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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 372 286 255
Rank change year-on-year -86 -31 -4
Contract jobs citing BDD 326 299 351
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.92% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 1.02% 1.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 200 241
10th Percentile £306 £362 £356
25th Percentile £400 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £461 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.85% -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £550 £614 £650
90th Percentile £671 £726 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £470 £498
% change year-on-year -4.26% -5.62% -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 45,377 29,398 32,720
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.63% 90.44% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,769 18,279 20,543
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% -3.49%
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 2,906 1,760 1,592
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.73 £17.30 £18.69
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.03 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.58 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +88.14% -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 3 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 3 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 -94 269 £459 -10.87% 202
UK excluding London -61 179 £450 -4.26% 124
London -67 114 £500 -9.75% 116
Work from Home -39 97 £475 -5.00% 115
North of England -51 75 £450 -14.29% 37
Midlands -18 42 £425 -15.00% 17
West Midlands -18 41 £425 -15.00% 11
North West -36 34 £441 +4.56% 22
Scotland -18 25 £465 +0.54% 12
Yorkshire -51 25 £606 +11.49% 10
North East -30 20 £450 -2.17% 5
South East -71 16 £275 -4.51% 28
South West -40 12 £525 +27.27% 8
East of England -15 8 £510 +36.00% 7
Wales - 4 £531 - 4
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 14

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 32 (9.82%) 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 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.61%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (2.76%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.45%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.92%) Findur
3 3 (0.92%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 112 (34.36%) AWS
2 98 (30.06%) Azure
3 91 (27.91%) GitHub
4 47 (14.42%) Azure DevOps
5 44 (13.50%) GitHub Actions
6 42 (12.88%) GCP
7 24 (7.36%) Serverless
8 21 (6.44%) GitHub Copilot
9 18 (5.52%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.21%) Amazon SQS
11 16 (4.91%) AWS Lambda
12 15 (4.60%) Amazon EC2
13 14 (4.29%) ChatGPT
14 13 (3.99%) Anthropic Claude
15 12 (3.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 10 (3.07%) Power Automate
17 9 (2.76%) Dynamics 365
17 9 (2.76%) Power Platform
18 8 (2.45%) AWS KMS
18 8 (2.45%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.15%) RTP
1 7 (2.15%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.84%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.92%) Internet
4 2 (0.61%) DSL
4 2 (0.61%) Firewall
4 2 (0.61%) HTTP
5 1 (0.31%) NaaS
5 1 (0.31%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (15.64%) MongoDB
2 30 (9.20%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (7.06%) NoSQL
4 20 (6.13%) Relational Database
5 15 (4.60%) Db2
5 15 (4.60%) SQL Server
6 13 (3.99%) DynamoDB
7 12 (3.68%) Amazon RDS
8 11 (3.37%) Amazon Aurora
8 11 (3.37%) Metadata
9 8 (2.45%) MySQL
10 7 (2.15%) Power BI
11 6 (1.84%) BigQuery
11 6 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
12 5 (1.53%) Couchbase
12 5 (1.53%) Data Lake
12 5 (1.53%) Tableau
13 3 (0.92%) Amazon Redshift
13 3 (0.92%) Flink
13 3 (0.92%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 113 (34.66%) Cucumber
2 92 (28.22%) Git
3 91 (27.91%) Selenium
4 70 (21.47%) Jenkins
5 59 (18.10%) GitLab
5 59 (18.10%) JUnit
6 49 (15.03%) JIRA
7 43 (13.19%) Postman
7 43 (13.19%) REST Assured
8 35 (10.74%) WebDriver
9 29 (8.90%) Mockito
10 28 (8.59%) SonarQube
11 26 (7.98%) Cypress.io
12 23 (7.06%) Gatling
13 20 (6.13%) SpecFlow
14 18 (5.52%) Maven
15 17 (5.21%) JMeter
16 13 (3.99%) TeamCity
17 8 (2.45%) Gradle
17 8 (2.45%) IntelliJ
General
1 112 (34.36%) Social Skills
2 74 (22.70%) Finance
3 61 (18.71%) Public Sector
4 55 (16.87%) Analytical Skills
5 44 (13.50%) Banking
6 16 (4.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (3.68%) Front Office
8 9 (2.76%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.15%) Retail
10 6 (1.84%) Military
11 5 (1.53%) Aviation
11 5 (1.53%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.53%) 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 (0.61%) Law
