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 12 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 337 281 320
Rank change year-on-year -56 +39 -179
Contract jobs citing BDD 277 268 307
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.70% 0.87% 0.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.80% 0.97% 0.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 168 153 214
10th Percentile £363 £355 £325
25th Percentile £406 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £492
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% +1.63% -16.04%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £593
90th Percentile £675 £800 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -2.25% +2.56% -7.14%

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 34,652 27,713 38,573
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.01% 89.46% 87.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,939 16,970 25,283
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £498 £500
% change year-on-year -4.06% -0.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,087 853 2,111
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.28
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -1.71% +1.74%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.51 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.18% -9.97% +9.38%

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 12 February 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 12 February 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 -66 240 £500 -1.47% 115
UK excluding London -40 144 £489 -2.25% 91
London -37 107 £513 -10.87% 34
North of England -31 103 £500 +11.11% 31
Work from Home -23 70 £475 -9.52% 79
Yorkshire -44 54 £575 +15.00% 6
North West -17 29 £431 +8.98% 23
North East +1 24 £460 +17.95% 2
Midlands -45 14 £438 -15.25% 17
West Midlands -44 12 £475 -7.99% 15
South West -28 8 £425 -19.05% 18
Scotland +8 7 £400 -8.57% 1
South East -45 6 £550 +10.00% 24
Wales +3 4 £375 -
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 1
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 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 27 (9.75%) Confluence
2 4 (1.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.72%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.72%) nginx
3 2 (0.72%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.36%) CMS
4 1 (0.36%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.36%) Tomcat
Applications
1 6 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 6 (2.17%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.72%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 83 (29.96%) AWS
2 52 (18.77%) Azure
3 32 (11.55%) GitHub
4 21 (7.58%) Serverless
5 20 (7.22%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (5.42%) AWS Lambda
7 14 (5.05%) Amazon S3
8 13 (4.69%) GCP
8 13 (4.69%) GitHub Actions
9 11 (3.97%) BrowserStack
10 8 (2.89%) SaaS
11 7 (2.53%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (2.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 5 (1.81%) Amazon Cognito
13 5 (1.81%) Amazon SQS
13 5 (1.81%) AWS Step Functions
14 4 (1.44%) Amazon ECS
14 4 (1.44%) Amazon SageMaker
14 4 (1.44%) BlazeMeter
14 4 (1.44%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.81%) Cisco IPT
2 2 (0.72%) HTTP
3 1 (0.36%) Fibre Channel
3 1 (0.36%) FTP
3 1 (0.36%) Internet
3 1 (0.36%) iSCSI
3 1 (0.36%) LAN
3 1 (0.36%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (16.25%) MongoDB
2 24 (8.66%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (5.78%) SQL Server
4 14 (5.05%) MySQL
5 10 (3.61%) NoSQL
5 10 (3.61%) Oracle Database
5 10 (3.61%) Relational Database
6 8 (2.89%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (2.53%) Data Lake
8 5 (1.81%) DynamoDB
9 4 (1.44%) Redis
10 3 (1.08%) Apache Cassandra
10 3 (1.08%) DB2
10 3 (1.08%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.72%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (0.72%) Amazon Aurora
11 2 (0.72%) Big Data
12 1 (0.36%) BigQuery
12 1 (0.36%) Data Warehouse
12 1 (0.36%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 97 (35.02%) Cucumber
2 67 (24.19%) Selenium
3 65 (23.47%) Jenkins
4 57 (20.58%) GitLab
5 56 (20.22%) JIRA
6 48 (17.33%) Git
7 41 (14.80%) Postman
8 37 (13.36%) Mockito
9 31 (11.19%) REST Assured
10 21 (7.58%) Cypress.io
10 21 (7.58%) JUnit
11 16 (5.78%) JMeter
12 14 (5.05%) SonarQube
13 13 (4.69%) Bitbucket
13 13 (4.69%) WebDriver
14 10 (3.61%) Gatling
15 9 (3.25%) Maven
15 9 (3.25%) TestRail
16 7 (2.53%) Serenity BDD
17 6 (2.17%) Zephyr
General
1 65 (23.47%) Social Skills
2 64 (23.10%) Public Sector
3 45 (16.25%) Finance
4 22 (7.94%) Banking
5 17 (6.14%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (2.17%) Military
7 5 (1.81%) Front Office
7 5 (1.81%) Legal
8 4 (1.44%) Electronics
9 3 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (0.72%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.72%) Retail
11 1 (0.36%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.36%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.36%) Marketing
