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 16 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 103 105
Rank change year-on-year -20 +2 +20
Contract jobs citing Performance Optimisation 42 11 7
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 1.20% 0.64% 0.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.41% 0.72% 0.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 4 3
10th Percentile £406 £470 £292
25th Percentile £453 £506 £318
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £575 £360
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +59.72% -39.92%
75th Percentile £594 £638 £455
90th Percentile £656 £660 £512
England median daily rate £530 £475 £581
% change year-on-year +11.58% -18.28% +11.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £71.25 - -
Median hourly rate £72.50 - £55.00
75th Percentile £73.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £48.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +44.33% +61.67% -60.00%

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 2,974 1,520 1,535
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.26% 88.32% 82.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,885 965 1,040
10th Percentile £313 £234 £269
25th Percentile £406 £380 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £625
90th Percentile £668 £650 £725
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 106 59
10th Percentile £13.38 £12.62 £13.14
25th Percentile £18.34 £14.81 £14.85
Median hourly rate £30.73 £24.34 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +26.25% +8.18% -16.67%
75th Percentile £53.75 £35.45 £38.13
90th Percentile £70.55 £50.00 £55.25
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.75
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.17% +3.59%

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 16 August 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 16 August 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
Shropshire -36 10 £515 -
Warwickshire -6 8 £469 +4.92% 1
Birmingham -13 8 £509 -21.73% 3
Coventry -20 8 £463 - 2
Worcestershire - 3 £638 - 1
Staffordshire - 2 £431 - 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 (19.05%) SAS
2 5 (11.90%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (2.38%) Apache
3 1 (2.38%) Apache Spark
3 1 (2.38%) Confluence
3 1 (2.38%) SharePoint
3 1 (2.38%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (4.76%) Chatbot
2 1 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (2.38%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (2.38%) Oracle ERP
1 1 (2.38%) Primavera
1 1 (2.38%) SAP ERP
1 1 (2.38%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 17 (40.48%) Azure
2 16 (38.10%) AWS
3 6 (14.29%) Amazon S3
4 5 (11.90%) AWS CloudFormation
4 5 (11.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 5 (11.90%) Power Platform
4 5 (11.90%) Snowflake
4 5 (11.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 4 (9.52%) Amazon EC2
5 4 (9.52%) Amazon SQS
5 4 (9.52%) Azure Machine Learning
5 4 (9.52%) GitHub
6 3 (7.14%) Azure Data Factory
6 3 (7.14%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (4.76%) AWS Direct Connect
7 2 (4.76%) AWS Lambda
7 2 (4.76%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 2 (4.76%) OpenShift
7 2 (4.76%) Serverless
8 1 (2.38%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 7 (16.67%) NetScaler
2 3 (7.14%) BGP
2 3 (7.14%) OSPF
2 3 (7.14%) SSL
2 3 (7.14%) VLAN
2 3 (7.14%) WAN
3 2 (4.76%) DNS
3 2 (4.76%) EIGRP
3 2 (4.76%) Firewall
3 2 (4.76%) HSRP
3 2 (4.76%) LAN
3 2 (4.76%) Network Security
3 2 (4.76%) SD-WAN
3 2 (4.76%) VRRP
3 2 (4.76%) VXLAN
4 1 (2.38%) Cisco Nexus
4 1 (2.38%) DNSSEC
4 1 (2.38%) Ethernet VPN
4 1 (2.38%) iSCSI
4 1 (2.38%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (14.29%) SAS Enterprise Guide
2 5 (11.90%) Amazon RDS
2 5 (11.90%) Power BI
3 4 (9.52%) SAS Visual Analytics
4 2 (4.76%) Base SAS
4 2 (4.76%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (4.76%) Metadata
4 2 (4.76%) Oracle Database
4 2 (4.76%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (4.76%) SQL Server
5 1 (2.38%) Db2
5 1 (2.38%) DynamoDB
5 1 (2.38%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (2.38%) Hadoop
5 1 (2.38%) MongoDB
5 1 (2.38%) NoSQL
5 1 (2.38%) Oracle Database 12c
5 1 (2.38%) SAS Data Integration Studio
5 1 (2.38%) Snowflake Schema
5 1 (2.38%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 3 (7.14%) Git
1 3 (7.14%) MLflow
2 2 (4.76%) GitLab
2 2 (4.76%) Hudson
