Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 23 April 2021

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for SDLC skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited SDLC over the 6 months to 23 April 2021 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Systems or Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
UK
6 months to
23 Apr 2021		 Same period 2020 Same period 2019
Rank 75 81 86
Rank change year-on-year +6 +5 -9
Contract jobs citing SDLC 1,601 1,521 2,724
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.96% 2.71% 2.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.40% 3.18% 3.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,064 1,032 1,904
10th Percentile £350 £330 £350
25th Percentile £413 £408 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £600 £616 £588
90th Percentile £675 £695 £660
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £440
% change year-on-year - +2.27% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 24 27
10th Percentile £41.88 £32.15 £23.83
25th Percentile £45.63 £37.16 £35.75
Median hourly rate £52.50 £43.25 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.39% +0.58% -4.44%
75th Percentile £56.50 £48.75 £49.38
90th Percentile £62.15 £56.35 £50.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £53.75 £45.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year +19.44% +4.65% -4.44%

SDLC is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 47,027 47,897 83,363
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.91% 85.25% 87.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 32,247 31,784 56,142
10th Percentile £306 £283 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% - +5.56%
75th Percentile £580 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £660 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £446 £435
% change year-on-year -1.91% +2.53% +3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,429 1,518 1,998
10th Percentile £12.25 £12.37 £11.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.93 £14.29
Median hourly rate £26.50 £21.57 £22.65
Median % change year-on-year +22.86% -4.77% +7.86%
75th Percentile £47.50 £46.00 £43.84
90th Percentile £58.75 £55.00 £50.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.21 £20.11 £22.40
% change year-on-year +15.42% -10.22% +12.00%

SDLC
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing SDLC as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SDLC in the UK

SDLC
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for SDLC in the UK

SDLC
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SDLC over the 6 months to 23 April 2021.

Daily rate histogram for SDLC in the UK

SDLC
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for SDLC in the UK

SDLC
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SDLC over the 6 months to 23 April 2021.

Hourly rate histogram for SDLC in the UK

SDLC
Top 18 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SDLC within the UK over the 6 months to 23 April 2021. 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
Job
Vacancies
England +7 1,286 £513 +2.50% 700
London +5 799 £550 +4.76% 260
UK excluding London +18 548 £450 - 496
Work from Home +6 458 £500 -7.06% 137
Scotland +32 120 £411 +9.67% 40
South East -27 119 £450 - 113
Midlands +12 91 £405 -7.43% 88
North of England +35 89 £450 - 130
South West +30 74 £463 -26.17% 52
West Midlands -3 57 £425 -3.63% 61
North West +19 51 £381 -2.87% 88
East of England +11 41 £508 +1.50% 53
Yorkshire +25 32 £490 +3.16% 33
East Midlands +26 28 £400 +6.67% 26
Northern Ireland +9 8 £431 -5.53% 6
North East +30 6 £450 +5.88% 9
Wales +4 5 £463 +15.63% 14
Channel Islands - 1 - -

For the 6 months to 23 April 2021, IT contractor jobs citing SDLC also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for SDLC.

1 999 (62.40%) Agile Software Development
2 438 (27.36%) Finance
3 420 (26.23%) Java
4 368 (22.99%) Azure
5 336 (20.99%) DevOps
6 326 (20.36%) SQL
7 311 (19.43%) Scrum
8 291 (18.18%) Microservices
9 284 (17.74%) Test Automation
10 274 (17.11%) Software Engineering
11 247 (15.43%) AWS
12 246 (15.37%) JavaScript
13 241 (15.05%) JIRA
14 224 (13.99%) Python
15 217 (13.55%) Banking
16 211 (13.18%) Git (software)
17 203 (12.68%) Continuous Integration
18 191 (11.93%) .NET
19 182 (11.37%) Problem-Solving
20 178 (11.12%) C#
20 178 (11.12%) QA
21 174 (10.87%) TDD
22 167 (10.43%) Project Management
23 163 (10.18%) Spring
24 161 (10.06%) Microsoft
24 161 (10.06%) Kubernetes
25 154 (9.62%) Security Cleared
26 147 (9.18%) Continuous Improvement
27 145 (9.06%) Oracle
28 144 (8.99%) REST

