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 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 335 286 312
Rank change year-on-year -49 +26 -170
Contract jobs citing BDD 277 261 315
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.86% 0.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.79% 0.96% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 167 148 216
10th Percentile £362 £356 £340
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £516 £488
Median % change year-on-year -7.99% +5.73% -16.89%
75th Percentile £559 £611 £594
90th Percentile £675 £800 £697
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -7.14%

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 34,951 27,281 38,890
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.91% 89.56% 87.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,148 16,723 25,428
10th Percentile £310 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.59% -1.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,114 833 2,148
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -4.41% -2.86%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.78 £35.00
% change year-on-year -18.29% -12.06% +7.63%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 -58 240 £488 -7.14% 117
UK excluding London -58 143 £475 -5.00% 94
London -29 108 £488 -17.72% 34
North of England -32 100 £495 +13.14% 27
Work from Home -40 72 £475 -9.52% 75
Yorkshire -38 51 £538 +4.88% 5
North West -22 29 £431 +10.23% 21
North East +2 24 £460 +17.95% 1
Midlands -48 14 £438 -15.25% 18
West Midlands -43 12 £475 -7.99% 16
South West -29 8 £425 -19.05% 19
South East -38 8 £463 -7.50% 26
Scotland +2 7 £400 -8.57% 2
Wales -1 4 £375 - 1
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 1
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 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 29 (10.47%) Confluence
2 4 (1.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.72%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.72%) nginx
3 2 (0.72%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.36%) CMS
4 1 (0.36%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.36%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 4 (1.44%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.36%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.72%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 85 (30.69%) AWS
2 55 (19.86%) Azure
3 34 (12.27%) GitHub
4 26 (9.39%) Azure DevOps
5 22 (7.94%) Serverless
6 16 (5.78%) AWS Lambda
7 14 (5.05%) Amazon S3
8 13 (4.69%) BrowserStack
8 13 (4.69%) GCP
8 13 (4.69%) GitHub Actions
9 8 (2.89%) Amazon EKS
9 8 (2.89%) SaaS
10 6 (2.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 6 (2.17%) Amazon SQS
11 5 (1.81%) Amazon Cognito
11 5 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
11 5 (1.81%) AWS Step Functions
12 4 (1.44%) Amazon ECS
12 4 (1.44%) Amazon SageMaker
12 4 (1.44%) BlazeMeter
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.81%) Cisco IPT
2 2 (0.72%) HTTP
3 1 (0.36%) Fibre Channel
3 1 (0.36%) FTP
3 1 (0.36%) Internet
3 1 (0.36%) iSCSI
3 1 (0.36%) LAN
3 1 (0.36%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (14.80%) MongoDB
2 22 (7.94%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (5.42%) SQL Server
4 14 (5.05%) MySQL
5 11 (3.97%) Relational Database
6 10 (3.61%) NoSQL
6 10 (3.61%) Oracle Database
7 8 (2.89%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (2.53%) Data Lake
9 5 (1.81%) DynamoDB
10 4 (1.44%) Redis
11 3 (1.08%) Apache Cassandra
11 3 (1.08%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.72%) Amazon Athena
12 2 (0.72%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (0.72%) Big Data
13 1 (0.36%) BigQuery
13 1 (0.36%) Data Warehouse
13 1 (0.36%) DB2
13 1 (0.36%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 96 (34.66%) Cucumber
2 67 (24.19%) Selenium
3 64 (23.10%) Jenkins
4 58 (20.94%) GitLab
4 58 (20.94%) JIRA
5 48 (17.33%) Git
6 41 (14.80%) Postman
7 33 (11.91%) Mockito
8 32 (11.55%) REST Assured
9 22 (7.94%) JUnit
10 21 (7.58%) Cypress.io
11 15 (5.42%) JMeter
11 15 (5.42%) SonarQube
12 14 (5.05%) WebDriver
13 12 (4.33%) Gatling
14 11 (3.97%) Bitbucket
15 9 (3.25%) Maven
15 9 (3.25%) TestRail
16 8 (2.89%) Serenity BDD
17 6 (2.17%) SpecFlow
General
1 63 (22.74%) Public Sector
1 63 (22.74%) Social Skills
2 43 (15.52%) Finance
3 20 (7.22%) Banking
4 19 (6.86%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (2.53%) Military
6 5 (1.81%) Front Office
6 5 (1.81%) Legal
7 4 (1.44%) Electronics
8 3 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.72%) Retail
10 1 (0.36%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.36%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.36%) Marketing
10 1 (0.36%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 93 (33.57%) Developer
2 65 (23.47%) Java Developer
