Performance Optimisation Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Performance Optimisation
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Performance Optimisation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 116 95 113
Rank change year-on-year -21 +18 +3
Contract jobs citing Performance Optimisation 41 5 4
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 1.27% 0.35% 0.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.51% 0.39% 0.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 35 4 1
10th Percentile £397 - -
25th Percentile £450 £525 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £575 £360
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +59.72% -44.62%
75th Percentile £588 £638 -
90th Percentile £656 £660 -
England median daily rate £525 £500 £575
% change year-on-year +5.00% -13.04% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
Median hourly rate - - £55.00
England median hourly rate £70.00 - £55.00
% change year-on-year - - +5.51%

All Process & Methodology Skills
West Midlands

Performance 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 2,715 1,272 1,639
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 84.34% 88.70% 82.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,772 811 1,086
10th Percentile £313 £200 £263
25th Percentile £404 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.45% -3.40% -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £625
90th Percentile £675 £663 £734
England median daily rate £515 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 67 117
10th Percentile £14.82 £12.62 £11.10
25th Percentile £22.50 £14.14 £14.25
Median hourly rate £33.99 £22.05 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.15% -2.00% +3.73%
75th Percentile £67.19 £32.82 £40.50
90th Percentile £72.54 £50.00 £58.75
England median hourly rate £47.50 £28.60 £37.50
% change year-on-year +66.08% -23.73% +3.81%

Performance Optimisation
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

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

Performance Optimisation job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Performance Optimisation
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

Performance Optimisation
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Performance Optimisation in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 7 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Performance Optimisation in the West Midlands

Performance Optimisation
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Performance Optimisation.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Performance Optimisation

Performance 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 Performance Optimisation within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 7 June 2026. 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 -13 15 £500 -23.08% 5
Shropshire -37 10 £515 -
Coventry - 6 £456 - 1
Warwickshire - 5 £463 - 1
Worcestershire - 2 £638 -
Staffordshire - 1 £313 - 1
Performance Optimisation
England

Performance 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:

