Systems or Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
UK

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 5 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
5 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 97 73 79
Rank change year-on-year -24 +6 +3
Contract jobs citing SDLC 988 1,892 2,775
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.29% 3.20% 3.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.65% 3.56% 3.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 694 1,247 1,934
10th Percentile £386 £413 £405
25th Percentile £458 £495 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £563
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +6.67% +12.50%
75th Percentile £700 £725 £675
90th Percentile £825 £825 £751
UK excluding London median daily rate £530 £525 £500
% change year-on-year +0.95% +5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 52 58
10th Percentile £35.50 £44.64 £35.00
25th Percentile £46.69 £49.62 £41.00
Median hourly rate £48.00 £57.38 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.34% +4.32% -
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.54
90th Percentile £57.50 £65.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.00 £58.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year -17.95% +4.00% +2.27%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,268 53,074 80,383
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.35% 89.85% 90.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,016 36,805 56,451
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.72%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,439 1,749 1,911
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.95 £35.80 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.42% +43.20% +2.04%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% +75.00% -6.98%

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 5 May 2024.

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 5 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for SDLC in the UK

SDLC
Top 17 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 5 May 2024. 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
England -26 836 £600 - 650
London -18 547 £600 -7.69% 262
Work from Home -11 361 £588 +0.26% 339
UK excluding London -24 343 £530 +0.95% 460
North of England +26 92 £475 -9.52% 106
South East -14 79 £590 +14.84% 103
Scotland +4 66 £500 -6.98% 48
North West +20 63 £450 -13.25% 63
South West +15 40 £625 +4.17% 61
Midlands -42 28 £573 +13.03% 81
Yorkshire +13 26 £500 -8.26% 34
West Midlands -31 24 £675 +25.46% 48
East of England -1 20 £550 +4.76% 37
Wales +15 19 £515 +8.42% 16
East Midlands -4 4 £445 -1.11% 33
North East +11 3 - - 9
Isle of Man - 2 - -

