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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 376 267 270
Rank change year-on-year -109 +3 -25
Contract jobs citing BDD 329 323 327
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.99% 0.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.71% 1.09% 1.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 216 214
10th Percentile £306 £361 £352
25th Percentile £400 £420 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £504 £516
Median % change year-on-year -10.65% -2.42% -6.14%
75th Percentile £538 £595 £623
90th Percentile £650 £700 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £475 £463
% change year-on-year -7.89% +2.70% -7.96%
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 46,309 29,588 32,312
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 90.49% 85.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,063 18,372 19,750
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,189 1,818 1,403
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.25 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%

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 23 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 23 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 -85 275 £450 -13.42% 251
UK excluding London -97 171 £438 -7.89% 173
London -72 123 £500 -9.09% 107
Work from Home -68 92 £475 -5.00% 136
North of England -88 71 £438 -16.67% 59
Midlands -19 44 £438 -4.89% 33
West Midlands -8 43 £438 -12.50% 22
Yorkshire -55 29 £416 -24.45% 16
North West -49 28 £438 +3.31% 29
Scotland -20 21 £470 +1.62% 16
North East -37 18 £450 -7.69% 14
South East -69 16 £275 -4.51% 32
South West -37 13 £513 +24.24% 14
East of England -26 5 £570 +52.00% 7
Wales -10 4 £531 +41.67% 7
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 6

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 29 (8.81%) Confluence
2 4 (1.22%) Apache
2 4 (1.22%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.91%) CMS
3 3 (0.91%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.91%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.30%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (0.91%) Notion
2 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.61%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 11 (3.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.43%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.91%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 117 (35.56%) AWS
2 104 (31.61%) Azure
3 89 (27.05%) GitHub
4 44 (13.37%) Azure DevOps
5 41 (12.46%) GitHub Actions
6 33 (10.03%) GCP
7 27 (8.21%) Serverless
8 24 (7.29%) GitHub Copilot
9 20 (6.08%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.17%) Amazon SQS
10 17 (5.17%) AWS Lambda
11 16 (4.86%) Amazon EC2
12 14 (4.26%) Anthropic Claude
13 13 (3.95%) ChatGPT
13 13 (3.95%) Dynamics 365
13 13 (3.95%) Power Automate
14 11 (3.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 10 (3.04%) Power Platform
16 9 (2.74%) AWS KMS
16 9 (2.74%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.13%) RTP
1 7 (2.13%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.82%) 3GPP
3 5 (1.52%) Internet
4 2 (0.61%) DNS
4 2 (0.61%) DSL
4 2 (0.61%) Firewall
4 2 (0.61%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (16.11%) MongoDB
2 29 (8.81%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (7.29%) NoSQL
4 21 (6.38%) Relational Database
5 19 (5.78%) SQL Server
6 14 (4.26%) Db2
7 13 (3.95%) Amazon RDS
8 12 (3.65%) DynamoDB
9 11 (3.34%) Metadata
10 10 (3.04%) Amazon Aurora
11 9 (2.74%) Data Lake
12 8 (2.43%) MySQL
13 7 (2.13%) Power BI
14 6 (1.82%) BigQuery
14 6 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
15 5 (1.52%) Couchbase
15 5 (1.52%) Tableau
16 3 (0.91%) Big Data
16 3 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
16 3 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 124 (37.69%) Cucumber
2 102 (31.00%) Git
3 99 (30.09%) Selenium
4 74 (22.49%) Jenkins
5 61 (18.54%) GitLab
5 61 (18.54%) JUnit
6 48 (14.59%) REST Assured
7 46 (13.98%) JIRA
7 46 (13.98%) Postman
8 31 (9.42%) Mockito
8 31 (9.42%) SonarQube
8 31 (9.42%) WebDriver
9 28 (8.51%) Cypress.io
9 28 (8.51%) Gatling
10 22 (6.69%) Maven
11 20 (6.08%) SpecFlow
12 14 (4.26%) JMeter
13 13 (3.95%) TeamCity
14 12 (3.65%) Gradle
15 9 (2.74%) SoapUI
General
1 119 (36.17%) Social Skills
2 76 (23.10%) Finance
3 62 (18.84%) Public Sector
4 57 (17.33%) Analytical Skills
5 49 (14.89%) Banking
6 20 (6.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (4.26%) Front Office
8 9 (2.74%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.13%) Military
9 7 (2.13%) Retail
10 5 (1.52%) Aviation
10 5 (1.52%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.52%) Police
11 4 (1.22%) Marketing
11 4 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.91%) Legal Technology
12 3 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.61%) Law
13 2 (0.61%) Local Government
14 1 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 95 (28.88%) Developer
2 75 (22.80%) Senior
