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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 330 293 288
Rank change year-on-year -37 -5 -64
Contract jobs citing BDD 362 284 341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.88% 0.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.81% 0.97% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 188 247
10th Percentile £317 £357 £357
25th Percentile £400 £412 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -7.41% -10.00%
75th Percentile £538 £598 £650
90th Percentile £676 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £510
% change year-on-year - -11.76% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £45.00 - £56.25
75th Percentile £46.88 - -
90th Percentile £48.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.25 - £56.25
% change year-on-year - - -21.05%

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 44,765 29,340 36,482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.42% 85.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,853 18,476 23,295
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £418 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,647 1,521 2,449
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.61 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.50 £52.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.70 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.25 £24.64 £38.12
% change year-on-year +83.64% -35.36% -0.99%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 -47 295 £463 -9.76% 121
UK excluding London -28 208 £450 - 114
London -69 118 £488 -17.02% 32
Work from Home -46 109 £450 -10.00% 117
North of England -30 84 £453 +0.67% 35
Midlands -18 51 £425 -7.86% 20
West Midlands -27 50 £425 -8.11% 10
North West -16 43 £438 +8.83% 17
Scotland +2 30 £451 +4.64% 8
Yorkshire -46 27 £620 +18.69% 11
North East -26 20 £450 +7.14% 8
South West -27 19 £525 +23.53% 8
South East -73 17 £358 -10.50% 25
East of England -14 8 £510 - 11
Wales -10 2 £650 - 5
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 6

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 53 (14.64%) Confluence
2 5 (1.38%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.10%) Apache
3 4 (1.10%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.55%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.28%) Camunda
6 1 (0.28%) CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (0.83%) Notion
2 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.28%) Mingle
3 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.21%) Payment Gateway
2 6 (1.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.83%) Findur
3 3 (0.83%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 134 (37.02%) AWS
2 110 (30.39%) Azure
3 94 (25.97%) GitHub
4 52 (14.36%) Azure DevOps
5 50 (13.81%) GCP
6 48 (13.26%) GitHub Actions
7 30 (8.29%) Serverless
8 26 (7.18%) Amazon S3
9 25 (6.91%) Amazon SQS
10 23 (6.35%) Amazon EC2
11 21 (5.80%) AWS Lambda
12 19 (5.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 13 (3.59%) AWS KMS
13 13 (3.59%) ChatGPT
14 12 (3.31%) BrowserStack
14 12 (3.31%) GitHub Copilot
14 12 (3.31%) Route 53
15 11 (3.04%) Anthropic Claude
16 10 (2.76%) Power Platform
17 8 (2.21%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.66%) 3GPP
1 6 (1.66%) RTP
1 6 (1.66%) Wireshark
2 3 (0.83%) DSL
2 3 (0.83%) Internet
2 3 (0.83%) WAN
3 2 (0.55%) Firewall
3 2 (0.55%) NaaS
4 1 (0.28%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.28%) HTTP
4 1 (0.28%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.28%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (16.85%) MongoDB
2 50 (13.81%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (6.91%) Relational Database
4 20 (5.52%) DynamoDB
5 19 (5.25%) NoSQL
5 19 (5.25%) SQL Server
6 18 (4.97%) Amazon RDS
7 16 (4.42%) Amazon Aurora
8 15 (4.14%) Db2
9 11 (3.04%) Data Lake
9 11 (3.04%) Metadata
10 10 (2.76%) Oracle Database
11 8 (2.21%) MySQL
12 7 (1.93%) Power BI
13 5 (1.38%) Amazon Athena
13 5 (1.38%) BigQuery
13 5 (1.38%) Couchbase
13 5 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
13 5 (1.38%) Tableau
14 3 (0.83%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 118 (32.60%) Cucumber
2 100 (27.62%) Selenium
3 96 (26.52%) Git
4 94 (25.97%) Jenkins
5 72 (19.89%) GitLab
6 70 (19.34%) JIRA
7 68 (18.78%) JUnit
8 45 (12.43%) REST Assured
9 44 (12.15%) WebDriver
10 43 (11.88%) Mockito
10 43 (11.88%) Postman
11 30 (8.29%) SonarQube
12 28 (7.73%) JMeter
13 25 (6.91%) Cypress.io
14 23 (6.35%) SpecFlow
15 22 (6.08%) Maven
16 20 (5.52%) Gatling
17 17 (4.70%) TeamCity
18 12 (3.31%) DbUnit
18 12 (3.31%) Serenity BDD
General
1 98 (27.07%) Social Skills
2 79 (21.82%) Finance
3 71 (19.61%) Public Sector
4 52 (14.36%) Analytical Skills
5 40 (11.05%) Banking
6 12 (3.31%) Front Office
7 11 (3.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 9 (2.49%) Organisational Skills
8 9 (2.49%) Retail
9 8 (2.21%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.21%) Military
10 5 (1.38%) Aviation
10 5 (1.38%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.38%) Police
11 4 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.83%) Automotive
