SDLC Contracts in England

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

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring SDLC skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited SDLC over the 6 months leading up to 4 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 110 85 79
Rank change year-on-year -25 -6 +3
Contract jobs citing SDLC 642 932 1,387
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 2.44% 2.50% 2.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.68% 2.92% 3.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 443 634 946
10th Percentile £331 £380 £416
25th Percentile £402 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% +4.35%
75th Percentile £688 £700 £725
90th Percentile £825 £838 £825
UK median daily rate £521 £550 £600
% change year-on-year -5.23% -8.33% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 26 35
10th Percentile £48.75 £40.88 £42.07
25th Percentile £49.69 £48.00 £46.75
Median hourly rate £51.25 £53.13 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.53% +1.19% -4.55%
75th Percentile £60.31 £67.38 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.98 £73.75 £71.97
UK median hourly rate £51.25 £50.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +2.50% -9.09% -

All Process and 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 23,975 31,937 42,799
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.99% 85.52% 89.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,423 20,731 29,966
10th Percentile £300 £306 £325
25th Percentile £406 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% +1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,196 2,302 1,555
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.79 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.85 £16.06 £16.62
Median hourly rate £25.15 £38.12 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -34.02% +1.65% +45.12%
75th Percentile £55.00 £61.60 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £73.75 £75.94
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £37.42
% change year-on-year -32.93% +0.21% +43.92%

SDLC
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing SDLC as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for SDLC in England

SDLC
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SDLC in England.

Daily rate trend for SDLC in England

SDLC
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SDLC in England over the 6 months to 4 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SDLC in England

SDLC
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SDLC in England.

Hourly rate trend for SDLC in England

SDLC
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SDLC in England over the 6 months to 4 July 2025.

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 4 July 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 -24 395 £575 -4.17% 2,051
North of England +5 104 £466 +3.56% 531
North West +4 75 £454 +0.83% 324
Midlands +23 59 £410 -25.45% 317
South East -12 43 £496 -13.74% 543
West Midlands +18 32 £467 -30.89% 194
Yorkshire +9 29 £520 +9.47% 167
East Midlands +11 26 £375 -15.73% 123
South West +5 23 £500 -13.04% 306
East of England +16 12 £538 +34.38% 274
SDLC
UK

