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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 361 293 271
Rank change year-on-year -68 -22 -82
Contract jobs citing BDD 282 246 351
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.84% 0.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.70% 0.92% 0.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 161 159 267
10th Percentile £343 £373 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.29% -2.38% -12.50%
75th Percentile £550 £656 £631
90th Percentile £688 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -6.70% -4.76% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
Median hourly rate - - £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £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 40,197 26,741 37,098
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.41% 90.94% 86.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,242 17,210 23,886
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,406 1,094 2,440
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.44 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.13 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.52% -21.23% +0.69%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -28.95% +8.57%

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 May 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 May 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 -78 237 £475 -9.52% 90
UK excluding London -36 160 £467 -6.70% 72
London -59 102 £481 -17.91% 25
Work from Home -30 78 £425 -17.07% 64
North of England -45 74 £475 -5.00% 18
North West -14 40 £431 +2.13% 10
West Midlands -40 32 £425 -11.69% 5
Midlands -46 32 £425 -8.11% 14
Yorkshire -57 27 £573 +9.05% 5
Scotland +17 23 £438 +9.38% 3
South East -66 11 £358 -28.40% 20
South West -29 10 £525 - 12
North East -17 9 £425 +9.04% 4
East of England - 8 £510 - 2
Northern Ireland - 2 - -
Wales -13 1 £650 - 3

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 40 (14.18%) Confluence
2 3 (1.06%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (1.06%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.71%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.35%) Camunda
4 1 (0.35%) CMS
4 1 (0.35%) nginx
4 1 (0.35%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (1.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.71%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.71%) Notion
3 1 (0.35%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.35%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 3 (1.06%) Findur
2 2 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.71%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.71%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 100 (35.46%) AWS
2 80 (28.37%) Azure
3 62 (21.99%) GitHub
4 43 (15.25%) GCP
5 33 (11.70%) Azure DevOps
6 28 (9.93%) GitHub Actions
7 22 (7.80%) Serverless
8 18 (6.38%) Amazon S3
9 17 (6.03%) Amazon EC2
10 16 (5.67%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (5.32%) Amazon SQS
12 14 (4.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 14 (4.96%) BrowserStack
13 10 (3.55%) SaaS
14 9 (3.19%) AWS KMS
14 9 (3.19%) ChatGPT
14 9 (3.19%) Route 53
15 8 (2.84%) GitHub Copilot
16 7 (2.48%) Anthropic Claude
17 6 (2.13%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.42%) 3GPP
1 4 (1.42%) RTP
1 4 (1.42%) Wireshark
2 3 (1.06%) WAN
3 2 (0.71%) NaaS
4 1 (0.35%) Cisco IPT
4 1 (0.35%) DSL
4 1 (0.35%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.35%) HTTP
4 1 (0.35%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.35%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (14.18%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (13.83%) MongoDB
3 21 (7.45%) Relational Database
4 18 (6.38%) SQL Server
5 16 (5.67%) MySQL
6 14 (4.96%) DynamoDB
7 13 (4.61%) Amazon Aurora
8 12 (4.26%) Amazon RDS
9 10 (3.55%) DB2
9 10 (3.55%) Oracle Database
10 9 (3.19%) Metadata
11 7 (2.48%) Data Lake
12 6 (2.13%) NoSQL
13 4 (1.42%) Power BI
14 3 (1.06%) Amazon Athena
14 3 (1.06%) Delta Lake
14 3 (1.06%) MariaDB
15 2 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
15 2 (0.71%) Redis
15 2 (0.71%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 95 (33.69%) Cucumber
2 75 (26.60%) Jenkins
2 75 (26.60%) Selenium
3 74 (26.24%) Git
4 64 (22.70%) JIRA
5 58 (20.57%) GitLab
6 52 (18.44%) JUnit
7 36 (12.77%) Postman
8 31 (10.99%) WebDriver
9 29 (10.28%) Mockito
10 28 (9.93%) SonarQube
11 27 (9.57%) REST Assured
12 24 (8.51%) JMeter
13 14 (4.96%) Maven
14 13 (4.61%) Cypress.io
14 13 (4.61%) TeamCity
15 11 (3.90%) SpecFlow
16 10 (3.55%) Gatling
17 9 (3.19%) DbUnit
17 9 (3.19%) jMock
General
1 71 (25.18%) Social Skills
2 65 (23.05%) Finance
3 53 (18.79%) Public Sector
4 35 (12.41%) Analytical Skills
5 28 (9.93%) Banking
6 8 (2.84%) Front Office
6 8 (2.84%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (2.48%) Investment Banking
8 4 (1.42%) Aviation
8 4 (1.42%) Fire and Rescue
8 4 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
8 4 (1.42%) Military
