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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 418 281 196
Rank change year-on-year -137 -85 +21
Contract jobs citing Derivative 268 305 495
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.93% 1.25%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.51% 2.67% 4.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 256 429
10th Percentile £450 £537 £600
25th Percentile £600 £620 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £725 £750 £800
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -6.25% +10.34%
75th Percentile £844 £825 £888
90th Percentile £893 £975 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £538 £638
% change year-on-year -6.98% -15.69% -20.31%
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 17,715 11,410 12,149
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.36% 34.79% 30.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,799 7,046 7,801
10th Percentile £320 £300 £300
25th Percentile £420 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £638 £641 £675
90th Percentile £750 £775 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 955 545 657
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.13 £12.28
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.87 £16.85
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.50 £41.25
Median % change year-on-year +49.02% -28.48% +10.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £77.00 £73.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £44.04
% change year-on-year +46.53% -31.88% -2.13%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 31 July 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 -149 246 £725 -3.33% 91
London -77 238 £725 -3.33% 86
Work from Home -103 85 £800 +6.67% 19
UK excluding London -85 25 £500 -6.98% 11
Scotland -3 16 £450 -10.00%
North of England -75 6 £725 +20.23% 4
Yorkshire -49 5 £725 - 1
Northern Ireland -4 2 £625 +25.00% 3
Midlands -53 1 - -
North West -60 1 £198 -67.16% 3
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 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.37%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.49%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 9 (3.36%) Aladdin
2 4 (1.49%) Loan IQ
2 4 (1.49%) Summit
3 3 (1.12%) Advent Geneva
3 3 (1.12%) Orchestrade
4 2 (0.75%) Front Arena
4 2 (0.75%) Global One
5 1 (0.37%) Bloomberg AIM
5 1 (0.37%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 43 (16.04%) AWS
2 38 (14.18%) Azure
3 32 (11.94%) GCP
4 11 (4.10%) ChatGPT
5 9 (3.36%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (2.99%) GitHub
6 8 (2.99%) GitHub Copilot
7 7 (2.61%) Power Platform
8 5 (1.87%) Snowflake
9 4 (1.49%) Azure DevOps
10 3 (1.12%) Amazon S3
10 3 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
10 3 (1.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
10 3 (1.12%) Serverless
11 1 (0.37%) Collibra
11 1 (0.37%) npm
11 1 (0.37%) OpenShift
11 1 (0.37%) SaaS
11 1 (0.37%) Yarn
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.72%) FIX Connectivity
2 8 (2.99%) HTTP
3 1 (0.37%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (9.33%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (7.84%) Relational Database
3 19 (7.09%) Metadata
4 17 (6.34%) MongoDB
5 16 (5.97%) SQL Server
6 13 (4.85%) Redis
7 10 (3.73%) Db2
8 8 (2.99%) RDBMS
8 8 (2.99%) Tableau
9 7 (2.61%) Power BI
10 6 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
11 5 (1.87%) Data Lake
12 4 (1.49%) NoSQL
13 3 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
13 3 (1.12%) KDB
14 2 (0.75%) Crystal Reports
14 2 (0.75%) Kdb+
14 2 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
14 2 (0.75%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 1 (0.37%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 17 (6.34%) JIRA
2 10 (3.73%) Octopus Deploy
3 9 (3.36%) Git
4 8 (2.99%) TeamCity
5 5 (1.87%) ER Studio
5 5 (1.87%) ERwin
5 5 (1.87%) PowerDesigner
6 3 (1.12%) Jenkins
6 3 (1.12%) VTune
7 1 (0.37%) GitLab
7 1 (0.37%) GoogleTest
7 1 (0.37%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.37%) webpack
General
1 179 (66.79%) Finance
2 145 (54.10%) Front Office
3 144 (53.73%) Banking
4 111 (41.42%) Investment Banking
5 68 (25.37%) Social Skills
6 38 (14.18%) Analytical Skills
7 10 (3.73%) Financial Institution
8 9 (3.36%) Back Office
8 9 (3.36%) Legal
8 9 (3.36%) Private Banking
9 4 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.12%) Public Sector
11 1 (0.37%) Agriculture
