Cost Optimisation Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Cost Optimization
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Cost Optimisation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 119 105 122
Rank change year-on-year -14 +17 +54
Contract jobs citing Cost Optimisation 18 9 1
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.86% 0.48% 0.051%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.95% 0.57% 0.060%
Number of daily rates quoted 16 1 0
10th Percentile £484 - -
25th Percentile £508 £513 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £525 -
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% - -
75th Percentile £682 £538 -
90th Percentile £892 - -
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -12.00%

All Process and Methodology Skills
West Midlands

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 the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,888 1,575 1,668
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 89.78% 83.33% 84.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,202 989 1,128
10th Percentile £263 £246 £263
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £624 £600
90th Percentile £675 £715 £713
England median daily rate £506 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.62% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 47 53
10th Percentile £13.25 £14.70 £16.02
25th Percentile £16.29 £17.25 £17.75
Median hourly rate £23.00 £26.13 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.96% -5.00% +55.28%
75th Percentile £30.47 £34.47 £50.00
90th Percentile £50.00 £51.00 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -32.93% -15.73% +27.14%

Cost Optimisation
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

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

Cost Optimisation job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Cost Optimisation
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Cost Optimisation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Cost Optimisation

Cost Optimisation
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cost Optimisation in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 16 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Cost Optimisation in the West Midlands

Cost Optimisation
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

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 West Midlands region over the 6 months to 16 November 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
Birmingham +2 13 £530 +0.95% 4
Coventry - 3 £523 - 1
Warwickshire - 1 £575 - 4
Cost Optimisation
England

Cost Optimisation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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:

Cloud Services
1 16 (88.89%) GCP
2 15 (83.33%) AWS
3 11 (61.11%) Serverless
4 5 (27.78%) Azure
5 4 (22.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 3 (16.67%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 2 (11.11%) AWS Direct Connect
8 1 (5.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 1 (5.56%) Amazon EKS
8 1 (5.56%) Amazon S3
8 1 (5.56%) AWS Fargate
8 1 (5.56%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (5.56%) Azure Cosmos DB
8 1 (5.56%) CloudFront
8 1 (5.56%) Datadog
8 1 (5.56%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 3 (16.67%) BGP
1 3 (16.67%) Cisco ASA
1 3 (16.67%) DHCP
1 3 (16.67%) DNS
1 3 (16.67%) EIGRP
1 3 (16.67%) Firewall
1 3 (16.67%) IPv4
1 3 (16.67%) IPv6
1 3 (16.67%) LAN
1 3 (16.67%) MPLS
1 3 (16.67%) OSPF
1 3 (16.67%) SD-WAN
1 3 (16.67%) VLAN
1 3 (16.67%) VPN
1 3 (16.67%) VXLAN
1 3 (16.67%) WAN
1 3 (16.67%) Wireless
1 3 (16.67%) WLAN
2 2 (11.11%) Cisco ISE
2 2 (11.11%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (55.56%) NoSQL
2 7 (38.89%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (5.56%) IBM InfoSphere
Development Applications
1 11 (61.11%) GitLab
1 11 (61.11%) Jenkins
2 6 (33.33%) Liquibase
General
1 14 (77.78%) Social Skills
2 9 (50.00%) Banking
2 9 (50.00%) Finance
3 6 (33.33%) Financial Institution
4 3 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (16.67%) Influencing Skills
5 2 (11.11%) Public Sector
6 1 (5.56%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (5.56%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 11 (61.11%) Cloud Engineer
2 9 (50.00%) GCP Engineer
3 6 (33.33%) Senior
3 6 (33.33%) Senior Software Engineer
3 6 (33.33%) Software Engineer
4 4 (22.22%) Architect
4 4 (22.22%) Cloud Software Engineer
4 4 (22.22%) DevOps Engineer
4 4 (22.22%) Senior Cloud Engineer
4 4 (22.22%) Senior DevOps
4 4 (22.22%) Senior DevOps Engineer
4 4 (22.22%) Solutions Architect
5 3 (16.67%) Network Architect
6 2 (11.11%) AWS DevOps
6 2 (11.11%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 2 (11.11%) AWS Engineer
6 2 (11.11%) AWS Software Engineer
6 2 (11.11%) GCP DevOps Engineer
6 2 (11.11%) GCP Software Engineer
6 2 (11.11%) Senior AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (61.11%) REST
2 10 (55.56%) Elastic Stack
2 10 (55.56%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 11 (61.11%) Distributed Systems
2 10 (55.56%) Public Cloud
3 7 (38.89%) Cloud Native
4 4 (22.22%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 10 (55.56%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (77.78%) Computer Science
1 14 (77.78%) Containerisation
1 14 (77.78%) Cybersecurity
2 13 (72.22%) CI/CD
2 13 (72.22%) DevOps
2 13 (72.22%) Infrastructure as Code
3 11 (61.11%) Root Cause Analysis
4 10 (55.56%) Agile
4 10 (55.56%) Cryptography
5 9 (50.00%) Data Security
5 9 (50.00%) Microservices
6 7 (38.89%) High Availability
7 6 (33.33%) Continuous Delivery
7 6 (33.33%) Continuous Integration
7 6 (33.33%) Data Encryption
7 6 (33.33%) Infrastructure Automation
7 6 (33.33%) Non-Functional Testing
7 6 (33.33%) Software Engineering
8 4 (22.22%) Data Protection
8 4 (22.22%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 14 (77.78%) Python
2 11 (61.11%) Go
3 4 (22.22%) SQL
Qualifications
1 14 (77.78%) Degree
2 11 (61.11%) Computer Science Degree
3 9 (50.00%) Master's Degree
4 6 (33.33%) AWS Certification
5 3 (16.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
5 3 (16.67%) Azure Certification
5 3 (16.67%) CCIE
5 3 (16.67%) CCIE Security
5 3 (16.67%) CCNP
5 3 (16.67%) CCSP
5 3 (16.67%) Cisco Certification
5 3 (16.67%) CISSP
6 2 (11.11%) AWS Certified Developer
6 2 (11.11%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
6 2 (11.11%) JNCIE
6 2 (11.11%) JNCIP
6 2 (11.11%) Security Cleared
7 1 (5.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (22.22%) GDPR
2 3 (16.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (16.67%) NIST
2 3 (16.67%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 8 (44.44%) Docker
2 3 (16.67%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (16.67%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 16 (88.89%) Terraform
2 13 (72.22%) Ansible
3 11 (61.11%) Prometheus
4 10 (55.56%) Grafana
4 10 (55.56%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 10 (55.56%) Splunk
2 7 (38.89%) Google
3 4 (22.22%) Microsoft
4 3 (16.67%) Cisco
4 3 (16.67%) F5
4 3 (16.67%) Fortinet
4 3 (16.67%) Meraki
4 3 (16.67%) Palo Alto
4 3 (16.67%) SolarWinds
4 3 (16.67%) VMware
5 2 (11.11%) Forcepoint
5 2 (11.11%) Juniper
6 1 (5.56%) IBM