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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 357 209 246
Rank change year-on-year -148 +37 +4
Contract jobs citing Derivative 233 382 416
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 1.20% 0.99%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.83% 3.72% 3.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 174 293 391
10th Percentile £478 £519 £550
25th Percentile £603 £638 £600
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £729 £725 £700
Median % change year-on-year +0.52% +3.57% -1.58%
75th Percentile £988 £888 £800
90th Percentile £1,000 £938 £869
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £325 £575
% change year-on-year +61.54% -43.48% -6.12%
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 12,709 10,260 13,073
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.26% 32.22% 30.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,011 6,098 8,616
10th Percentile £276 £263 £263
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £533 £545
Median % change year-on-year -6.15% -2.25% -1.80%
75th Percentile £625 £661 £660
90th Percentile £738 £775 £761
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 611 320 558
10th Percentile £14.25 £18.14 £15.42
25th Percentile £18.22 £23.52 £18.93
Median hourly rate £27.21 £34.25 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.55% -8.67% +56.25%
75th Percentile £60.75 £64.81 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.90 £75.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.21 £32.50 £41.37
% change year-on-year -16.28% -21.43% +95.12%

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 15 January 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 15 January 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 -131 225 £750 +3.45% 33
London -86 216 £750 +3.45% 27
Work from Home -113 70 £750 -3.23% 14
UK excluding London -66 12 £525 +61.54% 14
Scotland +7 3 £448 -
Northern Ireland -12 3 £320 -0.78%
North of England -39 3 £525 -12.50% 2
East of England - 3 £681 -
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 17 (7.30%) Apache
1 17 (7.30%) Apache Airflow
2 9 (3.86%) Apache Spark
3 8 (3.43%) Confluence
4 4 (1.72%) HCL Notes
4 4 (1.72%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.86%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.43%) IIS
6 1 (0.43%) MQSeries
6 1 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.43%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (10.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.43%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (2.15%) Aladdin
1 5 (2.15%) Temenos T24
2 3 (1.29%) Bloomberg TOMS
3 2 (0.86%) Algo Collateral
3 2 (0.86%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (0.86%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 1 (0.43%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.43%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.43%) ION MarketView
4 1 (0.43%) Loan IQ
4 1 (0.43%) Oracle FAH
4 1 (0.43%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.43%) Summit
4 1 (0.43%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 52 (22.32%) AWS
2 25 (10.73%) Azure
3 20 (8.58%) Snowflake
4 17 (7.30%) dbt
5 12 (5.15%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.58%) GCP
6 6 (2.58%) Serverless
7 5 (2.15%) Amazon S3
7 5 (2.15%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (1.72%) Power Automate
8 4 (1.72%) PowerApps
9 3 (1.29%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (1.29%) npm
9 3 (1.29%) SaaS
9 3 (1.29%) Yarn
10 2 (0.86%) OpenShift
11 1 (0.43%) IaaS
11 1 (0.43%) OCI
11 1 (0.43%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (3.00%) FIX Connectivity
2 4 (1.72%) Multicast
3 1 (0.43%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (8.58%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (7.73%) Data Lake
3 17 (7.30%) Amazon Athena
3 17 (7.30%) Apache Arrow
3 17 (7.30%) Apache Iceberg
3 17 (7.30%) Apache Ignite
3 17 (7.30%) Dremio
3 17 (7.30%) SQL Server
4 12 (5.15%) Power BI
5 8 (3.43%) Redis
6 4 (1.72%) Big Data
6 4 (1.72%) KDB
6 4 (1.72%) NoSQL
6 4 (1.72%) Tableau
7 3 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.86%) Data Mart
8 2 (0.86%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.86%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.43%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.43%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 18 (7.73%) Git
2 11 (4.72%) JIRA
3 10 (4.29%) Jenkins
4 6 (2.58%) Octopus Deploy
4 6 (2.58%) Visual Studio
5 5 (2.15%) GitLab
5 5 (2.15%) Maven
6 4 (1.72%) IntelliJ
7 3 (1.29%) Bitbucket
7 3 (1.29%) Gradle
7 3 (1.29%) webpack
8 2 (0.86%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.86%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.43%) Crucible
9 1 (0.43%) TeamCity
General
1 181 (77.68%) Finance
2 136 (58.37%) Banking
3 95 (40.77%) Front Office
4 90 (38.63%) Investment Banking
5 69 (29.61%) Social Skills
6 31 (13.30%) Analytical Skills
7 27 (11.59%) Financial Institution
