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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 384 277 261
Rank change year-on-year -107 -16 -20
Contract jobs citing BDD 329 311 341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.94% 0.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.71% 1.04% 1.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 206 224
10th Percentile £306 £361 £352
25th Percentile £400 £415 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £452 £510 £523
Median % change year-on-year -11.45% -2.39% -5.00%
75th Percentile £538 £605 £625
90th Percentile £650 £700 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £441 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -7.11% +5.56% -10.00%
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 46,340 29,830 33,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.48% 90.53% 85.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,136 18,534 20,247
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 £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,159 1,812 1,459
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.23 £14.96
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% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.76 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.22% -47.67% +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 19 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 19 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 -91 272 £450 -13.44% 249
UK excluding London -90 172 £441 -7.11% 147
London -72 120 £500 -9.09% 123
Work from Home -61 95 £475 -5.00% 125
North of England -76 71 £438 -16.67% 47
Midlands -18 44 £438 -8.85% 27
West Midlands -17 43 £438 -12.50% 17
North West -53 29 £438 +3.31% 23
Yorkshire -47 28 £416 -24.45% 13
Scotland -16 22 £470 +1.62% 14
North East -44 18 £450 -2.17% 11
South East -65 16 £275 -4.51% 29
South West -35 13 £513 +24.24% 15
East of England -22 5 £570 +52.00% 7
Wales -8 4 £531 +41.67% 4
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 5

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
1 115 (34.95%) AWS
2 103 (31.31%) Azure
3 89 (27.05%) GitHub
4 45 (13.68%) Azure DevOps
5 40 (12.16%) GitHub Actions
6 32 (9.73%) GCP
7 27 (8.21%) Serverless
8 25 (7.60%) 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 15 (4.56%) Anthropic Claude
13 14 (4.26%) ChatGPT
14 13 (3.95%) Dynamics 365
14 13 (3.95%) Power Automate
15 11 (3.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 11 (3.34%) 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 28 (8.51%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (7.29%) NoSQL
4 21 (6.38%) Relational Database
5 18 (5.47%) SQL Server
6 15 (4.56%) Db2
7 13 (3.95%) Amazon RDS
8 12 (3.65%) DynamoDB
8 12 (3.65%) Metadata
9 10 (3.04%) Amazon Aurora
10 9 (2.74%) Data Lake
11 8 (2.43%) Power BI
12 7 (2.13%) MySQL
13 6 (1.82%) BigQuery
13 6 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
14 5 (1.52%) Couchbase
14 5 (1.52%) Tableau
15 3 (0.91%) Big Data
15 3 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
15 3 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 122 (37.08%) Cucumber
2 99 (30.09%) Git
3 98 (29.79%) Selenium
4 72 (21.88%) Jenkins
5 62 (18.84%) GitLab
6 60 (18.24%) JUnit
7 48 (14.59%) REST Assured
8 45 (13.68%) JIRA
8 45 (13.68%) Postman
9 32 (9.73%) WebDriver
10 30 (9.12%) Mockito
10 30 (9.12%) SonarQube
11 28 (8.51%) Cypress.io
11 28 (8.51%) Gatling
12 21 (6.38%) Maven
13 20 (6.08%) SpecFlow
14 14 (4.26%) JMeter
15 13 (3.95%) TeamCity
16 11 (3.34%) Gradle
17 9 (2.74%) TestNG
General
1 117 (35.56%) Social Skills
2 74 (22.49%) Finance
3 61 (18.54%) Public Sector
4 57 (17.33%) Analytical Skills
5 48 (14.59%) Banking
6 20 (6.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (4.56%) Front Office
8 10 (3.04%) 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%) Legal
Job Titles
1 96 (29.18%) Developer
2 73 (22.19%) Senior
3 57 (17.33%) Java Developer
4 55 (16.72%) Test Engineer
