SDLC Contract Job Trends in the South East

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

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring SDLC skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 115 91
Rank change year-on-year +23 -24 +8
Contract jobs citing SDLC 149 51 94
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.24% 1.46% 2.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.78% 1.63% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 61 28 67
10th Percentile £355 £325 £387
25th Percentile £400 £358 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £509 £600
Median % change year-on-year +3.24% -15.25% +9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £578 £650
90th Percentile £652 £688 £660
England median daily rate £541 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +2.95% -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 7 2
10th Percentile £55.00 - £58.45
25th Percentile £61.87 - £59.88
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £63.51
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% -21.27% +18.16%
75th Percentile - - £65.89
90th Percentile £74.90 £52.00 £66.57
England median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +40.00% -23.08% +20.40%

All Process & 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 5,369 3,127 3,849
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.74% 89.22% 82.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,235 1,941 2,308
10th Percentile £275 £222 £256
25th Percentile £425 £385 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -1.14%
75th Percentile £619 £600 £630
90th Percentile £706 £656 £700
England median daily rate £525 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 614 312 271
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £15.50 £34.50
Median hourly rate £52.43 £21.82 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +140.23% -61.95% +9.24%
75th Percentile £70.00 £51.69 £71.82
90th Percentile £86.70 £69.65 £78.75
England median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% +1.18%

SDLC
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

SDLC job vacancy trend in the South East

SDLC
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing SDLC.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing SDLC

SDLC
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SDLC in the South East over the 6 months to 11 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SDLC in the South East

SDLC
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing SDLC.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing SDLC

SDLC
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SDLC in the South East over the 6 months to 11 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram 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 11 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
Thames Valley -22 44 £550 +30.02% 39
Surrey +9 37 £513 -6.82% 9
Hampshire -11 34 £594 +1.50% 19
Berkshire -19 24 £550 +5.57% 21
Buckinghamshire -23 19 £552 +69.73% 13
East Sussex - 14 £652 - 4
West Sussex -21 12 £325 -38.10% 5
Middlesex - 5 - -
Oxfordshire - 1 £330 - 6
Kent - 1 £625 - 2
SDLC
England

