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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 382 197 212
Rank change year-on-year -185 +15 +32
Contract jobs citing Derivative 254 399 478
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.53% 1.37% 1.12%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.66% 4.05% 3.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 166 353 431
10th Percentile £450 £525 £551
25th Percentile £581 £638 £650
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £733 £725 £750
Median % change year-on-year +1.03% -3.33% +2.56%
75th Percentile £850 £875 £850
90th Percentile £981 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £404 £638
% change year-on-year +23.76% -36.63% -20.31%

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 15,280 9,849 12,966
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.04% 33.89% 30.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,488 6,289 8,351
10th Percentile £313 £300 £270
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.14% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £670
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £482 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 726 393 901
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.79 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.00 £20.75 £15.17
Median hourly rate £42.60 £32.05 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +32.93% +1.75% +40.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.50 £83.37 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £30.93 £30.00
% change year-on-year +53.70% +3.10% +36.36%

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 May 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 7 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 May 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 -190 235 £733 -2.33% 54
London -111 229 £733 -2.33% 54
Work from Home -135 84 £800 +10.34% 17
UK excluding London -113 18 £500 +23.76% 12
Scotland +6 13 £470 +16.34% 1
East of England - 3 £681 -
Northern Ireland -16 2 £625 +92.31% 2

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 5 (1.97%) Confluence
2 2 (0.79%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 1 (0.39%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.39%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (5.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.57%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (3.15%) Aladdin
2 7 (2.76%) Summit
3 5 (1.97%) Loan IQ
3 5 (1.97%) Temenos T24
4 3 (1.18%) Advent Geneva
5 2 (0.79%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 2 (0.79%) Front Arena
5 2 (0.79%) Global One
5 2 (0.79%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.79%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.39%) Bloomberg AIM
6 1 (0.39%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.39%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 48 (18.90%) AWS
2 37 (14.57%) Azure
3 25 (9.84%) GCP
4 9 (3.54%) ChatGPT
4 9 (3.54%) Power Platform
5 7 (2.76%) Anthropic Claude
6 6 (2.36%) GitHub
6 6 (2.36%) GitHub Copilot
7 5 (1.97%) Amazon S3
7 5 (1.97%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (1.97%) Serverless
8 3 (1.18%) Amazon ECS
8 3 (1.18%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
8 3 (1.18%) SaaS
8 3 (1.18%) Snowflake
9 2 (0.79%) Collibra
9 2 (0.79%) npm
9 2 (0.79%) OpenShift
9 2 (0.79%) Yarn
Communications & Networking
1 18 (7.09%) FIX Connectivity
2 6 (2.36%) HTTP
3 1 (0.39%) RTMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (11.02%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (7.87%) Relational Database
3 18 (7.09%) Metadata
4 12 (4.72%) Redis
5 10 (3.94%) SQL Server
6 9 (3.54%) Power BI
6 9 (3.54%) RDBMS
6 9 (3.54%) Tableau
7 8 (3.15%) DB2
7 8 (3.15%) MongoDB
8 6 (2.36%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (1.57%) Data Lake
10 3 (1.18%) NoSQL
10 3 (1.18%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.79%) Crystal Reports
11 2 (0.79%) Power Query
11 2 (0.79%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 1 (0.39%) Apache Cassandra
12 1 (0.39%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 16 (6.30%) Git
2 12 (4.72%) JIRA
3 9 (3.54%) Octopus Deploy
4 7 (2.76%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.76%) TeamCity
5 4 (1.57%) ER Studio
5 4 (1.57%) ERwin
5 4 (1.57%) PowerDesigner
5 4 (1.57%) Visual Studio
6 3 (1.18%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.79%) GitLab
7 2 (0.79%) Gradle
7 2 (0.79%) Maven
7 2 (0.79%) webpack
8 1 (0.39%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.39%) GoogleTest
8 1 (0.39%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.39%) NUnit
8 1 (0.39%) REST Assured
General
1 169 (66.54%) Finance
2 127 (50.00%) Banking
3 120 (47.24%) Front Office
4 95 (37.40%) Investment Banking
5 66 (25.98%) Social Skills
