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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 371 273 256
Rank change year-on-year -98 -17 -10
Contract jobs citing BDD 326 304 353
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.92% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.71% 1.02% 1.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 202 237
10th Percentile £306 £363 £357
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.20% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £541 £603 £650
90th Percentile £655 £700 £755
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £470 £496
% change year-on-year -4.26% -5.24% -4.62%
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 46,112 29,840 32,750
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.63% 90.46% 85.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,098 18,520 20,299
10th Percentile £325 £300 £312
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
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 3,038 1,780 1,507
10th Percentile £13.87 £14.23 £14.70
25th Percentile £17.38 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +2.87%
75th Percentile £67.50 £45.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +76.89% -47.37% +8.65%

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 10 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 10 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 -87 269 £458 -11.43% 108
UK excluding London -81 173 £450 -4.26% 66
London -72 118 £500 -9.09% 55
Work from Home -58 95 £475 -5.00% 83
North of England -68 72 £448 -14.76% 20
Midlands -24 41 £431 -13.75% 11
West Midlands -13 40 £431 -13.75% 7
North West -47 32 £438 +3.67% 10
Yorkshire -57 25 £525 -4.55% 6
Scotland -37 23 £468 +1.08% 6
North East -35 19 £450 -2.17% 4
South East -71 16 £275 -4.51% 19
South West -43 12 £525 +27.27% 6
East of England -22 8 £510 +36.00% 1
Wales -8 4 £531 +41.67% 2
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 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 31 (9.51%) Confluence
2 5 (1.53%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.23%) Apache
4 3 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.92%) CMS
4 3 (0.92%) Headless CMS
4 3 (0.92%) SharePoint
5 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
1 114 (34.97%) AWS
2 98 (30.06%) Azure
3 92 (28.22%) GitHub
4 46 (14.11%) Azure DevOps
5 45 (13.80%) GitHub Actions
6 39 (11.96%) GCP
7 25 (7.67%) Serverless
8 22 (6.75%) GitHub Copilot
9 20 (6.13%) Amazon S3
10 18 (5.52%) Amazon SQS
11 17 (5.21%) AWS Lambda
12 16 (4.91%) Amazon EC2
13 14 (4.29%) Anthropic Claude
13 14 (4.29%) ChatGPT
14 12 (3.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 10 (3.07%) Power Automate
16 9 (2.76%) AWS KMS
16 9 (2.76%) Dynamics 365
16 9 (2.76%) Power Platform
17 8 (2.45%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.15%) RTP
1 7 (2.15%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.84%) 3GPP
3 4 (1.23%) Internet
4 2 (0.61%) DSL
4 2 (0.61%) Firewall
4 2 (0.61%) HTTP
5 1 (0.31%) DNS
5 1 (0.31%) NaaS
5 1 (0.31%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (15.95%) MongoDB
2 30 (9.20%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (7.36%) NoSQL
4 20 (6.13%) Relational Database
5 15 (4.60%) Db2
5 15 (4.60%) SQL Server
6 13 (3.99%) Amazon RDS
6 13 (3.99%) DynamoDB
7 12 (3.68%) Metadata
8 10 (3.07%) Amazon Aurora
9 7 (2.15%) MySQL
9 7 (2.15%) Power BI
10 6 (1.84%) BigQuery
10 6 (1.84%) Data Lake
10 6 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
11 5 (1.53%) Couchbase
11 5 (1.53%) Tableau
12 3 (0.92%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
12 3 (0.92%) Flink
Development Applications
1 113 (34.66%) Cucumber
2 97 (29.75%) Git
3 90 (27.61%) Selenium
4 74 (22.70%) Jenkins
5 61 (18.71%) GitLab
5 61 (18.71%) JUnit
6 48 (14.72%) JIRA
7 46 (14.11%) REST Assured
8 44 (13.50%) Postman
9 33 (10.12%) WebDriver
10 30 (9.20%) Mockito
11 28 (8.59%) SonarQube
12 26 (7.98%) Cypress.io
13 24 (7.36%) Gatling
14 20 (6.13%) SpecFlow
15 19 (5.83%) Maven
16 16 (4.91%) JMeter
17 13 (3.99%) TeamCity
18 9 (2.76%) Gradle
18 9 (2.76%) TestNG
General
1 111 (34.05%) Social Skills
2 74 (22.70%) Finance
3 61 (18.71%) Public Sector
4 55 (16.87%) Analytical Skills
5 45 (13.80%) Banking
6 17 (5.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (4.29%) 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%) Legal Technology
12 3 (0.92%) Marketing
12 3 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.61%) Law
13 2 (0.61%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 99 (30.37%) Developer
