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 4 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 357 291 280
Rank change year-on-year -66 -11 -93
Contract jobs citing BDD 282 250 349
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.85% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.71% 0.94% 0.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 159 262
10th Percentile £343 £375 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £513 £513
Median % change year-on-year -8.29% - -14.58%
75th Percentile £551 £662 £634
90th Percentile £689 £776 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.50% - -
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 39,853 26,632 37,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,078 17,168 24,015
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.46% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,383 1,080 2,442
10th Percentile £14.84 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.06% -0.47%
75th Percentile £67.13 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.57 £37.50
% change year-on-year +59.59% -26.48% +7.14%

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 4 May 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 15 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 4 May 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 -74 239 £475 -9.52% 92
UK excluding London -41 157 £473 -5.50% 71
London -61 104 £475 -22.76% 28
Work from Home -35 74 £425 -17.07% 62
North of England -37 73 £481 -3.75% 18
North West -8 40 £431 +1.17% 10
West Midlands -41 32 £425 -11.69% 3
Midlands -51 32 £425 -11.69% 10
Yorkshire -50 27 £573 +10.15% 4
Scotland +4 21 £433 +8.13% 3
South East -64 12 £358 -28.40% 26
South West -29 10 £525 - 9
North East -21 8 £425 +8.97% 4
East of England - 8 £510 - 2
Northern Ireland - 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 38 (13.48%) Confluence
2 4 (1.42%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.06%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.71%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.35%) Camunda
5 1 (0.35%) CMS
5 1 (0.35%) nginx
5 1 (0.35%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (1.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.71%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.71%) Notion
3 1 (0.35%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.35%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 3 (1.06%) Findur
2 2 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.71%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 100 (35.46%) AWS
2 82 (29.08%) Azure
3 61 (21.63%) GitHub
4 44 (15.60%) GCP
5 33 (11.70%) Azure DevOps
6 27 (9.57%) GitHub Actions
7 21 (7.45%) Serverless
8 18 (6.38%) Amazon S3
9 15 (5.32%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (5.32%) AWS Lambda
10 14 (4.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 14 (4.96%) Amazon SQS
11 13 (4.61%) BrowserStack
12 11 (3.90%) SaaS
13 9 (3.19%) AWS KMS
13 9 (3.19%) Route 53
14 8 (2.84%) ChatGPT
14 8 (2.84%) GitHub Copilot
15 7 (2.48%) Anthropic Claude
16 6 (2.13%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.42%) 3GPP
1 4 (1.42%) RTP
1 4 (1.42%) Wireshark
2 3 (1.06%) WAN
3 2 (0.71%) Cisco IPT
3 2 (0.71%) HTTP
3 2 (0.71%) NaaS
4 1 (0.35%) DSL
4 1 (0.35%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.35%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.35%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (13.12%) MongoDB
1 37 (13.12%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (6.74%) Relational Database
3 16 (5.67%) MySQL
3 16 (5.67%) SQL Server
4 14 (4.96%) DynamoDB
5 13 (4.61%) Amazon Aurora
6 12 (4.26%) Amazon RDS
7 10 (3.55%) Oracle Database
8 9 (3.19%) DB2
9 8 (2.84%) Metadata
10 7 (2.48%) Data Lake
11 5 (1.77%) NoSQL
12 4 (1.42%) Power BI
13 3 (1.06%) Amazon Athena
13 3 (1.06%) Delta Lake
13 3 (1.06%) MariaDB
14 2 (0.71%) Flink
14 2 (0.71%) InfluxDB
14 2 (0.71%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 96 (34.04%) Cucumber
2 78 (27.66%) Git
3 76 (26.95%) Jenkins
3 76 (26.95%) Selenium
4 64 (22.70%) JIRA
5 58 (20.57%) GitLab
6 54 (19.15%) JUnit
7 38 (13.48%) Postman
8 33 (11.70%) WebDriver
9 30 (10.64%) Mockito
10 29 (10.28%) SonarQube
11 25 (8.87%) REST Assured
12 23 (8.16%) JMeter
13 15 (5.32%) Maven
14 14 (4.96%) Cypress.io
15 13 (4.61%) TeamCity
16 10 (3.55%) SpecFlow
17 9 (3.19%) DbUnit
17 9 (3.19%) Gatling
17 9 (3.19%) jMock
General
1 72 (25.53%) Social Skills
2 65 (23.05%) Finance
3 50 (17.73%) Public Sector
4 34 (12.06%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (9.57%) Banking
6 8 (2.84%) Front Office
6 8 (2.84%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (2.48%) Investment Banking
8 5 (1.77%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.42%) Aviation
9 4 (1.42%) Fire and Rescue
9 4 (1.42%) Military
9 4 (1.42%) Police
10 3 (1.06%) Billing
