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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 373 292 257
Rank change year-on-year -81 -35 -16
Contract jobs citing BDD 326 303 354
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.92% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.71% 1.01% 1.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 200 238
10th Percentile £306 £363 £357
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £461 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.85% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £541 £614 £650
90th Percentile £655 £703 £754
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £473 £496
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.74% -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 46,202 29,871 32,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.62% 90.47% 85.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,118 18,549 20,447
10th Percentile £325 £300 £311
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 3,059 1,786 1,512
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.71
25th Percentile £17.36 £17.30 £20.09
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £67.50 £45.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +76.76% -47.37% +8.72%

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 11 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 11 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 -91 269 £459 -11.69% 140
UK excluding London -67 171 £450 -4.76% 86
London -66 120 £500 -9.09% 72
Work from Home -71 94 £500 - 156
North of England -68 71 £445 -15.24% 25
Midlands -19 40 £438 -12.50% 12
West Midlands -18 39 £438 -12.50% 8
North West -35 31 £438 +3.67% 13
Yorkshire -50 25 £525 -4.55% 7
Scotland -12 23 £468 +1.08% 9
North East -35 19 £450 -2.17% 5
South East -64 16 £275 -4.51% 21
South West -48 12 £525 +27.27% 9
East of England -26 8 £510 +36.00% 7
Wales -11 4 £531 +41.67% 4
Northern Ireland +2 1 - - 1

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
1 112 (34.36%) AWS
2 99 (30.37%) Azure
3 91 (27.91%) GitHub
4 46 (14.11%) Azure DevOps
5 44 (13.50%) 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 53 (16.26%) MongoDB
2 30 (9.20%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (7.36%) NoSQL
4 21 (6.44%) 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 8 (2.45%) MySQL
10 7 (2.15%) Power BI
11 6 (1.84%) BigQuery
11 6 (1.84%) Data Lake
11 6 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
12 5 (1.53%) Couchbase
12 5 (1.53%) Tableau
13 3 (0.92%) Amazon Redshift
13 3 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
13 3 (0.92%) Flink
Development Applications
1 114 (34.97%) Cucumber
2 98 (30.06%) Git
3 89 (27.30%) 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 32 (9.82%) WebDriver
10 31 (9.51%) Mockito
11 29 (8.90%) SonarQube
12 26 (7.98%) Cypress.io
13 24 (7.36%) Gatling
14 20 (6.13%) Maven
14 20 (6.13%) SpecFlow
15 15 (4.60%) JMeter
16 13 (3.99%) TeamCity
17 10 (3.07%) Gradle
18 9 (2.76%) TestNG
General
1 111 (34.05%) Social Skills
2 72 (22.09%) Finance
3 61 (18.71%) Public Sector
4 56 (17.18%) 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%) Military
9 7 (2.15%) Retail
10 5 (1.53%) Aviation
10 5 (1.53%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.53%) Police
11 3 (0.92%) Automotive
11 3 (0.92%) Legal Technology
11 3 (0.92%) Marketing
11 3 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.61%) Law
12 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 16 (4.91%) Tester
13 14 (4.29%) Automation Tester
13 14 (4.29%) QA Engineer
14 12 (3.68%) Quality Engineer
14 12 (3.68%) Senior Software Engineer
14 12 (3.68%) Test Leader
15 11 (3.37%) Python Developer
15 11 (3.37%) Senior Test Engineer
15 11 (3.37%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (22.70%) Spring
2 66 (20.25%) Playwright
3 64 (19.63%) Spring Boot
4 62 (19.02%) REST
5 57 (17.48%) Kafka
6 55 (16.87%) Gherkin
7 41 (12.58%) RESTful
8 28 (8.59%) .NET
9 25 (7.67%) Node.js
10 24 (7.36%) Terraform
11 23 (7.06%) React
11 23 (7.06%) WireMock
12 21 (6.44%) AngularJS
13 20 (6.13%) ActiveMQ
14 19 (5.83%) SOAP
15 16 (4.91%) HTML
16 14 (4.29%) JAX-RS
16 14 (4.29%) JSON
16 14 (4.29%) Swagger
16 14 (4.29%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 37 (11.35%) Product Ownership
2 30 (9.20%) Distributed Systems
3 29 (8.90%) 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 6 (1.84%) Distributed Architecture
9 6 (1.84%) Management Information System
9 6 (1.84%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.53%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.53%) NHS
10 5 (1.53%) Robotics
10 5 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.53%) Taxonomies
11 4 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.23%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 3 (0.92%) Legacy Code
13 2 (0.61%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 44 (13.50%) Linux
2 22 (6.75%) Unix
3 5 (1.53%) Android
3 5 (1.53%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.53%) Mac OS X
4 3 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.92%) Windows
5 2 (0.61%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.31%) AIX
6 1 (0.31%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 220 (67.48%) Agile
2 214 (65.64%) CI/CD
3 207 (63.50%) TDD
4 199 (61.04%) Test Automation
5 113 (34.66%) DevOps
6 109 (33.44%) Microservices
7 77 (23.62%) Scrum
8 71 (21.78%) AI
9 70 (21.47%) Problem-Solving
10 66 (20.25%) Software Engineering
11 64 (19.63%) Continuous Improvement
12 60 (18.40%) API Testing
12 60 (18.40%) Test Strategy
13 48 (14.72%) Software Testing
14 46 (14.11%) Stakeholder Management
15 43 (13.19%) Continuous Integration
15 43 (13.19%) SDLC
16 38 (11.66%) Mentoring
17 37 (11.35%) Containerisation
17 37 (11.35%) Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 200 (61.35%) Java
2 88 (26.99%) SQL
3 82 (25.15%) Python
4 61 (18.71%) 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 7 (2.15%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.15%) Groovy
10 6 (1.84%) Kotlin
10 6 (1.84%) R
11 5 (1.53%) Scala
12 4 (1.23%) Go
12 4 (1.23%) Perl
13 3 (0.92%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.92%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.61%) Bicep
14 2 (0.61%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 81 (24.85%) Security Cleared
2 66 (20.25%) SC Cleared
3 24 (7.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 22 (6.75%) Degree
5 19 (5.83%) ISTQB
6 16 (4.91%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (3.07%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.76%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 6 (1.84%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (1.53%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.92%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.92%) CSPO
12 2 (0.61%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.61%) ISEB
13 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 1 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
13 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 81 (24.85%) Docker
2 5 (1.53%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 66 (20.25%) Kubernetes
2 22 (6.75%) Grafana
3 17 (5.21%) 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%) Google
3 15 (4.60%) IBM
4 13 (3.99%) Oracle
5 8 (2.45%) Checkmarx
5 8 (2.45%) Conga
5 8 (2.45%) Databricks
5 8 (2.45%) GoCardless
6 7 (2.15%) Atlassian
7 6 (1.84%) Jaspersoft
8 5 (1.53%) OpenAI
9 3 (0.92%) CA Agile Central
9 3 (0.92%) Dynatrace
9 3 (0.92%) Guidewire
9 3 (0.92%) ION Trading
9 3 (0.92%) OpenLink
9 3 (0.92%) Splunk
10 2 (0.61%) Bloomberg