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 22 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 338 303 266
Rank change year-on-year -35 -37 -40
Contract jobs citing BDD 297 215 307
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.66% 0.79% 0.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.78% 0.87% 1.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 174 151 233
10th Percentile £313 £353 £363
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £461 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.10% -6.82% -8.33%
75th Percentile £552 £646 £650
90th Percentile £696 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £463 £500 £540
% change year-on-year -7.50% -7.41% -8.28%
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 38,278 24,745 30,322
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.32% 90.65% 85.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,038 15,865 19,799
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £645
90th Percentile £737 £738 £751
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,361 1,324 1,984
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.23 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.95 £17.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £69.50 £53.56 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £74.31
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%

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 22 July 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 22 July 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 -75 113 £488 -17.37% 30
North of England -27 86 £453 -0.44% 15
Midlands -15 53 £425 -7.86% 12
West Midlands -16 52 £425 -8.11% 6
North West -17 44 £438 +7.76% 9
Yorkshire -38 27 £620 +18.69% 3
North East -22 21 £450 +7.14% 4
South West -31 19 £525 +23.53% 4
South East -68 18 £358 -10.50% 14
East of England -13 8 £510 - 2
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 45 (15.15%) Confluence
2 4 (1.35%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.67%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.67%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.34%) Apache
4 1 (0.34%) Camunda
4 1 (0.34%) CMS
4 1 (0.34%) Headless CMS
4 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (1.01%) Notion
2 2 (0.67%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.34%) Mingle
3 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.69%) Payment Gateway
2 7 (2.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (1.01%) Findur
3 3 (1.01%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 102 (34.34%) AWS
2 94 (31.65%) Azure
3 71 (23.91%) GitHub
4 44 (14.81%) Azure DevOps
5 38 (12.79%) GCP
5 38 (12.79%) GitHub Actions
6 25 (8.42%) Serverless
7 24 (8.08%) Amazon SQS
8 22 (7.41%) Amazon EC2
9 20 (6.73%) Amazon S3
10 18 (6.06%) AWS Lambda
11 17 (5.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 12 (4.04%) AWS KMS
12 12 (4.04%) Route 53
13 11 (3.70%) BrowserStack
14 8 (2.69%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (2.69%) Power Automate
15 7 (2.36%) Dynamics 365
16 6 (2.02%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 5 (1.68%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.36%) RTP
1 7 (2.36%) Wireshark
2 6 (2.02%) 3GPP
3 3 (1.01%) DSL
3 3 (1.01%) Internet
3 3 (1.01%) WAN
4 2 (0.67%) Firewall
4 2 (0.67%) NaaS
5 1 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
5 1 (0.34%) HTTP
5 1 (0.34%) iSCSI
5 1 (0.34%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (16.84%) PostgreSQL
2 48 (16.16%) MongoDB
3 19 (6.40%) DynamoDB
4 18 (6.06%) SQL Server
5 17 (5.72%) Amazon RDS
6 14 (4.71%) NoSQL
7 12 (4.04%) Amazon Aurora
8 10 (3.37%) Relational Database
9 6 (2.02%) Oracle Database
10 5 (1.68%) Couchbase
11 4 (1.35%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (1.01%) Apache Iceberg
12 3 (1.01%) BigQuery
12 3 (1.01%) Data Lake
12 3 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
12 3 (1.01%) MySQL
13 2 (0.67%) Db2
13 2 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
13 2 (0.67%) InfluxDB
13 2 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 102 (34.34%) Cucumber
2 87 (29.29%) Git
3 84 (28.28%) Selenium
4 77 (25.93%) Jenkins
5 62 (20.88%) JUnit
6 61 (20.54%) JIRA
7 55 (18.52%) GitLab
8 40 (13.47%) Mockito
8 40 (13.47%) REST Assured
8 40 (13.47%) WebDriver
9 34 (11.45%) Postman
10 29 (9.76%) SonarQube
11 24 (8.08%) JMeter
12 21 (7.07%) Cypress.io
13 20 (6.73%) SpecFlow
14 19 (6.40%) Maven
15 18 (6.06%) Gatling
16 17 (5.72%) TeamCity
17 12 (4.04%) DbUnit
18 11 (3.70%) Bitbucket
General
1 83 (27.95%) Social Skills
2 59 (19.87%) Public Sector
3 56 (18.86%) Finance
4 43 (14.48%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (9.09%) Banking
6 10 (3.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (3.37%) Organisational Skills
7 9 (3.03%) Retail
8 7 (2.36%) Military
9 5 (1.68%) Aviation
9 5 (1.68%) Fire and Rescue
9 5 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.68%) Police
10 3 (1.01%) Automotive
10 3 (1.01%) Billing
10 3 (1.01%) Front Office
10 3 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.67%) Law
