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 16 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 337 232 237
Rank change year-on-year -105 +5 +20
Contract jobs citing Derivative 259 390 496
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 1.07% 1.05%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.05% 3.44% 3.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 304 451
10th Percentile £513 £604 £550
25th Percentile £600 £659 £600
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £750 £800 £700
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +14.29% -
75th Percentile £866 £883 £839
90th Percentile £1,000 £888 £1,000
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £600 £538
% change year-on-year -14.58% +11.63% +12.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £86.25 £76.25 -
Median hourly rate £87.50 £77.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +12.90% - -
75th Percentile £88.75 £78.75 -
90th Percentile - - -
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 12,653 11,334 15,092
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.83% 30.99% 32.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,823 6,683 10,166
10th Percentile £275 £285 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £526 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.76% -4.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £663 £666
90th Percentile £750 £788 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 682 366 509
10th Percentile £13.50 £16.96 £16.73
25th Percentile £17.98 £22.50 £20.82
Median hourly rate £26.89 £37.50 £43.84
Median % change year-on-year -28.29% -14.46% +48.61%
75th Percentile £51.25 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.16 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.25 £37.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year -30.00% -18.80% +84.72%

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 16 November 2025.

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 12 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 16 November 2025. 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 -105 248 £750 -6.25% 135
London -63 240 £750 -6.25% 129
Work from Home -84 98 £750 -6.25% 55
UK excluding London -24 16 £513 -14.58% 16
North of England -32 6 £569 -9.04% 1
Northern Ireland -6 5 £325 +8.33% 3
Scotland 0 4 £463 - 1
Yorkshire - 4 £525 -
Midlands - 3 £525 -
North West -23 2 £612 -2.08% 1
West Midlands - 2 £525 -
East Midlands - 1 £375 -