11 1 (0.37%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.37%) General Ledger
11 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.37%) Legal Technology
11 1 (0.37%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 140 (52.24%) Developer
2 67 (25.00%) Analyst
3 57 (21.27%) Business Analyst
4 44 (16.42%) Python Developer
5 40 (14.93%) Senior
6 36 (13.43%) Java Developer
7 29 (10.82%) C# Developer
7 29 (10.82%) Front Office Developer
8 24 (8.96%) Lead
8 24 (8.96%) Software Engineer
9 20 (7.46%) Electronic Trading Developer
10 19 (7.09%) Lead Developer
11 18 (6.72%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
11 18 (6.72%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
11 18 (6.72%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
11 18 (6.72%) Low Latency Java Developer
12 15 (5.60%) Senior Developer
13 14 (5.22%) Lead Software Engineer
14 12 (4.48%) Lead Software Developer
14 12 (4.48%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (13.43%) React
2 34 (12.69%) FIX Protocol
3 18 (6.72%) Redux
4 16 (5.97%) Node.js
5 12 (4.48%) .NET
5 12 (4.48%) NumPy
6 11 (4.10%) Kafka
6 11 (4.10%) WebSockets
7 10 (3.73%) Django
7 10 (3.73%) FastAPI
8 9 (3.36%) Pandas
8 9 (3.36%) REST
9 8 (2.99%) AngularJS
9 8 (2.99%) RxJava
9 8 (2.99%) Spring
10 6 (2.24%) Flask
10 6 (2.24%) Middleware
11 5 (1.87%) PySpark
11 5 (1.87%) XML
12 4 (1.49%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 77 (28.73%) Equities
2 63 (23.51%) Fixed Income
3 61 (22.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 37 (13.81%) Equity Derivative
5 20 (7.46%) Market Risk
6 19 (7.09%) OTC Derivatives
7 18 (6.72%) TWAP
7 18 (6.72%) VWAP
8 17 (6.34%) Distributed Systems
9 16 (5.97%) Algorithms
9 16 (5.97%) Data Structures
10 14 (5.22%) Credit Risk
10 14 (5.22%) Hedge funds
11 13 (4.85%) Data Protection Act
12 12 (4.48%) Exotic Derivative
13 11 (4.10%) Management Information System
14 8 (2.99%) Cloud Native
14 8 (2.99%) Credit Derivative
14 8 (2.99%) Onboarding
14 8 (2.99%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 18 (6.72%) Unix
2 13 (4.85%) Linux
3 1 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (25.00%) Agile
2 53 (19.78%) Problem-Solving
3 45 (16.79%) Low Latency
4 39 (14.55%) CI/CD
4 39 (14.55%) Multithreading
4 39 (14.55%) Software Engineering
5 38 (14.18%) Electronic Trading
6 35 (13.06%) Asset Management
7 32 (11.94%) User Acceptance Testing
8 31 (11.57%) DevOps
8 31 (11.57%) TDD
9 30 (11.19%) Risk Management
10 29 (10.82%) Algorithmic Trading
10 29 (10.82%) Analytics
10 29 (10.82%) Data Analysis
11 28 (10.45%) Microservices
11 28 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
12 26 (9.70%) AI
12 26 (9.70%) Fintech
13 25 (9.33%) Portfolio Management
Programming Languages
1 117 (43.66%) Python
2 94 (35.07%) SQL
3 79 (29.48%) Java
4 52 (19.40%) C#
5 36 (13.43%) C++
5 36 (13.43%) TypeScript
6 21 (7.84%) JavaScript
7 12 (4.48%) Rust
8 8 (2.99%) PowerShell
9 7 (2.61%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.87%) Perl
11 4 (1.49%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.49%) Scala
12 2 (0.75%) Bash
12 2 (0.75%) F#
12 2 (0.75%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.37%) Korn
13 1 (0.37%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.37%) R
13 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 27 (10.07%) Degree
2 13 (4.85%) Computer Science Degree
3 12 (4.48%) Master's Degree
4 10 (3.73%) PhD
5 1 (0.37%) ISTQB
5 1 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.22%) Data Quality
2 10 (3.73%) QA
3 9 (3.36%) EMIR
3 9 (3.36%) MiFID
4 2 (0.75%) Basel III
4 2 (0.75%) COREP
4 2 (0.75%) Dodd-Frank
4 2 (0.75%) FINREP
4 2 (0.75%) GAAP
4 2 (0.75%) IFRS
5 1 (0.37%) ISO 20022
5 1 (0.37%) SLA
System Software
1 17 (6.34%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (2.61%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.12%) ITRS Geneos
3 2 (0.75%) Control-M
4 1 (0.37%) Grafana
4 1 (0.37%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.37%) Terraform
4 1 (0.37%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 23 (8.58%) Murex
2 14 (5.22%) Bloomberg
3 10 (3.73%) Sybase
4 8 (2.99%) Oracle
5 7 (2.61%) Calypso
5 7 (2.61%) Charles River
5 7 (2.61%) IBM
6 3 (1.12%) Advent
6 3 (1.12%) Databricks
6 3 (1.12%) Google
7 2 (0.75%) Microsoft
8 1 (0.37%) Ab Initio
8 1 (0.37%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.37%) Apple
8 1 (0.37%) ION Trading
8 1 (0.37%) NYFIX
8 1 (0.37%) Refinitiv
8 1 (0.37%) Reuters
8 1 (0.37%) SimCorp
8 1 (0.37%) Splunk