Cost Optimisation Contract Job Trends in Scotland

Cost Optimization
UK > Scotland

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Scotland requiring Cost Optimisation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 104 115 141
Rank change year-on-year +11 +26 +29
Contract jobs citing Cost Optimisation 10 4 2
As % of all contract jobs in Scotland 0.64% 0.23% 0.083%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 0.26% 0.091%
Number of daily rates quoted 3 0 2
10th Percentile £260 - £555
25th Percentile £313 - £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 - £650
Median % change year-on-year - - +8.33%
75th Percentile £410 - £763
90th Percentile £416 - £785
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £50.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
Scotland

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 Scotland.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,386 1,521 2,194
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Scotland 88.22% 88.43% 91.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 792 901 1,374
10th Percentile £238 £213 £250
25th Percentile £381 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £464 £450 £493
Median % change year-on-year +3.06% -8.63% +3.68%
75th Percentile £550 £538 £588
90th Percentile £625 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 46 57
10th Percentile £14.20 £15.11 £12.13
25th Percentile £17.90 £18.77 £16.50
Median hourly rate £20.00 £22.94 £19.18
Median % change year-on-year -12.81% +19.59% +3.68%
75th Percentile £25.15 £24.18 £55.00
90th Percentile £52.25 £31.44 £67.00
UK median hourly rate £25.13 £33.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -23.86% -22.35% +21.43%

Cost Optimisation
Job Vacancy Trend in Scotland

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

Cost Optimisation job vacancy trend in Scotland

Cost Optimisation
Daily Rate Trend in Scotland

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Scotland citing Cost Optimisation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Scotland citing Cost Optimisation

Cost Optimisation
Daily Rate Histogram in Scotland

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cost Optimisation in Scotland over the 6 months to 13 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Cost Optimisation in Scotland

Cost Optimisation
Contract Job Locations in Scotland

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 Scotland region over the 6 months to 13 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
Glasgow - 7 £400 - 8
Edinburgh - 3 £323 -
Cost Optimisation
UK

Cost Optimisation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Scotland 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:

Business Applications
1 4 (40.00%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 10 (100.00%) AWS
2 9 (90.00%) Serverless
3 4 (40.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 4 (40.00%) Amazon EventBridge
3 4 (40.00%) Amazon Kinesis
3 4 (40.00%) AWS CloudFormation
3 4 (40.00%) AWS Lambda
3 4 (40.00%) GCP
3 4 (40.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 3 (30.00%) Azure
5 2 (20.00%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (40.00%) DynamoDB
2 3 (30.00%) Amazon Athena
2 3 (30.00%) NoSQL
3 2 (20.00%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 3 (30.00%) GitLab
1 3 (30.00%) Jenkins
1 3 (30.00%) Liquibase
General
1 6 (60.00%) Finance
2 5 (50.00%) Public Sector
3 4 (40.00%) Social Skills
4 3 (30.00%) Banking
5 1 (10.00%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 4 (40.00%) Architect
2 2 (20.00%) Database Engineer
2 2 (20.00%) Platform Engineer
2 2 (20.00%) Principal Architect
2 2 (20.00%) Senior
2 2 (20.00%) Senior Software Engineer
2 2 (20.00%) Software Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) AWS Architect
3 1 (10.00%) AWS Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) AWS Software Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Cloud Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Cloud Software Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Developer
3 1 (10.00%) GCP Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) GCP Software Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Python Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Python Software Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Senior Cloud Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (40.00%) Node.js
2 3 (30.00%) Elastic Stack
2 3 (30.00%) REST
2 3 (30.00%) RESTful
3 1 (10.00%) React
Miscellaneous
1 5 (50.00%) Cloud Native
1 5 (50.00%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (40.00%) IVR
2 4 (40.00%) NHS
3 3 (30.00%) Public Cloud
4 1 (10.00%) Data Centre
4 1 (10.00%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 4 (40.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (90.00%) CI/CD
1 9 (90.00%) Infrastructure as Code
2 6 (60.00%) DevOps
2 6 (60.00%) Migration
3 5 (50.00%) Continuous Improvement
3 5 (50.00%) High Availability
3 5 (50.00%) Roadmaps
4 4 (40.00%) Agile
4 4 (40.00%) Analytics
4 4 (40.00%) Containerisation
4 4 (40.00%) Customer Engagement
4 4 (40.00%) Data Protection
4 4 (40.00%) Disaster Recovery
4 4 (40.00%) Enterprise Architecture
4 4 (40.00%) Incident Management
4 4 (40.00%) ITSM
4 4 (40.00%) Performance Monitoring
4 4 (40.00%) Regulatory Compliance
4 4 (40.00%) Technology Roadmap
4 4 (40.00%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 9 (90.00%) Python
2 3 (30.00%) Go
2 3 (30.00%) Java
Qualifications
1 3 (30.00%) AWS Certification
1 3 (30.00%) Computer Science Degree
1 3 (30.00%) Degree
1 3 (30.00%) Master's Degree
2 2 (20.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
3 1 (10.00%) AWS Certified Developer
3 1 (10.00%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) SC Cleared
3 1 (10.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (40.00%) GDPR
1 4 (40.00%) PCI DSS
2 3 (30.00%) HIPAA
2 3 (30.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (30.00%) PMO
System Software
1 1 (10.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (90.00%) Terraform
2 5 (50.00%) Ansible
3 3 (30.00%) Grafana
3 3 (30.00%) Kubernetes
3 3 (30.00%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 4 (40.00%) Salesforce
1 4 (40.00%) ServiceNow
2 3 (30.00%) Avaya
2 3 (30.00%) Cisco
2 3 (30.00%) Genesys
2 3 (30.00%) Pega
2 3 (30.00%) Splunk
3 2 (20.00%) Google
3 2 (20.00%) Greenplum
4 1 (10.00%) Microsoft
4 1 (10.00%) Oracle