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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 397 241 202
Rank change year-on-year -156 -39 +19
Contract jobs citing Derivative 269 343 509
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 1.08% 1.18%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.57% 3.12% 3.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 164 296 450
10th Percentile £450 £537 £588
25th Percentile £569 £638 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £725 £725 £800
Median % change year-on-year - -9.38% +10.34%
75th Percentile £850 £841 £888
90th Percentile £907 £938 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £725 £425 £638
% change year-on-year +70.59% -33.33% -20.31%
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 17,156 10,998 13,116
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.95% 34.56% 30.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,487 6,840 8,322
10th Percentile £313 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £626 £650 £663
90th Percentile £747 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 869 507 906
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.50 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.60 £18.87 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.50 £30.81 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +41.21% -14.48% +38.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £62.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £77.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £36.00
% change year-on-year +46.53% -16.67% +29.96%

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 7 July 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 7 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Derivative in the UK

Derivative
Top 10 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 7 July 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 -154 248 £725 -3.33% 72
London -91 241 £725 -3.33% 66
Work from Home -132 89 £788 +8.62% 34
UK excluding London -125 23 £725 +70.59% 16
Scotland -9 15 £460 +13.86% 2
Yorkshire -45 5 £725 - 4
North of England -73 5 £725 +20.23% 6
Northern Ireland -6 2 £625 +50.15% 4
Midlands -58 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 6 (2.23%) Confluence
2 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.37%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.86%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (4.09%) Aladdin
2 6 (2.23%) Summit
3 5 (1.86%) Loan IQ
4 3 (1.12%) Advent Geneva
4 3 (1.12%) Orchestrade
5 2 (0.74%) Front Arena
5 2 (0.74%) Global One
6 1 (0.37%) Bloomberg AIM
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.37%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 43 (15.99%) AWS
2 37 (13.75%) Azure
3 30 (11.15%) GCP
4 11 (4.09%) ChatGPT
5 9 (3.35%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (2.97%) GitHub
6 8 (2.97%) GitHub Copilot
6 8 (2.97%) Power Platform
7 5 (1.86%) Snowflake
8 4 (1.49%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.12%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (1.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
9 3 (1.12%) SaaS
9 3 (1.12%) Serverless
10 2 (0.74%) Collibra
11 1 (0.37%) npm
11 1 (0.37%) OpenShift
11 1 (0.37%) Yarn
Communications & Networking
1 19 (7.06%) FIX Connectivity
2 8 (2.97%) HTTP
3 1 (0.37%) RTMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (10.04%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (9.29%) Relational Database
3 20 (7.43%) Metadata
4 18 (6.69%) MongoDB
5 17 (6.32%) SQL Server
6 13 (4.83%) Redis
7 10 (3.72%) Db2
7 10 (3.72%) RDBMS
8 8 (2.97%) Power BI
8 8 (2.97%) Tableau
9 5 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (1.49%) Data Lake
10 4 (1.49%) NoSQL
11 3 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
12 2 (0.74%) Crystal Reports
12 2 (0.74%) KDB
12 2 (0.74%) Kdb+
12 2 (0.74%) Power Query
12 2 (0.74%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (0.74%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 17 (6.32%) JIRA
2 11 (4.09%) Octopus Deploy
3 9 (3.35%) Git
4 8 (2.97%) TeamCity
5 4 (1.49%) ER Studio
5 4 (1.49%) ERwin
5 4 (1.49%) PowerDesigner
6 3 (1.12%) VTune
7 2 (0.74%) Jenkins
8 1 (0.37%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.37%) GitLab
8 1 (0.37%) GoogleTest
8 1 (0.37%) Gradle
8 1 (0.37%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.37%) Maven
8 1 (0.37%) NUnit
8 1 (0.37%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.37%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.37%) webpack
General
1 172 (63.94%) Finance
2 144 (53.53%) Front Office
3 143 (53.16%) Banking
4 114 (42.38%) Investment Banking
