BDD Contract Job Trends in England

Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring BDD skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 375 285 249
Rank change year-on-year -90 -36 -3
Contract jobs citing BDD 277 222 316
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.61% 0.80% 0.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.71% 0.89% 1.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 169 157 236
10th Percentile £306 £361 £363
25th Percentile £400 £422 £449
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £520 £540
Median % change year-on-year -11.69% -3.75% -10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £650 £650
90th Percentile £690 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £463 £500 £534
% change year-on-year -7.50% -6.37% -7.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £45.00 - £56.25
75th Percentile £46.88 - -
90th Percentile £48.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £85.00 £56.25
% change year-on-year -47.06% +51.11% -25.00%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

BDD 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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 38,860 25,068 28,450
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.96% 90.79% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,105 15,945 18,530
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £627 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,559 1,442 1,597
10th Percentile £14.28 £14.20 £14.15
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.87 £18.16
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +5.94%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% +0.86%

BDD
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing BDD relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

BDD job vacancy trend in England

BDD
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing BDD.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing BDD

BDD
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing BDD in England over the 6 months to 18 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for BDD in England

BDD
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing BDD.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing BDD

BDD
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing BDD within the England region over the 6 months to 18 August 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
London -73 115 £494 -16.31% 89
North of England -49 74 £450 -13.42% 29
Midlands -19 47 £425 -8.11% 20
West Midlands -13 46 £425 -11.69% 15
North West -34 35 £456 +9.68% 16
Yorkshire -39 23 £525 - 8
North East -23 20 £450 -2.17% 6
South East -82 17 £285 -16.18% 26
South West -40 14 £525 +27.27% 4
East of England -17 8 £510 +36.00% 8
BDD
UK

