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 25 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 368 283 260
Rank change year-on-year -85 -23 -18
Contract jobs citing BDD 327 293 359
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.90% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 0.99% 1.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 195 248
10th Percentile £306 £361 £361
25th Percentile £400 £417 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £534
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -6.37% -7.13%
75th Percentile £538 £601 £650
90th Percentile £675 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £461 £500
% change year-on-year -2.44% -7.75% -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £82.50 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £85.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year -47.06% +51.11% -25.00%
75th Percentile £46.88 £87.50 -
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 45,365 29,616 33,160
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.47% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,789 18,444 20,998
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,884 1,758 1,700
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £67.99 £47.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +6.25%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 -82 269 £463 -10.61% 132
UK excluding London -47 182 £450 -2.44% 78
London -78 110 £494 -15.96% 74
Work from Home -50 101 £475 -5.00% 63
North of England -45 73 £450 -13.42% 23
Midlands -31 45 £425 -8.11% 10
West Midlands -14 44 £425 -11.69% 8
North West -30 33 £456 +8.12% 11
Scotland -7 25 £465 +0.54% 8
Yorkshire -36 24 £550 +4.76% 7
North East -26 20 £450 -2.17% 5
South East -73 16 £275 -12.42% 17
South West -41 14 £525 +27.27% 8
East of England -15 8 £510 +36.00% 6
Wales - 4 £531 - 3
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 4

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 (11.31%) Confluence
2 5 (1.53%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.22%) Apache
4 3 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.92%) CMS
4 3 (0.92%) Headless CMS
4 3 (0.92%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.31%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (0.92%) Notion
2 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.31%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (2.75%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.45%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.92%) Findur
3 3 (0.92%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 115 (35.17%) AWS
2 102 (31.19%) Azure
3 92 (28.13%) GitHub
4 48 (14.68%) Azure DevOps
5 45 (13.76%) GCP
6 44 (13.46%) GitHub Actions
7 25 (7.65%) Serverless
8 21 (6.42%) GitHub Copilot
9 18 (5.50%) Amazon SQS
10 17 (5.20%) Amazon S3
11 16 (4.89%) AWS Lambda
12 15 (4.59%) Amazon EC2
13 14 (4.28%) ChatGPT
14 12 (3.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 12 (3.67%) Anthropic Claude
15 10 (3.06%) Power Automate
16 9 (2.75%) Dynamics 365
16 9 (2.75%) Power Platform
17 8 (2.45%) AWS KMS
17 8 (2.45%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.14%) RTP
1 7 (2.14%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.83%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.92%) DSL
3 3 (0.92%) Internet
4 2 (0.61%) Firewall
4 2 (0.61%) NaaS
4 2 (0.61%) WAN
5 1 (0.31%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (16.21%) MongoDB
2 33 (10.09%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (7.03%) NoSQL
4 20 (6.12%) Relational Database
5 17 (5.20%) SQL Server
6 15 (4.59%) Db2
7 13 (3.98%) DynamoDB
8 11 (3.36%) Amazon Aurora
8 11 (3.36%) Amazon RDS
8 11 (3.36%) Metadata
9 8 (2.45%) MySQL
10 7 (2.14%) Power BI
11 6 (1.83%) BigQuery
11 6 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
12 5 (1.53%) Couchbase
12 5 (1.53%) Data Lake
12 5 (1.53%) Tableau
13 3 (0.92%) Amazon Redshift
13 3 (0.92%) Flink
13 3 (0.92%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 113 (34.56%) Cucumber
2 92 (28.13%) Git
2 92 (28.13%) Selenium
3 75 (22.94%) Jenkins
4 63 (19.27%) GitLab
5 62 (18.96%) JUnit
6 52 (15.90%) JIRA
7 43 (13.15%) Postman
8 41 (12.54%) REST Assured
9 37 (11.31%) WebDriver
10 28 (8.56%) Mockito
11 27 (8.26%) SonarQube
12 25 (7.65%) Cypress.io
13 23 (7.03%) Gatling
14 21 (6.42%) JMeter
15 20 (6.12%) SpecFlow
16 16 (4.89%) Maven
17 14 (4.28%) TeamCity
18 9 (2.75%) Bitbucket
18 9 (2.75%) IntelliJ
General
1 110 (33.64%) Social Skills
2 74 (22.63%) Finance
3 63 (19.27%) Public Sector
4 52 (15.90%) Analytical Skills
5 41 (12.54%) Banking
6 15 (4.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (3.98%) Front Office
8 9 (2.75%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.14%) Retail
10 6 (1.83%) Military
11 5 (1.53%) Aviation
11 5 (1.53%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.53%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (1.53%) Police
12 3 (0.92%) Automotive
12 3 (0.92%) Billing
12 3 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.92%) Legal Technology
