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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 348 272 272
Rank change year-on-year -76 0 -77
Contract jobs citing BDD 257 201 295
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.62% 0.85% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.73% 0.93% 0.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 147 139 238
10th Percentile £350 £375 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £513 £540
Median % change year-on-year -7.32% -5.09% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £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 35,337 21,704 31,436
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.82% 91.29% 85.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,449 14,185 20,585
10th Percentile £325 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.14% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,203 923 2,285
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £15.95
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.71% -23.29% -2.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £27.45 £36.02
% change year-on-year +52.79% -23.80% -2.64%

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 27 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 27 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 -79 102 £500 -9.75% 25
North of England -32 84 £459 +4.91% 16
North West -8 44 £431 +10.23% 11
Midlands -47 38 £425 -7.86% 16
West Midlands -38 37 £425 -8.11% 5
Yorkshire -46 31 £585 +12.55% 4
South West -22 17 £525 - 8
North East -20 13 £426 +1.31% 2
South East -65 12 £358 -28.40% 18
East of England -22 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 (13.62%) Confluence
2 3 (1.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (1.17%) 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 (1.17%) 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 (3.11%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (1.17%) Findur
3 2 (0.78%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.39%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 94 (36.58%) AWS
2 72 (28.02%) Azure
3 56 (21.79%) GitHub
4 40 (15.56%) GCP
5 24 (9.34%) Azure DevOps
5 24 (9.34%) GitHub Actions
6 21 (8.17%) Amazon EC2
6 21 (8.17%) Amazon SQS
7 19 (7.39%) Amazon S3
8 17 (6.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 17 (6.61%) Serverless
9 15 (5.84%) AWS Lambda
10 12 (4.67%) AWS KMS
10 12 (4.67%) BrowserStack
10 12 (4.67%) Route 53
11 6 (2.33%) SaaS
12 5 (1.95%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (1.95%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 5 (1.95%) OpenShift
13 3 (1.17%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.33%) 3GPP
1 6 (2.33%) RTP
1 6 (2.33%) Wireshark
2 3 (1.17%) 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 (16.73%) PostgreSQL
2 32 (12.45%) MongoDB
3 17 (6.61%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (6.61%) DynamoDB
4 15 (5.84%) SQL Server
5 12 (4.67%) Amazon Aurora
6 9 (3.50%) MySQL
7 8 (3.11%) Relational Database
8 6 (2.33%) NoSQL
8 6 (2.33%) Oracle Database
9 4 (1.56%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (0.78%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.78%) Flink
10 2 (0.78%) InfluxDB
10 2 (0.78%) Power BI
10 2 (0.78%) Redis
10 2 (0.78%) Tableau
10 2 (0.78%) TimescaleDB
11 1 (0.39%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 91 (35.41%) Cucumber
2 75 (29.18%) Git
3 71 (27.63%) Jenkins
4 69 (26.85%) Selenium
5 58 (22.57%) JIRA
6 53 (20.62%) JUnit
7 49 (19.07%) GitLab
8 40 (15.56%) REST Assured
9 37 (14.40%) Postman
10 34 (13.23%) Mockito
11 29 (11.28%) SonarQube
12 26 (10.12%) WebDriver
13 22 (8.56%) JMeter
14 15 (5.84%) Maven
15 14 (5.45%) SpecFlow
15 14 (5.45%) TeamCity
16 12 (4.67%) Cypress.io
16 12 (4.67%) DbUnit
16 12 (4.67%) Gatling
17 11 (4.28%) jMock
General
1 65 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 56 (21.79%) Finance
3 51 (19.84%) Public Sector
4 30 (11.67%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (8.56%) Banking
6 8 (3.11%) Organisational Skills
7 5 (1.95%) Aviation
7 5 (1.95%) Fire and Rescue
7 5 (1.95%) Military
7 5 (1.95%) Police
8 4 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.17%) Billing
