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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 345 296 284
Rank change year-on-year -49 -12 -70
Contract jobs citing BDD 285 210 297
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.65% 0.82% 0.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.76% 0.90% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 170 145 233
10th Percentile £313 £360 £351
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £466 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.02% -6.82% -8.33%
75th Percentile £552 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £463 £500 £540
% change year-on-year -7.50% -7.41% -10.00%
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 - - -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 37,409 23,372 31,772
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.35% 91.17% 85.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,567 15,052 20,589
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £418 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £729 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +2.79% -4.57% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,348 1,165 2,330
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.97 £17.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £46.90 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.48% -34.02% +1.65%
75th Percentile £68.50 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £72.93
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.81%

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 1 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 1 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 -70 112 £488 -17.02% 30
North of England -35 85 £453 -1.52% 15
Midlands -25 49 £425 -11.69% 14
West Midlands -19 48 £425 -15.00% 11
North West -10 44 £438 +8.83% 8
Yorkshire -47 27 £620 +19.29% 4
North East -19 20 £450 +7.14% 3
South West -25 19 £525 +23.53% 3
South East -71 15 £359 +2.57% 19
East of England -14 8 £510 - 4
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 43 (15.09%) Confluence
2 3 (1.05%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.70%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.70%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.35%) Camunda
4 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (1.05%) Notion
2 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.35%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.35%) Mingle
3 1 (0.35%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.81%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (1.05%) Findur
4 2 (0.70%) Workday HCM
5 1 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 104 (36.49%) AWS
2 87 (30.53%) Azure
3 66 (23.16%) GitHub
4 38 (13.33%) Azure DevOps
5 35 (12.28%) GCP
6 33 (11.58%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (8.42%) Amazon SQS
7 24 (8.42%) Serverless
8 23 (8.07%) Amazon EC2
9 21 (7.37%) Amazon S3
10 19 (6.67%) AWS Lambda
11 18 (6.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 12 (4.21%) AWS KMS
12 12 (4.21%) Route 53
13 11 (3.86%) BrowserStack
14 8 (2.81%) Amazon EKS
15 6 (2.11%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 5 (1.75%) OpenShift
16 5 (1.75%) Power Automate
17 4 (1.40%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.11%) 3GPP
1 6 (2.11%) RTP
1 6 (2.11%) Wireshark
2 3 (1.05%) DSL
2 3 (1.05%) Internet
2 3 (1.05%) WAN
3 2 (0.70%) Firewall
3 2 (0.70%) NaaS
4 1 (0.35%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.35%) HTTP
4 1 (0.35%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.35%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (16.49%) PostgreSQL
2 43 (15.09%) MongoDB
3 20 (7.02%) DynamoDB
4 18 (6.32%) Amazon RDS
5 15 (5.26%) SQL Server
6 12 (4.21%) Amazon Aurora
7 11 (3.86%) NoSQL
8 9 (3.16%) Relational Database
9 6 (2.11%) Oracle Database
10 5 (1.75%) Amazon Athena
10 5 (1.75%) Couchbase
11 3 (1.05%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.70%) Apache Cassandra
12 2 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
12 2 (0.70%) Flink
12 2 (0.70%) InfluxDB
12 2 (0.70%) Neo4j
12 2 (0.70%) Redis
12 2 (0.70%) Tableau
12 2 (0.70%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 98 (34.39%) Cucumber
2 84 (29.47%) Git
3 76 (26.67%) Jenkins
3 76 (26.67%) Selenium
4 64 (22.46%) JUnit
5 61 (21.40%) JIRA
6 56 (19.65%) GitLab
7 41 (14.39%) Mockito
8 40 (14.04%) REST Assured
9 35 (12.28%) Postman
9 35 (12.28%) WebDriver
10 30 (10.53%) SonarQube
11 25 (8.77%) JMeter
12 19 (6.67%) Maven
13 18 (6.32%) Cypress.io
14 16 (5.61%) Gatling
14 16 (5.61%) SpecFlow
14 16 (5.61%) TeamCity
15 12 (4.21%) Bitbucket
15 12 (4.21%) DbUnit
General
1 77 (27.02%) Social Skills
2 58 (20.35%) Public Sector
3 56 (19.65%) Finance
4 39 (13.68%) Analytical Skills
5 28 (9.82%) Banking
6 9 (3.16%) Organisational Skills
6 9 (3.16%) Retail
7 7 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 7 (2.46%) Military
8 5 (1.75%) Aviation
8 5 (1.75%) Fire and Rescue
8 5 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.75%) Police
9 3 (1.05%) Billing
9 3 (1.05%) Front Office
