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

6 months to
22 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 314 226 226
Rank change year-on-year -88 0 +29
Contract jobs citing Derivative 270 406 525
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.81% 1.09% 1.10%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.25% 3.54% 3.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 217 327 480
10th Percentile £520 £613 £538
25th Percentile £613 £672 £575
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £750 £800 £700
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +14.29% -
75th Percentile £825 £888 £844
90th Percentile £988 - £1,000
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £650 £538
% change year-on-year -19.23% +20.93% +16.09%
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 12,014 11,464 15,222
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.87% 30.76% 32.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,384 6,815 10,382
10th Percentile £289 £280 £299
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £531 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.39% -3.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £668 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.65% -1.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 645 384 472
10th Percentile £13.99 £16.92 £17.00
25th Percentile £18.22 £23.10 £21.05
Median hourly rate £26.50 £45.59 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.87% +2.45% +71.15%
75th Percentile £50.00 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £75.16 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.04 £50.00 £47.59
% change year-on-year -49.93% +5.06% +111.51%

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 October 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 22 October 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 -78 257 £750 -6.25% 154
London -48 250 £750 -6.25% 125
Work from Home -83 110 £750 -6.25% 46
UK excluding London -13 18 £525 -19.23% 77
North of England -26 6 £569 -12.54% 2
Scotland - 6 £500 -
Northern Ireland -6 5 £525 - 2
Yorkshire - 4 £525 - 2
Midlands - 3 £525 - 1
North West -13 2 £612 -5.85%
West Midlands - 2 £525 - 1
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 40 (14.81%) Apache
1 40 (14.81%) Apache Airflow
2 14 (5.19%) Confluence
3 5 (1.85%) SharePoint
4 4 (1.48%) HCL Notes
5 3 (1.11%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.74%) IIS
7 1 (0.37%) MQSeries
7 1 (0.37%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.37%) WebSphere
Applications
1 24 (8.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.48%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.37%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 20 (7.41%) Aladdin
2 11 (4.07%) thinkFolio
3 4 (1.48%) Fidessa
4 2 (0.74%) ION MarketView
4 2 (0.74%) Kondor
5 1 (0.37%) Actimize
5 1 (0.37%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.37%) Endur
5 1 (0.37%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.37%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 70 (25.93%) AWS
2 43 (15.93%) Snowflake
3 40 (14.81%) dbt
4 33 (12.22%) Azure
5 17 (6.30%) Power Platform
6 5 (1.85%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (1.85%) Serverless
7 4 (1.48%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 4 (1.48%) Azure Logic Apps
7 4 (1.48%) Azure Service Bus
7 4 (1.48%) Power Automate
7 4 (1.48%) PowerApps
8 3 (1.11%) GCP
8 3 (1.11%) npm
8 3 (1.11%) Yarn
9 2 (0.74%) SaaS
10 1 (0.37%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.37%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (0.37%) Azure Machine Learning
10 1 (0.37%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.22%) TCP/IP
2 4 (1.48%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (15.19%) Data Lake
2 40 (14.81%) Amazon Athena
2 40 (14.81%) Apache Arrow
2 40 (14.81%) Apache Iceberg
2 40 (14.81%) Apache Ignite
2 40 (14.81%) Dremio
3 27 (10.00%) SQL Server
4 21 (7.78%) PostgreSQL
5 17 (6.30%) Power BI
6 10 (3.70%) NoSQL
7 7 (2.59%) Relational Database
7 7 (2.59%) Tableau
8 6 (2.22%) Redis
9 4 (1.48%) KDB
10 3 (1.11%) Big Data
10 3 (1.11%) Power Query
11 2 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.74%) DB2
11 2 (0.74%) MongoDB
11 2 (0.74%) MS Access
Development Applications
1 14 (5.19%) JIRA
2 9 (3.33%) Git
3 8 (2.96%) Octopus Deploy
4 5 (1.85%) Jenkins
5 4 (1.48%) GitLab
6 3 (1.11%) IntelliJ
6 3 (1.11%) Maven
6 3 (1.11%) webpack
7 2 (0.74%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.74%) Gradle
7 2 (0.74%) JUnit
7 2 (0.74%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.37%) Crucible
8 1 (0.37%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.37%) Hudson
General
1 215 (79.63%) Finance
2 158 (58.52%) Banking
3 144 (53.33%) Front Office