2 71 (21.78%) Senior
3 61 (18.71%) Java Developer
4 57 (17.48%) Test Engineer
5 36 (11.04%) Software Engineer
6 33 (10.12%) Test Automation Engineer
7 26 (7.98%) Senior Developer
8 25 (7.67%) Lead
9 22 (6.75%) Analyst
10 20 (6.13%) Java Engineer
11 18 (5.52%) Senior Java Developer
12 17 (5.21%) Tester
13 15 (4.60%) Automation Tester
14 14 (4.29%) QA Engineer
15 12 (3.68%) Quality Engineer
15 12 (3.68%) Senior Software Engineer
15 12 (3.68%) Test Leader
16 11 (3.37%) SC Cleared Java Developer
16 11 (3.37%) Senior Test Engineer
16 11 (3.37%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (23.31%) Spring
2 66 (20.25%) Playwright
3 65 (19.94%) Spring Boot
4 61 (18.71%) REST
5 56 (17.18%) Kafka
6 55 (16.87%) Gherkin
7 39 (11.96%) RESTful
8 28 (8.59%) .NET
9 24 (7.36%) Terraform
9 24 (7.36%) WireMock
10 23 (7.06%) Node.js
11 22 (6.75%) React
12 20 (6.13%) AngularJS
13 19 (5.83%) ActiveMQ
14 18 (5.52%) SOAP
15 15 (4.60%) HTML
16 14 (4.29%) JSON
16 14 (4.29%) Swagger
17 13 (3.99%) JAX-RS
17 13 (3.99%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 37 (11.35%) Product Ownership
2 30 (9.20%) Distributed Systems
3 28 (8.59%) Cloud Native
4 17 (5.21%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.29%) Equity Derivative
6 13 (3.99%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.07%) Derivative
8 8 (2.45%) Onboarding
9 7 (2.15%) Distributed Architecture
10 6 (1.84%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.84%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.53%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.53%) NHS
11 5 (1.53%) Robotics
11 5 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.53%) Taxonomies
12 4 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.23%) Mobile App
12 4 (1.23%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 3 (0.92%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 42 (12.88%) 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
7 1 (0.31%) AIX
7 1 (0.31%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 219 (67.18%) Agile
2 213 (65.34%) CI/CD
3 207 (63.50%) TDD
4 199 (61.04%) Test Automation
5 112 (34.36%) DevOps
6 110 (33.74%) Microservices
7 77 (23.62%) Scrum
8 71 (21.78%) AI
8 71 (21.78%) Problem-Solving
9 67 (20.55%) Continuous Improvement
10 65 (19.94%) Software Engineering
11 61 (18.71%) Test Strategy
12 59 (18.10%) API Testing
13 47 (14.42%) Software Testing
14 46 (14.11%) Stakeholder Management
15 44 (13.50%) SDLC
16 43 (13.19%) Continuous Integration
17 40 (12.27%) Mentoring
18 36 (11.04%) Integration Testing
19 35 (10.74%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 200 (61.35%) Java
2 88 (26.99%) SQL
3 82 (25.15%) Python
4 59 (18.10%) JavaScript
5 49 (15.03%) C#
6 30 (9.20%) TypeScript
7 12 (3.68%) Bash
7 12 (3.68%) Ruby
8 11 (3.37%) C++
9 8 (2.45%) Kotlin
10 7 (2.15%) Apex Code
10 7 (2.15%) Groovy
11 6 (1.84%) R
12 5 (1.53%) Scala
13 4 (1.23%) Go
13 4 (1.23%) Perl
14 3 (0.92%) Shell Script
14 3 (0.92%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.61%) Cypher
15 2 (0.61%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 81 (24.85%) Security Cleared
2 66 (20.25%) SC Cleared
3 24 (7.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (6.44%) Degree
5 19 (5.83%) ISTQB
6 15 (4.60%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.76%) DV Cleared
7 9 (2.76%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 6 (1.84%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (1.53%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 3 (0.92%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.92%) CSPO
11 2 (0.61%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.61%) ISEB
12 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 1 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.31%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (23.31%) QA
2 53 (16.26%) 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 80 (24.54%) Docker
2 5 (1.53%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 65 (19.94%) 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%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.31%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.31%) Control-M
8 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.31%) Rancher
8 1 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (7.67%) 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
7 7 (2.15%) Databricks
8 6 (1.84%) Jaspersoft
9 5 (1.53%) OpenAI
10 3 (0.92%) CA Agile Central
10 3 (0.92%) Dynatrace
10 3 (0.92%) Guidewire
10 3 (0.92%) ION Trading
10 3 (0.92%) OpenLink
10 3 (0.92%) Splunk
11 2 (0.61%) Bloomberg