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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 364 262 267
Rank change year-on-year -102 +5 -12
Contract jobs citing BDD 338 330 321
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.00% 0.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.74% 1.10% 0.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 219 203
10th Percentile £306 £360 £355
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year -9.98% -3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £538 £588 £611
90th Percentile £641 £700 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -7.89% +5.56% -12.20%
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 45,930 29,887 32,659
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 90.55% 85.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,618 18,553 19,727
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 £635 £623 £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 3,299 1,876 1,335
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.31 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.12 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.25 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.09% -39.40% -2.35%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.22 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.60 £65.00 £74.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +73.52% -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 5 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 5 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 -95 285 £450 -13.01% 331
UK excluding London -95 168 £438 -7.89% 289
London -70 133 £500 -7.41% 110
Work from Home -80 90 £475 -5.00% 266
North of England -86 69 £448 -14.33% 67
Midlands -7 48 £438 -5.41% 48
West Midlands -11 47 £438 -12.50% 28
Yorkshire -48 30 £438 -17.65% 21
North West -46 25 £441 +6.07% 30
Scotland -15 19 £470 +1.62% 37
North East -36 18 £450 -7.69% 16
South East -64 15 £275 -4.51% 53
South West -39 12 £500 +21.21% 35
Wales -10 5 £425 +13.33% 18
East of England -22 3 £600 +60.00% 24
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 10

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 (8.88%) Confluence
2 4 (1.18%) Apache
2 4 (1.18%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.89%) CMS
3 3 (0.89%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.89%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.89%) Mingle
1 3 (0.89%) Notion
2 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 12 (3.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (2.07%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.89%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 126 (37.28%) AWS
2 110 (32.54%) Azure
3 95 (28.11%) GitHub
4 45 (13.31%) Azure DevOps
5 44 (13.02%) GitHub Actions
6 35 (10.36%) GCP
7 28 (8.28%) Serverless
8 26 (7.69%) GitHub Copilot
9 19 (5.62%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.03%) AWS Lambda
11 16 (4.73%) Amazon SQS
12 15 (4.44%) Dynamics 365
13 14 (4.14%) Amazon EC2
14 13 (3.85%) Anthropic Claude
14 13 (3.85%) Power Automate
14 13 (3.85%) Power Platform
15 12 (3.55%) ChatGPT
16 10 (2.96%) Snowflake
17 9 (2.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 9 (2.66%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.07%) RTP
1 7 (2.07%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.78%) 3GPP
2 6 (1.78%) Internet
3 3 (0.89%) DNS
3 3 (0.89%) Firewall
4 2 (0.59%) DSL
4 2 (0.59%) HTTP
5 1 (0.30%) BGP
5 1 (0.30%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.30%) Network Security
5 1 (0.30%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.30%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.30%) VPN
5 1 (0.30%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (15.38%) MongoDB
2 28 (8.28%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (7.40%) NoSQL
4 19 (5.62%) Relational Database
5 18 (5.33%) SQL Server
6 13 (3.85%) Db2
7 11 (3.25%) Amazon RDS
8 10 (2.96%) Data Lake
8 10 (2.96%) DynamoDB
8 10 (2.96%) Metadata
9 8 (2.37%) Power BI
10 7 (2.07%) Amazon Aurora
10 7 (2.07%) BigQuery
10 7 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
10 7 (2.07%) MySQL
11 5 (1.48%) Couchbase
11 5 (1.48%) Tableau
12 4 (1.18%) Apache Iceberg
12 4 (1.18%) Big Data
12 4 (1.18%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 138 (40.83%) Cucumber
2 105 (31.07%) Selenium
3 102 (30.18%) Git
4 76 (22.49%) Jenkins
5 69 (20.41%) GitLab
6 62 (18.34%) JUnit
7 49 (14.50%) JIRA
7 49 (14.50%) REST Assured
8 47 (13.91%) Postman
9 33 (9.76%) Gatling
10 30 (8.88%) Cypress.io
10 30 (8.88%) SonarQube
10 30 (8.88%) WebDriver
11 27 (7.99%) Mockito
12 21 (6.21%) SpecFlow
13 20 (5.92%) Maven
14 14 (4.14%) JMeter
15 12 (3.55%) TeamCity
16 11 (3.25%) Gradle
17 10 (2.96%) SoapUI
General
1 129 (38.17%) Social Skills
2 79 (23.37%) Finance
3 65 (19.23%) Public Sector
4 60 (17.75%) Analytical Skills
5 51 (15.09%) Banking
6 21 (6.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (4.14%) Front Office
8 8 (2.37%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.37%) Military
9 7 (2.07%) Retail
10 5 (1.48%) Aviation
10 5 (1.48%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.48%) Police
11 4 (1.18%) Marketing