11 2 (0.67%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.67%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 89 (29.97%) Developer
2 69 (23.23%) Senior
3 66 (22.22%) Java Developer
4 53 (17.85%) Test Engineer
5 41 (13.80%) Lead
6 31 (10.44%) Software Engineer
7 30 (10.10%) Test Automation Engineer
8 25 (8.42%) Senior Developer
9 24 (8.08%) Tester
10 23 (7.74%) Senior Java Developer
11 20 (6.73%) Test Leader
12 19 (6.40%) Automation Tester
13 18 (6.06%) Analyst
14 17 (5.72%) Java Engineer
15 12 (4.04%) Senior Software Engineer
16 11 (3.70%) Automation Test Lead
16 11 (3.70%) Senior Tester
17 10 (3.37%) Architect
17 10 (3.37%) QA Engineer
17 10 (3.37%) Salesforce Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (25.93%) Spring
2 60 (20.20%) Spring Boot
3 58 (19.53%) Playwright
4 57 (19.19%) Kafka
5 55 (18.52%) REST
6 41 (13.80%) Gherkin
7 36 (12.12%) RESTful
8 33 (11.11%) .NET
9 29 (9.76%) AngularJS
10 28 (9.43%) ActiveMQ
11 27 (9.09%) WireMock
12 25 (8.42%) Node.js
13 23 (7.74%) React
13 23 (7.74%) SOAP
14 19 (6.40%) Spring Cloud
15 17 (5.72%) JAX-RS
15 17 (5.72%) Web Services
16 16 (5.39%) JPA
17 15 (5.05%) Hibernate
18 14 (4.71%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 39 (13.13%) Distributed Systems
2 28 (9.43%) Cloud Native
3 25 (8.42%) Product Ownership
4 16 (5.39%) Distributed Architecture
5 15 (5.05%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.02%) Onboarding
8 5 (1.68%) Mobile App
8 5 (1.68%) Robotics
8 5 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (1.68%) Taxonomies
8 5 (1.68%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.35%) Distributed Applications
9 4 (1.35%) Management Information System
10 3 (1.01%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.01%) Equities
10 3 (1.01%) Fixed Income
11 2 (0.67%) PKI
11 2 (0.67%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 46 (15.49%) Linux
2 22 (7.41%) Unix
3 12 (4.04%) Mac OS X
4 7 (2.36%) Android
4 7 (2.36%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.01%) Windows
6 2 (0.67%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.67%) VMS
7 1 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 202 (68.01%) Agile
2 189 (63.64%) TDD
3 180 (60.61%) CI/CD
4 173 (58.25%) Test Automation
5 124 (41.75%) Microservices
6 111 (37.37%) DevOps
7 67 (22.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 63 (21.21%) Scrum
9 62 (20.88%) Test Strategy
10 59 (19.87%) API Testing
10 59 (19.87%) Problem-Solving
11 54 (18.18%) Software Engineering
12 43 (14.48%) Continuous Integration
12 43 (14.48%) Mentoring
13 42 (14.14%) AI
13 42 (14.14%) Observability
14 39 (13.13%) Stakeholder Management
15 38 (12.79%) Kanban
16 35 (11.78%) SDLC
17 33 (11.11%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 169 (56.90%) Java
2 71 (23.91%) SQL
3 52 (17.51%) C#
4 51 (17.17%) Python
5 49 (16.50%) JavaScript
6 24 (8.08%) TypeScript
7 8 (2.69%) Kotlin
8 7 (2.36%) Groovy
9 6 (2.02%) Apex Code
9 6 (2.02%) T-SQL
10 5 (1.68%) Go
11 4 (1.35%) C++
11 4 (1.35%) R
11 4 (1.35%) Ruby
12 3 (1.01%) Scala
13 2 (0.67%) Bash
13 2 (0.67%) Bicep
13 2 (0.67%) Cypher
13 2 (0.67%) PromQL
13 2 (0.67%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 78 (26.26%) Security Cleared
2 61 (20.54%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.07%) Degree
4 13 (4.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (3.70%) ISTQB
6 10 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (2.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (1.68%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.68%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.68%) DV Cleared
9 4 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (1.01%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.34%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (21.89%) QA
2 37 (12.46%) Accessibility
3 16 (5.39%) WCAG
4 9 (3.03%) GDPR
5 2 (0.67%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.67%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.34%) SEPA
6 1 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 85 (28.62%) Docker
2 9 (3.03%) Postfix
3 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 64 (21.55%) Kubernetes
2 43 (14.48%) Grafana
3 35 (11.78%) Prometheus
4 27 (9.09%) Terraform
5 7 (2.36%) Ansible
6 4 (1.35%) Kibana
7 3 (1.01%) Istio
8 2 (0.67%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.67%) Argo
8 2 (0.67%) Consul
8 2 (0.67%) Rancher
8 2 (0.67%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.34%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.34%) EMC VPLEX
9 1 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 19 (6.40%) Salesforce
2 16 (5.39%) Microsoft
3 15 (5.05%) Oracle
4 14 (4.71%) Atlassian
5 13 (4.38%) Google
6 11 (3.70%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (2.69%) Checkmarx
7 8 (2.69%) Splunk
8 7 (2.36%) Conga
8 7 (2.36%) GoCardless
9 5 (1.68%) Dynatrace
10 4 (1.35%) ServiceNow
11 3 (1.01%) CA Agile Central
11 3 (1.01%) Guidewire
11 3 (1.01%) OpenAI
11 3 (1.01%) OpenLink
11 3 (1.01%) Sybase
11 3 (1.01%) Veracode
12 2 (0.67%) Amdocs
12 2 (0.67%) Bloomberg