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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 343 285 295
Rank change year-on-year -58 +10 -122
Contract jobs citing BDD 292 253 331
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.86% 0.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.74% 0.95% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 164 160 245
10th Percentile £350 £363 £335
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £516 £513
Median % change year-on-year -8.45% +0.71% -14.58%
75th Percentile £568 £641 £625
90th Percentile £696 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £506
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.23% -1.22%
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 39,258 26,720 37,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 90.74% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,768 17,301 24,236
10th Percentile £318 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +0.31% -3.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,351 1,041 2,413
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £29.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.93% -17.14% -6.67%

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 21 April 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 21 April 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 -65 250 £475 -9.52% 101
UK excluding London -49 156 £475 -5.00% 91
London -63 113 £475 -18.98% 29
Work from Home -31 82 £425 -15.00% 80
North of England -38 79 £475 -1.04% 22
North West -21 40 £431 +7.21% 13
West Midlands -40 32 £425 -8.11% 5
Midlands -45 32 £425 -8.11% 11
Yorkshire -66 30 £598 +14.38% 6
Scotland +10 17 £350 -12.50% 7
North East -13 11 £406 +4.17% 4
South West -28 9 £525 -2.33% 8
South East -64 9 £359 -28.20% 31
East of England -24 8 £510 - 3
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 7
Wales -9 1 £375 - 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 37 (12.67%) Confluence
2 4 (1.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 4 (1.37%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.68%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.34%) Camunda
4 1 (0.34%) CMS
4 1 (0.34%) nginx
4 1 (0.34%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.68%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.34%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 3 (1.03%) Findur
2 2 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.68%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.34%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 102 (34.93%) AWS
2 83 (28.42%) Azure
3 65 (22.26%) GitHub
4 44 (15.07%) GCP
5 34 (11.64%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (10.27%) GitHub Actions
7 23 (7.88%) Serverless
8 20 (6.85%) Amazon S3
9 18 (6.16%) AWS Lambda
10 15 (5.14%) Amazon EC2
10 15 (5.14%) Amazon SQS
11 13 (4.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 13 (4.45%) BrowserStack
12 11 (3.77%) SaaS
13 9 (3.08%) AWS KMS
13 9 (3.08%) Route 53
14 7 (2.40%) ChatGPT
15 6 (2.05%) Anthropic Claude
15 6 (2.05%) AWS Step Functions
15 6 (2.05%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.71%) Cisco IPT
2 3 (1.03%) 3GPP
2 3 (1.03%) HTTP
2 3 (1.03%) RTP
2 3 (1.03%) WAN
2 3 (1.03%) Wireshark
3 2 (0.68%) NaaS
4 1 (0.34%) DSL
4 1 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.34%) FTP
4 1 (0.34%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.34%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (14.38%) PostgreSQL
2 37 (12.67%) MongoDB
3 18 (6.16%) Relational Database
4 16 (5.48%) SQL Server
5 15 (5.14%) Amazon RDS
5 15 (5.14%) MySQL
6 14 (4.79%) DynamoDB
7 11 (3.77%) Amazon Aurora
8 10 (3.42%) Oracle Database
9 8 (2.74%) DB2
10 7 (2.40%) Data Lake
10 7 (2.40%) Metadata
10 7 (2.40%) NoSQL
11 3 (1.03%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (1.03%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.68%) Apache Cassandra
12 2 (0.68%) Flink
12 2 (0.68%) InfluxDB
12 2 (0.68%) Power BI
12 2 (0.68%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 98 (33.56%) Cucumber
2 83 (28.42%) Git
3 78 (26.71%) Jenkins
4 75 (25.68%) Selenium
5 65 (22.26%) JIRA
6 60 (20.55%) GitLab
7 54 (18.49%) JUnit
8 40 (13.70%) Postman
9 31 (10.62%) Mockito
10 30 (10.27%) WebDriver
11 28 (9.59%) SonarQube
12 25 (8.56%) REST Assured
13 24 (8.22%) JMeter
14 18 (6.16%) Cypress.io
15 16 (5.48%) Maven
16 10 (3.42%) Bitbucket
16 10 (3.42%) Gatling
16 10 (3.42%) TeamCity
17 9 (3.08%) DbUnit
17 9 (3.08%) jMock
General
1 75 (25.68%) Social Skills
2 63 (21.58%) Finance
3 52 (17.81%) Public Sector
4 32 (10.96%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (8.56%) Banking
6 8 (2.74%) Front Office
6 8 (2.74%) Organisational Skills
7 5 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
7 5 (1.71%) Investment Banking
7 5 (1.71%) Legal
8 4 (1.37%) Electronics
8 4 (1.37%) Military
9 3 (1.03%) Aviation
9 3 (1.03%) Billing
9 3 (1.03%) Fire and Rescue