3 59 (21.30%) Senior
4 51 (18.41%) Test Engineer
5 32 (11.55%) Senior Developer
6 30 (10.83%) Lead
7 28 (10.11%) Senior Java Developer
8 24 (8.66%) Software Engineer
9 23 (8.30%) Test Automation Engineer
10 17 (6.14%) QA Engineer
11 15 (5.42%) Java Engineer
12 14 (5.05%) Tester
13 13 (4.69%) Lead Test Engineer
14 12 (4.33%) Analyst
15 10 (3.61%) Automation Engineer
15 10 (3.61%) Automation Tester
16 9 (3.25%) Business Analyst
16 9 (3.25%) Senior Test Engineer
17 8 (2.89%) Test Leader
18 7 (2.53%) Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (20.58%) Spring Boot
2 51 (18.41%) REST
3 47 (16.97%) Spring
4 42 (15.16%) Kafka
5 41 (14.80%) Playwright
6 35 (12.64%) Node.js
6 35 (12.64%) RESTful
7 33 (11.91%) React
8 29 (10.47%) Gherkin
9 25 (9.03%) ActiveMQ
10 24 (8.66%) .NET
10 24 (8.66%) JAX-RS
11 18 (6.50%) AngularJS
12 16 (5.78%) CSS
12 16 (5.78%) Jest
13 15 (5.42%) WireMock
14 12 (4.33%) SOAP
14 12 (4.33%) Web Services
15 10 (3.61%) JSON
15 10 (3.61%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 25 (9.03%) Product Ownership
2 12 (4.33%) Cloud Native
3 9 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
4 7 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.17%) Client/Server
5 6 (2.17%) Distributed Architecture
5 6 (2.17%) Equities
5 6 (2.17%) Mobile App
6 5 (1.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (1.81%) NHS
7 4 (1.44%) Public Cloud
8 3 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.08%) Educational Technology
8 3 (1.08%) Private Cloud
9 2 (0.72%) AS400
9 2 (0.72%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.72%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (0.72%) iSeries
10 1 (0.36%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 45 (16.25%) Linux
2 34 (12.27%) Unix
3 22 (7.94%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.72%) Android
5 2 (0.72%) Windows
6 1 (0.36%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.36%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.36%) VMS
6 1 (0.36%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (66.43%) Agile
2 172 (62.09%) Test Automation
3 169 (61.01%) TDD
4 144 (51.99%) CI/CD
5 131 (47.29%) Microservices
6 76 (27.44%) DevOps
7 61 (22.02%) Problem-Solving
8 60 (21.66%) API Testing
9 57 (20.58%) Scrum
10 51 (18.41%) Software Engineering
11 47 (16.97%) Continuous Improvement
12 46 (16.61%) Containerisation
13 45 (16.25%) Test Strategy
14 36 (13.00%) Performance Testing
14 36 (13.00%) SDLC
15 35 (12.64%) Non-Functional Testing
16 34 (12.27%) Functional Testing
17 33 (11.91%) Mentoring
18 32 (11.55%) Continuous Deployment
19 31 (11.19%) Pair Programming
Programming Languages
1 184 (66.43%) Java
2 56 (20.22%) JavaScript
3 49 (17.69%) SQL
4 40 (14.44%) Python
5 36 (13.00%) TypeScript
6 24 (8.66%) C#
7 8 (2.89%) C++
7 8 (2.89%) Ruby
8 7 (2.53%) PHP
9 6 (2.17%) JSX
9 6 (2.17%) Kotlin
10 4 (1.44%) Bash
11 3 (1.08%) Go
11 3 (1.08%) Scala
11 3 (1.08%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.72%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.36%) Groovy
13 1 (0.36%) Swift
13 1 (0.36%) VBScript
13 1 (0.36%) XPath
Qualifications
1 76 (27.44%) Security Cleared
2 62 (22.38%) SC Cleared
3 15 (5.42%) BPSS Clearance
4 14 (5.05%) ISTQB
5 13 (4.69%) Degree
6 5 (1.81%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.81%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 3 (1.08%) ISEB
8 2 (0.72%) AWS Certified Developer
8 2 (0.72%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.72%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.36%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (23.83%) QA
2 39 (14.08%) Accessibility
3 13 (4.69%) WCAG
4 8 (2.89%) GDPR
5 5 (1.81%) PERC
6 2 (0.72%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.72%) HL7
7 1 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 63 (22.74%) Docker
2 2 (0.72%) Postfix
3 1 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 44 (15.88%) Kubernetes
2 24 (8.66%) Terraform
3 15 (5.42%) Grafana
4 10 (3.61%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.44%) Ansible
6 2 (0.72%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.72%) Kibana
6 2 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.36%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.36%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.36%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.36%) Kustomize
7 1 (0.36%) Rancher
Vendors
1 22 (7.94%) Oracle
2 13 (4.69%) Splunk
3 7 (2.53%) Atlassian
3 7 (2.53%) Databricks
3 7 (2.53%) Salesforce
4 6 (2.17%) Microsoft
4 6 (2.17%) ServiceNow
5 5 (1.81%) Red Hat
6 4 (1.44%) Adobe
6 4 (1.44%) Veracode
7 3 (1.08%) Google
8 2 (0.72%) IBM
8 2 (0.72%) Jaspersoft
8 2 (0.72%) SAP
8 2 (0.72%) VMware
8 2 (0.72%) Workday
9 1 (0.36%) CA Agile Central
9 1 (0.36%) Marketo
9 1 (0.36%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.36%) Xamarin