SDLC Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Systems or Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring SDLC skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 5 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 61 52 54
Rank change year-on-year -9 +2 0
Contract jobs citing SDLC 67 86 93
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 3.70% 3.98% 3.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.02% 4.34% 3.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 42 59 46
10th Percentile £367 £398 £463
25th Percentile £421 £486 £518
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £650 £685
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% -5.11% +5.38%
75th Percentile £723 £725 £797
90th Percentile £862 £860 £838
Central London median daily rate £600 £640 £685
% change year-on-year -6.25% -6.57% +5.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 1
10th Percentile £32.25 - -
25th Percentile £41.25 - £72.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 - £75.00
75th Percentile £73.75 - £77.50
90th Percentile £82.75 - -
Central London median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £75.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% -53.33% -7.98%

All Process and Methodology Skills
City of London

SDLC 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 City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,666 1,980 2,341
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 91.99% 91.62% 89.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,170 1,224 1,655
10th Percentile £331 £363 £363
25th Percentile £419 £472 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -
75th Percentile £675 £688 £690
90th Percentile £750 £788 £813
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -4.35% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 17 11
10th Percentile £20.06 £16.70 £17.00
25th Percentile £25.88 £22.00 £17.97
Median hourly rate £34.00 £38.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.69% +54.00% -51.46%
75th Percentile £52.19 £92.50 £42.38
90th Percentile £63.75 £122.20 £73.75
Central London median hourly rate £31.00 £35.00 £25.50
% change year-on-year -11.43% +37.25% -49.50%

SDLC
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SDLC relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

SDLC job vacancy trend in the City of London

SDLC
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing SDLC.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing SDLC

SDLC
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SDLC in the City of London over the 6 months to 5 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SDLC in the City of London

SDLC
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing SDLC.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing SDLC

SDLC
Hourly Rate Histogram in the City of London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SDLC in the City of London over the 6 months to 5 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SDLC in the City of London

SDLC
Contract Job Locations in the City of London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SDLC within the City of London region over the 6 months to 5 December 2025. 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
London Bridge - 1 - -
SDLC
Central London

