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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 349 281 277
Rank change year-on-year -68 -4 -89
Contract jobs citing BDD 255 201 296
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.62% 0.84% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.73% 0.92% 0.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 143 140 239
10th Percentile £350 £375 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £506 £540
Median % change year-on-year -6.17% -6.25% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £621 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £46.25 - -
Median hourly rate £47.50 - £56.25
75th Percentile £48.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £47.50 - £56.25
% change year-on-year - - -22.41%

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 35,064 21,889 31,425
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.71% 91.30% 86.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,297 14,308 20,582
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,170 926 2,283
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.35 £12.88
25th Percentile £20.39 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.18 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.69% -22.79% -2.46%
75th Percentile £67.84 £60.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £80.28 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.13 £27.59 £36.05
% change year-on-year +52.71% -23.47% -0.22%

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 25 May 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 25 May 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 -85 101 £500 -9.09% 18
North of England -42 84 £450 +1.41% 16
North West -11 45 £431 +8.70% 9
Midlands -38 38 £425 -7.86% 11
West Midlands -39 37 £425 -8.11% 5
Yorkshire -55 30 £620 +19.29% 5
South West -22 17 £525 - 6
North East -21 13 £426 +1.31% 3
South East -66 12 £358 -28.40% 16
East of England -25 8 £510 - 3
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 35 (13.73%) Confluence
2 3 (1.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (1.18%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.78%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.39%) Camunda
4 1 (0.39%) nginx
4 1 (0.39%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.39%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (1.18%) Notion
2 2 (0.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.39%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.39%) Mingle
3 1 (0.39%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (3.14%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (1.18%) Findur
3 2 (0.78%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.39%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 95 (37.25%) AWS
2 71 (27.84%) Azure
3 56 (21.96%) GitHub
4 40 (15.69%) GCP
5 24 (9.41%) Azure DevOps
5 24 (9.41%) GitHub Actions
6 21 (8.24%) Amazon EC2
6 21 (8.24%) Amazon SQS
7 20 (7.84%) Amazon S3
8 18 (7.06%) Serverless
9 17 (6.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 16 (6.27%) AWS Lambda
11 12 (4.71%) AWS KMS
11 12 (4.71%) BrowserStack
11 12 (4.71%) Route 53
12 6 (2.35%) SaaS
13 5 (1.96%) Amazon EKS
13 5 (1.96%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 5 (1.96%) OpenShift
14 4 (1.57%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.96%) 3GPP
1 5 (1.96%) RTP
1 5 (1.96%) Wireshark
2 3 (1.18%) WAN
3 2 (0.78%) NaaS
4 1 (0.39%) DSL
4 1 (0.39%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.39%) Firewall
4 1 (0.39%) HTTP
4 1 (0.39%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.39%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (16.86%) PostgreSQL
2 32 (12.55%) MongoDB
3 18 (7.06%) DynamoDB
4 17 (6.67%) Amazon RDS
5 15 (5.88%) SQL Server
6 12 (4.71%) Amazon Aurora
7 9 (3.53%) MySQL
8 8 (3.14%) Relational Database
9 6 (2.35%) NoSQL
9 6 (2.35%) Oracle Database
10 4 (1.57%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (0.78%) Apache Cassandra
11 2 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.78%) Flink
11 2 (0.78%) InfluxDB
11 2 (0.78%) Power BI
11 2 (0.78%) Redis
11 2 (0.78%) Tableau
11 2 (0.78%) TimescaleDB
12 1 (0.39%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 92 (36.08%) Cucumber
2 74 (29.02%) Git
3 72 (28.24%) Jenkins
4 70 (27.45%) Selenium
5 58 (22.75%) JIRA
6 53 (20.78%) JUnit
7 50 (19.61%) GitLab
8 40 (15.69%) REST Assured
9 37 (14.51%) Postman
10 34 (13.33%) Mockito
11 30 (11.76%) SonarQube
12 26 (10.20%) WebDriver
13 22 (8.63%) JMeter
14 16 (6.27%) Maven
15 14 (5.49%) SpecFlow
16 13 (5.10%) Cypress.io
16 13 (5.10%) TeamCity
17 12 (4.71%) DbUnit
18 11 (4.31%) Gatling
18 11 (4.31%) jMock
General
1 66 (25.88%) Social Skills
2 56 (21.96%) Finance
3 51 (20.00%) Public Sector
4 30 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (9.41%) Banking
6 8 (3.14%) Organisational Skills
7 5 (1.96%) Military
8 4 (1.57%) Aviation
8 4 (1.57%) Fire and Rescue
8 4 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
