SDLC Contract Job Trends in England

Systems or Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring SDLC skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 109 97 88
Rank change year-on-year -12 -9 -4
Contract jobs citing SDLC 1,118 745 848
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.42% 2.68% 2.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.86% 2.95% 3.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 660 496 571
10th Percentile £374 £325 £363
25th Percentile £431 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.14% -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £630 £688 £665
90th Percentile £725 £794 £800
UK median daily rate £527 £509 £528
% change year-on-year +3.59% -3.60% -8.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 24 17
10th Percentile £56.25 £22.16 £35.00
25th Percentile £61.87 £40.31 £46.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% -23.08% +16.85%
75th Percentile £71.00 £66.63 £73.75
90th Percentile £78.05 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +40.00% -23.08% +12.07%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 39,062 25,238 28,145
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.72% 90.90% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,917 16,041 17,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,725 1,497 1,306
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £14.92
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.75 £66.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%

SDLC
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

SDLC job vacancy trend in England

SDLC
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SDLC.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SDLC

SDLC
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SDLC in England over the 6 months to 16 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SDLC in England

SDLC
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SDLC.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SDLC

SDLC
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SDLC in England over the 6 months to 16 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SDLC in England

SDLC
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SDLC within the England region over the 6 months to 16 September 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
London -27 565 £575 -4.17% 1,399
North of England +1 223 £472 +0.64% 282
South East +14 146 £525 +3.24% 218
North West -33 90 £500 +6.61% 179
Midlands -27 89 £475 +18.75% 148
Yorkshire +7 88 £450 -3.43% 75
West Midlands -16 83 £475 -5.00% 91
South West -17 58 £463 +2.78% 241
North East +2 48 £400 -23.81% 33
East of England -12 34 £558 +8.78% 96
East Midlands -35 6 £508 +35.33% 56
SDLC
UK

