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 4 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 359 290 259
Rank change year-on-year -69 -31 -29
Contract jobs citing BDD 345 280 364
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.85% 0.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.77% 0.94% 1.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 187 258
10th Percentile £312 £356 £363
25th Percentile £400 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £534
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -6.37% -7.13%
75th Percentile £547 £591 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £500
% change year-on-year +5.88% -15.00% -0.99%
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 44,879 29,748 33,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.93% 90.41% 85.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,704 18,653 21,488
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
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 2,741 1,659 1,873
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.30 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.05 £40.94
% change year-on-year +90.72% -43.70% +3.38%

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 4 August 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 4 August 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 -51 290 £463 -9.31% 92
UK excluding London -10 203 £450 +5.88% 68
Work from Home -31 111 £475 -5.00% 64
London -68 110 £488 -17.37% 34
North of England -11 82 £464 +6.06% 21
Midlands -9 56 £425 -7.86% 15
West Midlands -14 55 £425 -8.11% 9
North West -24 41 £488 +18.90% 13
Scotland -7 25 £465 +7.83%
Yorkshire -31 25 £660 +26.98% 5
North East -27 20 £450 +7.14% 4
South East -72 19 £309 -21.84% 18
South West -42 14 £525 +27.27% 2
East of England -11 8 £510 +36.00% 3
Wales -12 2 £650 - 1
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 9

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 51 (14.78%) Confluence
2 5 (1.45%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.16%) Apache
3 4 (1.16%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.87%) CMS
4 3 (0.87%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.29%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (0.87%) Notion
2 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.29%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (2.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.32%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.87%) Findur
3 3 (0.87%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 125 (36.23%) AWS
2 114 (33.04%) Azure
3 92 (26.67%) GitHub
4 53 (15.36%) Azure DevOps
4 53 (15.36%) GCP
5 46 (13.33%) GitHub Actions
6 25 (7.25%) Serverless
7 24 (6.96%) Amazon SQS
8 23 (6.67%) Amazon S3
9 21 (6.09%) Amazon EC2
10 17 (4.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 17 (4.93%) GitHub Copilot
11 16 (4.64%) AWS Lambda
12 14 (4.06%) ChatGPT
13 13 (3.77%) AWS KMS
14 12 (3.48%) Anthropic Claude
14 12 (3.48%) Route 53
15 10 (2.90%) Power Automate
16 9 (2.61%) Dynamics 365
16 9 (2.61%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.03%) RTP
1 7 (2.03%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.74%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.87%) DSL
3 3 (0.87%) Internet
4 2 (0.58%) Firewall
4 2 (0.58%) NaaS
4 2 (0.58%) WAN
5 1 (0.29%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (17.68%) MongoDB
2 47 (13.62%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (6.38%) NoSQL
4 20 (5.80%) Relational Database
5 19 (5.51%) DynamoDB
6 18 (5.22%) SQL Server
7 17 (4.93%) Amazon RDS
8 16 (4.64%) Amazon Aurora
9 15 (4.35%) Db2
10 11 (3.19%) Metadata
11 8 (2.32%) MySQL
12 7 (2.03%) Power BI
13 6 (1.74%) BigQuery
13 6 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
14 5 (1.45%) Couchbase
14 5 (1.45%) Data Lake
14 5 (1.45%) Tableau
15 4 (1.16%) Amazon Athena
16 3 (0.87%) Apache Iceberg
16 3 (0.87%) Looker
Development Applications
1 119 (34.49%) Cucumber
2 99 (28.70%) Git
2 99 (28.70%) Selenium
3 83 (24.06%) Jenkins
4 70 (20.29%) JUnit
5 67 (19.42%) JIRA
6 64 (18.55%) GitLab
7 46 (13.33%) WebDriver
8 44 (12.75%) Postman
9 42 (12.17%) REST Assured
10 41 (11.88%) Mockito
11 28 (8.12%) JMeter
11 28 (8.12%) SonarQube
12 26 (7.54%) Cypress.io
13 22 (6.38%) SpecFlow
14 20 (5.80%) Gatling
14 20 (5.80%) Maven
15 16 (4.64%) TeamCity
16 12 (3.48%) DbUnit
17 11 (3.19%) jMock
General
1 107 (31.01%) Social Skills
2 73 (21.16%) Public Sector
3 70 (20.29%) Finance
4 55 (15.94%) Analytical Skills
5 38 (11.01%) Banking
6 13 (3.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (3.48%) Front Office
8 10 (2.90%) Organisational Skills
9 9 (2.61%) Investment Banking
10 8 (2.32%) Military
11 7 (2.03%) Retail
12 5 (1.45%) Aviation
12 5 (1.45%) Fire and Rescue
12 5 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (1.45%) Police
13 4 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.87%) Automotive
14 3 (0.87%) Billing
14 3 (0.87%) Legal Technology
14 3 (0.87%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 114 (33.04%) Developer
2 75 (21.74%) Senior
