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 24 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 94 107
Rank change year-on-year -29 +13 +11
Contract jobs citing Performance Optimisation 38 4 3
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 1.19% 0.29% 0.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.43% 0.33% 0.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 4 1
10th Percentile £408 - -
25th Percentile £455 £525 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £575 £360
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +59.72% -44.62%
75th Percentile £594 £638 -
90th Percentile £644 £660 -
England median daily rate £510 £500 £581
% change year-on-year +2.00% -13.98% +16.25%
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 2,655 1,228 1,588
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 83.44% 88.79% 83.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,714 797 1,063
10th Percentile £313 £195 £275
25th Percentile £404 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -3.85%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £673 £750
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 57 115
10th Percentile £14.82 £12.62 £11.09
25th Percentile £22.50 £13.78 £14.06
Median hourly rate £34.38 £19.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +80.92% -15.56% +3.73%
75th Percentile £67.84 £28.18 £41.13
90th Percentile £72.54 £51.00 £58.75
England median hourly rate £45.25 £28.48 £36.50
% change year-on-year +58.88% -21.97% -2.14%

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 24 May 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 24 May 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 -14 13 £500 -23.08% 5
Shropshire - 8 £500 - 3
Coventry - 6 £456 -
Warwickshire - 6 £500 - 1
Worcestershire - 2 £638 - 1
Staffordshire - 2 £431 -
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 6 (15.79%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (10.53%) SAS
3 1 (2.63%) Confluence
3 1 (2.63%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (5.26%) Chatbot
2 1 (2.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (2.63%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (2.63%) Primavera
1 1 (2.63%) SAP ERP
1 1 (2.63%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 17 (44.74%) Azure
2 13 (34.21%) AWS
3 6 (15.79%) GitHub
3 6 (15.79%) Power Platform
4 5 (13.16%) Amazon S3
4 5 (13.16%) AWS Lambda
4 5 (13.16%) OpenShift
4 5 (13.16%) Serverless
5 4 (10.53%) Azure Machine Learning
5 4 (10.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 4 (10.53%) dbt
5 4 (10.53%) Snowflake
6 3 (7.89%) Azure Data Factory
6 3 (7.89%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (5.26%) Amazon SQS
7 2 (5.26%) Power Automate
8 1 (2.63%) AWS Direct Connect
8 1 (2.63%) AWS Step Functions
8 1 (2.63%) Figma
8 1 (2.63%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (13.16%) DNS
2 3 (7.89%) Firewall
2 3 (7.89%) Network Security
3 2 (5.26%) DHCP
3 2 (5.26%) VPN
4 1 (2.63%) BGP
4 1 (2.63%) Cisco Nexus
4 1 (2.63%) EIGRP
4 1 (2.63%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (2.63%) HSRP
4 1 (2.63%) iSCSI
4 1 (2.63%) Multicast
4 1 (2.63%) NAS
4 1 (2.63%) NetScaler
4 1 (2.63%) OSPF
4 1 (2.63%) SAN
4 1 (2.63%) SSL
4 1 (2.63%) VLAN
4 1 (2.63%) VRRP
4 1 (2.63%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (15.79%) Power BI
2 3 (7.89%) Amazon Redshift
2 3 (7.89%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (5.26%) Metadata
3 2 (5.26%) Oracle Database
3 2 (5.26%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (5.26%) Power Query
3 2 (5.26%) Relational Database
3 2 (5.26%) SAS Enterprise Guide
3 2 (5.26%) SAS Visual Analytics
4 1 (2.63%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (2.63%) Data Lake
4 1 (2.63%) DB2
4 1 (2.63%) DynamoDB
4 1 (2.63%) MySQL
4 1 (2.63%) NoSQL
4 1 (2.63%) Oracle Database 12c
4 1 (2.63%) Pentaho
4 1 (2.63%) SAS Data Integration Studio
4 1 (2.63%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 7 (18.42%) Git
2 3 (7.89%) Jenkins
2 3 (7.89%) MLflow
3 2 (5.26%) GitLab
