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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 332 296 301
Rank change year-on-year -36 +5 -158
Contract jobs citing BDD 293 267 319
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.87% 0.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.81% 0.97% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 175 154 223
10th Percentile £355 £356 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £495
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +6.06% -15.53%
75th Percentile £570 £622 £591
90th Percentile £675 £800 £699
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -9.52%

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 36,013 27,550 38,397
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.71% 89.93% 86.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,879 17,122 25,100
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £411 £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 £721 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.58% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,136 871 2,197
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.03 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -1.71% -5.53%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.75 £59.50
90th Percentile £72.96 £75.00 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.51% -9.60% -

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 27 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 27 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 -52 257 £475 -9.52% 65
UK excluding London -52 149 £475 -5.00% 54
London -35 119 £481 -21.75% 17
North of England -36 93 £494 +12.86% 19
Work from Home -23 78 £454 -13.57% 41
Yorkshire -56 45 £550 +7.32% 4
North West -18 30 £431 +19.56% 10
Midlands -32 28 £425 -16.25% 12
West Midlands -29 26 £475 -6.40% 12
North East -5 21 £445 +14.10% 5
South West -31 8 £425 -19.05% 9
South East -45 8 £367 -26.60% 9
Scotland +12 6 £400 -8.57% 2
Wales -1 4 £375 - 1
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 1
East Midlands - 2 £310 -

