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 5 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 122 106 101
Rank change year-on-year -16 -5 -11
Contract jobs citing SDLC 43 96 124
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 1.31% 1.69% 2.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.45% 2.04% 2.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 72 72
10th Percentile £325 £376 £407
25th Percentile £404 £445 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £575 £533
Median % change year-on-year -13.74% +7.98% -3.18%
75th Percentile £550 £650 £600
90th Percentile £596 £675 £662
England median daily rate £525 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 2 9
10th Percentile - £58.45 £49.25
25th Percentile - £59.88 £50.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £63.51 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.27% +15.47% -8.33%
75th Percentile - £65.89 £59.25
90th Percentile £52.50 £66.57 £60.75
England median hourly rate £50.00 £53.13 £52.74
% change year-on-year -5.88% +0.74% -4.12%

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 2,973 4,709 5,223
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 90.64% 82.73% 89.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,851 2,740 3,569
10th Percentile £250 £255 £252
25th Percentile £398 £405 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -0.49% +3.00%
75th Percentile £600 £634 £623
90th Percentile £663 £700 £700
England median daily rate £515 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 244 448 236
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.00 £15.50
25th Percentile £15.13 £18.32 £21.89
Median hourly rate £24.00 £50.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -52.00% - +122.22%
75th Percentile £53.75 £67.86 £64.53
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.75 £75.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £38.12 £37.50
% change year-on-year -34.02% +1.65% +46.03%

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 5 July 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 5 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
Thames Valley +2 25 £450 -28.00% 140
Berkshire +4 16 £521 -16.64% 78
Hampshire +22 14 £525 -4.55% 81
Buckinghamshire +6 7 £325 -47.37% 35
West Sussex +5 3 £550 +23.60% 27
Oxfordshire +1 2 £513 +5.13% 27
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 (4.65%) SharePoint
2 1 (2.33%) Anypoint
2 1 (2.33%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (6.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (4.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (2.33%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (2.33%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (2.33%) Adobe Campaign
Cloud Services
1 11 (25.58%) Azure
2 8 (18.60%) Azure DevOps
3 6 (13.95%) AWS
4 3 (6.98%) GCP
4 3 (6.98%) Serverless
5 2 (4.65%) Amazon EC2
5 2 (4.65%) Amazon ECS
5 2 (4.65%) Amazon EKS
6 1 (2.33%) Azure AKS
6 1 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
6 1 (2.33%) Azure Pipelines
6 1 (2.33%) Azure Sentinel
6 1 (2.33%) Cloud Computing
6 1 (2.33%) dbt
6 1 (2.33%) GitHub
6 1 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (2.33%) Nutanix
6 1 (2.33%) Smartsheet
Communications & Networking
1 2 (4.65%) Firewall
1 2 (4.65%) HTTPS
1 2 (4.65%) VPN
2 1 (2.33%) Intrusion Detection
2 1 (2.33%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (16.28%) SQL Server
2 3 (6.98%) MySQL
2 3 (6.98%) NoSQL
2 3 (6.98%) Relational Database
3 2 (4.65%) MongoDB
3 2 (4.65%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (4.65%) RDBMS
4 1 (2.33%) Apache Cassandra
4 1 (2.33%) Redis
4 1 (2.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 14 (32.56%) Git
1 14 (32.56%) JIRA
2 4 (9.30%) Cucumber
2 4 (9.30%) Jenkins
2 4 (9.30%) Postman
2 4 (9.30%) Selenium
2 4 (9.30%) WebDriver
3 2 (4.65%) JMeter
3 2 (4.65%) JUnit
3 2 (4.65%) Mockito
3 2 (4.65%) QARun
3 2 (4.65%) Subversion
3 2 (4.65%) WinRunner
