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

6 months to
30 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 316 254 295
Rank change year-on-year -62 +41 -158
Contract jobs citing BDD 238 274 267
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.75% 0.97% 0.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 1.09% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 156 164 193
10th Percentile £363 £358 £400
25th Percentile £413 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.74% -4.05% -12.50%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £675 £813 £738
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 & 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 28,004 25,033 32,231
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.55% 88.72% 88.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,835 15,427 21,866
10th Percentile £303 £312 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £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 1,779 821 1,411
10th Percentile £15.18 £15.62 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.96 £20.30 £19.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +25.00%
75th Percentile £56.83 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.99 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.95
% change year-on-year -22.62% -26.05% +25.57%

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 30 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 30 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 -48 111 £520 -8.37% 70
North of England -29 99 £500 +11.11% 95
Yorkshire -35 49 £550 +15.79% 38
North West -22 29 £418 +4.38% 51
North East +9 23 £460 +26.90% 6
South East -23 11 £450 -10.00% 100
Midlands -39 6 £313 -38.42% 65
West Midlands -26 4 £475 -6.40% 35
South West -21 3 £400 -25.58% 36
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 26
East of England -18 1 £375 +20.00% 45
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 (8.82%) Confluence
2 4 (1.68%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.84%) nginx
4 1 (0.42%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.42%) CMS
Applications
1 6 (2.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 6 (2.52%) 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 (29.83%) AWS
2 50 (21.01%) Azure
3 31 (13.03%) GitHub
4 20 (8.40%) GCP
5 19 (7.98%) Serverless
6 15 (6.30%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (6.30%) GitHub Actions
7 14 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
8 10 (4.20%) SaaS
9 9 (3.78%) Amazon ECS
10 7 (2.94%) Amazon S3
10 7 (2.94%) Amazon SQS
10 7 (2.94%) Apigee
11 6 (2.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 6 (2.52%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (2.52%) AWS Step Functions
11 6 (2.52%) Datadog
11 6 (2.52%) PaaS
12 5 (2.10%) Amazon Cognito
12 5 (2.10%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.10%) 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 35 (14.71%) MongoDB
2 34 (14.29%) PostgreSQL
3 19 (7.98%) MySQL
4 16 (6.72%) NoSQL
5 15 (6.30%) SQL Server
6 11 (4.62%) Relational Database
7 10 (4.20%) Amazon RDS
7 10 (4.20%) Redis
8 8 (3.36%) DynamoDB
9 6 (2.52%) RDBMS
10 5 (2.10%) Amazon Aurora
10 5 (2.10%) BigQuery
11 4 (1.68%) Apache Cassandra
12 3 (1.26%) DB2
13 1 (0.42%) Big Data
13 1 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
13 1 (0.42%) GIS
13 1 (0.42%) Metadata
13 1 (0.42%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 76 (31.93%) Cucumber
2 60 (25.21%) Jenkins
3 54 (22.69%) Git
4 52 (21.85%) Selenium
5 42 (17.65%) JIRA
6 35 (14.71%) GitLab
7 31 (13.03%) Postman
8 25 (10.50%) Mockito
8 25 (10.50%) REST Assured
9 22 (9.24%) Cypress.io
10 14 (5.88%) Bitbucket
10 14 (5.88%) Gradle
11 13 (5.46%) JUnit
12 12 (5.04%) Maven
12 12 (5.04%) SonarQube
13 9 (3.78%) JMeter
13 9 (3.78%) TestRail
14 8 (3.36%) WebDriver
15 5 (2.10%) Gatling
15 5 (2.10%) SonarLint
General
1 63 (26.47%) Social Skills
2 48 (20.17%) Public Sector
3 30 (12.61%) Finance
4 26 (10.92%) Banking
5 13 (5.46%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.94%) Front Office
7 6 (2.52%) Investment Banking
8 5 (2.10%) Legal
8 5 (2.10%) Military
9 4 (1.68%) Electronics
10 3 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.42%) Back Office
