Cost Management Contracts

Cost Management
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Cost Management skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cost Management over the 6 months leading up to 28 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 425 485 550
Rank change year-on-year +60 +65 +147
Contract jobs citing Cost Management 123 87 128
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.37% 0.22% 0.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.41% 0.25% 0.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 77 51 98
10th Percentile £313 £375 £471
25th Percentile £405 £450 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £550 £675
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% -18.52% +28.57%
75th Percentile £653 £675 £743
90th Percentile £732 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £440 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -12.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 10 0
10th Percentile £38.00 £41.38 -
25th Percentile £42.50 £47.19 -
Median hourly rate £46.30 £52.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -11.81% - -
75th Percentile - £61.25 -
90th Percentile £47.02 £65.15 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.30 £52.50 -
% change year-on-year -11.81% - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Cost Management 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 29,664 34,298 48,313
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.43% 85.44% 89.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,593 22,051 33,190
10th Percentile £300 £308 £320
25th Percentile £404 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £547
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.02% -0.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,622 2,025 1,592
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.55 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £17.50 £18.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -5.88% +60.38%
75th Percentile £50.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £73.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £40.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -42.50% - +83.65%

Cost Management
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Cost Management in the UK

Cost Management
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Cost Management in the UK

Cost Management
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cost Management over the 6 months to 28 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Cost Management in the UK

Cost Management
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Cost Management in the UK

Cost Management
Top 14 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Cost Management within the UK over the 6 months to 28 July 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
England +70 104 £520 -5.45% 119
London +41 64 £533 -18.08% 53
Work from Home +36 47 £627 +22.34% 43
UK excluding London +26 39 £440 -12.00% 75
South East +28 12 £484 -15.87% 28
North of England +2 12 £355 -32.38% 22
West Midlands 0 7 £663 +17.78% 6
Midlands -7 7 £663 +20.45% 8
Yorkshire -13 7 £327 -25.54% 14
North West -6 5 £400 -27.27% 7
Scotland -5 3 £350 -30.00% 3
South West +29 2 £475 +955.56% 7
East of England - 2 £626 - 5
Northern Ireland - 1 - -