3 2 (5.26%) Hudson
4 1 (2.63%) JIRA
4 1 (2.63%) REST Assured
4 1 (2.63%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (2.63%) Storybook
4 1 (2.63%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (2.63%) Vite
4 1 (2.63%) webpack
General
1 14 (36.84%) Social Skills
2 5 (13.16%) Finance
2 5 (13.16%) Public Sector
3 4 (10.53%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (7.89%) Influencing Skills
5 2 (5.26%) Banking
5 2 (5.26%) Retail
Job Titles
1 11 (28.95%) Architect
2 8 (21.05%) Senior
3 7 (18.42%) Data Engineer
4 4 (10.53%) Data Architect
4 4 (10.53%) Developer
5 3 (7.89%) Analyst
5 3 (7.89%) Lead
5 3 (7.89%) Senior Analyst
6 2 (5.26%) Consultant
6 2 (5.26%) Data Analyst
6 2 (5.26%) Lead Architect
6 2 (5.26%) Network Engineer
6 2 (5.26%) Pega Architect
6 2 (5.26%) SAS Architect
6 2 (5.26%) SAS Engineer
6 2 (5.26%) Senior Data Analyst
6 2 (5.26%) Senior Data Engineer
6 2 (5.26%) Systems Architect
6 2 (5.26%) Technical Architect
6 2 (5.26%) VMware Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (13.16%) REST
2 3 (7.89%) OpenTelemetry
3 2 (5.26%) AngularJS
3 2 (5.26%) CSS
3 2 (5.26%) HTML
3 2 (5.26%) Node.js
3 2 (5.26%) RESTful
3 2 (5.26%) SOAP
3 2 (5.26%) XML
4 1 (2.63%) CSS3
4 1 (2.63%) HTML5
4 1 (2.63%) JMS
4 1 (2.63%) JSON
4 1 (2.63%) Lightning Web Components
4 1 (2.63%) React
Miscellaneous
1 8 (21.05%) Cloud Native
2 4 (10.53%) Hybrid Cloud
3 3 (7.89%) Enterprise Cloud
4 2 (5.26%) Analytical Mindset
4 2 (5.26%) Product Ownership
5 1 (2.63%) Data Centre
5 1 (2.63%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (2.63%) Enterprise Storage
5 1 (2.63%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 2 (5.26%) Linux
1 2 (5.26%) Unix
1 2 (5.26%) Windows
1 2 (5.26%) Windows Server
2 1 (2.63%) AIX
2 1 (2.63%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (55.26%) CI/CD
2 17 (44.74%) Migration
3 13 (34.21%) DevOps
4 12 (31.58%) Containerisation
5 10 (26.32%) Data Modelling
5 10 (26.32%) Data Pipeline
6 9 (23.68%) Agile
6 9 (23.68%) ETL
6 9 (23.68%) High Availability
7 8 (21.05%) Analytics
7 8 (21.05%) Data Governance
7 8 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
8 7 (18.42%) AI
8 7 (18.42%) Data Engineering
9 6 (15.79%) Business Intelligence
9 6 (15.79%) Load Balancing
9 6 (15.79%) Software Engineering
9 6 (15.79%) Stakeholder Management
9 6 (15.79%) Technical Leadership
10 5 (13.16%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 13 (34.21%) SQL
2 12 (31.58%) Python
3 3 (7.89%) Bash
4 2 (5.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 2 (5.26%) JavaScript
4 2 (5.26%) PL/SQL
4 2 (5.26%) Shell Script
4 2 (5.26%) TypeScript
5 1 (2.63%) Apex Code
5 1 (2.63%) Java
5 1 (2.63%) R
Qualifications
1 7 (18.42%) Security Cleared
2 6 (15.79%) SC Cleared
3 5 (13.16%) Degree
4 3 (7.89%) Master's Degree
4 3 (7.89%) PhD
5 2 (5.26%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (5.26%) SAS Certification
6 1 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (23.68%) Data Quality
2 2 (5.26%) Accessibility
2 2 (5.26%) QA
2 2 (5.26%) WCAG
3 1 (2.63%) FATCA
3 1 (2.63%) PMO
System Software
1 5 (13.16%) Docker
2 3 (7.89%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (7.89%) VMware NSX
2 3 (7.89%) vSphere
3 2 (5.26%) Active Directory
4 1 (2.63%) Firmware
4 1 (2.63%) NFS
4 1 (2.63%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 12 (31.58%) Kubernetes
2 5 (13.16%) Ansible
2 5 (13.16%) Terraform
3 4 (10.53%) Grafana
4 3 (7.89%) Argo
4 3 (7.89%) vCenter Server
5 2 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (2.63%) Data Guard
6 1 (2.63%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (2.63%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 8 (21.05%) Databricks
1 8 (21.05%) Microsoft
2 4 (10.53%) Oracle
2 4 (10.53%) Pure Storage
2 4 (10.53%) Red Hat
3 3 (7.89%) Splunk
3 3 (7.89%) VMware
4 2 (5.26%) Cisco
4 2 (5.26%) Denodo
4 2 (5.26%) Pega
4 2 (5.26%) Talend
5 1 (2.63%) Brocade
5 1 (2.63%) Cadence
5 1 (2.63%) Dell
5 1 (2.63%) IBM
5 1 (2.63%) Informatica
5 1 (2.63%) Meraki
5 1 (2.63%) Sage
5 1 (2.63%) Salesforce
5 1 (2.63%) SAP