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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 427 294 201
Rank change year-on-year -133 -93 +7
Contract jobs citing Derivative 267 284 467
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.86% 1.21%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.45% 2.42% 3.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 158 238 395
10th Percentile £416 £524 £600
25th Percentile £563 £615 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £725 £750 £800
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -6.25% +14.29%
75th Percentile £788 £825 £888
90th Percentile £896 £988 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £550 £650
% change year-on-year -14.09% -15.38% +44.44%
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 18,473 11,749 11,752
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.95% 35.66% 30.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,074 7,189 7,185
10th Percentile £322 £298 £294
25th Percentile £425 £406 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £540
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -4.63% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £749 £750 £807
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,189 585 474
10th Percentile £14.05 £15.13 £14.43
25th Percentile £18.00 £18.87 £21.25
Median hourly rate £38.25 £30.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.50% -40.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £67.89 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £30.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +33.33% -47.69% +18.58%

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 18 September 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 18 September 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 18 September 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 -118 239 £725 -3.33% 409
London -89 231 £725 -3.33% 388
Work from Home -118 71 £753 +0.33% 101
UK excluding London -100 31 £473 -14.09% 57
Scotland -9 21 £402 -23.43% 11
North of England -63 6 £725 +18.46% 6
Yorkshire -34 5 £725 -
Northern Ireland 0 3 £510 -0.49% 19
Midlands -47 1 - - 2
North West -51 1 £198 -67.65% 5
West Midlands - 1 - - 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 5 (1.87%) Confluence
2 2 (0.75%) Apache
2 2 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 4 (1.50%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 10 (3.75%) Aladdin
2 3 (1.12%) Orchestrade
3 2 (0.75%) Front Arena
3 2 (0.75%) Global One
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 (0.37%) Actimize
4 1 (0.37%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.37%) Markit EDM
4 1 (0.37%) MultiFonds
4 1 (0.37%) SimCorp Dimension
4 1 (0.37%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 19 (7.12%) Azure
2 17 (6.37%) AWS
3 15 (5.62%) GCP
4 11 (4.12%) ChatGPT
5 9 (3.37%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (3.00%) GitHub
6 8 (3.00%) GitHub Copilot
7 4 (1.50%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (1.50%) Power Platform
7 4 (1.50%) Snowflake
8 3 (1.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
9 2 (0.75%) Amazon S3
9 2 (0.75%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (0.75%) Serverless
10 1 (0.37%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (4.87%) FIX Connectivity
2 8 (3.00%) HTTP
3 2 (0.75%) Multicast
4 1 (0.37%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (7.12%) Relational Database
2 17 (6.37%) MongoDB
3 16 (5.99%) Metadata
4 14 (5.24%) SQL Server
5 10 (3.75%) Db2
6 9 (3.37%) Redis
7 7 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (2.25%) Data Lake
8 6 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
8 6 (2.25%) Tableau
9 5 (1.87%) RDBMS
10 4 (1.50%) KDB
10 4 (1.50%) NoSQL
10 4 (1.50%) Power BI
11 3 (1.12%) Kdb+
12 2 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
12 2 (0.75%) Crystal Reports
12 2 (0.75%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.37%) Snowflake Schema
13 1 (0.37%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 18 (6.74%) JIRA
2 8 (3.00%) Git
3 7 (2.62%) Octopus Deploy
4 5 (1.87%) ER Studio
4 5 (1.87%) ERwin
4 5 (1.87%) PowerDesigner
4 5 (1.87%) TeamCity
5 3 (1.12%) Jenkins
5 3 (1.12%) VTune
6 1 (0.37%) GitLab
6 1 (0.37%) GoogleTest
6 1 (0.37%) Visual Studio
General
1 190 (71.16%) Finance
2 152 (56.93%) Banking
3 141 (52.81%) Front Office
4 107 (40.07%) Investment Banking
5 72 (26.97%) Social Skills
6 39 (14.61%) Analytical Skills
7 18 (6.74%) Financial Institution
8 12 (4.49%) Back Office
9 11 (4.12%) Private Banking
10 10 (3.75%) Legal
11 4 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (1.12%) General Ledger
