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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 361 306 261
Rank change year-on-year -55 -45 -24
Contract jobs citing BDD 342 285 359
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.64% 0.87% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.75% 0.96% 1.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 187 250
10th Percentile £306 £356 £369
25th Percentile £400 £413 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £461 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -7.85% -6.98% -6.52%
75th Percentile £538 £591 £650
90th Percentile £675 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £500
% change year-on-year - -10.00% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £82.50 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £85.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year -47.06% +51.11% -25.00%
75th Percentile £46.88 £87.50 -
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 45,312 29,789 33,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.84% 90.47% 85.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,886 18,626 21,285
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £421 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,829 1,693 1,837
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -1.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +17.24%

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 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 11 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 -57 285 £459 -10.44% 118
UK excluding London -16 196 £450 - 64
London -88 113 £488 -17.37% 59
Work from Home -39 109 £475 -5.00% 69
North of England -38 77 £453 -1.52% 19
Midlands -14 53 £425 -7.86% 18
West Midlands -15 52 £425 -8.11% 10
North West -20 38 £475 -2.26% 12
Scotland -6 25 £465 +7.83%
Yorkshire -36 23 £585 +12.55% 4
North East -28 20 £450 - 4
South East -78 19 £309 -9.19% 18
South West -35 14 £525 +27.27% 3
East of England -14 8 £510 +36.00% 3
Wales -9 3 £650 - 3
Northern Ireland - 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 48 (14.04%) Confluence
2 5 (1.46%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.17%) Apache
4 3 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.88%) CMS
4 3 (0.88%) Headless CMS
4 3 (0.88%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.29%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (0.88%) Notion
2 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.29%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (2.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.34%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.88%) Findur
3 3 (0.88%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 123 (35.96%) AWS
2 114 (33.33%) Azure
3 94 (27.49%) GitHub
4 53 (15.50%) Azure DevOps
4 53 (15.50%) GCP
5 48 (14.04%) GitHub Actions
6 25 (7.31%) Serverless
7 22 (6.43%) Amazon SQS
8 21 (6.14%) Amazon S3
9 19 (5.56%) Amazon EC2
10 17 (4.97%) GitHub Copilot
11 16 (4.68%) AWS Lambda
12 15 (4.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 14 (4.09%) ChatGPT
14 12 (3.51%) Anthropic Claude
15 11 (3.22%) AWS KMS
16 10 (2.92%) Power Automate
16 10 (2.92%) Route 53
17 9 (2.63%) Dynamics 365
17 9 (2.63%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.05%) RTP
1 7 (2.05%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.75%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.88%) DSL
3 3 (0.88%) 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 56 (16.37%) MongoDB
2 45 (13.16%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (6.43%) NoSQL
4 20 (5.85%) Relational Database
5 18 (5.26%) SQL Server
6 17 (4.97%) DynamoDB
7 15 (4.39%) Amazon RDS
7 15 (4.39%) Db2
8 14 (4.09%) Amazon Aurora
9 11 (3.22%) Metadata
10 8 (2.34%) MySQL
11 7 (2.05%) Power BI
12 6 (1.75%) BigQuery
12 6 (1.75%) Data Warehouse
13 5 (1.46%) Couchbase
13 5 (1.46%) Data Lake
13 5 (1.46%) Tableau
14 4 (1.17%) Amazon Athena
15 3 (0.88%) Apache Iceberg
15 3 (0.88%) Looker
Development Applications
1 121 (35.38%) Cucumber
2 99 (28.95%) Selenium
3 98 (28.65%) Git
4 81 (23.68%) Jenkins
5 68 (19.88%) JUnit
6 65 (19.01%) JIRA
7 64 (18.71%) GitLab
8 45 (13.16%) Postman
8 45 (13.16%) WebDriver
9 42 (12.28%) REST Assured
10 35 (10.23%) Mockito
11 29 (8.48%) JMeter
12 26 (7.60%) Cypress.io
12 26 (7.60%) SonarQube
13 22 (6.43%) SpecFlow
14 20 (5.85%) Gatling
15 19 (5.56%) Maven
16 15 (4.39%) TeamCity
17 10 (2.92%) DbUnit
18 9 (2.63%) Bitbucket
General
1 107 (31.29%) Social Skills
2 71 (20.76%) Finance
3 67 (19.59%) Public Sector
4 57 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
5 40 (11.70%) Banking
6 13 (3.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (3.51%) Front Office
8 11 (3.22%) Organisational Skills
9 9 (2.63%) Investment Banking
10 7 (2.05%) Military
10 7 (2.05%) Retail
11 5 (1.46%) Aviation
11 5 (1.46%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.46%) Police
12 4 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
