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 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 368 283 272
Rank change year-on-year -85 -11 -23
Contract jobs citing BDD 325 304 354
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.93% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 1.03% 1.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 204 244
10th Percentile £306 £363 £357
25th Percentile £400 £432 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £461 £500 £529
Median % change year-on-year -7.85% -5.48% -8.00%
75th Percentile £547 £614 £650
90th Percentile £672 £718 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £473 £498
% change year-on-year -4.76% -5.12% -4.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £82.50 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £85.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -47.06% - -
75th Percentile £46.88 £87.50 -
90th Percentile £48.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.25 - -

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 45,369 29,617 32,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.56% 90.44% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,730 18,446 20,728
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,902 1,758 1,607
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.78 £17.30 £18.82
Median hourly rate £41.09 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.39% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.88 £47.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +92.49% -47.37% +14.67%

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 1 September 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 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
England -94 268 £459 -11.69% 202
UK excluding London -58 178 £450 -4.76% 121
London -75 114 £500 -9.09% 115
Work from Home -45 97 £475 -5.00% 119
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
Scotland -15 25 £465 +0.54% 11
Yorkshire -46 25 £606 +10.23% 10
North East -33 20 £450 -2.17% 7
South East -68 16 £275 -12.42% 26
South West -39 12 £525 +27.27% 11
East of England -16 8 £510 +36.00% 8
Wales - 4 £531 - 4
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 11

