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 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 119 85
Rank change year-on-year +16 -34 +19
Contract jobs citing SDLC 140 53 98
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.14% 1.49% 2.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.65% 1.67% 2.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 64 29 66
10th Percentile £338 £325 £386
25th Percentile £400 £358 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £609
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -17.86% +10.68%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £650
90th Percentile £686 £684 £660
England median daily rate £535 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +1.90% -4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 7 2
10th Percentile £50.74 - £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% +23.92%
75th Percentile - - £65.89
90th Percentile £77.60 £52.00 £66.57
England median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £66.01
% change year-on-year +40.00% -24.25% +20.02%

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 5,290 3,167 3,651
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 80.69% 89.04% 82.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,107 1,977 2,189
10th Percentile £275 £216 £254
25th Percentile £419 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £618 £588 £625
90th Percentile £713 £650 £688
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 660 317 205
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £16.33 £16.17 £30.00
Median hourly rate £47.54 £22.19 £58.38
Median % change year-on-year +114.24% -61.99% +9.11%
75th Percentile £69.77 £48.75 £70.43
90th Percentile £87.84 £69.11 £77.99
England median hourly rate £40.08 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.36% -41.51% -3.37%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 -24 42 £550 +30.02% 75
Surrey +9 35 £510 -7.27% 26
Hampshire -17 35 £613 +19.51% 52
Berkshire -24 24 £550 +5.57% 37
Buckinghamshire -14 17 £552 +69.73% 14
West Sussex -14 12 £295 -43.81% 10
East Sussex - 9 £652 - 14
Middlesex - 5 - -
Oxfordshire - 1 £330 - 24
Kent - 1 £625 - 11
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 (5.00%) Confluence
2 4 (2.86%) FactoryTalk
3 2 (1.43%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.71%) Apache
Applications
1 4 (2.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (2.14%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (2.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (2.14%) Primavera
2 2 (1.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.71%) Oracle Payroll
Cloud Services
1 41 (29.29%) AWS
2 27 (19.29%) Azure
3 19 (13.57%) OpenShift
4 11 (7.86%) GCP
5 9 (6.43%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (3.57%) GitHub
7 4 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
7 4 (2.86%) Power Platform
8 3 (2.14%) Entra ID
8 3 (2.14%) Microsoft 365
9 2 (1.43%) AWS CloudFormation
9 2 (1.43%) Power Automate
10 1 (0.71%) Amazon EMR
10 1 (0.71%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.71%) Amazon SQS
10 1 (0.71%) Azure Sentinel
10 1 (0.71%) BrowserStack
10 1 (0.71%) Serverless
10 1 (0.71%) Smartsheet
10 1 (0.71%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 5 (3.57%) Broadband
2 4 (2.86%) Firewall
2 4 (2.86%) HTTPS
2 4 (2.86%) TCP/IP
2 4 (2.86%) VLAN
3 1 (0.71%) MQTT
3 1 (0.71%) Network Security
3 1 (0.71%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (11.43%) Relational Database
2 3 (2.14%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (2.14%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.43%) MySQL
3 2 (1.43%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.71%) Couchbase
4 1 (0.71%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.71%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
4 1 (0.71%) Metadata
4 1 (0.71%) MongoDB
4 1 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
4 1 (0.71%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 23 (16.43%) Git
2 20 (14.29%) JIRA
3 19 (13.57%) SonarQube
4 16 (11.43%) Selenium
5 6 (4.29%) GitLab
5 6 (4.29%) Jenkins
6 5 (3.57%) Visual Studio
7 3 (2.14%) JMeter
8 2 (1.43%) Gatling
8 2 (1.43%) LoadRunner
8 2 (1.43%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (1.43%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.71%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.71%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.71%) Postman
9 1 (0.71%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.71%) TestRail
9 1 (0.71%) tSQLt
9 1 (0.71%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 55 (39.29%) Social Skills
2 24 (17.14%) Analytical Skills
3 19 (13.57%) Aerospace
4 13 (9.29%) Finance
5 12 (8.57%) Public Sector
6 11 (7.86%) Manufacturing
7 9 (6.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (4.29%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (3.57%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (1.43%) Banking
10 2 (1.43%) Military
10 2 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.43%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.71%) Automotive
11 1 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 23 (16.43%) Developer
2 17 (12.14%) Senior