11 4 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.89%) Legal Technology
12 3 (0.89%) Local Government
12 3 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.59%) Law
14 1 (0.30%) Legal
Job Titles
1 90 (26.63%) Developer
2 75 (22.19%) Senior
3 56 (16.57%) Test Engineer
4 50 (14.79%) Java Developer
5 36 (10.65%) Software Engineer
6 29 (8.58%) Lead
6 29 (8.58%) Test Automation Engineer
7 26 (7.69%) Senior Developer
8 23 (6.80%) Analyst
9 21 (6.21%) Java Engineer
9 21 (6.21%) Quality Engineer
10 17 (5.03%) QA Engineer
11 14 (4.14%) Senior Java Developer
11 14 (4.14%) Senior Test Engineer
11 14 (4.14%) Test Leader
12 13 (3.85%) Architect
12 13 (3.85%) Automation Engineer
12 13 (3.85%) Test Analyst
13 12 (3.55%) Senior Software Engineer
13 12 (3.55%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (23.08%) Playwright
2 73 (21.60%) Spring
3 62 (18.34%) Gherkin
4 61 (18.05%) REST
5 60 (17.75%) Spring Boot
6 56 (16.57%) Kafka
7 42 (12.43%) RESTful
8 32 (9.47%) .NET
9 28 (8.28%) React
9 28 (8.28%) WireMock
10 27 (7.99%) Terraform
11 24 (7.10%) Node.js
12 20 (5.92%) AngularJS
13 19 (5.62%) HTML
14 18 (5.33%) pytest
15 16 (4.73%) ActiveMQ
15 16 (4.73%) SOAP
16 14 (4.14%) .NET Core
16 14 (4.14%) RabbitMQ
16 14 (4.14%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 35 (10.36%) Product Ownership
2 32 (9.47%) Cloud Native
3 24 (7.10%) Distributed Systems
4 19 (5.62%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.14%) Legacy Systems
6 12 (3.55%) Equity Derivative
6 12 (3.55%) Onboarding
7 9 (2.66%) AI Agents
8 8 (2.37%) Derivative
8 8 (2.37%) Management Information System
8 8 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (2.07%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.48%) NHS
10 5 (1.48%) Robotics
10 5 (1.48%) Taxonomies
11 4 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.18%) Distributed Architecture
11 4 (1.18%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 3 (0.89%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (0.89%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 42 (12.43%) Linux
2 22 (6.51%) Unix
3 5 (1.48%) Android
3 5 (1.48%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.18%) Mac OS X
5 3 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.89%) Windows
6 2 (0.59%) AIX
7 1 (0.30%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 238 (70.41%) Agile
1 238 (70.41%) CI/CD
2 221 (65.38%) TDD
3 215 (63.61%) Test Automation
4 123 (36.39%) Microservices
5 117 (34.62%) DevOps
6 87 (25.74%) Scrum
7 77 (22.78%) AI
8 75 (22.19%) Software Engineering
9 74 (21.89%) Problem-Solving
10 69 (20.41%) Software Testing
11 68 (20.12%) Continuous Improvement
12 67 (19.82%) API Testing
12 67 (19.82%) Test Strategy
13 59 (17.46%) Stakeholder Management
14 48 (14.20%) SDLC
15 45 (13.31%) Integration Testing
16 44 (13.02%) Continuous Integration
17 42 (12.43%) Coaching
18 41 (12.13%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 208 (61.54%) Java
2 84 (24.85%) Python
2 84 (24.85%) SQL
3 72 (21.30%) JavaScript
4 62 (18.34%) C#
5 41 (12.13%) TypeScript
6 15 (4.44%) Bash
7 13 (3.85%) Ruby
8 8 (2.37%) C++
9 7 (2.07%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.07%) Groovy
9 7 (2.07%) Scala
10 6 (1.78%) Kotlin
10 6 (1.78%) R
11 4 (1.18%) Go
11 4 (1.18%) Perl
12 3 (0.89%) Bicep
12 3 (0.89%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.89%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.59%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 84 (24.85%) Security Cleared
2 68 (20.12%) SC Cleared
3 32 (9.47%) BPSS Clearance
4 24 (7.10%) Degree
5 21 (6.21%) ISTQB
6 19 (5.62%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (3.25%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.66%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 8 (2.37%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (1.78%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 5 (1.48%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.89%) 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 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (26.92%) QA
2 71 (21.01%) Accessibility
3 45 (13.31%) WCAG
4 16 (4.73%) GDPR
5 15 (4.44%) Data Quality
6 3 (0.89%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.59%) SEPA
7 2 (0.59%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.30%) EMIR
8 1 (0.30%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.30%) MiFID
8 1 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 92 (27.22%) Docker
2 3 (0.89%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 79 (23.37%) Kubernetes
2 19 (5.62%) Grafana
3 13 (3.85%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.78%) Ansible
5 5 (1.48%) Kibana
6 3 (0.89%) Istio
7 2 (0.59%) Argo
7 2 (0.59%) Consul
7 2 (0.59%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.30%) Control-M
8 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 33 (9.76%) Microsoft
2 17 (5.03%) Databricks
3 15 (4.44%) IBM
3 15 (4.44%) Oracle
3 15 (4.44%) Salesforce
4 14 (4.14%) Sybase
5 13 (3.85%) Google
6 8 (2.37%) Conga
6 8 (2.37%) GoCardless
7 6 (1.78%) OpenAI
8 5 (1.48%) Atlassian
8 5 (1.48%) Splunk
9 4 (1.18%) CA Agile Central
9 4 (1.18%) ION Trading
9 4 (1.18%) Jaspersoft
10 3 (0.89%) Checkmarx
10 3 (0.89%) Guidewire
10 3 (0.89%) OutSystems
11 2 (0.59%) FactSet
11 2 (0.59%) OneLogin