SDLC
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 115 (7.18%) Confluence
2 68 (4.25%) Apache
3 40 (2.50%) BizTalk Server
4 38 (2.37%) Apache Spark
5 27 (1.69%) Elasticsearch
6 25 (1.56%) CMS
7 23 (1.44%) SharePoint
8 22 (1.37%) JBoss
9 18 (1.12%) WebSphere
10 15 (0.94%) Cloud Foundry
10 15 (0.94%) Red Hat Fuse
11 12 (0.75%) Tomcat
12 11 (0.69%) Mule
12 11 (0.69%) Oracle Coherence
13 9 (0.56%) EPiServer
14 7 (0.44%) nginx
15 6 (0.37%) OpenStack
15 6 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.37%) Skype for Business
15 6 (0.37%) WebLogic
Applications
1 54 (3.37%) Microsoft Office
2 42 (2.62%) Microsoft Excel
3 30 (1.87%) Microsoft Project
4 18 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 8 (0.50%) Figma
7 5 (0.31%) InVision
7 5 (0.31%) Sketch
7 5 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
8 3 (0.19%) UserZoom
9 2 (0.12%) Simulink
9 2 (0.12%) Windchill
10 1 (0.062%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 21 (1.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.56%) Salesforce.com CRM
3 9 (0.56%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 6 (0.37%) Primavera
5 5 (0.31%) Eikon
5 5 (0.31%) Refinitiv Enterprise Platform
6 4 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
6 4 (0.25%) Unit4 Business World
7 3 (0.19%) Magento
7 3 (0.19%) NetSuite
7 3 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.12%) Maximo
8 2 (0.12%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.12%) SAP PS
8 2 (0.12%) Summit
9 1 (0.062%) Cognos TM1
9 1 (0.062%) Lawson
9 1 (0.062%) PeopleSoft Financials
9 1 (0.062%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 368 (22.99%) Azure
2 247 (15.43%) AWS
3 139 (8.68%) Serverless
4 80 (5.00%) GitHub
5 69 (4.31%) AWS Lambda
6 60 (3.75%) GCP
7 57 (3.56%) Azure Logic Apps
8 49 (3.06%) Azure Functions
9 48 (3.00%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 48 (3.00%) SaaS
10 46 (2.87%) Power Platform
11 45 (2.81%) Azure Storage
12 33 (2.06%) PaaS
13 27 (1.69%) Azure Data Factory
13 27 (1.69%) Dynamics 365
14 25 (1.56%) Microsoft 365
15 20 (1.25%) OpenShift
16 19 (1.19%) Amazon S3
17 16 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
17 16 (1.00%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 19 (1.19%) HTTP
2 18 (1.12%) Firewall
3 15 (0.94%) Internet
4 14 (0.87%) TCP/IP
5 11 (0.69%) SSL
6 9 (0.56%) DNS
6 9 (0.56%) WAN
7 8 (0.50%) Skype
8 7 (0.44%) HTTPS
8 7 (0.44%) Intrusion Detection
8 7 (0.44%) LAN
9 6 (0.37%) 2G
9 6 (0.37%) 5G
9 6 (0.37%) GSM
9 6 (0.37%) Kerberos
9 6 (0.37%) MVNO
9 6 (0.37%) Packet Switching
10 5 (0.31%) ATM
10 5 (0.31%) Broadband
10 5 (0.31%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (7.68%) SQL Server
2 95 (5.93%) Big Data
3 90 (5.62%) MongoDB
4 81 (5.06%) NoSQL
5 80 (5.00%) Relational Database
6 67 (4.18%) Data Warehouse
7 57 (3.56%) MySQL
8 55 (3.44%) Azure SQL Database
9 45 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
10 36 (2.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 35 (2.19%) Data Lake
12 33 (2.06%) Power BI
13 26 (1.62%) Tableau
14 24 (1.50%) Hadoop
14 24 (1.50%) Redis
15 22 (1.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 20 (1.25%) Tableau Desktop
16 20 (1.25%) Tableau Server
17 19 (1.19%) RDBMS
18 18 (1.12%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 241 (15.05%) JIRA
2 211 (13.18%) Git (software)
3 140 (8.74%) Jenkins
4 65 (4.06%) Selenium
5 51 (3.19%) Maven
6 47 (2.94%) TeamCity
7 46 (2.87%) Bitbucket
8 42 (2.62%) JUnit
9 38 (2.37%) Cucumber
10 35 (2.19%) Visual Studio
11 32 (2.00%) Team Foundation Server