SDLC
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England 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 47 (7.32%) Confluence
2 12 (1.87%) CICS
3 11 (1.71%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.56%) Apache
5 9 (1.40%) Apache Spark
5 9 (1.40%) JBoss
5 9 (1.40%) Tomcat
6 8 (1.25%) WebSphere
7 7 (1.09%) WebLogic
8 6 (0.93%) CMS
8 6 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
8 6 (0.93%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.78%) FactoryTalk
10 4 (0.62%) NetWeaver
11 3 (0.47%) BizTalk Server
12 2 (0.31%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.31%) IIS
12 2 (0.31%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.31%) Skype for Business
13 1 (0.16%) Appian
Applications
1 27 (4.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (1.09%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.47%) Trello
7 2 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.16%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 5 (0.78%) Endur
2 4 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
2 4 (0.62%) VisionPLUS
2 4 (0.62%) Workday HCM
3 3 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
4 2 (0.31%) BASE24
4 2 (0.31%) Maximo
4 2 (0.31%) SAP CRM
4 2 (0.31%) Shopify
5 1 (0.16%) Actimize
5 1 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.16%) IntelliMatch
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.16%) Sage X3
5 1 (0.16%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 165 (25.70%) Azure
2 143 (22.27%) AWS
3 71 (11.06%) GCP
4 46 (7.17%) GitHub
5 41 (6.39%) Azure DevOps
6 31 (4.83%) Power Platform
7 29 (4.52%) Serverless
8 26 (4.05%) SaaS
9 19 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
10 16 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
11 13 (2.02%) Cloud Computing
12 10 (1.56%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 9 (1.40%) Amazon Kinesis
13 9 (1.40%) Amazon S3
14 8 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (1.25%) Microsoft 365
14 8 (1.25%) PowerApps
15 7 (1.09%) Amazon Glacier
15 7 (1.09%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.02%) Firewall
1 13 (2.02%) HTTP
2 8 (1.25%) SSL
3 7 (1.09%) VPN
4 5 (0.78%) DNS
4 5 (0.78%) Network Security
5 4 (0.62%) DHCP
5 4 (0.62%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.31%) ATM
6 2 (0.31%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.31%) Wireless
7 1 (0.16%) 2G
7 1 (0.16%) 5G
7 1 (0.16%) Cisco Nexus
7 1 (0.16%) Internet
7 1 (0.16%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (0.16%) SAN
7 1 (0.16%) SSH
7 1 (0.16%) Unified Communications
7 1 (0.16%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (6.70%) SQL Server
2 42 (6.54%) MongoDB
3 39 (6.07%) Relational Database
4 30 (4.67%) DB2
5 27 (4.21%) Power BI
6 20 (3.12%) NoSQL
6 20 (3.12%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (2.96%) Big Data
8 14 (2.18%) MySQL
9 13 (2.02%) DynamoDB
10 12 (1.87%) Data Mining
11 10 (1.56%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (1.25%) Siebel EIM
12 8 (1.25%) Tableau
13 7 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
13 7 (1.09%) Oracle Database
13 7 (1.09%) RDBMS
14 6 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
14 6 (0.93%) Hadoop
15 5 (0.78%) Redis
Development Applications
1 106 (16.51%) JIRA
2 77 (11.99%) Git
3 70 (10.90%) Jenkins
4 43 (6.70%) JUnit
5 41 (6.39%) GitLab
6 19 (2.96%) Bitbucket
6 19 (2.96%) Selenium
6 19 (2.96%) SonarQube
7 13 (2.02%) Postman
8 12 (1.87%) Cucumber
8 12 (1.87%) Subversion
9 10 (1.56%) Burp Suite
9 10 (1.56%) Metasploit
10 9 (1.40%) Maven
11 8 (1.25%) Visual Studio
12 7 (1.09%) webpack
13 6 (0.93%) JMeter
13 6 (0.93%) Mockito
13 6 (0.93%) REST Assured
13 6 (0.93%) Zephyr
General
1 264 (41.12%) Social Skills
2 226 (35.20%) Finance
3 159 (24.77%) Analytical Skills
4 142 (22.12%) Banking
5 56 (8.72%) Investment Banking
6 38 (5.92%) Public Sector
7 25 (3.89%) Presentation Skills
8 17 (2.65%) Organisational Skills
9 16 (2.49%) Front Office
10 15 (2.34%) Legal
11 12 (1.87%) Financial Institution
12 11 (1.71%) Manufacturing
13 10 (1.56%) Marketing
14 8 (1.25%) Retail
15 7 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
16 6 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
16 6 (0.93%) Retail Banking
17 5 (0.78%) Billing
17 5 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
18 4 (0.62%) Military
Job Titles
1 178 (27.73%) Developer
2 81 (12.62%) Architect
3 79 (12.31%) Senior
4 74 (11.53%) Analyst
5 66 (10.28%) Java Developer
6 50 (7.79%) Solutions Architect
7 35 (5.45%) Business Analyst
8 34 (5.30%) Lead
9 30 (4.67%) Project Manager
10 28 (4.36%) Senior Developer
11 27 (4.21%) Consultant
12 21 (3.27%) Python Developer
12 21 (3.27%) Senior Java Developer
13 18 (2.80%) Technical Manager
14 17 (2.65%) Tester
15 16 (2.49%) Scrum Master
16 15 (2.34%) Full-Stack Developer
16 15 (2.34%) Investment Banking Java Developer
16 15 (2.34%) Linux Developer
