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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 359 207 259
Rank change year-on-year -152 +52 -19
Contract jobs citing Derivative 232 386 422
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.23% 0.97%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.80% 3.79% 3.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 169 299 396
10th Percentile £504 £500 £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 £867
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £325 £513
% change year-on-year +61.54% -36.59% -21.15%
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 12,893 10,172 13,383
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.22% 32.31% 30.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,154 6,018 8,761
10th Percentile £278 £263 £258
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £533 £538
Median % change year-on-year -6.19% -0.93% -3.93%
75th Percentile £625 £663 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £753
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 618 314 671
10th Percentile £14.47 £18.73 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.34 £23.89 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.63 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.07% - +55.66%
75th Percentile £61.23 £65.00 £60.57
90th Percentile £74.78 £81.80 £72.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% -9.72% +80.00%

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 21 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 21 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 -144 223 £733 +1.03% 33
London -88 214 £750 +3.45% 23
Work from Home -134 67 £750 -1.64% 15
UK excluding London -71 13 £525 +61.54% 13
Scotland +12 4 £448 -
Northern Ireland -13 3 £320 -1.54%
North of England -47 3 £525 -12.50% 1
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 (6.03%) Apache
1 14 (6.03%) Apache Airflow
2 9 (3.88%) Apache Spark
3 8 (3.45%) Confluence
4 3 (1.29%) HCL Notes
4 3 (1.29%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.86%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 25 (10.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.86%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (2.59%) Aladdin
2 5 (2.16%) Temenos T24
3 3 (1.29%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 2 (0.86%) Algo Collateral
4 2 (0.86%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.86%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.86%) 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 (20.26%) AWS
2 24 (10.34%) Azure
3 17 (7.33%) Snowflake
4 14 (6.03%) dbt
5 13 (5.60%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.59%) GCP
6 6 (2.59%) 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 (1.29%) Amazon ECS
8 3 (1.29%) Power Automate
8 3 (1.29%) PowerApps
9 2 (0.86%) npm
9 2 (0.86%) OpenShift
9 2 (0.86%) Yarn
10 1 (0.43%) AWS Step Functions
10 1 (0.43%) Azure Logic Apps
10 1 (0.43%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 7 (3.02%) FIX Connectivity
2 4 (1.72%) Multicast
3 1 (0.43%) RTMP
3 1 (0.43%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (7.76%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (6.90%) SQL Server
3 15 (6.47%) Data Lake
4 14 (6.03%) Amazon Athena
4 14 (6.03%) Apache Arrow
4 14 (6.03%) Apache Iceberg
4 14 (6.03%) Apache Ignite
4 14 (6.03%) Dremio
5 13 (5.60%) Power BI
6 8 (3.45%) Redis
7 4 (1.72%) Big Data
7 4 (1.72%) KDB
7 4 (1.72%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.72%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.72%) Tableau
8 3 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.86%) Data Mart
9 2 (0.86%) Metadata
9 2 (0.86%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.86%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 17 (7.33%) Git
2 12 (5.17%) JIRA
3 9 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 7 (3.02%) Octopus Deploy
5 6 (2.59%) Visual Studio
6 5 (2.16%) Maven
7 4 (1.72%) GitLab
7 4 (1.72%) IntelliJ
8 3 (1.29%) Bitbucket
8 3 (1.29%) Gradle
9 2 (0.86%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.86%) Eclipse
9 2 (0.86%) webpack
10 1 (0.43%) Crucible
10 1 (0.43%) NUnit
10 1 (0.43%) TeamCity
General
1 176 (75.86%) Finance
2 130 (56.03%) Banking
3 93 (40.09%) Front Office
4 86 (37.07%) Investment Banking
5 71 (30.60%) Social Skills
6 34 (14.66%) Analytical Skills
7 27 (11.64%) Financial Institution
8 9 (3.88%) Back Office
9 4 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.72%) Legal
9 4 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.29%) Spanish Language
