Cost Optimisation Contracts

Cost Optimization
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Cost Optimisation skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cost Optimisation over the 6 months leading up to 12 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 383 520 633
Rank change year-on-year +137 +113 +64
Contract jobs citing Cost Optimisation 145 70 66
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.50% 0.16% 0.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.55% 0.19% 0.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 74 32 31
10th Percentile £375 £353 £425
25th Percentile £463 £472 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £558 £538
Median % change year-on-year -5.83% +3.72% -10.42%
75th Percentile £634 £631 £669
90th Percentile £700 £699 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £563 £550
% change year-on-year -6.67% +2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £35.00 - -
Median hourly rate £36.00 - £90.00
75th Percentile £37.00 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 26,600 37,094 51,920
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.93% 86.26% 89.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,092 23,889 35,981
10th Percentile £306 £300 £325
25th Percentile £410 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.19% -4.55% +3.77%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £745 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.40% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,089 2,438 1,716
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.20 £16.00 £16.24
Median hourly rate £28.60 £36.50 £36.40
Median % change year-on-year -21.64% +0.29% +41.73%
75th Percentile £60.13 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.78 £38.06 £35.00
% change year-on-year -32.28% +8.74% +75.00%

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 12 May 2025.

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 15 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 12 May 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 +129 123 £525 -4.55% 212
London +77 90 £538 -2.27% 130
Work from Home +57 43 £513 -6.77% 141
UK excluding London +76 42 £525 -6.67% 111
Midlands +25 11 £537 +53.43% 14
Scotland +21 11 £525 - 6
North of England +21 11 £525 -6.67% 23
West Midlands +27 9 £537 +53.43% 9
North West +15 8 £525 -22.22% 7
East of England +26 4 £638 - 4
South East +46 3 £578 -14.44% 53
Yorkshire +14 3 £463 +2.78% 14
South West - 3 £625 - 10
East Midlands - 2 £588 - 5
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 2

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 8 (5.52%) Confluence
2 3 (2.07%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.38%) Apache
4 1 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.69%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (6.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.69%) CATIA
Business Applications
1 2 (1.38%) assyst
1 2 (1.38%) Shopify
2 1 (0.69%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 70 (48.28%) AWS
2 58 (40.00%) Azure
3 40 (27.59%) GCP
4 26 (17.93%) GitHub
5 25 (17.24%) Serverless
6 22 (15.17%) AWS CloudFormation
7 17 (11.72%) GitHub Actions
8 16 (11.03%) Azure DevOps
9 15 (10.34%) Amazon S3
10 14 (9.66%) Amazon EC2
10 14 (9.66%) SaaS
11 13 (8.97%) AWS Lambda
11 13 (8.97%) IaaS
12 12 (8.28%) Amazon EKS
12 12 (8.28%) PaaS
13 10 (6.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 10 (6.90%) Microsoft 365
14 8 (5.52%) Power Platform
15 6 (4.14%) Entra ID
15 6 (4.14%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 12 (8.28%) VPN
2 11 (7.59%) Firewall
3 5 (3.45%) DNS
3 5 (3.45%) TCP/IP