Cost Management
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 5 (4.07%) Confluence
2 3 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 2 (1.63%) CMS
4 1 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.81%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.81%) DataSynapse
4 1 (0.81%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 9 (7.32%) Microsoft Project
2 7 (5.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (3.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.81%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 8 (6.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (4.07%) SAP CO
3 4 (3.25%) Oracle ASCP
3 4 (3.25%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (3.25%) SAP FI
3 4 (3.25%) SAP FI/CO
3 4 (3.25%) SAP MDG
3 4 (3.25%) SAP PS
4 1 (0.81%) Dynamics NAV
4 1 (0.81%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.81%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 47 (38.21%) Azure
2 39 (31.71%) AWS
3 30 (24.39%) Serverless
4 28 (22.76%) Azure DevOps
5 26 (21.14%) AWS CloudFormation
6 25 (20.33%) Azure AKS
6 25 (20.33%) GitHub
7 18 (14.63%) Amazon EKS
8 17 (13.82%) GitHub Actions
8 17 (13.82%) PaaS
9 15 (12.20%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (12.20%) Azure Sentinel
9 15 (12.20%) Entra ID
9 15 (12.20%) SaaS
10 14 (11.38%) Azure Monitor
11 13 (10.57%) GCP
11 13 (10.57%) IaaS
12 11 (8.94%) Microsoft 365
13 10 (8.13%) AWS Lambda
14 9 (7.32%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 16 (13.01%) Firewall
2 12 (9.76%) DNS
3 11 (8.94%) HTTP
3 11 (8.94%) Internet
3 11 (8.94%) TCP/IP
4 9 (7.32%) VPN
5 3 (2.44%) Network Security
6 2 (1.63%) Remote Desktop
7 1 (0.81%) Kerberos
7 1 (0.81%) MPLS
7 1 (0.81%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (12.20%) Amazon RDS
2 11 (8.94%) Amazon Aurora
2 11 (8.94%) Azure SQL Database
3 9 (7.32%) Power BI
4 8 (6.50%) NoSQL
5 5 (4.07%) Delta Lake
6 4 (3.25%) Data Lake
7 2 (1.63%) Data Mining
7 2 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (1.63%) Relational Database
7 2 (1.63%) Tableau
8 1 (0.81%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.81%) Cloudera CDH
8 1 (0.81%) DocumentDB
8 1 (0.81%) Essbase
8 1 (0.81%) GIS
8 1 (0.81%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.81%) Redis
Development Applications
1 24 (19.51%) Jenkins
2 6 (4.88%) GitLab
3 5 (4.07%) JIRA
4 3 (2.44%) Git
5 2 (1.63%) Bitbucket
General
1 48 (39.02%) Finance
2 39 (31.71%) Social Skills
3 18 (14.63%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (8.94%) Banking
5 9 (7.32%) Manufacturing
5 9 (7.32%) Public Sector
6 8 (6.50%) Billing
7 6 (4.88%) Marketing
8 5 (4.07%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (3.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (2.44%) Legal
10 3 (2.44%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (2.44%) Telecoms
11 2 (1.63%) Aerospace
11 2 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (1.63%) Investment Banking
11 2 (1.63%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (1.63%) Publishing
12 1 (0.81%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.81%) Police
Job Titles
1 22 (17.89%) Architect
2 21 (17.07%) Senior
3 15 (12.20%) Analyst
4 14 (11.38%) Project Manager
5 13 (10.57%) Azure Architect
5 13 (10.57%) DevOps Engineer
6 12 (9.76%) Azure Engineer
6 12 (9.76%) Cloud Architect
6 12 (9.76%) Solutions Architect
7 11 (8.94%) Consultant
8 9 (7.32%) Senior DevOps
8 9 (7.32%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 7 (5.69%) AWS Architect
9 7 (5.69%) AWS Solution Architect
9 7 (5.69%) Cloud Engineer
10 6 (4.88%) AWS Engineer
10 6 (4.88%) Platform Engineer
11 5 (4.07%) Cloud Platform Engineer
11 5 (4.07%) Lead
11 5 (4.07%) Operations Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (9.76%) Elastic Stack
2 10 (8.13%) ARM Templates
3 7 (5.69%) REST
3 7 (5.69%) SAP Fiori
4 5 (4.07%) Azure Blueprints
5 4 (3.25%) ADO
6 3 (2.44%) React
7 2 (1.63%) Middleware
8 1 (0.81%) Akka
8 1 (0.81%) EDI
8 1 (0.81%) GraphQL
8 1 (0.81%) JSON
8 1 (0.81%) Kafka
8 1 (0.81%) Node.js
8 1 (0.81%) Oracle Fusion
8 1 (0.81%) RESTful
8 1 (0.81%) SailPoint
8 1 (0.81%) SOAP
8 1 (0.81%) Web Services
8 1 (0.81%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 22 (17.89%) Hybrid Cloud
2 21 (17.07%) Cloud Native
3 15 (12.20%) Public Cloud
4 7 (5.69%) Analytical Mindset
4 7 (5.69%) Data Centre
4 7 (5.69%) Reinsurance
5 6 (4.88%) Management Information System
6 4 (3.25%) Linux Command Line
6 4 (3.25%) Mainframe
7 3 (2.44%) Onboarding
7 3 (2.44%) Product Ownership
8 2 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.81%) Derivative
9 1 (0.81%) IoT
9 1 (0.81%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.81%) Life Science
9 1 (0.81%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 20 (16.26%) Linux
2 9 (7.32%) Windows
3 5 (4.07%) Windows Server
4 4 (3.25%) VMS
5 1 (0.81%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (47.15%) DevOps
2 57 (46.34%) Infrastructure as Code
3 34 (27.64%) CI/CD
4 26 (21.14%) Agile
4 26 (21.14%) Budgeting
5 25 (20.33%) Migration
6 24 (19.51%) Analytics
7 23 (18.70%) Containerisation
7 23 (18.70%) Problem-Solving
8 21 (17.07%) Cost Optimisation
9 17 (13.82%) Continuous Integration
9 17 (13.82%) Deployment Automation
9 17 (13.82%) Project Management
9 17 (13.82%) RBAC
9 17 (13.82%) Stakeholder Management
10 15 (12.20%) Cloud Security
10 15 (12.20%) Configuration Management
10 15 (12.20%) Project Delivery
11 13 (10.57%) Mentoring
11 13 (10.57%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 29 (23.58%) Bicep
2 25 (20.33%) PowerShell
3 15 (12.20%) SQL
4 8 (6.50%) Python
5 5 (4.07%) Go
6 4 (3.25%) Bash
6 4 (3.25%) Java
7 3 (2.44%) Kusto Query Language
8 2 (1.63%) Scala
9 1 (0.81%) JCL
9 1 (0.81%) REXX
9 1 (0.81%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 28 (22.76%) Security Cleared
2 25 (20.33%) SC Cleared
3 17 (13.82%) Azure Certification
4 12 (9.76%) Degree
5 9 (7.32%) Oracle Certification
6 7 (5.69%) AWS Certification
6 7 (5.69%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 5 (4.07%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (4.07%) OCP
8 3 (2.44%) APMP
8 3 (2.44%) ISEB
8 3 (2.44%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 2 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (1.63%) GCIA
9 2 (1.63%) GCIH
10 1 (0.81%) ACCA
10 1 (0.81%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.81%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.81%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (8.13%) GDPR
2 8 (6.50%) PMO
3 7 (5.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (3.25%) IFRS
4 4 (3.25%) NIST
4 4 (3.25%) SOC 2
5 3 (2.44%) Data Quality
6 2 (1.63%) P3O
7 1 (0.81%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.81%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.81%) GxP
7 1 (0.81%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.81%) NCSC
7 1 (0.81%) QA
7 1 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 31 (25.20%) Docker
2 15 (12.20%) Active Directory
3 6 (4.88%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (1.63%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.81%) Microcode
5 1 (0.81%) NFS
5 1 (0.81%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 55 (44.72%) Terraform
2 44 (35.77%) Kubernetes
3 21 (17.07%) Ansible
4 11 (8.94%) Grafana
4 11 (8.94%) Progress Chef
4 11 (8.94%) Prometheus
4 11 (8.94%) Puppet
5 4 (3.25%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.81%) Apache Ranger
6 1 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.81%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 42 (34.15%) Microsoft
2 14 (11.38%) SAP
3 13 (10.57%) Google
4 11 (8.94%) Red Hat
5 6 (4.88%) Databricks
5 6 (4.88%) Oracle
6 4 (3.25%) OpenAI
7 2 (1.63%) Cisco
7 2 (1.63%) NEC
7 2 (1.63%) Salesforce
7 2 (1.63%) ServiceNow
8 1 (0.81%) Ariba
8 1 (0.81%) Broadcom
8 1 (0.81%) Brocade
8 1 (0.81%) Cloudera
8 1 (0.81%) Dell
8 1 (0.81%) IBM
8 1 (0.81%) Informatica
8 1 (0.81%) Sitecore