12 3 (0.83%) Billing
12 3 (0.83%) Marketing
13 2 (0.55%) Law
Job Titles
1 115 (31.77%) Developer
2 77 (21.27%) Java Developer
3 74 (20.44%) Senior
4 61 (16.85%) Test Engineer
5 42 (11.60%) Lead
6 36 (9.94%) Software Engineer
7 34 (9.39%) Test Automation Engineer
8 28 (7.73%) Tester
9 25 (6.91%) Senior Developer
10 23 (6.35%) Automation Tester
10 23 (6.35%) Senior Java Developer
11 20 (5.52%) Analyst
12 19 (5.25%) Java Engineer
12 19 (5.25%) Test Leader
13 13 (3.59%) QA Engineer
13 13 (3.59%) Senior Software Engineer
13 13 (3.59%) Senior Tester
14 12 (3.31%) Architect
14 12 (3.31%) Automation Test Lead
15 11 (3.04%) Salesforce Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 94 (25.97%) Spring
2 74 (20.44%) Spring Boot
3 71 (19.61%) Playwright
4 64 (17.68%) REST
5 59 (16.30%) Kafka
6 50 (13.81%) Gherkin
7 44 (12.15%) RESTful
8 35 (9.67%) .NET
9 31 (8.56%) AngularJS
10 30 (8.29%) WireMock
11 28 (7.73%) ActiveMQ
12 27 (7.46%) Node.js
12 27 (7.46%) React
13 24 (6.63%) SOAP
14 21 (5.80%) Spring Cloud
15 19 (5.25%) JAX-RS
16 18 (4.97%) Web Services
17 17 (4.70%) JPA
18 16 (4.42%) Hibernate
19 14 (3.87%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 36 (9.94%) Distributed Systems
2 34 (9.39%) Cloud Native
3 31 (8.56%) Product Ownership
4 16 (4.42%) Distributed Architecture
5 15 (4.14%) Enterprise Software
6 13 (3.59%) Equity Derivative
7 10 (2.76%) Derivative
8 8 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (1.93%) Mobile App
9 7 (1.93%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.38%) Robotics
10 5 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.38%) Taxonomies
10 5 (1.38%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.10%) Distributed Applications
12 3 (0.83%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.83%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (0.83%) Fixed Income
12 3 (0.83%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.83%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 52 (14.36%) Linux
2 24 (6.63%) Unix
3 12 (3.31%) Mac OS X
4 6 (1.66%) Android
4 6 (1.66%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.83%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.83%) Windows
6 2 (0.55%) VMS
7 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (64.09%) Agile
2 228 (62.98%) TDD
3 224 (61.88%) CI/CD
4 208 (57.46%) Test Automation
5 145 (40.06%) Microservices
6 131 (36.19%) DevOps
7 78 (21.55%) Scrum
8 73 (20.17%) Problem-Solving
9 70 (19.34%) Test Strategy
10 69 (19.06%) Continuous Improvement
11 66 (18.23%) API Testing
12 65 (17.96%) Software Engineering
13 55 (15.19%) AI
14 48 (13.26%) Mentoring
15 45 (12.43%) SDLC
16 44 (12.15%) Containerisation
17 42 (11.60%) Observability
18 41 (11.33%) Continuous Integration
19 39 (10.77%) Stakeholder Management
20 37 (10.22%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 220 (60.77%) Java
2 92 (25.41%) SQL
3 73 (20.17%) Python
4 59 (16.30%) C#
5 58 (16.02%) JavaScript
6 32 (8.84%) TypeScript
7 15 (4.14%) C++
8 8 (2.21%) Groovy
8 8 (2.21%) Kotlin
9 7 (1.93%) Apex Code
10 6 (1.66%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.10%) Go
11 4 (1.10%) Perl
11 4 (1.10%) R
11 4 (1.10%) Ruby
12 3 (0.83%) Scala
12 3 (0.83%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.55%) Bash
13 2 (0.55%) Cypher
13 2 (0.55%) VBA
Qualifications
1 93 (25.69%) Security Cleared
2 76 (20.99%) SC Cleared
3 23 (6.35%) Degree
4 21 (5.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (3.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (3.87%) ISTQB
6 8 (2.21%) DV Cleared
7 7 (1.93%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (1.38%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.38%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.83%) CSPO
9 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.28%) ISEB
10 1 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (18.78%) QA
2 46 (12.71%) Accessibility
3 16 (4.42%) Data Quality
4 14 (3.87%) WCAG
5 10 (2.76%) GDPR
6 2 (0.55%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.28%) EMIR
7 1 (0.28%) MiFID
7 1 (0.28%) SEPA
7 1 (0.28%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 97 (26.80%) Docker
2 9 (2.49%) Postfix
3 1 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 81 (22.38%) Kubernetes
2 46 (12.71%) Grafana
3 37 (10.22%) Prometheus
4 32 (8.84%) Terraform
5 7 (1.93%) Ansible
6 4 (1.10%) Kibana
7 3 (0.83%) Istio
8 2 (0.55%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.55%) Argo
8 2 (0.55%) Consul
8 2 (0.55%) Rancher
8 2 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.55%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.28%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.28%) EMC VPLEX
Vendors
1 26 (7.18%) Oracle
2 21 (5.80%) Salesforce
3 16 (4.42%) Sybase
4 15 (4.14%) Google
5 14 (3.87%) Atlassian
5 14 (3.87%) Microsoft
6 11 (3.04%) IBM
6 11 (3.04%) Jaspersoft
6 11 (3.04%) Splunk
7 8 (2.21%) Checkmarx
7 8 (2.21%) Conga
7 8 (2.21%) GoCardless
8 6 (1.66%) Databricks
8 6 (1.66%) Dynatrace
9 5 (1.38%) ServiceNow
10 4 (1.10%) Veracode
11 3 (0.83%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.83%) OpenLink
12 2 (0.55%) Ciena
12 2 (0.55%) FactSet