9 3 (1.03%) Manufacturing
9 3 (1.03%) Police
9 3 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.68%) Retail
10 2 (0.68%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 99 (33.90%) Developer
2 64 (21.92%) Java Developer
3 47 (16.10%) Senior
4 44 (15.07%) Test Engineer
5 36 (12.33%) Lead
6 30 (10.27%) Software Engineer
7 25 (8.56%) Test Automation Engineer
8 24 (8.22%) Tester
9 19 (6.51%) Automation Tester
10 17 (5.82%) Senior Developer
11 16 (5.48%) Senior Java Developer
12 15 (5.14%) Test Leader
13 14 (4.79%) Java Engineer
14 11 (3.77%) Automation Test Lead
14 11 (3.77%) QA Engineer
15 10 (3.42%) Automation Engineer
15 10 (3.42%) Lead Test Engineer
15 10 (3.42%) Senior Automation Tester
15 10 (3.42%) Senior Tester
16 9 (3.08%) Backend Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (26.37%) Spring
2 62 (21.23%) Spring Boot
3 51 (17.47%) REST
4 40 (13.70%) Playwright
4 40 (13.70%) RESTful
5 37 (12.67%) Gherkin
5 37 (12.67%) Kafka
6 33 (11.30%) Node.js
7 30 (10.27%) AngularJS
8 29 (9.93%) React
9 26 (8.90%) .NET
10 23 (7.88%) WireMock
11 21 (7.19%) ActiveMQ
12 17 (5.82%) Spring Cloud
13 16 (5.48%) Web Services
14 15 (5.14%) JAX-RS
15 14 (4.79%) SOAP
16 12 (4.11%) CSS
16 12 (4.11%) Hibernate
16 12 (4.11%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 29 (9.93%) Product Ownership
2 28 (9.59%) Distributed Systems
3 26 (8.90%) Cloud Native
4 15 (5.14%) Distributed Architecture
5 10 (3.42%) Mobile App
6 7 (2.40%) Equity Derivative
7 6 (2.05%) Derivative
8 5 (1.71%) Client/Server
8 5 (1.71%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.37%) Distributed Applications
9 4 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.37%) Public Cloud
10 3 (1.03%) Robotics
11 2 (0.68%) AS400
11 2 (0.68%) Equities
11 2 (0.68%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 2 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.68%) iSeries
11 2 (0.68%) NHS
11 2 (0.68%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 41 (14.04%) Linux
2 17 (5.82%) Unix
3 11 (3.77%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.03%) VMS
5 2 (0.68%) Android
5 2 (0.68%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.68%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.68%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 186 (63.70%) TDD
2 176 (60.27%) Test Automation
3 175 (59.93%) Agile
4 163 (55.82%) CI/CD
5 120 (41.10%) Microservices
6 99 (33.90%) DevOps
7 63 (21.58%) Problem-Solving
8 59 (20.21%) API Testing
9 58 (19.86%) Test Strategy
10 56 (19.18%) Continuous Improvement
11 52 (17.81%) Scrum
12 49 (16.78%) Software Engineering
13 42 (14.38%) SDLC
14 40 (13.70%) Containerisation
15 35 (11.99%) Mentoring
16 32 (10.96%) AI
16 32 (10.96%) Kanban
17 31 (10.62%) Observability
18 30 (10.27%) End-to-End Testing
19 29 (9.93%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 182 (62.33%) Java
2 67 (22.95%) Python
2 67 (22.95%) SQL
3 48 (16.44%) JavaScript
4 32 (10.96%) C#
5 31 (10.62%) TypeScript
6 13 (4.45%) C++
7 11 (3.77%) Kotlin
8 8 (2.74%) Ruby
9 7 (2.40%) PHP
10 6 (2.05%) Go
11 4 (1.37%) Scala
12 3 (1.03%) Groovy
12 3 (1.03%) JSX
12 3 (1.03%) Perl
12 3 (1.03%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.34%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.34%) VBA
13 1 (0.34%) VBScript
13 1 (0.34%) XPath
Qualifications
1 73 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 63 (21.58%) SC Cleared
3 15 (5.14%) Degree
4 11 (3.77%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.05%) AWS Certification
6 6 (2.05%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.37%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.68%) ISEB
9 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Developer
9 1 (0.34%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (20.55%) QA
2 27 (9.25%) Accessibility
3 8 (2.74%) Data Quality
4 6 (2.05%) GDPR
5 5 (1.71%) PERC
6 4 (1.37%) WCAG
7 2 (0.68%) HL7
8 1 (0.34%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 75 (25.68%) Docker
2 8 (2.74%) Postfix
3 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 61 (20.89%) Kubernetes
2 36 (12.33%) Grafana
3 30 (10.27%) Prometheus
4 22 (7.53%) Terraform
5 3 (1.03%) Ansible
5 3 (1.03%) Rancher
6 2 (0.68%) Amdocs OSS
6 2 (0.68%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.68%) Kibana
6 2 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.34%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.34%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.34%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 19 (6.51%) Oracle
2 13 (4.45%) Atlassian
3 12 (4.11%) Google
4 10 (3.42%) ServiceNow
4 10 (3.42%) Splunk
5 9 (3.08%) Jaspersoft
6 8 (2.74%) Checkmarx
6 8 (2.74%) Salesforce
6 8 (2.74%) Sybase
7 7 (2.40%) Databricks
8 6 (2.05%) IBM
9 5 (1.71%) Microsoft
10 4 (1.37%) Adobe
10 4 (1.37%) Dynatrace
10 4 (1.37%) Veracode
11 3 (1.03%) OpenLink
12 2 (0.68%) Amdocs
12 2 (0.68%) Bloomberg
12 2 (0.68%) Red Hat
12 2 (0.68%) VMware