SDLC
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 37 (3.74%) Confluence
2 26 (2.63%) Apache Spark
3 13 (1.32%) Apache
4 12 (1.21%) IIS
4 12 (1.21%) SharePoint
5 11 (1.11%) CMS
6 9 (0.91%) BizTalk Server
7 8 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.81%) Drupal
7 8 (0.81%) SAS
8 6 (0.61%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.51%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 5 (0.51%) nginx
9 5 (0.51%) WordPress
10 4 (0.40%) SharePoint 2013
11 3 (0.30%) OpenEdge
11 3 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.30%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.20%) MQSeries
Applications
1 41 (4.15%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.81%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.10%) Camtasia
7 1 (0.10%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.10%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 14 (1.42%) Endur
2 13 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.71%) Loan IQ
4 7 (0.71%) SAP PM
5 5 (0.51%) Magento
6 3 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
6 3 (0.30%) SAP Hybris
7 2 (0.20%) FLEXCUBE
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
7 2 (0.20%) SAP CO
7 2 (0.20%) SAP EWM
7 2 (0.20%) SAP FI/CO
7 2 (0.20%) SAP R/3
7 2 (0.20%) Shopify
7 2 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 233 (23.58%) Azure
2 205 (20.75%) AWS
3 73 (7.39%) Serverless
4 61 (6.17%) GCP
5 58 (5.87%) GitHub
6 47 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
7 35 (3.54%) SaaS
8 34 (3.44%) Azure Data Factory
9 33 (3.34%) Power Platform
10 31 (3.14%) Azure Functions
11 30 (3.04%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 26 (2.63%) Azure Monitor
12 26 (2.63%) Microsoft 365
12 26 (2.63%) PaaS
13 24 (2.43%) AWS Lambda
13 24 (2.43%) Entra ID
14 19 (1.92%) Azure Logic Apps
14 19 (1.92%) Dynamics 365
15 17 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
15 17 (1.72%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.21%) DNS
2 10 (1.01%) Firewall
3 9 (0.91%) Internet
4 8 (0.81%) ATM
4 8 (0.81%) SNA
4 8 (0.81%) TCP/IP
4 8 (0.81%) VSAN
5 7 (0.71%) Fibre Channel
5 7 (0.71%) iSCSI
6 6 (0.61%) WAN
7 5 (0.51%) SD-WAN
7 5 (0.51%) SSH
7 5 (0.51%) SSL
8 4 (0.40%) HTTPS
8 4 (0.40%) IPsec
8 4 (0.40%) Network Security
8 4 (0.40%) SAN
9 3 (0.30%) BGP
9 3 (0.30%) Cisco IOS
9 3 (0.30%) IOS XR
Database & Business Intelligence
1 87 (8.81%) SQL Server
2 55 (5.57%) NoSQL
3 51 (5.16%) Relational Database
4 35 (3.54%) MySQL
5 34 (3.44%) Data Lake
6 31 (3.14%) Big Data
7 30 (3.04%) PostgreSQL
8 25 (2.53%) MongoDB
9 23 (2.33%) Power BI
10 20 (2.02%) Azure SQL Database
10 20 (2.02%) Oracle Database
11 19 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
12 14 (1.42%) KDB
13 12 (1.21%) DB2
14 8 (0.81%) Couchbase
14 8 (0.81%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 7 (0.71%) Apache Cassandra
15 7 (0.71%) Metadata
15 7 (0.71%) Sybase ASE
15 7 (0.71%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 108 (10.93%) JIRA
2 103 (10.43%) Git
3 82 (8.30%) Jenkins
4 36 (3.64%) GitLab
5 32 (3.24%) Selenium
6 27 (2.73%) Cucumber
7 26 (2.63%) JUnit
8 17 (1.72%) Maven
9 16 (1.62%) Mockito
10 15 (1.52%) TeamCity
11 13 (1.32%) Cypress.io
11 13 (1.32%) git-flow
11 13 (1.32%) SonarQube
12 12 (1.21%) JMeter
13 10 (1.01%) TestRail
14 9 (0.91%) Subversion
14 9 (0.91%) Team Foundation Server
14 9 (0.91%) Visual Studio
15 8 (0.81%) Bitbucket
16 6 (0.61%) Artifactory
General
1 293 (29.66%) Social Skills
2 267 (27.02%) Finance
3 152 (15.38%) Analytical Skills
4 133 (13.46%) Banking
5 59 (5.97%) Public Sector
6 42 (4.25%) Investment Banking
7 39 (3.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 36 (3.64%) Marketing
9 35 (3.54%) Front Office
10 28 (2.83%) Presentation Skills
11 26 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (2.23%) Aerospace
13 19 (1.92%) Retail
14 15 (1.52%) Manufacturing
15 14 (1.42%) Telecoms
16 8 (0.81%) Documentation Skills
17 7 (0.71%) Electronics
17 7 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
17 7 (0.71%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 282 (28.54%) Developer
2 143 (14.47%) Senior
3 108 (10.93%) Analyst
4 82 (8.30%) Architect
5 79 (8.00%) Java Developer
6 74 (7.49%) Lead
7 68 (6.88%) Software Engineer
8 64 (6.48%) Business Analyst
9 59 (5.97%) Project Manager
10 55 (5.57%) Full Stack Developer
10 55 (5.57%) Senior Developer
11 44 (4.45%) Solutions Architect
12 37 (3.74%) Consultant
13 32 (3.24%) Data Engineer
14 30 (3.04%) Python Developer
15 28 (2.83%) DevOps Engineer
16 25 (2.53%) Senior Java Developer
17 23 (2.33%) Azure Developer
18 22 (2.23%) Cloud Architect
19 21 (2.13%) Scrum Master
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (10.12%) React
2 93 (9.41%) .NET
3 66 (6.68%) Spring
4 62 (6.28%) REST
5 59 (5.97%) Spring Boot
6 57 (5.77%) HTML
7 55 (5.57%) AngularJS
8 51 (5.16%) CSS
9 42 (4.25%) JSON
9 42 (4.25%) Web Services
10 40 (4.05%) .NET Framework
10 40 (4.05%) RESTful
11 39 (3.95%) Kafka
12 35 (3.54%) XML
13 31 (3.14%) JPA
14 25 (2.53%) Middleware
14 25 (2.53%) Node.js
