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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 340 296 272
Rank change year-on-year -44 -24 -48
Contract jobs citing BDD 361 279 350
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.86% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.81% 0.95% 0.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 184 249
10th Percentile £316 £357 £361
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -7.41% -8.47%
75th Percentile £550 £607 £650
90th Percentile £679 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £518
% change year-on-year - -13.04% +3.50%
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 excluding London median hourly rate £46.25 - £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 44,806 29,445 35,310
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.36% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,768 18,486 22,647
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,649 1,571 2,189
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £13.06
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.44 £16.86
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.88 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £68.75 £73.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +87.50% -40.00% -1.45%

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 21 July 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 21 July 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 -22 296 £463 -9.76% 75
UK excluding London -17 214 £450 - 50
London -70 112 £488 -17.37% 30
Work from Home -38 109 £466 -6.75% 41
North of England -26 86 £453 -0.44% 15
Midlands -8 53 £425 -7.86% 12
West Midlands -14 52 £425 -8.11% 6
North West -17 44 £438 +7.76% 9
Scotland -4 31 £451 +4.64%
Yorkshire -43 27 £620 +18.69% 3
North East -28 21 £450 +7.14% 4
South West -32 19 £525 +23.53% 4
South East -77 18 £358 -10.50% 15
East of England -15 8 £510 - 2
Wales -14 2 £650 - 2
Northern Ireland - 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 53 (14.68%) Confluence
2 5 (1.39%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.11%) Apache
3 4 (1.11%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.55%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.28%) Camunda
6 1 (0.28%) CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (0.83%) Notion
2 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.28%) Mingle
3 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.22%) Payment Gateway
2 7 (1.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.83%) Findur
3 3 (0.83%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 130 (36.01%) AWS
2 111 (30.75%) Azure
3 96 (26.59%) GitHub
4 52 (14.40%) Azure DevOps
5 51 (14.13%) GCP
6 49 (13.57%) GitHub Actions
7 27 (7.48%) Serverless
8 25 (6.93%) Amazon SQS
9 24 (6.65%) Amazon S3
10 22 (6.09%) Amazon EC2
11 19 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
12 18 (4.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 14 (3.88%) ChatGPT
13 14 (3.88%) GitHub Copilot
14 13 (3.60%) AWS KMS
15 12 (3.32%) Anthropic Claude
15 12 (3.32%) BrowserStack
15 12 (3.32%) Route 53
16 10 (2.77%) Power Platform
17 8 (2.22%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.94%) RTP
1 7 (1.94%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.66%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.83%) DSL
3 3 (0.83%) Internet
3 3 (0.83%) WAN
4 2 (0.55%) Firewall
4 2 (0.55%) NaaS
5 1 (0.28%) Fibre Channel
5 1 (0.28%) HTTP
5 1 (0.28%) iSCSI
5 1 (0.28%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (17.45%) MongoDB
2 52 (14.40%) PostgreSQL
3 27 (7.48%) Relational Database
4 21 (5.82%) NoSQL
5 20 (5.54%) SQL Server
6 19 (5.26%) DynamoDB
7 17 (4.71%) Amazon RDS
8 16 (4.43%) Amazon Aurora
8 16 (4.43%) Db2
9 11 (3.05%) Metadata
10 10 (2.77%) Oracle Database
11 9 (2.49%) Data Lake
11 9 (2.49%) MySQL
12 7 (1.94%) Power BI
13 5 (1.39%) BigQuery
13 5 (1.39%) Couchbase
13 5 (1.39%) Data Warehouse
13 5 (1.39%) Tableau
14 4 (1.11%) Amazon Athena
15 3 (0.83%) Looker
Development Applications
1 118 (32.69%) Cucumber
2 101 (27.98%) Selenium
3 97 (26.87%) Git
4 95 (26.32%) Jenkins
5 71 (19.67%) GitLab
6 70 (19.39%) JIRA
7 65 (18.01%) JUnit
8 46 (12.74%) WebDriver
9 45 (12.47%) REST Assured
10 43 (11.91%) Postman
11 41 (11.36%) Mockito
12 30 (8.31%) SonarQube
13 28 (7.76%) JMeter
14 25 (6.93%) Cypress.io
15 23 (6.37%) SpecFlow
16 22 (6.09%) Maven
17 21 (5.82%) Gatling
18 18 (4.99%) TeamCity
19 12 (3.32%) DbUnit
19 12 (3.32%) Serenity BDD
General
1 102 (28.25%) Social Skills
2 78 (21.61%) Finance
3 73 (20.22%) Public Sector
4 54 (14.96%) Analytical Skills
5 41 (11.36%) Banking
6 12 (3.32%) Front Office
6 12 (3.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (2.77%) Organisational Skills
8 9 (2.49%) Retail
9 8 (2.22%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.22%) Military
10 5 (1.39%) Aviation
10 5 (1.39%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.39%) Police
11 4 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.83%) Automotive
12 3 (0.83%) Billing
12 3 (0.83%) Marketing
13 2 (0.55%) Law
Job Titles