8 9 (3.86%) Back Office
9 4 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.72%) Legal
9 4 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.29%) Spanish Language
10 3 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.86%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.43%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.43%) Japanese Language
12 1 (0.43%) Law
12 1 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 106 (45.49%) Developer
2 63 (27.04%) Senior
3 43 (18.45%) Analyst
4 37 (15.88%) Java Developer
5 32 (13.73%) Senior Developer
6 26 (11.16%) Business Analyst
7 21 (9.01%) Senior Java Developer
8 19 (8.15%) Java Engineer
9 18 (7.73%) Analytics Developer
9 18 (7.73%) AWS Developer
9 18 (7.73%) Java Software Engineer
9 18 (7.73%) Kafka Developer
9 18 (7.73%) PostgreSQL Developer
9 18 (7.73%) Software Engineer
10 17 (7.30%) AWS Engineer
10 17 (7.30%) AWS Software Engineer
10 17 (7.30%) Python Engineer
10 17 (7.30%) Python Software Engineer
11 16 (6.87%) Senior Java Engineer
11 16 (6.87%) Senior Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (10.30%) Kafka
2 20 (8.58%) NumPy
2 20 (8.58%) Pandas
2 20 (8.58%) SciPy
3 18 (7.73%) FIX Protocol
3 18 (7.73%) Protocol Buffers
4 17 (7.30%) gRPC
5 13 (5.58%) .NET
6 12 (5.15%) React
7 10 (4.29%) RESTful
8 9 (3.86%) Dask
9 7 (3.00%) REST
9 7 (3.00%) Spring
10 6 (2.58%) CSS
10 6 (2.58%) HTML
11 4 (1.72%) XML
12 3 (1.29%) Middleware
12 3 (1.29%) Redux
12 3 (1.29%) scikit-learn
12 3 (1.29%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 84 (36.05%) Equities
2 63 (27.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 55 (23.61%) Fixed Income
4 31 (13.30%) Equity Derivative
5 26 (11.16%) Hedge funds
6 24 (10.30%) Market Risk
7 20 (8.58%) Algorithms
8 18 (7.73%) Management Information System
9 17 (7.30%) Distributed Systems
9 17 (7.30%) Pricing Data
10 12 (5.15%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (4.72%) Cloud Native
11 11 (4.72%) Product Ownership
12 10 (4.29%) Distributed Computing
12 10 (4.29%) Interest Rate Derivative
12 10 (4.29%) TWAP
12 10 (4.29%) VWAP
13 9 (3.86%) Onboarding
14 8 (3.43%) Credit Risk
15 7 (3.00%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 17 (7.30%) Linux
2 8 (3.43%) Windows
3 6 (2.58%) Unix
4 3 (1.29%) Debian
4 3 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.29%) Ubuntu
4 3 (1.29%) VMS
5 2 (0.86%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (30.47%) Agile
2 60 (25.75%) Risk Management
3 43 (18.45%) Mathematics
4 38 (16.31%) Analytics
5 35 (15.02%) CI/CD
5 35 (15.02%) Problem-Solving
6 32 (13.73%) TDD
7 29 (12.45%) Software Engineering
8 25 (10.73%) DevOps
8 25 (10.73%) Low Latency
9 23 (9.87%) Asset Management
9 23 (9.87%) Computer Science
9 23 (9.87%) Stakeholder Management
10 22 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
10 22 (9.44%) Design Patterns
10 22 (9.44%) Electronic Trading
11 21 (9.01%) Physics
11 21 (9.01%) Quantitative Finance
12 20 (8.58%) Validation
13 19 (8.15%) Multithreading
Programming Languages
1 98 (42.06%) Python
2 68 (29.18%) Java
3 62 (26.61%) SQL
4 40 (17.17%) C++
5 35 (15.02%) C#
6 26 (11.16%) JavaScript
7 25 (10.73%) TypeScript
8 6 (2.58%) VBA
9 4 (1.72%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.86%) Perl
10 2 (0.86%) Rust
10 2 (0.86%) Scala
11 1 (0.43%) Bash
11 1 (0.43%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.43%) R
11 1 (0.43%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.43%) VC++
Qualifications
1 46 (19.74%) Degree
2 20 (8.58%) Master's Degree
3 15 (6.44%) Numerate Degree
4 11 (4.72%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.29%) PhD
6 3 (1.29%) PMI Certification
6 3 (1.29%) PMP
7 2 (0.86%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.43%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.58%) EMIR
1 13 (5.58%) QA
2 8 (3.43%) MiFID
3 6 (2.58%) Data Quality
3 6 (2.58%) IFRS
3 6 (2.58%) SLA
4 4 (1.72%) IFRS 9
5 3 (1.29%) IAS 32
5 3 (1.29%) IAS 39
6 2 (0.86%) Basel III
6 2 (0.86%) GAAP
6 2 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.43%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.43%) FINRA
7 1 (0.43%) GDPR
7 1 (0.43%) IFRS 17
7 1 (0.43%) PMO
7 1 (0.43%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 7 (3.00%) Docker
2 3 (1.29%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 8 (3.43%) Ansible
2 7 (3.00%) Kubernetes
3 4 (1.72%) Grafana
4 3 (1.29%) Podman
4 3 (1.29%) Terraform
4 3 (1.29%) Thomson Reuters DACS
5 2 (0.86%) ITRS Geneos
5 2 (0.86%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.43%) Control-M
6 1 (0.43%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 16 (6.87%) Bloomberg
1 16 (6.87%) Murex
2 11 (4.72%) Oracle
3 10 (4.29%) Microsoft
4 7 (3.00%) ION Trading
5 6 (2.58%) Calypso
5 6 (2.58%) Sophis
5 6 (2.58%) Tradeweb
6 5 (2.15%) jBASE
6 5 (2.15%) Temenos
7 4 (1.72%) Lotus
8 3 (1.29%) Charles River
8 3 (1.29%) Databricks
8 3 (1.29%) IBM
8 3 (1.29%) NVIDIA
8 3 (1.29%) NYFIX
8 3 (1.29%) Refinitiv
8 3 (1.29%) Splunk
9 2 (0.86%) AppDynamics
9 2 (0.86%) Reuters