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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 400 283 194
Rank change year-on-year -117 -89 +21
Contract jobs citing Derivative 280 300 512
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 0.92% 1.32%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.55% 2.60% 4.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 166 254 439
10th Percentile £424 £537 £600
25th Percentile £569 £622 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £725 £750 £800
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -6.25% +14.29%
75th Percentile £825 £825 £888
90th Percentile £894 £988 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £550 £638
% change year-on-year -14.55% -13.73% +18.60%
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 18,016 11,546 11,834
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.64% 35.22% 30.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,919 7,102 7,540
10th Percentile £322 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £823
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,041 571 585
10th Percentile £14.88 £15.13 £12.30
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.87 £18.27
Median hourly rate £43.50 £30.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +45.00% -33.33% +10.31%
75th Percentile £68.75 £57.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +46.53% -36.84% +11.76%

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 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 -142 252 £725 -3.33% 50
London -80 244 £725 -3.33% 47
Work from Home -116 85 £775 +3.33% 24
UK excluding London -97 29 £470 -14.55% 16
Scotland -6 20 £402 -19.60%
North of England -79 6 £725 +20.23% 3
Yorkshire -38 5 £725 - 1
Northern Ireland -1 2 £625 +21.95% 1
North West -48 1 £198 -67.16% 2
Midlands -50 1 - -
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 5 (1.79%) Confluence
2 1 (0.36%) Apache
2 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.36%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.36%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (1.43%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.07%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 9 (3.21%) Aladdin
2 4 (1.43%) Summit
3 3 (1.07%) Advent Geneva
3 3 (1.07%) Orchestrade
4 2 (0.71%) Front Arena
4 2 (0.71%) Global One
4 2 (0.71%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.36%) Bloomberg AIM
5 1 (0.36%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.36%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.36%) MultiFonds
5 1 (0.36%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 30 (10.71%) AWS
1 30 (10.71%) Azure
2 23 (8.21%) GCP
3 11 (3.93%) ChatGPT
4 9 (3.21%) Anthropic Claude
5 8 (2.86%) GitHub
5 8 (2.86%) GitHub Copilot
6 7 (2.50%) Power Platform
7 5 (1.79%) Snowflake
8 4 (1.43%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.07%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.07%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (1.07%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 3 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
9 3 (1.07%) Serverless
10 1 (0.36%) Collibra
10 1 (0.36%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (5.71%) FIX Connectivity
2 8 (2.86%) HTTP
3 2 (0.71%) Multicast
4 1 (0.36%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (7.86%) Relational Database
2 19 (6.79%) Metadata
3 17 (6.07%) MongoDB
3 17 (6.07%) SQL Server
4 15 (5.36%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (4.64%) Redis
6 10 (3.57%) Db2
7 8 (2.86%) RDBMS
7 8 (2.86%) Tableau
8 7 (2.50%) Power BI
9 6 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (1.79%) Data Lake
11 4 (1.43%) KDB
11 4 (1.43%) NoSQL
12 3 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
12 3 (1.07%) Kdb+
13 2 (0.71%) Crystal Reports
13 2 (0.71%) Snowflake Schema
13 2 (0.71%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 1 (0.36%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 18 (6.43%) JIRA
2 11 (3.93%) Git
3 10 (3.57%) Octopus Deploy
4 8 (2.86%) TeamCity
5 5 (1.79%) ER Studio
5 5 (1.79%) ERwin
5 5 (1.79%) PowerDesigner
6 4 (1.43%) Jenkins
7 3 (1.07%) VTune
8 1 (0.36%) GitLab
8 1 (0.36%) GoogleTest
8 1 (0.36%) Visual Studio
General
1 190 (67.86%) Finance
2 154 (55.00%) Banking
2 154 (55.00%) Front Office
3 113 (40.36%) Investment Banking
4 73 (26.07%) Social Skills
5 42 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
6 17 (6.07%) Financial Institution
7 11 (3.93%) Back Office
7 11 (3.93%) Private Banking
8 10 (3.57%) Legal
9 3 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