4 119 (44.07%) Investment Banking
5 78 (28.89%) Social Skills
6 34 (12.59%) Analytical Skills
7 20 (7.41%) Financial Institution
8 8 (2.96%) Back Office
9 6 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.11%) Law
10 3 (1.11%) Legal
10 3 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.37%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.37%) Documentation Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Prime Brokerage
12 1 (0.37%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 93 (34.44%) Developer
2 82 (30.37%) Senior
3 76 (28.15%) Analyst
4 56 (20.74%) Business Analyst
5 42 (15.56%) Software Engineer
6 41 (15.19%) Java Engineer
6 41 (15.19%) Java Software Engineer
7 40 (14.81%) AWS Engineer
7 40 (14.81%) AWS Software Engineer
7 40 (14.81%) Python Engineer
7 40 (14.81%) Python Software Engineer
8 39 (14.44%) Senior Java Engineer
8 39 (14.44%) Senior Java Software Engineer
8 39 (14.44%) Senior Software Engineer
9 30 (11.11%) Senior Developer
10 28 (10.37%) Java Developer
11 19 (7.04%) AWS Developer
11 19 (7.04%) Kafka Developer
11 19 (7.04%) PostgreSQL Developer
11 19 (7.04%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (15.19%) NumPy
1 41 (15.19%) Pandas
1 41 (15.19%) Protocol Buffers
2 40 (14.81%) gRPC
2 40 (14.81%) SciPy
3 24 (8.89%) Kafka
4 17 (6.30%) FIX Protocol
5 16 (5.93%) .NET
6 10 (3.70%) React
7 9 (3.33%) REST
8 8 (2.96%) Middleware
9 6 (2.22%) CSS
9 6 (2.22%) Spring
10 5 (1.85%) FpML
10 5 (1.85%) RabbitMQ
10 5 (1.85%) XML
11 4 (1.48%) .NET Core
11 4 (1.48%) .NET Framework
12 3 (1.11%) HTML
12 3 (1.11%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 104 (38.52%) Fixed Income
2 96 (35.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 85 (31.48%) Equities
4 56 (20.74%) Hedge funds
5 40 (14.81%) Pricing Data
6 32 (11.85%) Equity Derivative
7 28 (10.37%) Market Risk
8 19 (7.04%) Management Information System
9 18 (6.67%) Distributed Systems
10 17 (6.30%) Onboarding
10 17 (6.30%) Product Ownership
11 14 (5.19%) Algorithms
12 11 (4.07%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (4.07%) Interest Rate Derivative
13 10 (3.70%) Cloud Native
13 10 (3.70%) Credit Derivative
13 10 (3.70%) Credit Risk
13 10 (3.70%) Data Structures
14 8 (2.96%) OTC Derivatives
15 7 (2.59%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 17 (6.30%) Linux
2 8 (2.96%) Unix
3 7 (2.59%) Windows
4 1 (0.37%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 121 (44.81%) Agile
2 56 (20.74%) Asset Management
3 53 (19.63%) Risk Management
4 51 (18.89%) Investment Management
4 51 (18.89%) Software Engineering
5 49 (18.15%) Analytics
6 46 (17.04%) Mathematics
7 35 (12.96%) Problem-Solving
8 31 (11.48%) Business Analysis
9 27 (10.00%) Business Intelligence
10 26 (9.63%) CI/CD
10 26 (9.63%) Scrum
10 26 (9.63%) Stakeholder Management
11 25 (9.26%) Computer Science
12 24 (8.89%) TDD
13 22 (8.15%) Physics
14 21 (7.78%) User Acceptance Testing
15 20 (7.41%) Data Pipeline
15 20 (7.41%) DevOps
16 19 (7.04%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 130 (48.15%) Python
2 94 (34.81%) SQL
3 84 (31.11%) Java
4 47 (17.41%) JavaScript
4 47 (17.41%) TypeScript
5 42 (15.56%) C#
6 36 (13.33%) C++
7 6 (2.22%) VBA
8 4 (1.48%) PowerShell
9 2 (0.74%) Rust
9 2 (0.74%) Scala
10 1 (0.37%) Bash
10 1 (0.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.37%) Perl
10 1 (0.37%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.37%) VC++
Qualifications
1 43 (15.93%) Degree
2 19 (7.04%) Master's Degree
3 14 (5.19%) Computer Science Degree
4 10 (3.70%) PhD
5 8 (2.96%) Numerate Degree
6 3 (1.11%) PMI Certification
6 3 (1.11%) PMP
7 1 (0.37%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (6.30%) MiFID
2 11 (4.07%) QA
3 9 (3.33%) Data Quality
4 8 (2.96%) EMIR
5 7 (2.59%) Basel III
6 6 (2.22%) GDPR
7 4 (1.48%) SLA
8 3 (1.11%) PMO
9 2 (0.74%) COREP
9 2 (0.74%) Dodd-Frank
9 2 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.37%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.37%) IFRS
10 1 (0.37%) ISO 20022
10 1 (0.37%) SEPA
10 1 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 3 (1.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (1.48%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.11%) Ansible
2 3 (1.11%) Thomson Reuters DACS
3 1 (0.37%) Grafana
3 1 (0.37%) HP ALM
3 1 (0.37%) Terraform
3 1 (0.37%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 17 (6.30%) Microsoft
2 14 (5.19%) Calypso
3 12 (4.44%) Murex
4 11 (4.07%) BISAM
5 10 (3.70%) Bloomberg
5 10 (3.70%) Charles River
5 10 (3.70%) Oracle
6 7 (2.59%) Databricks
6 7 (2.59%) SimCorp
6 7 (2.59%) Sophis
7 5 (1.85%) Reuters
8 4 (1.48%) Lotus
8 4 (1.48%) Portware
8 4 (1.48%) Sybase
9 3 (1.11%) Atlassian
9 3 (1.11%) ION Trading
9 3 (1.11%) NYFIX
9 3 (1.11%) Refinitiv
9 3 (1.11%) Salesforce
10 1 (0.37%) OpenAI