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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 351 295 267
Rank change year-on-year -56 -28 -34
Contract jobs citing BDD 341 277 358
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.84% 0.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.76% 0.93% 1.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 201 183 253
10th Percentile £313 £351 £363
25th Percentile £400 £411 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -6.54% -8.94%
75th Percentile £550 £591 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £500
% change year-on-year +5.88% -15.00% -0.99%
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 - - -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 44,620 29,684 34,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.91% 90.46% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,627 18,648 21,888
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,682 1,621 1,980
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.73 £17.33 £17.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.35 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.57 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.55% -41.56% -

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 29 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 29 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 -52 285 £458 -9.85% 91
UK excluding London -17 200 £450 +5.88% 60
Work from Home -39 108 £470 -6.00% 51
London -70 108 £488 -17.37% 35
North of England -26 82 £453 +3.54% 24
Midlands -21 52 £425 -7.86% 16
West Midlands -21 51 £425 -8.11% 10
North West -22 41 £475 +15.85% 15
Scotland -11 25 £465 +7.83%
Yorkshire -33 25 £660 +26.98% 3
North East -33 20 £450 +7.14% 7
South East -74 19 £340 -2.79% 16
South West -36 15 £525 +27.27% 3
East of England -11 8 £510 - 3
Wales -13 2 £650 -
Northern Ireland - 1 - -

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 50 (14.66%) Confluence
2 5 (1.47%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.17%) Apache
3 4 (1.17%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.29%) Camunda
5 1 (0.29%) CMS
5 1 (0.29%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 3 (0.88%) Notion
2 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.29%) Mingle
3 1 (0.29%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.35%) Dynamics CRM
1 8 (2.35%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.88%) Findur
2 3 (0.88%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 122 (35.78%) AWS
2 110 (32.26%) Azure
3 92 (26.98%) GitHub
4 53 (15.54%) GCP
5 52 (15.25%) Azure DevOps
6 49 (14.37%) GitHub Actions
7 25 (7.33%) Amazon SQS
7 25 (7.33%) Serverless
8 23 (6.74%) Amazon S3
9 22 (6.45%) Amazon EC2
10 18 (5.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 17 (4.99%) AWS Lambda
12 14 (4.11%) ChatGPT
12 14 (4.11%) GitHub Copilot
13 13 (3.81%) AWS KMS
14 12 (3.52%) Anthropic Claude
14 12 (3.52%) Route 53
15 9 (2.64%) Power Automate
15 9 (2.64%) Power Platform
16 8 (2.35%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.05%) RTP
1 7 (2.05%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.76%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.88%) DSL
3 3 (0.88%) Internet
3 3 (0.88%) WAN
4 2 (0.59%) Firewall
4 2 (0.59%) NaaS
5 1 (0.29%) Fibre Channel
5 1 (0.29%) HTTP
5 1 (0.29%) iSCSI
5 1 (0.29%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (17.30%) MongoDB
2 51 (14.96%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (6.16%) NoSQL
3 21 (6.16%) Relational Database
4 20 (5.87%) SQL Server
5 19 (5.57%) DynamoDB
6 17 (4.99%) Amazon RDS
7 16 (4.69%) Amazon Aurora
7 16 (4.69%) Db2
8 11 (3.23%) Metadata
9 8 (2.35%) MySQL
10 7 (2.05%) Power BI
11 6 (1.76%) BigQuery
11 6 (1.76%) Data Warehouse
12 5 (1.47%) Couchbase
12 5 (1.47%) Data Lake
12 5 (1.47%) Tableau
13 4 (1.17%) Amazon Athena
14 3 (0.88%) Apache Iceberg
14 3 (0.88%) Looker
Development Applications
1 114 (33.43%) Cucumber
2 97 (28.45%) Selenium
3 96 (28.15%) Git
4 87 (25.51%) Jenkins
5 66 (19.35%) JIRA
6 65 (19.06%) JUnit
7 61 (17.89%) GitLab
8 45 (13.20%) WebDriver
9 44 (12.90%) Postman
10 42 (12.32%) REST Assured
11 41 (12.02%) Mockito
12 28 (8.21%) JMeter
13 25 (7.33%) Cypress.io
13 25 (7.33%) SonarQube
14 23 (6.74%) SpecFlow
15 21 (6.16%) Maven
16 17 (4.99%) TeamCity
17 16 (4.69%) Gatling
18 12 (3.52%) DbUnit
19 11 (3.23%) jMock
General
1 104 (30.50%) Social Skills
2 72 (21.11%) Public Sector
3 71 (20.82%) Finance
4 53 (15.54%) Analytical Skills
5 37 (10.85%) Banking
6 13 (3.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (3.52%) Front Office
8 10 (2.93%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (2.35%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.35%) Military
9 8 (2.35%) Retail
10 5 (1.47%) Aviation
10 5 (1.47%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.47%) Police
11 4 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.88%) Automotive
12 3 (0.88%) Billing
12 3 (0.88%) Marketing
13 2 (0.59%) Law
Job Titles
1 116 (34.02%) Developer
2 76 (22.29%) Java Developer
3 75 (21.99%) Senior