16 15 (2.34%) Senior SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (13.71%) REST
2 64 (9.97%) React
3 61 (9.50%) .NET
3 61 (9.50%) Spring
4 55 (8.57%) Kafka
5 49 (7.63%) Web Services
6 48 (7.48%) RESTful
7 46 (7.17%) AngularJS
8 44 (6.85%) SOAP
9 31 (4.83%) HTML
9 31 (4.83%) Spring Boot
10 30 (4.67%) JMS
11 27 (4.21%) CSS
12 23 (3.58%) XML
13 20 (3.12%) Middleware
14 18 (2.80%) Django
15 17 (2.65%) FastAPI
16 16 (2.49%) Node.js
17 15 (2.34%) JSON
18 12 (1.87%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 54 (8.41%) Product Ownership
2 30 (4.67%) Distributed Systems
3 29 (4.52%) Algorithms
4 26 (4.05%) Cloud Native
5 24 (3.74%) Data Structures
5 24 (3.74%) Equities
6 23 (3.58%) Self-Motivation
7 21 (3.27%) Onboarding
8 19 (2.96%) Virtual Team
9 17 (2.65%) Public Cloud
10 16 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
11 15 (2.34%) Mainframe
11 15 (2.34%) Market Risk
11 15 (2.34%) Private Cloud
12 11 (1.71%) Derivative
12 11 (1.71%) VSAM
13 10 (1.56%) Mobile App
14 9 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
15 8 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
15 8 (1.25%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 61 (9.50%) Linux
2 29 (4.52%) Unix
3 21 (3.27%) Windows
4 8 (1.25%) zOS
5 6 (0.93%) Android
6 4 (0.62%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.47%) Windows Server
8 2 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 383 (59.66%) Agile
2 191 (29.75%) Problem-Solving
3 176 (27.41%) CI/CD
4 175 (27.26%) DevOps
5 144 (22.43%) Scrum
6 93 (14.49%) Test Automation
7 83 (12.93%) Continuous Improvement
8 80 (12.46%) Microservices
9 67 (10.44%) Artificial Intelligence
10 61 (9.50%) Software Engineering
10 61 (9.50%) Stakeholder Management
11 59 (9.19%) Project Management
12 56 (8.72%) Analytics
13 50 (7.79%) Risk Management
14 48 (7.48%) Containerisation
14 48 (7.48%) Machine Learning
14 48 (7.48%) Migration
15 47 (7.32%) TDD
16 44 (6.85%) Data Modelling
16 44 (6.85%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 192 (29.91%) Python
2 178 (27.73%) SQL
3 173 (26.95%) Java
4 76 (11.84%) JavaScript
5 54 (8.41%) C#
6 50 (7.79%) TypeScript
7 38 (5.92%) Shell Script
8 25 (3.89%) Bash
9 23 (3.58%) Scala
10 17 (2.65%) C++
10 17 (2.65%) PowerShell
11 16 (2.49%) PL/SQL
12 13 (2.02%) Go
12 13 (2.02%) JCL
13 12 (1.87%) VB
14 11 (1.71%) COBOL
14 11 (1.71%) R
15 9 (1.40%) Kotlin
16 8 (1.25%) C
16 8 (1.25%) Perl
Qualifications
1 68 (10.59%) Degree
2 65 (10.12%) Security Cleared
3 49 (7.63%) SC Cleared
4 22 (3.43%) Computer Science Degree
5 15 (2.34%) Master's Degree
6 11 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (1.56%) CREST Certified
7 10 (1.56%) ISTQB
7 10 (1.56%) OSCP
7 10 (1.56%) Tigerscheme
8 9 (1.40%) DV Cleared
9 8 (1.25%) PMP
10 7 (1.09%) CHECK Team Member
10 7 (1.09%) CISSP
11 6 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 5 (0.78%) Oracle Certification
13 3 (0.47%) Azure Certification
13 3 (0.47%) CISM
13 3 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 3 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (12.62%) QA
2 18 (2.80%) GDPR
3 17 (2.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (2.49%) NIST
5 14 (2.18%) Data Quality
6 11 (1.71%) Basel II
7 10 (1.56%) PCI DSS
7 10 (1.56%) PMO
8 8 (1.25%) Accessibility
8 8 (1.25%) Cyber Essentials
8 8 (1.25%) NCSC
9 7 (1.09%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 6 (0.93%) GRC
11 4 (0.62%) Basel III
11 4 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 4 (0.62%) SLA
12 3 (0.47%) COBIT
12 3 (0.47%) COREP
12 3 (0.47%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.47%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 74 (11.53%) Docker
2 10 (1.56%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.93%) Time Sharing Option
4 3 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.31%) Firmware
5 2 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 77 (11.99%) Kubernetes
2 30 (4.67%) Terraform
3 26 (4.05%) Ansible
4 10 (1.56%) Nmap
5 8 (1.25%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.78%) CA Endevor
6 5 (0.78%) Grafana
6 5 (0.78%) OMEGAMON
7 4 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.47%) HP ALM
9 2 (0.31%) CASB
9 2 (0.31%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.31%) HP Fortify
9 2 (0.31%) Kibana
9 2 (0.31%) Nessus
9 2 (0.31%) Opsgenie
9 2 (0.31%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.31%) WMI
10 1 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.16%) OPNET
Vendors
1 83 (12.93%) Microsoft
2 66 (10.28%) Oracle
3 32 (4.98%) ServiceNow
4 26 (4.05%) Sybase
5 19 (2.96%) Databricks
5 19 (2.96%) SAP
6 16 (2.49%) Salesforce
7 13 (2.02%) Google
7 13 (2.02%) IBM
8 10 (1.56%) Veracode
9 9 (1.40%) Splunk
10 8 (1.25%) Siebel
11 7 (1.09%) CA Agile Central
11 7 (1.09%) Citrix
11 7 (1.09%) Workday
12 6 (0.93%) Dynatrace
12 6 (0.93%) MuleSoft
13 5 (0.78%) Atlassian
13 5 (0.78%) OpenLink
13 5 (0.78%) Rockwell