Cost Optimisation Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Cost Optimization
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring Cost Optimisation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 109 114 132
Rank change year-on-year +5 +18 +54
Contract jobs citing Cost Optimisation 18 6 3
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.98% 0.30% 0.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.08% 0.32% 0.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 7 2 3
10th Percentile £401 - £453
25th Percentile £406 £513 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £625
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -16.00% +2.88%
75th Percentile £663 £538 £838
90th Percentile £753 - £928
Central London median daily rate £523 £525 £595
% change year-on-year -0.48% -11.76% -2.06%

All Process & Methodology Skills
City of London

Cost Optimisation 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 in the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,663 1,873 2,199
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 90.33% 92.13% 89.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,167 1,140 1,573
10th Percentile £343 £363 £363
25th Percentile £423 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £543 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.65% - -2.13%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £763 £788 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £570
% change year-on-year -4.35% +0.88% -0.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 14 10
10th Percentile £20.18 £15.35 £17.00
25th Percentile £22.18 £22.00 £17.48
Median hourly rate £31.00 £40.50 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -23.46% +54.29% -30.46%
75th Percentile £42.47 £107.13 £44.56
90th Percentile £51.88 £129.85 £74.13
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year -25.40% +27.27% -21.43%

Cost Optimisation
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Cost Optimisation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Cost Optimisation job vacancy trend in the City of London

Cost Optimisation
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Cost Optimisation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Cost Optimisation

Cost Optimisation
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cost Optimisation in the City of London over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Cost Optimisation in the City of London

Cost Optimisation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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 2 (11.11%) Apache Airflow
1 2 (11.11%) Apache Spark
2 1 (5.56%) Apache
2 1 (5.56%) Confluence
2 1 (5.56%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (5.56%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (5.56%) Microsoft Project
1 1 (5.56%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 6 (33.33%) Azure
2 4 (22.22%) AWS
2 4 (22.22%) GCP
3 3 (16.67%) Azure DevOps
3 3 (16.67%) IaaS
4 2 (11.11%) dbt
4 2 (11.11%) Microsoft 365
4 2 (11.11%) Power Platform
4 2 (11.11%) SaaS
5 1 (5.56%) Amazon EKS
5 1 (5.56%) Amazon Kinesis
5 1 (5.56%) Amazon SageMaker
5 1 (5.56%) Asana
5 1 (5.56%) Azure Monitor
5 1 (5.56%) Cloudflare
5 1 (5.56%) Fivetran
5 1 (5.56%) GitHub
5 1 (5.56%) GitHub Actions
5 1 (5.56%) PaaS
5 1 (5.56%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 2 (11.11%) Network Security
1 2 (11.11%) Softphone
1 2 (11.11%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (11.11%) Power BI
1 2 (11.11%) Tableau
2 1 (5.56%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (5.56%) Couchbase
2 1 (5.56%) Data Lake
2 1 (5.56%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (5.56%) Delta Lake
2 1 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (5.56%) Redis
Development Applications
1 1 (5.56%) JIRA
1 1 (5.56%) MLflow
General
1 12 (66.67%) Finance
2 3 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
2 3 (16.67%) Social Skills
2 3 (16.67%) Telecoms
3 2 (11.11%) Banking
3 2 (11.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 2 (11.11%) Influencing Skills
3 2 (11.11%) Manufacturing
4 1 (5.56%) Electronics
4 1 (5.56%) Financial Institution
4 1 (5.56%) Marketing
4 1 (5.56%) Pharmaceutical
4 1 (5.56%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 4 (22.22%) Category Manager
1 4 (22.22%) Information Security Manager
1 4 (22.22%) Security Manager
2 3 (16.67%) Architect
2 3 (16.67%) IT Manager
2 3 (16.67%) IT Security Manager
2 3 (16.67%) Lead
3 2 (11.11%) Azure Architect
3 2 (11.11%) Cloud Architect
3 2 (11.11%) Data Engineer
3 2 (11.11%) Migration Architect
4 1 (5.56%) Cloud Engineer
4 1 (5.56%) Cybersecurity Manager
4 1 (5.56%) DevOps Engineer
4 1 (5.56%) Head of Operations
4 1 (5.56%) Head of Technical Operations
4 1 (5.56%) Machine Learning Engineer
4 1 (5.56%) Senior
4 1 (5.56%) Senior Data Engineer
4 1 (5.56%) Threat Intelligence Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (11.11%) .NET
1 2 (11.11%) Blazor
2 1 (5.56%) Middleware
2 1 (5.56%) NumPy
2 1 (5.56%) Pandas
2 1 (5.56%) PyTorch
2 1 (5.56%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 3 (16.67%) Cloud Native
2 2 (11.11%) Hedge funds
2 2 (11.11%) iPad
2 2 (11.11%) Video Conferencing
3 1 (5.56%) Culture of Ownership
3 1 (5.56%) Cyber Threat
3 1 (5.56%) Data Centre
3 1 (5.56%) Hybrid Cloud
3 1 (5.56%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 2 (11.11%) Windows
1 2 (11.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (33.33%) DevOps
1 6 (33.33%) Problem-Solving
1 6 (33.33%) Stakeholder Management
2 5 (27.78%) Cybersecurity
2 5 (27.78%) FinOps
2 5 (27.78%) Infrastructure as Code
3 4 (22.22%) CI/CD
3 4 (22.22%) Decision-Making
3 4 (22.22%) Information Security
3 4 (22.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 3 (16.67%) Analytics
4 3 (16.67%) Business Intelligence
4 3 (16.67%) Cloud Operations
4 3 (16.67%) Data Pipeline
4 3 (16.67%) Disaster Recovery
4 3 (16.67%) Migration
4 3 (16.67%) Software Engineering
5 2 (11.11%) Performance Tuning
5 2 (11.11%) Translating Business Requirements
5 2 (11.11%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 3 (16.67%) Python
1 3 (16.67%) SQL
2 2 (11.11%) C#
3 1 (5.56%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 3 (16.67%) Azure Certification
1 3 (16.67%) Degree
2 1 (5.56%) Computer Science Degree
2 1 (5.56%) DV Cleared
2 1 (5.56%) Master's Degree
2 1 (5.56%) Microsoft Certification
2 1 (5.56%) SC Cleared
2 1 (5.56%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (11.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
2 1 (5.56%) Accessibility
2 1 (5.56%) Data Quality
2 1 (5.56%) GRC
System Software
1 2 (11.11%) Active Directory
1 2 (11.11%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (22.22%) Terraform
2 1 (5.56%) Kubernetes
2 1 (5.56%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 6 (33.33%) Microsoft
2 5 (27.78%) Ariba
3 2 (11.11%) DevExpress
3 2 (11.11%) Google
3 2 (11.11%) Polycom
3 2 (11.11%) VMware
4 1 (5.56%) Databricks
4 1 (5.56%) New Relic
4 1 (5.56%) Rollbar
4 1 (5.56%) SAP
4 1 (5.56%) ServiceNow