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 20 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 137 83 105
Rank change year-on-year -54 +22 -15
Contract jobs citing SDLC 52 90 101
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.19% 2.42% 2.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.40% 2.74% 2.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 35 59 75
10th Percentile £366 £403 £416
25th Percentile £423 £444 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% +9.52%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £638
90th Percentile £775 £659 £686
England median daily rate £525 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 6
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £48.40
Median hourly rate £50.00 £67.02 £49.07
Median % change year-on-year -25.40% +36.59% -24.52%
75th Percentile £52.50 - £56.50
90th Percentile £54.00 - £60.63
England median hourly rate £60.61 £67.50 £52.21
% change year-on-year -10.21% +29.30% -19.68%

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 3,725 3,287 4,498
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 85.18% 88.29% 89.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,436 2,048 2,911
10th Percentile £221 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £520
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -1.44% +1.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £614
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 369 126 229
10th Percentile £14.75 £19.67 £17.80
25th Percentile £17.00 £26.06 £26.00
Median hourly rate £22.27 £47.51 £54.39
Median % change year-on-year -53.14% -12.64% +45.03%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.32 £65.86
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.93 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +23.61%

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 20 December 2025.

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
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 20 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
Thames Valley -36 26 £550 -12.00% 17
Berkshire -26 25 £575 -8.00% 9
Hampshire -24 12 £760 +52.00% 5
Surrey -1 7 £550 +36.48% 5
West Sussex -7 6 £550 +15.79% 5
Buckinghamshire +2 1 £325 -48.72% 3
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 2 (3.85%) Confluence
2 1 (1.92%) Camunda
2 1 (1.92%) Smallworld
2 1 (1.92%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (1.92%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (1.92%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 17 (32.69%) Azure
2 9 (17.31%) Azure DevOps
3 8 (15.38%) AWS
4 6 (11.54%) GCP
5 4 (7.69%) Entra ID
5 4 (7.69%) Nutanix
6 3 (5.77%) Azure Logic Apps
6 3 (5.77%) Serverless
7 2 (3.85%) Azure AKS
7 2 (3.85%) Azure Functions
7 2 (3.85%) GitHub
7 2 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (1.92%) Cloud Computing
8 1 (1.92%) OCI
8 1 (1.92%) OpenShift
8 1 (1.92%) PaaS
8 1 (1.92%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (13.46%) Firewall
2 4 (7.69%) Network Security
3 2 (3.85%) Internet
3 2 (3.85%) Intranet
3 2 (3.85%) Wireless
4 1 (1.92%) DHCP
4 1 (1.92%) DMZ
4 1 (1.92%) DNS
4 1 (1.92%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (3.85%) Oracle Database
1 2 (3.85%) Oracle Reports
1 2 (3.85%) SQL Server
2 1 (1.92%) GIS
2 1 (1.92%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 8 (15.38%) Git
2 7 (13.46%) JIRA
3 3 (5.77%) Selenium
4 2 (3.85%) Cucumber
4 2 (3.85%) Jenkins
4 2 (3.85%) Oracle APEX
4 2 (3.85%) Oracle Forms
4 2 (3.85%) Postman
4 2 (3.85%) Visual Studio
4 2 (3.85%) WebDriver
5 1 (1.92%) Appium
5 1 (1.92%) Burp Suite
5 1 (1.92%) Cypress.io
5 1 (1.92%) GitLab
5 1 (1.92%) SonarQube
General
1 28 (53.85%) Social Skills
2 11 (21.15%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (13.46%) Public Sector
4 5 (9.62%) Finance
4 5 (9.62%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (1.92%) Automotive
5 1 (1.92%) Back Office
5 1 (1.92%) Banking
5 1 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
5 1 (1.92%) Front Office
5 1 (1.92%) Retail
Job Titles
1 12 (23.08%) Architect
2 9 (17.31%) Developer
3 7 (13.46%) Security Architect
3 7 (13.46%) Senior
4 5 (9.62%) Analyst
4 5 (9.62%) C# Developer
