Cost Optimisation Contracts with Hybrid/Remote/WFH Options

Cost Optimization
UK > Work from Home

The table below provides summary statistics for remote or hybrid contract work requiring Cost Optimisation skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cost Optimisation over the 6 months leading up to 3 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 256 310 446
Rank change year-on-year +54 +136 +85
Contract jobs citing Cost Optimisation 45 34 25
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 0.45% 0.22% 0.097%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.50% 0.25% 0.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 9 10
10th Percentile £409 £445 £423
25th Percentile £463 £500 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £513
Median % change year-on-year -6.77% +7.32% -21.15%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £588
90th Percentile £678 £615 £610
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £525
% change year-on-year -8.70% +9.52% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
Median hourly rate - - £90.00
UK median hourly rate £36.00 - £90.00

All Process and Methodology Skills
Work from Home

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 with remote or hybrid options requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 9,020 13,413 23,039
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 91.13% 87.92% 89.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,197 8,959 16,290
10th Percentile £340 £325 £363
25th Percentile £419 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £763 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 221 580 529
10th Percentile £14.20 £15.17 £19.00
25th Percentile £19.75 £25.38 £30.54
Median hourly rate £39.00 £43.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.30% -21.82% +57.14%
75th Percentile £66.50 £60.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.25 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £35.58 £36.00
% change year-on-year -18.48% -1.18% +44.00%

Cost Optimisation
Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

Job vacancies with remote working options citing Cost Optimisation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Cost Optimisation trend for jobs with Hybrid/Remote/WFH options

Cost Optimisation
Daily Rate Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in job vacancies with remote working options citing Cost Optimisation.

Cost Optimisation daily rate for jobs with a WFH option

Cost Optimisation
Daily Rate Histogram for Jobs with a WFH Option

Daily rate distribution for jobs with remote working options citing Cost Optimisation over the 6 months to 3 May 2025.

