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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 292 272
Rank change year-on-year -60 -20 -78
Contract jobs citing BDD 293 253 345
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.86% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 0.95% 0.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 164 160 263
10th Percentile £345 £362 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £500 £533
Median % change year-on-year -5.50% -6.19% -11.17%
75th Percentile £541 £607 £638
90th Percentile £684 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £475 £533
% change year-on-year -1.47% -10.80% +6.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £46.25 - -
Median hourly rate £47.50 - £56.25
75th Percentile £48.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 - £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 40,423 26,734 36,712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.29% 90.97% 86.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,371 17,185 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.68% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,395 1,096 2,442
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.35 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.22 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +50.82% -21.77% +1.04%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.39% -32.73% +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 18 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 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 18 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 -63 246 £475 -7.32% 89
UK excluding London -36 171 £468 -1.47% 67
London -71 100 £488 -14.47% 28
Work from Home -27 84 £426 -14.90% 120
North of England -43 79 £472 +3.63% 18
North West -10 41 £431 +4.61% 9
West Midlands -36 33 £425 -8.11% 5
Midlands -43 33 £425 -7.86% 14
Yorkshire -56 29 £573 +10.15% 6
Scotland +12 23 £438 +12.90% 1
South West -16 16 £525 - 8
North East -17 12 £426 +9.10% 4
South East -69 12 £358 -28.40% 20
East of England - 8 £510 - 2
Northern Ireland - 2 - -
Wales -12 1 £650 - 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 38 (12.97%) Confluence
2 3 (1.02%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (1.02%) 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 3 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.68%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.68%) Notion
3 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.34%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 8 (2.73%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (1.02%) Findur
3 2 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.68%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.34%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 102 (34.81%) AWS
2 82 (27.99%) Azure
3 65 (22.18%) GitHub
4 44 (15.02%) GCP
5 34 (11.60%) Azure DevOps
6 28 (9.56%) GitHub Actions
7 22 (7.51%) Serverless
8 18 (6.14%) Amazon S3
9 17 (5.80%) Amazon EC2
10 16 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (5.12%) Amazon SQS
12 14 (4.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 14 (4.78%) BrowserStack
13 10 (3.41%) SaaS
14 9 (3.07%) AWS KMS
14 9 (3.07%) ChatGPT
14 9 (3.07%) Route 53
15 8 (2.73%) GitHub Copilot
16 7 (2.39%) Anthropic Claude
17 6 (2.05%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.71%) 3GPP
1 5 (1.71%) RTP
1 5 (1.71%) Wireshark
2 3 (1.02%) WAN
3 2 (0.68%) NaaS
4 1 (0.34%) DSL
4 1 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.34%) Firewall
4 1 (0.34%) HTTP
4 1 (0.34%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.34%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (14.33%) MongoDB
2 40 (13.65%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (7.17%) Relational Database
4 18 (6.14%) SQL Server
5 15 (5.12%) MySQL
6 14 (4.78%) DynamoDB
7 13 (4.44%) Amazon Aurora
8 12 (4.10%) Amazon RDS
9 10 (3.41%) DB2
9 10 (3.41%) Oracle Database
10 9 (3.07%) Metadata
11 7 (2.39%) Data Lake
12 6 (2.05%) NoSQL
13 4 (1.37%) Power BI
14 3 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
14 3 (1.02%) Delta Lake
14 3 (1.02%) MariaDB
15 2 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
15 2 (0.68%) Redis
15 2 (0.68%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 101 (34.47%) Cucumber
2 79 (26.96%) Selenium
3 77 (26.28%) Jenkins
4 75 (25.60%) Git
5 62 (21.16%) JIRA
6 58 (19.80%) GitLab
7 50 (17.06%) JUnit
8 41 (13.99%) Postman
9 39 (13.31%) REST Assured
10 31 (10.58%) WebDriver
11 29 (9.90%) Mockito
12 27 (9.22%) SonarQube
13 24 (8.19%) JMeter
14 14 (4.78%) Maven
14 14 (4.78%) TeamCity
15 13 (4.44%) Cypress.io
15 13 (4.44%) Gatling
16 11 (3.75%) Serenity BDD
16 11 (3.75%) SpecFlow
17 9 (3.07%) DbUnit
General
1 78 (26.62%) Social Skills
2 65 (22.18%) Finance
3 56 (19.11%) Public Sector
4 37 (12.63%) Analytical Skills
5 28 (9.56%) Banking
6 8 (2.73%) Front Office
6 8 (2.73%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (2.39%) Investment Banking
8 4 (1.37%) Aviation
8 4 (1.37%) Fire and Rescue
8 4 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
