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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 357 303 253
Rank change year-on-year -54 -50 -5
Contract jobs citing BDD 290 216 317
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.64% 0.78% 0.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.75% 0.85% 1.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 174 150 234
10th Percentile £306 £351 £372
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 £641 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £463 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -7.50% -6.98% -6.52%
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 38,771 25,264 28,522
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.11% 90.78% 85.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,101 16,147 18,629
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,535 1,418 1,654
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.87 £18.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +2.19%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.05 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -3.67%

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 10 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 10 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 -88 113 £500 -15.25% 105
North of England -20 81 £464 +0.87% 32
Midlands -8 53 £425 -7.86% 24
West Midlands -10 52 £425 -8.11% 13
North West -22 40 £488 +0.31% 20
Yorkshire -30 25 £660 +26.98% 8
North East -28 20 £450 - 5
South East -76 19 £309 -9.19% 24
South West -41 14 £525 +27.27% 7
East of England -11 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 41 (14.14%) Confluence
2 3 (1.03%) CMS
2 3 (1.03%) Headless CMS
2 3 (1.03%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.69%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.34%) Apache
4 1 (0.34%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (1.03%) Notion
2 2 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.34%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (3.10%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.76%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (1.03%) Findur
3 3 (1.03%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 98 (33.79%) Azure
2 97 (33.45%) AWS
3 69 (23.79%) GitHub
4 46 (15.86%) Azure DevOps
5 39 (13.45%) GCP
6 37 (12.76%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (8.28%) Serverless
8 21 (7.24%) Amazon SQS
9 19 (6.55%) Amazon EC2
10 17 (5.86%) Amazon S3
11 15 (5.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 15 (5.17%) AWS Lambda
12 10 (3.45%) AWS KMS
12 10 (3.45%) Power Automate
12 10 (3.45%) Route 53
13 9 (3.10%) Dynamics 365
14 7 (2.41%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (2.41%) BrowserStack
15 6 (2.07%) Azure Functions
15 6 (2.07%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.41%) RTP
1 7 (2.41%) Wireshark
2 6 (2.07%) 3GPP
3 3 (1.03%) DSL
3 3 (1.03%) Internet
4 2 (0.69%) Firewall
4 2 (0.69%) NaaS
4 2 (0.69%) WAN
5 1 (0.34%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (15.86%) MongoDB
2 44 (15.17%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (5.86%) DynamoDB
3 17 (5.86%) SQL Server
4 15 (5.17%) Amazon RDS
5 14 (4.83%) NoSQL
6 10 (3.45%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (2.07%) Relational Database
8 5 (1.72%) Couchbase
9 4 (1.38%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (1.03%) Apache Iceberg
10 3 (1.03%) BigQuery
10 3 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (1.03%) MySQL
11 2 (0.69%) Apache Cassandra
11 2 (0.69%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.69%) Flink
11 2 (0.69%) InfluxDB
11 2 (0.69%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 106 (36.55%) Cucumber
2 91 (31.38%) Git
3 82 (28.28%) Selenium
4 66 (22.76%) Jenkins
5 65 (22.41%) JUnit
6 58 (20.00%) JIRA
7 52 (17.93%) GitLab
8 41 (14.14%) WebDriver
9 37 (12.76%) Mockito
9 37 (12.76%) REST Assured
10 35 (12.07%) Postman
11 26 (8.97%) SonarQube
12 24 (8.28%) JMeter
13 23 (7.93%) Cypress.io
14 19 (6.55%) SpecFlow
15 18 (6.21%) Gatling
16 17 (5.86%) Maven
17 15 (5.17%) TeamCity
18 10 (3.45%) DbUnit
19 9 (3.10%) Bitbucket
General
1 85 (29.31%) Social Skills
2 59 (20.34%) Public Sector
3 53 (18.28%) Finance
4 46 (15.86%) Analytical Skills
5 29 (10.00%) Banking
6 11 (3.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 11 (3.79%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (2.41%) Military
7 7 (2.41%) Retail
8 5 (1.72%) Aviation
8 5 (1.72%) Fire and Rescue
8 5 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.72%) Police
9 3 (1.03%) Automotive
9 3 (1.03%) Billing
9 3 (1.03%) Front Office
9 3 (1.03%) Legal Technology
9 3 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.69%) Law
