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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 428 309 210
Rank change year-on-year -119 -99 -2
Contract jobs citing Derivative 268 275 445
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.83% 1.18%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.42% 2.32% 3.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 159 222 370
10th Percentile £417 £521 £600
25th Percentile £567 £613 £664
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £710 £750 £800
Median % change year-on-year -5.33% -6.25% +14.29%
75th Percentile £788 £825 £888
90th Percentile £878 £988 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £550 £650
% change year-on-year -14.09% -15.38% +10.64%
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 18,873 11,876 11,546
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.37% 35.92% 30.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,278 7,270 6,942
10th Percentile £322 £294 £281
25th Percentile £425 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £535
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -2.80% -2.73%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £672
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,272 602 427
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.80 £15.29
25th Percentile £17.85 £18.87 £22.50
Median hourly rate £36.00 £29.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.14% -42.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £75.06
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £29.27 £57.35
% change year-on-year +28.12% -48.96% +13.09%

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 1 October 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 1 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Derivative in the UK

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 1 October 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 -118 238 £725 -3.33% 385
London -85 230 £710 -5.33% 360
Work from Home -121 67 £753 +0.33% 94
UK excluding London -87 30 £473 -14.09% 68
Scotland -9 20 £402 -23.43% 18
North of England -72 6 £725 +18.46% 6
Yorkshire -37 5 £725 -
Northern Ireland +5 3 £510 -2.86% 18
Midlands -49 1 - - 1
North West -50 1 £198 -67.65% 6
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 (2.24%) Confluence
2 2 (0.75%) Apache
2 2 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 4 (1.49%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 10 (3.73%) Aladdin
2 3 (1.12%) Orchestrade
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle FAH
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.37%) Actimize
4 1 (0.37%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.37%) Front Arena
4 1 (0.37%) Global One
4 1 (0.37%) Markit EDM
4 1 (0.37%) MultiFonds
4 1 (0.37%) SimCorp Dimension
4 1 (0.37%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 24 (8.96%) Azure
2 17 (6.34%) AWS
3 15 (5.60%) GCP
4 10 (3.73%) ChatGPT
5 8 (2.99%) Anthropic Claude
5 8 (2.99%) GitHub
6 7 (2.61%) GitHub Copilot
7 5 (1.87%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (1.49%) Power Platform
8 4 (1.49%) Snowflake
9 3 (1.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
10 2 (0.75%) Amazon S3
10 2 (0.75%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (0.75%) Serverless
11 1 (0.37%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (4.10%) FIX Connectivity
2 8 (2.99%) HTTP
3 2 (0.75%) Multicast
4 1 (0.37%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (6.72%) Relational Database
2 17 (6.34%) MongoDB
3 15 (5.60%) Metadata
4 14 (5.22%) SQL Server
5 9 (3.36%) Db2
6 8 (2.99%) Redis
7 7 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (2.24%) Data Lake
8 6 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
9 5 (1.87%) RDBMS
10 4 (1.49%) KDB
10 4 (1.49%) NoSQL
10 4 (1.49%) Power BI
10 4 (1.49%) Tableau
11 3 (1.12%) Kdb+
12 2 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
13 1 (0.37%) Big Data
13 1 (0.37%) Delta Lake
13 1 (0.37%) Snowflake Schema
13 1 (0.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 19 (7.09%) JIRA
2 8 (2.99%) Git
3 6 (2.24%) Octopus Deploy
4 5 (1.87%) ER Studio
4 5 (1.87%) ERwin
4 5 (1.87%) PowerDesigner
4 5 (1.87%) TeamCity
5 3 (1.12%) Jenkins
5 3 (1.12%) VTune
6 1 (0.37%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.37%) GitLab
6 1 (0.37%) GoogleTest
6 1 (0.37%) Visual Studio
General
1 194 (72.39%) Finance
2 153 (57.09%) Banking
3 137 (51.12%) Front Office
4 103 (38.43%) Investment Banking
5 76 (28.36%) Social Skills
6 40 (14.93%) Analytical Skills
7 19 (7.09%) Financial Institution
8 12 (4.48%) Private Banking
9 11 (4.10%) Back Office
10 8 (2.99%) Legal