4 5 (9.62%) Test Manager
5 4 (7.69%) Lead
6 3 (5.77%) .NET Applications Developer
6 3 (5.77%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
6 3 (5.77%) Azure Developer
6 3 (5.77%) C# .NET Developer
6 3 (5.77%) C# Application Developer
6 3 (5.77%) DevOps Engineer
6 3 (5.77%) Lead .NET Developer
6 3 (5.77%) Lead C# Developer
6 3 (5.77%) Logic Apps Developer
6 3 (5.77%) Product Owner
6 3 (5.77%) Strategy Manager
6 3 (5.77%) Test Strategy Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (13.46%) REST
2 5 (9.62%) .NET
3 4 (7.69%) JWT
3 4 (7.69%) OAuth
3 4 (7.69%) SAML
4 3 (5.77%) Google JAX
4 3 (5.77%) JAX
4 3 (5.77%) PyTorch
4 3 (5.77%) scikit-learn
4 3 (5.77%) TensorFlow
5 2 (3.85%) .NET Core
5 2 (3.85%) AngularJS
5 2 (3.85%) GraphQL
5 2 (3.85%) JSON
5 2 (3.85%) WebdriverIO
6 1 (1.92%) gRPC
6 1 (1.92%) HTML
6 1 (1.92%) Middleware
6 1 (1.92%) Oracle Fusion
6 1 (1.92%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 6 (11.54%) Product Ownership
1 6 (11.54%) Security Posture
2 5 (9.62%) Distributed Systems
2 5 (9.62%) Hybrid Cloud
3 4 (7.69%) Cloud Native
4 3 (5.77%) Algorithms
4 3 (5.77%) Cloud Security Posture
4 3 (5.77%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (5.77%) Public Cloud
5 2 (3.85%) Operational Technology
5 2 (3.85%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.92%) Cyber Kill Chain
6 1 (1.92%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.92%) IoT
6 1 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.92%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.92%) Mobile App
6 1 (1.92%) Mobile Computing
Operating Systems
1 6 (11.54%) Windows
2 5 (9.62%) Linux
3 2 (3.85%) Windows Server
4 1 (1.92%) Kali Linux
4 1 (1.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (1.92%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (1.92%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (59.62%) Agile
2 18 (34.62%) DevOps
3 16 (30.77%) Problem-Solving
3 16 (30.77%) Test Automation
4 15 (28.85%) CI/CD
5 12 (23.08%) Threat Modelling
6 10 (19.23%) Secure Coding
6 10 (19.23%) Waterfall
7 9 (17.31%) Scrum
7 9 (17.31%) Test Management
8 8 (15.38%) Cloud Security
8 8 (15.38%) DevSecOps
8 8 (15.38%) OWASP
8 8 (15.38%) Security Architecture
9 7 (13.46%) Computer Science
9 7 (13.46%) Dynamic Application Security Testing
9 7 (13.46%) Roadmaps
9 7 (13.46%) Software Engineering
9 7 (13.46%) Software Testing
9 7 (13.46%) Static Application Security Testing
Programming Languages
1 10 (19.23%) Java
2 9 (17.31%) C#
3 8 (15.38%) SQL
4 6 (11.54%) Python
5 5 (9.62%) C
5 5 (9.62%) PowerShell
6 4 (7.69%) JavaScript
7 3 (5.77%) C++
7 3 (5.77%) R
8 2 (3.85%) Ada
8 2 (3.85%) Assembly Language
8 2 (3.85%) Bash
8 2 (3.85%) MATLAB
8 2 (3.85%) PHP
8 2 (3.85%) PL/SQL
9 1 (1.92%) Magik
9 1 (1.92%) Tcl
9 1 (1.92%) TypeScript
9 1 (1.92%) VB
Qualifications
1 17 (32.69%) Security Cleared
2 11 (21.15%) SC Cleared
3 8 (15.38%) Degree
4 5 (9.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
4 5 (9.62%) CCSP
4 5 (9.62%) Cisco Certification
4 5 (9.62%) CISSP
5 4 (7.69%) AWS Certification
5 4 (7.69%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (5.77%) Azure Certification
6 3 (5.77%) CSPO
7 2 (3.85%) DV Cleared
7 2 (3.85%) Master's Degree
8 1 (1.92%) ISTQB
8 1 (1.92%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (1.92%) OCP
8 1 (1.92%) Oracle Certification
8 1 (1.92%) OSCP
8 1 (1.92%) PMP
8 1 (1.92%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (19.23%) GDPR
2 9 (17.31%) QA
3 8 (15.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (13.46%) NIST
5 5 (9.62%) PCI DSS
6 4 (7.69%) NCSC
6 4 (7.69%) PSD2
7 3 (5.77%) EU AI Act
8 1 (1.92%) GRC
8 1 (1.92%) ISO/IEC 27005
8 1 (1.92%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 1 (1.92%) JSP 440
System Software
1 6 (11.54%) Docker
2 1 (1.92%) Active Directory
2 1 (1.92%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 11 (21.15%) Kubernetes
2 2 (3.85%) Nessus
3 1 (1.92%) Ansible
3 1 (1.92%) Argo
3 1 (1.92%) Nmap
3 1 (1.92%) Podman
3 1 (1.92%) Puppet
3 1 (1.92%) SCCM
3 1 (1.92%) Terraform
Vendors
1 4 (7.69%) Microsoft
1 4 (7.69%) Oracle
1 4 (7.69%) SAP
2 3 (5.77%) Citrix
3 1 (1.92%) Micro Focus
3 1 (1.92%) OpenText
3 1 (1.92%) Red Hat
3 1 (1.92%) Sparx
3 1 (1.92%) Tenable
3 1 (1.92%) VMware