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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 356 299 251
Rank change year-on-year -57 -48 0
Contract jobs citing BDD 285 216 317
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.63% 0.78% 0.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.73% 0.86% 1.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 173 150 234
10th Percentile £306 £351 £372
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.44% -6.82% -8.33%
75th Percentile £550 £641 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £461 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -7.85% -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 38,792 25,089 28,626
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.08% 90.79% 85.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,117 16,022 18,624
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £422
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 2,537 1,415 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% +4.78%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -1.35%

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 11 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 11 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 £488 -17.37% 59
North of England -38 77 £453 -1.52% 19
Midlands -14 53 £425 -7.86% 18
West Midlands -15 52 £425 -8.11% 10
North West -20 38 £475 -2.26% 12
Yorkshire -36 23 £585 +12.55% 4
North East -28 20 £450 - 4
South East -78 19 £309 -9.19% 18
South West -35 14 £525 +27.27% 3
East of England -14 8 £510 +36.00% 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 41 (14.39%) Confluence
2 3 (1.05%) CMS
2 3 (1.05%) Headless CMS
2 3 (1.05%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.70%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.35%) Apache
4 1 (0.35%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (1.05%) Notion
2 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.35%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.35%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (3.16%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.81%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (1.05%) Findur
3 3 (1.05%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 99 (34.74%) Azure
2 98 (34.39%) AWS
3 70 (24.56%) GitHub
4 46 (16.14%) Azure DevOps
5 39 (13.68%) GCP
6 38 (13.33%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (8.42%) Serverless
8 21 (7.37%) Amazon SQS
9 19 (6.67%) Amazon EC2
10 17 (5.96%) Amazon S3
11 15 (5.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 15 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
12 10 (3.51%) AWS KMS
12 10 (3.51%) Power Automate
12 10 (3.51%) Route 53
13 9 (3.16%) Dynamics 365
14 7 (2.46%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (2.46%) BrowserStack
15 6 (2.11%) Azure Functions
15 6 (2.11%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.46%) RTP
1 7 (2.46%) Wireshark
2 6 (2.11%) 3GPP
3 3 (1.05%) DSL
3 3 (1.05%) Internet
4 2 (0.70%) Firewall
4 2 (0.70%) NaaS
4 2 (0.70%) WAN
5 1 (0.35%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (15.44%) PostgreSQL
2 42 (14.74%) MongoDB
3 17 (5.96%) DynamoDB
3 17 (5.96%) SQL Server
4 15 (5.26%) Amazon RDS
5 14 (4.91%) NoSQL
6 10 (3.51%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (2.11%) Relational Database
8 5 (1.75%) Couchbase
9 4 (1.40%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (1.05%) Apache Iceberg
10 3 (1.05%) BigQuery
10 3 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (1.05%) MySQL
11 2 (0.70%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.70%) Flink
11 2 (0.70%) InfluxDB
11 2 (0.70%) Power BI
11 2 (0.70%) Snowflake Schema
11 2 (0.70%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 106 (37.19%) Cucumber
2 90 (31.58%) Git
3 82 (28.77%) Selenium
4 66 (23.16%) Jenkins
5 65 (22.81%) JUnit
6 58 (20.35%) JIRA
7 51 (17.89%) GitLab
8 40 (14.04%) WebDriver
9 37 (12.98%) REST Assured
10 36 (12.63%) Postman
11 33 (11.58%) Mockito
12 26 (9.12%) SonarQube
13 24 (8.42%) JMeter
14 23 (8.07%) Cypress.io
15 19 (6.67%) SpecFlow
16 18 (6.32%) Gatling
17 17 (5.96%) Maven
18 15 (5.26%) TeamCity
19 10 (3.51%) DbUnit
20 9 (3.16%) Bitbucket
General
1 85 (29.82%) Social Skills
2 55 (19.30%) Public Sector
3 53 (18.60%) Finance
4 46 (16.14%) Analytical Skills
5 29 (10.18%) Banking
6 11 (3.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 11 (3.86%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (2.46%) Retail
8 6 (2.11%) Military
9 5 (1.75%) Aviation
9 5 (1.75%) Fire and Rescue
9 5 (1.75%) Police
10 4 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.05%) Automotive
11 3 (1.05%) Billing
11 3 (1.05%) Front Office
11 3 (1.05%) Legal Technology
11 3 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.70%) Investment Banking
