SDLC Contract Job Trends in the North of England

Systems or Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring SDLC skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 25 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 91 87 106
Rank change year-on-year -4 +19 +10
Contract jobs citing SDLC 132 73 81
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 2.76% 2.05% 1.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.13% 2.36% 1.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 82 54 49
10th Percentile £314 £316 £393
25th Percentile £437 £359 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £525
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -14.29% -
75th Percentile £597 £538 £600
90th Percentile £700 £617 £738
England median daily rate £525 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 9
10th Percentile - - £38.22
25th Percentile £22.16 - -
Median hourly rate £35.16 - £45.88
75th Percentile £55.00 - £50.00
90th Percentile £60.61 - £50.05
England median hourly rate £60.61 £67.50 £51.89
% change year-on-year -10.21% +30.08% -20.17%

All Process and Methodology Skills
North of 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 the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 4,219 3,088 4,096
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 88.28% 86.89% 88.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,799 1,759 2,711
10th Percentile £220 £263 £299
25th Percentile £363 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.11% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £670 £675
England median daily rate £501 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.67% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 265 150 199
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.20 £15.74
25th Percentile £19.75 £17.12 £17.75
Median hourly rate £29.60 £27.44 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.86% -21.59% +55.56%
75th Percentile £53.75 £46.18 £46.18
90th Percentile £68.79 £67.57 £62.35
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +22.56%

SDLC
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

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

SDLC job vacancy trend in the North of England

SDLC
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing SDLC

SDLC
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SDLC in the North of England over the 6 months to 25 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SDLC in the North of England

SDLC
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing SDLC

SDLC
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SDLC in the North of England over the 6 months to 25 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SDLC in the North of England

SDLC
Contract Job Locations in the North of 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 North of England region over the 6 months to 25 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
North West -8 62 £480 -3.52% 126
Yorkshire -13 53 £500 +33.33% 103
North East +2 17 £525 +47.37% 19
SDLC
England

