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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 349 304 249
Rank change year-on-year -45 -55 -12
Contract jobs citing BDD 295 210 320
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.65% 0.76% 0.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.76% 0.84% 1.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 176 149 242
10th Percentile £306 £347 £363
25th Percentile £398 £413 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £461 £508 £540
Median % change year-on-year -9.21% -6.02% -10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £643 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £463 £500 £533
% change year-on-year -7.50% -6.19% -9.28%
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 - - -23.73%

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 38,823 25,045 28,976
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.31% 90.74% 85.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,257 16,045 18,963
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
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 £523 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,475 1,380 1,752
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.87 £17.80
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.03
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -40.16% -1.11%
75th Percentile £68.75 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 1 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 1 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 -70 113 £494 -16.31% 33
North of England -23 82 £453 +3.54% 24
Midlands -10 56 £425 -7.86% 16
West Midlands -20 55 £425 -8.11% 9
North West -25 41 £475 +15.85% 16
Yorkshire -27 25 £660 +26.98% 5
North East -26 20 £450 +7.14% 4
South East -70 20 £323 -7.86% 19
South West -37 15 £525 +27.27% 4
East of England -11 8 £510 +36.00% 4
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 (15.25%) Confluence
2 4 (1.36%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.02%) CMS
3 3 (1.02%) Headless CMS
4 2 (0.68%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.34%) Apache
5 1 (0.34%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (1.02%) Notion
2 2 (0.68%) 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 9 (3.05%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.71%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (1.02%) Findur
3 3 (1.02%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 101 (34.24%) AWS
2 100 (33.90%) Azure
3 70 (23.73%) GitHub
4 46 (15.59%) Azure DevOps
5 39 (13.22%) GCP
6 38 (12.88%) GitHub Actions
7 25 (8.47%) Serverless
8 24 (8.14%) Amazon SQS
9 22 (7.46%) Amazon EC2
10 19 (6.44%) Amazon S3
11 17 (5.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 16 (5.42%) AWS Lambda
13 12 (4.07%) AWS KMS
13 12 (4.07%) Route 53
14 10 (3.39%) Power Automate
15 9 (3.05%) Dynamics 365
16 8 (2.71%) Amazon EKS
17 7 (2.37%) BrowserStack
18 6 (2.03%) Azure Functions
18 6 (2.03%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.37%) RTP
1 7 (2.37%) Wireshark
2 6 (2.03%) 3GPP
3 3 (1.02%) DSL
3 3 (1.02%) Internet
3 3 (1.02%) WAN
4 2 (0.68%) Firewall
4 2 (0.68%) 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 49 (16.61%) PostgreSQL
2 45 (15.25%) MongoDB
3 20 (6.78%) SQL Server
4 19 (6.44%) DynamoDB
5 17 (5.76%) Amazon RDS
6 13 (4.41%) NoSQL
7 12 (4.07%) Amazon Aurora
8 6 (2.03%) Relational Database
9 5 (1.69%) Couchbase
10 4 (1.36%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (1.02%) Apache Iceberg
11 3 (1.02%) BigQuery
11 3 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (1.02%) MySQL
12 2 (0.68%) Db2
12 2 (0.68%) Flink
12 2 (0.68%) InfluxDB
12 2 (0.68%) Power BI
12 2 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (0.68%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 107 (36.27%) Cucumber
2 93 (31.53%) Git
3 85 (28.81%) Selenium
4 70 (23.73%) Jenkins
5 68 (23.05%) JUnit
6 62 (21.02%) JIRA
7 52 (17.63%) GitLab
8 41 (13.90%) WebDriver
9 39 (13.22%) Mockito
10 37 (12.54%) REST Assured
11 36 (12.20%) Postman
12 28 (9.49%) SonarQube
13 24 (8.14%) JMeter
14 23 (7.80%) Cypress.io
15 20 (6.78%) SpecFlow
16 18 (6.10%) Gatling
16 18 (6.10%) Maven
17 17 (5.76%) TeamCity
18 12 (4.07%) DbUnit
19 11 (3.73%) jMock
General
1 86 (29.15%) Social Skills
2 62 (21.02%) Public Sector
3 56 (18.98%) Finance
4 46 (15.59%) Analytical Skills
5 28 (9.49%) Banking
6 12 (4.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (3.39%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.71%) Retail
9 7 (2.37%) Military
10 5 (1.69%) Aviation
10 5 (1.69%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.69%) Police
11 3 (1.02%) Automotive
11 3 (1.02%) Billing
11 3 (1.02%) Front Office
11 3 (1.02%) Legal Technology
11 3 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.68%) Investment Banking
12 2 (0.68%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 87 (29.49%) Developer
