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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 379 267 267
Rank change year-on-year -112 0 -15
Contract jobs citing BDD 349 323 321
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.97% 0.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.75% 1.08% 1.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 238 212 198
10th Percentile £306 £363 £366
25th Percentile £400 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -1.72% -3.10%
75th Percentile £535 £589 £600
90th Percentile £641 £700 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -7.89% +5.56% -11.76%
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 46,826 30,024 32,246
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.73% 90.50% 86.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,144 18,679 19,408
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £737 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,407 1,886 1,245
10th Percentile £13.64 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.72 £65.07 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -8.14%

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 14 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 14 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 -90 294 £450 -11.75% 177
UK excluding London -94 173 £438 -7.89% 120
London -77 138 £500 -7.41% 81
Work from Home -62 94 £473 -5.50% 93
North of England -89 70 £448 -14.76% 30
Midlands -11 54 £438 -7.89% 25
West Midlands -5 52 £438 -12.50% 18
Yorkshire -47 31 £438 -18.60% 9
North West -50 26 £438 +3.67% 11
Scotland -23 19 £470 +1.62% 17
North East -44 17 £450 -6.49% 10
South East -68 15 £275 -4.51% 22
South West -37 12 £500 +17.65% 9
Wales -9 6 £419 +11.67% 3
Northern Ireland +6 1 - - 9
East Midlands -19 1 £402 +30.73% 7

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 33 (9.46%) Confluence
2 4 (1.15%) Apache
2 4 (1.15%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.86%) CMS
3 3 (0.86%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.86%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.86%) Mingle
1 3 (0.86%) Notion
2 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 12 (3.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (2.01%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.86%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 138 (39.54%) AWS
2 115 (32.95%) Azure
3 98 (28.08%) GitHub
4 47 (13.47%) Azure DevOps
4 47 (13.47%) GitHub Actions
5 36 (10.32%) GCP
6 29 (8.31%) GitHub Copilot
6 29 (8.31%) Serverless
7 19 (5.44%) Amazon S3
8 18 (5.16%) AWS Lambda
9 16 (4.58%) Amazon SQS
10 15 (4.30%) Dynamics 365
11 14 (4.01%) Amazon EC2
12 13 (3.72%) Power Automate
13 12 (3.44%) Anthropic Claude
13 12 (3.44%) Power Platform
14 11 (3.15%) ChatGPT
15 10 (2.87%) Snowflake
16 9 (2.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 9 (2.58%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.01%) Internet
2 5 (1.43%) DNS
2 5 (1.43%) RTP
2 5 (1.43%) Wireshark
3 4 (1.15%) 3GPP
3 4 (1.15%) Firewall
4 2 (0.57%) BGP
4 2 (0.57%) DSL
4 2 (0.57%) HTTP
4 2 (0.57%) Intrusion Detection
4 2 (0.57%) Network Security
4 2 (0.57%) SD-WAN
4 2 (0.57%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.57%) VPN
4 2 (0.57%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (16.33%) MongoDB
2 30 (8.60%) PostgreSQL
3 26 (7.45%) NoSQL
4 20 (5.73%) Relational Database
5 19 (5.44%) SQL Server
6 12 (3.44%) Db2
7 11 (3.15%) Amazon RDS
7 11 (3.15%) Data Lake
8 10 (2.87%) DynamoDB
9 9 (2.58%) Metadata
9 9 (2.58%) MySQL
10 7 (2.01%) Amazon Aurora
10 7 (2.01%) BigQuery
10 7 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
10 7 (2.01%) Power BI
11 5 (1.43%) Couchbase
11 5 (1.43%) Tableau
12 4 (1.15%) Apache Iceberg
12 4 (1.15%) Big Data
12 4 (1.15%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 149 (42.69%) Cucumber
2 112 (32.09%) Selenium
3 108 (30.95%) Git
4 84 (24.07%) Jenkins
5 73 (20.92%) GitLab
6 67 (19.20%) JUnit
7 52 (14.90%) JIRA
8 50 (14.33%) REST Assured
9 49 (14.04%) Postman
10 37 (10.60%) Gatling
11 33 (9.46%) Cypress.io
12 32 (9.17%) SonarQube
13 30 (8.60%) WebDriver
14 29 (8.31%) Mockito
15 23 (6.59%) SpecFlow
16 22 (6.30%) Maven
17 14 (4.01%) Gradle
17 14 (4.01%) JMeter
18 10 (2.87%) SoapUI
18 10 (2.87%) TeamCity
General
1 137 (39.26%) Social Skills
2 80 (22.92%) Finance
3 71 (20.34%) Public Sector
4 61 (17.48%) Analytical Skills
5 50 (14.33%) Banking
6 22 (6.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (3.72%) Front Office
8 8 (2.29%) Military
9 7 (2.01%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.01%) Retail
10 4 (1.15%) Marketing
10 4 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.86%) Aviation
11 3 (0.86%) Fire and Rescue
11 3 (0.86%) Legal Technology
11 3 (0.86%) Local Government
11 3 (0.86%) Police
11 3 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.57%) Law
13 1 (0.29%) Legal
Job Titles
1 93 (26.65%) Developer