SDLC
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of 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 10 (7.58%) Confluence
2 9 (6.82%) CICS
3 6 (4.55%) CMS
4 4 (3.03%) SharePoint
5 2 (1.52%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.76%) Apache
6 1 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.76%) JBoss
6 1 (0.76%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.76%) SAS
6 1 (0.76%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.76%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (9.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (4.55%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (4.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (3.79%) Oracle Manufacturing
1 5 (3.79%) VisionPLUS
2 1 (0.76%) Finacle
2 1 (0.76%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.76%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 49 (37.12%) AWS
2 36 (27.27%) Azure
3 18 (13.64%) GCP
4 12 (9.09%) GitHub
5 8 (6.06%) Microsoft 365
5 8 (6.06%) OpenShift
5 8 (6.06%) Power Platform
5 8 (6.06%) Serverless
6 6 (4.55%) Amazon ECS
6 6 (4.55%) Amazon SQS
6 6 (4.55%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (3.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 5 (3.79%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (3.79%) Amazon EventBridge
7 5 (3.79%) AWS Fargate
8 4 (3.03%) Apigee
8 4 (3.03%) AWS CloudFormation
8 4 (3.03%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (3.03%) Datadog
8 4 (3.03%) Loggly
Communications & Networking
1 6 (4.55%) Firewall
2 3 (2.27%) HTTP
2 3 (2.27%) HTTPS
3 2 (1.52%) Network Security
4 1 (0.76%) FTP
4 1 (0.76%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (6.06%) Power BI
2 7 (5.30%) DynamoDB
3 5 (3.79%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (3.79%) Redis
4 4 (3.03%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (3.03%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (3.03%) BigQuery
4 4 (3.03%) MySQL
4 4 (3.03%) NoSQL
4 4 (3.03%) Oracle Reports
4 4 (3.03%) RDBMS
4 4 (3.03%) Relational Database
5 2 (1.52%) DB2
5 2 (1.52%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.76%) Base SAS
6 1 (0.76%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.76%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.76%) SAS Data Integration Studio
6 1 (0.76%) SAS Visual Analytics
6 1 (0.76%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 23 (17.42%) JIRA
2 22 (16.67%) Git
3 16 (12.12%) Jenkins
4 12 (9.09%) SonarQube
5 9 (6.82%) GitLab
6 6 (4.55%) Bitbucket
6 6 (4.55%) TestRail
7 5 (3.79%) Maven
8 4 (3.03%) Cucumber
8 4 (3.03%) Gradle
8 4 (3.03%) Snyk
8 4 (3.03%) SonarLint
9 3 (2.27%) Oracle Forms
9 3 (2.27%) Postman
10 2 (1.52%) Selenium
10 2 (1.52%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.76%) CircleCI
11 1 (0.76%) Gatling
11 1 (0.76%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.76%) SpecFlow
General
1 49 (37.12%) Finance
2 47 (35.61%) Social Skills
3 28 (21.21%) Analytical Skills
4 26 (19.70%) Banking
5 16 (12.12%) Public Sector
6 6 (4.55%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (4.55%) Legal
7 5 (3.79%) Influencing Skills
7 5 (3.79%) Manufacturing
8 4 (3.03%) General Ledger
9 3 (2.27%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.76%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.76%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.76%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 26 (19.70%) Developer
2 17 (12.88%) Lead
3 15 (11.36%) Architect
4 13 (9.85%) Senior
5 12 (9.09%) Analyst
6 11 (8.33%) Business Analyst
6 11 (8.33%) Consultant
7 10 (7.58%) Java Developer
8 7 (5.30%) Solutions Architect
9 6 (4.55%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 6 (4.55%) Lead Consultant
9 6 (4.55%) Platform Engineer
9 6 (4.55%) Senior Analyst
9 6 (4.55%) Senior Business Analyst
10 5 (3.79%) Administrator
10 5 (3.79%) Java Software Engineer
10 5 (3.79%) Oracle Manufacturing Consultant
10 5 (3.79%) Product Owner
10 5 (3.79%) Software Engineer
10 5 (3.79%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (18.94%) Spring Boot
2 20 (15.15%) REST
3 18 (13.64%) Spring
4 9 (6.82%) JMS
5 7 (5.30%) XML
6 6 (4.55%) RESTful
7 5 (3.79%) AngularJS
7 5 (3.79%) Celery
7 5 (3.79%) Dropwizard
7 5 (3.79%) J2EE
7 5 (3.79%) Kafka
7 5 (3.79%) Micronaut
7 5 (3.79%) OAuth
7 5 (3.79%) OAuth2
7 5 (3.79%) Oracle Fusion
8 4 (3.03%) .NET
8 4 (3.03%) JSON
8 4 (3.03%) JWT
8 4 (3.03%) Node.js
8 4 (3.03%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 19 (14.39%) Product Ownership
2 18 (13.64%) Cloud Native
3 9 (6.82%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 9 (6.82%) VSAM
4 7 (5.30%) Mainframe
4 7 (5.30%) Security Posture
5 5 (3.79%) Enterprise Software
5 5 (3.79%) Mobile App
5 5 (3.79%) N-Tier
6 4 (3.03%) Management Information System
6 4 (3.03%) Onboarding
7 3 (2.27%) Cloud Security Posture
7 3 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (2.27%) IBM Mainframe
7 3 (2.27%) Private Cloud
8 2 (1.52%) Blockchain
8 2 (1.52%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (1.52%) Hybrid Cloud
8 2 (1.52%) IoT
8 2 (1.52%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (3.03%) zOS
2 2 (1.52%) Linux
3 1 (0.76%) Unix
3 1 (0.76%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (53.03%) Agile
2 50 (37.88%) DevOps
3 49 (37.12%) CI/CD
4 48 (36.36%) Problem-Solving
5 33 (25.00%) Test Automation
6 30 (22.73%) Continuous Improvement
7 25 (18.94%) Containerisation
7 25 (18.94%) Microservices
8 23 (17.42%) Stakeholder Management
8 23 (17.42%) User Acceptance Testing
9 20 (15.15%) Mentoring
9 20 (15.15%) Risk Management
10 19 (14.39%) DevSecOps
10 19 (14.39%) Requirements Gathering
10 19 (14.39%) Scrum
11 18 (13.64%) User Stories
12 15 (11.36%) API Design
12 15 (11.36%) BDD
12 15 (11.36%) Event-Driven
12 15 (11.36%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 36 (27.27%) Java
2 19 (14.39%) SQL
3 16 (12.12%) Python
4 9 (6.82%) JCL
5 7 (5.30%) C#
6 6 (4.55%) COBOL
7 5 (3.79%) Kotlin
8 4 (3.03%) CLIST
8 4 (3.03%) Go
8 4 (3.03%) REXX
8 4 (3.03%) TypeScript
9 3 (2.27%) Rust
10 2 (1.52%) JavaScript
10 2 (1.52%) Perl
10 2 (1.52%) Ruby
10 2 (1.52%) Shell Script
10 2 (1.52%) Solidity
11 1 (0.76%) Groovy
11 1 (0.76%) SAS Macro
11 1 (0.76%) XPath
Qualifications
1 22 (16.67%) Security Cleared
2 18 (13.64%) Degree
3 14 (10.61%) SC Cleared
4 8 (6.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (4.55%) AWS Certification
5 6 (4.55%) CISSP
6 5 (3.79%) Azure Certification
6 5 (3.79%) CEH
7 3 (2.27%) GIAC
7 3 (2.27%) GWAPT
8 2 (1.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 2 (1.52%) CCSK
8 2 (1.52%) CCSP
8 2 (1.52%) CISA
8 2 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (1.52%) CISM
8 2 (1.52%) OSCP
8 2 (1.52%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.76%) OCP
9 1 (0.76%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (14.39%) QA
2 12 (9.09%) PSD2
3 10 (7.58%) ISO 20022
4 9 (6.82%) SEPA
5 6 (4.55%) Data Quality
6 5 (3.79%) GDPR
6 5 (3.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (3.79%) NIST
6 5 (3.79%) PCI DSS
7 2 (1.52%) Accessibility
7 2 (1.52%) SLA
7 2 (1.52%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.76%) WCAG
System Software
1 30 (22.73%) Docker
2 4 (3.03%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 33 (25.00%) Kubernetes
2 17 (12.88%) Terraform
3 4 (3.03%) Ansible
3 4 (3.03%) OMEGAMON
4 3 (2.27%) Argo
4 3 (2.27%) CA Endevor
4 3 (2.27%) HP ALM
5 2 (1.52%) Packer
Vendors
1 22 (16.67%) Oracle
2 17 (12.88%) Microsoft
3 8 (6.06%) SAP
4 4 (3.03%) Checkmarx
4 4 (3.03%) Gigya
4 4 (3.03%) IBM
4 4 (3.03%) Veracode
5 3 (2.27%) F5
5 3 (2.27%) HP
5 3 (2.27%) Imperva
5 3 (2.27%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.76%) AppDynamics
6 1 (0.76%) Ariba
6 1 (0.76%) Concur
6 1 (0.76%) Databricks
6 1 (0.76%) Dynatrace
6 1 (0.76%) Genesys
6 1 (0.76%) NEC
6 1 (0.76%) Pega
6 1 (0.76%) Splunk