Cost Optimisation Job Trends in the South East

Cost Optimization
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Cost Optimisation skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 246 289 293
Rank change year-on-year +43 +4 +118
Permanent jobs citing Cost Optimisation 24 17 2
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 0.23% 0.19% 0.023%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.29% 0.21% 0.026%
Number of salaries quoted 14 14 1
10th Percentile £41,600 £55,375 -
25th Percentile £51,250 £56,250 £61,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £57,500 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% -8.00% +13.64%
75th Percentile £65,000 £58,750 £63,750
90th Percentile £67,625 £90,000 -
England median annual salary £70,079 £80,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year -12.40% +14.29% -12.50%

All Process & Methodology Skills
South East

Cost Optimisation falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the South East.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 8,324 7,915 7,772
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 80.21% 88.16% 88.29%
Number of salaries quoted 4,975 3,773 5,421
10th Percentile £27,750 £33,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £34,250 £45,000 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £58,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -14.53% +11.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,000 £75,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £85,000 £80,000
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

Cost Optimisation
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Cost Optimisation relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Cost Optimisation job vacancy trend in the South East

Cost Optimisation
Salary Trend in the South East

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Cost Optimisation.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Cost Optimisation

Cost Optimisation
Salary Histogram in the South East

Salary distribution for jobs citing Cost Optimisation in the South East over the 6 months to 14 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Cost Optimisation in the South East

Cost Optimisation
Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Cost Optimisation within the South East region over the 6 months to 14 January 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Thames Valley - 20 £62,500 - 13
Berkshire - 12 £65,000 - 9
Buckinghamshire - 6 £57,500 - 3
Surrey +5 3 £38,000 - 2
Oxfordshire - 2 £85,000 - 1
Kent -14 1 £50,000 -9.09% 2
Cost Optimisation
England

Cost Optimisation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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:

Applications
1 6 (25.00%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (25.00%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (8.33%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 8 (33.33%) GCP
2 7 (29.17%) Power Platform
3 4 (16.67%) AWS
4 3 (12.50%) Azure
5 2 (8.33%) SaaS
6 1 (4.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (4.17%) Amazon EKS
6 1 (4.17%) Amazon S3
6 1 (4.17%) AWS Fargate
6 1 (4.17%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (4.17%) CloudFront
6 1 (4.17%) Datadog
6 1 (4.17%) dbt
6 1 (4.17%) Entra ID
6 1 (4.17%) Fivetran
6 1 (4.17%) OCI
6 1 (4.17%) Serverless
6 1 (4.17%) Snowflake
6 1 (4.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (29.17%) Power BI
2 6 (25.00%) BigQuery
3 1 (4.17%) Airbyte
3 1 (4.17%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 1 (4.17%) Git
General
1 11 (45.83%) Analytical Skills
1 11 (45.83%) Social Skills
2 9 (37.50%) Finance
3 6 (25.00%) Influencing Skills
3 6 (25.00%) Law
3 6 (25.00%) Marketing
4 2 (8.33%) Organisational Skills
4 2 (8.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 10 (41.67%) Architect
2 6 (25.00%) Analyst
2 6 (25.00%) Cloud Architect
2 6 (25.00%) Data Analyst
2 6 (25.00%) Financial Analyst
2 6 (25.00%) GCP Architect
2 6 (25.00%) Platform Architect
3 3 (12.50%) Business Architect
4 2 (8.33%) Coordinator
4 2 (8.33%) IT Support
4 2 (8.33%) Product Manager
4 2 (8.33%) Senior
4 2 (8.33%) Technical Manager
4 2 (8.33%) Technical Product Manager
5 1 (4.17%) Business Manager
5 1 (4.17%) Business Operations Manager
5 1 (4.17%) Lead
5 1 (4.17%) Operations Manager
5 1 (4.17%) Platform Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (4.17%) Snowpark
Miscellaneous
1 7 (29.17%) Cloud Native
2 2 (8.33%) Management Information System
3 1 (4.17%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (4.17%) Driving Licence
Processes & Methodologies
1 15 (62.50%) Continuous Improvement
2 11 (45.83%) Decision-Making
2 11 (45.83%) Roadmaps
3 9 (37.50%) Budgeting and Forecasting
4 8 (33.33%) Analytics
4 8 (33.33%) Budgeting
4 8 (33.33%) Cost Management
4 8 (33.33%) ERP
4 8 (33.33%) Strategic Roadmap
5 7 (29.17%) Agile
5 7 (29.17%) Business Intelligence
5 7 (29.17%) ETL
6 6 (25.00%) Architectural Design
6 6 (25.00%) Cloud Security
6 6 (25.00%) Data Science
6 6 (25.00%) Financial Analysis
6 6 (25.00%) Mentoring
6 6 (25.00%) Performance Analysis
6 6 (25.00%) Performance Optimisation
7 4 (16.67%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 13 (54.17%) Python
2 7 (29.17%) SQL
3 6 (25.00%) Go
3 6 (25.00%) Java
3 6 (25.00%) VBA
Qualifications
1 6 (25.00%) ACCA
1 6 (25.00%) CIMA
2 3 (12.50%) Degree
3 2 (8.33%) A+ Certification
3 2 (8.33%) MCP
3 2 (8.33%) Network+ Certification
4 1 (4.17%) AWS Certification
4 1 (4.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 1 (4.17%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (16.67%) GDPR
2 1 (4.17%) Accessibility
2 1 (4.17%) Data Quality
2 1 (4.17%) HIPAA
2 1 (4.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (4.17%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 1 (4.17%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (29.17%) Kubernetes
2 2 (8.33%) Terraform
3 1 (4.17%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 8 (33.33%) Google
1 8 (33.33%) SAP
2 2 (8.33%) Salesforce
3 1 (4.17%) Oracle