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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 389 267 282
Rank change year-on-year -122 +15 -27
Contract jobs citing BDD 341 328 322
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 0.99% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.74% 1.09% 0.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 218 206
10th Percentile £306 £359 £357
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year -9.98% -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £538 £586 £623
90th Percentile £641 £700 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -7.89% +5.56% -10.89%
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 46,356 30,019 32,670
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.58% 85.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,940 18,640 19,751
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £632 £625 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,287 1,869 1,348
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.17 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.27
Median % change year-on-year +53.96% -40.49% -0.55%
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.02 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.86% -48.10% +1.18%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 -94 288 £450 -12.60% 338
UK excluding London -103 171 £438 -7.89% 320
London -59 133 £500 -7.41% 119
Work from Home -76 90 £475 -5.00% 288
North of England -84 72 £448 -14.76% 77
Midlands -14 48 £438 -5.41% 51
West Midlands -3 47 £438 -12.50% 32
Yorkshire -46 33 £438 -17.65% 25
North West -51 25 £441 +4.56% 34
Scotland -26 19 £470 +1.62% 57
North East -44 18 £450 -7.69% 18
South East -69 15 £275 -4.51% 53
South West -39 12 £500 +21.21% 26
Wales -9 5 £425 +13.33% 25
East of England -23 3 £600 +60.00% 18
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 14

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 30 (8.80%) Confluence
2 4 (1.17%) Apache
2 4 (1.17%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.88%) CMS
3 3 (0.88%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.88%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.88%) Mingle
1 3 (0.88%) Notion
2 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 12 (3.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.35%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.88%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 126 (36.95%) AWS
2 111 (32.55%) Azure
3 95 (27.86%) GitHub
4 46 (13.49%) Azure DevOps
5 44 (12.90%) GitHub Actions
6 35 (10.26%) GCP
7 28 (8.21%) Serverless
8 26 (7.62%) GitHub Copilot
9 19 (5.57%) Amazon S3
10 17 (4.99%) AWS Lambda
11 16 (4.69%) Amazon SQS
12 15 (4.40%) Dynamics 365
13 14 (4.11%) Amazon EC2
14 13 (3.81%) Anthropic Claude
14 13 (3.81%) Power Automate
14 13 (3.81%) Power Platform
15 12 (3.52%) ChatGPT
16 10 (2.93%) Snowflake
17 9 (2.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 9 (2.64%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.05%) RTP
1 7 (2.05%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.76%) 3GPP
2 6 (1.76%) Internet
3 3 (0.88%) DNS
3 3 (0.88%) Firewall
4 2 (0.59%) DSL
4 2 (0.59%) HTTP
5 1 (0.29%) BGP
5 1 (0.29%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.29%) Network Security
5 1 (0.29%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.29%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.29%) VPN
5 1 (0.29%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (15.84%) MongoDB
2 28 (8.21%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (7.33%) NoSQL
4 19 (5.57%) Relational Database
5 18 (5.28%) SQL Server
6 13 (3.81%) Db2
7 11 (3.23%) Amazon RDS
8 10 (2.93%) Data Lake
8 10 (2.93%) DynamoDB
8 10 (2.93%) Metadata
9 8 (2.35%) Power BI
10 7 (2.05%) Amazon Aurora
10 7 (2.05%) BigQuery
10 7 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
10 7 (2.05%) MySQL
11 5 (1.47%) Couchbase
11 5 (1.47%) Tableau
12 4 (1.17%) Apache Iceberg
12 4 (1.17%) Big Data
12 4 (1.17%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 139 (40.76%) Cucumber
2 106 (31.09%) Selenium
3 103 (30.21%) Git
4 77 (22.58%) Jenkins
5 70 (20.53%) GitLab
6 63 (18.48%) JUnit
7 50 (14.66%) REST Assured
8 49 (14.37%) JIRA
9 48 (14.08%) Postman
10 34 (9.97%) Gatling
11 30 (8.80%) Cypress.io
11 30 (8.80%) SonarQube
11 30 (8.80%) WebDriver
12 29 (8.50%) Mockito
13 21 (6.16%) Maven
13 21 (6.16%) SpecFlow
14 15 (4.40%) JMeter
15 12 (3.52%) Gradle
15 12 (3.52%) TeamCity
16 11 (3.23%) SoapUI
General
1 129 (37.83%) Social Skills
2 79 (23.17%) Finance
3 65 (19.06%) Public Sector
4 60 (17.60%) Analytical Skills
5 51 (14.96%) Banking
6 21 (6.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (4.11%) Front Office
8 8 (2.35%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.35%) Military
9 7 (2.05%) Retail
10 5 (1.47%) Aviation
10 5 (1.47%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.47%) Police
11 4 (1.17%) Marketing
11 4 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.88%) Legal Technology
12 3 (0.88%) Local Government
12 3 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.59%) Law
14 1 (0.29%) Legal