SDLC
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 121 (10.82%) Confluence
2 14 (1.25%) Apache
3 12 (1.07%) SharePoint
4 10 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.63%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.36%) FactoryTalk
6 4 (0.36%) IIS
6 4 (0.36%) SAS
7 2 (0.18%) Apache Superset
7 2 (0.18%) CICS
7 2 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.089%) CMS
8 1 (0.089%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.089%) Mule
8 1 (0.089%) Mule ESB
8 1 (0.089%) NetWeaver
8 1 (0.089%) nginx
8 1 (0.089%) OpenStack
Applications
1 29 (2.59%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.43%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.089%) Notion
Business Applications
1 8 (0.72%) Magento
2 6 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.45%) Aladdin
3 5 (0.45%) Findur
4 4 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 4 (0.36%) Workday HCM
5 3 (0.27%) Actimize
5 3 (0.27%) Primavera
5 3 (0.27%) Remedy AR System
5 3 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
5 3 (0.27%) Summit
6 2 (0.18%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 2 (0.18%) Eikon
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.089%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.089%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.089%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.089%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.089%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 293 (26.21%) Azure
2 268 (23.97%) AWS
3 113 (10.11%) Azure DevOps
4 104 (9.30%) GitHub
5 85 (7.60%) GCP
6 61 (5.46%) Power Platform
7 46 (4.11%) OpenShift
8 43 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
9 33 (2.95%) Serverless
10 28 (2.50%) GitHub Copilot
11 23 (2.06%) AWS Lambda
11 23 (2.06%) SaaS
12 19 (1.70%) Anthropic Claude
12 19 (1.70%) PowerApps
13 18 (1.61%) Amazon S3
14 17 (1.52%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 16 (1.43%) Amazon EKS
16 15 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
17 14 (1.25%) dbt
17 14 (1.25%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.79%) Firewall
2 19 (1.70%) Network Security
3 12 (1.07%) TCP/IP
4 8 (0.72%) HTTP
5 5 (0.45%) Broadband
5 5 (0.45%) DNS
5 5 (0.45%) Internet
5 5 (0.45%) SSL
5 5 (0.45%) VLAN
6 4 (0.36%) HTTPS
7 3 (0.27%) DHCP
8 2 (0.18%) BGP
8 2 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
8 2 (0.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 2 (0.18%) Intranet
8 2 (0.18%) Software-Defined Networking
9 1 (0.089%) MQTT
9 1 (0.089%) NAS
9 1 (0.089%) NFC
9 1 (0.089%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (6.98%) Relational Database
2 57 (5.10%) SQL Server
3 39 (3.49%) Power BI
4 35 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
5 33 (2.95%) PostgreSQL
6 28 (2.50%) Oracle Database
7 25 (2.24%) MongoDB
7 25 (2.24%) NoSQL
8 20 (1.79%) Metadata
9 14 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
10 11 (0.98%) MySQL
11 10 (0.89%) Db2
11 10 (0.89%) Tableau
12 9 (0.81%) Data Lake
12 9 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
12 9 (0.81%) RDBMS
12 9 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
13 7 (0.63%) DataStage
13 7 (0.63%) Looker
13 7 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 205 (18.34%) JIRA
2 167 (14.94%) Git
3 89 (7.96%) Jenkins
4 75 (6.71%) GitLab
5 63 (5.64%) Selenium
6 57 (5.10%) SonarQube
7 36 (3.22%) JUnit
8 29 (2.59%) Cucumber
9 19 (1.70%) Bitbucket
10 17 (1.52%) Postman
11 15 (1.34%) Maven
12 14 (1.25%) Claude Code
12 14 (1.25%) Cypress.io
12 14 (1.25%) Gatling
13 13 (1.16%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.98%) JMeter
14 11 (0.98%) Mockito
14 11 (0.98%) REST Assured
15 10 (0.89%) Rational DOORS
15 10 (0.89%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 428 (38.28%) Social Skills
2 369 (33.01%) Finance
3 179 (16.01%) Analytical Skills
4 160 (14.31%) Banking
5 113 (10.11%) Public Sector
6 35 (3.13%) Front Office
7 34 (3.04%) Organisational Skills
8 30 (2.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 27 (2.42%) Investment Banking
10 24 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
11 23 (2.06%) Retail
12 22 (1.97%) Aerospace
13 20 (1.79%) Manufacturing
14 18 (1.61%) Military
15 16 (1.43%) Legal
16 15 (1.34%) Financial Institution
17 14 (1.25%) Automotive
17 14 (1.25%) Publishing
18 13 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
19 10 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 293 (26.21%) Developer
2 149 (13.33%) Senior
3 113 (10.11%) Architect
4 110 (9.84%) Analyst
5 94 (8.41%) Java Developer
6 90 (8.05%) Lead
7 68 (6.08%) Business Analyst
8 56 (5.01%) Solutions Architect
9 51 (4.56%) Software Engineer
10 49 (4.38%) Project Manager
11 45 (4.03%) Senior Developer
12 41 (3.67%) Python Developer
13 39 (3.49%) Java Engineer
14 36 (3.22%) Consultant
15 33 (2.95%) Data Engineer
16 31 (2.77%) Full-Stack Developer
17 30 (2.68%) Software Developer
17 30 (2.68%) Test Engineer
18 29 (2.59%) DevOps Engineer
19 25 (2.24%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (12.08%) REST
