Quantitative Trading Contract Job Trends

Quantitative Trading
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Quantitative Trading skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 574 539 597
Rank change year-on-year -35 +58 +165
Contract jobs citing Quantitative Trading 10 5 8
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.027% 0.015% 0.018%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.031% 0.017% 0.020%
Number of daily rates quoted 3 2 8
10th Percentile £732 £845 £400
25th Percentile £767 £856 £681
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £850 £900 £850
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +5.88% +9.68%
75th Percentile £888 £931 £881
90th Percentile £895 £935 £908
UK excluding London median daily rate - - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Quantitative 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 32,537 30,122 39,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.36% 88.11% 88.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,461 18,405 26,081
10th Percentile £300 £306 £308
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
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 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,095 985 1,517
10th Percentile £14.57 £15.62 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.52 £20.50 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.33
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -24.99% +23.80%
75th Percentile £50.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -27.69% -26.97% +39.06%

Quantitative Trading
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Quantitative Trading job vacancy trend in the UK

Quantitative Trading
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Quantitative Trading.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Quantitative Trading

Quantitative Trading
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Quantitative Trading over the 6 months to 19 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Quantitative Trading in the UK

Quantitative 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 Quantitative Trading within the UK over the 6 months to 19 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 -6 10 £850 -5.56% 6
England -24 10 £850 -5.56% 37
Work from Home +3 5 - - 17

Quantitative 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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (20.00%) AWS
2 1 (10.00%) Azure
Communications & Networking
1 5 (50.00%) FIX Connectivity
2 1 (10.00%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (10.00%) KDB
1 1 (10.00%) Kdb+
1 1 (10.00%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 3 (30.00%) Git
1 3 (30.00%) Gradle
1 3 (30.00%) Maven
2 2 (20.00%) Eclipse
2 2 (20.00%) IntelliJ
General
1 7 (70.00%) Front Office
2 4 (40.00%) Banking
2 4 (40.00%) Investment Banking
3 1 (10.00%) Finance
Job Titles
1 8 (80.00%) Developer
2 7 (70.00%) Java Developer
3 6 (60.00%) Algorithmic Trading Developer
3 6 (60.00%) Java Developer - Algorithmic Trading
4 5 (50.00%) Electronic Trading Developer
4 5 (50.00%) Electronic Trading Java Developer
5 4 (40.00%) Low Latency Java Developer
6 1 (10.00%) Cloud Engineer
6 1 (10.00%) Cloud Security Engineer
6 1 (10.00%) KDB Developer
6 1 (10.00%) Platform Engineer
6 1 (10.00%) Security Engineer
6 1 (10.00%) Senior
6 1 (10.00%) Senior Developer
6 1 (10.00%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (70.00%) FIX Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 7 (70.00%) Equities
2 6 (60.00%) Derivative
2 6 (60.00%) TWAP
2 6 (60.00%) VWAP
3 1 (10.00%) Algorithms
3 1 (10.00%) Data Centre
3 1 (10.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 1 (10.00%) Linux
1 1 (10.00%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (80.00%) Algorithmic Trading
1 8 (80.00%) Low Latency
2 7 (70.00%) Design Patterns
2 7 (70.00%) Multithreading
2 7 (70.00%) TDD
3 6 (60.00%) Electronic Trading
3 6 (60.00%) Garbage Collection
3 6 (60.00%) OO
3 6 (60.00%) Smart Order Routing
3 6 (60.00%) UML
4 2 (20.00%) Agile
4 2 (20.00%) CI/CD
4 2 (20.00%) OOD
4 2 (20.00%) Requirements Gathering
4 2 (20.00%) SDLC
4 2 (20.00%) Unit Testing
5 1 (10.00%) DevSecOps
5 1 (10.00%) High-Frequency Trading
5 1 (10.00%) Performance Optimisation
5 1 (10.00%) Translating Business Requirements
Programming Languages
1 8 (80.00%) Java
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (10.00%) QA
Systems Management
1 2 (20.00%) Ansible
1 2 (20.00%) Terraform
2 1 (10.00%) Kubernetes