9 3 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.07%) Public Sector
10 2 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.36%) Agriculture
11 1 (0.36%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.36%) General Ledger
11 1 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.36%) Legal Technology
Job Titles
1 137 (48.93%) Developer
2 70 (25.00%) Analyst
3 61 (21.79%) Business Analyst
4 44 (15.71%) Python Developer
5 41 (14.64%) Senior
6 31 (11.07%) Java Developer
7 30 (10.71%) C# Developer
7 30 (10.71%) Front Office Developer
8 18 (6.43%) Electronic Trading Developer
8 18 (6.43%) Quantitative Developer
8 18 (6.43%) Software Engineer
9 16 (5.71%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
9 16 (5.71%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
9 16 (5.71%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
9 16 (5.71%) Low Latency Java Developer
10 15 (5.36%) Lead
11 13 (4.64%) Senior Developer
12 11 (3.93%) Lead Developer
12 11 (3.93%) Pricing Developer
12 11 (3.93%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (11.79%) FIX Protocol
2 29 (10.36%) React
3 13 (4.64%) WebSockets
4 12 (4.29%) .NET
4 12 (4.29%) NumPy
4 12 (4.29%) Redux
5 10 (3.57%) Django
5 10 (3.57%) FastAPI
5 10 (3.57%) Pandas
6 9 (3.21%) AngularJS
6 9 (3.21%) REST
7 8 (2.86%) Kafka
7 8 (2.86%) Node.js
8 7 (2.50%) RxJava
8 7 (2.50%) Spring
9 6 (2.14%) Flask
9 6 (2.14%) Middleware
10 5 (1.79%) PySpark
10 5 (1.79%) RESTful
10 5 (1.79%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 76 (27.14%) Equities
2 68 (24.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 62 (22.14%) Fixed Income
4 43 (15.36%) Equity Derivative
5 19 (6.79%) Distributed Systems
5 19 (6.79%) Market Risk
6 18 (6.43%) Algorithms
6 18 (6.43%) OTC Derivatives
7 16 (5.71%) Credit Risk
7 16 (5.71%) Data Structures
7 16 (5.71%) Exotic Derivative
7 16 (5.71%) TWAP
7 16 (5.71%) VWAP
8 15 (5.36%) Hedge funds
9 14 (5.00%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (3.57%) Credit Derivative
10 10 (3.57%) Management Information System
10 10 (3.57%) Onboarding
11 8 (2.86%) Product Ownership
12 7 (2.50%) Interest Rate Derivative
Operating Systems
1 18 (6.43%) Unix
2 13 (4.64%) Linux
3 1 (0.36%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (21.07%) Agile
2 56 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
3 44 (15.71%) Low Latency
4 39 (13.93%) CI/CD
5 38 (13.57%) Multithreading
6 36 (12.86%) Data Analysis
6 36 (12.86%) Electronic Trading
6 36 (12.86%) Software Engineering
7 34 (12.14%) User Acceptance Testing
8 32 (11.43%) Stakeholder Management
9 31 (11.07%) Analytics
9 31 (11.07%) Risk Management
10 29 (10.36%) DevOps
11 28 (10.00%) Algorithmic Trading
11 28 (10.00%) Asset Management
11 28 (10.00%) Business Analysis
11 28 (10.00%) Microservices
11 28 (10.00%) TDD
11 28 (10.00%) Validation
12 26 (9.29%) AI
Programming Languages
1 117 (41.79%) Python
2 95 (33.93%) SQL
3 78 (27.86%) Java
4 57 (20.36%) C#
5 37 (13.21%) C++
6 29 (10.36%) TypeScript
7 13 (4.64%) JavaScript
8 12 (4.29%) Rust
9 9 (3.21%) PowerShell
10 7 (2.50%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.79%) Perl
12 4 (1.43%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.07%) Scala
14 2 (0.71%) Bash
14 2 (0.71%) C
14 2 (0.71%) F#
14 2 (0.71%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.36%) Korn
15 1 (0.36%) Kotlin
15 1 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 28 (10.00%) Degree
2 13 (4.64%) Computer Science Degree
3 12 (4.29%) Master's Degree
4 10 (3.57%) PhD
5 2 (0.71%) PMI Certification
5 2 (0.71%) PMP
5 2 (0.71%) Security Cleared
6 1 (0.36%) Numerate Degree
6 1 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.36%) Data Quality
2 10 (3.57%) QA
3 9 (3.21%) EMIR
3 9 (3.21%) MiFID
4 2 (0.71%) Basel III
4 2 (0.71%) COREP
4 2 (0.71%) Dodd-Frank
4 2 (0.71%) FINREP
4 2 (0.71%) GAAP
4 2 (0.71%) IFRS
4 2 (0.71%) SLA
5 1 (0.36%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 16 (5.71%) Docker
2 1 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 7 (2.50%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.07%) ITRS Geneos
3 2 (0.71%) Control-M
3 2 (0.71%) Thomson Reuters DACS
4 1 (0.36%) Grafana
4 1 (0.36%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 26 (9.29%) Murex
2 18 (6.43%) Bloomberg
3 10 (3.57%) Sybase
4 9 (3.21%) Calypso
5 8 (2.86%) Oracle
6 7 (2.50%) Charles River
6 7 (2.50%) IBM
7 3 (1.07%) Advent
7 3 (1.07%) Databricks
7 3 (1.07%) Google
7 3 (1.07%) SimCorp
8 2 (0.71%) Microsoft
8 2 (0.71%) NYFIX
8 2 (0.71%) Refinitiv
8 2 (0.71%) Tradeweb
9 1 (0.36%) Alteryx
9 1 (0.36%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.36%) FIS
9 1 (0.36%) Solace
9 1 (0.36%) Splunk