BDD Contract Job Trends

Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring BDD skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 25 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 353 293 281
Rank change year-on-year -60 -12 -109
Contract jobs citing BDD 295 254 339
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.86% 0.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.75% 0.95% 0.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 167 161 248
10th Percentile £347 £375 £343
25th Percentile £400 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £513 £513
Median % change year-on-year -8.29% - -14.58%
75th Percentile £559 £656 £625
90th Percentile £680 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -6.20% - -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
Median hourly rate - - £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £56.25
% change year-on-year - - -22.41%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 39,506 26,799 37,659
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.73% 90.79% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,946 17,322 24,335
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% -0.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £487 £500
% change year-on-year -0.36% -2.65% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,360 1,068 2,432
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.60% -16.94% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.86 £28.00 £35.58
% change year-on-year +49.48% -21.29% -4.62%

BDD
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing BDD relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

BDD job vacancy trend in the UK

BDD
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BDD.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BDD

BDD
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing BDD over the 6 months to 25 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for BDD in the UK

BDD
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BDD.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing BDD

BDD
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing BDD within the UK over the 6 months to 25 April 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
England -67 251 £475 -9.52% 90
UK excluding London -30 163 £469 -6.20% 79
London -71 110 £475 -19.15% 27
Work from Home -18 81 £425 -15.00% 82
North of England -42 80 £481 -3.75% 18
North West -11 40 £431 +1.17% 10
West Midlands -37 32 £425 -11.69% 5
Midlands -38 32 £425 -11.69% 9
Yorkshire -59 32 £550 +5.82% 5
Scotland +19 20 £400 - 3
South East -72 11 £358 -28.40% 31
North East -18 10 £413 +5.77% 3
South West -37 10 £525 -2.33% 8
East of England -32 8 £510 - 3
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 5
Wales -9 1 £375 - 2

