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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 380 286 252
Rank change year-on-year -94 -34 +15
Contract jobs citing BDD 268 237 312
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.59% 0.86% 0.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.69% 0.95% 1.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 170 227
10th Percentile £306 £362 £360
25th Percentile £400 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £520 £540
Median % change year-on-year -11.69% -3.75% -10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £648 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £755
UK median daily rate £461 £500 £529
% change year-on-year -7.85% -5.48% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £45.00 - -
75th Percentile £46.88 - -
90th Percentile £48.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £85.00 -
% change year-on-year -47.06% - -

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 38,738 25,035 28,393
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.83% 90.79% 85.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,882 15,942 18,107
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,595 1,467 1,443
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.87 £18.63
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.09 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +63.39% -40.82% +2.41%

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 September 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 September 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 -75 114 £500 -9.09% 114
North of England -59 74 £450 -14.29% 35
Midlands -24 42 £425 -11.69% 18
West Midlands -19 41 £425 -15.00% 11
North West -47 33 £438 +3.67% 18
Yorkshire -46 25 £606 +10.23% 10
North East -33 20 £450 -2.17% 7
South East -68 16 £275 -12.42% 27
South West -39 12 £525 +27.27% 10
East of England -16 8 £510 +36.00% 8
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 25 (9.33%) Confluence
2 3 (1.12%) CMS
2 3 (1.12%) Headless CMS
2 3 (1.12%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.37%) Apache
3 1 (0.37%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.37%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (1.12%) Notion
2 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.75%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (3.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.99%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (1.12%) Findur
3 3 (1.12%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 85 (31.72%) AWS
1 85 (31.72%) Azure
2 66 (24.63%) GitHub
3 42 (15.67%) Azure DevOps
4 32 (11.94%) GitHub Actions
5 29 (10.82%) GCP
6 22 (8.21%) Serverless
7 16 (5.97%) Amazon SQS
8 13 (4.85%) Amazon EC2
8 13 (4.85%) Amazon S3
8 13 (4.85%) AWS Lambda
9 11 (4.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 10 (3.73%) GitHub Copilot
10 10 (3.73%) Power Automate
11 9 (3.36%) Dynamics 365
12 7 (2.61%) AWS KMS
12 7 (2.61%) Route 53
13 6 (2.24%) Azure Functions
13 6 (2.24%) OpenShift
14 5 (1.87%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.61%) RTP
1 7 (2.61%) Wireshark
2 6 (2.24%) 3GPP
3 3 (1.12%) Internet
4 2 (0.75%) DSL
4 2 (0.75%) Firewall
4 2 (0.75%) HTTP
5 1 (0.37%) NaaS
5 1 (0.37%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (13.43%) MongoDB
2 28 (10.45%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (5.60%) SQL Server
4 13 (4.85%) DynamoDB
4 13 (4.85%) NoSQL
5 11 (4.10%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (2.61%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (2.61%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.87%) Couchbase
8 3 (1.12%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (1.12%) Apache Iceberg
8 3 (1.12%) BigQuery
8 3 (1.12%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.12%) Flink
8 3 (1.12%) MySQL
9 2 (0.75%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.75%) Power BI
9 2 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (0.75%) Tableau
9 2 (0.75%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 98 (36.57%) Cucumber
2 84 (31.34%) Git
3 75 (27.99%) Selenium
4 57 (21.27%) Jenkins
4 57 (21.27%) JUnit
5 48 (17.91%) GitLab
6 41 (15.30%) JIRA
7 37 (13.81%) REST Assured
8 36 (13.43%) Postman
9 31 (11.57%) WebDriver
10 28 (10.45%) SonarQube
11 26 (9.70%) Mockito
12 22 (8.21%) Cypress.io
13 21 (7.84%) Gatling
14 17 (6.34%) SpecFlow
15 15 (5.60%) Maven
16 13 (4.85%) JMeter
16 13 (4.85%) TeamCity
17 8 (2.99%) IntelliJ
18 7 (2.61%) SoapUI
General
1 86 (32.09%) Social Skills
2 54 (20.15%) Finance
3 49 (18.28%) Public Sector
4 42 (15.67%) Analytical Skills
5 32 (11.94%) Banking
6 11 (4.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 7 (2.61%) Retail
8 5 (1.87%) Aviation
8 5 (1.87%) Fire and Rescue
8 5 (1.87%) Military
8 5 (1.87%) Police
9 3 (1.12%) Automotive
9 3 (1.12%) Front Office
9 3 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.12%) Legal Technology