5 37 (11.25%) Software Engineer
6 31 (9.42%) Test Automation Engineer
7 28 (8.51%) Lead
7 28 (8.51%) Senior Developer
8 24 (7.29%) 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
12 14 (4.26%) Tester
13 13 (3.95%) Test Analyst
14 12 (3.65%) Architect
14 12 (3.65%) Automation Tester
14 12 (3.65%) Senior Software Engineer
15 11 (3.34%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (21.58%) Spring
2 70 (21.28%) Playwright
3 62 (18.84%) REST
4 60 (18.24%) Spring Boot
5 59 (17.93%) Gherkin
6 57 (17.33%) Kafka
7 40 (12.16%) RESTful
8 30 (9.12%) .NET
9 25 (7.60%) React
10 24 (7.29%) Node.js
10 24 (7.29%) Terraform
10 24 (7.29%) WireMock
11 20 (6.08%) ActiveMQ
11 20 (6.08%) AngularJS
12 18 (5.47%) SOAP
13 17 (5.17%) HTML
14 14 (4.26%) JPA
14 14 (4.26%) Swagger
15 13 (3.95%) .NET Core
15 13 (3.95%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 37 (11.25%) Product Ownership
2 29 (8.81%) Cloud Native
3 26 (7.90%) Distributed Systems
4 18 (5.47%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.26%) Equity Derivative
6 13 (3.95%) Legacy Systems
7 11 (3.34%) Onboarding
8 10 (3.04%) Derivative
9 8 (2.43%) Management Information System
9 8 (2.43%) Self-Motivation
10 7 (2.13%) AI Agents
11 6 (1.82%) Virtual Team
12 5 (1.52%) NHS
12 5 (1.52%) Robotics
12 5 (1.52%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 5 (1.52%) Taxonomies
13 4 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
13 4 (1.22%) Distributed Architecture
14 3 (0.91%) Legacy Applications
14 3 (0.91%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 45 (13.68%) Linux
2 24 (7.29%) Unix
3 5 (1.52%) Android
3 5 (1.52%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.52%) Mac OS X
4 3 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.91%) Windows
5 2 (0.61%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.30%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 223 (67.78%) Agile
2 217 (65.96%) CI/CD
3 212 (64.44%) TDD
4 204 (62.01%) Test Automation
5 115 (34.95%) DevOps
6 114 (34.65%) Microservices
7 82 (24.92%) Scrum
8 76 (23.10%) AI
9 72 (21.88%) Problem-Solving
10 71 (21.58%) Software Engineering
11 65 (19.76%) Continuous Improvement
12 64 (19.45%) Test Strategy
13 61 (18.54%) API Testing
14 56 (17.02%) Software Testing
15 55 (16.72%) Stakeholder Management
16 46 (13.98%) SDLC
17 43 (13.07%) Continuous Integration
18 41 (12.46%) Integration Testing
19 38 (11.55%) Containerisation
19 38 (11.55%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 203 (61.70%) Java
2 87 (26.44%) SQL
3 81 (24.62%) Python
4 64 (19.45%) JavaScript
5 58 (17.63%) C#
6 33 (10.03%) TypeScript
7 12 (3.65%) Bash
7 12 (3.65%) Ruby
8 10 (3.04%) C++
9 7 (2.13%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.13%) Groovy
9 7 (2.13%) Scala
10 6 (1.82%) Kotlin
10 6 (1.82%) R
11 5 (1.52%) Go
12 4 (1.22%) Perl
13 3 (0.91%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.91%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.61%) Cypher
14 2 (0.61%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 76 (23.10%) Security Cleared
2 61 (18.54%) SC Cleared
3 28 (8.51%) BPSS Clearance
4 23 (6.99%) Degree
5 21 (6.38%) ISTQB
6 17 (5.17%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (3.04%) 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 83 (25.23%) QA
2 60 (18.24%) Accessibility
3 39 (11.85%) WCAG
4 17 (5.17%) Data Quality
5 16 (4.86%) GDPR
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 82 (24.92%) Docker
2 5 (1.52%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 66 (20.06%) 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 16 (4.86%) IBM
2 16 (4.86%) Sybase
3 15 (4.56%) Salesforce
4 14 (4.26%) Oracle
5 13 (3.95%) Databricks
6 12 (3.65%) Google
7 8 (2.43%) Conga
7 8 (2.43%) GoCardless
8 7 (2.13%) Atlassian
9 6 (1.82%) Jaspersoft
9 6 (1.82%) OpenAI
10 5 (1.52%) Checkmarx
10 5 (1.52%) Splunk
11 4 (1.22%) ION Trading
12 3 (0.91%) CA Agile Central
12 3 (0.91%) Guidewire
13 2 (0.61%) FactSet
13 2 (0.61%) HP
13 2 (0.61%) Solace