8 4 (1.37%) Military
8 4 (1.37%) Police
9 3 (1.02%) Billing
9 3 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.02%) Retail
10 2 (0.68%) Automotive
10 2 (0.68%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.68%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.34%) Legal
Job Titles
1 93 (31.74%) Developer
2 59 (20.14%) Java Developer
3 53 (18.09%) Test Engineer
4 47 (16.04%) Senior
5 39 (13.31%) Lead
6 30 (10.24%) Software Engineer
7 29 (9.90%) Test Automation Engineer
8 23 (7.85%) Tester
9 18 (6.14%) Automation Tester
10 16 (5.46%) Senior Developer
10 16 (5.46%) Test Leader
11 15 (5.12%) Analyst
11 15 (5.12%) Senior Java Developer
12 14 (4.78%) Java Engineer
13 12 (4.10%) Automation Test Lead
13 12 (4.10%) Business Analyst
13 12 (4.10%) Lead Test Engineer
14 11 (3.75%) QA Engineer
15 10 (3.41%) Senior Automation Tester
15 10 (3.41%) Senior Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (26.96%) Spring
2 62 (21.16%) Spring Boot
3 53 (18.09%) Playwright
4 49 (16.72%) REST
5 40 (13.65%) Kafka
6 38 (12.97%) Gherkin
6 38 (12.97%) RESTful
7 30 (10.24%) .NET
8 29 (9.90%) AngularJS
9 27 (9.22%) React
10 25 (8.53%) Node.js
11 21 (7.17%) WireMock
12 20 (6.83%) ActiveMQ
12 20 (6.83%) Spring Cloud
13 15 (5.12%) Web Services
14 14 (4.78%) JAX-RS
15 13 (4.44%) Hibernate
15 13 (4.44%) SOAP
16 11 (3.75%) JPA
16 11 (3.75%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.24%) Distributed Systems
2 26 (8.87%) Cloud Native
3 24 (8.19%) Product Ownership
4 13 (4.44%) Distributed Architecture
5 11 (3.75%) Mobile App
6 10 (3.41%) Enterprise Software
7 9 (3.07%) Equity Derivative
8 8 (2.73%) Derivative
9 4 (1.37%) Distributed Applications
9 4 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (1.37%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.37%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.37%) Robotics
9 4 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
10 2 (0.68%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
10 2 (0.68%) iSeries
10 2 (0.68%) Private Cloud
10 2 (0.68%) Synthetic Data
10 2 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 41 (13.99%) Linux
2 17 (5.80%) Unix
3 11 (3.75%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.71%) Android
4 5 (1.71%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.68%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.68%) VMS
5 2 (0.68%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (61.09%) TDD
2 176 (60.07%) Test Automation
3 167 (57.00%) Agile
4 166 (56.66%) CI/CD
5 115 (39.25%) Microservices
6 99 (33.79%) DevOps
7 63 (21.50%) API Testing
8 61 (20.82%) Problem-Solving
8 61 (20.82%) Test Strategy
9 57 (19.45%) Continuous Improvement
10 52 (17.75%) Scrum
11 47 (16.04%) Software Engineering
12 38 (12.97%) AI
12 38 (12.97%) Containerisation
13 37 (12.63%) Mentoring
13 37 (12.63%) SDLC
14 33 (11.26%) Observability
15 32 (10.92%) Software Testing
16 30 (10.24%) Performance Testing
17 29 (9.90%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 183 (62.46%) Java
2 75 (25.60%) SQL
3 68 (23.21%) Python
4 51 (17.41%) JavaScript
5 38 (12.97%) C#
6 27 (9.22%) TypeScript
7 13 (4.44%) C++
8 11 (3.75%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.39%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.39%) PHP
9 7 (2.39%) Ruby
10 5 (1.71%) Go
10 5 (1.71%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.37%) Perl
12 3 (1.02%) Groovy
13 2 (0.68%) Bash
13 2 (0.68%) Scala
13 2 (0.68%) VBA
14 1 (0.34%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.34%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 71 (24.23%) Security Cleared
2 61 (20.82%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.17%) Degree
4 11 (3.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (3.41%) ISTQB
6 9 (3.07%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.71%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.37%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.68%) ISEB
10 1 (0.34%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (19.80%) QA
2 31 (10.58%) Accessibility
3 10 (3.41%) Data Quality
4 7 (2.39%) WCAG
5 2 (0.68%) HL7
6 1 (0.34%) GDPR
6 1 (0.34%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 77 (26.28%) Docker
2 8 (2.73%) Postfix
3 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 60 (20.48%) Kubernetes
2 39 (13.31%) Grafana
3 33 (11.26%) Prometheus
4 19 (6.48%) Terraform
5 4 (1.37%) Ansible
6 3 (1.02%) Kibana
7 2 (0.68%) Amdocs OSS
7 2 (0.68%) HP Fortify
7 2 (0.68%) Istio
7 2 (0.68%) Rancher
7 2 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.34%) EMC VPLEX
8 1 (0.34%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.34%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 22 (7.51%) Oracle
2 15 (5.12%) Salesforce
3 13 (4.44%) Atlassian
4 12 (4.10%) Google
4 12 (4.10%) Splunk
5 11 (3.75%) Sybase
6 10 (3.41%) ServiceNow
7 9 (3.07%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (2.73%) Checkmarx
8 8 (2.73%) Conga
8 8 (2.73%) GoCardless
8 8 (2.73%) IBM
9 7 (2.39%) Databricks
10 5 (1.71%) Dynatrace
11 4 (1.37%) Veracode
12 3 (1.02%) Adobe
12 3 (1.02%) Microsoft
12 3 (1.02%) OpenLink
13 2 (0.68%) Bloomberg
13 2 (0.68%) SAP