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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 355 223 251
Rank change year-on-year -132 +28 +1
Contract jobs citing Derivative 247 380 418
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 1.15% 0.97%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.92% 3.58% 3.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 287 392
10th Percentile £499 £511 £550
25th Percentile £610 £638 £609
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £750 £725 £700
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £975 £888 £800
90th Percentile £1,000 £938 £899
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £325 £575
% change year-on-year +57.69% -43.48% -
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 12,849 10,629 13,458
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.63% 32.04% 31.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,063 6,328 8,934
10th Percentile £280 £265 £263
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £526 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.75% -4.36% -
75th Percentile £630 £656 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 622 325 518
10th Percentile £13.94 £18.07 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.23 £23.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £27.36 £33.54 £42.40
Median % change year-on-year -18.44% -20.90% +34.61%
75th Percentile £61.23 £64.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.21 £32.50 £45.21
% change year-on-year -16.28% -28.11% +77.96%

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 1 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 1 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 -118 238 £750 - 101
London -77 229 £750 - 98
Work from Home -100 79 £750 -6.25% 39
UK excluding London -51 13 £513 +57.69% 12
Scotland +13 4 £470 -
Northern Ireland -14 3 £320 -0.78%
North of England -52 3 £525 -12.50%
Yorkshire - 3 £525 -
East of England - 3 £681 - 1
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 20 (8.10%) Apache
1 20 (8.10%) Apache Airflow
2 9 (3.64%) Apache Spark
3 8 (3.24%) Confluence
4 4 (1.62%) HCL Notes
4 4 (1.62%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.81%) IIS
5 2 (0.81%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.40%) MQSeries
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.40%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (9.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.40%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (3.24%) Aladdin
2 5 (2.02%) Temenos T24
3 4 (1.62%) Fidessa
3 4 (1.62%) thinkFolio
4 3 (1.21%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 2 (0.81%) Algo Collateral
6 1 (0.40%) Endur
6 1 (0.40%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.40%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.40%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.40%) Orchestrade
6 1 (0.40%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 57 (23.08%) AWS
2 30 (12.15%) Azure
3 23 (9.31%) Snowflake
4 20 (8.10%) dbt
5 16 (6.48%) Power Platform
6 9 (3.64%) Serverless
7 6 (2.43%) GCP
8 5 (2.02%) Amazon S3
8 5 (2.02%) AWS Lambda
8 5 (2.02%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (2.02%) npm
8 5 (2.02%) Yarn
9 4 (1.62%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 4 (1.62%) Azure Logic Apps
9 4 (1.62%) Azure Service Bus
9 4 (1.62%) Power Automate
9 4 (1.62%) PowerApps
10 3 (1.21%) Amazon ECS
10 3 (1.21%) SaaS
11 2 (0.81%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.43%) FIX Connectivity
2 4 (1.62%) Multicast
3 1 (0.40%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (8.50%) Data Lake
1 21 (8.50%) PostgreSQL
1 21 (8.50%) SQL Server
2 20 (8.10%) Amazon Athena
2 20 (8.10%) Apache Arrow
2 20 (8.10%) Apache Iceberg
2 20 (8.10%) Apache Ignite
2 20 (8.10%) Dremio
3 16 (6.48%) Power BI
4 7 (2.83%) Redis
5 6 (2.43%) NoSQL
5 6 (2.43%) Tableau
6 4 (1.62%) Big Data
6 4 (1.62%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (1.62%) KDB
7 3 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.81%) Data Mart
8 2 (0.81%) Metadata
8 2 (0.81%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.40%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 18 (7.29%) Git
2 11 (4.45%) JIRA
3 10 (4.05%) Jenkins
4 6 (2.43%) Octopus Deploy
4 6 (2.43%) Visual Studio
5 5 (2.02%) GitLab
5 5 (2.02%) webpack
6 4 (1.62%) Maven
7 3 (1.21%) Bitbucket
7 3 (1.21%) IntelliJ
8 2 (0.81%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.81%) Gradle
9 1 (0.40%) Crucible
9 1 (0.40%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.40%) JUnit
9 1 (0.40%) TeamCity
General
1 194 (78.54%) Finance
2 150 (60.73%) Banking
3 104 (42.11%) Front Office
4 102 (41.30%) Investment Banking
5 73 (29.55%) Social Skills
6 34 (13.77%) Analytical Skills
7 28 (11.34%) Financial Institution
8 10 (4.05%) Back Office
