Cost Optimisation Contracts

Cost Optimization
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Cost Optimisation skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Cost Optimisation over the 6 months to 28 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 529 648 696
Rank change year-on-year +119 +48 -64
Contract jobs citing Cost Optimisation 65 68 159
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.15% 0.11% 0.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.17% 0.13% 0.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 29 33 107
10th Percentile £370 £425 £445
25th Percentile £500 £475 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £525 £600
Median % change year-on-year +9.52% -12.50% +6.67%
75th Percentile £650 £600 £700
90th Percentile £738 £725 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £663 £538 £558
% change year-on-year +23.26% -3.59% +1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £90.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Cost Optimisation is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,383 53,667 80,409
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.31% 89.90% 90.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,097 37,244 56,431
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% +8.25%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +9.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,426 1,746 1,925
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.25
Median hourly rate £35.00 £37.30 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.17% +49.20% -
75th Percentile £59.44 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.05 £36.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +0.13% +80.00% -8.51%

Cost Optimisation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Cost Optimisation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Cost Optimisation in the UK

Cost Optimisation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Cost Optimisation.

Daily rate trend for Cost Optimisation in the UK

Cost Optimisation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cost Optimisation over the 6 months to 28 April 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Cost Optimisation in the UK

Cost Optimisation
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Cost Optimisation.

Hourly rate trend for Cost Optimisation in the UK

Cost Optimisation
Top 11 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Cost Optimisation within the UK over the 6 months to 28 April 2024. 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 +114 60 £570 +14.00% 47
London +107 48 £550 +10.00% 17
Work from Home +135 34 £550 +10.00% 19
UK excluding London +64 12 £663 +23.26% 29
North of England +34 7 £663 +0.08% 13
North West - 6 £675 - 7
West Midlands +30 3 £350 -26.32% 2
Midlands +26 3 £350 -26.32% 3
Scotland +34 1 - -
Yorkshire +21 1 £625 +28.21% 5
South East +19 1 £675 +22.73% 8

