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

6 months to
25 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 355 227 247
Rank change year-on-year -128 +20 +9
Contract jobs citing Derivative 245 389 424
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 1.15% 0.98%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.90% 3.58% 3.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 299 393
10th Percentile £499 £519 £550
25th Percentile £600 £638 £609
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £750 £750 £700
Median % change year-on-year - +7.14% -
75th Percentile £975 £881 £801
90th Percentile £1,000 £938 £901
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £325 £575
% change year-on-year +57.69% -43.48% +9.52%
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 12,897 10,852 13,640
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.75% 32.02% 31.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,073 6,485 9,064
10th Percentile £278 £267 £263
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £533 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.25% -3.09% -
75th Percentile £626 £656 £666
90th Percentile £738 £775 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 640 333 502
10th Percentile £13.89 £17.30 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.00 £23.00 £20.06
Median hourly rate £27.00 £33.54 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.50% -21.08% +21.43%
75th Percentile £60.61 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.75 £76.73
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.21 £32.50 £45.11
% change year-on-year -16.28% -27.95% +51.77%

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 25 December 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 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 25 December 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 -126 236 £750 - 85
London -69 228 £750 - 71
Work from Home -109 80 £750 -6.25% 33
UK excluding London -45 13 £513 +57.69% 26
Scotland +8 4 £470 -
Northern Ireland -12 3 £320 -
North of England -50 3 £525 -12.50% 2
East of England - 3 £681 - 1
Yorkshire - 3 £525 -
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 22 (8.98%) Apache
1 22 (8.98%) Apache Airflow
2 9 (3.67%) Apache Spark
3 8 (3.27%) Confluence
4 4 (1.63%) HCL Notes
4 4 (1.63%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.82%) IIS
6 1 (0.41%) MQSeries
6 1 (0.41%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.41%) WebSphere
Applications
1 23 (9.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.41%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (3.27%) Aladdin
2 4 (1.63%) Fidessa
2 4 (1.63%) thinkFolio
3 3 (1.22%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 2 (0.82%) Algo Collateral
4 2 (0.82%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.41%) Endur
5 1 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.41%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.41%) Markit EDM
5 1 (0.41%) Orchestrade
5 1 (0.41%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 57 (23.27%) AWS
2 28 (11.43%) Azure
3 25 (10.20%) Snowflake
4 22 (8.98%) dbt
5 15 (6.12%) Power Platform
6 9 (3.67%) Serverless
7 6 (2.45%) GCP
8 5 (2.04%) Amazon S3
8 5 (2.04%) AWS Lambda
8 5 (2.04%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (2.04%) npm
8 5 (2.04%) Yarn
9 4 (1.63%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 4 (1.63%) Azure Logic Apps
9 4 (1.63%) Azure Service Bus
9 4 (1.63%) Power Automate
9 4 (1.63%) PowerApps
10 3 (1.22%) Amazon ECS
11 2 (0.82%) OpenShift
11 2 (0.82%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.04%) FIX Connectivity
2 4 (1.63%) Multicast
3 1 (0.41%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (9.39%) Data Lake
2 22 (8.98%) Amazon Athena
2 22 (8.98%) Apache Arrow
2 22 (8.98%) Apache Iceberg
2 22 (8.98%) Apache Ignite
2 22 (8.98%) Dremio
3 21 (8.57%) SQL Server
4 20 (8.16%) PostgreSQL
5 15 (6.12%) Power BI
6 6 (2.45%) NoSQL
6 6 (2.45%) Redis
6 6 (2.45%) Tableau
7 4 (1.63%) Big Data
7 4 (1.63%) KDB
8 3 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.82%) Data Mart
9 2 (0.82%) Metadata
9 2 (0.82%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.41%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 17 (6.94%) Git
2 10 (4.08%) Jenkins
2 10 (4.08%) JIRA
3 7 (2.86%) Octopus Deploy
4 6 (2.45%) Visual Studio
5 5 (2.04%) GitLab
5 5 (2.04%) webpack
6 4 (1.63%) Maven
7 3 (1.22%) IntelliJ
8 2 (0.82%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.82%) Gradle
9 1 (0.41%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.41%) Crucible
9 1 (0.41%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.41%) JUnit
9 1 (0.41%) TeamCity
General
1 190 (77.55%) Finance
2 149 (60.82%) Banking
3 106 (43.27%) Front Office
4 104 (42.45%) Investment Banking
5 76 (31.02%) Social Skills
6 35 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
