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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 383 292 257
Rank change year-on-year -91 -35 +7
Contract jobs citing BDD 272 243 301
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.58% 0.87% 0.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.69% 0.96% 1.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 178 171 208
10th Percentile £306 £360 £354
25th Percentile £400 £417 £424
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.44% -0.95% -8.70%
75th Percentile £538 £643 £650
90th Percentile £667 £750 £766
UK median daily rate £452 £510 £523
% change year-on-year -11.45% -2.39% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £45.00 - -
75th Percentile £46.88 - -
90th Percentile £48.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £85.00 -
% change year-on-year -47.06% - -

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 39,448 25,281 28,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.75% 90.90% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,130 16,062 17,635
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,805 1,509 1,303
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.55
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%

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 19 September 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 19 September 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 -72 120 £500 -9.09% 123
North of England -76 71 £438 -16.67% 47
Midlands -18 44 £438 -8.85% 27
West Midlands -17 43 £438 -12.50% 17
North West -53 29 £438 +3.31% 23
Yorkshire -47 28 £416 -24.45% 13
North East -44 18 £450 -2.17% 11
South East -65 16 £275 -4.51% 29
South West -35 13 £513 +24.24% 15
East of England -22 5 £570 +52.00% 7
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 22 (8.09%) Confluence
2 3 (1.10%) CMS
2 3 (1.10%) Headless CMS
2 3 (1.10%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.37%) Apache
3 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.37%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (1.10%) Notion
2 2 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.74%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 11 (4.04%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.94%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (1.10%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 90 (33.09%) Azure
2 88 (32.35%) AWS
3 65 (23.90%) GitHub
4 39 (14.34%) Azure DevOps
5 29 (10.66%) GitHub Actions
6 25 (9.19%) Serverless
7 20 (7.35%) GCP
8 15 (5.51%) Amazon EC2
8 15 (5.51%) Amazon S3
8 15 (5.51%) Amazon SQS
8 15 (5.51%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (5.15%) GitHub Copilot
10 13 (4.78%) Dynamics 365
10 13 (4.78%) Power Automate
11 10 (3.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (3.31%) Azure Functions
13 8 (2.94%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (2.94%) OpenShift
14 7 (2.57%) AWS KMS
14 7 (2.57%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.57%) RTP
1 7 (2.57%) Wireshark
2 6 (2.21%) 3GPP
3 5 (1.84%) Internet
4 2 (0.74%) DNS
4 2 (0.74%) DSL
4 2 (0.74%) Firewall
4 2 (0.74%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (13.24%) MongoDB
2 27 (9.93%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (6.62%) SQL Server
4 15 (5.51%) NoSQL
5 13 (4.78%) Amazon RDS
6 12 (4.41%) DynamoDB
7 7 (2.57%) Amazon Aurora
7 7 (2.57%) Relational Database
8 6 (2.21%) Data Lake
9 5 (1.84%) Couchbase
10 4 (1.47%) MySQL
11 3 (1.10%) Big Data
11 3 (1.10%) BigQuery
11 3 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
11 3 (1.10%) Pinecone
11 3 (1.10%) Power BI
11 3 (1.10%) Snowflake Schema
11 3 (1.10%) Weaviate
11 3 (1.10%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 108 (39.71%) Cucumber
2 93 (34.19%) Git
3 84 (30.88%) Selenium
4 59 (21.69%) JUnit
5 57 (20.96%) Jenkins
6 50 (18.38%) GitLab
7 43 (15.81%) REST Assured
8 39 (14.34%) JIRA
9 38 (13.97%) Postman
10 30 (11.03%) SonarQube
11 29 (10.66%) WebDriver
12 28 (10.29%) Mockito
13 25 (9.19%) Gatling
14 24 (8.82%) Cypress.io
15 19 (6.99%) Maven
16 17 (6.25%) SpecFlow
17 13 (4.78%) TeamCity
18 11 (4.04%) Gradle
19 10 (3.68%) JMeter
20 8 (2.94%) TestNG
General
1 93 (34.19%) Social Skills
2 55 (20.22%) Finance
3 51 (18.75%) Public Sector
4 46 (16.91%) Analytical Skills
5 37 (13.60%) Banking
6 16 (5.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 7 (2.57%) Retail
8 6 (2.21%) Front Office
8 6 (2.21%) Military
9 5 (1.84%) Aviation
9 5 (1.84%) Fire and Rescue
9 5 (1.84%) Police
10 4 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (1.10%) Investment Banking
11 3 (1.10%) Legal Technology
12 2 (0.74%) Law
12 2 (0.74%) Local Government
12 2 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.37%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.37%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 66 (24.26%) Developer
