Cost Reduction Contracts

Cost Reduction
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Cost Reduction skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cost Reduction over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 417 464 593
Rank change year-on-year +47 +129 +13
Contract jobs citing Cost Reduction 103 118 125
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.35% 0.27% 0.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.39% 0.31% 0.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 65 47
10th Percentile £378 £413 £156
25th Percentile £456 £500 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £600 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +14.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £743 £719
90th Percentile £738 £808 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £575 £500
% change year-on-year -10.87% +15.00% +6.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 0
10th Percentile £32.15 £30.70 -
25th Percentile £33.09 £45.48 -
Median hourly rate £36.06 £60.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -40.40% - -
75th Percentile £40.42 £60.75 -
90th Percentile £42.20 £68.12 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.06 £60.50 -
% change year-on-year -40.40% - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Cost Reduction 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 26,594 37,597 53,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.84% 86.31% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,149 24,227 37,238
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £743 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,443 1,746
10th Percentile £14.41 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.21 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%
75th Percentile £60.38 £59.98 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £37.34 £36.00
% change year-on-year -26.35% +3.72% +80.00%

Cost Reduction
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Cost Reduction in the UK

Cost Reduction
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Cost Reduction in the UK

Cost Reduction
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cost Reduction over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Cost Reduction in the UK

Cost Reduction
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Cost Reduction in the UK

Cost Reduction
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 Reduction within the UK over the 6 months to 1 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 +38 90 £525 -12.50% 225
UK excluding London +45 50 £513 -10.87% 116
London +49 46 £575 -12.05% 142
Work from Home +29 27 £563 +0.09% 112
Midlands +12 12 £500 -13.04% 17
South West +52 11 £538 +53.57% 9
North of England +1 11 £615 +10.81% 44
West Midlands +3 10 £500 -13.04% 9
South East +49 7 £450 -32.08% 25
Scotland +16 7 £580 - 15
North West +4 7 £615 -0.40% 24
East of England +29 4 £353 -37.05% 7
Yorkshire +4 3 - - 13
East Midlands +11 2 £450 - 6
North East -1 1 - - 7