12 4 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.88%) Automotive
13 3 (0.88%) Billing
13 3 (0.88%) Legal Technology
13 3 (0.88%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 106 (30.99%) Developer
2 72 (21.05%) Senior
3 65 (19.01%) Java Developer
4 57 (16.67%) Test Engineer
5 38 (11.11%) Lead
6 33 (9.65%) Test Automation Engineer
7 32 (9.36%) Software Engineer
8 27 (7.89%) Tester
9 24 (7.02%) Analyst
10 22 (6.43%) Automation Tester
10 22 (6.43%) Senior Developer
11 21 (6.14%) Test Leader
12 19 (5.56%) Senior Java Developer
13 15 (4.39%) Java Engineer
14 13 (3.80%) QA Engineer
14 13 (3.80%) Senior Tester
15 12 (3.51%) Senior Software Engineer
16 11 (3.22%) Architect
16 11 (3.22%) Business Analyst
16 11 (3.22%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 81 (23.68%) Spring
2 66 (19.30%) Playwright
2 66 (19.30%) REST
3 60 (17.54%) Spring Boot
4 56 (16.37%) Kafka
5 53 (15.50%) Gherkin
6 41 (11.99%) RESTful
7 35 (10.23%) .NET
8 32 (9.36%) WireMock
9 27 (7.89%) AngularJS
9 27 (7.89%) Node.js
10 26 (7.60%) ActiveMQ
11 25 (7.31%) React
12 21 (6.14%) SOAP
13 18 (5.26%) JAX-RS
14 16 (4.68%) JSON
15 15 (4.39%) HTML
15 15 (4.39%) JPA
16 14 (4.09%) Hibernate
16 14 (4.09%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.99%) Distributed Systems
2 35 (10.23%) Product Ownership
3 29 (8.48%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.68%) Distributed Architecture
4 16 (4.68%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.09%) Equity Derivative
6 10 (2.92%) Derivative
6 10 (2.92%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (2.05%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.75%) Management Information System
9 5 (1.46%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.46%) Robotics
9 5 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.46%) Taxonomies
9 5 (1.46%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.17%) Distributed Applications
11 3 (0.88%) AI Agents
11 3 (0.88%) Legacy Code
11 3 (0.88%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 48 (14.04%) Linux
2 21 (6.14%) Unix
3 7 (2.05%) Android
3 7 (2.05%) Apple iOS
3 7 (2.05%) Mac OS X
4 3 (0.88%) Mac OS
4 3 (0.88%) Windows
5 2 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.58%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 229 (66.96%) Agile
2 224 (65.50%) CI/CD
3 220 (64.33%) TDD
4 206 (60.23%) Test Automation
5 130 (38.01%) Microservices
6 122 (35.67%) DevOps
7 80 (23.39%) Scrum
8 75 (21.93%) Continuous Improvement
9 73 (21.35%) Problem-Solving
10 71 (20.76%) Test Strategy
11 69 (20.18%) API Testing
12 60 (17.54%) AI
13 59 (17.25%) Software Engineering
14 46 (13.45%) Mentoring
14 46 (13.45%) Stakeholder Management
15 44 (12.87%) Continuous Integration
16 39 (11.40%) Containerisation
16 39 (11.40%) End-to-End Testing
16 39 (11.40%) Software Testing
17 38 (11.11%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 193 (56.43%) Java
2 87 (25.44%) SQL
3 74 (21.64%) Python
4 59 (17.25%) JavaScript
5 57 (16.67%) C#
6 31 (9.06%) TypeScript
7 14 (4.09%) C++
8 8 (2.34%) Groovy
8 8 (2.34%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.05%) Apex Code
10 6 (1.75%) Ruby
11 5 (1.46%) Go
11 5 (1.46%) R
11 5 (1.46%) T-SQL
12 4 (1.17%) Bash
12 4 (1.17%) Perl
12 4 (1.17%) Scala
13 3 (0.88%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.58%) Cypher
14 2 (0.58%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 87 (25.44%) Security Cleared
2 70 (20.47%) SC Cleared
3 23 (6.73%) Degree
4 21 (6.14%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (4.97%) ISTQB
6 15 (4.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (2.34%) DV Cleared
8 7 (2.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 6 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.88%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.88%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.88%) CSPO
10 3 (0.88%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.29%) ISEB
11 1 (0.29%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.29%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (20.47%) QA
2 48 (14.04%) Accessibility
3 25 (7.31%) WCAG
4 16 (4.68%) Data Quality
5 14 (4.09%) 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 90 (26.32%) Docker
2 7 (2.05%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 71 (20.76%) Kubernetes
2 39 (11.40%) Grafana
3 31 (9.06%) Prometheus
4 21 (6.14%) Terraform
5 6 (1.75%) Ansible
6 4 (1.17%) Kibana
7 3 (0.88%) 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 23 (6.73%) Microsoft
2 18 (5.26%) Salesforce
3 16 (4.68%) Sybase
4 14 (4.09%) Google
4 14 (4.09%) IBM
5 13 (3.80%) Oracle
6 11 (3.22%) Atlassian
7 9 (2.63%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (2.34%) Checkmarx
8 8 (2.34%) Conga
8 8 (2.34%) GoCardless
9 6 (1.75%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.46%) Databricks
10 5 (1.46%) Splunk
11 4 (1.17%) ServiceNow
12 3 (0.88%) CA Agile Central
12 3 (0.88%) Guidewire
12 3 (0.88%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.88%) OpenLink
13 2 (0.58%) Amdocs