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 20 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 46 52
Rank change year-on-year -22 +6 -7
Contract jobs citing SDLC 59 76 86
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 3.21% 4.09% 3.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.60% 4.44% 3.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 47 48
10th Percentile £413 £358 £451
25th Percentile £465 £474 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £575 £650
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -11.54% -
75th Percentile £681 £725 £775
90th Percentile £894 £955 £804
Central London median daily rate £600 £575 £650
% change year-on-year +4.35% -11.54% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.25 - £72.50
Median hourly rate £27.50 - £75.00
75th Percentile £28.75 - £77.50
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £75.00
% change year-on-year -21.43% -53.33% -7.98%

All Process & 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 1,641 1,710 2,177
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 89.18% 91.98% 89.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,155 1,038 1,548
10th Percentile £350 £375 £363
25th Percentile £425 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -2.95%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £792 £800
Central London median daily rate £540 £575 £574
% change year-on-year -6.09% +0.22% -1.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 10 10
10th Percentile £19.98 £13.73 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.66 £22.00 £17.48
Median hourly rate £27.75 £35.50 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -21.83% +35.24% -25.00%
75th Percentile £42.12 £94.94 £44.56
90th Percentile £45.08 £114.55 £74.13
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -20.54%

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 20 January 2026.

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
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 (8.47%) Confluence
2 2 (3.39%) Apache
3 1 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (1.69%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 2 (3.39%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (3.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (3.39%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (3.39%) Oracle General Ledger
1 2 (3.39%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 1 (1.69%) Exchequer
2 1 (1.69%) Loan IQ
2 1 (1.69%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 15 (25.42%) Azure
2 10 (16.95%) AWS
2 10 (16.95%) GCP
3 7 (11.86%) Power Platform
4 5 (8.47%) Google Gemini
5 4 (6.78%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (6.78%) GitHub
6 3 (5.08%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (3.39%) Cloud Run
7 2 (3.39%) OCI
7 2 (3.39%) Serverless
8 1 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 1 (1.69%) Amazon Kinesis
8 1 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (1.69%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (1.69%) Azure Functions
8 1 (1.69%) Azure Logic Apps
8 1 (1.69%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
8 1 (1.69%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 1 (1.69%) Stackdriver
Communications & Networking
1 2 (3.39%) HTTP
1 2 (3.39%) SSL
1 2 (3.39%) TCP/IP
2 1 (1.69%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (8.47%) Power BI
2 4 (6.78%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (5.08%) MongoDB
3 3 (5.08%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (5.08%) Relational Database
3 3 (5.08%) Tableau
4 2 (3.39%) Apache Cassandra
4 2 (3.39%) KDB
4 2 (3.39%) Kdb+
4 2 (3.39%) MySQL
4 2 (3.39%) NoSQL
4 2 (3.39%) Oracle Reports
4 2 (3.39%) SQL Server
5 1 (1.69%) Big Data
5 1 (1.69%) BigQuery
5 1 (1.69%) Delta Lake
5 1 (1.69%) DynamoDB
5 1 (1.69%) RDBMS
5 1 (1.69%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 11 (18.64%) JIRA
2 5 (8.47%) Git
3 4 (6.78%) Jenkins
4 3 (5.08%) Selenium
5 2 (3.39%) GitLab
5 2 (3.39%) JUnit
5 2 (3.39%) Robot Framework
5 2 (3.39%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (1.69%) Ant
6 1 (1.69%) Bitbucket
6 1 (1.69%) Jaeger
6 1 (1.69%) Mockito
6 1 (1.69%) Postman
6 1 (1.69%) REST Assured
6 1 (1.69%) Snyk
General
1 34 (57.63%) Finance
2 23 (38.98%) Social Skills
3 11 (18.64%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (13.56%) Banking