4 4 (2.76%) HTTP
5 3 (2.07%) Kerberos
5 3 (2.07%) NAS
5 3 (2.07%) SAN
5 3 (2.07%) VLAN
6 2 (1.38%) DSL
6 2 (1.38%) Network Security
6 2 (1.38%) SNMP
7 1 (0.69%) BGP
7 1 (0.69%) DHCP
7 1 (0.69%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.69%) MPLS
7 1 (0.69%) OSPF
7 1 (0.69%) SMS
7 1 (0.69%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (8.97%) Amazon RDS
2 10 (6.90%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (6.21%) Data Lake
4 8 (5.52%) Oracle Database
4 8 (5.52%) Power BI
5 7 (4.83%) MongoDB
6 5 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (3.45%) SQL Server
7 4 (2.76%) DynamoDB
7 4 (2.76%) NoSQL
8 3 (2.07%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (2.07%) BigQuery
8 3 (2.07%) Parquet
9 2 (1.38%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (1.38%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (1.38%) Delta Lake
9 2 (1.38%) Looker
9 2 (1.38%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (1.38%) Sybase ASE
9 2 (1.38%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 21 (14.48%) Jenkins
2 9 (6.21%) GitLab
2 9 (6.21%) JIRA
3 4 (2.76%) Git
4 3 (2.07%) Bitbucket
4 3 (2.07%) TeamCity
5 2 (1.38%) CircleCI
5 2 (1.38%) JMeter
5 2 (1.38%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.69%) MLflow
6 1 (0.69%) Serena SBM
6 1 (0.69%) Subversion
General
1 59 (40.69%) Social Skills
2 48 (33.10%) Finance
3 25 (17.24%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (8.28%) Public Sector
5 10 (6.90%) Banking
6 9 (6.21%) Marketing
6 9 (6.21%) Retail
7 7 (4.83%) Financial Institution
8 4 (2.76%) Legal
9 3 (2.07%) Billing
9 3 (2.07%) Manufacturing
9 3 (2.07%) Telecoms
10 2 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.69%) Digital Health
11 1 (0.69%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.69%) Local Government
11 1 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 25 (17.24%) Architect
2 24 (16.55%) Senior
3 15 (10.34%) Cloud Engineer
4 14 (9.66%) Developer
5 12 (8.28%) DevOps Engineer
6 11 (7.59%) Azure Engineer
6 11 (7.59%) Senior Cloud Engineer
7 10 (6.90%) Analyst
8 9 (6.21%) Cloud Architect
8 9 (6.21%) Solutions Architect
9 8 (5.52%) Project Manager
9 8 (5.52%) Technical Manager
10 7 (4.83%) AWS Engineer
10 7 (4.83%) Lead
10 7 (4.83%) Technical Project Manager
11 6 (4.14%) SailPoint Developer
11 6 (4.14%) Senior Developer
12 5 (3.45%) AWS Developer
12 5 (3.45%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
12 5 (3.45%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (6.21%) Kafka
2 6 (4.14%) SailPoint
3 5 (3.45%) ARM Templates
3 5 (3.45%) AWS CDK
3 5 (3.45%) JSON
4 4 (2.76%) Elastic Stack
4 4 (2.76%) OAuth
4 4 (2.76%) OAuth2
4 4 (2.76%) OpenID
4 4 (2.76%) SAML
4 4 (2.76%) YAML
5 3 (2.07%) GraphQL
5 3 (2.07%) LDAP
5 3 (2.07%) Middleware
5 3 (2.07%) Node.js
5 3 (2.07%) REST
5 3 (2.07%) SOAP
6 2 (1.38%) PySpark
6 2 (1.38%) RESTful
6 2 (1.38%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 19 (13.10%) Cloud Native
2 8 (5.52%) Hybrid Cloud
2 8 (5.52%) Management Information System
2 8 (5.52%) Onboarding
3 6 (4.14%) Public Cloud
3 6 (4.14%) Replication
4 5 (3.45%) Data Protection Act
5 4 (2.76%) CMDB
5 4 (2.76%) Data Centre
6 3 (2.07%) BYOD
6 3 (2.07%) Clustering
6 3 (2.07%) FMCG
6 3 (2.07%) Oracle Licensing
7 2 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
7 2 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.38%) Private Cloud
7 2 (1.38%) Product Ownership
8 1 (0.69%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 12 (8.28%) Linux
2 7 (4.83%) Windows
3 5 (3.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (2.76%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.38%) Solaris