BDD
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 36 (12.20%) Confluence
2 4 (1.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.02%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.68%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.34%) Camunda
5 1 (0.34%) CMS
5 1 (0.34%) nginx
5 1 (0.34%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.68%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.34%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 3 (1.02%) Findur
2 2 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.68%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.34%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 104 (35.25%) AWS
2 84 (28.47%) Azure
3 65 (22.03%) GitHub
4 44 (14.92%) GCP
5 35 (11.86%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (10.17%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (8.14%) Serverless
8 20 (6.78%) Amazon S3
9 18 (6.10%) AWS Lambda
10 15 (5.08%) Amazon EC2
11 14 (4.75%) Amazon SQS
12 13 (4.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 13 (4.41%) BrowserStack
13 11 (3.73%) SaaS
14 9 (3.05%) AWS KMS
14 9 (3.05%) Route 53
15 8 (2.71%) ChatGPT
16 7 (2.37%) Anthropic Claude
16 7 (2.37%) GitHub Copilot
17 6 (2.03%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.69%) Cisco IPT
2 3 (1.02%) 3GPP
2 3 (1.02%) HTTP
2 3 (1.02%) RTP
2 3 (1.02%) WAN
2 3 (1.02%) Wireshark
3 2 (0.68%) NaaS
4 1 (0.34%) DSL
4 1 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.34%) FTP
4 1 (0.34%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.34%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (13.56%) PostgreSQL
2 37 (12.54%) MongoDB
3 18 (6.10%) Relational Database
4 16 (5.42%) SQL Server
5 15 (5.08%) Amazon RDS
5 15 (5.08%) MySQL
6 14 (4.75%) DynamoDB
7 12 (4.07%) Amazon Aurora
8 10 (3.39%) Oracle Database
9 9 (3.05%) DB2
10 8 (2.71%) Metadata
11 7 (2.37%) Data Lake
12 6 (2.03%) NoSQL
13 3 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
13 3 (1.02%) Delta Lake
13 3 (1.02%) MariaDB
14 2 (0.68%) Flink
14 2 (0.68%) InfluxDB
14 2 (0.68%) Power BI
14 2 (0.68%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 100 (33.90%) Cucumber
2 85 (28.81%) Git
3 79 (26.78%) Jenkins
4 77 (26.10%) Selenium
5 65 (22.03%) JIRA
6 59 (20.00%) GitLab
7 54 (18.31%) JUnit
8 39 (13.22%) Postman
9 33 (11.19%) WebDriver
10 31 (10.51%) Mockito
11 28 (9.49%) SonarQube
12 25 (8.47%) REST Assured
13 24 (8.14%) JMeter
14 18 (6.10%) Cypress.io
15 15 (5.08%) Maven
16 12 (4.07%) TeamCity
17 11 (3.73%) Bitbucket
18 10 (3.39%) Gatling
18 10 (3.39%) SpecFlow
19 9 (3.05%) DbUnit
General
1 74 (25.08%) Social Skills
2 64 (21.69%) Finance
3 52 (17.63%) Public Sector
4 32 (10.85%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (8.47%) Banking
6 8 (2.71%) Front Office
6 8 (2.71%) Organisational Skills
7 6 (2.03%) Investment Banking
7 6 (2.03%) Legal
8 5 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.36%) Electronics
9 4 (1.36%) Military
10 3 (1.02%) Aviation
10 3 (1.02%) Billing
10 3 (1.02%) Fire and Rescue
10 3 (1.02%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.02%) Police
10 3 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.68%) Automotive
11 2 (0.68%) Retail
Job Titles
1 98 (33.22%) Developer
2 63 (21.36%) Java Developer
3 47 (15.93%) Senior
3 47 (15.93%) Test Engineer
4 39 (13.22%) Lead
5 29 (9.83%) Software Engineer
6 27 (9.15%) Test Automation Engineer
7 23 (7.80%) Tester
8 18 (6.10%) Automation Tester
9 17 (5.76%) Senior Developer
10 16 (5.42%) Senior Java Developer
10 16 (5.42%) Test Leader
11 15 (5.08%) Java Engineer
12 11 (3.73%) Analyst
12 11 (3.73%) Automation Test Lead
12 11 (3.73%) Lead Test Engineer
12 11 (3.73%) QA Engineer
13 10 (3.39%) Automation Engineer
13 10 (3.39%) Senior Automation Tester
13 10 (3.39%) Senior Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (26.10%) Spring
2 61 (20.68%) Spring Boot
3 50 (16.95%) REST
4 41 (13.90%) Playwright
5 39 (13.22%) Gherkin
5 39 (13.22%) RESTful
6 36 (12.20%) Kafka
7 34 (11.53%) Node.js
8 31 (10.51%) AngularJS
9 28 (9.49%) React
10 26 (8.81%) .NET
11 23 (7.80%) WireMock
12 21 (7.12%) ActiveMQ
13 17 (5.76%) Spring Cloud
14 16 (5.42%) Web Services
15 15 (5.08%) JAX-RS
16 14 (4.75%) SOAP
17 13 (4.41%) Jest
18 12 (4.07%) CSS
18 12 (4.07%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.17%) Product Ownership
2 29 (9.83%) Distributed Systems
3 27 (9.15%) Cloud Native
4 15 (5.08%) Distributed Architecture
5 10 (3.39%) Mobile App
6 8 (2.71%) Equity Derivative
7 7 (2.37%) Derivative
8 5 (1.69%) Client/Server
8 5 (1.69%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.36%) Distributed Applications
9 4 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.36%) Public Cloud
10 3 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.02%) Robotics
11 2 (0.68%) AS400
11 2 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.68%) iSeries
11 2 (0.68%) NHS
11 2 (0.68%) Private Cloud
11 2 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 41 (13.90%) Linux
2 17 (5.76%) Unix
3 11 (3.73%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.02%) VMS
5 2 (0.68%) Android
5 2 (0.68%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.68%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.68%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (62.03%) TDD
2 179 (60.68%) Test Automation
3 175 (59.32%) Agile
4 164 (55.59%) CI/CD
5 116 (39.32%) Microservices
6 100 (33.90%) DevOps
7 61 (20.68%) Problem-Solving
8 59 (20.00%) API Testing
9 58 (19.66%) Test Strategy
10 56 (18.98%) Continuous Improvement
11 53 (17.97%) Scrum
12 48 (16.27%) Software Engineering
13 42 (14.24%) SDLC
14 40 (13.56%) Containerisation
15 34 (11.53%) AI
16 33 (11.19%) Mentoring
17 31 (10.51%) End-to-End Testing
17 31 (10.51%) Observability
18 30 (10.17%) Kanban
19 29 (9.83%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 183 (62.03%) Java
2 69 (23.39%) SQL
3 68 (23.05%) Python
4 50 (16.95%) JavaScript
5 34 (11.53%) C#
6 33 (11.19%) TypeScript
7 13 (4.41%) C++
8 11 (3.73%) Kotlin
9 8 (2.71%) Ruby
10 7 (2.37%) PHP
11 5 (1.69%) Go
12 3 (1.02%) Groovy
12 3 (1.02%) JSX
12 3 (1.02%) Perl
12 3 (1.02%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.68%) Scala
14 1 (0.34%) Bash
14 1 (0.34%) Swift
14 1 (0.34%) VBScript
14 1 (0.34%) XPath
Qualifications
1 75 (25.42%) Security Cleared
2 64 (21.69%) SC Cleared
3 15 (5.08%) Degree
4 12 (4.07%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.03%) ISTQB
7 5 (1.69%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.36%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.68%) ISEB
10 1 (0.34%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.34%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (20.34%) QA
2 28 (9.49%) Accessibility
3 9 (3.05%) Data Quality
4 6 (2.03%) GDPR
5 5 (1.69%) PERC
5 5 (1.69%) WCAG
6 2 (0.68%) HL7
7 1 (0.34%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 74 (25.08%) Docker
2 8 (2.71%) Postfix
3 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 60 (20.34%) Kubernetes
2 35 (11.86%) Grafana
3 29 (9.83%) Prometheus
4 21 (7.12%) Terraform
5 3 (1.02%) Ansible
5 3 (1.02%) Rancher
6 2 (0.68%) Amdocs OSS
6 2 (0.68%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.34%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.34%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.34%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.34%) Kibana
Vendors
1 20 (6.78%) Oracle
2 13 (4.41%) Atlassian
3 12 (4.07%) Google
4 10 (3.39%) ServiceNow
4 10 (3.39%) Splunk
5 9 (3.05%) Jaspersoft
5 9 (3.05%) Sybase
6 8 (2.71%) Checkmarx
6 8 (2.71%) Salesforce
7 7 (2.37%) Databricks
7 7 (2.37%) IBM
8 5 (1.69%) Microsoft
9 4 (1.36%) Adobe
9 4 (1.36%) Dynatrace
9 4 (1.36%) Veracode
10 3 (1.02%) OpenLink
11 2 (0.68%) Amdocs
11 2 (0.68%) Bloomberg
11 2 (0.68%) Red Hat
11 2 (0.68%) VMware