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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 347 296 249
Rank change year-on-year -51 -47 -4
Contract jobs citing BDD 290 213 322
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.64% 0.77% 0.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.75% 0.85% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 173 150 243
10th Percentile £306 £351 £363
25th Percentile £400 £413 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £510 £540
Median % change year-on-year -9.31% -5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £641 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £463 £500 £534
% change year-on-year -7.50% -6.37% -7.13%
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 - £56.25
% change year-on-year - - -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 38,456 25,047 28,792
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.21% 90.72% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,987 16,039 18,801
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 £758
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,460 1,391 1,685
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.87 £18.16
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.90% -4.71%

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 4 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 4 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 -68 110 £488 -17.37% 54
North of England -11 82 £464 +6.06% 24
Midlands -9 56 £425 -7.86% 19
West Midlands -14 55 £425 -8.11% 12
North West -24 41 £488 +18.90% 15
Yorkshire -31 25 £660 +26.98% 5
North East -27 20 £450 +7.14% 5
South East -72 19 £309 -21.84% 18
South West -42 14 £525 +27.27% 5
East of England -11 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 44 (15.17%) Confluence
2 4 (1.38%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.03%) CMS
3 3 (1.03%) Headless CMS
4 2 (0.69%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.34%) Apache
5 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
1 100 (34.48%) AWS
2 99 (34.14%) Azure
3 68 (23.45%) GitHub
4 46 (15.86%) Azure DevOps
5 39 (13.45%) GCP
6 36 (12.41%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (8.28%) Serverless
8 23 (7.93%) Amazon SQS
9 21 (7.24%) Amazon EC2
10 19 (6.55%) Amazon S3
11 17 (5.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 15 (5.17%) AWS Lambda
13 12 (4.14%) AWS KMS
13 12 (4.14%) Route 53
14 10 (3.45%) Power Automate
15 9 (3.10%) Dynamics 365
16 7 (2.41%) Amazon EKS
16 7 (2.41%) BrowserStack
17 6 (2.07%) Azure Functions
17 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
1 46 (15.86%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (6.55%) DynamoDB
3 17 (5.86%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (5.86%) SQL Server
4 14 (4.83%) NoSQL
5 12 (4.14%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (2.07%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.72%) Couchbase
8 4 (1.38%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (1.03%) Apache Iceberg
9 3 (1.03%) BigQuery
9 3 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.03%) MySQL
10 2 (0.69%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.69%) Flink
10 2 (0.69%) InfluxDB
10 2 (0.69%) Power BI
10 2 (0.69%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.69%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 105 (36.21%) Cucumber
2 91 (31.38%) Git
3 83 (28.62%) Selenium
4 68 (23.45%) Jenkins
5 67 (23.10%) JUnit
6 60 (20.69%) JIRA
7 51 (17.59%) GitLab
8 41 (14.14%) WebDriver
9 39 (13.45%) Mockito
10 37 (12.76%) REST Assured
11 35 (12.07%) Postman
12 28 (9.66%) SonarQube
13 24 (8.28%) JMeter
14 23 (7.93%) Cypress.io
15 19 (6.55%) SpecFlow
16 18 (6.21%) Gatling
16 18 (6.21%) Maven
17 16 (5.52%) TeamCity
18 12 (4.14%) DbUnit
19 11 (3.79%) jMock
General
1 86 (29.66%) Social Skills
2 62 (21.38%) Public Sector
3 52 (17.93%) Finance
4 45 (15.52%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (9.31%) Banking
6 11 (3.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (3.45%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (2.41%) Military
