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

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 366 212 249
Rank change year-on-year -154 +37 -6
Contract jobs citing Derivative 234 390 415
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.23% 0.96%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.81% 3.81% 3.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 301 389
10th Percentile £500 £500 £550
25th Percentile £605 £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 £865
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 12,937 10,249 13,290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.22% 32.33% 30.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,187 6,069 8,702
10th Percentile £278 £263 £258
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £531 £538
Median % change year-on-year -5.75% -1.39% -3.93%
75th Percentile £625 £663 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 621 316 669
10th Percentile £14.54 £18.51 £14.48
25th Percentile £18.28 £23.75 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.54 £35.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.31% -1.41% +57.88%
75th Percentile £61.50 £65.00 £60.39
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.50 £72.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £36.02
% change year-on-year -15.38% -9.78% +80.11%

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 22 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 22 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 -134 225 £733 +1.03% 122
London -92 216 £750 +3.45% 25
Work from Home -125 67 £750 -3.23% 37
UK excluding London -75 13 £525 +61.54% 109
Scotland +4 4 £448 - 3
Northern Ireland -16 3 £320 -1.54% 3
North of England -58 3 £525 -12.50% 16
East of England - 3 £681 - 18
Yorkshire - 3 £525 - 9
Midlands - 2 £525 - 14
West Midlands - 2 £525 - 3