2 124 (11.09%) .NET
3 106 (9.48%) Terraform
4 94 (8.41%) Spring
5 82 (7.33%) Spring Boot
6 72 (6.44%) AngularJS
7 67 (5.99%) RESTful
8 58 (5.19%) React
9 53 (4.74%) Kafka
10 47 (4.20%) Web Services
11 45 (4.03%) .NET Framework
12 34 (3.04%) Playwright
12 34 (3.04%) Quarkus
13 33 (2.95%) JSON
14 32 (2.86%) SOAP
15 31 (2.77%) HTML
15 31 (2.77%) Node.js
16 28 (2.50%) CSS
17 26 (2.33%) XML
18 21 (1.88%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 152 (13.60%) Cloud Native
2 122 (10.91%) Product Ownership
3 57 (5.10%) Enterprise Software
4 50 (4.47%) Distributed Systems
5 47 (4.20%) Management Information System
6 38 (3.40%) Self-Motivation
7 30 (2.68%) Security Posture
8 26 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
9 23 (2.06%) AI Agents
10 22 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
11 21 (1.88%) Data Structures
11 21 (1.88%) Onboarding
12 20 (1.79%) Credit Risk
13 18 (1.61%) Algorithms
14 17 (1.52%) Derivative
14 17 (1.52%) Equities
14 17 (1.52%) Virtual Team
15 11 (0.98%) Public Cloud
16 9 (0.81%) Hedge funds
16 9 (0.81%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 74 (6.62%) Linux
2 39 (3.49%) Windows
3 36 (3.22%) Unix
4 18 (1.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.72%) Windows Server
6 6 (0.54%) Android
7 4 (0.36%) Apple iOS
8 3 (0.27%) FreeRTOS
9 1 (0.089%) Solaris
9 1 (0.089%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.089%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.089%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 623 (55.72%) Agile
2 446 (39.89%) CI/CD
3 362 (32.38%) DevOps
4 266 (23.79%) Software Engineering
4 266 (23.79%) Test Automation
5 251 (22.45%) Continuous Improvement
6 250 (22.36%) Stakeholder Management
7 245 (21.91%) Scrum
8 244 (21.82%) Problem-Solving
9 212 (18.96%) AI
10 142 (12.70%) Microservices
11 131 (11.72%) Infrastructure as Code
12 123 (11.00%) DevSecOps
13 122 (10.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 114 (10.20%) Software Testing
15 108 (9.66%) Validation
16 106 (9.48%) Risk Management
16 106 (9.48%) Sprint Planning
17 101 (9.03%) Containerisation
18 96 (8.59%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 262 (23.43%) Java
2 246 (22.00%) SQL
3 234 (20.93%) Python
4 110 (9.84%) C#
5 91 (8.14%) JavaScript
6 54 (4.83%) TypeScript
7 42 (3.76%) PowerShell
8 36 (3.22%) Bash
9 29 (2.59%) PL/SQL
10 26 (2.33%) Shell Script
11 22 (1.97%) C++
12 19 (1.70%) Bicep
13 18 (1.61%) Kotlin
14 15 (1.34%) Go
15 13 (1.16%) T-SQL
16 10 (0.89%) Scala
17 9 (0.81%) Ada
18 8 (0.72%) Perl
19 7 (0.63%) VB.NET
20 6 (0.54%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 296 (26.48%) Security Cleared
2 242 (21.65%) SC Cleared
3 112 (10.02%) Degree
4 49 (4.38%) DV Cleared
5 46 (4.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 40 (3.58%) CISSP
7 31 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
8 20 (1.79%) ISTQB
9 17 (1.52%) AWS Certification
10 15 (1.34%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 15 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
11 14 (1.25%) ISEB
12 13 (1.16%) Azure Certification
12 13 (1.16%) CISM
13 11 (0.98%) PMI Certification
13 11 (0.98%) PMP
14 10 (0.89%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 8 (0.72%) CEH
15 8 (0.72%) GIAC
15 8 (0.72%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 183 (16.37%) QA
2 49 (4.38%) Data Quality
3 33 (2.95%) Accessibility
4 29 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 27 (2.42%) NIST
6 19 (1.70%) GDPR
7 16 (1.43%) NCSC
8 14 (1.25%) GRC
9 9 (0.81%) WCAG
10 8 (0.72%) GxP
11 7 (0.63%) PCI DSS
12 6 (0.54%) JSP 440
12 6 (0.54%) PMO
13 5 (0.45%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 5 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
13 5 (0.45%) NIST 800
13 5 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 5 (0.45%) SLA
14 4 (0.36%) Basel III
14 4 (0.36%) MiFID
System Software
1 115 (10.29%) Docker
2 18 (1.61%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.089%) RACF
4 1 (0.089%) Time Sharing Option
4 1 (0.089%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.089%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 174 (15.56%) Kubernetes
2 45 (4.03%) Ansible
3 34 (3.04%) Argo
4 25 (2.24%) Grafana
5 19 (1.70%) Prometheus
6 12 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
7 9 (0.81%) Progress Chef
8 6 (0.54%) Control-M
9 5 (0.45%) Puppet
10 4 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.36%) Functional Safety
10 4 (0.36%) HP Fortify
10 4 (0.36%) Istio
10 4 (0.36%) Kibana
11 3 (0.27%) CA Endevor
12 2 (0.18%) HP ALM
12 2 (0.18%) Podman
12 2 (0.18%) SCCM
13 1 (0.089%) PTC Integrity
13 1 (0.089%) QRadar
Vendors
1 128 (11.45%) Microsoft
2 95 (8.50%) Oracle
3 43 (3.85%) Red Hat
4 39 (3.49%) Google
5 26 (2.33%) SAP
5 26 (2.33%) ServiceNow
6 20 (1.79%) IBM
7 18 (1.61%) Salesforce
8 14 (1.25%) Splunk
9 12 (1.07%) Databricks
9 12 (1.07%) OpenAI
10 11 (0.98%) Atlassian
11 10 (0.89%) Talend
11 10 (0.89%) UiPath
12 9 (0.81%) Dynatrace
13 8 (0.72%) Alteryx
13 8 (0.72%) Checkmarx
13 8 (0.72%) VMware
13 8 (0.72%) Workday
14 7 (0.63%) F5