Performance Tuning Contract Job Trends in the North West

Performance Tuning
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Performance Tuning skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 27 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 96 107
Rank change year-on-year -4 +11 +15
Contract jobs citing Performance Tuning 79 35 18
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 2.01% 1.57% 0.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.43% 1.77% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 49 26 11
10th Percentile £304 £355 £350
25th Percentile £403 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £506 £493
Median % change year-on-year -5.71% +2.61% +23.25%
75th Percentile £550 £625 £588
90th Percentile £588 £775 £638
England median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.96% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £71.00 - -
Median hourly rate £72.00 - -
75th Percentile £73.00 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £38.25 £70.00 £61.60
% change year-on-year -45.36% +13.64% -13.54%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

Performance Tuning 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 North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 3,257 1,977 2,048
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.79% 88.69% 84.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,908 1,283 1,224
10th Percentile £293 £300 £310
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £591 £575 £588
90th Percentile £680 £669 £675
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 134 147
10th Percentile £16.50 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £17.44 £16.06
Median hourly rate £45.50 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +80.91% -28.87% +1.03%
75th Percentile £72.28 £52.50 £53.25
90th Percentile £84.50 £72.50 £70.90
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -

Performance Tuning
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Performance Tuning relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Performance Tuning job vacancy trend in the North West

Performance Tuning
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Performance Tuning.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Performance Tuning

Performance Tuning
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Performance Tuning in the North West over the 6 months to 27 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Performance Tuning in the North West

Performance Tuning
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Performance Tuning.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Performance Tuning

Performance Tuning
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Performance Tuning within the North West region over the 6 months to 27 August 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
Manchester +14 57 £429 +3.75% 21
Cheshire -3 11 £525 +6.71% 5
Merseyside -23 3 £425 -32.00% 2
Lancashire -14 2 £625 +38.97% 4
Cumbria -19 2 £600 -
Performance Tuning
England

