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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 397 213 260
Rank change year-on-year -184 +47 -5
Contract jobs citing Derivative 245 373 423
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 1.22% 0.94%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.72% 3.64% 3.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 299 378
10th Percentile £513 £500 £550
25th Percentile £613 £638 £610
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £750 £725 £700
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +3.57% -6.67%
75th Percentile £913 £888 £800
90th Percentile £1,000 £938 £854
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £333 £625
% change year-on-year +57.89% -46.80% -21.88%
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 14,235 10,246 13,601
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.33% 33.43% 30.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,956 6,331 8,725
10th Percentile £286 £275 £255
25th Percentile £406 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £765 £753
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 663 350 858
10th Percentile £15.27 £17.45 £12.86
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% +8.33% +33.42%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.80 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £31.76 £28.50
% change year-on-year +5.48% +11.44% +29.55%

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 March 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 7 March 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 -171 236 £750 - 46
London -85 227 £750 - 45
Work from Home -133 79 £800 +10.34% 14
UK excluding London -96 10 £525 +57.89% 10
North of England -67 3 £525 -10.64% 1
East of England - 3 £681 -
Yorkshire - 3 £525 -
Scotland +8 2 £470 +16.34% 1
Northern Ireland -16 2 £315 -3.08%
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 9 (3.67%) Apache Spark
2 8 (3.27%) Confluence
3 4 (1.63%) Apache
3 4 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.82%) WebSphere
5 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.41%) SharePoint
Applications
1 21 (8.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (1.22%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 8 (3.27%) Aladdin
2 5 (2.04%) Loan IQ
2 5 (2.04%) Temenos T24
3 3 (1.22%) Advent Geneva
3 3 (1.22%) Summit
4 2 (0.82%) Algo Collateral
4 2 (0.82%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 2 (0.82%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.82%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.41%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.41%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 58 (23.67%) AWS
2 34 (13.88%) Azure
3 22 (8.98%) GCP
4 10 (4.08%) Snowflake
5 6 (2.45%) Amazon S3
5 6 (2.45%) AWS Lambda
5 6 (2.45%) Power Platform
5 6 (2.45%) Serverless
6 5 (2.04%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (2.04%) SaaS
7 4 (1.63%) dbt
8 3 (1.22%) Amazon ECS
8 3 (1.22%) npm
8 3 (1.22%) OpenShift
8 3 (1.22%) Yarn
9 1 (0.41%) AWS CloudFormation
9 1 (0.41%) AWS CodePipeline
9 1 (0.41%) AWS Step Functions
9 1 (0.41%) Azure Machine Learning
9 1 (0.41%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 13 (5.31%) FIX Connectivity
2 4 (1.63%) Multicast
3 1 (0.41%) RTMP
3 1 (0.41%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (13.47%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (4.90%) Redis
2 12 (4.90%) SQL Server
3 6 (2.45%) Power BI
4 5 (2.04%) NoSQL
5 4 (1.63%) Amazon Athena
5 4 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.63%) Apache Arrow
5 4 (1.63%) Apache Iceberg
5 4 (1.63%) Apache Ignite
5 4 (1.63%) Big Data
5 4 (1.63%) Data Lake
5 4 (1.63%) Dremio
5 4 (1.63%) KDB
5 4 (1.63%) Relational Database
6 3 (1.22%) Metadata
6 3 (1.22%) Tableau
7 2 (0.82%) Apache Cassandra
7 2 (0.82%) Data Mart
7 2 (0.82%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 17 (6.94%) Git
2 11 (4.49%) JIRA
3 10 (4.08%) Jenkins
4 9 (3.67%) Octopus Deploy
5 5 (2.04%) Visual Studio
6 4 (1.63%) GitLab
6 4 (1.63%) Maven
6 4 (1.63%) TeamCity
7 3 (1.22%) Bitbucket
7 3 (1.22%) IntelliJ
7 3 (1.22%) webpack
8 2 (0.82%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.82%) Gradle
9 1 (0.41%) Crucible
9 1 (0.41%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.41%) NUnit
9 1 (0.41%) REST Assured
General
1 177 (72.24%) Finance
2 120 (48.98%) Banking
3 103 (42.04%) Front Office
4 82 (33.47%) Investment Banking
5 74 (30.20%) Social Skills
6 39 (15.92%) Analytical Skills
7 22 (8.98%) Financial Institution
8 7 (2.86%) Back Office
