SDLC Contracts in the South East

Systems or Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East 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 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 109 128 108
Rank change year-on-year +19 -20 -38
Contract jobs citing SDLC 50 78 119
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 1.66% 1.40% 2.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.81% 1.65% 2.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 60 68
10th Percentile £418 £367 £375
25th Percentile £452 £472 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £595 £514
Median % change year-on-year -9.66% +15.82% -6.59%
75th Percentile £600 £672 £600
90th Percentile £638 £688 £675
England median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 11
10th Percentile £50.50 - £46.25
25th Percentile £51.25 - £50.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £67.02 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.67% +25.27% +7.00%
75th Percentile £53.75 - £59.63
90th Percentile £54.50 - £63.75
England median hourly rate £61.25 £48.00 £58.50
% change year-on-year +27.60% -17.95% +6.58%

All Process and Methodology Skills
South East

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 South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,757 4,716 5,181
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 91.59% 84.85% 89.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,756 2,743 3,594
10th Percentile £256 £243 £250
25th Percentile £400 £400 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year - -1.53% +1.55%
75th Percentile £600 £621 £619
90th Percentile £675 £700 £700
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 434 219
10th Percentile £13.85 £13.00 £18.25
25th Percentile £15.79 £18.23 £23.83
Median hourly rate £28.00 £47.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.05% -5.00% +122.22%
75th Percentile £62.50 £62.49 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.86 £74.83
England median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -19.25% -4.00% +53.06%

SDLC
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Job postings citing SDLC as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Job vacancy trend for SDLC in the South East

SDLC
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SDLC in the South East.

Daily rate trend for SDLC in the South East

SDLC
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SDLC in the South East over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SDLC in the South East

SDLC
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SDLC in the South East.

Hourly rate trend for SDLC in the South East

SDLC
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SDLC within the South East region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
Thames Valley +23 24 £600 -1.23% 140
Berkshire +17 20 £600 -4.00% 73
Hampshire +25 17 £500 -9.09% 81
Surrey +7 5 £475 -24.00% 56
West Sussex - 3 £550 - 31
Buckinghamshire +10 2 £325 -42.98% 42
Oxfordshire +5 2 £513 +5.13% 40
SDLC
England