10 2 (0.69%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 84 (28.97%) Developer
2 69 (23.79%) Senior
3 60 (20.69%) Java Developer
4 49 (16.90%) Test Engineer
5 36 (12.41%) Lead
6 29 (10.00%) Software Engineer
6 29 (10.00%) Test Automation Engineer
7 24 (8.28%) Senior Developer
8 23 (7.93%) Tester
9 22 (7.59%) Senior Java Developer
10 21 (7.24%) Test Leader
11 20 (6.90%) Analyst
12 18 (6.21%) Automation Tester
13 15 (5.17%) Java Engineer
14 12 (4.14%) QA Engineer
15 11 (3.79%) Senior Software Engineer
15 11 (3.79%) Senior Tester
16 10 (3.45%) Automation Engineer
16 10 (3.45%) Automation Test Lead
16 10 (3.45%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (23.45%) Spring
2 58 (20.00%) Playwright
3 57 (19.66%) REST
4 55 (18.97%) Kafka
5 49 (16.90%) Spring Boot
6 42 (14.48%) Gherkin
7 33 (11.38%) .NET
7 33 (11.38%) RESTful
8 30 (10.34%) WireMock
9 27 (9.31%) ActiveMQ
10 26 (8.97%) AngularJS
11 25 (8.62%) Node.js
12 23 (7.93%) React
13 21 (7.24%) SOAP
14 18 (6.21%) JAX-RS
15 15 (5.17%) JSON
16 14 (4.83%) JPA
16 14 (4.83%) Web Services
17 13 (4.48%) Hibernate
17 13 (4.48%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 41 (14.14%) Distributed Systems
2 27 (9.31%) Cloud Native
2 27 (9.31%) Product Ownership
3 16 (5.52%) Distributed Architecture
4 15 (5.17%) Enterprise Software
5 8 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (2.07%) Management Information System
6 6 (2.07%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.72%) Mobile App
7 5 (1.72%) Robotics
7 5 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (1.72%) Taxonomies
7 5 (1.72%) Virtual Team
8 4 (1.38%) Distributed Applications
9 3 (1.03%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.69%) Equities
10 2 (0.69%) Fixed Income
10 2 (0.69%) PKI
10 2 (0.69%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 48 (16.55%) Linux
2 23 (7.93%) Unix
3 12 (4.14%) Mac OS X
4 7 (2.41%) Android
4 7 (2.41%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.03%) Windows
6 2 (0.69%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.69%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 202 (69.66%) Agile
2 189 (65.17%) TDD
3 177 (61.03%) Test Automation
4 176 (60.69%) CI/CD
5 120 (41.38%) Microservices
6 105 (36.21%) DevOps
7 69 (23.79%) Continuous Improvement
8 63 (21.72%) Scrum
8 63 (21.72%) Test Strategy
9 61 (21.03%) API Testing
9 61 (21.03%) Problem-Solving
10 51 (17.59%) Software Engineering
11 48 (16.55%) AI
12 43 (14.83%) Continuous Integration
12 43 (14.83%) Stakeholder Management
13 40 (13.79%) Mentoring
14 38 (13.10%) End-to-End Testing
14 38 (13.10%) Observability
15 34 (11.72%) SDLC
15 34 (11.72%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 160 (55.17%) Java
2 67 (23.10%) SQL
3 52 (17.93%) C#
3 52 (17.93%) Python
4 50 (17.24%) JavaScript
5 25 (8.62%) TypeScript
6 8 (2.76%) Kotlin
7 7 (2.41%) Groovy
8 6 (2.07%) Apex Code
9 5 (1.72%) Go
9 5 (1.72%) R
9 5 (1.72%) T-SQL
10 4 (1.38%) Bash
10 4 (1.38%) C++
10 4 (1.38%) Ruby
10 4 (1.38%) Scala
11 2 (0.69%) Bicep
11 2 (0.69%) Cypher
11 2 (0.69%) PromQL
11 2 (0.69%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 75 (25.86%) Security Cleared
2 59 (20.34%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.90%) Degree
4 13 (4.48%) Computer Science Degree
4 13 (4.48%) ISTQB
5 12 (4.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (2.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (1.72%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.03%) AWS Certification
9 3 (1.03%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.34%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (23.10%) QA
2 37 (12.76%) Accessibility
3 22 (7.59%) WCAG
4 11 (3.79%) GDPR
5 2 (0.69%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.69%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.34%) SEPA
6 1 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 80 (27.59%) Docker
2 7 (2.41%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 60 (20.69%) Kubernetes
2 37 (12.76%) Grafana
3 30 (10.34%) Prometheus
4 21 (7.24%) Terraform
5 6 (2.07%) Ansible
6 4 (1.38%) Kibana
7 3 (1.03%) Istio
8 2 (0.69%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.69%) Argo
8 2 (0.69%) Consul
8 2 (0.69%) Rancher
8 2 (0.69%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.34%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 22 (7.59%) Microsoft
2 17 (5.86%) Salesforce
3 11 (3.79%) Atlassian
3 11 (3.79%) Google
4 9 (3.10%) Jaspersoft
5 8 (2.76%) Checkmarx
5 8 (2.76%) Oracle
6 7 (2.41%) Conga
6 7 (2.41%) GoCardless
7 5 (1.72%) Databricks
7 5 (1.72%) Dynatrace
8 4 (1.38%) Splunk
9 3 (1.03%) CA Agile Central
9 3 (1.03%) Guidewire
9 3 (1.03%) IBM
9 3 (1.03%) OpenAI
9 3 (1.03%) OpenLink
9 3 (1.03%) ServiceNow
10 2 (0.69%) Ciena
10 2 (0.69%) FactSet