SDLC
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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 5 (7.46%) Confluence
2 4 (5.97%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (4.48%) SharePoint
4 1 (1.49%) Apache
4 1 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (1.49%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.49%) IIS
4 1 (1.49%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 4 (5.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (4.48%) MS Visio
3 2 (2.99%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (2.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (1.49%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (4.48%) Salesforce CRM
1 3 (4.48%) Workday HCM
2 1 (1.49%) Endur
2 1 (1.49%) Exchequer
2 1 (1.49%) Loan IQ
2 1 (1.49%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 21 (31.34%) Azure
2 11 (16.42%) GCP
3 9 (13.43%) AWS
4 8 (11.94%) Power Platform
5 4 (5.97%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (5.97%) Entra ID
5 4 (5.97%) Google Gemini
5 4 (5.97%) Microsoft 365
6 3 (4.48%) GitHub
6 3 (4.48%) PaaS
7 2 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (2.99%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 2 (2.99%) Serverless
8 1 (1.49%) Amazon Glacier
8 1 (1.49%) Amazon Kinesis
8 1 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (1.49%) Azure Functions
8 1 (1.49%) Firebase
8 1 (1.49%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.99%) DNS
1 2 (2.99%) HTTP
1 2 (2.99%) SSL
1 2 (2.99%) TCP/IP
2 1 (1.49%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (8.96%) Power BI
2 5 (7.46%) SQL Server
3 4 (5.97%) MongoDB
4 3 (4.48%) Big Data
4 3 (4.48%) Tableau
5 2 (2.99%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (2.99%) BigQuery
5 2 (2.99%) KDB
5 2 (2.99%) Kdb+
5 2 (2.99%) MySQL
5 2 (2.99%) NoSQL
5 2 (2.99%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (2.99%) Relational Database
6 1 (1.49%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (1.49%) Data Mining
6 1 (1.49%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (1.49%) Delta Lake
6 1 (1.49%) MemSQL
6 1 (1.49%) RDBMS
6 1 (1.49%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 10 (14.93%) JIRA
2 4 (5.97%) Git
3 3 (4.48%) Selenium
4 2 (2.99%) Jenkins
4 2 (2.99%) JUnit
4 2 (2.99%) Robot Framework
4 2 (2.99%) Team Foundation Server
5 1 (1.49%) Ant
5 1 (1.49%) Bitbucket
5 1 (1.49%) Gradle
5 1 (1.49%) Jaeger
5 1 (1.49%) Mockito
5 1 (1.49%) Snyk
General
1 34 (50.75%) Finance
2 26 (38.81%) Social Skills
3 12 (17.91%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (11.94%) Banking
4 8 (11.94%) Financial Institution
5 7 (10.45%) Front Office
5 7 (10.45%) Influencing Skills
6 5 (7.46%) Investment Banking
7 4 (5.97%) Legal
7 4 (5.97%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.49%) Back Office
8 1 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.49%) Games
8 1 (1.49%) Law
8 1 (1.49%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 12 (17.91%) Developer
2 10 (14.93%) Architect
3 9 (13.43%) Solutions Architect
4 8 (11.94%) Analyst
5 7 (10.45%) Business Analyst
6 6 (8.96%) Java Developer
7 5 (7.46%) Senior
8 4 (5.97%) Consultant
8 4 (5.97%) Technical Analyst
9 3 (4.48%) Data Scientist
9 3 (4.48%) Full-Stack Developer
9 3 (4.48%) Low Latency Java Developer
9 3 (4.48%) Network Engineer
9 3 (4.48%) Python Engineer
9 3 (4.48%) Technical Business Analyst
10 2 (2.99%) Data Engineer
10 2 (2.99%) GCP Engineer
10 2 (2.99%) Lead
10 2 (2.99%) Monitoring Engineer
10 2 (2.99%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (11.94%) RESTful
2 7 (10.45%) .NET
3 6 (8.96%) React
4 4 (5.97%) CSS
4 4 (5.97%) HTML
4 4 (5.97%) REST
5 3 (4.48%) AngularJS
5 3 (4.48%) Kafka
5 3 (4.48%) Lightning Web Components
5 3 (4.48%) Spring
5 3 (4.48%) Web Services
6 2 (2.99%) .NET Framework
6 2 (2.99%) GraphQL
6 2 (2.99%) Hibernate
6 2 (2.99%) HTML5
6 2 (2.99%) OAuth
6 2 (2.99%) OAuth2
6 2 (2.99%) Spring Boot
6 2 (2.99%) Vue
6 2 (2.99%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (8.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
1 6 (8.96%) Product Ownership
2 4 (5.97%) Derivative
2 4 (5.97%) Distributed Systems
3 3 (4.48%) Market Risk
3 3 (4.48%) Public Cloud
4 2 (2.99%) Algorithms
4 2 (2.99%) CMDB
4 2 (2.99%) Credit Risk
4 2 (2.99%) Distributed Computing
4 2 (2.99%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (2.99%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (2.99%) Private Cloud
4 2 (2.99%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.49%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.49%) Educational Technology
5 1 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (1.49%) Online Games
5 1 (1.49%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 5 (7.46%) Unix
2 4 (5.97%) Linux
3 2 (2.99%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (46.27%) Agile
2 18 (26.87%) Problem-Solving
3 17 (25.37%) CI/CD
3 17 (25.37%) DevOps
4 12 (17.91%) Computer Science
4 12 (17.91%) Scrum
5 11 (16.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 9 (13.43%) Business Intelligence
6 9 (13.43%) Low Latency
6 9 (13.43%) Service Management
6 9 (13.43%) Software Engineering
7 8 (11.94%) Analytics
8 7 (10.45%) Containerisation
8 7 (10.45%) Continuous Improvement
8 7 (10.45%) Data Science
8 7 (10.45%) Requirements Gathering
8 7 (10.45%) User Acceptance Testing
9 6 (8.96%) Microservices
9 6 (8.96%) Project Delivery
9 6 (8.96%) Scenario Testing
Programming Languages
1 18 (26.87%) Java
1 18 (26.87%) Python
2 15 (22.39%) SQL
3 9 (13.43%) C#
4 4 (5.97%) JavaScript
5 2 (2.99%) C++
5 2 (2.99%) Go
5 2 (2.99%) Perl
5 2 (2.99%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.49%) Fortran
6 1 (1.49%) MATLAB
6 1 (1.49%) R
6 1 (1.49%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 16 (23.88%) Degree
2 5 (7.46%) Computer Science Degree
3 2 (2.99%) CBAP
3 2 (2.99%) CISSP
3 2 (2.99%) ISEB
4 1 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (1.49%) CFA
4 1 (1.49%) IIBA
4 1 (1.49%) Master's Degree
4 1 (1.49%) Postgraduate
4 1 (1.49%) SC Cleared
4 1 (1.49%) Security Cleared
4 1 (1.49%) Six Sigma Green Belt
4 1 (1.49%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (10.45%) GDPR
1 7 (10.45%) QA
2 3 (4.48%) COBIT
3 2 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.49%) Basel II
4 1 (1.49%) ISO 20022
4 1 (1.49%) PMO
4 1 (1.49%) SEPA
System Software
1 6 (8.96%) Docker
2 1 (1.49%) Active Directory
2 1 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 8 (11.94%) Terraform
2 7 (10.45%) Kubernetes
3 2 (2.99%) Ansible
3 2 (2.99%) Progress Chef
3 2 (2.99%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.49%) Grafana
4 1 (1.49%) WMI
Vendors
1 12 (17.91%) Microsoft
2 6 (8.96%) Google
3 5 (7.46%) IFS
4 4 (5.97%) Databricks
4 4 (5.97%) Oracle
4 4 (5.97%) Workday
5 3 (4.48%) Salesforce
5 3 (4.48%) ServiceNow
6 2 (2.99%) F5
7 1 (1.49%) Alteryx
7 1 (1.49%) Atlassian
7 1 (1.49%) Citrix
7 1 (1.49%) Duck Creek
7 1 (1.49%) MuleSoft
7 1 (1.49%) OpenAI
7 1 (1.49%) OpenLink
7 1 (1.49%) Remedy
7 1 (1.49%) Splunk
7 1 (1.49%) Spotify