4 8 (13.56%) Front Office
5 7 (11.86%) Financial Institution
6 6 (10.17%) Influencing Skills
7 4 (6.78%) Investment Banking
7 4 (6.78%) Legal
8 2 (3.39%) Back Office
9 1 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (1.69%) Games
9 1 (1.69%) Law
9 1 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (1.69%) Public Sector
9 1 (1.69%) Retail
Job Titles
1 10 (16.95%) Developer
2 8 (13.56%) Analyst
2 8 (13.56%) Architect
3 7 (11.86%) Business Analyst
3 7 (11.86%) Solutions Architect
4 4 (6.78%) Java Developer
4 4 (6.78%) Lead
5 3 (5.08%) Cloud Architect
5 3 (5.08%) Consultant
5 3 (5.08%) Data Scientist
5 3 (5.08%) Full-Stack Developer
5 3 (5.08%) Low Latency Java Developer
5 3 (5.08%) Network Engineer
5 3 (5.08%) Python Engineer
5 3 (5.08%) Senior
5 3 (5.08%) Technical Analyst
6 2 (3.39%) Cloud Solutions Architect
6 2 (3.39%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
6 2 (3.39%) Scrum Master
6 2 (3.39%) Technical Writer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (8.47%) React
1 5 (8.47%) REST
2 4 (6.78%) RESTful
2 4 (6.78%) XML
3 3 (5.08%) .NET
3 3 (5.08%) AngularJS
3 3 (5.08%) CSS
3 3 (5.08%) HTML
3 3 (5.08%) Spring
3 3 (5.08%) Spring Boot
4 2 (3.39%) GraphQL
4 2 (3.39%) Hibernate
4 2 (3.39%) Kafka
4 2 (3.39%) Middleware
4 2 (3.39%) OAuth
4 2 (3.39%) OAuth2
4 2 (3.39%) OpenTelemetry
4 2 (3.39%) Oracle Fusion
5 1 (1.69%) SOAP
5 1 (1.69%) XML Schema
Miscellaneous
1 9 (15.25%) Product Ownership
2 7 (11.86%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 4 (6.78%) Cloud Native
3 4 (6.78%) Distributed Systems
4 3 (5.08%) Market Risk
4 3 (5.08%) Public Cloud
4 3 (5.08%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (3.39%) Algorithms
5 2 (3.39%) Distributed Computing
5 2 (3.39%) Equities
5 2 (3.39%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (3.39%) Private Cloud
6 1 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.69%) Derivative
6 1 (1.69%) Educational Technology
6 1 (1.69%) e-Learning
6 1 (1.69%) Fixed Income
6 1 (1.69%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (1.69%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 4 (6.78%) Unix
2 3 (5.08%) Linux
3 2 (3.39%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (54.24%) Agile
2 18 (30.51%) Problem-Solving
3 15 (25.42%) CI/CD
3 15 (25.42%) DevOps
4 12 (20.34%) Scrum
5 11 (18.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 8 (13.56%) Computer Science
6 8 (13.56%) Containerisation
6 8 (13.56%) Continuous Improvement
6 8 (13.56%) Low Latency
6 8 (13.56%) Risk Management
6 8 (13.56%) User Acceptance Testing
7 7 (11.86%) AI
7 7 (11.86%) Generative AI
7 7 (11.86%) Requirements Gathering
7 7 (11.86%) Software Engineering
8 6 (10.17%) Analytics
8 6 (10.17%) Business Analysis
8 6 (10.17%) Mentoring
8 6 (10.17%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 15 (25.42%) Java
2 14 (23.73%) Python
3 12 (20.34%) SQL
4 7 (11.86%) C#
5 4 (6.78%) JavaScript
6 2 (3.39%) C++
6 2 (3.39%) Go
6 2 (3.39%) Korn
6 2 (3.39%) Perl
6 2 (3.39%) TypeScript
7 1 (1.69%) Fortran
7 1 (1.69%) MATLAB
7 1 (1.69%) R
7 1 (1.69%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 12 (20.34%) Degree
2 4 (6.78%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (5.08%) CBAP
3 3 (5.08%) ISEB
4 2 (3.39%) CFA
4 2 (3.39%) IIBA
4 2 (3.39%) SC Cleared
4 2 (3.39%) Security Cleared
5 1 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.69%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.69%) PMI Certification
5 1 (1.69%) PMP
5 1 (1.69%) Postgraduate
5 1 (1.69%) Six Sigma Green Belt
5 1 (1.69%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (11.86%) QA
2 4 (6.78%) GDPR
3 2 (3.39%) GAAP
3 2 (3.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.69%) Basel III
4 1 (1.69%) Data Quality
System Software
1 7 (11.86%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (11.86%) Kubernetes
1 7 (11.86%) Terraform
2 2 (3.39%) Ansible
3 1 (1.69%) Argo
3 1 (1.69%) Grafana
3 1 (1.69%) Istio
3 1 (1.69%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 6 (10.17%) Oracle
2 5 (8.47%) Google
2 5 (8.47%) Microsoft
3 4 (6.78%) IFS
4 3 (5.08%) Databricks
4 3 (5.08%) Workday
5 2 (3.39%) F5
5 2 (3.39%) SAP
6 1 (1.69%) Atlassian
6 1 (1.69%) MuleSoft
6 1 (1.69%) Murex
6 1 (1.69%) OpenAI
6 1 (1.69%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.69%) ServiceNow
6 1 (1.69%) Splunk