15 24 (2.43%) YAML
16 21 (2.13%) Hibernate
17 20 (2.02%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 61 (6.17%) Product Ownership
2 41 (4.15%) Management Information System
3 39 (3.95%) Distributed Systems
4 38 (3.85%) Mobile App
5 34 (3.44%) Cloud Native
6 31 (3.14%) Enterprise Software
7 26 (2.63%) Public Cloud
8 23 (2.33%) Algorithms
8 23 (2.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 22 (2.23%) Data Structures
10 20 (2.02%) Derivative
10 20 (2.02%) IoT
11 18 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
12 16 (1.62%) Linux Command Line
13 15 (1.52%) Fixed Income
13 15 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
13 15 (1.52%) SWIFT Messaging Network
14 12 (1.21%) Credit Derivative
14 12 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
14 12 (1.21%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 82 (8.30%) Linux
2 62 (6.28%) Windows
3 32 (3.24%) Unix
4 21 (2.13%) Android
5 12 (1.21%) Windows Server
6 10 (1.01%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.51%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.40%) CentOS
9 4 (0.40%) Data ONTAP
9 4 (0.40%) SafeRTOS
10 2 (0.20%) VMS
10 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 484 (48.99%) Agile
2 248 (25.10%) DevOps
3 240 (24.29%) CI/CD
4 197 (19.94%) Software Engineering
5 180 (18.22%) Scrum
6 177 (17.91%) Problem-Solving
7 130 (13.16%) Microservices
8 103 (10.43%) Test Automation
9 95 (9.62%) Project Management
10 91 (9.21%) Full Stack Development
11 80 (8.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 78 (7.89%) Stakeholder Management
13 76 (7.69%) Computer Science
14 71 (7.19%) Analytics
15 65 (6.58%) Migration
16 64 (6.48%) User Acceptance Testing
16 64 (6.48%) Waterfall
17 62 (6.28%) Continuous Integration
18 60 (6.07%) Change Management
19 58 (5.87%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 240 (24.29%) Java
2 207 (20.95%) SQL
3 194 (19.64%) Python
4 121 (12.25%) C#
5 112 (11.34%) JavaScript
6 67 (6.78%) PowerShell
7 63 (6.38%) TypeScript
8 30 (3.04%) C
9 27 (2.73%) Go
9 27 (2.73%) Kotlin
9 27 (2.73%) Scala
10 26 (2.63%) C++
11 25 (2.53%) T-SQL
12 22 (2.23%) PL/SQL
13 21 (2.13%) PHP
13 21 (2.13%) Shell Script
14 19 (1.92%) Perl
15 12 (1.21%) Bash
16 9 (0.91%) VB
17 7 (0.71%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 165 (16.70%) Degree
2 116 (11.74%) Security Cleared
3 90 (9.11%) SC Cleared
4 50 (5.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 40 (4.05%) DV Cleared
6 25 (2.53%) Master's Degree
7 19 (1.92%) AWS Certification
8 18 (1.82%) PMP
9 16 (1.62%) PMI Certification
10 13 (1.32%) CISSP
11 12 (1.21%) ISTQB
12 11 (1.11%) CISM
13 8 (0.81%) Azure Certification
14 5 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
15 4 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 4 (0.40%) CBAP
15 4 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 3 (0.30%) AWS Certified Developer
16 3 (0.30%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 3 (0.30%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (9.21%) QA
2 27 (2.73%) NIST
3 22 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 15 (1.52%) Data Quality
5 13 (1.32%) PCI DSS
6 12 (1.21%) Accessibility
6 12 (1.21%) PMO
7 8 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 7 (0.71%) EMIR
9 6 (0.61%) MiFID
9 6 (0.61%) SEPA
10 4 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.40%) GDPR
10 4 (0.40%) HIPAA
10 4 (0.40%) IFRS
11 3 (0.30%) Basel III
11 3 (0.30%) HL7
11 3 (0.30%) SLA
12 2 (0.20%) GAAP
12 2 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 12207
System Software
1 59 (5.97%) Docker
2 33 (3.34%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (1.11%) VMware NSX
4 8 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
5 7 (0.71%) NFS
5 7 (0.71%) Virtual Servers
6 4 (0.40%) GPFS
7 3 (0.30%) vCloud
7 3 (0.30%) vSphere
8 2 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.10%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.10%) GridGain
9 1 (0.10%) HDFS
9 1 (0.10%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 91 (9.21%) Kubernetes
2 80 (8.10%) Terraform
3 58 (5.87%) Ansible
4 28 (2.83%) Puppet
5 13 (1.32%) Argo
5 13 (1.32%) Grafana
6 9 (0.91%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.91%) vRealize
7 8 (0.81%) vCenter Server
8 7 (0.71%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.61%) Kibana
9 6 (0.61%) Zipkin
10 4 (0.40%) Veritas Storage Foundation
10 4 (0.40%) vRealize Orchestrator
11 3 (0.30%) Autotask
11 3 (0.30%) HP Fortify
11 3 (0.30%) Netcool
12 2 (0.20%) logstash
12 2 (0.20%) SCOM
12 2 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 123 (12.45%) Microsoft
2 79 (8.00%) Oracle
3 41 (4.15%) SAP
4 31 (3.14%) ServiceNow
5 28 (2.83%) Databricks
6 27 (2.73%) Salesforce
7 25 (2.53%) VMware
8 24 (2.43%) Google
9 20 (2.02%) Atlassian
10 19 (1.92%) IBM
11 13 (1.32%) MuleSoft
11 13 (1.32%) Sybase
12 11 (1.11%) Bloomberg
13 9 (0.91%) OpenLink
13 9 (0.91%) Refinitiv
14 8 (0.81%) Adobe
14 8 (0.81%) Red Hat
14 8 (0.81%) Solace
15 7 (0.71%) TOWER Software
16 6 (0.61%) TIBCO