Job Titles
1 100 (30.67%) Developer
2 68 (20.86%) Senior
3 61 (18.71%) Java Developer
4 55 (16.87%) Test Engineer
5 34 (10.43%) Software Engineer
6 32 (9.82%) Test Automation Engineer
7 27 (8.28%) Lead
8 24 (7.36%) Senior Developer
9 22 (6.75%) Analyst
10 19 (5.83%) Java Engineer
11 18 (5.52%) Senior Java Developer
11 18 (5.52%) Tester
12 16 (4.91%) Automation Tester
13 14 (4.29%) Test Leader
14 13 (3.99%) QA Engineer
15 12 (3.68%) Python Developer
15 12 (3.68%) Quality Engineer
16 11 (3.37%) Automation Engineer
16 11 (3.37%) Senior Software Engineer
16 11 (3.37%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (22.70%) Spring
2 65 (19.94%) Playwright
3 62 (19.02%) REST
4 61 (18.71%) Spring Boot
5 56 (17.18%) Gherkin
6 54 (16.56%) Kafka
7 38 (11.66%) RESTful
8 29 (8.90%) .NET
9 25 (7.67%) Terraform
9 25 (7.67%) WireMock
10 24 (7.36%) Node.js
11 22 (6.75%) React
12 21 (6.44%) AngularJS
13 19 (5.83%) ActiveMQ
14 18 (5.52%) SOAP
15 15 (4.60%) HTML
16 14 (4.29%) JAX-RS
16 14 (4.29%) JSON
16 14 (4.29%) pytest
17 13 (3.99%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 35 (10.74%) Product Ownership
2 31 (9.51%) Distributed Systems
3 27 (8.28%) Cloud Native
4 18 (5.52%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.29%) Equity Derivative
6 13 (3.99%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.07%) Derivative
8 8 (2.45%) Distributed Architecture
9 7 (2.15%) Onboarding
10 6 (1.84%) Management Information System
11 5 (1.53%) NHS
11 5 (1.53%) Robotics
11 5 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.53%) Taxonomies
11 5 (1.53%) Virtual Team
12 4 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.23%) Mobile App
12 4 (1.23%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 3 (0.92%) AI Agents
13 3 (0.92%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 44 (13.50%) Linux
2 21 (6.44%) Unix
3 5 (1.53%) Android
3 5 (1.53%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.23%) Mac OS X
5 3 (0.92%) Windows
6 2 (0.61%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.61%) VMS
7 1 (0.31%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 220 (67.48%) Agile
2 212 (65.03%) CI/CD
3 211 (64.72%) TDD
4 196 (60.12%) Test Automation
5 111 (34.05%) DevOps
5 111 (34.05%) Microservices
6 77 (23.62%) Scrum
7 70 (21.47%) Problem-Solving
8 68 (20.86%) AI
9 67 (20.55%) Continuous Improvement
10 63 (19.33%) Test Strategy
11 62 (19.02%) Software Engineering
12 59 (18.10%) API Testing
13 45 (13.80%) Software Testing
13 45 (13.80%) Stakeholder Management
14 41 (12.58%) Continuous Integration
14 41 (12.58%) Mentoring
15 40 (12.27%) SDLC
16 35 (10.74%) Pair Programming
17 34 (10.43%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 198 (60.74%) Java
2 88 (26.99%) SQL
3 79 (24.23%) Python
4 58 (17.79%) JavaScript
5 49 (15.03%) C#
6 28 (8.59%) TypeScript
7 11 (3.37%) Bash
7 11 (3.37%) C++
7 11 (3.37%) Ruby
8 7 (2.15%) Apex Code
8 7 (2.15%) Groovy
8 7 (2.15%) Kotlin
9 6 (1.84%) R
10 4 (1.23%) Go
10 4 (1.23%) Perl
10 4 (1.23%) Scala
11 3 (0.92%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.92%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.61%) Cypher
12 2 (0.61%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 78 (23.93%) Security Cleared
2 63 (19.33%) SC Cleared
3 24 (7.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 20 (6.13%) Degree
5 19 (5.83%) ISTQB
6 14 (4.29%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.76%) DV Cleared
7 9 (2.76%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 6 (1.84%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.92%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.92%) CSPO
9 3 (0.92%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.61%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.61%) ISEB
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 (22.39%) QA
2 51 (15.64%) Accessibility
3 33 (10.12%) WCAG
4 16 (4.91%) Data Quality
5 14 (4.29%) 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 (23.93%) Docker
2 5 (1.53%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 64 (19.63%) Kubernetes
2 23 (7.06%) Grafana
3 18 (5.52%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.84%) Ansible
5 4 (1.23%) Kibana
6 3 (0.92%) Istio
7 2 (0.61%) Argo
7 2 (0.61%) Consul
7 2 (0.61%) Rancher
7 2 (0.61%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.31%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (7.36%) Microsoft
2 16 (4.91%) Salesforce
2 16 (4.91%) Sybase
3 15 (4.60%) IBM
4 14 (4.29%) Google
5 13 (3.99%) Oracle
6 8 (2.45%) Checkmarx
6 8 (2.45%) Conga
6 8 (2.45%) GoCardless
7 7 (2.15%) Atlassian
8 6 (1.84%) Databricks
8 6 (1.84%) Jaspersoft
9 3 (0.92%) CA Agile Central
9 3 (0.92%) Dynatrace
9 3 (0.92%) Guidewire
9 3 (0.92%) OpenAI
9 3 (0.92%) OpenLink
9 3 (0.92%) Splunk
10 2 (0.61%) Bloomberg
10 2 (0.61%) Solace