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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 324 256 303
Rank change year-on-year -68 +47 -163
Contract jobs citing BDD 239 279 262
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.75% 0.97% 0.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 1.09% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 156 168 187
10th Percentile £363 £361 £400
25th Percentile £413 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £504 £540
Median % change year-on-year +0.00% -6.72% -10.00%
75th Percentile £606 £632 £661
90th Percentile £688 £813 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -14.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £76.25
Median hourly rate - - £77.50
75th Percentile - - £84.38
90th Percentile - - £87.75
UK median hourly rate £85.00 - £77.50
% change year-on-year - - +10.71%

All Process and 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 28,083 25,497 32,413
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.56% 88.71% 88.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,857 15,730 22,001
10th Percentile £300 £311 £308
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £648 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,811 841 1,406
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £14.75
25th Percentile £17.89 £20.30 £19.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +22.56%
75th Percentile £55.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.45 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -26.97% +27.14%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025. 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 -41 112 £525 -7.28% 50
North of England -30 98 £500 +11.11% 38
Yorkshire -30 49 £550 +15.79% 12
North West -28 28 £410 +2.50% 25
North East +9 23 £460 +26.90% 1
South East -39 11 £450 -10.00% 38
Midlands -36 6 £313 -38.57% 18
West Midlands -30 4 £475 -6.63% 12
South West -31 3 £400 -25.58% 8
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 5
East of England -23 1 £375 +20.00% 10
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 21 (8.79%) Confluence
2 4 (1.67%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.84%) nginx
4 1 (0.42%) CMS
Applications
1 6 (2.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 6 (2.51%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 71 (29.71%) AWS
2 53 (22.18%) Azure
3 30 (12.55%) GitHub
4 19 (7.95%) Azure DevOps
4 19 (7.95%) GCP
4 19 (7.95%) Serverless
5 15 (6.28%) GitHub Actions
6 14 (5.86%) AWS Lambda
7 10 (4.18%) SaaS
8 9 (3.77%) Amazon ECS
9 7 (2.93%) Amazon S3
9 7 (2.93%) Amazon SQS
9 7 (2.93%) Apigee
10 6 (2.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 6 (2.51%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (2.51%) AWS Step Functions
10 6 (2.51%) Datadog
10 6 (2.51%) PaaS
11 5 (2.09%) Amazon Cognito
11 5 (2.09%) AWS Fargate
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.09%) Cisco IPT
2 2 (0.84%) HTTP
2 2 (0.84%) MQTT
3 1 (0.42%) DSL
3 1 (0.42%) FTP
3 1 (0.42%) Internet
3 1 (0.42%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (15.06%) PostgreSQL
2 35 (14.64%) MongoDB
3 18 (7.53%) MySQL
4 16 (6.69%) NoSQL
5 15 (6.28%) SQL Server
6 12 (5.02%) Relational Database
7 11 (4.60%) Redis
8 10 (4.18%) Amazon RDS
9 8 (3.35%) DynamoDB
10 6 (2.51%) RDBMS
11 5 (2.09%) Amazon Aurora
11 5 (2.09%) BigQuery
12 4 (1.67%) Apache Cassandra
13 3 (1.26%) DB2
14 2 (0.84%) Data Lake
14 2 (0.84%) Delta Lake
14 2 (0.84%) Parquet
15 1 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
15 1 (0.42%) Metadata
15 1 (0.42%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 75 (31.38%) Cucumber
2 61 (25.52%) Jenkins
3 55 (23.01%) Git
4 51 (21.34%) Selenium
5 42 (17.57%) JIRA
6 35 (14.64%) GitLab
7 30 (12.55%) Postman
8 25 (10.46%) Mockito
8 25 (10.46%) REST Assured
9 22 (9.21%) Cypress.io
10 14 (5.86%) Bitbucket
10 14 (5.86%) Gradle
11 13 (5.44%) JUnit
12 12 (5.02%) Maven
12 12 (5.02%) SonarQube
13 9 (3.77%) TestRail
14 8 (3.35%) JMeter
14 8 (3.35%) WebDriver
15 5 (2.09%) Gatling
15 5 (2.09%) Subversion
General
1 63 (26.36%) Social Skills
2 47 (19.67%) Public Sector
3 28 (11.72%) Finance
4 27 (11.30%) Banking
5 14 (5.86%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.93%) Front Office
6 7 (2.93%) Investment Banking
7 5 (2.09%) Legal
7 5 (2.09%) Military
8 4 (1.67%) Electronics
9 3 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.42%) Back Office
10 1 (0.42%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.42%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.42%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 94 (39.33%) Developer