11 4 (1.49%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (1.12%) General Ledger
12 3 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (1.12%) Public Sector
13 2 (0.75%) Corporate Banking
14 1 (0.37%) International Banking
14 1 (0.37%) Marketing
14 1 (0.37%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.37%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 118 (44.03%) Developer
2 64 (23.88%) Analyst
3 55 (20.52%) Business Analyst
4 44 (16.42%) Senior
5 34 (12.69%) Python Developer
6 30 (11.19%) Front Office Developer
7 27 (10.07%) C# Developer
8 24 (8.96%) Java Developer
9 19 (7.09%) Quantitative Developer
10 14 (5.22%) Project Manager
11 12 (4.48%) Electronic Trading Developer
11 12 (4.48%) Senior Developer
11 12 (4.48%) Software Engineer
12 11 (4.10%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
12 11 (4.10%) Data Engineer
12 11 (4.10%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
12 11 (4.10%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
12 11 (4.10%) Low Latency Java Developer
12 11 (4.10%) Pricing Developer
13 10 (3.73%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (10.45%) FIX Protocol
2 17 (6.34%) React
3 13 (4.85%) WebSockets
4 11 (4.10%) .NET
4 11 (4.10%) NumPy
5 10 (3.73%) Django
5 10 (3.73%) FastAPI
5 10 (3.73%) Pandas
5 10 (3.73%) REST
6 8 (2.99%) PySpark
6 8 (2.99%) Spring
7 7 (2.61%) Flask
7 7 (2.61%) Kafka
7 7 (2.61%) RxJava
8 6 (2.24%) AngularJS
9 5 (1.87%) Middleware
10 4 (1.49%) Next.js
10 4 (1.49%) RESTful
11 3 (1.12%) gRPC
11 3 (1.12%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 73 (27.24%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 69 (25.75%) Equities
3 57 (21.27%) Fixed Income
4 39 (14.55%) Equity Derivative
5 22 (8.21%) Distributed Systems
6 17 (6.34%) Exotic Derivative
7 16 (5.97%) Algorithms
7 16 (5.97%) OTC Derivatives
8 15 (5.60%) Market Risk
9 13 (4.85%) Credit Risk
9 13 (4.85%) Data Protection Act
9 13 (4.85%) Hedge funds
10 12 (4.48%) Data Structures
10 12 (4.48%) Onboarding
11 11 (4.10%) TWAP
11 11 (4.10%) VWAP
12 10 (3.73%) Management Information System
13 7 (2.61%) Credit Derivative
13 7 (2.61%) Interest Rate Derivative
13 7 (2.61%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 16 (5.97%) Unix
2 14 (5.22%) Linux
3 1 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (20.52%) Problem-Solving
2 45 (16.79%) Stakeholder Management
3 44 (16.42%) Agile
4 40 (14.93%) Analytics
5 37 (13.81%) Low Latency
6 36 (13.43%) CI/CD
7 34 (12.69%) Data Analysis
7 34 (12.69%) Software Engineering
7 34 (12.69%) User Acceptance Testing
8 29 (10.82%) Business Analysis
8 29 (10.82%) Electronic Trading
8 29 (10.82%) Multithreading
8 29 (10.82%) Validation
9 27 (10.07%) Microservices
9 27 (10.07%) Risk Management
10 26 (9.70%) AI
10 26 (9.70%) Data Modelling
11 25 (9.33%) DevOps
11 25 (9.33%) Performance Optimisation
11 25 (9.33%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 103 (38.43%) Python
2 87 (32.46%) SQL
3 69 (25.75%) Java
4 56 (20.90%) C#
5 38 (14.18%) C++
6 19 (7.09%) TypeScript
7 10 (3.73%) Rust
8 8 (2.99%) PowerShell
8 8 (2.99%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.87%) PL/SQL
10 4 (1.49%) JavaScript
10 4 (1.49%) Perl
11 3 (1.12%) Scala
11 3 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.75%) Bash
12 2 (0.75%) C
13 1 (0.37%) Korn
13 1 (0.37%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.37%) R
13 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 24 (8.96%) Degree
2 12 (4.48%) Master's Degree
3 10 (3.73%) PhD
4 7 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (0.75%) CFA
5 2 (0.75%) Numerate Degree
5 2 (0.75%) PMI Certification
5 2 (0.75%) PMP
5 2 (0.75%) Security Cleared
6 1 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (6.34%) Data Quality
2 10 (3.73%) MiFID
3 9 (3.36%) EMIR
4 6 (2.24%) QA
5 3 (1.12%) SLA
6 2 (0.75%) Basel III
6 2 (0.75%) COREP
6 2 (0.75%) Dodd-Frank
6 2 (0.75%) FINREP
6 2 (0.75%) GAAP
6 2 (0.75%) IFRS
7 1 (0.37%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 14 (5.22%) Docker
2 1 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 6 (2.24%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.75%) ITRS Geneos
2 2 (0.75%) Thomson Reuters DACS
3 1 (0.37%) Control-M
3 1 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 20 (7.46%) Murex
2 16 (5.97%) Bloomberg
3 9 (3.36%) Calypso
3 9 (3.36%) Sybase
4 7 (2.61%) Databricks
4 7 (2.61%) Oracle
5 6 (2.24%) IBM
6 5 (1.87%) Charles River
7 3 (1.12%) Google
7 3 (1.12%) Microsoft
7 3 (1.12%) SimCorp
8 2 (0.75%) NYFIX
8 2 (0.75%) Refinitiv
8 2 (0.75%) Tradeweb
9 1 (0.37%) Alteryx
9 1 (0.37%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.37%) eFront
9 1 (0.37%) FIS
9 1 (0.37%) Solace
9 1 (0.37%) Splunk