3 1 (2.38%) Jenkins
3 1 (2.38%) JIRA
3 1 (2.38%) Rational Rhapsody
3 1 (2.38%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 12 (28.57%) Social Skills
2 7 (16.67%) Public Sector
3 6 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (9.52%) Influencing Skills
5 3 (7.14%) Banking
5 3 (7.14%) Retail
6 2 (4.76%) Finance
7 1 (2.38%) Billing
7 1 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (2.38%) Legal
7 1 (2.38%) Military
7 1 (2.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 15 (35.71%) Architect
2 12 (28.57%) Senior
3 6 (14.29%) Data Engineer
4 5 (11.90%) Developer
5 4 (9.52%) Infrastructure Architect
5 4 (9.52%) SAS Architect
5 4 (9.52%) Senior Data Engineer
5 4 (9.52%) Technical Architect
6 3 (7.14%) Analyst
6 3 (7.14%) Lead
6 3 (7.14%) Network Architect
6 3 (7.14%) Senior Analyst
7 2 (4.76%) Consultant
7 2 (4.76%) Data Analyst
7 2 (4.76%) Data Scientist
7 2 (4.76%) Lead Architect
7 2 (4.76%) SAS Developer
7 2 (4.76%) SAS Engineer
7 2 (4.76%) Senior Data Analyst
7 2 (4.76%) Systems Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (4.76%) Node.js
1 2 (4.76%) React
1 2 (4.76%) REST
1 2 (4.76%) RESTful
2 1 (2.38%) .NET
2 1 (2.38%) .NET Core
2 1 (2.38%) AngularJS
2 1 (2.38%) Apache NiFi
2 1 (2.38%) CSS
2 1 (2.38%) Elastic Stack
2 1 (2.38%) HTML
2 1 (2.38%) JMS
2 1 (2.38%) jQuery
2 1 (2.38%) Kafka
2 1 (2.38%) Middleware
2 1 (2.38%) Next.js
2 1 (2.38%) Sass
2 1 (2.38%) SOAP
2 1 (2.38%) Web Services
2 1 (2.38%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 8 (19.05%) Cloud Native
2 5 (11.90%) Analytical Mindset
2 5 (11.90%) Enterprise Cloud
3 2 (4.76%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
3 2 (4.76%) Hybrid Cloud
3 2 (4.76%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (2.38%) Algorithms
4 1 (2.38%) CMDB
4 1 (2.38%) Data Centre
4 1 (2.38%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (2.38%) Enterprise Storage
4 1 (2.38%) Legacy Applications
4 1 (2.38%) Operational Technology
4 1 (2.38%) Product Ownership
4 1 (2.38%) Replication
4 1 (2.38%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 7 (16.67%) Linux
2 5 (11.90%) AIX
2 5 (11.90%) Windows
3 2 (4.76%) Unix
4 1 (2.38%) HPUX
4 1 (2.38%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 17 (40.48%) Migration
3 15 (35.71%) DevOps
4 11 (26.19%) Containerisation
5 10 (23.81%) Agile
5 10 (23.81%) High Availability
5 10 (23.81%) Technical Leadership
6 9 (21.43%) Data Pipeline
6 9 (21.43%) Infrastructure as Code
6 9 (21.43%) Stakeholder Management
7 8 (19.05%) Analytics
7 8 (19.05%) Continuous Improvement
7 8 (19.05%) Data Governance
7 8 (19.05%) Data Modelling
8 7 (16.67%) AI
8 7 (16.67%) Computer Science
8 7 (16.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 6 (14.29%) ETL
9 6 (14.29%) Zero Trust
10 5 (11.90%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 11 (26.19%) SQL
2 8 (19.05%) Python
3 3 (7.14%) PL/SQL
4 2 (4.76%) JavaScript
4 2 (4.76%) TypeScript
5 1 (2.38%) Bash
5 1 (2.38%) C
5 1 (2.38%) C#
5 1 (2.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 1 (2.38%) Shell Script
5 1 (2.38%) T-SQL
5 1 (2.38%) VB
5 1 (2.38%) VB6
Qualifications
1 12 (28.57%) Security Cleared
2 9 (21.43%) SC Cleared
3 7 (16.67%) Degree
4 4 (9.52%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (9.52%) SAS Certification
5 3 (7.14%) Master's Degree
5 3 (7.14%) PhD
6 2 (4.76%) CCNP
6 2 (4.76%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (2.38%) CCIE
7 1 (2.38%) CCNA
7 1 (2.38%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (21.43%) Data Quality
2 3 (7.14%) QA
3 2 (4.76%) Basel III
4 1 (2.38%) HL7
4 1 (2.38%) PMO
System Software
1 6 (14.29%) Docker
2 1 (2.38%) Firmware
2 1 (2.38%) NFS
2 1 (2.38%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (2.38%) VMware NSX
2 1 (2.38%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 12 (28.57%) Kubernetes
2 8 (19.05%) Terraform
3 4 (9.52%) Ansible
4 3 (7.14%) Grafana
5 1 (2.38%) Argo
5 1 (2.38%) Data Guard
5 1 (2.38%) Kibana
5 1 (2.38%) logstash
5 1 (2.38%) Oracle RMAN
5 1 (2.38%) Prometheus
5 1 (2.38%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 11 (26.19%) Databricks
2 8 (19.05%) Cisco
2 8 (19.05%) Microsoft
3 6 (14.29%) Oracle
4 5 (11.90%) VMware
5 2 (4.76%) Citrix
5 2 (4.76%) Denodo
5 2 (4.76%) Pega
5 2 (4.76%) Pure Storage
5 2 (4.76%) SolarWinds
6 1 (2.38%) AppDynamics
6 1 (2.38%) Dell
6 1 (2.38%) Dynatrace
6 1 (2.38%) IFS
6 1 (2.38%) Informatica
6 1 (2.38%) Meraki
6 1 (2.38%) New Relic
6 1 (2.38%) Palo Alto
6 1 (2.38%) Splunk
6 1 (2.38%) Talend