Cost Reduction
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 9 (8.74%) SharePoint
2 7 (6.80%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.97%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (2.91%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.94%) Microsoft Project
2 2 (1.94%) Trello
3 1 (0.97%) CATIA
3 1 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.97%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (1.94%) SAP S/4HANA
1 2 (1.94%) Shopify
2 1 (0.97%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.97%) SAP GTS
2 1 (0.97%) SAP IBP
2 1 (0.97%) SAP MM
2 1 (0.97%) SAP PP
2 1 (0.97%) SAP SCM
2 1 (0.97%) SAP SRM
Cloud Services
1 16 (15.53%) AWS
2 14 (13.59%) Microsoft 365
3 13 (12.62%) Azure
4 11 (10.68%) SaaS
5 9 (8.74%) PaaS
6 6 (5.83%) Entra ID
7 5 (4.85%) GCP
7 5 (4.85%) Power Platform
7 5 (4.85%) Serverless
8 4 (3.88%) Azure Functions
8 4 (3.88%) Azure Logic Apps
8 4 (3.88%) OneDrive
9 3 (2.91%) Cloud Run
9 3 (2.91%) GitHub
9 3 (2.91%) GitHub Actions
9 3 (2.91%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 3 (2.91%) Yammer
10 2 (1.94%) BigCommerce
10 2 (1.94%) Microsoft Purview
10 2 (1.94%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 8 (7.77%) PBX
1 8 (7.77%) VoIP
2 3 (2.91%) Firewall
3 2 (1.94%) DSL
4 1 (0.97%) Extranet
4 1 (0.97%) Intranet
4 1 (0.97%) LAN
4 1 (0.97%) MPLS
4 1 (0.97%) SDH
4 1 (0.97%) WAN
4 1 (0.97%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (5.83%) MySQL
2 5 (4.85%) Power BI
3 3 (2.91%) Data Mining
3 3 (2.91%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (2.91%) Tableau
4 2 (1.94%) Big Data
4 2 (1.94%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.97%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (0.97%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 5 (4.85%) GitLab
1 5 (4.85%) Jenkins
2 3 (2.91%) CircleCI
2 3 (2.91%) Terragrunt
3 2 (1.94%) Cucumber
3 2 (1.94%) ERwin
3 2 (1.94%) Jasmine
3 2 (1.94%) JMeter
4 1 (0.97%) Gatling
4 1 (0.97%) Git
4 1 (0.97%) Grunt
4 1 (0.97%) gulp
4 1 (0.97%) JIRA
4 1 (0.97%) JUnit
4 1 (0.97%) Mocha
General
1 38 (36.89%) Finance
1 38 (36.89%) Social Skills
2 26 (25.24%) Public Sector
3 14 (13.59%) Telecoms
4 13 (12.62%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (9.71%) Marketing
6 8 (7.77%) Banking
7 7 (6.80%) Electronics
8 6 (5.83%) Manufacturing
8 6 (5.83%) Retail
9 5 (4.85%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (3.88%) Military
11 2 (1.94%) Italian Language
11 2 (1.94%) Legal
11 2 (1.94%) Local Government
12 1 (0.97%) Automotive
12 1 (0.97%) Billing
12 1 (0.97%) French Language
12 1 (0.97%) German Language
12 1 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 22 (21.36%) Architect
2 12 (11.65%) Lead
3 9 (8.74%) Applications Architect
3 9 (8.74%) Consultant
3 9 (8.74%) Senior
4 8 (7.77%) Analyst
5 7 (6.80%) Business Analyst
6 5 (4.85%) Data Business Analyst
6 5 (4.85%) Developer
6 5 (4.85%) IT Manager
6 5 (4.85%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
7 4 (3.88%) Data Analyst
7 4 (3.88%) Lead Developer
7 4 (3.88%) Microsoft 365 Architect
7 4 (3.88%) Security Consultant
8 3 (2.91%) Infrastructure Architect
8 3 (2.91%) Market Data Analyst
8 3 (2.91%) Senior Manager
8 3 (2.91%) Solutions Architect
8 3 (2.91%) Team Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (6.80%) Spring
1 7 (6.80%) Spring Boot
2 4 (3.88%) Microsoft Graph
3 3 (2.91%) GraphQL
3 3 (2.91%) Web Services
3 3 (2.91%) XML
4 2 (1.94%) Apache Axis
4 2 (1.94%) HTML
4 2 (1.94%) Kafka
4 2 (1.94%) VML
5 1 (0.97%) cloud-init
5 1 (0.97%) HTML5
5 1 (0.97%) jQuery
5 1 (0.97%) Mustache
5 1 (0.97%) Node.js
5 1 (0.97%) OpenAPI
5 1 (0.97%) Sass
5 1 (0.97%) Spring Batch
5 1 (0.97%) Spring Security
5 1 (0.97%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 9 (8.74%) Onboarding
2 8 (7.77%) Blackberry
2 8 (7.77%) Video Conferencing
3 7 (6.80%) IoT
4 6 (5.83%) Blockchain
4 6 (5.83%) Data Structures
4 6 (5.83%) Public Cloud
5 5 (4.85%) Management Information System
5 5 (4.85%) Social Media
6 4 (3.88%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (2.91%) Algorithms
7 3 (2.91%) Cloud Native
7 3 (2.91%) NHS
8 2 (1.94%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (1.94%) FMCG
8 2 (1.94%) Shadow IT
9 1 (0.97%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 1 (0.97%) Fibre Optics
9 1 (0.97%) Microsoft Licensing
9 1 (0.97%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 10 (9.71%) Linux
2 7 (6.80%) Windows
3 5 (4.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (2.91%) Windows 10
5 2 (1.94%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.94%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.97%) CentOS
6 1 (0.97%) Unix
6 1 (0.97%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (31.07%) Problem-Solving
2 24 (23.30%) Agile
3 23 (22.33%) Roadmaps
4 20 (19.42%) Migration
5 19 (18.45%) Technical Leadership
6 16 (15.53%) DevOps
6 16 (15.53%) Microservices
7 15 (14.56%) Business Intelligence
7 15 (14.56%) Thought Leadership
8 13 (12.62%) Process Improvement
8 13 (12.62%) Service Design
8 13 (12.62%) SOA
9 12 (11.65%) Commercial Awareness
9 12 (11.65%) Cost Optimisation
9 12 (11.65%) Stakeholder Management
10 11 (10.68%) Decision-Making
10 11 (10.68%) Machine Learning
11 10 (9.71%) Analytics
11 10 (9.71%) Continuous Improvement
11 10 (9.71%) Product Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 11 (10.68%) Java
2 10 (9.71%) JavaScript
3 9 (8.74%) PowerShell
4 8 (7.77%) SQL
5 5 (4.85%) Shell Script
5 5 (4.85%) TypeScript
6 3 (2.91%) Python
7 2 (1.94%) Bash
7 2 (1.94%) C#
7 2 (1.94%) Go
7 2 (1.94%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 29 (28.16%) Security Cleared
2 27 (26.21%) SC Cleared
3 10 (9.71%) Degree
4 9 (8.74%) DV Cleared
5 8 (7.77%) CCNP
5 8 (7.77%) Cisco Certification
5 8 (7.77%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 4 (3.88%) Master's Degree
7 3 (2.91%) PMI Certification
7 3 (2.91%) PMP
8 2 (1.94%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.94%) CISSP
8 2 (1.94%) CompTIA Security+
8 2 (1.94%) Six Sigma Black Belt
9 1 (0.97%) BC Cleared
9 1 (0.97%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (0.97%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.97%) MBA
9 1 (0.97%) Six Sigma Green Belt
9 1 (0.97%) Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (5.83%) Accessibility
2 5 (4.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (4.85%) QA
3 3 (2.91%) Actionable Recommendations
3 3 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
3 3 (2.91%) NIST
3 3 (2.91%) PCI DSS
4 2 (1.94%) Disclosure Scotland
4 2 (1.94%) GDPR
5 1 (0.97%) GRC
5 1 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.97%) SLA
5 1 (0.97%) WCAG
System Software
1 11 (10.68%) Active Directory
2 8 (7.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (1.94%) Docker
4 1 (0.97%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 12 (11.65%) Terraform
2 6 (5.83%) Kubernetes
3 5 (4.85%) Ansible
4 3 (2.91%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (2.91%) Opsview
5 2 (1.94%) Progress Chef
5 2 (1.94%) Puppet
5 2 (1.94%) Salt
5 2 (1.94%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.97%) Data Guard
6 1 (0.97%) Packer
Vendors
1 16 (15.53%) Microsoft
2 10 (9.71%) SAP
3 9 (8.74%) Cisco
3 9 (8.74%) Nokia
4 8 (7.77%) Avaya
4 8 (7.77%) Ericsson
4 8 (7.77%) F5
4 8 (7.77%) Juniper
4 8 (7.77%) Palo Alto
4 8 (7.77%) Ribbon
4 8 (7.77%) VMware
5 4 (3.88%) Salesforce
6 3 (2.91%) PagerDuty
7 2 (1.94%) Adobe
7 2 (1.94%) Google
7 2 (1.94%) New Relic
7 2 (1.94%) Sitecore
7 2 (1.94%) TOWER Software
7 2 (1.94%) Zscaler
8 1 (0.97%) Pega