High-Frequency Trading Contract Job Trends

High-Frequency Trading
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring High-Frequency Trading skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 572 529 596
Rank change year-on-year -43 +67 +143
Contract jobs citing High-Frequency Trading 14 6 7
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.038% 0.018% 0.016%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.043% 0.020% 0.018%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 4 6
10th Percentile £424 £711 £800
25th Percentile £456 £728 £825
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £623 £775 £850
Median % change year-on-year -19.68% -8.82% +40.21%
75th Percentile £678 £833 £913
90th Percentile £721 £869 £938
UK excluding London median daily rate - - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

High-Frequency Trading falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 32,432 29,959 38,773
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.29% 88.23% 88.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,397 18,286 25,908
10th Percentile £300 £307 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £743 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,093 972 1,488
10th Percentile £14.51 £15.62 £14.33
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £18.99
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.84
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -25.86% +25.25%
75th Percentile £50.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £31.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -26.98% -29.21% +39.26%

High-Frequency Trading
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing High-Frequency Trading relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

High-Frequency Trading job vacancy trend in the UK

High-Frequency Trading
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing High-Frequency Trading.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing High-Frequency Trading

High-Frequency Trading
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing High-Frequency Trading over the 6 months to 21 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for High-Frequency Trading in the UK

High-Frequency Trading
Top 3 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing High-Frequency Trading within the UK over the 6 months to 21 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
London +3 14 £623 -19.68% 8
England -22 14 £623 -19.68% 8
Work from Home - 2 £416 - 4

High-Frequency Trading
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:

Communications & Networking
1 1 (7.14%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (57.14%) Elasticsearch
2 2 (14.29%) KDB
3 1 (7.14%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 8 (57.14%) Jenkins
2 1 (7.14%) Git
2 1 (7.14%) Gradle
2 1 (7.14%) Jaeger
2 1 (7.14%) Maven
General
1 11 (78.57%) Finance
2 6 (42.86%) Banking
2 6 (42.86%) Investment Banking
3 5 (35.71%) Social Skills
4 3 (21.43%) Front Office
5 1 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (7.14%) Financial Institution
5 1 (7.14%) Games
Job Titles
1 5 (35.71%) Applications Engineer
2 4 (28.57%) Developer
3 3 (21.43%) Java Developer
4 2 (14.29%) Senior
4 2 (14.29%) Senior Developer
5 1 (7.14%) Applications Support
5 1 (7.14%) Applications Support Engineer
5 1 (7.14%) Data Engineer
5 1 (7.14%) Developer/Software Engineer
5 1 (7.14%) Electronic Trading Developer
5 1 (7.14%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
5 1 (7.14%) KDB Developer
5 1 (7.14%) Low Latency Java Developer
5 1 (7.14%) Monitoring Engineer
5 1 (7.14%) Network Monitoring Engineer
5 1 (7.14%) Senior Java Developer
5 1 (7.14%) Senior Software Developer
5 1 (7.14%) Senior Software Engineer
5 1 (7.14%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 1 (7.14%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (71.43%) FIX Protocol
2 8 (57.14%) Elastic Stack
3 4 (28.57%) JSON
3 4 (28.57%) REST
3 4 (28.57%) Ultra Messaging
3 4 (28.57%) XML
4 1 (7.14%) Loki
4 1 (7.14%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 9 (64.29%) Cloud Native
2 8 (57.14%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (50.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 6 (42.86%) Fixed Income
5 5 (35.71%) Algorithms
6 4 (28.57%) Replication
7 1 (7.14%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (7.14%) Derivative
7 1 (7.14%) Equities
7 1 (7.14%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (7.14%) Media Streaming
7 1 (7.14%) Online Games
7 1 (7.14%) TWAP
7 1 (7.14%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 9 (64.29%) Linux
2 1 (7.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (85.71%) Low Latency
2 10 (71.43%) Algorithmic Trading
3 9 (64.29%) Event-Driven
3 9 (64.29%) Event-Driven Architecture
3 9 (64.29%) Observability
4 8 (57.14%) Data Pipeline
4 8 (57.14%) Data Science
4 8 (57.14%) DevOps
4 8 (57.14%) Machine Learning
4 8 (57.14%) RBAC
5 7 (50.00%) Electronic Trading
6 5 (35.71%) CI/CD
6 5 (35.71%) High Availability
6 5 (35.71%) Infrastructure as Code
6 5 (35.71%) Performance Tuning
7 4 (28.57%) Configuration Management
7 4 (28.57%) Data Integration
7 4 (28.57%) Decision-Making
7 4 (28.57%) ETL
7 4 (28.57%) Time Management
Programming Languages
1 10 (71.43%) Python
2 8 (57.14%) PowerShell
3 4 (28.57%) Java
3 4 (28.57%) SQL
4 1 (7.14%) C#
4 1 (7.14%) Go
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (7.14%) QA
System Software
1 8 (57.14%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (64.29%) Kubernetes
2 8 (57.14%) ITRS Geneos
2 8 (57.14%) Kibana
2 8 (57.14%) logstash
3 1 (7.14%) Grafana
3 1 (7.14%) Prometheus
3 1 (7.14%) Terraform
Vendors
1 8 (57.14%) Solace
2 4 (28.57%) TIBCO
3 3 (21.43%) Microsoft
4 1 (7.14%) Splunk