Application Platforms
1 8 (19.51%) Apache Airflow
1 8 (19.51%) SAS
2 1 (2.44%) Confluence
2 1 (2.44%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (4.88%) Chatbot
2 1 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (2.44%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (2.44%) Oracle ERP
1 1 (2.44%) Primavera
1 1 (2.44%) SAP ERP
1 1 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 18 (43.90%) Azure
2 15 (36.59%) AWS
3 6 (14.63%) GitHub
3 6 (14.63%) Snowflake
4 5 (12.20%) Amazon S3
4 5 (12.20%) AWS Lambda
4 5 (12.20%) Power Platform
4 5 (12.20%) Serverless
5 4 (9.76%) Azure Machine Learning
5 4 (9.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 4 (9.76%) dbt
5 4 (9.76%) OpenShift
6 3 (7.32%) Azure Data Factory
6 3 (7.32%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (4.88%) Amazon SQS
8 1 (2.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 1 (2.44%) AWS CloudFormation
8 1 (2.44%) IBM Cloud
8 1 (2.44%) SuccessFactors
8 1 (2.44%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (12.20%) DNS
2 3 (7.32%) Firewall
2 3 (7.32%) Network Security
3 2 (4.88%) BGP
3 2 (4.88%) DHCP
3 2 (4.88%) OSPF
3 2 (4.88%) VLAN
3 2 (4.88%) VPN
3 2 (4.88%) WAN
4 1 (2.44%) Cisco IOS
4 1 (2.44%) Cisco Nexus
4 1 (2.44%) EIGRP
4 1 (2.44%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (2.44%) iSCSI
4 1 (2.44%) LAN
4 1 (2.44%) NAS
4 1 (2.44%) NetScaler
4 1 (2.44%) SAN
4 1 (2.44%) SSL
4 1 (2.44%) VRRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (14.63%) SAS Enterprise Guide
2 5 (12.20%) Power BI
3 4 (9.76%) SAS Visual Analytics
4 3 (7.32%) Amazon Redshift
4 3 (7.32%) Data Warehouse
4 3 (7.32%) Oracle Database
5 2 (4.88%) Base SAS
5 2 (4.88%) Metadata
5 2 (4.88%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (4.88%) Relational Database
6 1 (2.44%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (2.44%) Data Lake
6 1 (2.44%) DynamoDB
6 1 (2.44%) NoSQL
6 1 (2.44%) Oracle Database 12c
6 1 (2.44%) Pentaho
6 1 (2.44%) Power Query
6 1 (2.44%) SAS Data Integration Studio
6 1 (2.44%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (2.44%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 5 (12.20%) Git
2 3 (7.32%) Jenkins
2 3 (7.32%) MLflow
3 2 (4.88%) GitLab
4 1 (2.44%) Hudson
4 1 (2.44%) JIRA
4 1 (2.44%) REST Assured
4 1 (2.44%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (2.44%) Storybook
4 1 (2.44%) Vite
4 1 (2.44%) webpack
General
1 15 (36.59%) Social Skills
2 7 (17.07%) Public Sector
3 6 (14.63%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (12.20%) Influencing Skills
5 4 (9.76%) Banking
5 4 (9.76%) Finance
6 2 (4.88%) Retail
7 1 (2.44%) Billing
7 1 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (2.44%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 13 (31.71%) Architect
2 8 (19.51%) Senior
3 7 (17.07%) Data Engineer
4 5 (12.20%) Developer
5 4 (9.76%) Data Architect
5 4 (9.76%) SAS Architect
5 4 (9.76%) Technical Architect
6 3 (7.32%) Analyst
6 3 (7.32%) Lead
6 3 (7.32%) Senior Analyst
7 2 (4.88%) Data Analyst
7 2 (4.88%) Data Scientist
7 2 (4.88%) Lead Architect
7 2 (4.88%) Network Engineer
7 2 (4.88%) Pega Architect
7 2 (4.88%) SAS Developer
7 2 (4.88%) Senior Data Analyst
7 2 (4.88%) Senior Data Engineer
7 2 (4.88%) Systems Architect
7 2 (4.88%) VMware Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (9.76%) REST
2 3 (7.32%) OpenTelemetry
3 2 (4.88%) AngularJS
3 2 (4.88%) CSS
3 2 (4.88%) HTML
3 2 (4.88%) Node.js
3 2 (4.88%) RESTful
4 1 (2.44%) CSS3
4 1 (2.44%) HTML5
4 1 (2.44%) JMS
4 1 (2.44%) JSON
4 1 (2.44%) Middleware
4 1 (2.44%) React
4 1 (2.44%) SOAP
4 1 (2.44%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 10 (24.39%) Cloud Native
2 5 (12.20%) Analytical Mindset
2 5 (12.20%) Enterprise Cloud
3 4 (9.76%) Hybrid Cloud
4 2 (4.88%) Product Ownership
5 1 (2.44%) Data Centre
5 1 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (2.44%) Enterprise Storage
5 1 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (2.44%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 3 (7.32%) Linux
1 3 (7.32%) Unix
1 3 (7.32%) Windows
2 2 (4.88%) Windows Server
3 1 (2.44%) AIX
3 1 (2.44%) HPUX
3 1 (2.44%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (51.22%) CI/CD
2 20 (48.78%) Migration
3 14 (34.15%) DevOps
4 13 (31.71%) Containerisation
5 10 (24.39%) Data Pipeline
5 10 (24.39%) ETL
6 9 (21.95%) Agile
6 9 (21.95%) Analytics
6 9 (21.95%) Data Governance
6 9 (21.95%) Data Modelling
6 9 (21.95%) High Availability
6 9 (21.95%) Stakeholder Management
7 8 (19.51%) AI
7 8 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
8 7 (17.07%) Computer Science
8 7 (17.07%) Data Engineering
8 7 (17.07%) Technical Leadership
8 7 (17.07%) Validation
9 6 (14.63%) Data Integration
9 6 (14.63%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 12 (29.27%) SQL
2 11 (26.83%) Python
3 3 (7.32%) Bash
4 2 (4.88%) JavaScript
4 2 (4.88%) Shell Script
4 2 (4.88%) TypeScript
5 1 (2.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 1 (2.44%) Java
5 1 (2.44%) PL/SQL
5 1 (2.44%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 11 (26.83%) Security Cleared
2 9 (21.95%) SC Cleared
3 7 (17.07%) Degree
4 4 (9.76%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (9.76%) SAS Certification
5 3 (7.32%) Master's Degree
5 3 (7.32%) PhD
6 2 (4.88%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (2.44%) CCNA
7 1 (2.44%) CCNP
7 1 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (26.83%) Data Quality
2 2 (4.88%) Accessibility
2 2 (4.88%) Basel III
2 2 (4.88%) QA
2 2 (4.88%) WCAG
3 1 (2.44%) FATCA
3 1 (2.44%) PMO
System Software
1 5 (12.20%) Docker
2 3 (7.32%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (7.32%) VMware NSX
2 3 (7.32%) vSphere
3 2 (4.88%) Active Directory
4 1 (2.44%) Firmware
4 1 (2.44%) NFS
4 1 (2.44%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 13 (31.71%) Kubernetes
2 4 (9.76%) Ansible
2 4 (9.76%) Grafana
2 4 (9.76%) Terraform
3 3 (7.32%) Argo
3 3 (7.32%) vCenter Server
4 2 (4.88%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (2.44%) Data Guard
5 1 (2.44%) Oracle RMAN
5 1 (2.44%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 10 (24.39%) Databricks
2 7 (17.07%) Microsoft
3 6 (14.63%) Oracle
4 4 (9.76%) Pure Storage
5 3 (7.32%) Cisco
5 3 (7.32%) Red Hat
5 3 (7.32%) Splunk
5 3 (7.32%) VMware
6 2 (4.88%) Denodo
6 2 (4.88%) Pega
6 2 (4.88%) Talend
7 1 (2.44%) AppDynamics
7 1 (2.44%) Brocade
7 1 (2.44%) Cadence
7 1 (2.44%) Dynatrace
7 1 (2.44%) IBM
7 1 (2.44%) Meraki
7 1 (2.44%) NetCracker
7 1 (2.44%) Sage
7 1 (2.44%) SolarWinds