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 41 (13.99%) Confluence
2 4 (1.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.02%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.68%) nginx
4 2 (0.68%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.34%) CMS
5 1 (0.34%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 4 (1.37%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.68%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.34%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 103 (35.15%) AWS
2 70 (23.89%) Azure
3 44 (15.02%) GitHub
4 27 (9.22%) Azure DevOps
5 26 (8.87%) GCP
6 24 (8.19%) Serverless
7 21 (7.17%) GitHub Actions
8 18 (6.14%) Amazon S3
8 18 (6.14%) AWS Lambda
9 13 (4.44%) BrowserStack
10 10 (3.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 10 (3.41%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (3.41%) Amazon SQS
11 9 (3.07%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (2.73%) SaaS
13 5 (1.71%) Amazon Cognito
13 5 (1.71%) AWS KMS
13 5 (1.71%) AWS Step Functions
13 5 (1.71%) Route 53
14 4 (1.37%) BlazeMeter
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.71%) Cisco IPT
2 2 (0.68%) HTTP
2 2 (0.68%) WAN
3 1 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
3 1 (0.34%) FTP
3 1 (0.34%) Internet
3 1 (0.34%) iSCSI
3 1 (0.34%) LAN
3 1 (0.34%) NaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (12.29%) MongoDB
1 36 (12.29%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (5.46%) SQL Server
3 12 (4.10%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (4.10%) MySQL
4 11 (3.75%) Relational Database
5 10 (3.41%) Oracle Database
6 9 (3.07%) DynamoDB
6 9 (3.07%) NoSQL
7 7 (2.39%) Data Lake
8 5 (1.71%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (1.02%) Delta Lake
9 3 (1.02%) Redis
10 2 (0.68%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.34%) Big Data
11 1 (0.34%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.34%) InfluxDB
11 1 (0.34%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 112 (38.23%) Cucumber
2 80 (27.30%) Selenium
3 75 (25.60%) Jenkins
4 70 (23.89%) JIRA
5 65 (22.18%) Git
6 63 (21.50%) GitLab
7 44 (15.02%) Postman
8 38 (12.97%) JUnit
9 33 (11.26%) REST Assured
10 32 (10.92%) Mockito
11 25 (8.53%) JMeter
12 24 (8.19%) WebDriver
13 23 (7.85%) Cypress.io
14 18 (6.14%) SonarQube
15 12 (4.10%) Bitbucket
15 12 (4.10%) Maven
16 11 (3.75%) Gatling
17 8 (2.73%) Serenity BDD
17 8 (2.73%) SpecFlow
17 8 (2.73%) TestRail
General
1 72 (24.57%) Social Skills
2 64 (21.84%) Public Sector
3 48 (16.38%) Finance
4 26 (8.87%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (7.51%) Banking
6 8 (2.73%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (2.39%) Military
8 6 (2.05%) Front Office
9 5 (1.71%) Legal
10 4 (1.37%) Electronics
11 3 (1.02%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.68%) Billing
12 2 (0.68%) Retail
12 2 (0.68%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.34%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.34%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.34%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 94 (32.08%) Developer
2 61 (20.82%) Java Developer
3 59 (20.14%) Senior
4 52 (17.75%) Test Engineer
5 36 (12.29%) Lead
6 26 (8.87%) Senior Developer
7 24 (8.19%) Software Engineer
8 23 (7.85%) Test Automation Engineer
8 23 (7.85%) Tester
9 22 (7.51%) Senior Java Developer
10 16 (5.46%) Automation Tester
10 16 (5.46%) QA Engineer
11 15 (5.12%) Java Engineer
12 13 (4.44%) Lead Test Engineer
12 13 (4.44%) Test Leader
13 12 (4.10%) Analyst
14 10 (3.41%) Automation Engineer
14 10 (3.41%) Senior Test Engineer
15 9 (3.07%) Automation Test Lead
15 9 (3.07%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (20.48%) Spring
2 58 (19.80%) REST
2 58 (19.80%) Spring Boot
3 46 (15.70%) Playwright
4 40 (13.65%) Kafka
5 38 (12.97%) RESTful
6 37 (12.63%) Node.js
7 35 (11.95%) React
8 31 (10.58%) Gherkin
9 27 (9.22%) .NET
9 27 (9.22%) WireMock
10 24 (8.19%) AngularJS
11 23 (7.85%) ActiveMQ
12 19 (6.48%) JAX-RS
13 18 (6.14%) CSS
14 16 (5.46%) Jest
14 16 (5.46%) SOAP
15 15 (5.12%) Web Services
16 13 (4.44%) Spring Cloud
17 11 (3.75%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 25 (8.53%) Product Ownership
2 19 (6.48%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (5.12%) Cloud Native
4 14 (4.78%) Distributed Architecture
5 6 (2.05%) Client/Server
5 6 (2.05%) Equities
5 6 (2.05%) Mobile App
5 6 (2.05%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (1.71%) NHS
7 4 (1.37%) Distributed Applications
7 4 (1.37%) Public Cloud
8 3 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.02%) Educational Technology
9 2 (0.68%) AS400
9 2 (0.68%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (0.68%) iSeries
9 2 (0.68%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.68%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 43 (14.68%) Linux
2 29 (9.90%) Unix
3 18 (6.14%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.02%) Windows
5 2 (0.68%) Android
6 1 (0.34%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.34%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.34%) VMS
6 1 (0.34%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (65.53%) Agile
2 186 (63.48%) Test Automation
3 180 (61.43%) TDD
4 162 (55.29%) CI/CD
5 139 (47.44%) Microservices
6 80 (27.30%) DevOps
7 67 (22.87%) API Testing
8 65 (22.18%) Problem-Solving
9 60 (20.48%) Scrum
10 59 (20.14%) Continuous Improvement
11 58 (19.80%) Test Strategy
12 51 (17.41%) Containerisation
13 49 (16.72%) Software Engineering
14 39 (13.31%) Mentoring
15 38 (12.97%) Performance Testing
16 37 (12.63%) SDLC
17 36 (12.29%) Non-Functional Testing
18 35 (11.95%) Functional Testing
19 31 (10.58%) Kanban
20 30 (10.24%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 183 (62.46%) Java
2 58 (19.80%) JavaScript
3 52 (17.75%) SQL
4 44 (15.02%) Python
5 38 (12.97%) TypeScript
6 28 (9.56%) C#
7 10 (3.41%) C++
8 8 (2.73%) Ruby
9 7 (2.39%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.39%) PHP
10 6 (2.05%) JSX
11 4 (1.37%) Go
11 4 (1.37%) Scala
11 4 (1.37%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.68%) Bash
12 2 (0.68%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.34%) Groovy
13 1 (0.34%) Swift
13 1 (0.34%) VBScript
13 1 (0.34%) XPath
Qualifications
1 87 (29.69%) Security Cleared
2 71 (24.23%) SC Cleared
3 15 (5.12%) BPSS Clearance
4 13 (4.44%) Degree
5 12 (4.10%) ISTQB
6 6 (2.05%) AWS Certification
6 6 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (1.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (1.02%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.02%) ISEB
9 2 (0.68%) AWS Certified Developer
10 1 (0.34%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (22.87%) QA
2 40 (13.65%) Accessibility
3 13 (4.44%) WCAG
4 8 (2.73%) GDPR
5 5 (1.71%) PERC
6 2 (0.68%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.68%) HL7
7 1 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 77 (26.28%) Docker
2 4 (1.37%) Postfix
3 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 56 (19.11%) Kubernetes
2 29 (9.90%) Grafana
3 24 (8.19%) Terraform
4 22 (7.51%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.37%) Ansible
6 2 (0.68%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.68%) Kibana
6 2 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.34%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.34%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.34%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.34%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.34%) Rancher
Vendors
1 23 (7.85%) Oracle
2 13 (4.44%) Splunk
3 11 (3.75%) Atlassian
4 8 (2.73%) Salesforce
4 8 (2.73%) ServiceNow
5 7 (2.39%) Databricks
6 5 (1.71%) Jaspersoft
6 5 (1.71%) Microsoft
7 4 (1.37%) Adobe
7 4 (1.37%) Veracode
8 3 (1.02%) Google
8 3 (1.02%) Red Hat
9 2 (0.68%) CA Agile Central
9 2 (0.68%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.68%) IBM
9 2 (0.68%) SAP
9 2 (0.68%) VMware
9 2 (0.68%) Workday
10 1 (0.34%) Amdocs
10 1 (0.34%) BT