3 56 (17.02%) Java Developer
3 56 (17.02%) Test Engineer
4 37 (11.25%) Software Engineer
5 31 (9.42%) Test Automation Engineer
6 29 (8.81%) Senior Developer
7 28 (8.51%) Lead
8 23 (6.99%) Analyst
9 19 (5.78%) Java Engineer
10 18 (5.47%) Senior Java Developer
11 16 (4.86%) Quality Engineer
12 14 (4.26%) QA Engineer
12 14 (4.26%) Test Leader
13 13 (3.95%) Test Analyst
13 13 (3.95%) Tester
14 12 (3.65%) Architect
14 12 (3.65%) Senior Software Engineer
14 12 (3.65%) Senior Test Engineer
15 11 (3.34%) Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (21.88%) Spring
2 71 (21.58%) Playwright
3 63 (19.15%) REST
4 61 (18.54%) Spring Boot
5 59 (17.93%) Gherkin
6 58 (17.63%) Kafka
7 41 (12.46%) RESTful
8 31 (9.42%) .NET
9 27 (8.21%) React
10 25 (7.60%) Node.js
11 24 (7.29%) Terraform
11 24 (7.29%) WireMock
12 21 (6.38%) ActiveMQ
12 21 (6.38%) AngularJS
13 19 (5.78%) SOAP
14 18 (5.47%) HTML
15 14 (4.26%) JAX-RS
15 14 (4.26%) JPA
15 14 (4.26%) pytest
15 14 (4.26%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 36 (10.94%) Product Ownership
2 29 (8.81%) Cloud Native
3 26 (7.90%) Distributed Systems
4 19 (5.78%) Enterprise Software
5 13 (3.95%) Equity Derivative
5 13 (3.95%) Legacy Systems
6 11 (3.34%) Onboarding
7 9 (2.74%) Derivative
8 8 (2.43%) Management Information System
8 8 (2.43%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (2.13%) AI Agents
9 7 (2.13%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.52%) NHS
10 5 (1.52%) Robotics
10 5 (1.52%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 5 (1.52%) Taxonomies
11 4 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.22%) Distributed Architecture
12 3 (0.91%) Legacy Applications
12 3 (0.91%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 47 (14.29%) Linux
2 25 (7.60%) Unix
3 6 (1.82%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.52%) Android
4 5 (1.52%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.91%) Windows
6 2 (0.61%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.30%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 226 (68.69%) Agile
2 219 (66.57%) CI/CD
3 213 (64.74%) TDD
4 205 (62.31%) Test Automation
5 115 (34.95%) DevOps
5 115 (34.95%) Microservices
6 83 (25.23%) Scrum
7 75 (22.80%) AI
8 74 (22.49%) Problem-Solving
9 71 (21.58%) Software Engineering
10 65 (19.76%) Continuous Improvement
10 65 (19.76%) Test Strategy
11 63 (19.15%) API Testing
12 57 (17.33%) Software Testing
13 56 (17.02%) Stakeholder Management
14 47 (14.29%) SDLC
15 44 (13.37%) Continuous Integration
16 42 (12.77%) Integration Testing
17 40 (12.16%) Containerisation
18 38 (11.55%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 203 (61.70%) Java
2 86 (26.14%) SQL
3 81 (24.62%) Python
4 67 (20.36%) JavaScript
5 58 (17.63%) C#
6 35 (10.64%) TypeScript
7 13 (3.95%) Bash
8 12 (3.65%) Ruby
9 9 (2.74%) C++
10 7 (2.13%) Apex Code
10 7 (2.13%) Groovy
10 7 (2.13%) Scala
11 6 (1.82%) Kotlin
11 6 (1.82%) R
12 5 (1.52%) Go
13 4 (1.22%) Perl
14 3 (0.91%) Shell Script
14 3 (0.91%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.61%) Cypher
15 2 (0.61%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 78 (23.71%) Security Cleared
2 63 (19.15%) SC Cleared
3 28 (8.51%) BPSS Clearance
4 24 (7.29%) Degree
5 21 (6.38%) ISTQB
6 18 (5.47%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (3.34%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.74%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 8 (2.43%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (1.82%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.91%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.91%) CSPO
12 2 (0.61%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.61%) ISEB
13 1 (0.30%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 1 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
13 1 (0.30%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (25.84%) QA
2 61 (18.54%) Accessibility
3 39 (11.85%) WCAG
4 16 (4.86%) GDPR
5 15 (4.56%) Data Quality
6 4 (1.22%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.61%) SEPA
8 1 (0.30%) EMIR
8 1 (0.30%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.30%) MiFID
8 1 (0.30%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 85 (25.84%) Docker
2 5 (1.52%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 69 (20.97%) Kubernetes
2 20 (6.08%) Grafana
3 15 (4.56%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.82%) Ansible
5 5 (1.52%) Kibana
6 3 (0.91%) Istio
7 2 (0.61%) Argo
7 2 (0.61%) Consul
7 2 (0.61%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.30%) Control-M
8 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 30 (9.12%) Microsoft
2 15 (4.56%) IBM
2 15 (4.56%) Salesforce
2 15 (4.56%) Sybase
3 14 (4.26%) Oracle
4 13 (3.95%) Databricks
4 13 (3.95%) Google
5 8 (2.43%) Conga
5 8 (2.43%) GoCardless
6 7 (2.13%) Atlassian
7 6 (1.82%) Jaspersoft
7 6 (1.82%) OpenAI
8 5 (1.52%) Checkmarx
8 5 (1.52%) Splunk
9 4 (1.22%) ION Trading
10 3 (0.91%) CA Agile Central
10 3 (0.91%) Guidewire
11 2 (0.61%) FactSet
11 2 (0.61%) HP
11 2 (0.61%) Solace