10 3 (1.06%) Legal
10 3 (1.06%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.06%) Retail
11 2 (0.71%) Automotive
11 2 (0.71%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 93 (32.98%) Developer
2 58 (20.57%) Java Developer
3 45 (15.96%) Senior
4 44 (15.60%) Test Engineer
5 36 (12.77%) Lead
6 27 (9.57%) Software Engineer
7 25 (8.87%) Test Automation Engineer
8 22 (7.80%) Tester
9 17 (6.03%) Automation Tester
10 16 (5.67%) Senior Developer
10 16 (5.67%) Test Leader
11 15 (5.32%) Senior Java Developer
12 14 (4.96%) Analyst
12 14 (4.96%) Java Engineer
13 11 (3.90%) Automation Test Lead
13 11 (3.90%) Business Analyst
14 10 (3.55%) Lead Test Engineer
14 10 (3.55%) Senior Automation Tester
14 10 (3.55%) Senior Tester
15 9 (3.19%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (26.95%) Spring
2 57 (20.21%) Spring Boot
3 45 (15.96%) REST
4 40 (14.18%) Gherkin
4 40 (14.18%) Playwright
5 36 (12.77%) RESTful
6 35 (12.41%) Kafka
7 29 (10.28%) AngularJS
8 27 (9.57%) Node.js
9 26 (9.22%) .NET
10 22 (7.80%) React
11 21 (7.45%) WireMock
12 20 (7.09%) ActiveMQ
13 17 (6.03%) Spring Cloud
14 16 (5.67%) Web Services
15 14 (4.96%) JAX-RS
16 13 (4.61%) SOAP
17 12 (4.26%) Hibernate
18 11 (3.90%) JPA
18 11 (3.90%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 29 (10.28%) Distributed Systems
2 27 (9.57%) Cloud Native
3 26 (9.22%) Product Ownership
4 13 (4.61%) Distributed Architecture
5 11 (3.90%) Mobile App
6 8 (2.84%) Equity Derivative
7 7 (2.48%) Derivative
8 5 (1.77%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.42%) Distributed Applications
9 4 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.42%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.42%) Robotics
10 3 (1.06%) Client/Server
10 3 (1.06%) Legacy Systems
11 2 (0.71%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.71%) iSeries
11 2 (0.71%) NHS
11 2 (0.71%) Private Cloud
11 2 (0.71%) Synthetic Data
11 2 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 41 (14.54%) Linux
2 17 (6.03%) Unix
3 11 (3.90%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.77%) Android
4 5 (1.77%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.06%) VMS
6 2 (0.71%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.71%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 172 (60.99%) TDD
2 168 (59.57%) Test Automation
3 164 (58.16%) Agile
4 155 (54.96%) CI/CD
5 109 (38.65%) Microservices
6 95 (33.69%) DevOps
7 61 (21.63%) Problem-Solving
8 58 (20.57%) Test Strategy
9 56 (19.86%) API Testing
10 51 (18.09%) Continuous Improvement
10 51 (18.09%) Scrum
11 45 (15.96%) Software Engineering
12 38 (13.48%) SDLC
13 37 (13.12%) AI
14 36 (12.77%) Containerisation
15 31 (10.99%) Mentoring
16 30 (10.64%) Kanban
16 30 (10.64%) Observability
17 28 (9.93%) End-to-End Testing
17 28 (9.93%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 174 (61.70%) Java
2 70 (24.82%) SQL
3 67 (23.76%) Python
4 43 (15.25%) JavaScript
5 34 (12.06%) C#
6 27 (9.57%) TypeScript
7 13 (4.61%) C++
8 11 (3.90%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.48%) PHP
9 7 (2.48%) Ruby
10 5 (1.77%) Go
11 3 (1.06%) Groovy
11 3 (1.06%) Perl
11 3 (1.06%) Scala
11 3 (1.06%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.71%) VBA
13 1 (0.35%) Bicep
13 1 (0.35%) COBOL
13 1 (0.35%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.35%) Swift
Qualifications
1 69 (24.47%) Security Cleared
2 59 (20.92%) SC Cleared
3 16 (5.67%) Degree
4 11 (3.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (1.77%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.77%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.42%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.71%) ISEB
9 1 (0.35%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (20.21%) QA
2 28 (9.93%) Accessibility
3 9 (3.19%) Data Quality
4 5 (1.77%) WCAG
5 3 (1.06%) GDPR
6 2 (0.71%) HL7
6 2 (0.71%) PERC
7 1 (0.35%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 71 (25.18%) Docker
2 8 (2.84%) Postfix
3 1 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 59 (20.92%) Kubernetes
2 35 (12.41%) Grafana
3 29 (10.28%) Prometheus
4 20 (7.09%) Terraform
5 3 (1.06%) Ansible
5 3 (1.06%) Rancher
6 2 (0.71%) Amdocs OSS
6 2 (0.71%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.71%) Kibana
6 2 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.35%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.35%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.35%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 21 (7.45%) Oracle
2 13 (4.61%) Atlassian
3 12 (4.26%) Google
4 10 (3.55%) ServiceNow
4 10 (3.55%) Splunk
5 9 (3.19%) Jaspersoft
5 9 (3.19%) Sybase
6 8 (2.84%) Checkmarx
6 8 (2.84%) IBM
6 8 (2.84%) Salesforce
7 7 (2.48%) Databricks
8 4 (1.42%) Adobe
8 4 (1.42%) Dynatrace
8 4 (1.42%) Veracode
9 3 (1.06%) Microsoft
9 3 (1.06%) OpenLink
10 2 (0.71%) Amdocs
10 2 (0.71%) Bloomberg
10 2 (0.71%) SAP
10 2 (0.71%) VMware