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 33 (10.15%) Confluence
2 4 (1.23%) Apache
2 4 (1.23%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.92%) CMS
3 3 (0.92%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.92%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.31%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (0.92%) Notion
2 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.62%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (2.77%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.46%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.92%) Findur
3 3 (0.92%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 111 (34.15%) AWS
2 99 (30.46%) Azure
3 90 (27.69%) GitHub
4 48 (14.77%) Azure DevOps
5 43 (13.23%) GCP
6 42 (12.92%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (7.38%) Serverless
8 21 (6.46%) GitHub Copilot
9 17 (5.23%) Amazon S3
9 17 (5.23%) Amazon SQS
10 15 (4.62%) AWS Lambda
11 14 (4.31%) Amazon EC2
11 14 (4.31%) ChatGPT
12 12 (3.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 12 (3.69%) Anthropic Claude
13 10 (3.08%) Power Automate
14 9 (2.77%) Dynamics 365
14 9 (2.77%) Power Platform
15 8 (2.46%) AWS KMS
15 8 (2.46%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.15%) RTP
1 7 (2.15%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.85%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.92%) Internet
4 2 (0.62%) DSL
4 2 (0.62%) Firewall
4 2 (0.62%) HTTP
5 1 (0.31%) NaaS
5 1 (0.31%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (15.69%) MongoDB
2 29 (8.92%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (6.77%) NoSQL
4 21 (6.46%) Relational Database
5 15 (4.62%) Db2
5 15 (4.62%) SQL Server
6 13 (4.00%) DynamoDB
7 11 (3.38%) Amazon Aurora
7 11 (3.38%) Amazon RDS
7 11 (3.38%) Metadata
8 7 (2.15%) MySQL
8 7 (2.15%) Power BI
9 6 (1.85%) BigQuery
9 6 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (1.54%) Couchbase
10 5 (1.54%) Data Lake
10 5 (1.54%) Tableau
11 3 (0.92%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.92%) Flink
11 3 (0.92%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 113 (34.77%) Cucumber
2 91 (28.00%) Selenium
3 90 (27.69%) Git
4 72 (22.15%) Jenkins
5 60 (18.46%) GitLab
6 59 (18.15%) JUnit
7 48 (14.77%) JIRA
8 44 (13.54%) Postman
9 42 (12.92%) REST Assured
10 35 (10.77%) WebDriver
11 28 (8.62%) Mockito
11 28 (8.62%) SonarQube
12 26 (8.00%) Cypress.io
13 23 (7.08%) Gatling
14 20 (6.15%) SpecFlow
15 18 (5.54%) JMeter
16 17 (5.23%) Maven
17 13 (4.00%) TeamCity
18 9 (2.77%) IntelliJ
19 7 (2.15%) TestNG
General
1 109 (33.54%) Social Skills
2 73 (22.46%) Finance
3 61 (18.77%) Public Sector
4 53 (16.31%) Analytical Skills
5 43 (13.23%) Banking
6 15 (4.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (3.69%) Front Office
8 9 (2.77%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.15%) Retail
10 6 (1.85%) Military
11 5 (1.54%) Aviation
11 5 (1.54%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.54%) Police
12 3 (0.92%) Automotive
12 3 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.92%) Legal Technology
12 3 (0.92%) Marketing
12 3 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.62%) Law
Job Titles
1 99 (30.46%) Developer
2 68 (20.92%) Senior
3 61 (18.77%) Java Developer
4 55 (16.92%) Test Engineer
5 35 (10.77%) Software Engineer
6 32 (9.85%) Test Automation Engineer
7 28 (8.62%) Lead
8 23 (7.08%) Senior Developer
9 21 (6.46%) Analyst
10 20 (6.15%) Java Engineer
11 18 (5.54%) Senior Java Developer
11 18 (5.54%) Tester
12 16 (4.92%) Automation Tester
13 14 (4.31%) QA Engineer
13 14 (4.31%) Test Leader
14 12 (3.69%) Quality Engineer
14 12 (3.69%) Senior Software Engineer
15 11 (3.38%) Automation Engineer
15 11 (3.38%) Python Developer
16 10 (3.08%) Salesforce Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (22.46%) Spring
2 65 (20.00%) Playwright
3 61 (18.77%) REST
4 59 (18.15%) Spring Boot
5 57 (17.54%) Gherkin
6 53 (16.31%) Kafka
7 39 (12.00%) RESTful
8 29 (8.92%) .NET
9 26 (8.00%) Node.js
10 25 (7.69%) Terraform
11 24 (7.38%) WireMock
12 23 (7.08%) React
13 22 (6.77%) AngularJS
14 19 (5.85%) ActiveMQ
15 18 (5.54%) SOAP
16 15 (4.62%) HTML
16 15 (4.62%) JSON
17 14 (4.31%) JAX-RS
18 13 (4.00%) XML
19 12 (3.69%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 35 (10.77%) Product Ownership
2 31 (9.54%) Distributed Systems
3 29 (8.92%) Cloud Native
4 18 (5.54%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.31%) Equity Derivative
6 13 (4.00%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.08%) Derivative
8 8 (2.46%) Distributed Architecture
8 8 (2.46%) Onboarding
9 6 (1.85%) Management Information System
10 5 (1.54%) NHS
10 5 (1.54%) Robotics
10 5 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.54%) Taxonomies
10 5 (1.54%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.23%) Mobile App
11 4 (1.23%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 3 (0.92%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.92%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 43 (13.23%) Linux
2 21 (6.46%) Unix
3 5 (1.54%) Android
3 5 (1.54%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.23%) Mac OS X
5 3 (0.92%) Windows
6 2 (0.62%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.62%) VMS
7 1 (0.31%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 218 (67.08%) Agile
2 212 (65.23%) CI/CD
3 210 (64.62%) TDD
4 197 (60.62%) Test Automation
5 113 (34.77%) DevOps
6 112 (34.46%) Microservices
7 78 (24.00%) Scrum
8 69 (21.23%) Problem-Solving
9 67 (20.62%) Continuous Improvement
10 66 (20.31%) AI
11 64 (19.69%) Test Strategy
12 63 (19.38%) Software Engineering
13 59 (18.15%) API Testing
14 45 (13.85%) Software Testing
14 45 (13.85%) Stakeholder Management
15 41 (12.62%) Continuous Integration
15 41 (12.62%) Mentoring
15 41 (12.62%) SDLC
16 35 (10.77%) Pair Programming
17 34 (10.46%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 199 (61.23%) Java
2 88 (27.08%) SQL
3 79 (24.31%) Python
4 59 (18.15%) JavaScript
5 49 (15.08%) C#
6 29 (8.92%) TypeScript
7 11 (3.38%) C++
7 11 (3.38%) Ruby
8 9 (2.77%) Bash
9 8 (2.46%) Groovy
10 7 (2.15%) Apex Code
11 6 (1.85%) Kotlin
11 6 (1.85%) R
12 4 (1.23%) Go
12 4 (1.23%) Perl
13 3 (0.92%) Scala
13 3 (0.92%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.92%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.62%) Cypher
14 2 (0.62%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 76 (23.38%) Security Cleared
2 61 (18.77%) SC Cleared
3 25 (7.69%) BPSS Clearance
4 20 (6.15%) Degree
5 19 (5.85%) ISTQB
6 14 (4.31%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.77%) DV Cleared
7 9 (2.77%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 6 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.92%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.92%) CSPO
9 3 (0.92%) ISEB
9 3 (0.92%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.62%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.31%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (22.46%) QA
2 51 (15.69%) Accessibility
3 32 (9.85%) WCAG
4 16 (4.92%) Data Quality
5 14 (4.31%) GDPR
6 3 (0.92%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.31%) EMIR
7 1 (0.31%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.31%) MiFID
7 1 (0.31%) SEPA
7 1 (0.31%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.31%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 78 (24.00%) Docker
2 5 (1.54%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 65 (20.00%) Kubernetes
2 23 (7.08%) Grafana
3 17 (5.23%) Prometheus
4 7 (2.15%) Ansible
5 4 (1.23%) Kibana
6 3 (0.92%) Istio
7 2 (0.62%) Argo
7 2 (0.62%) Consul
7 2 (0.62%) Rancher
7 2 (0.62%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.31%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (7.69%) Microsoft
2 16 (4.92%) Salesforce
2 16 (4.92%) Sybase
3 15 (4.62%) Google
3 15 (4.62%) IBM
4 13 (4.00%) Oracle
5 8 (2.46%) Checkmarx
5 8 (2.46%) Conga
5 8 (2.46%) GoCardless
6 7 (2.15%) Atlassian
7 6 (1.85%) Databricks
7 6 (1.85%) Jaspersoft
8 4 (1.23%) Dynatrace
8 4 (1.23%) Splunk
9 3 (0.92%) CA Agile Central
9 3 (0.92%) Guidewire
9 3 (0.92%) OpenAI
9 3 (0.92%) OpenLink
10 2 (0.62%) FactSet
10 2 (0.62%) ServiceNow