10 3 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.86%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.86%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.43%) Japanese Language
12 1 (0.43%) Law
12 1 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 107 (46.12%) Developer
2 59 (25.43%) Senior
3 44 (18.97%) Analyst
4 36 (15.52%) Java Developer
5 30 (12.93%) Senior Developer
6 28 (12.07%) Business Analyst
7 20 (8.62%) Senior Java Developer
8 17 (7.33%) Analytics Developer
8 17 (7.33%) AWS Developer
8 17 (7.33%) Kafka Developer
8 17 (7.33%) PostgreSQL Developer
9 16 (6.90%) Java Engineer
10 15 (6.47%) C# Developer
10 15 (6.47%) Java Software Engineer
10 15 (6.47%) Python Engineer
10 15 (6.47%) Quantitative Developer
10 15 (6.47%) Software Engineer
11 14 (6.03%) AWS Engineer
11 14 (6.03%) AWS Software Engineer
11 14 (6.03%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (9.48%) Kafka
2 18 (7.76%) NumPy
2 18 (7.76%) Pandas
3 17 (7.33%) FIX Protocol
3 17 (7.33%) SciPy
4 15 (6.47%) .NET
4 15 (6.47%) Protocol Buffers
5 14 (6.03%) gRPC
5 14 (6.03%) React
6 12 (5.17%) RESTful
7 9 (3.88%) Dask
7 9 (3.88%) HTML
8 8 (3.45%) REST
9 7 (3.02%) Spring
10 6 (2.59%) CSS
11 5 (2.16%) WebSockets
12 4 (1.72%) HTML5
12 4 (1.72%) XML
13 3 (1.29%) PyTorch
13 3 (1.29%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 84 (36.21%) Equities
2 58 (25.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 57 (24.57%) Fixed Income
4 34 (14.66%) Equity Derivative
5 24 (10.34%) Market Risk
6 23 (9.91%) Hedge funds
7 20 (8.62%) Algorithms
8 17 (7.33%) Distributed Systems
8 17 (7.33%) Management Information System
9 15 (6.47%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (6.03%) Pricing Data
11 11 (4.74%) Cloud Native
11 11 (4.74%) Product Ownership
12 10 (4.31%) Distributed Computing
12 10 (4.31%) Interest Rate Derivative
12 10 (4.31%) TWAP
12 10 (4.31%) VWAP
13 9 (3.88%) Credit Risk
13 9 (3.88%) Onboarding
14 7 (3.02%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 16 (6.90%) Linux
2 10 (4.31%) Unix
3 7 (3.02%) Windows
4 3 (1.29%) Debian
4 3 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.29%) Ubuntu
4 3 (1.29%) VMS
5 1 (0.43%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (30.17%) Agile
2 64 (27.59%) Risk Management
3 42 (18.10%) Mathematics
4 39 (16.81%) Problem-Solving
5 38 (16.38%) Analytics
6 34 (14.66%) CI/CD
7 33 (14.22%) TDD
8 27 (11.64%) Low Latency
9 26 (11.21%) Software Engineering
9 26 (11.21%) Stakeholder Management
10 24 (10.34%) DevOps
11 23 (9.91%) Computer Science
11 23 (9.91%) Data Pipeline
11 23 (9.91%) Design Patterns
12 21 (9.05%) Asset Management
12 21 (9.05%) Electronic Trading
13 20 (8.62%) Physics
13 20 (8.62%) Quantitative Finance
14 19 (8.19%) Multithreading
14 19 (8.19%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 95 (40.95%) Python
2 66 (28.45%) SQL
3 64 (27.59%) Java
4 39 (16.81%) C++
5 34 (14.66%) C#
6 24 (10.34%) JavaScript
7 22 (9.48%) TypeScript
8 6 (2.59%) VBA
9 4 (1.72%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.29%) PowerShell
11 2 (0.86%) Perl
11 2 (0.86%) Rust
11 2 (0.86%) Scala
12 1 (0.43%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.43%) R
12 1 (0.43%) VC++
Qualifications
1 45 (19.40%) Degree
2 18 (7.76%) Master's Degree
3 15 (6.47%) Numerate Degree
4 11 (4.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.31%) PhD
6 3 (1.29%) PMI Certification
6 3 (1.29%) PMP
7 2 (0.86%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.43%) CBAP
8 1 (0.43%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.17%) EMIR
1 12 (5.17%) QA
2 8 (3.45%) IFRS
3 7 (3.02%) Data Quality
3 7 (3.02%) MiFID
4 4 (1.72%) IFRS 9
4 4 (1.72%) SLA
5 3 (1.29%) Basel III
5 3 (1.29%) IAS 32
5 3 (1.29%) IAS 39
6 2 (0.86%) GAAP
6 2 (0.86%) PMO
6 2 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.43%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.43%) FINRA
7 1 (0.43%) GDPR
7 1 (0.43%) IFRS 17
7 1 (0.43%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 8 (3.45%) Docker
2 3 (1.29%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 8 (3.45%) Kubernetes
2 7 (3.02%) Ansible
3 3 (1.29%) Grafana
3 3 (1.29%) Podman
3 3 (1.29%) Thomson Reuters DACS
4 2 (0.86%) ITRS Geneos
4 2 (0.86%) Prometheus
4 2 (0.86%) Terraform
5 1 (0.43%) Control-M
Vendors
1 17 (7.33%) Bloomberg
2 16 (6.90%) Murex
3 14 (6.03%) Oracle
4 11 (4.74%) Microsoft
5 7 (3.02%) ION Trading
6 6 (2.59%) Tradeweb
7 5 (2.16%) Calypso
7 5 (2.16%) jBASE
7 5 (2.16%) Sophis
7 5 (2.16%) Temenos
8 4 (1.72%) Charles River
9 3 (1.29%) Databricks
9 3 (1.29%) IBM
9 3 (1.29%) Lotus
9 3 (1.29%) NVIDIA
9 3 (1.29%) NYFIX
9 3 (1.29%) Refinitiv
10 2 (0.86%) Apple
10 2 (0.86%) Reuters
10 2 (0.86%) SmartStream