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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 425 301 199
Rank change year-on-year -124 -102 +17
Contract jobs citing Derivative 267 276 468
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.85% 1.23%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.45% 2.39% 4.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 159 233 397
10th Percentile £410 £521 £600
25th Percentile £564 £613 £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 £895 £988 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £538 £563
% change year-on-year -12.09% -4.44% +25.00%
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 18,406 11,527 11,576
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.83% 35.51% 30.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,053 7,036 7,123
10th Percentile £320 £299 £300
25th Percentile £423 £406 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £543
Median % change year-on-year +1.95% -5.07% -1.36%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £749 £760 £812
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,150 577 482
10th Percentile £14.07 £15.13 £14.41
25th Percentile £18.00 £18.87 £21.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -40.00% +11.73%
75th Percentile £67.65 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.43 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £30.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +29.07% -47.69% +22.14%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -135 240 £725 -3.33% 513
London -85 232 £725 -3.33% 493
Work from Home -116 73 £753 +0.33% 141
UK excluding London -102 30 £473 -12.09% 76
Scotland -5 20 £402 -23.43% 18
North of England -69 6 £725 +18.46% 5
Yorkshire -29 5 £725 -
Northern Ireland 0 3 £510 +2.00% 28
Midlands -45 1 - - 3
North West -47 1 £198 -67.65% 4
West Midlands - 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 4 (1.50%) Confluence
2 1 (0.37%) Apache
2 1 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 4 (1.50%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.12%) 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
2 3 (1.12%) Summit
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
Cloud Services
1 19 (7.12%) Azure
2 17 (6.37%) AWS
3 14 (5.24%) GCP
4 11 (4.12%) ChatGPT
5 9 (3.37%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (3.00%) GitHub
6 8 (3.00%) GitHub Copilot
7 5 (1.87%) Power Platform
8 4 (1.50%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
9 3 (1.12%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.75%) Amazon S3
10 2 (0.75%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (0.75%) Serverless
11 1 (0.37%) Collibra
11 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 21 (7.87%) Relational Database
2 18 (6.74%) Metadata
3 17 (6.37%) MongoDB
4 14 (5.24%) SQL Server
5 10 (3.75%) Db2
6 9 (3.37%) Redis
7 7 (2.62%) RDBMS
8 6 (2.25%) Data Lake
8 6 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
8 6 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (2.25%) Tableau
9 5 (1.87%) Power BI
10 4 (1.50%) KDB
10 4 (1.50%) NoSQL
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%) Data Mining
13 1 (0.37%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 17 (6.37%) 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
1 186 (69.66%) Finance
2 150 (56.18%) Banking
3 142 (53.18%) Front Office
4 108 (40.45%) Investment Banking
5 74 (27.72%) Social Skills
6 42 (15.73%) Analytical Skills
7 18 (6.74%) Financial Institution
8 11 (4.12%) Back Office
8 11 (4.12%) Private Banking
9 10 (3.75%) Legal
10 4 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.12%) General Ledger
11 3 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.12%) Public Sector
12 2 (0.75%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.37%) Agriculture
13 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.37%) International Banking
13 1 (0.37%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 118 (44.19%) Developer
2 71 (26.59%) Analyst
3 62 (23.22%) Business Analyst
4 42 (15.73%) Senior
5 34 (12.73%) Python Developer
6 30 (11.24%) Front Office Developer
7 28 (10.49%) Java Developer
8 27 (10.11%) C# Developer
9 18 (6.74%) Quantitative Developer
10 14 (5.24%) Electronic Trading Developer
11 13 (4.87%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
11 13 (4.87%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
11 13 (4.87%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
11 13 (4.87%) Low Latency Java Developer
12 12 (4.49%) Project Manager
12 12 (4.49%) Senior Developer
12 12 (4.49%) Software Engineer
13 11 (4.12%) Pricing Developer
14 10 (3.75%) Banking Analyst
15 9 (3.37%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (11.24%) FIX Protocol
2 16 (5.99%) React
3 12 (4.49%) WebSockets
4 10 (3.75%) .NET
4 10 (3.75%) NumPy
5 9 (3.37%) Django
5 9 (3.37%) FastAPI
6 8 (3.00%) Pandas
6 8 (3.00%) REST
7 7 (2.62%) Kafka
7 7 (2.62%) RxJava
7 7 (2.62%) Spring
8 6 (2.25%) Flask
8 6 (2.25%) Middleware
9 5 (1.87%) AngularJS
9 5 (1.87%) PySpark
9 5 (1.87%) XML
10 4 (1.50%) Next.js
10 4 (1.50%) RESTful
11 3 (1.12%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 70 (26.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 66 (24.72%) Equities
3 56 (20.97%) Fixed Income
4 40 (14.98%) Equity Derivative
5 20 (7.49%) Distributed Systems
6 17 (6.37%) Algorithms
6 17 (6.37%) Exotic Derivative
6 17 (6.37%) Market Risk
7 16 (5.99%) Credit Risk
7 16 (5.99%) OTC Derivatives
8 15 (5.62%) Data Protection Act
8 15 (5.62%) Hedge funds
9 13 (4.87%) TWAP
9 13 (4.87%) VWAP
10 12 (4.49%) Data Structures
11 10 (3.75%) Management Information System
11 10 (3.75%) Onboarding
12 9 (3.37%) Credit Derivative
13 8 (3.00%) Interest Rate Derivative
14 7 (2.62%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 17 (6.37%) Unix
2 13 (4.87%) Linux
3 1 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (21.35%) Problem-Solving
2 42 (15.73%) Agile
3 40 (14.98%) Stakeholder Management
4 38 (14.23%) Low Latency
5 36 (13.48%) CI/CD
5 36 (13.48%) Data Analysis
6 35 (13.11%) Analytics
7 34 (12.73%) User Acceptance Testing
8 33 (12.36%) Electronic Trading
9 32 (11.99%) Software Engineering
10 31 (11.61%) Risk Management
11 30 (11.24%) Business Analysis
11 30 (11.24%) Multithreading
11 30 (11.24%) Validation
12 27 (10.11%) Requirements Gathering
13 25 (9.36%) Algorithmic Trading
13 25 (9.36%) Microservices
13 25 (9.36%) TDD
14 24 (8.99%) Data Modelling
14 24 (8.99%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 102 (38.20%) Python
2 89 (33.33%) SQL
3 70 (26.22%) Java
4 53 (19.85%) C#
5 38 (14.23%) C++
6 18 (6.74%) 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 25 (9.36%) Degree
2 12 (4.49%) Master's Degree
3 10 (3.75%) PhD
4 7 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
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%) CFA
6 1 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (6.37%) 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 22 (8.24%) Murex
2 15 (5.62%) Bloomberg
3 10 (3.75%) Sybase
4 9 (3.37%) Calypso
4 9 (3.37%) Oracle
5 7 (2.62%) IBM
6 5 (1.87%) Charles River
7 4 (1.50%) Databricks
8 3 (1.12%) Microsoft
8 3 (1.12%) SimCorp
9 2 (0.75%) Google
9 2 (0.75%) NYFIX
9 2 (0.75%) Refinitiv
9 2 (0.75%) Tradeweb
10 1 (0.37%) Alteryx
10 1 (0.37%) Avaloq
10 1 (0.37%) Dynatrace
10 1 (0.37%) FIS
10 1 (0.37%) Solace
10 1 (0.37%) Splunk