SDLC
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East 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 2 (4.00%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (6.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (4.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (2.00%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (2.00%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (2.00%) Adobe Campaign
Cloud Services
1 18 (36.00%) Azure
2 12 (24.00%) AWS
3 9 (18.00%) Azure DevOps
3 9 (18.00%) Serverless
4 7 (14.00%) Azure Monitor
5 6 (12.00%) Azure Cosmos DB
5 6 (12.00%) Azure Data Factory
5 6 (12.00%) Azure Functions
6 5 (10.00%) GCP
7 4 (8.00%) Entra ID
8 3 (6.00%) AWS CloudFormation
9 2 (4.00%) Amazon EC2
9 2 (4.00%) Amazon ECS
9 2 (4.00%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (4.00%) SaaS
10 1 (2.00%) Azure Pipelines
10 1 (2.00%) Azure Sentinel
10 1 (2.00%) dbt
10 1 (2.00%) Power Automate
10 1 (2.00%) Smartsheet
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.00%) Firewall
1 1 (2.00%) HTTPS
1 1 (2.00%) Intrusion Detection
1 1 (2.00%) Network Security
1 1 (2.00%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (20.00%) NoSQL
2 6 (12.00%) MySQL
3 5 (10.00%) MongoDB
3 5 (10.00%) Relational Database
4 3 (6.00%) Apache Cassandra
4 3 (6.00%) Redis
4 3 (6.00%) SQL Server
5 2 (4.00%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (4.00%) RDBMS
6 1 (2.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 20 (40.00%) Git
2 7 (14.00%) JIRA
3 5 (10.00%) Selenium
3 5 (10.00%) Subversion
4 4 (8.00%) Jenkins
5 3 (6.00%) JMeter
5 3 (6.00%) JUnit
6 2 (4.00%) Balsamiq
6 2 (4.00%) Codeception
6 2 (4.00%) Mockito
6 2 (4.00%) QARun
6 2 (4.00%) WinRunner
7 1 (2.00%) Cucumber
7 1 (2.00%) Cypress.io
7 1 (2.00%) GitLab
7 1 (2.00%) Postman
7 1 (2.00%) SonarQube
7 1 (2.00%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (2.00%) TestRail
7 1 (2.00%) WebDriver
General
1 14 (28.00%) Social Skills
2 10 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
3 8 (16.00%) Finance
4 4 (8.00%) Public Sector
5 1 (2.00%) Marketing
5 1 (2.00%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 20 (40.00%) Developer
2 9 (18.00%) Full-Stack Developer
3 8 (16.00%) Analyst
4 7 (14.00%) Architect
5 6 (12.00%) Azure Developer
6 5 (10.00%) Full-Stack Python Developer
6 5 (10.00%) Python Developer
6 5 (10.00%) Senior
7 4 (8.00%) Business Analyst
7 4 (8.00%) React Developer
8 3 (6.00%) Financial Analyst
8 3 (6.00%) Lead
8 3 (6.00%) PHP Developer
8 3 (6.00%) Project Manager
8 3 (6.00%) Senior Architect
8 3 (6.00%) Senior Solutions Architect
8 3 (6.00%) Service Analyst
8 3 (6.00%) Software Developer
8 3 (6.00%) Solutions Architect
9 2 (4.00%) ServiceNow Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (20.00%) HTML
1 10 (20.00%) Web Services
2 9 (18.00%) React
3 8 (16.00%) CSS
4 7 (14.00%) .NET
5 6 (12.00%) REST
5 6 (12.00%) RESTful
6 5 (10.00%) ActiveMQ
6 5 (10.00%) Laravel
6 5 (10.00%) Phalcon
7 3 (6.00%) Hibernate
7 3 (6.00%) Kafka
7 3 (6.00%) RabbitMQ
7 3 (6.00%) Spring
7 3 (6.00%) Spring Boot
7 3 (6.00%) Symfony
7 3 (6.00%) Vue
8 2 (4.00%) AngularJS
8 2 (4.00%) Apache Camel
8 2 (4.00%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 7 (14.00%) Product Ownership
2 6 (12.00%) Algorithms
2 6 (12.00%) Device Driver
2 6 (12.00%) Embedded Systems
2 6 (12.00%) IoT
3 3 (6.00%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (4.00%) Cyberattack
4 2 (4.00%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (4.00%) Management Information System
4 2 (4.00%) Public Cloud
4 2 (4.00%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (2.00%) Cloud Native
5 1 (2.00%) Cyber Defence
5 1 (2.00%) EPoS
5 1 (2.00%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (2.00%) N-Tier
5 1 (2.00%) Onboarding
5 1 (2.00%) PKI
5 1 (2.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 6 (12.00%) Linux
2 3 (6.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (84.00%) Agile
2 20 (40.00%) CI/CD
2 20 (40.00%) DevOps
3 14 (28.00%) Microservices
3 14 (28.00%) Scrum
4 11 (22.00%) Full-Stack Development
4 11 (22.00%) Unit Testing
5 10 (20.00%) Artificial Intelligence
6 9 (18.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 9 (18.00%) Project Management
6 9 (18.00%) Software Testing
7 8 (16.00%) Integration Testing
8 7 (14.00%) Problem-Solving
8 7 (14.00%) Test Automation
9 6 (12.00%) Architectural Design
9 6 (12.00%) Cloud Enablement
9 6 (12.00%) Decision-Making
9 6 (12.00%) Device Driver Development
9 6 (12.00%) Multithreading
9 6 (12.00%) Product Backlog
Programming Languages
1 16 (32.00%) Python
2 13 (26.00%) JavaScript
3 8 (16.00%) C#
4 7 (14.00%) Java
4 7 (14.00%) SQL
5 6 (12.00%) Embedded C
6 5 (10.00%) C
6 5 (10.00%) PHP
7 2 (4.00%) Go
7 2 (4.00%) Shell Script
7 2 (4.00%) TypeScript
7 2 (4.00%) VB
8 1 (2.00%) Bash
Qualifications
1 5 (10.00%) Degree
2 2 (4.00%) CEH
2 2 (4.00%) CISSP
2 2 (4.00%) Computer Science Degree
2 2 (4.00%) ISTQB
2 2 (4.00%) SC Cleared
2 2 (4.00%) Security Cleared
3 1 (2.00%) CCSK
3 1 (2.00%) CISM
3 1 (2.00%) CompTIA Security+
3 1 (2.00%) GIAC
3 1 (2.00%) ISEB
3 1 (2.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
3 1 (2.00%) Master's Degree
3 1 (2.00%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (10.00%) QA
2 4 (8.00%) PMO
3 2 (4.00%) NIST
4 1 (2.00%) GDPR
4 1 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (2.00%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 6 (12.00%) Active Directory
1 6 (12.00%) Firmware
2 4 (8.00%) Docker
3 1 (2.00%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 8 (16.00%) Kubernetes
2 2 (4.00%) Kibana
3 1 (2.00%) CASB
3 1 (2.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (10.00%) OpenAI
1 5 (10.00%) Zend
2 4 (8.00%) Microsoft
3 3 (6.00%) Google
3 3 (6.00%) SAP
4 2 (4.00%) Dynatrace
4 2 (4.00%) ServiceNow
4 2 (4.00%) Splunk
5 1 (2.00%) Adobe
5 1 (2.00%) CyberArk
5 1 (2.00%) Forcepoint