2 70 (23.73%) Senior
3 63 (21.36%) Java Developer
4 50 (16.95%) Test Engineer
5 38 (12.88%) Lead
6 30 (10.17%) Software Engineer
6 30 (10.17%) Test Automation Engineer
7 24 (8.14%) Tester
8 23 (7.80%) Senior Developer
9 22 (7.46%) Test Leader
10 21 (7.12%) Senior Java Developer
11 20 (6.78%) Analyst
12 19 (6.44%) Automation Tester
13 14 (4.75%) Java Engineer
14 12 (4.07%) Senior Software Engineer
15 11 (3.73%) Automation Test Lead
15 11 (3.73%) QA Engineer
15 11 (3.73%) Senior Tester
16 10 (3.39%) Architect
16 10 (3.39%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (24.07%) Spring
2 60 (20.34%) Playwright
3 59 (20.00%) REST
4 53 (17.97%) Kafka
4 53 (17.97%) Spring Boot
5 45 (15.25%) Gherkin
6 35 (11.86%) RESTful
7 34 (11.53%) .NET
8 30 (10.17%) WireMock
9 29 (9.83%) AngularJS
10 28 (9.49%) ActiveMQ
10 28 (9.49%) Node.js
11 24 (8.14%) React
12 23 (7.80%) SOAP
13 17 (5.76%) JAX-RS
14 16 (5.42%) JPA
14 16 (5.42%) Web Services
15 15 (5.08%) Hibernate
15 15 (5.08%) Spring Cloud
16 14 (4.75%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 41 (13.90%) Distributed Systems
2 27 (9.15%) Cloud Native
3 26 (8.81%) Product Ownership
4 16 (5.42%) Distributed Architecture
4 16 (5.42%) Enterprise Software
5 8 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (2.03%) Management Information System
6 6 (2.03%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.69%) Mobile App
7 5 (1.69%) Robotics
7 5 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (1.69%) Taxonomies
7 5 (1.69%) Virtual Team
8 4 (1.36%) Distributed Applications
9 3 (1.02%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.02%) Equities
9 3 (1.02%) Fixed Income
10 2 (0.68%) PKI
10 2 (0.68%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 48 (16.27%) Linux
2 22 (7.46%) Unix
3 12 (4.07%) Mac OS X
4 7 (2.37%) Android
4 7 (2.37%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.02%) Windows
6 2 (0.68%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.68%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 205 (69.49%) Agile
2 190 (64.41%) TDD
3 179 (60.68%) CI/CD
4 178 (60.34%) Test Automation
5 124 (42.03%) Microservices
6 110 (37.29%) DevOps
7 70 (23.73%) Continuous Improvement
8 66 (22.37%) Scrum
9 64 (21.69%) API Testing
10 63 (21.36%) Test Strategy
11 60 (20.34%) Problem-Solving
12 53 (17.97%) Software Engineering
13 46 (15.59%) AI
14 45 (15.25%) Continuous Integration
14 45 (15.25%) Stakeholder Management
15 44 (14.92%) Mentoring
16 38 (12.88%) Observability
17 37 (12.54%) End-to-End Testing
17 37 (12.54%) Kanban
18 36 (12.20%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 163 (55.25%) Java
2 68 (23.05%) SQL
3 54 (18.31%) C#
4 52 (17.63%) JavaScript
4 52 (17.63%) Python
5 25 (8.47%) TypeScript
6 8 (2.71%) Kotlin
7 7 (2.37%) Groovy
8 6 (2.03%) Apex Code
8 6 (2.03%) T-SQL
9 5 (1.69%) Go
9 5 (1.69%) R
10 4 (1.36%) C++
10 4 (1.36%) Ruby
10 4 (1.36%) Scala
11 3 (1.02%) Bash
12 2 (0.68%) Bicep
12 2 (0.68%) Cypher
12 2 (0.68%) PromQL
12 2 (0.68%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 76 (25.76%) Security Cleared
2 59 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.12%) Degree
4 13 (4.41%) Computer Science Degree
4 13 (4.41%) ISTQB
5 12 (4.07%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (2.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (1.69%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.69%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.69%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.02%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.34%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (23.73%) QA
2 39 (13.22%) Accessibility
3 21 (7.12%) WCAG
4 11 (3.73%) GDPR
5 2 (0.68%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.68%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.34%) SEPA
6 1 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 83 (28.14%) Docker
2 9 (3.05%) Postfix
3 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 62 (21.02%) Kubernetes
2 39 (13.22%) Grafana
3 31 (10.51%) Prometheus
4 22 (7.46%) Terraform
5 6 (2.03%) Ansible
6 5 (1.69%) Kibana
7 3 (1.02%) Istio
8 2 (0.68%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.68%) Argo
8 2 (0.68%) Consul
8 2 (0.68%) Rancher
8 2 (0.68%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.34%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.34%) EMC VPLEX
9 1 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 21 (7.12%) Microsoft
2 17 (5.76%) Salesforce
3 14 (4.75%) Atlassian
4 12 (4.07%) Google
5 11 (3.73%) Jaspersoft
6 10 (3.39%) Oracle
7 8 (2.71%) Checkmarx
8 7 (2.37%) Conga
8 7 (2.37%) GoCardless
9 5 (1.69%) Dynatrace
10 4 (1.36%) ServiceNow
10 4 (1.36%) Splunk
11 3 (1.02%) CA Agile Central
11 3 (1.02%) Databricks
11 3 (1.02%) Guidewire
11 3 (1.02%) OpenAI
11 3 (1.02%) OpenLink
11 3 (1.02%) Sybase
12 2 (0.68%) Bloomberg
12 2 (0.68%) IBM