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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 332 286 291
Rank change year-on-year -46 +5 -69
Contract jobs citing BDD 357 281 350
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.87% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.80% 0.96% 0.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 184 255
10th Percentile £321 £358 £356
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -7.41% -10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £595 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £460 £510
% change year-on-year -1.52% -9.80% +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 - - -19.64%

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 44,694 29,246 37,042
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.15% 90.54% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,812 18,436 23,663
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,657 1,477 2,496
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% -3.62%

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 9 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 9 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 -64 291 £463 -9.76% 74
UK excluding London -29 209 £453 -1.52% 55
London -79 114 £494 -15.78% 27
Work from Home -32 106 £450 -10.00% 58
North of England -39 85 £453 -1.52% 15
Midlands -26 50 £425 -8.11% 13
West Midlands -30 49 £425 -11.69% 10
North West -12 44 £438 +8.83% 10
Scotland +6 30 £451 +12.81% 2
Yorkshire -47 27 £620 +19.29% 4
North East -19 20 £450 +7.14% 1
South West -29 19 £525 +23.53% 3
South East -62 18 £359 -20.33% 18
East of England -16 8 £510 - 3
Wales -13 2 £650 - 1
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 2

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 (14.85%) Confluence
2 5 (1.40%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.84%) Apache
3 3 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.84%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.56%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.28%) Camunda
5 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (0.84%) Notion
2 2 (0.56%) 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 (2.24%) Payment Gateway
2 5 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.84%) Findur
3 3 (0.84%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.56%) Workday HCM
5 1 (0.28%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 132 (36.97%) AWS
2 108 (30.25%) Azure
3 93 (26.05%) GitHub
4 49 (13.73%) Azure DevOps
4 49 (13.73%) GCP
5 48 (13.45%) GitHub Actions
6 30 (8.40%) Serverless
7 25 (7.00%) Amazon S3
8 24 (6.72%) Amazon SQS
9 23 (6.44%) Amazon EC2
10 21 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
11 19 (5.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 13 (3.64%) ChatGPT
13 12 (3.36%) AWS KMS
13 12 (3.36%) BrowserStack
13 12 (3.36%) GitHub Copilot
13 12 (3.36%) Route 53
14 11 (3.08%) Anthropic Claude
15 10 (2.80%) Power Platform
16 8 (2.24%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.68%) 3GPP
1 6 (1.68%) RTP
1 6 (1.68%) Wireshark
2 3 (0.84%) DSL
2 3 (0.84%) Internet
2 3 (0.84%) WAN
3 2 (0.56%) Firewall
3 2 (0.56%) 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 58 (16.25%) MongoDB
2 49 (13.73%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (7.00%) Relational Database
4 20 (5.60%) DynamoDB
5 18 (5.04%) Amazon RDS
5 18 (5.04%) NoSQL
5 18 (5.04%) SQL Server
6 16 (4.48%) Amazon Aurora
7 15 (4.20%) Db2
8 11 (3.08%) Data Lake
8 11 (3.08%) Metadata
9 10 (2.80%) Oracle Database
10 8 (2.24%) MySQL
11 7 (1.96%) Power BI
12 5 (1.40%) Amazon Athena
12 5 (1.40%) Couchbase
12 5 (1.40%) Tableau
13 4 (1.12%) BigQuery
13 4 (1.12%) Data Warehouse
14 3 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 118 (33.05%) Cucumber
2 97 (27.17%) Selenium
3 94 (26.33%) Git
4 93 (26.05%) Jenkins
5 72 (20.17%) JIRA
6 70 (19.61%) GitLab
7 67 (18.77%) JUnit
8 45 (12.61%) Postman
8 45 (12.61%) REST Assured
9 43 (12.04%) Mockito
9 43 (12.04%) WebDriver
10 30 (8.40%) SonarQube
11 29 (8.12%) JMeter
12 23 (6.44%) Cypress.io
12 23 (6.44%) SpecFlow
13 22 (6.16%) Maven
14 18 (5.04%) Gatling
15 17 (4.76%) TeamCity
16 12 (3.36%) Bitbucket
16 12 (3.36%) DbUnit
General
1 98 (27.45%) Social Skills
2 80 (22.41%) Finance
3 72 (20.17%) Public Sector
4 51 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
5 40 (11.20%) Banking
6 12 (3.36%) Front Office
7 10 (2.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 9 (2.52%) Organisational Skills
8 9 (2.52%) Retail
9 8 (2.24%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.24%) Military
10 5 (1.40%) Aviation
10 5 (1.40%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.40%) Police
11 4 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.84%) Automotive
12 3 (0.84%) Billing
12 3 (0.84%) Marketing
13 2 (0.56%) Law
Job Titles
1 113 (31.65%) Developer
2 78 (21.85%) Java Developer
3 72 (20.17%) Senior
4 62 (17.37%) Test Engineer