7 27 (11.02%) Financial Institution
8 10 (4.08%) Back Office
9 5 (2.04%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.22%) Legal
11 3 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.22%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.41%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.41%) Law
13 1 (0.41%) Retail
13 1 (0.41%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 102 (41.63%) Developer
2 69 (28.16%) Senior
3 48 (19.59%) Analyst
4 35 (14.29%) Java Developer
5 34 (13.88%) Senior Developer
6 32 (13.06%) Business Analyst
7 24 (9.80%) Java Engineer
8 23 (9.39%) Java Software Engineer
8 23 (9.39%) Software Engineer
9 22 (8.98%) AWS Engineer
9 22 (8.98%) AWS Software Engineer
9 22 (8.98%) Python Engineer
9 22 (8.98%) Python Software Engineer
10 21 (8.57%) Senior Java Developer
10 21 (8.57%) Senior Java Engineer
10 21 (8.57%) Senior Java Software Engineer
10 21 (8.57%) Senior Software Engineer
11 18 (7.35%) Analytics Developer
11 18 (7.35%) AWS Developer
11 18 (7.35%) PostgreSQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (10.20%) NumPy
1 25 (10.20%) Pandas
1 25 (10.20%) SciPy
2 23 (9.39%) Protocol Buffers
3 22 (8.98%) gRPC
3 22 (8.98%) Kafka
4 18 (7.35%) FIX Protocol
5 17 (6.94%) .NET
6 12 (4.90%) React
7 9 (3.67%) Dask
8 8 (3.27%) CSS
8 8 (3.27%) REST
8 8 (3.27%) RESTful
8 8 (3.27%) Spring
9 6 (2.45%) HTML
10 5 (2.04%) RabbitMQ
11 4 (1.63%) .NET Core
11 4 (1.63%) .NET Framework
11 4 (1.63%) XML
12 3 (1.22%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 84 (34.29%) Equities
2 73 (29.80%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 65 (26.53%) Fixed Income
4 33 (13.47%) Hedge funds
5 28 (11.43%) Equity Derivative
6 23 (9.39%) Market Risk
7 22 (8.98%) Pricing Data
8 19 (7.76%) Distributed Systems
9 18 (7.35%) Algorithms
9 18 (7.35%) Management Information System
10 15 (6.12%) Product Ownership
11 14 (5.71%) Cloud Native
12 13 (5.31%) Data Protection Act
13 11 (4.49%) Interest Rate Derivative
14 10 (4.08%) Distributed Computing
14 10 (4.08%) Onboarding
15 8 (3.27%) Analytical Mindset
15 8 (3.27%) Credit Risk
16 7 (2.86%) OTC Derivatives
16 7 (2.86%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 17 (6.94%) Linux
2 7 (2.86%) Unix
2 7 (2.86%) Windows
3 3 (1.22%) Debian
3 3 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.22%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.22%) VMS
4 1 (0.41%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (33.88%) Agile
2 61 (24.90%) Risk Management
3 43 (17.55%) Analytics
3 43 (17.55%) Mathematics
4 37 (15.10%) CI/CD
4 37 (15.10%) Problem-Solving
5 35 (14.29%) Software Engineering
6 29 (11.84%) TDD
7 28 (11.43%) DevOps
8 27 (11.02%) Asset Management
9 26 (10.61%) Stakeholder Management
10 22 (8.98%) Computer Science
10 22 (8.98%) Data Pipeline
10 22 (8.98%) Design Patterns
10 22 (8.98%) Investment Management
11 21 (8.57%) Low Latency
11 21 (8.57%) Physics
12 20 (8.16%) Quantitative Finance
13 19 (7.76%) Multithreading
13 19 (7.76%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 101 (41.22%) Python
2 71 (28.98%) Java
3 69 (28.16%) SQL
4 37 (15.10%) C#
5 36 (14.69%) C++
6 31 (12.65%) JavaScript
7 30 (12.24%) TypeScript
8 6 (2.45%) VBA
9 4 (1.63%) PowerShell
10 3 (1.22%) Perl
11 2 (0.82%) Scala
12 1 (0.41%) Bash
12 1 (0.41%) R
12 1 (0.41%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.41%) VC++
Qualifications
1 45 (18.37%) Degree
2 20 (8.16%) Master's Degree
3 14 (5.71%) Numerate Degree
4 10 (4.08%) Computer Science Degree
4 10 (4.08%) PhD
5 4 (1.63%) PMI Certification
5 4 (1.63%) PMP
6 2 (0.82%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.41%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.71%) EMIR
1 14 (5.71%) MiFID
2 11 (4.49%) QA
3 8 (3.27%) Data Quality
4 7 (2.86%) SLA
5 4 (1.63%) IFRS
6 3 (1.22%) Basel III
6 3 (1.22%) GDPR
6 3 (1.22%) IAS 32
6 3 (1.22%) IAS 39
6 3 (1.22%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.41%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.41%) Dodd-Frank
7 1 (0.41%) FINRA
7 1 (0.41%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.41%) PMO
7 1 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.41%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 7 (2.86%) Docker
2 3 (1.22%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 8 (3.27%) Ansible
2 7 (2.86%) Kubernetes
3 3 (1.22%) Podman
3 3 (1.22%) Thomson Reuters DACS
4 2 (0.82%) Grafana
4 2 (0.82%) ITRS Geneos
5 1 (0.41%) Terraform
5 1 (0.41%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 17 (6.94%) Bloomberg
2 15 (6.12%) Murex
3 11 (4.49%) Microsoft
4 9 (3.67%) Oracle
5 7 (2.86%) Calypso
5 7 (2.86%) ION Trading
6 6 (2.45%) Databricks
6 6 (2.45%) Sophis
6 6 (2.45%) Tradeweb
7 4 (1.63%) Lotus
7 4 (1.63%) Portware
8 3 (1.22%) Atlassian
8 3 (1.22%) Charles River
8 3 (1.22%) NVIDIA
8 3 (1.22%) NYFIX
8 3 (1.22%) Refinitiv
8 3 (1.22%) Reuters
8 3 (1.22%) Splunk
9 2 (0.82%) AppDynamics
9 2 (0.82%) jBASE