1 119 (32.96%) Developer
2 78 (21.61%) Java Developer
3 76 (21.05%) Senior
4 61 (16.90%) Test Engineer
5 43 (11.91%) Lead
6 34 (9.42%) Test Automation Engineer
7 33 (9.14%) Software Engineer
8 28 (7.76%) Tester
9 27 (7.48%) Senior Developer
10 24 (6.65%) Senior Java Developer
11 23 (6.37%) Automation Tester
12 22 (6.09%) Analyst
13 20 (5.54%) Test Leader
14 17 (4.71%) Java Engineer
15 13 (3.60%) QA Engineer
15 13 (3.60%) Senior Software Engineer
15 13 (3.60%) Senior Tester
16 12 (3.32%) Architect
16 12 (3.32%) Automation Test Lead
17 11 (3.05%) Senior Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (25.76%) Spring
2 73 (20.22%) Spring Boot
3 69 (19.11%) Playwright
4 64 (17.73%) REST
5 61 (16.90%) Kafka
6 52 (14.40%) Gherkin
7 46 (12.74%) RESTful
8 36 (9.97%) .NET
9 30 (8.31%) AngularJS
10 29 (8.03%) ActiveMQ
10 29 (8.03%) WireMock
11 28 (7.76%) Node.js
12 26 (7.20%) React
13 23 (6.37%) SOAP
14 21 (5.82%) Spring Cloud
15 20 (5.54%) JAX-RS
16 18 (4.99%) Web Services
17 17 (4.71%) JPA
18 16 (4.43%) Hibernate
19 15 (4.16%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 38 (10.53%) Distributed Systems
2 33 (9.14%) Product Ownership
3 31 (8.59%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.43%) Distributed Architecture
5 15 (4.16%) Enterprise Software
6 14 (3.88%) Equity Derivative
7 10 (2.77%) Derivative
8 9 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (1.94%) Mobile App
9 7 (1.94%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.39%) Distributed Applications
10 5 (1.39%) Robotics
10 5 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.39%) Taxonomies
10 5 (1.39%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.11%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.83%) Equities
12 3 (0.83%) Fixed Income
12 3 (0.83%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 52 (14.40%) Linux
2 26 (7.20%) Unix
3 12 (3.32%) Mac OS X
4 7 (1.94%) Android
4 7 (1.94%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.83%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.83%) Windows
6 2 (0.55%) VMS
7 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 235 (65.10%) Agile
2 231 (63.99%) TDD
3 228 (63.16%) CI/CD
4 210 (58.17%) Test Automation
5 145 (40.17%) Microservices
6 131 (36.29%) DevOps
7 81 (22.44%) Scrum
8 76 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
9 72 (19.94%) Continuous Improvement
10 70 (19.39%) Test Strategy
11 68 (18.84%) API Testing
12 62 (17.17%) Software Engineering
13 57 (15.79%) AI
14 49 (13.57%) Mentoring
15 44 (12.19%) Continuous Integration
15 44 (12.19%) SDLC
16 42 (11.63%) Containerisation
16 42 (11.63%) Observability
17 41 (11.36%) Kanban
17 41 (11.36%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 216 (59.83%) Java
2 92 (25.48%) SQL
3 70 (19.39%) Python
4 61 (16.90%) JavaScript
5 59 (16.34%) C#
6 32 (8.86%) TypeScript
7 15 (4.16%) C++
8 8 (2.22%) Groovy
8 8 (2.22%) Kotlin
9 7 (1.94%) Apex Code
10 6 (1.66%) T-SQL
11 5 (1.39%) Go
11 5 (1.39%) Ruby
12 4 (1.11%) Perl
12 4 (1.11%) R
12 4 (1.11%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.83%) Scala
14 2 (0.55%) Bash
14 2 (0.55%) Cypher
14 2 (0.55%) VBA
Qualifications
1 92 (25.48%) Security Cleared
2 74 (20.50%) SC Cleared
3 23 (6.37%) Degree
4 21 (5.82%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.16%) ISTQB
6 14 (3.88%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (2.22%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.94%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (1.39%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.39%) Azure Certification
10 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.83%) CSPO
11 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.28%) ISEB
12 1 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (19.67%) QA
2 47 (13.02%) Accessibility
3 16 (4.43%) Data Quality
3 16 (4.43%) WCAG
4 12 (3.32%) GDPR
5 2 (0.55%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.28%) EMIR
6 1 (0.28%) MiFID
6 1 (0.28%) SEPA
6 1 (0.28%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 97 (26.87%) Docker
2 9 (2.49%) Postfix
3 1 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 80 (22.16%) Kubernetes
2 46 (12.74%) Grafana
3 37 (10.25%) Prometheus
4 32 (8.86%) Terraform
5 7 (1.94%) Ansible
6 4 (1.11%) Kibana
7 3 (0.83%) Istio
8 2 (0.55%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.55%) Argo
8 2 (0.55%) Consul
8 2 (0.55%) Rancher
8 2 (0.55%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.28%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.28%) EMC VPLEX
9 1 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 26 (7.20%) Oracle
2 21 (5.82%) Salesforce
3 17 (4.71%) Microsoft
3 17 (4.71%) Sybase
4 15 (4.16%) Google
5 14 (3.88%) Atlassian
6 12 (3.32%) IBM
7 11 (3.05%) Jaspersoft
7 11 (3.05%) Splunk
8 8 (2.22%) Checkmarx
8 8 (2.22%) Conga
8 8 (2.22%) GoCardless
9 6 (1.66%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.39%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.11%) Databricks
11 4 (1.11%) Veracode
12 3 (0.83%) CA Agile Central
12 3 (0.83%) Guidewire
12 3 (0.83%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.83%) OpenLink