6 1 (0.69%) Oracle Linux
6 1 (0.69%) Unix
6 1 (0.69%) VMS
6 1 (0.69%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (36.55%) DevOps
2 51 (35.17%) Infrastructure as Code
3 49 (33.79%) CI/CD
4 37 (25.52%) Problem-Solving
5 32 (22.07%) Agile
6 30 (20.69%) Migration
7 27 (18.62%) Containerisation
8 25 (17.24%) FinOps
9 23 (15.86%) Analytics
9 23 (15.86%) Artificial Intelligence
10 22 (15.17%) Cost Management
10 22 (15.17%) Stakeholder Management
11 19 (13.10%) Cloud Security
11 19 (13.10%) ETL
11 19 (13.10%) High Availability
12 18 (12.41%) RBAC
13 17 (11.72%) Disaster Recovery
14 15 (10.34%) Identity Access Management
14 15 (10.34%) Software Engineering
15 14 (9.66%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 32 (22.07%) Python
2 13 (8.97%) Java
2 13 (8.97%) SQL
3 12 (8.28%) Bicep
4 9 (6.21%) Bash
4 9 (6.21%) JavaScript
5 8 (5.52%) PowerShell
6 6 (4.14%) BeanShell
6 6 (4.14%) Shell Script
7 4 (2.76%) C#
8 3 (2.07%) Go
9 2 (1.38%) Kotlin
9 2 (1.38%) Scala
10 1 (0.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.69%) Groovy
10 1 (0.69%) Perl
10 1 (0.69%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.69%) Ruby
10 1 (0.69%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.69%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 21 (14.48%) Security Cleared
2 19 (13.10%) Degree
3 18 (12.41%) AWS Certification
3 18 (12.41%) Azure Certification
4 15 (10.34%) SC Cleared
5 11 (7.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 7 (4.83%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (4.83%) Master's Degree
7 3 (2.07%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 2 (1.38%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (1.38%) DV Cleared
8 2 (1.38%) PMI Certification
8 2 (1.38%) PMP
8 2 (1.38%) SnowPro
8 2 (1.38%) Tableau Certification
8 2 (1.38%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.69%) ACCA
9 1 (0.69%) CCNA
9 1 (0.69%) CCNP
9 1 (0.69%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (6.21%) Data Quality
1 9 (6.21%) GDPR
2 5 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (3.45%) QA
3 3 (2.07%) PCI DSS
3 3 (2.07%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 2 (1.38%) Disclosure Scotland
4 2 (1.38%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.69%) GRC
5 1 (0.69%) NCSC
System Software
1 28 (19.31%) Docker
2 7 (4.83%) Active Directory
3 5 (3.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (2.76%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (2.76%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (2.76%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (1.38%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 41 (28.28%) Terraform
2 38 (26.21%) Kubernetes
3 15 (10.34%) Ansible
4 7 (4.83%) Prometheus
4 7 (4.83%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (4.14%) Grafana
6 4 (2.76%) Progress Chef
6 4 (2.76%) Puppet
7 3 (2.07%) Opsview
7 3 (2.07%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (1.38%) Dell DRAC
8 2 (1.38%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (1.38%) Salt
8 2 (1.38%) Tivoli
8 2 (1.38%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 1 (0.69%) Control-M
9 1 (0.69%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.69%) Nagios
9 1 (0.69%) Netcool
Vendors
1 23 (15.86%) Microsoft
2 21 (14.48%) Google
3 11 (7.59%) Oracle
4 10 (6.90%) ServiceNow
5 6 (4.14%) VMware
6 5 (3.45%) Cisco
6 5 (3.45%) Databricks
6 5 (3.45%) SAP
7 4 (2.76%) Red Hat
7 4 (2.76%) Splunk
8 3 (2.07%) IBM
8 3 (2.07%) New Relic
8 3 (2.07%) PagerDuty
8 3 (2.07%) Qualys
8 3 (2.07%) Salesforce
8 3 (2.07%) Sybase
9 2 (1.38%) Adobe
9 2 (1.38%) CyberArk
9 2 (1.38%) Dynatrace
9 2 (1.38%) Sitecore