4 55 (16.13%) Test Engineer
5 40 (11.73%) Lead
6 33 (9.68%) Test Automation Engineer
7 32 (9.38%) Software Engineer
8 28 (8.21%) Tester
9 26 (7.62%) Senior Developer
10 23 (6.74%) Analyst
10 23 (6.74%) Automation Tester
10 23 (6.74%) Senior Java Developer
11 21 (6.16%) Test Leader
12 14 (4.11%) Java Engineer
13 13 (3.81%) Senior Software Engineer
13 13 (3.81%) Senior Tester
14 12 (3.52%) Architect
14 12 (3.52%) Automation Test Lead
14 12 (3.52%) QA Engineer
15 11 (3.23%) Senior Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (24.34%) Spring
2 65 (19.06%) REST
2 65 (19.06%) Spring Boot
3 64 (18.77%) Playwright
4 57 (16.72%) Kafka
5 51 (14.96%) Gherkin
6 42 (12.32%) RESTful
7 35 (10.26%) .NET
8 30 (8.80%) ActiveMQ
8 30 (8.80%) AngularJS
8 30 (8.80%) Node.js
9 29 (8.50%) WireMock
10 25 (7.33%) React
11 23 (6.74%) SOAP
12 21 (6.16%) JAX-RS
13 17 (4.99%) JPA
13 17 (4.99%) Web Services
14 16 (4.69%) Hibernate
14 16 (4.69%) Spring Cloud
15 15 (4.40%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 39 (11.44%) Distributed Systems
2 33 (9.68%) Product Ownership
3 29 (8.50%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.69%) Distributed Architecture
5 15 (4.40%) Enterprise Software
6 14 (4.11%) Equity Derivative
7 10 (2.93%) Derivative
8 9 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (2.05%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.47%) Management Information System
10 5 (1.47%) Mobile App
10 5 (1.47%) Robotics
10 5 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.47%) Taxonomies
10 5 (1.47%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.17%) Distributed Applications
12 3 (0.88%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.88%) Fixed Income
12 3 (0.88%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 54 (15.84%) Linux
2 27 (7.92%) Unix
3 12 (3.52%) Mac OS X
4 7 (2.05%) Android
4 7 (2.05%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.88%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.88%) Windows
6 2 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.59%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 229 (67.16%) Agile
2 221 (64.81%) TDD
3 220 (64.52%) CI/CD
4 204 (59.82%) Test Automation
5 138 (40.47%) Microservices
6 126 (36.95%) DevOps
7 80 (23.46%) Scrum
8 73 (21.41%) Continuous Improvement
9 70 (20.53%) Problem-Solving
10 69 (20.23%) API Testing
11 66 (19.35%) Test Strategy
12 61 (17.89%) Software Engineering
13 54 (15.84%) AI
14 47 (13.78%) Mentoring
15 46 (13.49%) Continuous Integration
16 42 (12.32%) Stakeholder Management
17 41 (12.02%) Containerisation
18 39 (11.44%) Kanban
19 38 (11.14%) Observability
19 38 (11.14%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 195 (57.18%) Java
2 89 (26.10%) SQL
3 71 (20.82%) Python
4 60 (17.60%) JavaScript
5 58 (17.01%) C#
6 31 (9.09%) TypeScript
7 14 (4.11%) C++
8 8 (2.35%) Groovy
8 8 (2.35%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.05%) Apex Code
10 6 (1.76%) T-SQL
11 5 (1.47%) Go
11 5 (1.47%) Ruby
12 4 (1.17%) Perl
12 4 (1.17%) R
12 4 (1.17%) Scala
13 3 (0.88%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.59%) Bash
14 2 (0.59%) Cypher
14 2 (0.59%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 90 (26.39%) Security Cleared
2 72 (21.11%) SC Cleared
3 24 (7.04%) Degree
4 21 (6.16%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (4.69%) ISTQB
6 15 (4.40%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (2.35%) DV Cleared
8 7 (2.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (1.47%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.47%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.88%) CSPO
10 3 (0.88%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.29%) ISEB
11 1 (0.29%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.29%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (20.23%) QA
2 44 (12.90%) Accessibility
3 17 (4.99%) WCAG
4 16 (4.69%) Data Quality
5 13 (3.81%) GDPR
6 2 (0.59%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.29%) EMIR
7 1 (0.29%) MiFID
7 1 (0.29%) SEPA
7 1 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 91 (26.69%) Docker
2 9 (2.64%) Postfix
3 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 70 (20.53%) Kubernetes
2 41 (12.02%) Grafana
3 32 (9.38%) Prometheus
4 22 (6.45%) Terraform
5 6 (1.76%) Ansible
6 5 (1.47%) Kibana
7 3 (0.88%) Istio
8 2 (0.59%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.59%) Argo
8 2 (0.59%) Consul
8 2 (0.59%) Rancher
8 2 (0.59%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.29%) EMC VPLEX
9 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 19 (5.57%) Microsoft
2 18 (5.28%) Salesforce
3 17 (4.99%) Sybase
4 16 (4.69%) Google
5 15 (4.40%) Oracle
6 14 (4.11%) Atlassian
7 12 (3.52%) IBM
8 11 (3.23%) Jaspersoft
9 8 (2.35%) Checkmarx
9 8 (2.35%) Conga
9 8 (2.35%) GoCardless
10 6 (1.76%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.76%) Splunk
11 5 (1.47%) ServiceNow
12 3 (0.88%) CA Agile Central
12 3 (0.88%) Guidewire
12 3 (0.88%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.88%) OpenLink
13 2 (0.59%) Amdocs
13 2 (0.59%) Bloomberg