8 4 (1.57%) Police
9 3 (1.18%) Billing
9 3 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.18%) Retail
10 2 (0.78%) Automotive
10 2 (0.78%) Investment Banking
10 2 (0.78%) Law
10 2 (0.78%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.78%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 77 (30.20%) Developer
2 55 (21.57%) Java Developer
3 50 (19.61%) Test Engineer
4 45 (17.65%) Senior
5 41 (16.08%) Lead
6 29 (11.37%) Test Automation Engineer
7 28 (10.98%) Software Engineer
8 22 (8.63%) Tester
9 18 (7.06%) Automation Tester
9 18 (7.06%) Senior Developer
9 18 (7.06%) Test Leader
10 17 (6.67%) Senior Java Developer
11 14 (5.49%) Automation Test Lead
11 14 (5.49%) Java Engineer
12 12 (4.71%) Lead Test Engineer
13 10 (3.92%) Senior Automation Tester
13 10 (3.92%) Senior Tester
14 9 (3.53%) Analyst
14 9 (3.53%) Automation Engineer
14 9 (3.53%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (29.80%) Spring
2 59 (23.14%) Spring Boot
3 52 (20.39%) REST
4 45 (17.65%) Playwright
5 38 (14.90%) Kafka
6 35 (13.73%) Gherkin
6 35 (13.73%) RESTful
7 30 (11.76%) AngularJS
8 29 (11.37%) .NET
9 24 (9.41%) Node.js
10 23 (9.02%) React
11 22 (8.63%) ActiveMQ
11 22 (8.63%) WireMock
12 19 (7.45%) Spring Cloud
13 18 (7.06%) SOAP
14 17 (6.67%) Web Services
15 15 (5.88%) Hibernate
15 15 (5.88%) JPA
16 14 (5.49%) Spring Batch
17 13 (5.10%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 31 (12.16%) Distributed Systems
2 23 (9.02%) Cloud Native
3 19 (7.45%) Product Ownership
4 14 (5.49%) Distributed Architecture
5 11 (4.31%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (3.53%) Mobile App
7 4 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (1.57%) Robotics
7 4 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (1.18%) Distributed Applications
9 2 (0.78%) AS400
9 2 (0.78%) Equities
9 2 (0.78%) Fixed Income
9 2 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (0.78%) iSeries
9 2 (0.78%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.78%) Private Cloud
9 2 (0.78%) Public Cloud
10 1 (0.39%) Data Centre
10 1 (0.39%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 39 (15.29%) Linux
2 15 (5.88%) Unix
3 10 (3.92%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.96%) Android
4 5 (1.96%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.78%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.78%) VMS
5 2 (0.78%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (61.57%) TDD
2 155 (60.78%) Test Automation
3 154 (60.39%) Agile
4 137 (53.73%) CI/CD
5 107 (41.96%) Microservices
6 89 (34.90%) DevOps
7 60 (23.53%) API Testing
8 58 (22.75%) Test Strategy
9 54 (21.18%) Continuous Improvement
10 50 (19.61%) Scrum
11 46 (18.04%) Problem-Solving
12 45 (17.65%) Software Engineering
13 38 (14.90%) Observability
14 35 (13.73%) Mentoring
15 32 (12.55%) Continuous Integration
15 32 (12.55%) SDLC
16 31 (12.16%) Containerisation
17 29 (11.37%) Kanban
18 28 (10.98%) End-to-End Testing
18 28 (10.98%) Performance Testing
Programming Languages
1 155 (60.78%) Java
2 67 (26.27%) SQL
3 51 (20.00%) Python
4 42 (16.47%) JavaScript
5 36 (14.12%) C#
6 22 (8.63%) TypeScript
7 10 (3.92%) Kotlin
8 6 (2.35%) Apex Code
8 6 (2.35%) PHP
9 5 (1.96%) C++
9 5 (1.96%) Go
9 5 (1.96%) Ruby
9 5 (1.96%) T-SQL
10 2 (0.78%) Groovy
10 2 (0.78%) PromQL
10 2 (0.78%) Scala
11 1 (0.39%) Bash
11 1 (0.39%) Bicep
11 1 (0.39%) COBOL
11 1 (0.39%) VBA
Qualifications
1 63 (24.71%) Security Cleared
2 51 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 18 (7.06%) Degree
4 10 (3.92%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.75%) ISTQB
6 5 (1.96%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.96%) Azure Certification
6 5 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (1.18%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (21.96%) QA
2 25 (9.80%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.35%) WCAG
4 1 (0.39%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.39%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 74 (29.02%) Docker
2 9 (3.53%) Postfix
3 1 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 54 (21.18%) Kubernetes
2 39 (15.29%) Grafana
3 33 (12.94%) Prometheus
4 17 (6.67%) Terraform
5 6 (2.35%) Ansible
6 3 (1.18%) Kibana
7 2 (0.78%) Amdocs OSS
7 2 (0.78%) Consul
7 2 (0.78%) Istio
7 2 (0.78%) Rancher
7 2 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.78%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.39%) EMC VPLEX
8 1 (0.39%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.39%) HP ALM
8 1 (0.39%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 15 (5.88%) Atlassian
2 14 (5.49%) Salesforce
3 12 (4.71%) Google
3 12 (4.71%) Oracle
4 11 (4.31%) Jaspersoft
5 9 (3.53%) ServiceNow
6 8 (3.14%) Checkmarx
6 8 (3.14%) Splunk
7 7 (2.75%) Conga
7 7 (2.75%) GoCardless
8 4 (1.57%) Dynatrace
8 4 (1.57%) Veracode
9 3 (1.18%) Adobe
9 3 (1.18%) IBM
9 3 (1.18%) OpenLink
10 2 (0.78%) Bloomberg
10 2 (0.78%) Microsoft
10 2 (0.78%) Red Hat
10 2 (0.78%) SAP
10 2 (0.78%) Sybase