8 7 (2.41%) Retail
9 5 (1.72%) Aviation
9 5 (1.72%) Fire and Rescue
9 5 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.72%) Police
10 3 (1.03%) Automotive
10 3 (1.03%) Billing
10 3 (1.03%) Front Office
10 3 (1.03%) Legal Technology
10 3 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.69%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.69%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 86 (29.66%) Developer
2 68 (23.45%) Senior
3 62 (21.38%) Java Developer
4 49 (16.90%) Test Engineer
5 37 (12.76%) Lead
6 29 (10.00%) Software Engineer
6 29 (10.00%) Test Automation Engineer
7 24 (8.28%) Senior Developer
7 24 (8.28%) Tester
8 22 (7.59%) Senior Java Developer
8 22 (7.59%) Test Leader
9 20 (6.90%) Analyst
10 19 (6.55%) Automation Tester
11 14 (4.83%) Java Engineer
12 11 (3.79%) Automation Test Lead
12 11 (3.79%) QA Engineer
12 11 (3.79%) Senior Software Engineer
12 11 (3.79%) Senior Tester
13 10 (3.45%) Test Analyst
14 9 (3.10%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (24.14%) Spring
2 59 (20.34%) Playwright
3 58 (20.00%) REST
4 53 (18.28%) Kafka
5 51 (17.59%) Spring Boot
6 44 (15.17%) Gherkin
7 33 (11.38%) .NET
7 33 (11.38%) RESTful
8 30 (10.34%) WireMock
9 29 (10.00%) ActiveMQ
10 28 (9.66%) AngularJS
11 27 (9.31%) Node.js
12 23 (7.93%) React
12 23 (7.93%) SOAP
13 18 (6.21%) JAX-RS
14 16 (5.52%) JPA
14 16 (5.52%) Web Services
15 15 (5.17%) Hibernate
15 15 (5.17%) Spring Cloud
16 14 (4.83%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 42 (14.48%) Distributed Systems
2 27 (9.31%) Cloud Native
3 26 (8.97%) Product Ownership
4 16 (5.52%) Distributed Architecture
5 15 (5.17%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.07%) Management Information System
7 6 (2.07%) Onboarding
8 5 (1.72%) Mobile App
8 5 (1.72%) Robotics
8 5 (1.72%) Taxonomies
8 5 (1.72%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.38%) Distributed Applications
9 4 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (1.03%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (0.69%) Equities
11 2 (0.69%) Fixed Income
11 2 (0.69%) PKI
11 2 (0.69%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 49 (16.90%) 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
2 191 (65.86%) TDD
3 176 (60.69%) CI/CD
3 176 (60.69%) Test Automation
4 122 (42.07%) Microservices
5 107 (36.90%) DevOps
6 70 (24.14%) Continuous Improvement
7 64 (22.07%) Scrum
8 63 (21.72%) Test Strategy
9 62 (21.38%) API Testing
10 60 (20.69%) Problem-Solving
11 51 (17.59%) Software Engineering
12 47 (16.21%) AI
13 45 (15.52%) Stakeholder Management
14 44 (15.17%) Continuous Integration
15 42 (14.48%) Mentoring
16 38 (13.10%) Observability
17 37 (12.76%) End-to-End Testing
18 35 (12.07%) Kanban
19 34 (11.72%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 161 (55.52%) Java
2 66 (22.76%) SQL
3 52 (17.93%) C#
4 51 (17.59%) Python
5 50 (17.24%) JavaScript
6 25 (8.62%) TypeScript
7 8 (2.76%) Kotlin
8 7 (2.41%) Groovy
9 6 (2.07%) Apex Code
10 5 (1.72%) Go
10 5 (1.72%) R
10 5 (1.72%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.38%) C++
11 4 (1.38%) Ruby
11 4 (1.38%) Scala
12 3 (1.03%) Bash
13 2 (0.69%) Bicep
13 2 (0.69%) Cypher
13 2 (0.69%) PromQL
13 2 (0.69%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 77 (26.55%) Security Cleared
2 60 (20.69%) 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%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.72%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.72%) DV Cleared
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 81 (27.93%) Docker
2 9 (3.10%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 59 (20.34%) Kubernetes
2 39 (13.45%) 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 21 (7.24%) Microsoft
2 17 (5.86%) Salesforce
3 13 (4.48%) Atlassian
4 12 (4.14%) Google
5 11 (3.79%) Jaspersoft
6 8 (2.76%) Checkmarx
6 8 (2.76%) Oracle
7 7 (2.41%) Conga
7 7 (2.41%) GoCardless
8 5 (1.72%) Dynatrace
9 4 (1.38%) ServiceNow
9 4 (1.38%) Splunk
10 3 (1.03%) CA Agile Central
10 3 (1.03%) Databricks
10 3 (1.03%) Guidewire
10 3 (1.03%) OpenAI
10 3 (1.03%) OpenLink
11 2 (0.69%) Bloomberg
11 2 (0.69%) IBM
11 2 (0.69%) Sybase