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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 341 294 281
Rank change year-on-year -47 -13 -56
Contract jobs citing BDD 298 214 308
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.66% 0.79% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.78% 0.87% 1.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 174 151 238
10th Percentile £312 £356 £363
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.76% -6.82% -8.33%
75th Percentile £550 £643 £650
90th Percentile £696 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £463 £500 £545
% change year-on-year -7.50% -8.26% -9.17%
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 - £56.25
% change year-on-year - - -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 38,446 24,678 30,937
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.44% 90.65% 85.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,172 15,843 20,140
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £735 £746 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,378 1,309 2,090
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.28 £13.18
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £16.83
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -8.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £53.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.50 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.88%

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 July 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 July 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 -59 116 £481 -18.43% 20
North of England -35 85 £453 +0.67% 11
Midlands -15 53 £425 -7.86% 8
West Midlands -20 52 £425 -8.11% 4
North West -23 44 £438 +8.83% 8
Yorkshire -32 27 £620 +18.69% 2
North East -20 20 £450 +7.14% 2
South West -33 19 £525 +23.53% 2
South East -63 18 £358 -10.50% 9
East of England -12 8 £510 - 1
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 46 (15.44%) Confluence
2 4 (1.34%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.67%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.67%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.34%) Apache
4 1 (0.34%) Camunda
4 1 (0.34%) CMS
4 1 (0.34%) Headless CMS
4 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (1.01%) Notion
2 2 (0.67%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.34%) Mingle
3 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.68%) Payment Gateway
2 7 (2.35%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (1.01%) Findur
3 3 (1.01%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 106 (35.57%) AWS
2 94 (31.54%) Azure
3 71 (23.83%) GitHub
4 44 (14.77%) Azure DevOps
5 38 (12.75%) GitHub Actions
6 37 (12.42%) GCP
7 26 (8.72%) Serverless
8 24 (8.05%) Amazon SQS
9 23 (7.72%) Amazon EC2
10 21 (7.05%) Amazon S3
11 19 (6.38%) AWS Lambda
12 18 (6.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 12 (4.03%) AWS KMS
13 12 (4.03%) Route 53
14 11 (3.69%) BrowserStack
15 8 (2.68%) Amazon EKS
15 8 (2.68%) Power Automate
16 7 (2.35%) Dynamics 365
17 6 (2.01%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 5 (1.68%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.35%) RTP
1 7 (2.35%) Wireshark
2 6 (2.01%) 3GPP
3 3 (1.01%) DSL
3 3 (1.01%) Internet
3 3 (1.01%) WAN
4 2 (0.67%) Firewall
4 2 (0.67%) NaaS
5 1 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
5 1 (0.34%) HTTP
5 1 (0.34%) iSCSI
5 1 (0.34%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (16.78%) PostgreSQL
2 46 (15.44%) MongoDB
3 20 (6.71%) DynamoDB
4 18 (6.04%) Amazon RDS
4 18 (6.04%) SQL Server
5 12 (4.03%) Amazon Aurora
5 12 (4.03%) NoSQL
6 10 (3.36%) Relational Database
7 6 (2.01%) Oracle Database
8 5 (1.68%) Amazon Athena
8 5 (1.68%) Couchbase
9 3 (1.01%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.01%) MySQL
10 2 (0.67%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.67%) Db2
10 2 (0.67%) Neo4j
10 2 (0.67%) Redis
10 2 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.67%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 102 (34.23%) Cucumber
2 88 (29.53%) Git
3 83 (27.85%) Selenium
4 78 (26.17%) Jenkins
5 63 (21.14%) JIRA
5 63 (21.14%) JUnit
6 57 (19.13%) GitLab
7 40 (13.42%) Mockito
7 40 (13.42%) WebDriver
8 39 (13.09%) REST Assured
9 35 (11.74%) Postman
10 30 (10.07%) SonarQube
11 24 (8.05%) JMeter
12 21 (7.05%) Cypress.io
13 20 (6.71%) SpecFlow
14 19 (6.38%) Maven
15 17 (5.70%) Gatling
15 17 (5.70%) TeamCity
16 12 (4.03%) DbUnit
17 11 (3.69%) Bitbucket
General
1 82 (27.52%) Social Skills
2 59 (19.80%) Finance
2 59 (19.80%) Public Sector
3 43 (14.43%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (9.73%) Banking
5 10 (3.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 10 (3.36%) Organisational Skills
6 9 (3.02%) Retail
7 7 (2.35%) Military
8 5 (1.68%) Aviation
8 5 (1.68%) Fire and Rescue
8 5 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.68%) Police
9 3 (1.01%) Automotive
9 3 (1.01%) Billing
9 3 (1.01%) Front Office