9 4 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.22%) Legal
10 3 (1.22%) Spanish Language
10 3 (1.22%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.82%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.41%) Japanese Language
12 1 (0.41%) Law
12 1 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 119 (48.57%) Developer
2 49 (20.00%) Senior
3 43 (17.55%) Analyst
4 41 (16.73%) Java Developer
5 34 (13.88%) Business Analyst
6 28 (11.43%) Senior Developer
7 24 (9.80%) Lead
8 20 (8.16%) Python Developer
9 19 (7.76%) Senior Java Developer
10 17 (6.94%) Electronic Trading Developer
10 17 (6.94%) Software Engineer
11 16 (6.53%) Analytics Developer
11 16 (6.53%) AWS Developer
11 16 (6.53%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
11 16 (6.53%) Kafka Developer
11 16 (6.53%) Lead Developer
11 16 (6.53%) PostgreSQL Developer
12 15 (6.12%) C# Developer
13 14 (5.71%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
13 14 (5.71%) Low Latency Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (15.10%) React
2 23 (9.39%) Kafka
3 21 (8.57%) FIX Protocol
3 21 (8.57%) Redux
4 16 (6.53%) Node.js
5 14 (5.71%) RESTful
6 12 (4.90%) HTML
7 11 (4.49%) .NET
8 10 (4.08%) Pandas
9 9 (3.67%) CSS
9 9 (3.67%) Dask
9 9 (3.67%) NumPy
10 8 (3.27%) REST
10 8 (3.27%) SciPy
10 8 (3.27%) Spring
11 7 (2.86%) HTML5
11 7 (2.86%) WebSockets
12 5 (2.04%) AngularJS
12 5 (2.04%) Protocol Buffers
13 4 (1.63%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 94 (38.37%) Equities
2 64 (26.12%) Fixed Income
3 46 (18.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 33 (13.47%) Equity Derivative
5 24 (9.80%) Market Risk
6 20 (8.16%) Algorithms
7 17 (6.94%) Management Information System
8 16 (6.53%) TWAP
8 16 (6.53%) VWAP
9 15 (6.12%) Distributed Systems
9 15 (6.12%) Hedge funds
10 13 (5.31%) Cloud Native
11 11 (4.49%) Data Protection Act
12 10 (4.08%) Data Structures
13 9 (3.67%) Credit Risk
13 9 (3.67%) Onboarding
13 9 (3.67%) Product Ownership
14 8 (3.27%) Distributed Computing
15 7 (2.86%) Analytical Mindset
15 7 (2.86%) OTC Derivatives
Operating Systems
1 10 (4.08%) Linux
1 10 (4.08%) Unix
2 3 (1.22%) Debian
2 3 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (1.22%) Ubuntu
2 3 (1.22%) VMS
2 3 (1.22%) Windows
3 1 (0.41%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (34.29%) Agile
2 66 (26.94%) Risk Management
3 43 (17.55%) Problem-Solving
4 38 (15.51%) Mathematics
5 37 (15.10%) Analytics
6 36 (14.69%) Low Latency
6 36 (14.69%) TDD
7 35 (14.29%) CI/CD
8 32 (13.06%) Asset Management
9 31 (12.65%) Electronic Trading
9 31 (12.65%) Software Engineering
10 30 (12.24%) DevOps
11 28 (11.43%) Design Patterns
12 26 (10.61%) Mentoring
12 26 (10.61%) Stakeholder Management
13 25 (10.20%) Computer Science
14 24 (9.80%) Multithreading
15 23 (9.39%) Portfolio Management
15 23 (9.39%) Validation
16 22 (8.98%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 104 (42.45%) Python
2 75 (30.61%) SQL
3 64 (26.12%) Java
4 32 (13.06%) C#
4 32 (13.06%) C++
4 32 (13.06%) TypeScript
5 31 (12.65%) JavaScript
6 4 (1.63%) Shell Script
6 4 (1.63%) VBA
7 3 (1.22%) PowerShell
7 3 (1.22%) Rust
8 2 (0.82%) F#
8 2 (0.82%) Perl
8 2 (0.82%) Scala
9 1 (0.41%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.41%) R
Qualifications
1 46 (18.78%) Degree
2 18 (7.35%) Master's Degree
3 14 (5.71%) Computer Science Degree
3 14 (5.71%) Numerate Degree
4 10 (4.08%) PhD
5 3 (1.22%) ISTQB
5 3 (1.22%) PMI Certification
5 3 (1.22%) PMP
6 1 (0.41%) CBAP
6 1 (0.41%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (6.12%) QA
2 12 (4.90%) EMIR
3 7 (2.86%) Data Quality
3 7 (2.86%) IFRS
3 7 (2.86%) MiFID
4 4 (1.63%) IFRS 9
4 4 (1.63%) SLA
5 3 (1.22%) Basel III
5 3 (1.22%) IAS 32
5 3 (1.22%) IAS 39
6 2 (0.82%) GAAP
6 2 (0.82%) PMO
7 1 (0.41%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.41%) FINRA
7 1 (0.41%) IFRS 17
7 1 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 10 (4.08%) Docker
2 3 (1.22%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 9 (3.67%) Kubernetes
2 7 (2.86%) Ansible
3 4 (1.63%) Grafana
4 3 (1.22%) Podman
4 3 (1.22%) Prometheus
4 3 (1.22%) Terraform
4 3 (1.22%) Thomson Reuters DACS
5 2 (0.82%) ITRS Geneos
6 1 (0.41%) Control-M
Vendors
1 24 (9.80%) Murex
2 20 (8.16%) Bloomberg
3 14 (5.71%) Oracle
4 7 (2.86%) Charles River
5 6 (2.45%) ION Trading
6 5 (2.04%) jBASE
6 5 (2.04%) Temenos
6 5 (2.04%) Tradeweb
7 4 (1.63%) Calypso
7 4 (1.63%) Microsoft
8 3 (1.22%) Advent
8 3 (1.22%) Apple
8 3 (1.22%) Google
8 3 (1.22%) IBM
8 3 (1.22%) NVIDIA
8 3 (1.22%) NYFIX
8 3 (1.22%) Refinitiv
9 2 (0.82%) AppDynamics
9 2 (0.82%) MarketAxess
9 2 (0.82%) SmartStream