Job Titles
1 92 (26.98%) Developer
2 77 (22.58%) Senior
3 57 (16.72%) Test Engineer
4 52 (15.25%) Java Developer
5 36 (10.56%) Software Engineer
6 30 (8.80%) Test Automation Engineer
7 29 (8.50%) Lead
8 28 (8.21%) Senior Developer
9 23 (6.74%) Analyst
10 21 (6.16%) Java Engineer
10 21 (6.16%) Quality Engineer
11 17 (4.99%) QA Engineer
12 16 (4.69%) Senior Java Developer
13 14 (4.11%) Senior Test Engineer
13 14 (4.11%) Test Leader
14 13 (3.81%) Architect
14 13 (3.81%) Automation Engineer
14 13 (3.81%) Test Analyst
15 12 (3.52%) Senior Software Engineer
15 12 (3.52%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (23.17%) Playwright
2 73 (21.41%) Spring
3 62 (18.18%) Gherkin
3 62 (18.18%) REST
4 60 (17.60%) Spring Boot
5 59 (17.30%) Kafka
6 42 (12.32%) RESTful
7 32 (9.38%) .NET
8 28 (8.21%) React
8 28 (8.21%) WireMock
9 27 (7.92%) Terraform
10 24 (7.04%) Node.js
11 20 (5.87%) AngularJS
12 19 (5.57%) HTML
13 18 (5.28%) ActiveMQ
13 18 (5.28%) pytest
14 17 (4.99%) SOAP
15 14 (4.11%) .NET Core
15 14 (4.11%) RabbitMQ
15 14 (4.11%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 36 (10.56%) Product Ownership
2 32 (9.38%) Cloud Native
3 24 (7.04%) Distributed Systems
4 19 (5.57%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.11%) Legacy Systems
6 12 (3.52%) Equity Derivative
6 12 (3.52%) Onboarding
7 9 (2.64%) AI Agents
8 8 (2.35%) Derivative
8 8 (2.35%) Management Information System
8 8 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (2.05%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.47%) NHS
10 5 (1.47%) Robotics
10 5 (1.47%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 5 (1.47%) Taxonomies
11 4 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.17%) Distributed Architecture
12 3 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (0.88%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 44 (12.90%) Linux
2 24 (7.04%) Unix
3 6 (1.76%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.47%) Android
4 5 (1.47%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.88%) Windows
6 2 (0.59%) AIX
7 1 (0.29%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 240 (70.38%) Agile
2 239 (70.09%) CI/CD
3 223 (65.40%) TDD
4 218 (63.93%) Test Automation
5 125 (36.66%) Microservices
6 118 (34.60%) DevOps
7 87 (25.51%) Scrum
8 77 (22.58%) AI
9 75 (21.99%) Software Engineering
10 74 (21.70%) Problem-Solving
11 69 (20.23%) Software Testing
12 68 (19.94%) Continuous Improvement
13 67 (19.65%) API Testing
13 67 (19.65%) Test Strategy
14 59 (17.30%) Stakeholder Management
15 48 (14.08%) SDLC
16 45 (13.20%) Integration Testing
17 44 (12.90%) Continuous Integration
18 42 (12.32%) Coaching
19 41 (12.02%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 211 (61.88%) Java
2 85 (24.93%) SQL
3 84 (24.63%) Python
4 72 (21.11%) JavaScript
5 62 (18.18%) C#
6 41 (12.02%) TypeScript
7 15 (4.40%) Bash
8 13 (3.81%) Ruby
9 8 (2.35%) C++
10 7 (2.05%) Apex Code
10 7 (2.05%) Groovy
10 7 (2.05%) Scala
11 6 (1.76%) Kotlin
11 6 (1.76%) R
12 4 (1.17%) Go
12 4 (1.17%) Perl
13 3 (0.88%) Bicep
13 3 (0.88%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.88%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.59%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 84 (24.63%) Security Cleared
2 68 (19.94%) SC Cleared
3 32 (9.38%) BPSS Clearance
4 24 (7.04%) Degree
5 21 (6.16%) ISTQB
6 19 (5.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (3.23%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.64%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 8 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (1.76%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 5 (1.47%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.88%) CSPO
13 2 (0.59%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 2 (0.59%) Azure Certification
13 2 (0.59%) ISEB
13 2 (0.59%) Master's Degree
14 1 (0.29%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (26.69%) QA
2 71 (20.82%) Accessibility
3 45 (13.20%) WCAG
4 16 (4.69%) GDPR
5 15 (4.40%) Data Quality
6 4 (1.17%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.59%) SEPA
7 2 (0.59%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.29%) EMIR
8 1 (0.29%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.29%) MiFID
8 1 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 93 (27.27%) Docker
2 3 (0.88%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 80 (23.46%) Kubernetes
2 19 (5.57%) Grafana
3 13 (3.81%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.76%) Ansible
5 5 (1.47%) Kibana
6 3 (0.88%) Istio
7 2 (0.59%) Argo
7 2 (0.59%) Consul
7 2 (0.59%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.29%) Control-M
8 1 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 33 (9.68%) Microsoft
2 17 (4.99%) Databricks
3 15 (4.40%) IBM
3 15 (4.40%) Oracle
3 15 (4.40%) Salesforce
4 14 (4.11%) Sybase
5 13 (3.81%) Google
6 8 (2.35%) Conga
6 8 (2.35%) GoCardless
7 6 (1.76%) OpenAI
7 6 (1.76%) Splunk
8 5 (1.47%) Atlassian
9 4 (1.17%) CA Agile Central
9 4 (1.17%) ION Trading
9 4 (1.17%) Jaspersoft
10 3 (0.88%) Checkmarx
10 3 (0.88%) Guidewire
10 3 (0.88%) OutSystems
11 2 (0.59%) FactSet
11 2 (0.59%) OneLogin