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 (5.98%) Apache
1 14 (5.98%) Apache Airflow
2 9 (3.85%) Apache Spark
3 8 (3.42%) Confluence
4 3 (1.28%) HCL Notes
4 3 (1.28%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.85%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 25 (10.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.85%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (2.56%) Aladdin
2 5 (2.14%) Temenos T24
3 3 (1.28%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 2 (0.85%) Algo Collateral
4 2 (0.85%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.85%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.85%) 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 (20.09%) AWS
2 24 (10.26%) Azure
3 17 (7.26%) Snowflake
4 14 (5.98%) dbt
5 13 (5.56%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.56%) GCP
6 6 (2.56%) Serverless
7 5 (2.14%) Amazon S3
7 5 (2.14%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (2.14%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (2.14%) SaaS
8 3 (1.28%) Amazon ECS
8 3 (1.28%) Power Automate
8 3 (1.28%) PowerApps
9 2 (0.85%) npm
9 2 (0.85%) OpenShift
9 2 (0.85%) Yarn
10 1 (0.43%) AWS CloudFormation
10 1 (0.43%) AWS CodePipeline
10 1 (0.43%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.99%) FIX Connectivity
2 4 (1.71%) Multicast
3 1 (0.43%) RTMP
3 1 (0.43%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (7.69%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (6.84%) SQL Server
3 15 (6.41%) Data Lake
4 14 (5.98%) Amazon Athena
4 14 (5.98%) Apache Arrow
4 14 (5.98%) Apache Iceberg
4 14 (5.98%) Apache Ignite
4 14 (5.98%) Dremio
5 13 (5.56%) Power BI
6 8 (3.42%) Redis
7 4 (1.71%) Big Data
7 4 (1.71%) KDB
7 4 (1.71%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.71%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.71%) Tableau
8 3 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.85%) Data Mart
9 2 (0.85%) Metadata
9 2 (0.85%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.85%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 17 (7.26%) Git
2 12 (5.13%) JIRA
3 9 (3.85%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.99%) Octopus Deploy
5 6 (2.56%) Visual Studio
6 5 (2.14%) Maven
7 4 (1.71%) GitLab
7 4 (1.71%) IntelliJ
8 3 (1.28%) Bitbucket
8 3 (1.28%) Gradle
9 2 (0.85%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.85%) Eclipse
9 2 (0.85%) webpack
10 1 (0.43%) Crucible
10 1 (0.43%) NUnit
10 1 (0.43%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.43%) TeamCity
General
1 176 (75.21%) Finance
2 130 (55.56%) Banking
3 95 (40.60%) Front Office
4 86 (36.75%) Investment Banking
5 71 (30.34%) Social Skills
6 34 (14.53%) Analytical Skills
7 26 (11.11%) Financial Institution
8 8 (3.42%) Back Office
9 4 (1.71%) Legal
9 4 (1.71%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.28%) Spanish Language
10 3 (1.28%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.85%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.43%) Japanese Language
12 1 (0.43%) Law
12 1 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 107 (45.73%) Developer
2 59 (25.21%) Senior
3 45 (19.23%) Analyst
4 36 (15.38%) Java Developer
5 30 (12.82%) Business Analyst
5 30 (12.82%) Senior Developer
6 20 (8.55%) Senior Java Developer
7 17 (7.26%) Analytics Developer
7 17 (7.26%) AWS Developer
7 17 (7.26%) Java Engineer
7 17 (7.26%) Kafka Developer
7 17 (7.26%) PostgreSQL Developer
8 15 (6.41%) C# Developer
8 15 (6.41%) Java Software Engineer
8 15 (6.41%) Python Engineer
8 15 (6.41%) Quantitative Developer
8 15 (6.41%) Software Engineer
9 14 (5.98%) AWS Engineer
9 14 (5.98%) AWS Software Engineer
9 14 (5.98%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (9.40%) Kafka
2 18 (7.69%) NumPy
2 18 (7.69%) Pandas
3 17 (7.26%) FIX Protocol
3 17 (7.26%) SciPy
4 15 (6.41%) Protocol Buffers
4 15 (6.41%) React
5 14 (5.98%) .NET
5 14 (5.98%) gRPC
6 13 (5.56%) RESTful
7 10 (4.27%) HTML
8 9 (3.85%) Dask
9 8 (3.42%) REST
10 7 (2.99%) Spring
11 6 (2.56%) CSS
11 6 (2.56%) WebSockets
12 5 (2.14%) HTML5
13 4 (1.71%) XML
14 3 (1.28%) PyTorch
14 3 (1.28%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 85 (36.32%) Equities
2 58 (24.79%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 56 (23.93%) Fixed Income
4 36 (15.38%) Equity Derivative
5 24 (10.26%) Market Risk
6 23 (9.83%) Hedge funds
7 20 (8.55%) Algorithms
8 18 (7.69%) Management Information System
9 17 (7.26%) Distributed Systems
10 15 (6.41%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (5.98%) Pricing Data
12 11 (4.70%) Cloud Native
12 11 (4.70%) Product Ownership
13 10 (4.27%) Distributed Computing
13 10 (4.27%) Interest Rate Derivative
13 10 (4.27%) TWAP
13 10 (4.27%) VWAP
14 9 (3.85%) Credit Risk
14 9 (3.85%) Onboarding
15 7 (2.99%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 16 (6.84%) Linux
2 11 (4.70%) Unix
3 7 (2.99%) Windows
4 3 (1.28%) Debian
4 3 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.28%) Ubuntu
4 3 (1.28%) VMS
5 1 (0.43%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (30.34%) Agile
2 64 (27.35%) Risk Management
3 42 (17.95%) Mathematics
4 39 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
5 38 (16.24%) Analytics
6 34 (14.53%) CI/CD
7 33 (14.10%) TDD
8 28 (11.97%) Low Latency
9 27 (11.54%) Stakeholder Management
10 26 (11.11%) Software Engineering
11 24 (10.26%) DevOps
12 23 (9.83%) Computer Science
12 23 (9.83%) Data Pipeline
12 23 (9.83%) Design Patterns
13 21 (8.97%) Asset Management
13 21 (8.97%) Electronic Trading
14 20 (8.55%) Physics
14 20 (8.55%) Quantitative Finance
15 19 (8.12%) Multithreading
15 19 (8.12%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 96 (41.03%) Python
2 66 (28.21%) SQL
3 65 (27.78%) Java
4 39 (16.67%) C++
5 34 (14.53%) C#
6 24 (10.26%) JavaScript
7 22 (9.40%) TypeScript
8 6 (2.56%) VBA
9 4 (1.71%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.28%) PowerShell
11 2 (0.85%) Perl
11 2 (0.85%) Rust
11 2 (0.85%) Scala
12 1 (0.43%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.43%) R
12 1 (0.43%) VC++
Qualifications
1 45 (19.23%) Degree
2 17 (7.26%) Master's Degree
3 15 (6.41%) Numerate Degree
4 11 (4.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.27%) PhD
6 3 (1.28%) PMI Certification
6 3 (1.28%) PMP
7 2 (0.85%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.43%) CBAP
8 1 (0.43%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.56%) QA
2 12 (5.13%) EMIR
3 8 (3.42%) IFRS
4 7 (2.99%) MiFID
5 6 (2.56%) Data Quality
6 4 (1.71%) IFRS 9
6 4 (1.71%) SLA
7 3 (1.28%) Basel III
7 3 (1.28%) IAS 32
7 3 (1.28%) IAS 39
8 2 (0.85%) GAAP
8 2 (0.85%) PMO
8 2 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.43%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.43%) FINRA
9 1 (0.43%) GDPR
9 1 (0.43%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.43%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 8 (3.42%) Docker
2 3 (1.28%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 8 (3.42%) Kubernetes
2 7 (2.99%) Ansible
3 3 (1.28%) Grafana
3 3 (1.28%) Podman
3 3 (1.28%) Thomson Reuters DACS
4 2 (0.85%) ITRS Geneos
4 2 (0.85%) Prometheus
4 2 (0.85%) Terraform
5 1 (0.43%) Control-M
Vendors
1 17 (7.26%) Bloomberg
2 16 (6.84%) Murex
3 15 (6.41%) Oracle
4 10 (4.27%) Microsoft
5 7 (2.99%) ION Trading
6 6 (2.56%) Tradeweb
7 5 (2.14%) jBASE
7 5 (2.14%) Sophis
7 5 (2.14%) Temenos
8 4 (1.71%) Calypso
8 4 (1.71%) Charles River
9 3 (1.28%) Databricks
9 3 (1.28%) IBM
9 3 (1.28%) Lotus
9 3 (1.28%) NVIDIA
9 3 (1.28%) NYFIX
9 3 (1.28%) Refinitiv
10 2 (0.85%) Apple
10 2 (0.85%) Reuters
10 2 (0.85%) SmartStream