8 4 (1.42%) Police
9 3 (1.06%) Billing
9 3 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.06%) Retail
10 2 (0.71%) Automotive
10 2 (0.71%) Legal
10 2 (0.71%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.71%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 93 (32.98%) Developer
2 59 (20.92%) Java Developer
3 46 (16.31%) Senior
4 42 (14.89%) Test Engineer
5 36 (12.77%) Lead
6 30 (10.64%) Software Engineer
7 26 (9.22%) Test Automation Engineer
8 23 (8.16%) Tester
9 18 (6.38%) Automation Tester
10 16 (5.67%) Senior Developer
10 16 (5.67%) Test Leader
11 15 (5.32%) Analyst
11 15 (5.32%) Senior Java Developer
12 13 (4.61%) Java Engineer
13 12 (4.26%) Business Analyst
14 10 (3.55%) Automation Test Lead
14 10 (3.55%) QA Engineer
14 10 (3.55%) Senior Automation Tester
14 10 (3.55%) Senior Tester
15 9 (3.19%) Lead Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (26.95%) Spring
2 58 (20.57%) Spring Boot
3 48 (17.02%) REST
4 42 (14.89%) Playwright
5 38 (13.48%) Gherkin
6 37 (13.12%) Kafka
6 37 (13.12%) RESTful
7 30 (10.64%) AngularJS
8 29 (10.28%) .NET
9 24 (8.51%) Node.js
10 22 (7.80%) WireMock
11 20 (7.09%) ActiveMQ
11 20 (7.09%) React
12 18 (6.38%) Spring Cloud
13 15 (5.32%) Web Services
14 14 (4.96%) JAX-RS
15 13 (4.61%) SOAP
16 12 (4.26%) Hibernate
17 11 (3.90%) JPA
17 11 (3.90%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 29 (10.28%) Distributed Systems
2 26 (9.22%) Cloud Native
3 25 (8.87%) Product Ownership
4 13 (4.61%) Distributed Architecture
5 11 (3.90%) Mobile App
6 9 (3.19%) Equity Derivative
7 8 (2.84%) Derivative
8 6 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.77%) Onboarding
10 4 (1.42%) Distributed Applications
10 4 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.42%) Public Cloud
10 4 (1.42%) Robotics
11 2 (0.71%) AS400
11 2 (0.71%) Client/Server
11 2 (0.71%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (0.71%) Equities
11 2 (0.71%) Fixed Income
11 2 (0.71%) NHS
11 2 (0.71%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 40 (14.18%) Linux
2 17 (6.03%) Unix
3 11 (3.90%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.77%) Android
4 5 (1.77%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.71%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.71%) VMS
5 2 (0.71%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (60.28%) TDD
2 166 (58.87%) Test Automation
3 163 (57.80%) Agile
4 155 (54.96%) CI/CD
5 111 (39.36%) Microservices
6 92 (32.62%) DevOps
7 60 (21.28%) Problem-Solving
8 58 (20.57%) Test Strategy
9 55 (19.50%) API Testing
10 53 (18.79%) Continuous Improvement
11 49 (17.38%) Scrum
12 46 (16.31%) Software Engineering
13 38 (13.48%) AI
14 37 (13.12%) Containerisation
14 37 (13.12%) SDLC
15 32 (11.35%) Mentoring
15 32 (11.35%) Observability
16 29 (10.28%) Performance Testing
17 28 (9.93%) Kanban
17 28 (9.93%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 173 (61.35%) Java
2 73 (25.89%) SQL
3 67 (23.76%) Python
4 44 (15.60%) JavaScript
5 37 (13.12%) C#
6 28 (9.93%) TypeScript
7 13 (4.61%) C++
8 11 (3.90%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.48%) PHP
9 7 (2.48%) Ruby
10 5 (1.77%) Go
10 5 (1.77%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.42%) Perl
12 3 (1.06%) Groovy
13 2 (0.71%) Scala
13 2 (0.71%) VBA
14 1 (0.35%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.35%) Bash
14 1 (0.35%) Bicep
14 1 (0.35%) Swift
Qualifications
1 70 (24.82%) Security Cleared
2 61 (21.63%) SC Cleared
3 16 (5.67%) Degree
4 11 (3.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (1.77%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.77%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.42%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.71%) ISEB
9 1 (0.35%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (20.57%) QA
2 29 (10.28%) Accessibility
3 9 (3.19%) Data Quality
4 6 (2.13%) WCAG
5 2 (0.71%) GDPR
5 2 (0.71%) HL7
6 1 (0.35%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.35%) PERC
System Software
1 72 (25.53%) Docker
2 8 (2.84%) Postfix
3 1 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 59 (20.92%) Kubernetes
2 37 (13.12%) Grafana
3 31 (10.99%) Prometheus
4 18 (6.38%) Terraform
5 3 (1.06%) Ansible
5 3 (1.06%) Kibana
6 2 (0.71%) Amdocs OSS
6 2 (0.71%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.71%) Rancher
6 2 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.35%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.35%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.35%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.35%) Istio
Vendors
1 22 (7.80%) Oracle
2 13 (4.61%) Atlassian
3 12 (4.26%) Google
4 11 (3.90%) Splunk
4 11 (3.90%) Sybase
5 10 (3.55%) ServiceNow
6 9 (3.19%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (2.84%) Checkmarx
7 8 (2.84%) IBM
7 8 (2.84%) Salesforce
8 7 (2.48%) Databricks
9 4 (1.42%) Dynatrace
9 4 (1.42%) Veracode
10 3 (1.06%) Adobe
10 3 (1.06%) Microsoft
10 3 (1.06%) OpenLink
11 2 (0.71%) Bloomberg
11 2 (0.71%) CA Agile Central
11 2 (0.71%) Ciena
11 2 (0.71%) SAP