BDD
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 34 (12.27%) Confluence
2 3 (1.08%) CMS
2 3 (1.08%) Headless CMS
2 3 (1.08%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.72%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.36%) Apache
4 1 (0.36%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (1.08%) Notion
2 2 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.36%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (3.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.89%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (1.08%) Findur
3 3 (1.08%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 95 (34.30%) Azure
2 91 (32.85%) AWS
3 68 (24.55%) GitHub
4 43 (15.52%) Azure DevOps
5 37 (13.36%) GitHub Actions
6 36 (13.00%) GCP
7 23 (8.30%) Serverless
8 19 (6.86%) Amazon SQS
9 17 (6.14%) Amazon EC2
10 16 (5.78%) Amazon S3
11 14 (5.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 14 (5.05%) AWS Lambda
12 10 (3.61%) Power Automate
13 9 (3.25%) AWS KMS
13 9 (3.25%) Dynamics 365
13 9 (3.25%) Route 53
14 7 (2.53%) GitHub Copilot
15 6 (2.17%) Amazon EKS
15 6 (2.17%) Azure Functions
15 6 (2.17%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.53%) RTP
1 7 (2.53%) Wireshark
2 6 (2.17%) 3GPP
3 3 (1.08%) DSL
3 3 (1.08%) Internet
4 2 (0.72%) Firewall
4 2 (0.72%) NaaS
4 2 (0.72%) WAN
5 1 (0.36%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (14.44%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (14.08%) MongoDB
3 16 (5.78%) DynamoDB
3 16 (5.78%) SQL Server
4 14 (5.05%) Amazon RDS
4 14 (5.05%) NoSQL
5 9 (3.25%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (2.17%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.81%) Couchbase
8 4 (1.44%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (1.08%) Apache Iceberg
9 3 (1.08%) BigQuery
9 3 (1.08%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.08%) MySQL
10 2 (0.72%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.72%) Flink
10 2 (0.72%) InfluxDB
10 2 (0.72%) Neo4j
10 2 (0.72%) Power BI
10 2 (0.72%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 102 (36.82%) Cucumber
2 88 (31.77%) Git
3 80 (28.88%) Selenium
4 64 (23.10%) Jenkins
5 62 (22.38%) JUnit
6 51 (18.41%) JIRA
7 48 (17.33%) GitLab
8 38 (13.72%) WebDriver
9 37 (13.36%) Postman
10 36 (13.00%) REST Assured
11 30 (10.83%) Mockito
12 24 (8.66%) SonarQube
13 22 (7.94%) Cypress.io
14 21 (7.58%) JMeter
15 18 (6.50%) SpecFlow
16 16 (5.78%) Gatling
16 16 (5.78%) Maven
17 15 (5.42%) TeamCity
18 9 (3.25%) Bitbucket
18 9 (3.25%) DbUnit
General
1 86 (31.05%) Social Skills
2 57 (20.58%) Finance
3 52 (18.77%) Public Sector
4 44 (15.88%) Analytical Skills
5 31 (11.19%) Banking
6 11 (3.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (3.25%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (2.53%) Retail
9 5 (1.81%) Aviation
9 5 (1.81%) Fire and Rescue
9 5 (1.81%) Military
9 5 (1.81%) Police
10 3 (1.08%) Automotive
10 3 (1.08%) Billing
10 3 (1.08%) Front Office
10 3 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.08%) Legal Technology
10 3 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.72%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.72%) Law
Job Titles
1 75 (27.08%) Developer
2 63 (22.74%) Senior
3 53 (19.13%) Java Developer
4 51 (18.41%) Test Engineer
5 32 (11.55%) Lead
6 31 (11.19%) Test Automation Engineer
7 28 (10.11%) Software Engineer
8 21 (7.58%) Tester
9 19 (6.86%) Senior Developer
10 18 (6.50%) Test Leader
11 17 (6.14%) Analyst
11 17 (6.14%) Senior Java Developer
12 16 (5.78%) Automation Tester
12 16 (5.78%) Java Engineer
13 12 (4.33%) QA Engineer
14 11 (3.97%) Automation Engineer
15 10 (3.61%) Senior Software Engineer
15 10 (3.61%) Senior Test Engineer
15 10 (3.61%) Senior Tester
15 10 (3.61%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (23.10%) Spring
2 57 (20.58%) REST
3 54 (19.49%) Playwright
4 52 (18.77%) Kafka
5 49 (17.69%) Spring Boot
6 41 (14.80%) Gherkin
7 33 (11.91%) RESTful
8 29 (10.47%) .NET
9 26 (9.39%) AngularJS
9 26 (9.39%) WireMock
10 23 (8.30%) Node.js
11 22 (7.94%) React
12 21 (7.58%) ActiveMQ
13 20 (7.22%) SOAP
14 14 (5.05%) HTML
14 14 (5.05%) JSON
15 13 (4.69%) JPA
15 13 (4.69%) Web Services
16 12 (4.33%) CSS
16 12 (4.33%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 38 (13.72%) Distributed Systems
2 26 (9.39%) Cloud Native
3 25 (9.03%) Product Ownership
4 18 (6.50%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (5.05%) Distributed Architecture
6 11 (3.97%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.17%) Management Information System
7 6 (2.17%) Onboarding
7 6 (2.17%) Virtual Team
8 5 (1.81%) Mobile App
8 5 (1.81%) Robotics
8 5 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (1.81%) Taxonomies
9 4 (1.44%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 3 (1.08%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.08%) Distributed Applications
10 3 (1.08%) NHS
11 2 (0.72%) Fixed Income
11 2 (0.72%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 42 (15.16%) Linux
2 19 (6.86%) Unix
3 6 (2.17%) Android
3 6 (2.17%) Apple iOS
3 6 (2.17%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.81%) Windows
5 2 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.72%) VMS
6 1 (0.36%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (69.31%) Agile
2 178 (64.26%) TDD
3 172 (62.09%) CI/CD
4 169 (61.01%) Test Automation
5 103 (37.18%) Microservices
6 102 (36.82%) DevOps
7 70 (25.27%) Continuous Improvement
8 59 (21.30%) API Testing
8 59 (21.30%) Test Strategy
9 58 (20.94%) Scrum
10 57 (20.58%) Problem-Solving
11 52 (18.77%) AI
12 50 (18.05%) Software Engineering
13 41 (14.80%) Stakeholder Management
14 40 (14.44%) Continuous Integration
14 40 (14.44%) Mentoring
15 36 (13.00%) End-to-End Testing
16 35 (12.64%) SDLC
17 34 (12.27%) Observability
18 32 (11.55%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 156 (56.32%) Java
2 72 (25.99%) SQL
3 57 (20.58%) Python
4 49 (17.69%) JavaScript
5 48 (17.33%) C#
6 26 (9.39%) TypeScript
7 7 (2.53%) Groovy
7 7 (2.53%) Kotlin
8 6 (2.17%) Apex Code
8 6 (2.17%) R
9 5 (1.81%) Bash
9 5 (1.81%) Go
10 4 (1.44%) C++
10 4 (1.44%) Ruby
10 4 (1.44%) T-SQL
11 3 (1.08%) Scala
12 2 (0.72%) Bicep
12 2 (0.72%) Cypher
12 2 (0.72%) PromQL
12 2 (0.72%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 70 (25.27%) Security Cleared
2 54 (19.49%) SC Cleared
3 18 (6.50%) Degree
4 15 (5.42%) ISTQB
5 13 (4.69%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (3.25%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 6 (2.17%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (1.81%) DV Cleared
10 3 (1.08%) AWS Certification
10 3 (1.08%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.08%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.72%) ISEB
12 1 (0.36%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (23.83%) QA
2 34 (12.27%) Accessibility
3 22 (7.94%) WCAG
4 11 (3.97%) GDPR
5 3 (1.08%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.72%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.36%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.36%) SEPA
7 1 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 76 (27.44%) Docker
2 7 (2.53%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 58 (20.94%) Kubernetes
2 32 (11.55%) Grafana
3 26 (9.39%) Prometheus
4 21 (7.58%) Terraform
5 7 (2.53%) Ansible
6 4 (1.44%) Kibana
7 3 (1.08%) Istio
8 2 (0.72%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.72%) Argo
8 2 (0.72%) Consul
8 2 (0.72%) Rancher
8 2 (0.72%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.36%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (8.66%) Microsoft
2 17 (6.14%) Salesforce
3 11 (3.97%) Google
4 10 (3.61%) Atlassian
5 8 (2.89%) Checkmarx
5 8 (2.89%) Jaspersoft
5 8 (2.89%) Oracle
6 7 (2.53%) Conga
6 7 (2.53%) GoCardless
7 5 (1.81%) Databricks
7 5 (1.81%) Dynatrace
7 5 (1.81%) IBM
8 3 (1.08%) CA Agile Central
8 3 (1.08%) Guidewire
8 3 (1.08%) OpenAI
8 3 (1.08%) OpenLink
8 3 (1.08%) ServiceNow
8 3 (1.08%) Splunk
9 2 (0.72%) FactSet
9 2 (0.72%) Solace