Cost Optimisation daily rate histogram for jobs with a WFH option

Cost Optimisation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities with WFH Options 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 1 (2.22%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 26 (57.78%) Azure
2 23 (51.11%) AWS
3 11 (24.44%) GCP
3 11 (24.44%) GitHub
4 8 (17.78%) AWS CloudFormation
5 7 (15.56%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (15.56%) Serverless
6 6 (13.33%) GitHub Actions
7 5 (11.11%) Microsoft 365
8 4 (8.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 4 (8.89%) Amazon EKS
8 4 (8.89%) Amazon S3
8 4 (8.89%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (8.89%) Entra ID
8 4 (8.89%) Microsoft Purview
8 4 (8.89%) Power Platform
9 3 (6.67%) Azure AKS
9 3 (6.67%) Azure Batch
9 3 (6.67%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (6.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 4 (8.89%) DNS
2 3 (6.67%) TCP/IP
3 2 (4.44%) HTTP
4 1 (2.22%) DHCP
4 1 (2.22%) HTTPS
4 1 (2.22%) Kerberos
4 1 (2.22%) NAS
4 1 (2.22%) Network Security
4 1 (2.22%) SAN
4 1 (2.22%) SSL
4 1 (2.22%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (8.89%) Power BI
2 3 (6.67%) Amazon Athena
2 3 (6.67%) Amazon RDS
2 3 (6.67%) DynamoDB
2 3 (6.67%) MongoDB
2 3 (6.67%) Parquet
3 2 (4.44%) Amazon Aurora
3 2 (4.44%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (4.44%) BigQuery
3 2 (4.44%) NoSQL
3 2 (4.44%) Oracle Database
3 2 (4.44%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (4.44%) SQL Server
4 1 (2.22%) Data Lake
4 1 (2.22%) MySQL
4 1 (2.22%) Oracle Exadata
4 1 (2.22%) RDBMS
4 1 (2.22%) Redis
4 1 (2.22%) Relational Database
4 1 (2.22%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 11 (24.44%) Jenkins
2 6 (13.33%) GitLab
3 3 (6.67%) Git
4 2 (4.44%) JIRA
5 1 (2.22%) Bitbucket
5 1 (2.22%) TeamCity
General
1 20 (44.44%) Social Skills
2 6 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
2 6 (13.33%) Finance
3 5 (11.11%) Public Sector
4 2 (4.44%) Billing
4 2 (4.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 2 (4.44%) Retail
5 1 (2.22%) Banking
5 1 (2.22%) Digital Health
5 1 (2.22%) Legal
5 1 (2.22%) Local Government
5 1 (2.22%) Marketing
5 1 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (2.22%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 16 (35.56%) Senior
2 10 (22.22%) Cloud Engineer
2 10 (22.22%) Senior Cloud Engineer
3 9 (20.00%) DevOps Engineer
4 6 (13.33%) Architect
4 6 (13.33%) AWS Engineer
4 6 (13.33%) Azure Engineer
4 6 (13.33%) Lead
5 5 (11.11%) Senior DevOps
5 5 (11.11%) Senior DevOps Engineer
6 4 (8.89%) Developer
6 4 (8.89%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
6 4 (8.89%) Platform Engineer
6 4 (8.89%) Solutions Architect
7 3 (6.67%) AWS DevOps
7 3 (6.67%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 3 (6.67%) Cloud Architect
7 3 (6.67%) Cloud Developer
7 3 (6.67%) Senior Developer
7 3 (6.67%) Senior Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (6.67%) AWS CDK
1 3 (6.67%) Elastic Stack
1 3 (6.67%) JSON
2 2 (4.44%) LDAP
2 2 (4.44%) Middleware
3 1 (2.22%) GraphQL
3 1 (2.22%) Keycloak
3 1 (2.22%) OpenTelemetry
3 1 (2.22%) Prisma
3 1 (2.22%) PySpark
3 1 (2.22%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 7 (15.56%) Cloud Native
2 5 (11.11%) Management Information System
2 5 (11.11%) Onboarding
3 3 (6.67%) Replication
4 2 (4.44%) BYOD
4 2 (4.44%) Clustering
4 2 (4.44%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (2.22%) CMDB
5 1 (2.22%) FMCG
5 1 (2.22%) NHS
5 1 (2.22%) Oracle Licensing
Operating Systems
1 6 (13.33%) Linux
2 2 (4.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 2 (4.44%) Windows
3 1 (2.22%) Oracle Linux
3 1 (2.22%) Solaris
3 1 (2.22%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (55.56%) DevOps
2 22 (48.89%) CI/CD
3 18 (40.00%) Problem-Solving
4 14 (31.11%) Infrastructure as Code
5 10 (22.22%) Cloud Security
5 10 (22.22%) Containerisation
6 9 (20.00%) Agile
6 9 (20.00%) Artificial Intelligence
6 9 (20.00%) Identity Access Management
7 8 (17.78%) FinOps
8 7 (15.56%) Cost Management
8 7 (15.56%) High Availability
8 7 (15.56%) Identity Management
9 6 (13.33%) Change Management
9 6 (13.33%) Collaborative Working
9 6 (13.33%) Software Engineering
10 5 (11.11%) Deployment Automation
10 5 (11.11%) Disaster Recovery
10 5 (11.11%) Migration
10 5 (11.11%) Resource Management
Programming Languages
1 13 (28.89%) Python
2 7 (15.56%) SQL
3 6 (13.33%) PowerShell
4 5 (11.11%) Bash
5 4 (8.89%) Bicep
5 4 (8.89%) Shell Script
6 3 (6.67%) Java
6 3 (6.67%) JavaScript
7 2 (4.44%) C#
7 2 (4.44%) Go
7 2 (4.44%) Kotlin
8 1 (2.22%) Groovy
8 1 (2.22%) Scala
8 1 (2.22%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 8 (17.78%) Security Cleared
2 7 (15.56%) AWS Certification
2 7 (15.56%) Azure Certification
3 6 (13.33%) SC Cleared
4 3 (6.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 3 (6.67%) Degree
5 2 (4.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (4.44%) DV Cleared
5 2 (4.44%) PMI Certification
5 2 (4.44%) PMP
5 2 (4.44%) TOGAF Certification
6 1 (2.22%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
6 1 (2.22%) Cisco Certification
6 1 (2.22%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (8.89%) GDPR
2 3 (6.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (4.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (2.22%) GRC
4 1 (2.22%) NCSC
System Software
1 17 (37.78%) Docker
2 3 (6.67%) Active Directory
3 2 (4.44%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (2.22%) Oracle RAC
4 1 (2.22%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 17 (37.78%) Kubernetes
2 15 (33.33%) Terraform
3 7 (15.56%) Ansible
3 7 (15.56%) Prometheus
4 6 (13.33%) Grafana
5 2 (4.44%) Progress Chef
5 2 (4.44%) Puppet
6 1 (2.22%) Argo
6 1 (2.22%) Consul
6 1 (2.22%) EMC NetWorker
6 1 (2.22%) Istio
6 1 (2.22%) linkerd
6 1 (2.22%) Netcool
6 1 (2.22%) Opsview
6 1 (2.22%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (2.22%) Tivoli
6 1 (2.22%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 10 (22.22%) Microsoft
2 8 (17.78%) Google
3 3 (6.67%) Databricks
3 3 (6.67%) Oracle
3 3 (6.67%) Red Hat
3 3 (6.67%) ServiceNow
4 2 (4.44%) Dynatrace
4 2 (4.44%) Qualys
4 2 (4.44%) Splunk
4 2 (4.44%) Sybase
5 1 (2.22%) Cisco
5 1 (2.22%) CyberArk
5 1 (2.22%) EMC
5 1 (2.22%) IBM
5 1 (2.22%) Isilon
5 1 (2.22%) New Relic
5 1 (2.22%) PagerDuty
5 1 (2.22%) Serena
5 1 (2.22%) VMware