9 3 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.17%) 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 79 (30.74%) Developer
2 56 (21.79%) Java Developer
3 50 (19.46%) Test Engineer
4 46 (17.90%) Senior
5 42 (16.34%) Lead
6 29 (11.28%) Software Engineer
6 29 (11.28%) Test Automation Engineer
7 23 (8.95%) Tester
8 18 (7.00%) Automation Tester
8 18 (7.00%) Senior Developer
8 18 (7.00%) Test Leader
9 17 (6.61%) Senior Java Developer
10 14 (5.45%) Automation Test Lead
10 14 (5.45%) Java Engineer
11 12 (4.67%) Lead Test Engineer
12 11 (4.28%) Senior Tester
13 10 (3.89%) Senior Automation Tester
14 9 (3.50%) Automation Engineer
14 9 (3.50%) Backend Developer
14 9 (3.50%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (29.18%) Spring
2 60 (23.35%) Spring Boot
3 52 (20.23%) REST
4 46 (17.90%) Playwright
5 38 (14.79%) Kafka
6 35 (13.62%) RESTful
7 34 (13.23%) Gherkin
8 31 (12.06%) .NET
9 29 (11.28%) AngularJS
10 25 (9.73%) Node.js
11 23 (8.95%) React
12 22 (8.56%) ActiveMQ
12 22 (8.56%) WireMock
13 19 (7.39%) Spring Cloud
14 18 (7.00%) SOAP
15 17 (6.61%) Web Services
16 15 (5.84%) Hibernate
16 15 (5.84%) JPA
17 14 (5.45%) Spring Batch
18 13 (5.06%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 31 (12.06%) Distributed Systems
2 23 (8.95%) Cloud Native
3 18 (7.00%) Product Ownership
4 14 (5.45%) Distributed Architecture
5 11 (4.28%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (3.50%) Mobile App
7 5 (1.95%) Robotics
8 4 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
9 3 (1.17%) Distributed Applications
10 2 (0.78%) Equities
10 2 (0.78%) Fixed Income
10 2 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
10 2 (0.78%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.78%) Private Cloud
10 2 (0.78%) Public Cloud
11 1 (0.39%) Data Centre
11 1 (0.39%) Hedge funds
11 1 (0.39%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 1 (0.39%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 40 (15.56%) Linux
2 15 (5.84%) Unix
3 10 (3.89%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.95%) Android
4 5 (1.95%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.78%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.78%) VMS
5 2 (0.78%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 160 (62.26%) TDD
2 154 (59.92%) Agile
2 154 (59.92%) Test Automation
3 138 (53.70%) CI/CD
4 109 (42.41%) Microservices
5 90 (35.02%) DevOps
6 60 (23.35%) API Testing
7 56 (21.79%) Test Strategy
8 54 (21.01%) Continuous Improvement
9 48 (18.68%) Scrum
9 48 (18.68%) Software Engineering
10 45 (17.51%) Problem-Solving
11 38 (14.79%) Observability
12 34 (13.23%) Mentoring
13 32 (12.45%) Continuous Integration
13 32 (12.45%) SDLC
14 31 (12.06%) Containerisation
15 29 (11.28%) Performance Testing
16 28 (10.89%) AI
16 28 (10.89%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 156 (60.70%) Java
2 67 (26.07%) SQL
3 51 (19.84%) Python
4 44 (17.12%) JavaScript
5 38 (14.79%) C#
6 22 (8.56%) TypeScript
7 11 (4.28%) Kotlin
8 6 (2.33%) Apex Code
8 6 (2.33%) PHP
9 5 (1.95%) C++
9 5 (1.95%) Go
9 5 (1.95%) Ruby
9 5 (1.95%) 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 (24.51%) Security Cleared
2 51 (19.84%) SC Cleared
3 19 (7.39%) Degree
4 11 (4.28%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (1.95%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.95%) Azure Certification
6 5 (1.95%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (1.17%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 55 (21.40%) QA
2 25 (9.73%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.33%) WCAG
4 1 (0.39%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.39%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 76 (29.57%) Docker
2 9 (3.50%) Postfix
3 1 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 54 (21.01%) Kubernetes
2 39 (15.18%) Grafana
3 33 (12.84%) Prometheus
4 17 (6.61%) Terraform
5 6 (2.33%) Ansible
6 3 (1.17%) 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
Vendors
1 15 (5.84%) Atlassian
2 14 (5.45%) Salesforce
3 12 (4.67%) Google
3 12 (4.67%) Oracle
4 11 (4.28%) Jaspersoft
5 9 (3.50%) ServiceNow
6 8 (3.11%) Checkmarx
6 8 (3.11%) Splunk
7 7 (2.72%) Conga
7 7 (2.72%) GoCardless
8 4 (1.56%) Dynatrace
8 4 (1.56%) Veracode
9 3 (1.17%) Adobe
9 3 (1.17%) 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
10 2 (0.78%) VMware