Cost Optimisation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 12 (18.46%) Confluence
2 3 (4.62%) Apache
2 3 (4.62%) nginx
2 3 (4.62%) OpenStack
3 2 (3.08%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 5 (7.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (4.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (3.08%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (1.54%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (4.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (1.54%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 37 (56.92%) Azure
2 30 (46.15%) AWS
3 20 (30.77%) GCP
4 11 (16.92%) PaaS
5 8 (12.31%) Cloud Computing
5 8 (12.31%) IaaS
5 8 (12.31%) Nutanix
5 8 (12.31%) SaaS
6 7 (10.77%) Rubrik
7 3 (4.62%) Amazon Kinesis
8 2 (3.08%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (3.08%) GitHub
9 1 (1.54%) Amazon SageMaker
9 1 (1.54%) Cloud Run
9 1 (1.54%) Entra ID
9 1 (1.54%) Google Data Studio
9 1 (1.54%) Microsoft 365
9 1 (1.54%) Power Platform
9 1 (1.54%) Salesforce Einstein
9 1 (1.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 10 (15.38%) DNS
2 9 (13.85%) Firewall
3 8 (12.31%) DHCP
3 8 (12.31%) TCP/IP
3 8 (12.31%) VLAN
4 7 (10.77%) Kerberos
4 7 (10.77%) NAS
4 7 (10.77%) SAN
5 2 (3.08%) 4G
5 2 (3.08%) 5G
5 2 (3.08%) Intrusion Detection
5 2 (3.08%) Radio Access Network
5 2 (3.08%) WAN
6 1 (1.54%) BGP
6 1 (1.54%) Internet
6 1 (1.54%) LAN
6 1 (1.54%) OSPF
6 1 (1.54%) SD-WAN
6 1 (1.54%) VPN
6 1 (1.54%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (4.62%) Couchbase
1 3 (4.62%) NoSQL
1 3 (4.62%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (3.08%) BigQuery
3 1 (1.54%) Data Lake
3 1 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.54%) Looker
3 1 (1.54%) Power BI
3 1 (1.54%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 13 (20.00%) JIRA
2 10 (15.38%) Git
3 8 (12.31%) Jenkins
4 7 (10.77%) TeamCity
5 2 (3.08%) Bitbucket
5 2 (3.08%) GitLab
6 1 (1.54%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 24 (36.92%) Social Skills
2 19 (29.23%) Finance
3 10 (15.38%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (13.85%) Telecoms
5 5 (7.69%) Presentation Skills
6 4 (6.15%) Manufacturing
7 3 (4.62%) Retail
8 2 (3.08%) Billing
8 2 (3.08%) Dutch Language
8 2 (3.08%) Public Sector
9 1 (1.54%) French Language
9 1 (1.54%) Front Office
9 1 (1.54%) German Language
9 1 (1.54%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 9 (13.85%) Architect
2 8 (12.31%) Cloud Engineer
3 7 (10.77%) Senior
4 6 (9.23%) Consultant
4 6 (9.23%) Project Manager
5 5 (7.69%) Analyst
5 5 (7.69%) Lead
5 5 (7.69%) Solutions Architect
6 4 (6.15%) Senior Consultant
7 3 (4.62%) DevOps Engineer
7 3 (4.62%) FMCG Manager
7 3 (4.62%) SAP Manager
7 3 (4.62%) Technical Manager
7 3 (4.62%) Technical Project Manager
8 2 (3.08%) Cloud Architect
8 2 (3.08%) Cloud Solutions Architect
8 2 (3.08%) Head of Engineering
8 2 (3.08%) Platform Engineer
8 2 (3.08%) Security Manager
8 2 (3.08%) Security Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (10.77%) LDAP
2 3 (4.62%) Elastic Stack
2 3 (4.62%) LAPP Stack
3 2 (3.08%) SailPoint
3 2 (3.08%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 9 (13.85%) Replication
2 8 (12.31%) Public Cloud
3 7 (10.77%) Clustering
4 6 (9.23%) Management Information System
5 4 (6.15%) Cloud Native
6 3 (4.62%) Data Centre
6 3 (4.62%) FMCG
6 3 (4.62%) Product Ownership
7 2 (3.08%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (3.08%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (1.54%) Linux Command Line
8 1 (1.54%) Mobile App
8 1 (1.54%) Onboarding
8 1 (1.54%) Renewable Energy
8 1 (1.54%) Solar Panel
Operating Systems
1 13 (20.00%) Linux
2 9 (13.85%) Windows
3 8 (12.31%) Windows Server
4 7 (10.77%) Oracle Linux
4 7 (10.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (10.77%) Solaris
5 3 (4.62%) CentOS
5 3 (4.62%) Ubuntu
5 3 (4.62%) VMS
6 1 (1.54%) Android
6 1 (1.54%) Apple iOS
6 1 (1.54%) Mac OS
6 1 (1.54%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 18 (27.69%) Agile
2 16 (24.62%) DevOps
3 15 (23.08%) Continuous Improvement
3 15 (23.08%) Problem-Solving
4 13 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 11 (16.92%) Disaster Recovery
5 11 (16.92%) Project Management
6 10 (15.38%) Root Cause Analysis
6 10 (15.38%) Site Reliability Engineering
7 9 (13.85%) Analytics
7 9 (13.85%) FinOps
7 9 (13.85%) High Availability
8 8 (12.31%) Data Security
8 8 (12.31%) DevSecOps
8 8 (12.31%) Vulnerability Management
9 7 (10.77%) Continuous Integration
9 7 (10.77%) Deployment Automation
9 7 (10.77%) Performance Tuning
9 7 (10.77%) Service Catalogue
9 7 (10.77%) Storage Management
Programming Languages
1 12 (18.46%) PowerShell
1 12 (18.46%) Python
2 11 (16.92%) Bash
3 6 (9.23%) Go
4 4 (6.15%) SQL
5 1 (1.54%) LookML
Qualifications
1 11 (16.92%) Azure Certification
2 7 (10.77%) Degree
3 4 (6.15%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (4.62%) AWS Certification
4 3 (4.62%) PMI Certification
4 3 (4.62%) PMP
4 3 (4.62%) SC Cleared
4 3 (4.62%) Security Cleared
5 2 (3.08%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
5 2 (3.08%) CISM
5 2 (3.08%) CISSP
6 1 (1.54%) CCNA
6 1 (1.54%) CCNP
6 1 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (12.31%) GDPR
2 7 (10.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 5 (7.69%) QA
4 3 (4.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (3.08%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (3.08%) NIST
5 2 (3.08%) PCI DSS
6 1 (1.54%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 1 (1.54%) Data Quality
6 1 (1.54%) SLA
System Software
1 21 (32.31%) Docker
2 10 (15.38%) Active Directory
2 10 (15.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (13.85%) Hyper-V
4 4 (6.15%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (1.54%) vCloud
5 1 (1.54%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (1.54%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (1.54%) VMware NSX
5 1 (1.54%) VMware Workstation
5 1 (1.54%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 24 (36.92%) Terraform
2 22 (33.85%) Kubernetes
3 13 (20.00%) Ansible
4 7 (10.77%) EMC NetWorker
4 7 (10.77%) Netcool
4 7 (10.77%) Tivoli
4 7 (10.77%) Tivoli Storage Manager
5 6 (9.23%) Grafana
6 3 (4.62%) Kibana
6 3 (4.62%) Prometheus
6 3 (4.62%) ZABBIX
7 1 (1.54%) Matomo
Vendors
1 24 (36.92%) Microsoft
2 18 (27.69%) VMware
3 8 (12.31%) Cisco
3 8 (12.31%) ServiceNow
4 7 (10.77%) CyberArk
4 7 (10.77%) Dell
4 7 (10.77%) EMC
4 7 (10.77%) HP
4 7 (10.77%) IBM
4 7 (10.77%) Isilon
4 7 (10.77%) Oracle
4 7 (10.77%) Qualys
4 7 (10.77%) Serena
4 7 (10.77%) Splunk
5 4 (6.15%) Google
6 3 (4.62%) SAP
7 2 (3.08%) Atlassian
7 2 (3.08%) Facebook
7 2 (3.08%) Instagram
8 1 (1.54%) Workday