12 3 (0.92%) Marketing
12 3 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 101 (30.89%) Developer
2 67 (20.49%) Senior
3 61 (18.65%) Java Developer
4 55 (16.82%) Test Engineer
5 32 (9.79%) Software Engineer
5 32 (9.79%) Test Automation Engineer
6 29 (8.87%) Lead
7 23 (7.03%) Senior Developer
8 21 (6.42%) Analyst
8 21 (6.42%) Tester
9 18 (5.50%) Senior Java Developer
10 17 (5.20%) Automation Tester
10 17 (5.20%) Java Engineer
11 15 (4.59%) Test Leader
12 13 (3.98%) QA Engineer
13 12 (3.67%) Quality Engineer
14 11 (3.36%) Architect
14 11 (3.36%) Python Developer
14 11 (3.36%) Senior Software Engineer
15 10 (3.06%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (23.55%) Spring
2 66 (20.18%) Playwright
3 62 (18.96%) REST
4 60 (18.35%) Spring Boot
5 54 (16.51%) Gherkin
6 53 (16.21%) Kafka
7 40 (12.23%) RESTful
8 30 (9.17%) .NET
9 27 (8.26%) WireMock
10 25 (7.65%) Node.js
11 24 (7.34%) AngularJS
11 24 (7.34%) React
12 22 (6.73%) Terraform
13 20 (6.12%) ActiveMQ
14 17 (5.20%) SOAP
15 15 (4.59%) HTML
15 15 (4.59%) JAX-RS
15 15 (4.59%) JSON
16 12 (3.67%) CSS
16 12 (3.67%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 35 (10.70%) Product Ownership
2 34 (10.40%) Distributed Systems
3 28 (8.56%) Cloud Native
4 18 (5.50%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.28%) Equity Derivative
5 14 (4.28%) Legacy Systems
6 10 (3.06%) Derivative
6 10 (3.06%) Distributed Architecture
7 7 (2.14%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.83%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.83%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.53%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.53%) NHS
9 5 (1.53%) Robotics
9 5 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.53%) Taxonomies
10 4 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.22%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 3 (0.92%) AI Agents
11 3 (0.92%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 45 (13.76%) Linux
2 22 (6.73%) Unix
3 6 (1.83%) Android
3 6 (1.83%) Apple iOS
4 5 (1.53%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.53%) Windows
5 2 (0.61%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.61%) VMS
6 1 (0.31%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 220 (67.28%) Agile
2 214 (65.44%) CI/CD
3 212 (64.83%) TDD
4 198 (60.55%) Test Automation
5 120 (36.70%) Microservices
6 115 (35.17%) DevOps
7 77 (23.55%) Scrum
8 71 (21.71%) Continuous Improvement
8 71 (21.71%) Problem-Solving
9 66 (20.18%) Test Strategy
10 65 (19.88%) AI
11 61 (18.65%) Software Engineering
12 59 (18.04%) API Testing
13 45 (13.76%) Stakeholder Management
14 43 (13.15%) Mentoring
15 41 (12.54%) Software Testing
16 40 (12.23%) Continuous Integration
17 38 (11.62%) SDLC
18 36 (11.01%) Pair Programming
19 35 (10.70%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 197 (60.24%) Java
2 89 (27.22%) SQL
3 75 (22.94%) Python
4 59 (18.04%) JavaScript
5 49 (14.98%) C#
6 32 (9.79%) TypeScript
7 14 (4.28%) C++
8 8 (2.45%) Groovy
9 7 (2.14%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.14%) Ruby
10 6 (1.83%) Kotlin
10 6 (1.83%) R
11 5 (1.53%) Bash
12 4 (1.22%) Go
12 4 (1.22%) Perl
12 4 (1.22%) T-SQL
13 3 (0.92%) Scala
13 3 (0.92%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.61%) Cypher
14 2 (0.61%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 78 (23.85%) Security Cleared
2 62 (18.96%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.95%) BPSS Clearance
4 20 (6.12%) Degree
5 19 (5.81%) ISTQB
6 14 (4.28%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.75%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 8 (2.45%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.92%) CSPO
10 3 (0.92%) ISEB
10 3 (0.92%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.61%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.61%) Azure Certification
12 1 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.31%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (22.02%) QA
2 50 (15.29%) Accessibility
3 31 (9.48%) WCAG
4 16 (4.89%) Data Quality
5 14 (4.28%) GDPR
6 3 (0.92%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.31%) EMIR
7 1 (0.31%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.31%) MiFID
7 1 (0.31%) SEPA
7 1 (0.31%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 80 (24.46%) Docker
2 5 (1.53%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 64 (19.57%) Kubernetes
2 27 (8.26%) Grafana
3 21 (6.42%) Prometheus
4 7 (2.14%) Ansible
5 4 (1.22%) Kibana
6 3 (0.92%) Istio
7 2 (0.61%) Amdocs OSS
7 2 (0.61%) Argo
7 2 (0.61%) Consul
7 2 (0.61%) Rancher
7 2 (0.61%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (7.65%) Microsoft
2 17 (5.20%) Salesforce
3 16 (4.89%) Sybase
4 15 (4.59%) IBM
5 14 (4.28%) Google
6 13 (3.98%) Oracle
7 8 (2.45%) Atlassian
7 8 (2.45%) Checkmarx
7 8 (2.45%) Conga
7 8 (2.45%) GoCardless
8 6 (1.83%) Dynatrace
8 6 (1.83%) Jaspersoft
9 5 (1.53%) Databricks
10 4 (1.22%) ServiceNow
10 4 (1.22%) Splunk
11 3 (0.92%) Guidewire
11 3 (0.92%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.92%) OpenLink
12 2 (0.61%) Amdocs
12 2 (0.61%) Bloomberg