9 3 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.75%) Investment Banking
10 2 (0.75%) Law
10 2 (0.75%) Local Government
10 2 (0.75%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 69 (25.75%) Developer
2 61 (22.76%) Senior
3 50 (18.66%) Java Developer
4 49 (18.28%) Test Engineer
5 32 (11.94%) Software Engineer
6 30 (11.19%) Test Automation Engineer
7 26 (9.70%) Lead
8 20 (7.46%) Java Engineer
8 20 (7.46%) Senior Developer
9 17 (6.34%) Analyst
9 17 (6.34%) Senior Java Developer
10 14 (5.22%) Test Leader
10 14 (5.22%) Tester
11 13 (4.85%) QA Engineer
12 12 (4.48%) Automation Tester
12 12 (4.48%) Quality Engineer
13 11 (4.10%) Automation Engineer
13 11 (4.10%) Senior Software Engineer
14 10 (3.73%) Test Analyst
15 9 (3.36%) Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (22.01%) Spring
2 55 (20.52%) Playwright
3 53 (19.78%) REST
4 49 (18.28%) Kafka
5 47 (17.54%) Spring Boot
6 46 (17.16%) Gherkin
7 29 (10.82%) RESTful
8 27 (10.07%) .NET
9 25 (9.33%) Terraform
10 23 (8.58%) Node.js
11 22 (8.21%) AngularJS
11 22 (8.21%) WireMock
12 21 (7.84%) React
13 18 (6.72%) SOAP
14 17 (6.34%) ActiveMQ
15 14 (5.22%) HTML
15 14 (5.22%) JSON
16 13 (4.85%) XML
17 12 (4.48%) .NET Core
17 12 (4.48%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 31 (11.57%) Distributed Systems
2 26 (9.70%) Cloud Native
2 26 (9.70%) Product Ownership
3 18 (6.72%) Enterprise Software
4 11 (4.10%) Legacy Systems
5 8 (2.99%) Distributed Architecture
6 7 (2.61%) Onboarding
7 6 (2.24%) Management Information System
8 5 (1.87%) Robotics
8 5 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (1.87%) Taxonomies
8 5 (1.87%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.49%) Mobile App
9 4 (1.49%) NHS
9 4 (1.49%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 3 (1.12%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
11 2 (0.75%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 37 (13.81%) Linux
2 17 (6.34%) Unix
3 5 (1.87%) Android
3 5 (1.87%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.49%) Mac OS X
5 3 (1.12%) Windows
6 2 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.75%) VMS
7 1 (0.37%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 187 (69.78%) Agile
2 172 (64.18%) TDD
3 167 (62.31%) CI/CD
4 163 (60.82%) Test Automation
5 98 (36.57%) DevOps
6 94 (35.07%) Microservices
7 62 (23.13%) Continuous Improvement
8 61 (22.76%) Scrum
9 56 (20.90%) Test Strategy
10 54 (20.15%) AI
10 54 (20.15%) Problem-Solving
11 53 (19.78%) API Testing
12 52 (19.40%) Software Engineering
13 41 (15.30%) Stakeholder Management
14 40 (14.93%) Software Testing
15 39 (14.55%) SDLC
16 38 (14.18%) Continuous Integration
17 37 (13.81%) Mentoring
18 32 (11.94%) End-to-End Testing
19 31 (11.57%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 160 (59.70%) Java
2 68 (25.37%) SQL
3 60 (22.39%) Python
4 47 (17.54%) JavaScript
5 45 (16.79%) C#
6 23 (8.58%) TypeScript
7 9 (3.36%) Bash
8 8 (2.99%) Ruby
9 7 (2.61%) Groovy
10 6 (2.24%) Apex Code
10 6 (2.24%) Kotlin
10 6 (2.24%) R
11 4 (1.49%) Go
12 3 (1.12%) Scala
12 3 (1.12%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.75%) Bicep
13 2 (0.75%) Cypher
13 2 (0.75%) PromQL
13 2 (0.75%) SHACL
14 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 62 (23.13%) Security Cleared
2 48 (17.91%) SC Cleared
3 17 (6.34%) Degree
4 15 (5.60%) BPSS Clearance
4 15 (5.60%) ISTQB
5 12 (4.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (2.24%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.24%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (1.12%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 2 (0.75%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.75%) ISEB
10 1 (0.37%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.37%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (25.37%) QA
2 40 (14.93%) Accessibility
3 29 (10.82%) WCAG
4 11 (4.10%) GDPR
5 3 (1.12%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.75%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.37%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.37%) SEPA
7 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 70 (26.12%) Docker
2 5 (1.87%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 56 (20.90%) Kubernetes
2 21 (7.84%) Grafana
3 16 (5.97%) Prometheus
4 7 (2.61%) Ansible
5 4 (1.49%) Kibana
6 3 (1.12%) Istio
7 2 (0.75%) Argo
7 2 (0.75%) Consul
7 2 (0.75%) Rancher
7 2 (0.75%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.37%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.37%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (8.96%) Microsoft
2 15 (5.60%) Salesforce
3 12 (4.48%) Google
4 8 (2.99%) Checkmarx
4 8 (2.99%) Oracle
5 7 (2.61%) Atlassian
5 7 (2.61%) Conga
5 7 (2.61%) GoCardless
6 6 (2.24%) Databricks
6 6 (2.24%) Jaspersoft
7 5 (1.87%) IBM
8 3 (1.12%) CA Agile Central
8 3 (1.12%) Dynatrace
8 3 (1.12%) Guidewire
8 3 (1.12%) OpenAI
8 3 (1.12%) OpenLink
8 3 (1.12%) Splunk
9 2 (0.75%) Bloomberg
9 2 (0.75%) FactSet
9 2 (0.75%) Solace