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 34 (13.13%) Apache
1 34 (13.13%) Apache Airflow
2 14 (5.41%) Confluence
3 7 (2.70%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.93%) SharePoint
5 4 (1.54%) HCL Notes
6 2 (0.77%) IIS
7 1 (0.39%) MQSeries
7 1 (0.39%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.39%) WebSphere
Applications
1 22 (8.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.93%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.39%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (3.47%) Aladdin
2 5 (1.93%) thinkFolio
3 4 (1.54%) Fidessa
4 2 (0.77%) Algo Collateral
4 2 (0.77%) Kondor
5 1 (0.39%) Actimize
5 1 (0.39%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.39%) Endur
5 1 (0.39%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.39%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.39%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 66 (25.48%) AWS
2 37 (14.29%) Snowflake
3 34 (13.13%) dbt
4 32 (12.36%) Azure
5 16 (6.18%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.32%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (1.93%) Serverless
8 4 (1.54%) Azure Cosmos DB
8 4 (1.54%) Azure Logic Apps
8 4 (1.54%) Azure Service Bus
8 4 (1.54%) GCP
8 4 (1.54%) npm
8 4 (1.54%) Power Automate
8 4 (1.54%) PowerApps
8 4 (1.54%) Yarn
9 2 (0.77%) SaaS
10 1 (0.39%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (0.39%) Azure Machine Learning
10 1 (0.39%) Figma
10 1 (0.39%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.32%) TCP/IP
2 4 (1.54%) Multicast
3 2 (0.77%) FIX Connectivity
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (13.51%) Data Lake
2 34 (13.13%) Amazon Athena
2 34 (13.13%) Apache Arrow
2 34 (13.13%) Apache Iceberg
2 34 (13.13%) Apache Ignite
2 34 (13.13%) Dremio
3 24 (9.27%) SQL Server
4 21 (8.11%) PostgreSQL
5 16 (6.18%) Power BI
6 11 (4.25%) NoSQL
7 6 (2.32%) Redis
7 6 (2.32%) Tableau
8 5 (1.93%) Relational Database
9 4 (1.54%) Big Data
9 4 (1.54%) KDB
10 3 (1.16%) Power Query
11 2 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.77%) Data Mart
11 2 (0.77%) Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.77%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 15 (5.79%) JIRA
2 9 (3.47%) Git
3 7 (2.70%) Octopus Deploy
4 5 (1.93%) Jenkins
5 4 (1.54%) GitLab
5 4 (1.54%) webpack
6 3 (1.16%) IntelliJ
6 3 (1.16%) Maven
6 3 (1.16%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.77%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.77%) Gradle
8 1 (0.39%) Crucible
8 1 (0.39%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.39%) Hudson
8 1 (0.39%) JUnit
8 1 (0.39%) TeamCity
General
1 207 (79.92%) Finance
2 157 (60.62%) Banking
3 126 (48.65%) Front Office
4 120 (46.33%) Investment Banking
5 78 (30.12%) Social Skills
6 40 (15.44%) Analytical Skills
7 24 (9.27%) Financial Institution
8 10 (3.86%) Back Office
9 5 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.93%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.16%) Law
11 3 (1.16%) Legal
12 2 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.39%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.39%) Documentation Skills
13 1 (0.39%) Prime Brokerage
13 1 (0.39%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 96 (37.07%) Developer
2 80 (30.89%) Senior
3 62 (23.94%) Analyst
4 41 (15.83%) Business Analyst
5 36 (13.90%) Java Engineer
5 36 (13.90%) Software Engineer
6 35 (13.51%) Java Software Engineer
7 34 (13.13%) AWS Engineer
7 34 (13.13%) AWS Software Engineer
7 34 (13.13%) Python Engineer
7 34 (13.13%) Python Software Engineer
7 34 (13.13%) Senior Developer
8 33 (12.74%) Java Developer
8 33 (12.74%) Senior Java Engineer
8 33 (12.74%) Senior Java Software Engineer
8 33 (12.74%) Senior Software Engineer
9 21 (8.11%) Senior Java Developer
10 20 (7.72%) AWS Developer
10 20 (7.72%) Kafka Developer
10 20 (7.72%) PostgreSQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (13.51%) Protocol Buffers
2 34 (13.13%) gRPC
2 34 (13.13%) NumPy
2 34 (13.13%) Pandas
2 34 (13.13%) SciPy
3 24 (9.27%) Kafka
4 19 (7.34%) FIX Protocol
5 16 (6.18%) .NET
6 10 (3.86%) React
7 9 (3.47%) REST
7 9 (3.47%) Spring
8 8 (3.09%) Middleware
9 7 (2.70%) CSS
9 7 (2.70%) Dask
9 7 (2.70%) RESTful
10 5 (1.93%) FpML
10 5 (1.93%) RabbitMQ
10 5 (1.93%) XML
11 4 (1.54%) .NET Framework
11 4 (1.54%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 93 (35.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 89 (34.36%) Fixed Income
3 83 (32.05%) Equities
4 43 (16.60%) Hedge funds
5 34 (13.13%) Pricing Data
6 29 (11.20%) Equity Derivative
7 27 (10.42%) Market Risk
8 20 (7.72%) Management Information System
9 18 (6.95%) Product Ownership
10 17 (6.56%) Algorithms
11 16 (6.18%) Distributed Systems
12 13 (5.02%) Cloud Native
13 12 (4.63%) Onboarding
14 11 (4.25%) Data Protection Act
15 10 (3.86%) Credit Derivative
15 10 (3.86%) Credit Risk
15 10 (3.86%) Interest Rate Derivative
16 9 (3.47%) Data Structures
16 9 (3.47%) Distributed Computing
17 8 (3.09%) OTC Derivatives
Operating Systems
1 16 (6.18%) Linux
2 8 (3.09%) Unix
3 7 (2.70%) Windows
4 1 (0.39%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (40.93%) Agile
2 55 (21.24%) Risk Management
3 48 (18.53%) Software Engineering
4 47 (18.15%) Analytics
5 46 (17.76%) Mathematics
6 39 (15.06%) Asset Management
7 37 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
8 35 (13.51%) Investment Management
9 28 (10.81%) CI/CD
9 28 (10.81%) Computer Science
10 26 (10.04%) Stakeholder Management
10 26 (10.04%) TDD
11 25 (9.65%) Physics
12 23 (8.88%) Scrum
13 22 (8.49%) Data Pipeline
13 22 (8.49%) Design Patterns
14 21 (8.11%) Business Analysis
14 21 (8.11%) DevOps
15 20 (7.72%) Requirements Gathering
15 20 (7.72%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 114 (44.02%) Python
2 85 (32.82%) Java
3 81 (31.27%) SQL
4 42 (16.22%) JavaScript
5 41 (15.83%) TypeScript
6 38 (14.67%) C#
7 36 (13.90%) C++
8 6 (2.32%) VBA
9 4 (1.54%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.39%) Bash
10 1 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.39%) Perl
10 1 (0.39%) Rust
10 1 (0.39%) Scala
10 1 (0.39%) VC++
Qualifications
1 49 (18.92%) Degree
2 23 (8.88%) Master's Degree
3 14 (5.41%) Computer Science Degree
4 13 (5.02%) PhD
5 8 (3.09%) Numerate Degree
6 3 (1.16%) PMI Certification
6 3 (1.16%) PMP
7 2 (0.77%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.39%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.18%) MiFID
2 12 (4.63%) QA
3 8 (3.09%) Data Quality
3 8 (3.09%) EMIR
4 7 (2.70%) Basel III
5 6 (2.32%) GDPR
6 4 (1.54%) SLA
7 3 (1.16%) PMO
8 2 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.39%) Dodd-Frank
9 1 (0.39%) FINRA
9 1 (0.39%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.39%) IFRS
9 1 (0.39%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.39%) SEPA
9 1 (0.39%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 3 (1.16%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (1.54%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.16%) Ansible
2 3 (1.16%) Thomson Reuters DACS
3 1 (0.39%) Grafana
3 1 (0.39%) Terraform
3 1 (0.39%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 16 (6.18%) Microsoft
2 14 (5.41%) Murex
3 13 (5.02%) Bloomberg
4 8 (3.09%) Calypso
5 7 (2.70%) Oracle
5 7 (2.70%) Sophis
6 6 (2.32%) Databricks
6 6 (2.32%) ION Trading
7 4 (1.54%) Charles River
7 4 (1.54%) Lotus
7 4 (1.54%) Portware
7 4 (1.54%) Reuters
7 4 (1.54%) Tradeweb
8 3 (1.16%) Atlassian
8 3 (1.16%) NYFIX
8 3 (1.16%) Refinitiv
8 3 (1.16%) Sybase
9 2 (0.77%) IBM
9 2 (0.77%) Salesforce
9 2 (0.77%) SmartStream