9 5 (2.02%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.62%) Legal
11 3 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.21%) Spanish Language
11 3 (1.21%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.40%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.40%) General Ledger
13 1 (0.40%) Law
13 1 (0.40%) Retail
Job Titles
1 109 (44.13%) Developer
2 69 (27.94%) Senior
3 45 (18.22%) Analyst
4 37 (14.98%) Java Developer
5 36 (14.57%) Senior Developer
6 28 (11.34%) Business Analyst
7 22 (8.91%) Java Engineer
7 22 (8.91%) Senior Java Developer
8 21 (8.50%) Java Software Engineer
8 21 (8.50%) Software Engineer
9 20 (8.10%) AWS Engineer
9 20 (8.10%) AWS Software Engineer
9 20 (8.10%) Python Engineer
9 20 (8.10%) Python Software Engineer
10 19 (7.69%) Analytics Developer
10 19 (7.69%) AWS Developer
10 19 (7.69%) Kafka Developer
10 19 (7.69%) PostgreSQL Developer
10 19 (7.69%) Senior Java Engineer
10 19 (7.69%) Senior Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (9.72%) Kafka
2 23 (9.31%) NumPy
2 23 (9.31%) Pandas
2 23 (9.31%) SciPy
3 21 (8.50%) Protocol Buffers
4 20 (8.10%) gRPC
5 19 (7.69%) FIX Protocol
6 17 (6.88%) .NET
7 13 (5.26%) React
8 9 (3.64%) Dask
8 9 (3.64%) REST
8 9 (3.64%) RESTful
9 8 (3.24%) CSS
9 8 (3.24%) Spring
10 6 (2.43%) HTML
11 5 (2.02%) RabbitMQ
11 5 (2.02%) XML
12 4 (1.62%) .NET Core
12 4 (1.62%) .NET Framework
13 3 (1.21%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 86 (34.82%) Equities
2 73 (29.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 63 (25.51%) Fixed Income
4 31 (12.55%) Hedge funds
5 30 (12.15%) Equity Derivative
6 25 (10.12%) Market Risk
7 20 (8.10%) Distributed Systems
7 20 (8.10%) Pricing Data
8 19 (7.69%) Algorithms
8 19 (7.69%) Management Information System
9 15 (6.07%) Product Ownership
10 14 (5.67%) Cloud Native
11 12 (4.86%) Data Protection Act
12 10 (4.05%) Distributed Computing
12 10 (4.05%) Interest Rate Derivative
12 10 (4.05%) Onboarding
13 9 (3.64%) Credit Risk
14 8 (3.24%) TWAP
14 8 (3.24%) VWAP
15 7 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 18 (7.29%) Linux
2 8 (3.24%) Windows
3 7 (2.83%) Unix
4 3 (1.21%) Debian
4 3 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.21%) Ubuntu
4 3 (1.21%) VMS
5 2 (0.81%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (33.20%) Agile
2 63 (25.51%) Risk Management
3 45 (18.22%) Analytics
4 43 (17.41%) Mathematics
5 39 (15.79%) CI/CD
6 37 (14.98%) Problem-Solving
7 34 (13.77%) Software Engineering
8 31 (12.55%) TDD
9 29 (11.74%) DevOps
10 26 (10.53%) Asset Management
10 26 (10.53%) Stakeholder Management
11 24 (9.72%) Computer Science
12 23 (9.31%) Data Pipeline
12 23 (9.31%) Design Patterns
12 23 (9.31%) Low Latency
13 21 (8.50%) Electronic Trading
13 21 (8.50%) Physics
13 21 (8.50%) Quantitative Finance
14 20 (8.10%) Investment Management
14 20 (8.10%) Multithreading
Programming Languages
1 101 (40.89%) Python
2 72 (29.15%) Java
3 70 (28.34%) SQL
4 38 (15.38%) C#
4 38 (15.38%) C++
5 30 (12.15%) JavaScript
6 29 (11.74%) TypeScript
7 6 (2.43%) VBA
8 4 (1.62%) PowerShell
9 3 (1.21%) Perl
10 2 (0.81%) Scala
11 1 (0.40%) Bash
11 1 (0.40%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.40%) R
11 1 (0.40%) Rust
11 1 (0.40%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.40%) VC++
Qualifications
1 47 (19.03%) Degree
2 21 (8.50%) Master's Degree
3 15 (6.07%) Numerate Degree
4 12 (4.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.05%) PhD
6 4 (1.62%) PMI Certification
6 4 (1.62%) PMP
7 2 (0.81%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.40%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.26%) EMIR
1 13 (5.26%) MiFID
2 12 (4.86%) QA
3 8 (3.24%) Data Quality
4 7 (2.83%) SLA
5 5 (2.02%) IFRS
6 4 (1.62%) IFRS 9
7 3 (1.21%) Basel III
7 3 (1.21%) GDPR
7 3 (1.21%) IAS 32
7 3 (1.21%) IAS 39
8 2 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.40%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.40%) FINRA
9 1 (0.40%) GAAP
9 1 (0.40%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.40%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.40%) PMO
9 1 (0.40%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 7 (2.83%) Docker
2 3 (1.21%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 8 (3.24%) Ansible
2 7 (2.83%) Kubernetes
3 3 (1.21%) Grafana
3 3 (1.21%) Podman
3 3 (1.21%) Thomson Reuters DACS
4 2 (0.81%) ITRS Geneos
4 2 (0.81%) Terraform
5 1 (0.40%) Control-M
5 1 (0.40%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.40%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 17 (6.88%) Bloomberg
2 15 (6.07%) Murex
3 11 (4.45%) Microsoft
4 10 (4.05%) Oracle
5 7 (2.83%) ION Trading
6 6 (2.43%) Calypso
6 6 (2.43%) Databricks
6 6 (2.43%) Sophis
6 6 (2.43%) Tradeweb
7 5 (2.02%) jBASE
7 5 (2.02%) Temenos
8 4 (1.62%) Lotus
8 4 (1.62%) Portware
9 3 (1.21%) Atlassian
9 3 (1.21%) Charles River
9 3 (1.21%) IBM
9 3 (1.21%) NVIDIA
9 3 (1.21%) NYFIX
9 3 (1.21%) Reuters
9 3 (1.21%) Splunk