (3.32%) WebSockets
9 7 (2.90%) HTML5
9 7 (2.90%) XML
10 6 (2.49%) CSS
10 6 (2.49%) SciPy
11 5 (2.07%) AngularJS
12 4 (1.66%) RxJS
Miscellaneous
1 93 (38.59%) Equities
2 61 (25.31%) Fixed Income
3 38 (15.77%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 34 (14.11%) Equity Derivative
5 26 (10.79%) Market Risk
6 19 (7.88%) Algorithms
7 17 (7.05%) TWAP
7 17 (7.05%) VWAP
8 16 (6.64%) Distributed Systems
8 16 (6.64%) Management Information System
9 14 (5.81%) Data Protection Act
9 14 (5.81%) Hedge funds
10 12 (4.98%) Cloud Native
10 12 (4.98%) Credit Risk
11 9 (3.73%) Data Structures
12 8 (3.32%) Distributed Computing
12 8 (3.32%) Onboarding
12 8 (3.32%) OTC Derivatives
12 8 (3.32%) Product Ownership
13 7 (2.90%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 13 (5.39%) Unix
2 9 (3.73%) Linux
3 3 (1.24%) Debian
3 3 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.24%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.24%) VMS
4 2 (0.83%) Windows
5 1 (0.41%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (31.54%) Agile
2 67 (27.80%) Risk Management
3 43 (17.84%) Problem-Solving
4 39 (16.18%) Low Latency
5 36 (14.94%) TDD
6 35 (14.52%) Mathematics
7 34 (14.11%) Analytics
8 33 (13.69%) CI/CD
8 33 (13.69%) Electronic Trading
9 32 (13.28%) Asset Management
10 30 (12.45%) DevOps
10 30 (12.45%) Software Engineering
11 27 (11.20%) Multithreading
12 26 (10.79%) Design Patterns
12 26 (10.79%) Mentoring
13 25 (10.37%) Stakeholder Management
13 25 (10.37%) User Acceptance Testing
14 24 (9.96%) Computer Science
15 23 (9.54%) Portfolio Management
16 22 (9.13%) Algorithmic Trading
Programming Languages
1 106 (43.98%) Python
2 80 (33.20%) SQL
3 63 (26.14%) Java
4 32 (13.28%) C++
5 31 (12.86%) TypeScript
6 30 (12.45%) C#
7 26 (10.79%) JavaScript
8 4 (1.66%) PowerShell
8 4 (1.66%) Rust
8 4 (1.66%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.24%) Perl
9 3 (1.24%) Scala
9 3 (1.24%) VBA
10 2 (0.83%) F#
10 2 (0.83%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.41%) R
Qualifications
1 45 (18.67%) Degree
2 17 (7.05%) Master's Degree
3 13 (5.39%) Computer Science Degree
3 13 (5.39%) Numerate Degree
4 10 (4.15%) PhD
5 3 (1.24%) ISTQB
5 3 (1.24%) PMI Certification
5 3 (1.24%) PMP
6 1 (0.41%) CBAP
6 1 (0.41%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (6.22%) QA
2 12 (4.98%) EMIR
3 7 (2.90%) Data Quality
3 7 (2.90%) IFRS
3 7 (2.90%) MiFID
4 4 (1.66%) IFRS 9
4 4 (1.66%) SLA
5 3 (1.24%) Basel III
5 3 (1.24%) IAS 32
5 3 (1.24%) IAS 39
6 2 (0.83%) GAAP
6 2 (0.83%) PMO
7 1 (0.41%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.41%) FINRA
7 1 (0.41%) IFRS 17
7 1 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 10 (4.15%) Docker
2 3 (1.24%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 8 (3.32%) Kubernetes
2 7 (2.90%) Ansible
3 4 (1.66%) Grafana
4 3 (1.24%) ITRS Geneos
4 3 (1.24%) Podman
4 3 (1.24%) Prometheus
4 3 (1.24%) Terraform
4 3 (1.24%) Thomson Reuters DACS
5 2 (0.83%) Control-M
Vendors
1 24 (9.96%) Murex
2 21 (8.71%) Bloomberg
3 16 (6.64%) Oracle
4 7 (2.90%) Charles River
5 6 (2.49%) ION Trading
6 5 (2.07%) jBASE
6 5 (2.07%) Temenos
6 5 (2.07%) Tradeweb
7 4 (1.66%) Calypso
7 4 (1.66%) Microsoft
8 3 (1.24%) Advent
8 3 (1.24%) Apple
8 3 (1.24%) Google
8 3 (1.24%) IBM
8 3 (1.24%) NVIDIA
8 3 (1.24%) NYFIX
8 3 (1.24%) Refinitiv
9 2 (0.83%) AppDynamics
9 2 (0.83%) MarketAxess
9 2 (0.83%) SmartStream