11 1 (0.36%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 100 (36.10%) Developer
2 72 (25.99%) Java Developer
3 60 (21.66%) Senior
4 49 (17.69%) Test Engineer
5 35 (12.64%) Senior Developer
6 31 (11.19%) Senior Java Developer
7 28 (10.11%) Lead
8 23 (8.30%) Software Engineer
9 22 (7.94%) Test Automation Engineer
10 17 (6.14%) QA Engineer
11 15 (5.42%) Java Engineer
12 14 (5.05%) Tester
13 12 (4.33%) Lead Test Engineer
14 10 (3.61%) Automation Engineer
14 10 (3.61%) Automation Tester
15 9 (3.25%) Analyst
15 9 (3.25%) Senior Test Engineer
16 7 (2.53%) Java Software Engineer
16 7 (2.53%) React Developer
16 7 (2.53%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (20.94%) Spring Boot
2 52 (18.77%) REST
3 46 (16.61%) Spring
4 45 (16.25%) Kafka
5 40 (14.44%) Playwright
6 39 (14.08%) Node.js
7 36 (13.00%) RESTful
8 35 (12.64%) React
9 30 (10.83%) Gherkin
10 29 (10.47%) ActiveMQ
11 28 (10.11%) JAX-RS
12 20 (7.22%) .NET
13 17 (6.14%) AngularJS
13 17 (6.14%) CSS
14 16 (5.78%) Jest
15 14 (5.05%) WireMock
16 13 (4.69%) SOAP
17 12 (4.33%) JSON
17 12 (4.33%) Web Services
18 11 (3.97%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 25 (9.03%) Product Ownership
2 11 (3.97%) Cloud Native
3 9 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
4 7 (2.53%) Mobile App
4 7 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.17%) Client/Server
5 6 (2.17%) Distributed Architecture
5 6 (2.17%) Equities
6 5 (1.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (1.81%) NHS
7 4 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
7 4 (1.44%) Public Cloud
8 3 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.08%) Educational Technology
8 3 (1.08%) Private Cloud
9 2 (0.72%) AS400
9 2 (0.72%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (0.72%) iSeries
10 1 (0.36%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 48 (17.33%) Linux
2 37 (13.36%) Unix
3 25 (9.03%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.72%) Android
5 2 (0.72%) Windows
6 1 (0.36%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.36%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.36%) VMS
6 1 (0.36%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (66.79%) Agile
2 176 (63.54%) Test Automation
3 171 (61.73%) TDD
4 141 (50.90%) CI/CD
5 133 (48.01%) Microservices
6 69 (24.91%) DevOps
7 60 (21.66%) Problem-Solving
8 57 (20.58%) API Testing
9 55 (19.86%) Scrum
10 51 (18.41%) Software Engineering
11 45 (16.25%) Containerisation
11 45 (16.25%) Continuous Improvement
12 41 (14.80%) Test Strategy
13 37 (13.36%) Non-Functional Testing
14 36 (13.00%) Continuous Deployment
14 36 (13.00%) Performance Testing
14 36 (13.00%) SDLC
15 35 (12.64%) Functional Testing
16 33 (11.91%) Mentoring
17 32 (11.55%) Pair Programming
Programming Languages
1 190 (68.59%) Java
2 58 (20.94%) JavaScript
3 50 (18.05%) SQL
4 38 (13.72%) Python
5 36 (13.00%) TypeScript
6 19 (6.86%) C#
7 8 (2.89%) C++
7 8 (2.89%) Ruby
8 7 (2.53%) PHP
9 6 (2.17%) JSX
9 6 (2.17%) Kotlin
10 4 (1.44%) Bash
11 3 (1.08%) Go
11 3 (1.08%) Scala
12 2 (0.72%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.72%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.36%) Groovy
13 1 (0.36%) VBA
13 1 (0.36%) VBScript
13 1 (0.36%) XPath
Qualifications
1 77 (27.80%) Security Cleared
2 63 (22.74%) SC Cleared
3 16 (5.78%) BPSS Clearance
4 14 (5.05%) ISTQB
5 11 (3.97%) Degree
6 5 (1.81%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.81%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 3 (1.08%) ISEB
8 2 (0.72%) AWS Certified Developer
8 2 (0.72%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.72%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.36%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (23.10%) QA
2 37 (13.36%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.97%) WCAG
4 8 (2.89%) GDPR
5 5 (1.81%) PERC
6 2 (0.72%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.72%) HL7
7 1 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 64 (23.10%) Docker
2 2 (0.72%) Postfix
3 1 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 45 (16.25%) Kubernetes
2 24 (8.66%) Terraform
3 14 (5.05%) Grafana
4 9 (3.25%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.44%) Ansible
6 2 (0.72%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.72%) Kibana
6 2 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.36%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.36%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.36%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.36%) Kustomize
7 1 (0.36%) Rancher
Vendors
1 22 (7.94%) Oracle
2 12 (4.33%) Splunk
3 9 (3.25%) Atlassian
4 7 (2.53%) Databricks
4 7 (2.53%) Salesforce
5 6 (2.17%) Microsoft
5 6 (2.17%) ServiceNow
6 5 (1.81%) Red Hat
7 4 (1.44%) Adobe
7 4 (1.44%) Veracode
8 3 (1.08%) Google
9 2 (0.72%) IBM
9 2 (0.72%) Jaspersoft
9 2 (0.72%) SAP
9 2 (0.72%) VMware
9 2 (0.72%) Workday
10 1 (0.36%) CA Agile Central
10 1 (0.36%) Marketo
10 1 (0.36%) MuleSoft
10 1 (0.36%) Xamarin