5 75 (27.88%) Social Skills
6 42 (15.61%) Analytical Skills
7 9 (3.35%) Back Office
7 9 (3.35%) Legal
8 8 (2.97%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.86%) Private Banking
10 4 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.12%) Public Sector
12 2 (0.74%) General Ledger
13 1 (0.37%) Agriculture
13 1 (0.37%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.37%) Legal Technology
13 1 (0.37%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 135 (50.19%) Developer
2 71 (26.39%) Analyst
3 64 (23.79%) Business Analyst
4 39 (14.50%) Java Developer
4 39 (14.50%) Python Developer
4 39 (14.50%) Senior
5 31 (11.52%) C# Developer
6 28 (10.41%) Front Office Developer
7 25 (9.29%) Lead
8 24 (8.92%) Software Engineer
9 21 (7.81%) Electronic Trading Developer
10 20 (7.43%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
10 20 (7.43%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
11 19 (7.06%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
11 19 (7.06%) Lead Developer
11 19 (7.06%) Low Latency Java Developer
12 14 (5.20%) Lead Software Engineer
13 13 (4.83%) Derivatives Business Analyst
13 13 (4.83%) Python Engineer
13 13 (4.83%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (14.87%) React
2 35 (13.01%) FIX Protocol
3 18 (6.69%) Redux
4 16 (5.95%) Node.js
5 15 (5.58%) .NET
6 14 (5.20%) WebSockets
7 12 (4.46%) Kafka
8 9 (3.35%) NumPy
9 8 (2.97%) AngularJS
9 8 (2.97%) RxJava
9 8 (2.97%) Spring
10 7 (2.60%) XML
11 6 (2.23%) Django
11 6 (2.23%) FastAPI
11 6 (2.23%) HTML
11 6 (2.23%) HTML5
11 6 (2.23%) Middleware
11 6 (2.23%) Pandas
11 6 (2.23%) REST
11 6 (2.23%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 80 (29.74%) Equities
2 61 (22.68%) Fixed Income
3 60 (22.30%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 39 (14.50%) Equity Derivative
5 20 (7.43%) TWAP
5 20 (7.43%) VWAP
6 19 (7.06%) Market Risk
7 18 (6.69%) Credit Risk
7 18 (6.69%) OTC Derivatives
8 17 (6.32%) Data Structures
9 16 (5.95%) Distributed Systems
10 14 (5.20%) Algorithms
10 14 (5.20%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (5.20%) Hedge funds
11 13 (4.83%) Management Information System
12 11 (4.09%) Exotic Derivative
13 8 (2.97%) Cloud Native
13 8 (2.97%) Reference Data
14 7 (2.60%) Credit Derivative
14 7 (2.60%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 18 (6.69%) Unix
2 7 (2.60%) Linux
3 1 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (27.14%) Agile
2 58 (21.56%) Problem-Solving
3 48 (17.84%) Low Latency
4 42 (15.61%) Electronic Trading
5 41 (15.24%) Multithreading
6 38 (14.13%) Risk Management
7 37 (13.75%) CI/CD
7 37 (13.75%) User Acceptance Testing
8 36 (13.38%) Software Engineering
8 36 (13.38%) TDD
9 35 (13.01%) Asset Management
10 29 (10.78%) Algorithmic Trading
10 29 (10.78%) DevOps
11 28 (10.41%) Analytics
11 28 (10.41%) Data Analysis
12 27 (10.04%) Full-Stack Development
12 27 (10.04%) Microservices
12 27 (10.04%) Stakeholder Management
13 26 (9.67%) Validation
14 25 (9.29%) AI
Programming Languages
1 110 (40.89%) Python
2 97 (36.06%) SQL
3 83 (30.86%) Java
4 55 (20.45%) C#
5 37 (13.75%) TypeScript
6 34 (12.64%) C++
7 22 (8.18%) JavaScript
8 12 (4.46%) Rust
9 7 (2.60%) PowerShell
10 6 (2.23%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.86%) Perl
12 4 (1.49%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.49%) Scala
13 2 (0.74%) F#
13 2 (0.74%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.37%) Bash
14 1 (0.37%) C
14 1 (0.37%) Korn
14 1 (0.37%) R
14 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 29 (10.78%) Degree
2 16 (5.95%) Computer Science Degree
3 11 (4.09%) Master's Degree
4 9 (3.35%) PhD
5 1 (0.37%) FFIEC
5 1 (0.37%) ISTQB
5 1 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.95%) Data Quality
2 12 (4.46%) QA
3 8 (2.97%) EMIR
4 7 (2.60%) MiFID
5 5 (1.86%) IFRS
6 3 (1.12%) Basel III
6 3 (1.12%) GAAP
7 2 (0.74%) COREP
7 2 (0.74%) FINREP
8 1 (0.37%) Dodd-Frank
8 1 (0.37%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.37%) PMO
8 1 (0.37%) SLA
System Software
1 18 (6.69%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (2.60%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.74%) Control-M
2 2 (0.74%) ITRS Geneos
3 1 (0.37%) Grafana
3 1 (0.37%) Prometheus
3 1 (0.37%) Terraform
Vendors
1 27 (10.04%) Murex
2 16 (5.95%) Bloomberg
3 15 (5.58%) Oracle
4 10 (3.72%) Sybase
5 8 (2.97%) Charles River
6 7 (2.60%) Calypso
6 7 (2.60%) IBM
7 4 (1.49%) Microsoft
8 3 (1.12%) Advent
8 3 (1.12%) Databricks
8 3 (1.12%) Google
9 2 (0.74%) Reuters
9 2 (0.74%) SimCorp
10 1 (0.37%) Ab Initio
10 1 (0.37%) Alteryx
10 1 (0.37%) Apple
10 1 (0.37%) CA Agile Central
10 1 (0.37%) ION Trading
10 1 (0.37%) Solace