12 30 (1.87%) Subversion
13 27 (1.69%) Octopus Deploy
14 23 (1.44%) git-flow
15 22 (1.37%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 20 (1.25%) kappa
16 20 (1.25%) PowerDesigner
16 20 (1.25%) Visual Studio Team System
17 19 (1.19%) Ant
17 19 (1.19%) GitLab
General
1 438 (27.36%) Finance
2 217 (13.55%) Banking
3 116 (7.25%) Public Sector
4 76 (4.75%) Investment Banking
5 73 (4.56%) Front Office
6 48 (3.00%) Telecoms
7 39 (2.44%) Retail
8 31 (1.94%) Retail Banking
9 19 (1.19%) Financial Institution
10 17 (1.06%) Marketing
11 14 (0.87%) Legal
12 13 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
13 12 (0.75%) Law
14 10 (0.62%) Manufacturing
15 8 (0.50%) Electronics
16 6 (0.37%) Back Office
17 5 (0.31%) Publishing
18 3 (0.19%) Advertising
18 3 (0.19%) Billing
18 3 (0.19%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 565 (35.29%) Developer
2 175 (10.93%) Analyst
3 147 (9.18%) Architect
4 142 (8.87%) Java Developer
5 96 (6.00%) Senior Developer
6 92 (5.75%) Business Analyst
6 92 (5.75%) Project Manager
7 85 (5.31%) Software Engineer
8 66 (4.12%) Solutions Architect
9 60 (3.75%) .NET Developer
10 53 (3.31%) Delivery Manager
11 48 (3.00%) Python Developer
12 46 (2.87%) Consultant
13 44 (2.75%) Full Stack Developer
14 43 (2.69%) React Developer
15 39 (2.44%) Test Manager
16 38 (2.37%) Senior Java Developer
17 37 (2.31%) Senior Software Engineer
18 36 (2.25%) Angular Developer
18 36 (2.25%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 191 (11.93%) .NET
2 163 (10.18%) Spring
3 144 (8.99%) AngularJS
3 144 (8.99%) REST
4 139 (8.68%) Web Services
5 135 (8.43%) HTML
6 130 (8.12%) CSS
7 122 (7.62%) Node.js
8 113 (7.06%) React
9 108 (6.75%) RESTful
10 85 (5.31%) XML
11 67 (4.18%) Spring Boot
12 64 (4.00%) Kafka
13 61 (3.81%) SOAP
14 60 (3.75%) HTML5
15 57 (3.56%) .NET Core
16 54 (3.37%) JSON
17 51 (3.19%) Hibernate
18 45 (2.81%) JMS
19 38 (2.37%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 132 (8.24%) Analytical Skills
2 99 (6.18%) User Experience
3 92 (5.75%) Self-Motivation
4 89 (5.56%) Virtual Team
5 77 (4.81%) Cloud Native
6 74 (4.62%) Mobile App
7 60 (3.75%) Fixed Income
8 56 (3.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 44 (2.75%) Enterprise Software
10 36 (2.25%) Greenfield Project
11 31 (1.94%) Equities
12 30 (1.87%) Data Structures
12 30 (1.87%) Public Cloud
13 20 (1.25%) Derivative
13 20 (1.25%) Management Information System
14 19 (1.19%) N-Tier
15 14 (0.87%) PMI
16 13 (0.81%) Credit Risk
17 11 (0.69%) CMDB
17 11 (0.69%) Mobile Payment
Operating Systems
1 104 (6.50%) Windows
2 102 (6.37%) Linux
3 52 (3.25%) Android
4 42 (2.62%) Unix
5 39 (2.44%) Apple iOS
6 15 (0.94%) Windows Server
7 10 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (0.50%) CentOS
9 5 (0.31%) Windows 10
10 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.19%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.12%) MVS
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.062%) AIX
13 1 (0.062%) DC/OS
13 1 (0.062%) Embedded Linux
13 1 (0.062%) Solaris
13 1 (0.062%) SUSE
13 1 (0.062%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 999 (62.40%) Agile Software Development
2 336 (20.99%) DevOps
3 311 (19.43%) Scrum
4 291 (18.18%) Microservices
5 284 (17.74%) Test Automation
6 274 (17.11%) Software Engineering
7 203 (12.68%) Continuous Integration
8 182 (11.37%) Problem-Solving
9 174 (10.87%) TDD
10 167 (10.43%) Project Management
11 147 (9.18%) Continuous Improvement
12 135 (8.43%) Stakeholder Management
13 131 (8.18%) Waterfall
14 130 (8.12%) BDD
15 116 (7.25%) Analytics