11 1 (0.42%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.42%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.42%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 93 (39.08%) Developer
2 65 (27.31%) Java Developer
3 46 (19.33%) Senior
4 38 (15.97%) Test Engineer
5 26 (10.92%) Senior Developer
6 21 (8.82%) Lead
6 21 (8.82%) Senior Java Developer
7 18 (7.56%) Software Engineer
7 18 (7.56%) Test Automation Engineer
8 14 (5.88%) QA Engineer
9 13 (5.46%) Analyst
10 11 (4.62%) Java Engineer
11 10 (4.20%) Angular Developer
12 9 (3.78%) Automation Engineer
12 9 (3.78%) Tester
13 8 (3.36%) Senior Test Engineer
14 7 (2.94%) Architect
14 7 (2.94%) Automation Tester
14 7 (2.94%) Backend Developer
14 7 (2.94%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (23.53%) Spring Boot
2 52 (21.85%) REST
3 44 (18.49%) Kafka
4 38 (15.97%) Spring
5 37 (15.55%) React
6 34 (14.29%) RESTful
7 32 (13.45%) Node.js
8 26 (10.92%) ActiveMQ
9 25 (10.50%) Playwright
10 24 (10.08%) Gherkin
11 23 (9.66%) CSS
11 23 (9.66%) JAX-RS
12 21 (8.82%) AngularJS
13 20 (8.40%) .NET
14 17 (7.14%) HTML
15 14 (5.88%) Jest
16 13 (5.46%) JSON
16 13 (5.46%) WireMock
17 11 (4.62%) XML
18 10 (4.20%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 29 (12.18%) Product Ownership
2 14 (5.88%) Cloud Native
3 8 (3.36%) Mobile App
4 6 (2.52%) Distributed Architecture
4 6 (2.52%) N-Tier
4 6 (2.52%) Onboarding
5 5 (2.10%) Client/Server
5 5 (2.10%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (2.10%) Equities
5 5 (2.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 5 (2.10%) Greenfield Project
6 3 (1.26%) Educational Technology
6 3 (1.26%) Mobile Banking
6 3 (1.26%) NHS
6 3 (1.26%) Public Cloud
7 2 (0.84%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (0.84%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (0.84%) Data Structures
7 2 (0.84%) IoT
7 2 (0.84%) iSeries
Operating Systems
1 34 (14.29%) Linux
2 28 (11.76%) Unix
3 19 (7.98%) Mac OS X
4 4 (1.68%) 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
1 171 (71.85%) Agile
2 168 (70.59%) TDD
3 147 (61.76%) Test Automation
4 129 (54.20%) Microservices
5 121 (50.84%) CI/CD
6 62 (26.05%) Scrum
7 52 (21.85%) Problem-Solving
8 51 (21.43%) DevOps
9 48 (20.17%) API Testing
10 44 (18.49%) Containerisation
11 42 (17.65%) Software Engineering
12 38 (15.97%) Continuous Improvement
13 36 (15.13%) Kanban
14 34 (14.29%) Continuous Deployment
15 32 (13.45%) Test Strategy
16 31 (13.03%) Mentoring
16 31 (13.03%) Non-Functional Testing
17 30 (12.61%) Functional Testing
18 28 (11.76%) Full-Stack Development
18 28 (11.76%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 166 (69.75%) Java
2 49 (20.59%) JavaScript
3 47 (19.75%) SQL
4 37 (15.55%) Python
5 33 (13.87%) TypeScript
6 13 (5.46%) C#
7 9 (3.78%) C++
8 8 (3.36%) Kotlin
8 8 (3.36%) Ruby
9 7 (2.94%) PHP
9 7 (2.94%) Scala
10 6 (2.52%) JSX
11 5 (2.10%) Go
12 4 (1.68%) Bash
12 4 (1.68%) 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 61 (25.63%) Security Cleared
2 47 (19.75%) SC Cleared
3 14 (5.88%) ISTQB
4 11 (4.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (4.20%) Degree
6 5 (2.10%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 3 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.26%) ISEB
8 2 (0.84%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 2 (0.84%) Numerate Degree
9 1 (0.42%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.42%) AWS Certified Developer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (21.85%) QA
2 23 (9.66%) Accessibility
3 11 (4.62%) WCAG
4 8 (3.36%) GDPR
5 5 (2.10%) PERC
6 2 (0.84%) HL7
7 1 (0.42%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 66 (27.73%) Docker
Systems Management
1 44 (18.49%) Kubernetes
2 17 (7.14%) Terraform
3 9 (3.78%) Grafana
4 5 (2.10%) Ansible
5 4 (1.68%) 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 (5.04%) Oracle
2 8 (3.36%) Microsoft
3 7 (2.94%) Atlassian
4 6 (2.52%) Splunk
5 5 (2.10%) Gigya
5 5 (2.10%) ServiceNow
6 4 (1.68%) Adobe
6 4 (1.68%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.26%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.84%) CA Agile Central
8 2 (0.84%) Databricks
8 2 (0.84%) IBM
9 1 (0.42%) Charles River
9 1 (0.42%) Google
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