5 43 (12.04%) Lead
6 37 (10.36%) Software Engineer
7 35 (9.80%) Test Automation Engineer
8 29 (8.12%) Tester
9 24 (6.72%) Senior Developer
9 24 (6.72%) Senior Java Developer
10 23 (6.44%) Automation Tester
11 20 (5.60%) Test Leader
12 19 (5.32%) Java Engineer
13 18 (5.04%) Analyst
14 13 (3.64%) QA Engineer
14 13 (3.64%) Senior Software Engineer
14 13 (3.64%) Senior Tester
15 12 (3.36%) Architect
15 12 (3.36%) Automation Test Lead
16 11 (3.08%) Salesforce Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (26.05%) Spring
2 73 (20.45%) Spring Boot
3 69 (19.33%) Playwright
4 64 (17.93%) REST
5 58 (16.25%) Kafka
6 48 (13.45%) Gherkin
7 44 (12.32%) RESTful
8 34 (9.52%) .NET
9 31 (8.68%) AngularJS
10 30 (8.40%) WireMock
11 28 (7.84%) ActiveMQ
12 26 (7.28%) Node.js
12 26 (7.28%) React
13 24 (6.72%) SOAP
14 21 (5.88%) Spring Cloud
15 19 (5.32%) JAX-RS
16 18 (5.04%) Web Services
17 17 (4.76%) JPA
18 16 (4.48%) Hibernate
19 14 (3.92%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 36 (10.08%) Distributed Systems
2 33 (9.24%) Cloud Native
3 30 (8.40%) Product Ownership
4 16 (4.48%) Distributed Architecture
5 14 (3.92%) Enterprise Software
6 13 (3.64%) Equity Derivative
7 10 (2.80%) Derivative
8 8 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (1.96%) Mobile App
9 7 (1.96%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.40%) Robotics
10 5 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (1.12%) Distributed Applications
11 4 (1.12%) Taxonomies
12 3 (0.84%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.84%) Equities
12 3 (0.84%) Fixed Income
12 3 (0.84%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.84%) Public Cloud
12 3 (0.84%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 52 (14.57%) Linux
2 23 (6.44%) Unix
3 12 (3.36%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.40%) Android
4 5 (1.40%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.84%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.84%) Windows
6 2 (0.56%) VMS
7 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 226 (63.31%) Agile
2 224 (62.75%) TDD
3 216 (60.50%) CI/CD
4 208 (58.26%) Test Automation
5 143 (40.06%) Microservices
6 127 (35.57%) DevOps
7 75 (21.01%) Scrum
8 71 (19.89%) Problem-Solving
9 70 (19.61%) Test Strategy
10 68 (19.05%) Continuous Improvement
11 67 (18.77%) Software Engineering
12 66 (18.49%) API Testing
13 52 (14.57%) AI
14 49 (13.73%) Mentoring
15 45 (12.61%) SDLC
16 43 (12.04%) Containerisation
17 42 (11.76%) Observability
18 39 (10.92%) Continuous Integration
19 37 (10.36%) End-to-End Testing
20 36 (10.08%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 219 (61.34%) Java
2 91 (25.49%) SQL
3 73 (20.45%) Python
4 59 (16.53%) C#
5 57 (15.97%) JavaScript
6 30 (8.40%) TypeScript
7 16 (4.48%) C++
8 8 (2.24%) Groovy
8 8 (2.24%) Kotlin
9 7 (1.96%) Apex Code
10 6 (1.68%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.12%) Go
11 4 (1.12%) Perl
12 3 (0.84%) R
12 3 (0.84%) Ruby
12 3 (0.84%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.56%) Bicep
13 2 (0.56%) Cypher
13 2 (0.56%) SHACL
13 2 (0.56%) VBA
Qualifications
1 94 (26.33%) Security Cleared
2 77 (21.57%) SC Cleared
3 23 (6.44%) Degree
4 21 (5.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (3.92%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (3.64%) ISTQB
7 8 (2.24%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.68%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (1.40%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.40%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.84%) CSPO
10 3 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.84%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.28%) ISEB
11 1 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (17.93%) QA
2 43 (12.04%) Accessibility
3 16 (4.48%) Data Quality
4 12 (3.36%) WCAG
5 9 (2.52%) GDPR
6 2 (0.56%) 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 95 (26.61%) Docker
2 9 (2.52%) Postfix
3 1 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 78 (21.85%) Kubernetes
2 46 (12.89%) Grafana
3 37 (10.36%) Prometheus
4 32 (8.96%) Terraform
5 7 (1.96%) Ansible
6 3 (0.84%) Istio
6 3 (0.84%) Kibana
7 2 (0.56%) Amdocs OSS
7 2 (0.56%) Argo
7 2 (0.56%) Consul
7 2 (0.56%) Rancher
7 2 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.56%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.28%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.28%) EMC VPLEX
8 1 (0.28%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 25 (7.00%) Oracle
2 21 (5.88%) Salesforce
3 16 (4.48%) Sybase
4 15 (4.20%) Atlassian
5 14 (3.92%) Google
6 11 (3.08%) IBM
6 11 (3.08%) Jaspersoft
6 11 (3.08%) Microsoft
6 11 (3.08%) Splunk
7 8 (2.24%) Checkmarx
7 8 (2.24%) Conga
7 8 (2.24%) GoCardless
8 6 (1.68%) Databricks
8 6 (1.68%) Dynatrace
9 5 (1.40%) ServiceNow
10 4 (1.12%) Veracode
11 3 (0.84%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.84%) OpenLink
12 2 (0.56%) FactSet
12 2 (0.56%) SAP