2 66 (27.62%) Java Developer
3 45 (18.83%) Senior
4 37 (15.48%) Test Engineer
5 26 (10.88%) Senior Developer
6 21 (8.79%) Lead
6 21 (8.79%) Senior Java Developer
7 17 (7.11%) Software Engineer
7 17 (7.11%) Test Automation Engineer
8 14 (5.86%) QA Engineer
9 13 (5.44%) Analyst
10 10 (4.18%) Angular Developer
10 10 (4.18%) Java Engineer
10 10 (4.18%) Tester
11 9 (3.77%) Automation Engineer
12 8 (3.35%) Automation Tester
12 8 (3.35%) Senior Test Engineer
13 7 (2.93%) Architect
13 7 (2.93%) Business Analyst
13 7 (2.93%) Lead Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (23.01%) Spring Boot
2 51 (21.34%) REST
3 46 (19.25%) Kafka
4 38 (15.90%) Spring
5 34 (14.23%) React
6 33 (13.81%) RESTful
7 31 (12.97%) Node.js
8 27 (11.30%) ActiveMQ
9 25 (10.46%) Playwright
10 23 (9.62%) CSS
10 23 (9.62%) Gherkin
10 23 (9.62%) JAX-RS
11 20 (8.37%) .NET
11 20 (8.37%) AngularJS
12 17 (7.11%) HTML
13 14 (5.86%) Jest
14 13 (5.44%) JSON
14 13 (5.44%) WireMock
15 11 (4.60%) XML
16 10 (4.18%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 29 (12.13%) Product Ownership
2 13 (5.44%) Cloud Native
3 8 (3.35%) Mobile App
4 6 (2.51%) Distributed Architecture
4 6 (2.51%) N-Tier
5 5 (2.09%) Client/Server
5 5 (2.09%) Equities
5 5 (2.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 5 (2.09%) Greenfield Project
5 5 (2.09%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (1.26%) Educational Technology
7 3 (1.26%) Mobile Banking
7 3 (1.26%) NHS
7 3 (1.26%) Public Cloud
8 2 (0.84%) AS400
8 2 (0.84%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (0.84%) Data Structures
8 2 (0.84%) IoT
8 2 (0.84%) iSeries
Operating Systems
1 35 (14.64%) Linux
2 28 (11.72%) Unix
3 19 (7.95%) Mac OS X
4 4 (1.67%) Android
5 3 (1.26%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.42%) VMS
6 1 (0.42%) Windows
6 1 (0.42%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (72.38%) Agile
2 167 (69.87%) TDD
3 148 (61.92%) Test Automation
4 128 (53.56%) Microservices
5 123 (51.46%) CI/CD
6 63 (26.36%) Scrum
7 53 (22.18%) DevOps
7 53 (22.18%) Problem-Solving
8 47 (19.67%) API Testing
9 44 (18.41%) Containerisation
10 40 (16.74%) Software Engineering
11 39 (16.32%) Continuous Improvement
12 37 (15.48%) Kanban
13 34 (14.23%) Continuous Deployment
14 33 (13.81%) Test Strategy
15 31 (12.97%) Non-Functional Testing
16 30 (12.55%) Functional Testing
16 30 (12.55%) Mentoring
17 28 (11.72%) Continuous Integration
17 28 (11.72%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 167 (69.87%) Java
2 48 (20.08%) JavaScript
3 47 (19.67%) SQL
4 38 (15.90%) Python
5 31 (12.97%) TypeScript
6 13 (5.44%) C#
7 9 (3.77%) C++
8 8 (3.35%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.93%) PHP
9 7 (2.93%) Ruby
9 7 (2.93%) Scala
10 6 (2.51%) JSX
11 5 (2.09%) Go
12 4 (1.67%) Bash
12 4 (1.67%) C
13 3 (1.26%) Objective-C
13 3 (1.26%) Swift
14 2 (0.84%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.42%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.42%) XPath
Qualifications
1 64 (26.78%) Security Cleared
2 50 (20.92%) SC Cleared
3 14 (5.86%) ISTQB
4 11 (4.60%) BPSS Clearance
4 11 (4.60%) Degree
5 5 (2.09%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 3 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.26%) ISEB
6 3 (1.26%) Numerate Degree
7 2 (0.84%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 1 (0.42%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.42%) AWS Certified Developer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (21.34%) QA
2 22 (9.21%) Accessibility
3 11 (4.60%) WCAG
4 8 (3.35%) GDPR
5 5 (2.09%) PERC
6 2 (0.84%) HL7
7 1 (0.42%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 67 (28.03%) Docker
Systems Management
1 44 (18.41%) Kubernetes
2 17 (7.11%) Terraform
3 9 (3.77%) Grafana
4 5 (2.09%) Ansible
5 4 (1.67%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.84%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.84%) Kibana
7 1 (0.42%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.42%) logstash
7 1 (0.42%) Rancher
7 1 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 12 (5.02%) Oracle
2 8 (3.35%) Microsoft
3 7 (2.93%) Atlassian
4 6 (2.51%) Splunk
5 5 (2.09%) Gigya
5 5 (2.09%) ServiceNow
6 4 (1.67%) Adobe
6 4 (1.67%) Databricks
6 4 (1.67%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.26%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.84%) CA Agile Central
8 2 (0.84%) IBM
9 1 (0.42%) Charles River
9 1 (0.42%) Marketo
9 1 (0.42%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.42%) Typelevel
9 1 (0.42%) UiPath
9 1 (0.42%) VMware
9 1 (0.42%) Xamarin