Performance Tuning
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 4 (5.06%) SharePoint
2 2 (2.53%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (1.27%) IIS
3 1 (1.27%) NetWeaver
Business Applications
1 4 (5.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (3.80%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (2.53%) Oracle Cash Management
3 2 (2.53%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (2.53%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (2.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 1 (1.27%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (1.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 27 (34.18%) Azure
2 11 (13.92%) Power Platform
3 10 (12.66%) Azure DevOps
4 9 (11.39%) AWS
5 6 (7.59%) Azure Data Factory
5 6 (7.59%) Azure Monitor
6 5 (6.33%) Power Automate
7 4 (5.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 4 (5.06%) GitHub
7 4 (5.06%) Microsoft 365
8 3 (3.80%) GCP
8 3 (3.80%) Serverless
9 2 (2.53%) Akamai
9 2 (2.53%) Amazon ECS
9 2 (2.53%) AWS Fargate
9 2 (2.53%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (2.53%) dbt
9 2 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.53%) OCI
10 1 (1.27%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (10.13%) SSL
2 6 (7.59%) VSAN
3 3 (3.80%) DNS
3 3 (3.80%) NAS
3 3 (3.80%) SAN
3 3 (3.80%) Skype
4 2 (2.53%) Firewall
4 2 (2.53%) HTTP
4 2 (2.53%) TCP/IP
5 1 (1.27%) DHCP
5 1 (1.27%) Fibre Channel
5 1 (1.27%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (35.44%) SQL Server
2 15 (18.99%) Data Warehouse
2 15 (18.99%) Relational Database
3 14 (17.72%) Oracle Database
3 14 (17.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (12.66%) Power BI
5 8 (10.13%) MySQL
5 8 (10.13%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (7.59%) DataStage
6 6 (7.59%) Db2
6 6 (7.59%) RDBMS
6 6 (7.59%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 5 (6.33%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 5 (6.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 4 (5.06%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (5.06%) MongoDB
8 4 (5.06%) Oracle Exadata
8 4 (5.06%) Snowflake Schema
9 3 (3.80%) Oracle Database 12c
10 2 (2.53%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 4 (5.06%) GitLab
2 3 (3.80%) Git
2 3 (3.80%) Toad
3 2 (2.53%) Flyway
3 2 (2.53%) JDeveloper
3 2 (2.53%) Jenkins
3 2 (2.53%) Liquibase
General
1 14 (17.72%) Analytical Skills
1 14 (17.72%) Finance
2 13 (16.46%) Social Skills
3 8 (10.13%) Banking
4 5 (6.33%) Public Sector
5 4 (5.06%) Law
5 4 (5.06%) Military
6 2 (2.53%) General Ledger
6 2 (2.53%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.27%) Corporate Banking
7 1 (1.27%) Health Technology
7 1 (1.27%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 30 (37.97%) DBA
2 21 (26.58%) SQL DBA
3 17 (21.52%) Administrator
4 12 (15.19%) Senior
5 11 (13.92%) Oracle DBA
6 9 (11.39%) Developer
7 6 (7.59%) Consultant
7 6 (7.59%) Lead
7 6 (7.59%) SQL Server DBA
7 6 (7.59%) VMware Engineer
8 5 (6.33%) Data Engineer
8 5 (6.33%) DataStage Developer
8 5 (6.33%) Senior VMware Engineer
9 4 (5.06%) Azure Engineer
10 3 (3.80%) SC Cleared DBA
10 3 (3.80%) Software Engineer
11 2 (2.53%) ABAP Consultant
11 2 (2.53%) Business Consultant
11 2 (2.53%) Oracle Consultant
11 2 (2.53%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (12.66%) Terraform
2 5 (6.33%) Kafka
3 4 (5.06%) XML
4 3 (3.80%) BAPI
4 3 (3.80%) SAP Fiori
4 3 (3.80%) Web Services
5 2 (2.53%) .NET
5 2 (2.53%) JSON
5 2 (2.53%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 2 (2.53%) Oracle Streams
5 2 (2.53%) React
5 2 (2.53%) Spring
5 2 (2.53%) Spring Boot
6 1 (1.27%) Middleware
6 1 (1.27%) Pandas
6 1 (1.27%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 18 (22.78%) Replication
2 13 (16.46%) Clustering
3 5 (6.33%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (3.80%) Blackberry
4 3 (3.80%) Data Centre
4 3 (3.80%) Handset
4 3 (3.80%) Product Ownership
5 2 (2.53%) Data Structures
5 2 (2.53%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 2 (2.53%) Hybrid Cloud
5 2 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.53%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 2 (2.53%) Public Cloud
5 2 (2.53%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.27%) Enterprise Storage
6 1 (1.27%) FPGA
6 1 (1.27%) Grid Computing
6 1 (1.27%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 18 (22.78%) Windows
2 14 (17.72%) Linux
3 10 (12.66%) Windows Server
4 8 (10.13%) Unix
5 5 (6.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (5.06%) AIX
7 3 (3.80%) Android
8 2 (2.53%) Solaris
8 2 (2.53%) Ubuntu
8 2 (2.53%) VMS
8 2 (2.53%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (2.53%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (1.27%) HPUX
9 1 (1.27%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (1.27%) SUSE
9 1 (1.27%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (1.27%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (26.58%) Data Modelling
1 21 (26.58%) DevOps
2 20 (25.32%) ITIL
3 17 (21.52%) Root Cause Analysis
4 16 (20.25%) CI/CD
4 16 (20.25%) Disaster Recovery
4 16 (20.25%) ETL
5 15 (18.99%) Problem-Solving
6 14 (17.72%) Database Tuning
6 14 (17.72%) High Availability
6 14 (17.72%) Migration
7 13 (16.46%) Capacity Planning
8 12 (15.19%) Data Integration
9 11 (13.92%) Business Intelligence
9 11 (13.92%) Change Management
9 11 (13.92%) Data Pipeline
10 9 (11.39%) Analytics
10 9 (11.39%) Data Migration
10 9 (11.39%) Infrastructure as Code
10 9 (11.39%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 48 (60.76%) SQL
2 20 (25.32%) PowerShell
3 19 (24.05%) T-SQL
4 12 (15.19%) Python
5 10 (12.66%) PL/SQL
6 7 (8.86%) Bash
7 6 (7.59%) Shell Script
8 3 (3.80%) ABAP
8 3 (3.80%) Java
9 2 (2.53%) C#
10 1 (1.27%) Bicep
10 1 (1.27%) Perl
Qualifications
1 29 (36.71%) Security Cleared
2 27 (34.18%) SC Cleared
3 6 (7.59%) Azure Certification
3 6 (7.59%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (6.33%) Degree
4 5 (6.33%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
4 5 (6.33%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (2.53%) DBS Check
5 2 (2.53%) DV Cleared
5 2 (2.53%) VCAP
5 2 (2.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (17.72%) Data Quality
2 4 (5.06%) SLA
3 2 (2.53%) GDPR
4 1 (1.27%) GRC
4 1 (1.27%) QA
System Software
1 15 (18.99%) Virtual Machines
2 14 (17.72%) Oracle RAC
3 7 (8.86%) VMware ESXi
3 7 (8.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (7.59%) VMware NSX
4 6 (7.59%) vSphere
5 4 (5.06%) Docker
6 2 (2.53%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 1 (1.27%) Active Directory
7 1 (1.27%) Firmware
7 1 (1.27%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 14 (17.72%) Data Guard
2 12 (15.19%) Ansible
3 7 (8.86%) Oracle RMAN
4 6 (7.59%) PowerCLI
4 6 (7.59%) SCOM
5 5 (6.33%) Kubernetes
6 3 (3.80%) Grafana
6 3 (3.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (3.80%) Prometheus
6 3 (3.80%) vCenter Server
6 3 (3.80%) vMotion
7 2 (2.53%) Argo
7 2 (2.53%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
7 2 (2.53%) Failover Clustering
7 2 (2.53%) Nagios
7 2 (2.53%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 2 (2.53%) vRealize
8 1 (1.27%) Microsoft Clustering
8 1 (1.27%) NetApp OnCommand
8 1 (1.27%) Packer
Vendors
1 29 (36.71%) Oracle
2 25 (31.65%) Microsoft
3 9 (11.39%) ServiceNow
4 8 (10.13%) VMware
5 7 (8.86%) IBM
6 6 (7.59%) Teradata
7 4 (5.06%) SAP
8 3 (3.80%) Adobe
8 3 (3.80%) BMC
8 3 (3.80%) Red Hat
8 3 (3.80%) Remedy
9 2 (2.53%) Confluent
9 2 (2.53%) Dynatrace
10 1 (1.27%) Brocade
10 1 (1.27%) Cisco
10 1 (1.27%) Databricks
10 1 (1.27%) HP
10 1 (1.27%) Mellanox
10 1 (1.27%) Solarflare
10 1 (1.27%) Sybase