12 3 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (1.12%) Public Sector
13 2 (0.75%) Corporate Banking
14 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 1 (0.37%) International Banking
14 1 (0.37%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.37%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 118 (44.19%) Developer
2 67 (25.09%) Analyst
3 58 (21.72%) Business Analyst
4 43 (16.10%) Senior
5 33 (12.36%) Python Developer
6 30 (11.24%) Front Office Developer
7 27 (10.11%) C# Developer
7 27 (10.11%) Java Developer
8 18 (6.74%) Quantitative Developer
9 14 (5.24%) Electronic Trading Developer
10 13 (4.87%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
10 13 (4.87%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
10 13 (4.87%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
10 13 (4.87%) Low Latency Java Developer
10 13 (4.87%) Software Engineer
11 12 (4.49%) Project Manager
11 12 (4.49%) Senior Developer
12 11 (4.12%) Pricing Developer
13 10 (3.75%) Banking Analyst
14 9 (3.37%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (10.86%) FIX Protocol
2 17 (6.37%) React
3 13 (4.87%) WebSockets
4 10 (3.75%) .NET
4 10 (3.75%) NumPy
5 9 (3.37%) Django
5 9 (3.37%) FastAPI
5 9 (3.37%) Pandas
5 9 (3.37%) REST
6 8 (3.00%) Spring
7 7 (2.62%) Kafka
7 7 (2.62%) RxJava
8 6 (2.25%) Flask
8 6 (2.25%) Middleware
9 5 (1.87%) AngularJS
9 5 (1.87%) PySpark
10 4 (1.50%) Next.js
10 4 (1.50%) RESTful
11 3 (1.12%) Web Services
11 3 (1.12%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 71 (26.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 67 (25.09%) Equities
3 53 (19.85%) Fixed Income
4 40 (14.98%) Equity Derivative
5 20 (7.49%) Distributed Systems
6 17 (6.37%) Exotic Derivative
7 16 (5.99%) Algorithms
7 16 (5.99%) OTC Derivatives
8 15 (5.62%) Credit Risk
8 15 (5.62%) Market Risk
9 14 (5.24%) Hedge funds
10 13 (4.87%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (4.87%) TWAP
10 13 (4.87%) VWAP
11 12 (4.49%) Data Structures
12 11 (4.12%) Onboarding
13 10 (3.75%) Management Information System
14 8 (3.00%) Credit Derivative
14 8 (3.00%) Interest Rate Derivative
15 7 (2.62%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.62%) Unix
2 13 (4.87%) Linux
3 1 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (20.22%) Problem-Solving
2 43 (16.10%) Agile
3 42 (15.73%) Stakeholder Management
4 37 (13.86%) CI/CD
4 37 (13.86%) Low Latency
5 35 (13.11%) Analytics
5 35 (13.11%) Data Analysis
6 34 (12.73%) User Acceptance Testing
7 33 (12.36%) Software Engineering
8 32 (11.99%) Electronic Trading
9 31 (11.61%) Business Analysis
10 30 (11.24%) Multithreading
10 30 (11.24%) Validation
11 29 (10.86%) Risk Management
12 26 (9.74%) Microservices
13 25 (9.36%) Algorithmic Trading
13 25 (9.36%) Requirements Gathering
13 25 (9.36%) TDD
14 24 (8.99%) AI
14 24 (8.99%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 100 (37.45%) Python
2 87 (32.58%) SQL
3 71 (26.59%) Java
4 53 (19.85%) C#
5 37 (13.86%) C++
6 19 (7.12%) TypeScript
7 11 (4.12%) Rust
8 9 (3.37%) PowerShell
9 7 (2.62%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.87%) Perl
10 5 (1.87%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.50%) JavaScript
12 2 (0.75%) Bash
12 2 (0.75%) C
12 2 (0.75%) Scala
12 2 (0.75%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.37%) Korn
13 1 (0.37%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.37%) R
13 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 24 (8.99%) Degree
2 12 (4.49%) Master's Degree
3 10 (3.75%) PhD
4 7 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (0.75%) CFA
5 2 (0.75%) Numerate Degree
5 2 (0.75%) PMI Certification
5 2 (0.75%) PMP
5 2 (0.75%) Security Cleared
6 1 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.99%) Data Quality
2 10 (3.75%) MiFID
3 9 (3.37%) EMIR
4 7 (2.62%) QA
5 3 (1.12%) Basel III
5 3 (1.12%) SLA
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 (0.37%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 14 (5.24%) Docker
2 1 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 6 (2.25%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.12%) ITRS Geneos
3 2 (0.75%) Control-M
3 2 (0.75%) Thomson Reuters DACS
4 1 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 21 (7.87%) Murex
2 16 (5.99%) Bloomberg
3 10 (3.75%) Sybase
4 9 (3.37%) Calypso
5 7 (2.62%) IBM
5 7 (2.62%) Oracle
6 5 (1.87%) Charles River
7 4 (1.50%) Databricks
8 3 (1.12%) Google
8 3 (1.12%) Microsoft
8 3 (1.12%) SimCorp
9 2 (0.75%) NYFIX
9 2 (0.75%) Refinitiv
9 2 (0.75%) Tradeweb
10 1 (0.37%) Alteryx
10 1 (0.37%) Dynatrace
10 1 (0.37%) eFront
10 1 (0.37%) FIS
10 1 (0.37%) Solace
10 1 (0.37%) Splunk