4 1 (2.33%) Bitbucket
4 1 (2.33%) Codeception
4 1 (2.33%) Maven
4 1 (2.33%) Team Foundation Server
4 1 (2.33%) Visual Studio
General
1 14 (32.56%) Social Skills
2 8 (18.60%) Finance
3 5 (11.63%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (9.30%) Public Sector
5 1 (2.33%) Legal
5 1 (2.33%) Marketing
5 1 (2.33%) Retail
5 1 (2.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 10 (23.26%) Analyst
2 8 (18.60%) Architect
2 8 (18.60%) Developer
3 6 (13.95%) Senior
3 6 (13.95%) Test Analyst
4 4 (9.30%) Integration Analyst
4 4 (9.30%) Integration Test Analyst
4 4 (9.30%) Security Architect
4 4 (9.30%) Software Test Engineer
4 4 (9.30%) Solutions Architect
4 4 (9.30%) Test Engineer
5 3 (6.98%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
5 3 (6.98%) Project Manager
5 3 (6.98%) Senior Developer
6 2 (4.65%) Business Analyst
6 2 (4.65%) Java Developer
6 2 (4.65%) PHP Developer
6 2 (4.65%) Release Manager
6 2 (4.65%) Senior Java Developer
6 2 (4.65%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (25.58%) REST
2 8 (18.60%) Web Services
3 5 (11.63%) RESTful
4 4 (9.30%) Hibernate
4 4 (9.30%) Spring
4 4 (9.30%) Spring Boot
4 4 (9.30%) WebdriverIO
5 3 (6.98%) ActiveMQ
5 3 (6.98%) Google JAX
5 3 (6.98%) HTML
5 3 (6.98%) JAX
5 3 (6.98%) PyTorch
5 3 (6.98%) scikit-learn
5 3 (6.98%) TensorFlow
6 2 (4.65%) .NET
6 2 (4.65%) ADO
6 2 (4.65%) Apache Camel
6 2 (4.65%) jQuery
6 2 (4.65%) Laravel
6 2 (4.65%) Phalcon
Miscellaneous
1 6 (13.95%) Self-Motivation
2 5 (11.63%) Algorithms
3 4 (9.30%) Distributed Systems
4 3 (6.98%) Security Posture
5 2 (4.65%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (4.65%) Device Driver
5 2 (4.65%) Embedded Systems
5 2 (4.65%) IoT
6 1 (2.33%) Cloud Native
6 1 (2.33%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (2.33%) Cyberattack
6 1 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (2.33%) EPoS
6 1 (2.33%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (2.33%) N-Tier
6 1 (2.33%) Onboarding
6 1 (2.33%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 7 (16.28%) Windows
2 2 (4.65%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (67.44%) Agile
2 18 (41.86%) DevOps
3 16 (37.21%) Test Automation
4 14 (32.56%) Scrum
5 13 (30.23%) CI/CD
6 12 (27.91%) Problem-Solving
6 12 (27.91%) Software Testing
7 9 (20.93%) Microservices
8 8 (18.60%) Logistics
9 7 (16.28%) Integration Testing
9 7 (16.28%) System Integration Testing
9 7 (16.28%) Test Planning
9 7 (16.28%) Waterfall
10 6 (13.95%) Data Migration
10 6 (13.95%) Data Protection
10 6 (13.95%) Defect Management
10 6 (13.95%) Manual Testing
10 6 (13.95%) Migration
10 6 (13.95%) Project Management
10 6 (13.95%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 11 (25.58%) Java
2 7 (16.28%) C#
3 6 (13.95%) VB
4 5 (11.63%) C
4 5 (11.63%) Python
5 4 (9.30%) JavaScript
6 3 (6.98%) C++
6 3 (6.98%) R
7 2 (4.65%) Embedded C
7 2 (4.65%) Go
7 2 (4.65%) PHP
7 2 (4.65%) Shell Script
7 2 (4.65%) SQL
Qualifications
1 3 (6.98%) Computer Science Degree
1 3 (6.98%) Degree
2 2 (4.65%) PMP
2 2 (4.65%) Security Cleared
3 1 (2.33%) CCSK
3 1 (2.33%) CEH
3 1 (2.33%) CISSP
3 1 (2.33%) CompTIA Security+
3 1 (2.33%) GIAC
3 1 (2.33%) Master's Degree
3 1 (2.33%) SANS
3 1 (2.33%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (16.28%) QA
2 4 (9.30%) GDPR
2 4 (9.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (9.30%) PMO
3 3 (6.98%) EU AI Act
3 3 (6.98%) NIST
System Software
1 3 (6.98%) Docker
2 2 (4.65%) Firmware
3 1 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 7 (16.28%) Kubernetes
2 2 (4.65%) Kibana
3 1 (2.33%) CASB
3 1 (2.33%) CloudHub
3 1 (2.33%) HP ALM
3 1 (2.33%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 8 (18.60%) Microsoft
2 3 (6.98%) ServiceNow
3 2 (4.65%) Dynatrace
3 2 (4.65%) Salesforce
3 2 (4.65%) Splunk
3 2 (4.65%) Zend
4 1 (2.33%) Adobe
4 1 (2.33%) BMC
4 1 (2.33%) Conga
4 1 (2.33%) CyberArk
4 1 (2.33%) Forcepoint
4 1 (2.33%) Google
4 1 (2.33%) HP
4 1 (2.33%) MuleSoft
4 1 (2.33%) SAP