12 2 (0.70%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 78 (27.37%) Developer
2 65 (22.81%) Senior
3 54 (18.95%) Java Developer
4 50 (17.54%) Test Engineer
5 36 (12.63%) Lead
6 30 (10.53%) Test Automation Engineer
7 29 (10.18%) Software Engineer
8 23 (8.07%) Tester
9 21 (7.37%) Test Leader
10 20 (7.02%) Analyst
10 20 (7.02%) Senior Developer
11 18 (6.32%) Automation Tester
11 18 (6.32%) Senior Java Developer
12 15 (5.26%) Java Engineer
13 12 (4.21%) QA Engineer
14 11 (3.86%) Senior Software Engineer
14 11 (3.86%) Senior Tester
15 10 (3.51%) Automation Engineer
15 10 (3.51%) Automation Test Lead
15 10 (3.51%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (23.86%) Spring
2 57 (20.00%) Playwright
2 57 (20.00%) REST
3 52 (18.25%) Kafka
4 49 (17.19%) Spring Boot
5 42 (14.74%) Gherkin
6 33 (11.58%) .NET
6 33 (11.58%) RESTful
7 30 (10.53%) WireMock
8 26 (9.12%) AngularJS
9 25 (8.77%) Node.js
10 24 (8.42%) ActiveMQ
11 23 (8.07%) React
12 21 (7.37%) SOAP
13 15 (5.26%) JSON
14 14 (4.91%) JAX-RS
14 14 (4.91%) JPA
14 14 (4.91%) Web Services
15 13 (4.56%) Hibernate
15 13 (4.56%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 41 (14.39%) Distributed Systems
2 27 (9.47%) Cloud Native
2 27 (9.47%) Product Ownership
3 16 (5.61%) Distributed Architecture
3 16 (5.61%) Enterprise Software
4 9 (3.16%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (2.11%) Management Information System
5 6 (2.11%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.75%) Mobile App
6 5 (1.75%) Robotics
6 5 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
6 5 (1.75%) Taxonomies
6 5 (1.75%) Virtual Team
7 4 (1.40%) Distributed Applications
8 3 (1.05%) AI Agents
8 3 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.70%) Equities
9 2 (0.70%) Fixed Income
9 2 (0.70%) NHS
9 2 (0.70%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 42 (14.74%) Linux
2 17 (5.96%) Unix
3 7 (2.46%) Android
3 7 (2.46%) Apple iOS
3 7 (2.46%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.05%) Windows
5 2 (0.70%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.70%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 197 (69.12%) Agile
2 183 (64.21%) TDD
3 177 (62.11%) CI/CD
4 171 (60.00%) Test Automation
5 113 (39.65%) Microservices
6 105 (36.84%) DevOps
7 71 (24.91%) Continuous Improvement
8 63 (22.11%) Test Strategy
9 62 (21.75%) Scrum
10 61 (21.40%) API Testing
11 58 (20.35%) Problem-Solving
12 50 (17.54%) Software Engineering
13 48 (16.84%) AI
14 43 (15.09%) Stakeholder Management
15 42 (14.74%) Continuous Integration
16 41 (14.39%) Mentoring
17 38 (13.33%) End-to-End Testing
17 38 (13.33%) Observability
18 34 (11.93%) SDLC
18 34 (11.93%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 155 (54.39%) Java
2 67 (23.51%) SQL
3 54 (18.95%) Python
4 52 (18.25%) C#
5 49 (17.19%) JavaScript
6 25 (8.77%) TypeScript
7 8 (2.81%) Kotlin
8 7 (2.46%) Groovy
9 6 (2.11%) Apex Code
10 5 (1.75%) Go
10 5 (1.75%) R
10 5 (1.75%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.40%) Bash
11 4 (1.40%) C++
11 4 (1.40%) Ruby
11 4 (1.40%) Scala
12 2 (0.70%) Bicep
12 2 (0.70%) Cypher
12 2 (0.70%) PromQL
12 2 (0.70%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 74 (25.96%) Security Cleared
2 58 (20.35%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.02%) Degree
4 13 (4.56%) Computer Science Degree
4 13 (4.56%) ISTQB
5 11 (3.86%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (2.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (2.11%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (1.75%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.05%) AWS Certification
9 3 (1.05%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.35%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (23.16%) QA
2 37 (12.98%) Accessibility
3 23 (8.07%) WCAG
4 11 (3.86%) GDPR
5 2 (0.70%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.70%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.35%) SEPA
6 1 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 81 (28.42%) Docker
2 7 (2.46%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 61 (21.40%) Kubernetes
2 37 (12.98%) Grafana
3 30 (10.53%) Prometheus
4 21 (7.37%) Terraform
5 6 (2.11%) Ansible
6 4 (1.40%) Kibana
7 3 (1.05%) Istio
8 2 (0.70%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.70%) Argo
8 2 (0.70%) Consul
8 2 (0.70%) Rancher
8 2 (0.70%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.35%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 22 (7.72%) Microsoft
2 17 (5.96%) Salesforce
3 11 (3.86%) Atlassian
3 11 (3.86%) Google
4 9 (3.16%) Jaspersoft
5 8 (2.81%) Checkmarx
5 8 (2.81%) Oracle
6 7 (2.46%) Conga
6 7 (2.46%) GoCardless
7 5 (1.75%) Databricks
7 5 (1.75%) Dynatrace
8 4 (1.40%) IBM
8 4 (1.40%) Splunk
9 3 (1.05%) CA Agile Central
9 3 (1.05%) Guidewire
9 3 (1.05%) OpenAI
9 3 (1.05%) OpenLink
9 3 (1.05%) ServiceNow
10 2 (0.70%) Ciena
10 2 (0.70%) Solace