3 14 (10.00%) Analyst
4 13 (9.29%) Architect
4 13 (9.29%) Business Analyst
5 11 (7.86%) Java Developer
6 10 (7.14%) Consultant
7 9 (6.43%) Lead
7 9 (6.43%) Senior Analyst
7 9 (6.43%) Senior Business Analyst
8 7 (5.00%) Java Engineer
9 6 (4.29%) Delivery Manager
9 6 (4.29%) Environment Manager
9 6 (4.29%) Programme Manager
9 6 (4.29%) Security Architect
9 6 (4.29%) Software Developer
10 5 (3.57%) Project Manager
11 4 (2.86%) Security Consultant
11 4 (2.86%) Software Engineer
11 4 (2.86%) Team Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (13.57%) AngularJS
2 18 (12.86%) Quarkus
3 9 (6.43%) .NET
4 8 (5.71%) RESTful
4 8 (5.71%) Terraform
5 7 (5.00%) REST
6 6 (4.29%) Spring
6 6 (4.29%) Web Services
7 5 (3.57%) Kafka
7 5 (3.57%) LDAP
7 5 (3.57%) OAuth
7 5 (3.57%) OpenID
7 5 (3.57%) SAML
7 5 (3.57%) Spring Boot
8 4 (2.86%) Hibernate
8 4 (2.86%) OAuth2
8 4 (2.86%) XML
9 3 (2.14%) ARM Templates
9 3 (2.14%) Node.js
10 2 (1.43%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 14 (10.00%) Product Ownership
2 8 (5.71%) Cloud Native
3 6 (4.29%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (3.57%) Life Science
4 5 (3.57%) Security Posture
5 4 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (2.86%) Operational Technology
5 4 (2.86%) SCADA
5 4 (2.86%) Social Media
6 3 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (2.14%) Hybrid Cloud
6 3 (2.14%) PKI
7 2 (1.43%) Enterprise Cloud
7 2 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (1.43%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.71%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.71%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.71%) Driving Licence
8 1 (0.71%) Embedded Systems
8 1 (0.71%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.86%) Linux
1 4 (2.86%) Windows
1 4 (2.86%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (65.71%) Agile
2 57 (40.71%) Test Automation
3 51 (36.43%) CI/CD
4 46 (32.86%) Scrum
5 43 (30.71%) Continuous Improvement
6 42 (30.00%) DevSecOps
7 38 (27.14%) Stakeholder Management
8 36 (25.71%) Software Engineering
9 35 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
10 32 (22.86%) Vulnerability Management
11 30 (21.43%) DevOps
11 30 (21.43%) Software Testing
12 29 (20.71%) Sprint Planning
12 29 (20.71%) Validation
13 26 (18.57%) Containerisation
14 25 (17.86%) Cybersecurity
14 25 (17.86%) Defect Management
14 25 (17.86%) Infrastructure as Code
15 24 (17.14%) Security Testing
16 23 (16.43%) Regression Testing
Programming Languages
1 39 (27.86%) Java
2 31 (22.14%) Python
3 22 (15.71%) SQL
4 11 (7.86%) PowerShell
5 8 (5.71%) C#
6 7 (5.00%) C++
7 6 (4.29%) Bash
8 5 (3.57%) JavaScript
9 4 (2.86%) Bicep
9 4 (2.86%) VB.NET
10 3 (2.14%) Go
11 2 (1.43%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.71%) Ada
12 1 (0.71%) C
12 1 (0.71%) Groovy
12 1 (0.71%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.71%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.71%) Rust
12 1 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.71%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 83 (59.29%) Security Cleared
2 65 (46.43%) SC Cleared
3 20 (14.29%) DV Cleared
4 18 (12.86%) Degree
5 17 (12.14%) CISSP
6 10 (7.14%) CISM
6 10 (7.14%) ISTQB
7 9 (6.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 9 (6.43%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (5.71%) ISEB
9 7 (5.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 6 (4.29%) CompTIA Security+
10 6 (4.29%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 5 (3.57%) CEH
11 5 (3.57%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 4 (2.86%) DBS Check
12 4 (2.86%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 3 (2.14%) AWS Certification
13 3 (2.14%) CBAP
13 3 (2.14%) ISEB Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (26.43%) QA
2 14 (10.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (10.00%) NIST
3 8 (5.71%) NCSC
4 4 (2.86%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 4 (2.86%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (2.86%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 4 (2.86%) Def Stans
4 4 (2.86%) GDPR
4 4 (2.86%) GxP
4 4 (2.86%) NIST 800
5 2 (1.43%) GRC
6 1 (0.71%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.71%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.71%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.71%) PMO
6 1 (0.71%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 7 (5.00%) Docker
2 5 (3.57%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 31 (22.14%) Kubernetes
2 18 (12.86%) Argo
3 5 (3.57%) Ansible
4 4 (2.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 1 (0.71%) Grafana
5 1 (0.71%) Podman
5 1 (0.71%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.71%) Puppet
5 1 (0.71%) QRadar
5 1 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 18 (12.86%) Red Hat
2 17 (12.14%) Microsoft
3 4 (2.86%) Rockwell
3 4 (2.86%) VMware
4 3 (2.14%) Oracle
5 2 (1.43%) CA Agile Central
5 2 (1.43%) Google
5 2 (1.43%) SAP
5 2 (1.43%) Sparx
6 1 (0.71%) ForgeRock
6 1 (0.71%) Foundry
6 1 (0.71%) IBM
6 1 (0.71%) MuleSoft
6 1 (0.71%) NVIDIA
6 1 (0.71%) Okta
6 1 (0.71%) Ping Identity
6 1 (0.71%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.71%) Splunk
6 1 (0.71%) Tenable