6 40 (15.75%) Analytical Skills
7 15 (5.91%) Financial Institution
8 11 (4.33%) Back Office
9 7 (2.76%) Legal
10 4 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.18%) Spanish Language
11 3 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.79%) General Ledger
12 2 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.39%) Japanese Language
13 1 (0.39%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.39%) Private Banking
13 1 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 124 (48.82%) Developer
2 59 (23.23%) Analyst
3 49 (19.29%) Business Analyst
4 41 (16.14%) Senior
5 39 (15.35%) Java Developer
6 35 (13.78%) Python Developer
7 24 (9.45%) Lead
8 22 (8.66%) Electronic Trading Developer
9 21 (8.27%) Software Engineer
10 20 (7.87%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
10 20 (7.87%) Senior Developer
11 19 (7.48%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
11 19 (7.48%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
12 18 (7.09%) Low Latency Java Developer
13 16 (6.30%) C# Developer
13 16 (6.30%) Lead Developer
14 13 (5.12%) Lead Software Engineer
14 13 (5.12%) Python Engineer
15 12 (4.72%) Developer/Software Engineer
15 12 (4.72%) Lead Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (14.17%) React
2 31 (12.20%) FIX Protocol
3 19 (7.48%) Redux
4 16 (6.30%) Node.js
5 14 (5.51%) WebSockets
6 13 (5.12%) Kafka
7 11 (4.33%) .NET
8 8 (3.15%) HTML
8 8 (3.15%) RESTful
9 7 (2.76%) AngularJS
9 7 (2.76%) HTML5
9 7 (2.76%) NumPy
9 7 (2.76%) Pandas
9 7 (2.76%) REST
9 7 (2.76%) XML
10 5 (1.97%) CSS
11 4 (1.57%) RxJava
11 4 (1.57%) SciPy
11 4 (1.57%) Spring
12 3 (1.18%) RxJS
Miscellaneous
1 88 (34.65%) Equities
2 54 (21.26%) Fixed Income
3 41 (16.14%) Equity Derivative
4 40 (15.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 25 (9.84%) Market Risk
6 20 (7.87%) Credit Risk
6 20 (7.87%) Distributed Systems
6 20 (7.87%) TWAP
6 20 (7.87%) VWAP
7 18 (7.09%) Algorithms
8 17 (6.69%) Data Protection Act
9 13 (5.12%) Data Structures
9 13 (5.12%) Management Information System
9 13 (5.12%) OTC Derivatives
10 11 (4.33%) Hedge funds
11 8 (3.15%) Reference Data
12 7 (2.76%) Product Ownership
13 6 (2.36%) Credit Derivative
13 6 (2.36%) Exotic Derivative
14 5 (1.97%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 17 (6.69%) Unix
2 9 (3.54%) Linux
3 3 (1.18%) Debian
3 3 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.18%) Ubuntu
3 3 (1.18%) VMS
4 2 (0.79%) Windows
5 1 (0.39%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (25.59%) Agile
2 52 (20.47%) Risk Management
3 44 (17.32%) Low Latency
4 43 (16.93%) Problem-Solving
5 42 (16.54%) Electronic Trading
6 39 (15.35%) TDD
7 36 (14.17%) CI/CD
8 32 (12.60%) Multithreading
9 31 (12.20%) Asset Management
10 30 (11.81%) Software Engineering
10 30 (11.81%) User Acceptance Testing
11 29 (11.42%) Analytics
12 27 (10.63%) Algorithmic Trading
12 27 (10.63%) DevOps
13 25 (9.84%) Mentoring
14 24 (9.45%) Mathematics
14 24 (9.45%) Stakeholder Management
15 23 (9.06%) Design Patterns
15 23 (9.06%) Validation
16 22 (8.66%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 113 (44.49%) Python
2 89 (35.04%) SQL
3 68 (26.77%) Java
4 39 (15.35%) C#
5 37 (14.57%) C++
6 34 (13.39%) TypeScript
7 24 (9.45%) JavaScript
8 9 (3.54%) Rust
9 7 (2.76%) Perl
10 5 (1.97%) PowerShell
10 5 (1.97%) Scala
10 5 (1.97%) Shell Script
11 4 (1.57%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.79%) F#
12 2 (0.79%) R
12 2 (0.79%) VBA
13 1 (0.39%) Bash
13 1 (0.39%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 32 (12.60%) Degree
2 13 (5.12%) Computer Science Degree
3 10 (3.94%) Numerate Degree
4 9 (3.54%) Master's Degree
5 5 (1.97%) PhD
6 2 (0.79%) PMI Certification
6 2 (0.79%) PMP
7 1 (0.39%) CBAP
7 1 (0.39%) FFIEC
7 1 (0.39%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.30%) QA
2 14 (5.51%) Data Quality
3 13 (5.12%) EMIR
4 9 (3.54%) MiFID
5 7 (2.76%) IFRS
6 4 (1.57%) Basel III
6 4 (1.57%) IFRS 9
7 3 (1.18%) IAS 32
7 3 (1.18%) IAS 39
7 3 (1.18%) SLA
8 2 (0.79%) GAAP
9 1 (0.39%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.39%) Dodd-Frank
9 1 (0.39%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.39%) PMO
9 1 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 13 (5.12%) Docker
2 3 (1.18%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 6 (2.36%) Kubernetes
2 5 (1.97%) Ansible
3 4 (1.57%) Grafana
3 4 (1.57%) ITRS Geneos
4 3 (1.18%) Control-M
4 3 (1.18%) Podman
4 3 (1.18%) Prometheus
4 3 (1.18%) Terraform
Vendors
1 20 (7.87%) Murex
2 18 (7.09%) Oracle
3 15 (5.91%) Bloomberg
4 8 (3.15%) Sybase
5 7 (2.76%) Calypso
6 6 (2.36%) Charles River
6 6 (2.36%) IBM
7 5 (1.97%) jBASE
7 5 (1.97%) Temenos
8 4 (1.57%) Google
9 3 (1.18%) Advent
9 3 (1.18%) Apple
9 3 (1.18%) Databricks
9 3 (1.18%) Microsoft
9 3 (1.18%) NVIDIA
10 2 (0.79%) ION Trading
10 2 (0.79%) MarketAxess
10 2 (0.79%) Reuters
10 2 (0.79%) Splunk
10 2 (0.79%) Tradeweb