15 116 (7.25%) Data Modelling
16 106 (6.62%) Mentoring
17 103 (6.43%) Kanban
18 98 (6.12%) Software Testing
19 90 (5.62%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 420 (26.23%) Java
2 326 (20.36%) SQL
3 246 (15.37%) JavaScript
4 224 (13.99%) Python
5 178 (11.12%) C#
6 82 (5.12%) C++
7 65 (4.06%) Go
8 64 (4.00%) PL/SQL
9 61 (3.81%) T-SQL
10 60 (3.75%) TypeScript
11 58 (3.62%) Java 8
12 57 (3.56%) Kotlin
13 46 (2.87%) PowerShell
14 41 (2.56%) Scala
15 36 (2.25%) C
16 30 (1.87%) Bash Shell
17 29 (1.81%) Apex Code
18 25 (1.56%) VB
19 23 (1.44%) ES6
20 20 (1.25%) Apple Swift
Qualifications
1 154 (9.62%) Security Cleared
2 140 (8.74%) SC Cleared
3 125 (7.81%) Degree
4 42 (2.62%) ISTQB
5 41 (2.56%) DV Cleared
6 22 (1.37%) ISEB
6 22 (1.37%) PMI Certification
7 17 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
7 17 (1.06%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 17 (1.06%) PMP
8 13 (0.81%) CISSP
9 12 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
10 9 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
10 9 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 8 (0.50%) CISM
12 6 (0.37%) AWS Certification
12 6 (0.37%) CRISC
13 5 (0.31%) CHECK Team Leader
13 5 (0.31%) CREST Certified
13 5 (0.31%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 178 (11.12%) QA
2 35 (2.19%) Data Quality
3 23 (1.44%) SLA
4 20 (1.25%) PMO
5 17 (1.06%) NIST
6 16 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (0.62%) GDPR
8 8 (0.50%) WCAG
9 6 (0.37%) PCI DSS
10 5 (0.31%) ISO 8583
10 5 (0.31%) PMBOK
11 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.19%) MiFID
12 2 (0.12%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 2 (0.12%) COBIT
12 2 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.12%) GAMP
12 2 (0.12%) GRC
12 2 (0.12%) GxP
12 2 (0.12%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 129 (8.06%) Docker
2 14 (0.87%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.25%) Firmware
5 4 (0.25%) vSphere
5 4 (0.25%) XenApp
5 4 (0.25%) XenDesktop
6 3 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.062%) GlusterFS
7 1 (0.062%) HDFS
7 1 (0.062%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.062%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.062%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.062%) OpenAM
7 1 (0.062%) Shibboleth
7 1 (0.062%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.062%) VirtualBox
7 1 (0.062%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 161 (10.06%) Kubernetes
2 76 (4.75%) Ansible
3 72 (4.50%) Terraform
4 32 (2.00%) Puppet
5 26 (1.62%) Opscode Chef
6 22 (1.37%) Prometheus
7 13 (0.81%) Kibana
8 9 (0.56%) Consul
9 8 (0.50%) Zipkin
10 7 (0.44%) Grafana
10 7 (0.44%) logstash
11 6 (0.37%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
11 6 (0.37%) Rancher
11 6 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
12 5 (0.31%) CA Single Sign-On
12 5 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
12 5 (0.31%) HP Fortify
13 4 (0.25%) Cisco UCCE
13 4 (0.25%) Control-M
13 4 (0.25%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 161 (10.06%) Microsoft
2 145 (9.06%) Oracle
3 78 (4.87%) MuleSoft
4 61 (3.81%) SAP
5 57 (3.56%) Salesforce.com
6 44 (2.75%) Google
7 38 (2.37%) CheckPoint
8 24 (1.50%) Databricks
9 21 (1.31%) Red Hat
9 21 (1.31%) ServiceNow
10 20 (1.25%) Atlassian
10 20 (1.25%) BiZZdesign
10 20 (1.25%) Splunk
11 18 (1.12%) HP
11 18 (1.12%) Sybase
12 16 (1.00%) VMware
13 15 (0.94%) Citrix
13 15 (0.94%) Ericsson
13 15 (0.94%) Huawei
13 15 (0.94%) Nokia
777 SDLC job vacancies Nationwide