9 3 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.70%) Automotive
10 2 (0.70%) Law
10 2 (0.70%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.70%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 85 (29.82%) Developer
2 65 (22.81%) Java Developer
3 62 (21.75%) Senior
4 49 (17.19%) Test Engineer
5 40 (14.04%) Lead
6 34 (11.93%) Software Engineer
7 27 (9.47%) Test Automation Engineer
8 25 (8.77%) Tester
9 22 (7.72%) Senior Developer
9 22 (7.72%) Senior Java Developer
10 19 (6.67%) Automation Tester
10 19 (6.67%) Java Engineer
10 19 (6.67%) Test Leader
11 13 (4.56%) Analyst
12 12 (4.21%) Senior Software Engineer
13 11 (3.86%) Automation Test Lead
13 11 (3.86%) Senior Tester
14 10 (3.51%) Architect
14 10 (3.51%) QA Engineer
14 10 (3.51%) Salesforce Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (27.37%) Spring
2 61 (21.40%) Spring Boot
3 55 (19.30%) Playwright
4 54 (18.95%) Kafka
5 53 (18.60%) REST
6 37 (12.98%) Gherkin
7 31 (10.88%) .NET
7 31 (10.88%) RESTful
8 30 (10.53%) AngularJS
9 28 (9.82%) WireMock
10 26 (9.12%) ActiveMQ
11 24 (8.42%) Node.js
12 23 (8.07%) React
13 20 (7.02%) SOAP
14 19 (6.67%) Spring Cloud
15 16 (5.61%) JPA
15 16 (5.61%) Web Services
16 15 (5.26%) Hibernate
16 15 (5.26%) JAX-RS
17 14 (4.91%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 36 (12.63%) Distributed Systems
2 27 (9.47%) Cloud Native
3 21 (7.37%) Product Ownership
4 16 (5.61%) Distributed Architecture
5 13 (4.56%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.75%) Mobile App
7 5 (1.75%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.75%) Robotics
7 5 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.40%) Taxonomies
9 3 (1.05%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.05%) Distributed Applications
9 3 (1.05%) Equities
9 3 (1.05%) Fixed Income
9 3 (1.05%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.70%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (0.70%) Management Information System
10 2 (0.70%) PKI
10 2 (0.70%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 45 (15.79%) Linux
2 19 (6.67%) Unix
3 12 (4.21%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.75%) Android
4 5 (1.75%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.05%) Windows
6 2 (0.70%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.70%) VMS
7 1 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 186 (65.26%) Agile
2 178 (62.46%) TDD
3 165 (57.89%) Test Automation
4 162 (56.84%) CI/CD
5 121 (42.46%) Microservices
6 103 (36.14%) DevOps
7 60 (21.05%) Test Strategy
8 58 (20.35%) Continuous Improvement
8 58 (20.35%) Scrum
9 57 (20.00%) Software Engineering
10 55 (19.30%) API Testing
11 50 (17.54%) Problem-Solving
12 42 (14.74%) Mentoring
12 42 (14.74%) Observability
13 36 (12.63%) Continuous Integration
13 36 (12.63%) SDLC
14 34 (11.93%) AI
15 33 (11.58%) Kanban
16 32 (11.23%) Containerisation
16 32 (11.23%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 171 (60.00%) Java
2 68 (23.86%) SQL
3 46 (16.14%) C#
3 46 (16.14%) Python
4 43 (15.09%) JavaScript
5 23 (8.07%) TypeScript
6 8 (2.81%) Kotlin
7 7 (2.46%) Groovy
8 6 (2.11%) Apex Code
8 6 (2.11%) T-SQL
9 5 (1.75%) C++
10 4 (1.40%) Go
11 2 (0.70%) Bash
11 2 (0.70%) Bicep
11 2 (0.70%) Cypher
11 2 (0.70%) PromQL
11 2 (0.70%) R
11 2 (0.70%) Ruby
11 2 (0.70%) Scala
11 2 (0.70%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 77 (27.02%) Security Cleared
2 61 (21.40%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.02%) Degree
4 12 (4.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (3.51%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (2.81%) ISTQB
7 6 (2.11%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (1.75%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.75%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.75%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 54 (18.95%) QA
2 32 (11.23%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.86%) WCAG
4 5 (1.75%) GDPR
5 2 (0.70%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.35%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.35%) SEPA
System Software
1 82 (28.77%) Docker
2 9 (3.16%) Postfix
3 1 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 63 (22.11%) Kubernetes
2 43 (15.09%) Grafana
3 35 (12.28%) Prometheus
4 27 (9.47%) Terraform
5 7 (2.46%) Ansible
6 3 (1.05%) Istio
6 3 (1.05%) Kibana
7 2 (0.70%) Amdocs OSS
7 2 (0.70%) Argo
7 2 (0.70%) Consul
7 2 (0.70%) Rancher
7 2 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.70%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.35%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.35%) EMC VPLEX
8 1 (0.35%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 16 (5.61%) Salesforce
2 15 (5.26%) Atlassian
3 14 (4.91%) Oracle
4 11 (3.86%) Google
4 11 (3.86%) Jaspersoft
5 8 (2.81%) Checkmarx
5 8 (2.81%) Microsoft
5 8 (2.81%) Splunk
6 7 (2.46%) Conga
6 7 (2.46%) GoCardless
7 5 (1.75%) Dynatrace
8 4 (1.40%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.40%) Veracode
9 3 (1.05%) OpenAI
9 3 (1.05%) OpenLink
9 3 (1.05%) Sybase
10 2 (0.70%) Amdocs
10 2 (0.70%) IBM
10 2 (0.70%) SAP
10 2 (0.70%) Workday