2 64 (23.53%) Senior
3 49 (18.01%) Test Engineer
4 45 (16.54%) Java Developer
5 33 (12.13%) Software Engineer
6 29 (10.66%) Test Automation Engineer
7 26 (9.56%) Lead
8 24 (8.82%) Senior Developer
9 20 (7.35%) Analyst
10 18 (6.62%) Java Engineer
11 17 (6.25%) Senior Java Developer
12 16 (5.88%) Quality Engineer
13 14 (5.15%) QA Engineer
13 14 (5.15%) Test Leader
14 13 (4.78%) Test Analyst
15 10 (3.68%) Architect
15 10 (3.68%) Automation Engineer
15 10 (3.68%) Senior Software Engineer
15 10 (3.68%) Senior Test Engineer
15 10 (3.68%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (22.06%) Playwright
2 58 (21.32%) Spring
3 56 (20.59%) REST
4 52 (19.12%) Kafka
5 49 (18.01%) Gherkin
5 49 (18.01%) Spring Boot
6 31 (11.40%) RESTful
7 28 (10.29%) .NET
8 24 (8.82%) Terraform
9 23 (8.46%) React
10 22 (8.09%) Node.js
10 22 (8.09%) WireMock
11 20 (7.35%) AngularJS
12 18 (6.62%) ActiveMQ
12 18 (6.62%) SOAP
13 16 (5.88%) HTML
14 14 (5.15%) JPA
14 14 (5.15%) Swagger
15 13 (4.78%) .NET Core
16 12 (4.41%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 28 (10.29%) Product Ownership
2 27 (9.93%) Cloud Native
3 26 (9.56%) Distributed Systems
4 18 (6.62%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (4.04%) Legacy Systems
5 11 (4.04%) Onboarding
6 8 (2.94%) Management Information System
6 8 (2.94%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (2.57%) AI Agents
8 6 (2.21%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.84%) Robotics
9 5 (1.84%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 5 (1.84%) Taxonomies
10 4 (1.47%) Distributed Architecture
10 4 (1.47%) NHS
11 3 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.10%) Legacy Applications
12 2 (0.74%) Equities
12 2 (0.74%) Fixed Income
12 2 (0.74%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 41 (15.07%) Linux
2 20 (7.35%) Unix
3 5 (1.84%) Android
3 5 (1.84%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.84%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.10%) Windows
5 1 (0.37%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 190 (69.85%) Agile
2 173 (63.60%) CI/CD
2 173 (63.60%) TDD
3 171 (62.87%) Test Automation
4 101 (37.13%) DevOps
5 98 (36.03%) Microservices
6 66 (24.26%) AI
7 64 (23.53%) Scrum
8 60 (22.06%) Continuous Improvement
9 59 (21.69%) Software Engineering
10 58 (21.32%) Test Strategy
11 56 (20.59%) API Testing
11 56 (20.59%) Problem-Solving
12 52 (19.12%) Software Testing
13 51 (18.75%) Stakeholder Management
14 43 (15.81%) SDLC
15 39 (14.34%) Continuous Integration
15 39 (14.34%) Integration Testing
16 36 (13.24%) Coaching
16 36 (13.24%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 166 (61.03%) Java
2 67 (24.63%) SQL
3 61 (22.43%) Python
4 54 (19.85%) JavaScript
5 53 (19.49%) C#
6 27 (9.93%) TypeScript
7 11 (4.04%) Bash
8 8 (2.94%) Ruby
9 7 (2.57%) Groovy
10 6 (2.21%) Apex Code
10 6 (2.21%) Kotlin
10 6 (2.21%) R
10 6 (2.21%) Scala
11 5 (1.84%) Go
12 3 (1.10%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.74%) Bicep
13 2 (0.74%) Cypher
13 2 (0.74%) PromQL
13 2 (0.74%) SHACL
14 1 (0.37%) Korn
Qualifications
1 61 (22.43%) Security Cleared
2 47 (17.28%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.35%) Degree
4 19 (6.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (6.25%) ISTQB
6 15 (5.51%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (3.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 8 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (2.57%) DV Cleared
10 6 (2.21%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (1.10%) AWS Certification
12 2 (0.74%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.74%) ISEB
13 1 (0.37%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 1 (0.37%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (29.04%) QA
2 50 (18.38%) Accessibility
3 36 (13.24%) WCAG
4 13 (4.78%) GDPR
5 4 (1.47%) ISO 20022
6 3 (1.10%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.74%) SEPA
8 1 (0.37%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 73 (26.84%) Docker
2 5 (1.84%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 58 (21.32%) Kubernetes
2 19 (6.99%) Grafana
3 14 (5.15%) Prometheus
4 6 (2.21%) Ansible
5 4 (1.47%) Kibana
6 3 (1.10%) Istio
7 2 (0.74%) Argo
7 2 (0.74%) Consul
7 2 (0.74%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.37%) Control-M
8 1 (0.37%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 30 (11.03%) Microsoft
2 14 (5.15%) Salesforce
3 13 (4.78%) Databricks
4 10 (3.68%) Oracle
5 9 (3.31%) Google
6 7 (2.57%) Atlassian
6 7 (2.57%) Conga
6 7 (2.57%) GoCardless
7 6 (2.21%) IBM
7 6 (2.21%) Jaspersoft
7 6 (2.21%) OpenAI
8 5 (1.84%) Checkmarx
8 5 (1.84%) Splunk
9 4 (1.47%) ION Trading
10 3 (1.10%) CA Agile Central
10 3 (1.10%) Guidewire
11 2 (0.74%) Dynatrace
11 2 (0.74%) FactSet
11 2 (0.74%) HP
11 2 (0.74%) Solace