SDLC
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 7 (4.70%) Confluence
2 4 (2.68%) FactoryTalk
3 2 (1.34%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.67%) Apache
Applications
1 5 (3.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (2.01%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (2.01%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (2.01%) Primavera
2 2 (1.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.67%) Oracle Payroll
Cloud Services
1 39 (26.17%) AWS
2 27 (18.12%) Azure
3 20 (13.42%) OpenShift
4 9 (6.04%) Azure DevOps
4 9 (6.04%) GCP
5 5 (3.36%) GitHub
6 4 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
6 4 (2.68%) Power Platform
7 3 (2.01%) Entra ID
7 3 (2.01%) Microsoft 365
8 2 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.34%) Power Automate
9 1 (0.67%) Amazon EMR
9 1 (0.67%) Amazon S3
9 1 (0.67%) Azure Sentinel
9 1 (0.67%) BrowserStack
9 1 (0.67%) Google Sheets
9 1 (0.67%) SaaS
9 1 (0.67%) Serverless
9 1 (0.67%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 5 (3.36%) Broadband
1 5 (3.36%) Firewall
1 5 (3.36%) TCP/IP
1 5 (3.36%) VLAN
2 3 (2.01%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.67%) DHCP
3 1 (0.67%) DNS
3 1 (0.67%) LAN
3 1 (0.67%) MQTT
3 1 (0.67%) Network Security
3 1 (0.67%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (0.67%) WAN
3 1 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (10.07%) Relational Database
2 3 (2.01%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.67%) Couchbase
4 1 (0.67%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
4 1 (0.67%) Metadata
4 1 (0.67%) MySQL
4 1 (0.67%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
4 1 (0.67%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 22 (14.77%) Git
2 20 (13.42%) SonarQube
3 16 (10.74%) JIRA
3 16 (10.74%) Selenium
4 6 (4.03%) GitLab
4 6 (4.03%) Jenkins
5 5 (3.36%) Postman
5 5 (3.36%) Visual Studio
6 2 (1.34%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (1.34%) REST Assured
7 1 (0.67%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.67%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.67%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.67%) JMeter
7 1 (0.67%) JUnit
7 1 (0.67%) Mockito
7 1 (0.67%) SoapUI
7 1 (0.67%) TestRail
7 1 (0.67%) tSQLt
7 1 (0.67%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 53 (35.57%) Social Skills
2 22 (14.77%) Analytical Skills
3 16 (10.74%) Aerospace
4 12 (8.05%) Finance
5 11 (7.38%) Public Sector
6 8 (5.37%) Manufacturing
7 7 (4.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (4.03%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (2.68%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (1.34%) Banking
10 2 (1.34%) Military
10 2 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.34%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.67%) Automotive
11 1 (0.67%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.67%) Retail
Job Titles
1 20 (13.42%) Developer
2 17 (11.41%) Senior
3 15 (10.07%) Analyst
3 15 (10.07%) Architect
4 13 (8.72%) Business Analyst
5 12 (8.05%) Environment Manager
5 12 (8.05%) Programme Manager
6 11 (7.38%) Java Developer
7 10 (6.71%) Consultant
8 9 (6.04%) Senior Analyst
8 9 (6.04%) Senior Business Analyst
9 8 (5.37%) Java Engineer
9 8 (5.37%) Lead
10 7 (4.70%) Security Architect
11 6 (4.03%) Software Engineer
11 6 (4.03%) Test Engineer
12 5 (3.36%) Software Developer
12 5 (3.36%) Software Test Engineer
13 4 (2.68%) Project Manager
13 4 (2.68%) Team Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (12.75%) AngularJS
1 19 (12.75%) Quarkus
2 11 (7.38%) RESTful
3 10 (6.71%) REST
3 10 (6.71%) Terraform
4 9 (6.04%) .NET
5 6 (4.03%) Web Services
6 5 (3.36%) LDAP
6 5 (3.36%) OAuth
6 5 (3.36%) OpenID
6 5 (3.36%) SAML
6 5 (3.36%) Spring
7 4 (2.68%) Kafka
7 4 (2.68%) OAuth2
7 4 (2.68%) Spring Boot
7 4 (2.68%) XML
8 3 (2.01%) ARM Templates
8 3 (2.01%) Hibernate
9 2 (1.34%) JSON
9 2 (1.34%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 16 (10.74%) Product Ownership
2 9 (6.04%) Cloud Native
3 6 (4.03%) Self-Motivation
4 5 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (3.36%) Security Posture
4 5 (3.36%) Virtual Team
5 4 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (2.68%) Life Science
5 4 (2.68%) Operational Technology
5 4 (2.68%) SCADA
5 4 (2.68%) Social Media
6 3 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (2.01%) Hybrid Cloud
6 3 (2.01%) PKI
7 2 (1.34%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (0.67%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.67%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.67%) Driving Licence
8 1 (0.67%) Embedded Systems
8 1 (0.67%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.68%) Linux
1 4 (2.68%) Windows
1 4 (2.68%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 91 (61.07%) Agile
2 63 (42.28%) Test Automation
3 49 (32.89%) CI/CD
4 44 (29.53%) Scrum
5 41 (27.52%) DevSecOps
6 37 (24.83%) Continuous Improvement
7 35 (23.49%) DevOps
8 34 (22.82%) Stakeholder Management
9 33 (22.15%) Sprint Planning
10 32 (21.48%) Problem-Solving
10 32 (21.48%) Software Engineering
10 32 (21.48%) Vulnerability Management
11 31 (20.81%) Software Testing
12 27 (18.12%) Containerisation
12 27 (18.12%) Validation
13 26 (17.45%) Cybersecurity
13 26 (17.45%) Infrastructure as Code
14 25 (16.78%) Security Testing
15 23 (15.44%) Coaching
15 23 (15.44%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 38 (25.50%) Java
2 31 (20.81%) Python
3 22 (14.77%) SQL
4 11 (7.38%) PowerShell
5 8 (5.37%) C#
6 6 (4.03%) C++
7 5 (3.36%) Bash
8 4 (2.68%) Bicep
8 4 (2.68%) JavaScript
8 4 (2.68%) VB.NET
9 2 (1.34%) Go
9 2 (1.34%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.67%) Ada
10 1 (0.67%) C
10 1 (0.67%) Groovy
10 1 (0.67%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.67%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.67%) Rust
10 1 (0.67%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.67%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 88 (59.06%) Security Cleared
2 70 (46.98%) SC Cleared
3 21 (14.09%) DV Cleared
4 17 (11.41%) CISSP
5 16 (10.74%) Degree
6 10 (6.71%) CISM
7 9 (6.04%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 9 (6.04%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (5.37%) ISEB
8 8 (5.37%) ISTQB
9 7 (4.70%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 6 (4.03%) CompTIA Security+
10 6 (4.03%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 5 (3.36%) CEH
11 5 (3.36%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 4 (2.68%) DBS Check
12 4 (2.68%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 3 (2.01%) AWS Certification
13 3 (2.01%) CBAP
13 3 (2.01%) ISEB Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (22.82%) QA
2 15 (10.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 15 (10.07%) NIST
3 8 (5.37%) NCSC
4 5 (3.36%) NIST 800
5 4 (2.68%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 4 (2.68%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (2.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (2.68%) Def Stans
5 4 (2.68%) GDPR
5 4 (2.68%) GxP
6 2 (1.34%) GRC
7 1 (0.67%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.67%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.67%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.67%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.67%) PMO
7 1 (0.67%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 6 (4.03%) Docker
2 5 (3.36%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 31 (20.81%) Kubernetes
2 19 (12.75%) Argo
3 5 (3.36%) Ansible
4 4 (2.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 1 (0.67%) Grafana
5 1 (0.67%) Podman
5 1 (0.67%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.67%) Puppet
5 1 (0.67%) QRadar
5 1 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 19 (12.75%) Microsoft
1 19 (12.75%) Red Hat
2 4 (2.68%) Oracle
2 4 (2.68%) Rockwell
2 4 (2.68%) VMware
3 2 (1.34%) CA Agile Central
3 2 (1.34%) Google
3 2 (1.34%) SAP
3 2 (1.34%) Sparx
4 1 (0.67%) ForgeRock
4 1 (0.67%) Foundry
4 1 (0.67%) IBM
4 1 (0.67%) MuleSoft
4 1 (0.67%) NVIDIA
4 1 (0.67%) Okta
4 1 (0.67%) Ping Identity
4 1 (0.67%) Salesforce
4 1 (0.67%) Splunk
4 1 (0.67%) Tenable