2 78 (22.35%) Senior
3 57 (16.33%) Test Engineer
4 50 (14.33%) Java Developer
5 34 (9.74%) Software Engineer
6 30 (8.60%) Lead
6 30 (8.60%) Test Automation Engineer
7 29 (8.31%) Senior Developer
8 26 (7.45%) Quality Engineer
9 23 (6.59%) Java Engineer
10 22 (6.30%) Analyst
11 19 (5.44%) QA Engineer
12 15 (4.30%) Automation Engineer
12 15 (4.30%) Senior Java Developer
13 14 (4.01%) Senior Test Engineer
13 14 (4.01%) Test Leader
14 13 (3.72%) Test Analyst
15 12 (3.44%) Senior Software Engineer
15 12 (3.44%) Tester
16 11 (3.15%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (25.21%) Playwright
2 77 (22.06%) Spring
3 69 (19.77%) REST
4 64 (18.34%) Gherkin
5 63 (18.05%) Spring Boot
6 59 (16.91%) Kafka
7 47 (13.47%) RESTful
8 34 (9.74%) React
9 33 (9.46%) .NET
10 31 (8.88%) WireMock
11 29 (8.31%) Terraform
12 27 (7.74%) Node.js
13 22 (6.30%) AngularJS
14 21 (6.02%) HTML
15 19 (5.44%) pytest
16 18 (5.16%) ActiveMQ
16 18 (5.16%) RabbitMQ
16 18 (5.16%) SOAP
17 16 (4.58%) JSON
18 15 (4.30%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 38 (10.89%) Product Ownership
2 33 (9.46%) Cloud Native
3 28 (8.02%) Distributed Systems
4 21 (6.02%) Enterprise Software
5 15 (4.30%) Legacy Systems
6 13 (3.72%) Onboarding
7 11 (3.15%) Equity Derivative
8 9 (2.58%) AI Agents
8 9 (2.58%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (2.29%) Management Information System
10 7 (2.01%) Derivative
10 7 (2.01%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.43%) Distributed Architecture
11 5 (1.43%) NHS
11 5 (1.43%) Taxonomies
12 4 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.15%) Mainframe
12 4 (1.15%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 3 (0.86%) Data Centre
13 3 (0.86%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 42 (12.03%) Linux
2 23 (6.59%) Unix
3 7 (2.01%) macOS
4 5 (1.43%) Android
4 5 (1.43%) Apple iOS
5 4 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.86%) AIX
6 3 (0.86%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 253 (72.49%) Agile
2 250 (71.63%) CI/CD
3 229 (65.62%) TDD
3 229 (65.62%) Test Automation
4 133 (38.11%) Microservices
5 124 (35.53%) DevOps
6 94 (26.93%) Scrum
7 78 (22.35%) Problem-Solving
8 76 (21.78%) Software Engineering
9 75 (21.49%) AI
9 75 (21.49%) Continuous Improvement
9 75 (21.49%) Software Testing
10 72 (20.63%) API Testing
11 71 (20.34%) Test Strategy
12 66 (18.91%) Stakeholder Management
13 49 (14.04%) Integration Testing
13 49 (14.04%) SDLC
14 47 (13.47%) Coaching
15 46 (13.18%) Continuous Integration
16 44 (12.61%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 217 (62.18%) Java
2 88 (25.21%) Python
3 84 (24.07%) SQL
4 83 (23.78%) JavaScript
5 64 (18.34%) C#
6 47 (13.47%) TypeScript
7 16 (4.58%) Bash
8 14 (4.01%) Ruby
9 7 (2.01%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.01%) C++
9 7 (2.01%) Groovy
9 7 (2.01%) Scala
10 6 (1.72%) R
11 5 (1.43%) Go
11 5 (1.43%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.15%) Perl
13 3 (0.86%) Bicep
13 3 (0.86%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.86%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.57%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 90 (25.79%) Security Cleared
2 74 (21.20%) SC Cleared
3 34 (9.74%) BPSS Clearance
4 25 (7.16%) Degree
5 22 (6.30%) ISTQB
6 19 (5.44%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (3.72%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.58%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 8 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (1.72%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 5 (1.43%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.86%) CSPO
13 2 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 2 (0.57%) Azure Certification
13 2 (0.57%) ISEB
13 2 (0.57%) Master's Degree
14 1 (0.29%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (27.79%) QA
2 78 (22.35%) Accessibility
3 50 (14.33%) WCAG
4 16 (4.58%) GDPR
5 13 (3.72%) Data Quality
6 3 (0.86%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.57%) SEPA
7 2 (0.57%) 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
1 100 (28.65%) Docker
2 3 (0.86%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 87 (24.93%) Kubernetes
2 19 (5.44%) Grafana
3 13 (3.72%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.72%) Ansible
5 5 (1.43%) Kibana
6 3 (0.86%) Istio
7 2 (0.57%) Argo
7 2 (0.57%) Consul
7 2 (0.57%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.29%) Control-M
8 1 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 34 (9.74%) Microsoft
2 19 (5.44%) Oracle
3 17 (4.87%) Databricks
4 16 (4.58%) Salesforce
5 14 (4.01%) IBM
6 13 (3.72%) Google
6 13 (3.72%) Sybase
7 8 (2.29%) Conga
7 8 (2.29%) GoCardless
8 6 (1.72%) Atlassian
8 6 (1.72%) OpenAI
9 5 (1.43%) Splunk
10 4 (1.15%) CA Agile Central
10 4 (1.15%) ION Trading
10 4 (1.15%) Jaspersoft
11 3 (0.86%) Guidewire
11 3 (0.86%) OneLogin
11 3 (0.86%) OutSystems
12 2 (0.57%) FactSet
12 2 (0.57%) HP