9 3 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.67%) Law
10 2 (0.67%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.67%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 88 (29.53%) Developer
2 67 (22.48%) Senior
3 65 (21.81%) Java Developer
4 53 (17.79%) Test Engineer
5 41 (13.76%) Lead
6 34 (11.41%) Software Engineer
7 30 (10.07%) Test Automation Engineer
8 24 (8.05%) Senior Developer
8 24 (8.05%) Tester
9 22 (7.38%) Senior Java Developer
10 20 (6.71%) Test Leader
11 19 (6.38%) Automation Tester
11 19 (6.38%) Java Engineer
12 17 (5.70%) Analyst
13 12 (4.03%) Senior Software Engineer
14 11 (3.69%) Automation Test Lead
14 11 (3.69%) Senior Tester
15 10 (3.36%) Architect
15 10 (3.36%) QA Engineer
15 10 (3.36%) Salesforce Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (26.17%) Spring
2 61 (20.47%) Spring Boot
3 57 (19.13%) Playwright
4 56 (18.79%) Kafka
5 55 (18.46%) REST
6 40 (13.42%) Gherkin
7 36 (12.08%) RESTful
8 33 (11.07%) .NET
9 30 (10.07%) AngularJS
10 28 (9.40%) WireMock
11 27 (9.06%) ActiveMQ
12 24 (8.05%) Node.js
12 24 (8.05%) SOAP
13 23 (7.72%) React
14 19 (6.38%) Spring Cloud
15 17 (5.70%) Web Services
16 16 (5.37%) JAX-RS
16 16 (5.37%) JPA
17 15 (5.03%) Hibernate
18 14 (4.70%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 38 (12.75%) Distributed Systems
2 28 (9.40%) Cloud Native
3 25 (8.39%) Product Ownership
4 16 (5.37%) Distributed Architecture
5 15 (5.03%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.68%) Mobile App
7 5 (1.68%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.68%) Robotics
7 5 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (1.68%) Taxonomies
7 5 (1.68%) Virtual Team
8 4 (1.34%) Distributed Applications
8 4 (1.34%) Management Information System
9 3 (1.01%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.01%) Equities
9 3 (1.01%) Fixed Income
10 2 (0.67%) PKI
10 2 (0.67%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 47 (15.77%) Linux
2 21 (7.05%) Unix
3 12 (4.03%) Mac OS X
4 7 (2.35%) Android
4 7 (2.35%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.01%) Windows
6 2 (0.67%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.67%) VMS
7 1 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 201 (67.45%) Agile
2 188 (63.09%) TDD
3 179 (60.07%) CI/CD
4 172 (57.72%) Test Automation
5 125 (41.95%) Microservices
6 112 (37.58%) DevOps
7 67 (22.48%) Continuous Improvement
8 62 (20.81%) Test Strategy
9 61 (20.47%) Scrum
10 59 (19.80%) API Testing
11 58 (19.46%) Problem-Solving
12 56 (18.79%) Software Engineering
13 43 (14.43%) Mentoring
13 43 (14.43%) Observability
14 42 (14.09%) Continuous Integration
15 41 (13.76%) AI
16 39 (13.09%) Stakeholder Management
17 36 (12.08%) Kanban
18 35 (11.74%) SDLC
19 33 (11.07%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 172 (57.72%) Java
2 70 (23.49%) SQL
3 53 (17.79%) C#
4 50 (16.78%) Python
5 48 (16.11%) JavaScript
6 24 (8.05%) TypeScript
7 8 (2.68%) Kotlin
8 7 (2.35%) Groovy
9 6 (2.01%) Apex Code
9 6 (2.01%) T-SQL
10 5 (1.68%) Go
11 4 (1.34%) C++
11 4 (1.34%) R
11 4 (1.34%) Ruby
12 3 (1.01%) Scala
13 2 (0.67%) Bash
13 2 (0.67%) Bicep
13 2 (0.67%) Cypher
13 2 (0.67%) PromQL
13 2 (0.67%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 75 (25.17%) Security Cleared
2 59 (19.80%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.71%) Degree
4 12 (4.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (3.69%) ISTQB
6 10 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (2.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (1.68%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.68%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.68%) DV Cleared
9 4 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (1.01%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (21.48%) QA
2 37 (12.42%) Accessibility
3 16 (5.37%) WCAG
4 9 (3.02%) GDPR
5 2 (0.67%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.67%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.34%) SEPA
6 1 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 85 (28.52%) Docker
2 9 (3.02%) Postfix
3 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 66 (22.15%) Kubernetes
2 43 (14.43%) Grafana
3 35 (11.74%) Prometheus
4 27 (9.06%) Terraform
5 7 (2.35%) Ansible
6 4 (1.34%) Kibana
7 3 (1.01%) Istio
8 2 (0.67%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.67%) Argo
8 2 (0.67%) Consul
8 2 (0.67%) Rancher
8 2 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.67%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.34%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.34%) EMC VPLEX
Vendors
1 20 (6.71%) Salesforce
2 16 (5.37%) Microsoft
3 15 (5.03%) Oracle
4 14 (4.70%) Atlassian
5 12 (4.03%) Google
6 11 (3.69%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (2.68%) Checkmarx
7 8 (2.68%) Splunk
8 7 (2.35%) Conga
8 7 (2.35%) GoCardless
9 5 (1.68%) Dynatrace
10 4 (1.34%) ServiceNow
10 4 (1.34%) Veracode
11 3 (1.01%) CA Agile Central
11 3 (1.01%) Guidewire
11 3 (1.01%) OpenAI
11 3 (1.01%) OpenLink
11 3 (1.01%) Sybase
12 2 (0.67%) Amdocs
12 2 (0.67%) Bloomberg