3 74 (21.45%) Java Developer
4 55 (15.94%) Test Engineer
5 39 (11.30%) Lead
6 32 (9.28%) Test Automation Engineer
7 31 (8.99%) Software Engineer
8 28 (8.12%) Tester
9 27 (7.83%) Senior Developer
10 24 (6.96%) Analyst
10 24 (6.96%) Senior Java Developer
11 23 (6.67%) Automation Tester
12 22 (6.38%) Test Leader
13 14 (4.06%) Java Engineer
14 13 (3.77%) Senior Tester
15 12 (3.48%) Automation Test Lead
15 12 (3.48%) QA Engineer
15 12 (3.48%) Senior Software Engineer
16 11 (3.19%) Python Developer
16 11 (3.19%) Senior Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (24.06%) Spring
2 68 (19.71%) Playwright
3 67 (19.42%) REST
4 62 (17.97%) Spring Boot
5 57 (16.52%) Kafka
6 54 (15.65%) Gherkin
7 41 (11.88%) RESTful
8 35 (10.14%) .NET
9 32 (9.28%) WireMock
10 31 (8.99%) ActiveMQ
11 30 (8.70%) Node.js
12 29 (8.41%) AngularJS
13 25 (7.25%) React
14 23 (6.67%) SOAP
15 22 (6.38%) JAX-RS
16 17 (4.93%) JPA
17 16 (4.64%) Hibernate
17 16 (4.64%) Spring Cloud
17 16 (4.64%) Web Services
18 15 (4.35%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 42 (12.17%) Distributed Systems
2 33 (9.57%) Product Ownership
3 30 (8.70%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.64%) Distributed Architecture
5 15 (4.35%) Enterprise Software
6 14 (4.06%) Equity Derivative
7 10 (2.90%) Derivative
8 9 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (2.03%) Onboarding
10 6 (1.74%) Management Information System
11 5 (1.45%) Mobile App
11 5 (1.45%) Robotics
11 5 (1.45%) Taxonomies
11 5 (1.45%) Virtual Team
12 4 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.16%) Distributed Applications
12 4 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
13 3 (0.87%) AI Agents
13 3 (0.87%) Legacy Code
14 2 (0.58%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 56 (16.23%) Linux
2 28 (8.12%) Unix
3 12 (3.48%) Mac OS X
4 7 (2.03%) Android
4 7 (2.03%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.87%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.87%) Windows
6 2 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.58%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 233 (67.54%) Agile
2 227 (65.80%) TDD
3 221 (64.06%) CI/CD
4 210 (60.87%) Test Automation
5 140 (40.58%) Microservices
6 124 (35.94%) DevOps
7 81 (23.48%) Scrum
8 74 (21.45%) Continuous Improvement
9 73 (21.16%) Problem-Solving
10 70 (20.29%) API Testing
10 70 (20.29%) Test Strategy
11 59 (17.10%) AI
11 59 (17.10%) Software Engineering
12 47 (13.62%) Mentoring
12 47 (13.62%) Stakeholder Management
13 46 (13.33%) Continuous Integration
14 41 (11.88%) Containerisation
15 38 (11.01%) End-to-End Testing
15 38 (11.01%) Observability
15 38 (11.01%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 199 (57.68%) Java
2 86 (24.93%) SQL
3 71 (20.58%) Python
4 60 (17.39%) JavaScript
5 57 (16.52%) C#
6 31 (8.99%) TypeScript
7 14 (4.06%) C++
8 8 (2.32%) Groovy
8 8 (2.32%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.03%) Apex Code
10 5 (1.45%) Go
10 5 (1.45%) R
10 5 (1.45%) Ruby
10 5 (1.45%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.16%) Perl
11 4 (1.16%) Scala
12 3 (0.87%) Bash
12 3 (0.87%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.58%) Cypher
13 2 (0.58%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 91 (26.38%) Security Cleared
2 73 (21.16%) SC Cleared
3 23 (6.67%) Degree
4 22 (6.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (4.93%) ISTQB
6 15 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (2.32%) DV Cleared
8 7 (2.03%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 6 (1.74%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (1.45%) AWS Certification
10 5 (1.45%) Azure Certification
11 3 (0.87%) CSPO
11 3 (0.87%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.29%) ISEB
12 1 (0.29%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.29%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (20.29%) QA
2 46 (13.33%) Accessibility
3 22 (6.38%) WCAG
4 16 (4.64%) Data Quality
5 14 (4.06%) GDPR
6 2 (0.58%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.29%) EMIR
7 1 (0.29%) MiFID
7 1 (0.29%) SEPA
7 1 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 91 (26.38%) Docker
2 9 (2.61%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 69 (20.00%) Kubernetes
2 41 (11.88%) Grafana
3 31 (8.99%) Prometheus
4 21 (6.09%) Terraform
5 6 (1.74%) Ansible
6 4 (1.16%) Kibana
7 3 (0.87%) Istio
8 2 (0.58%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.58%) Argo
8 2 (0.58%) Consul
8 2 (0.58%) Rancher
8 2 (0.58%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 22 (6.38%) Microsoft
2 18 (5.22%) Salesforce
3 16 (4.64%) Sybase
4 15 (4.35%) Google
5 13 (3.77%) Atlassian
5 13 (3.77%) Oracle
6 12 (3.48%) IBM
7 11 (3.19%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (2.32%) Checkmarx
8 8 (2.32%) Conga
8 8 (2.32%) GoCardless
9 6 (1.74%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.45%) ServiceNow
10 5 (1.45%) Splunk
11 3 (0.87%) CA Agile Central
11 3 (0.87%) Databricks
11 3 (0.87%) Guidewire
11 3 (0.87%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.87%) OpenLink
12 2 (0.58%) Amdocs