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 14 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 377 279 264
Rank change year-on-year -98 -15 -16
Contract jobs citing BDD 317 304 351
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.93% 0.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.69% 1.03% 1.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 200 235
10th Percentile £306 £362 £356
25th Percentile £400 £413 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £550 £628 £650
90th Percentile £661 £703 £758
UK excluding London median daily rate £445 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -6.32% +5.56% -10.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £82.50 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £85.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -47.06% - -
75th Percentile £46.88 £87.50 -
90th Percentile £48.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.25 - -

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 45,698 29,594 32,877
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.42% 90.53% 85.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,784 18,388 20,318
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £726 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,048 1,782 1,485
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.44 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £66.95 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.22% -47.67% +7.50%

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 14 September 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 14 September 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 -95 260 £458 -11.88% 266
UK excluding London -75 166 £445 -6.32% 158
London -78 116 £500 -9.09% 136
Work from Home -60 92 £500 - 146
North of England -77 69 £448 -14.76% 56
Midlands -19 40 £438 -8.85% 28
West Midlands -17 39 £438 -12.50% 19
North West -50 29 £438 +3.31% 32
Yorkshire -45 25 £525 -4.55% 15
Scotland -18 23 £468 +1.08% 17
North East -29 19 £450 -2.17% 10
South East -60 16 £275 -4.51% 27
South West -47 12 £525 +27.27% 14
East of England -27 5 £570 +52.00% 8
Wales -9 4 £531 +41.67% 4
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 5

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 30 (9.46%) Confluence
2 4 (1.26%) Apache
2 4 (1.26%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.95%) CMS
3 3 (0.95%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.95%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.32%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (0.95%) Notion
2 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.63%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 10 (3.15%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.52%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.95%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.63%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 107 (33.75%) AWS
2 96 (30.28%) Azure
3 84 (26.50%) GitHub
4 46 (14.51%) Azure DevOps
5 41 (12.93%) GitHub Actions
6 33 (10.41%) GCP
7 25 (7.89%) Serverless
8 22 (6.94%) GitHub Copilot
9 19 (5.99%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.36%) Amazon SQS
11 16 (5.05%) AWS Lambda
12 15 (4.73%) Amazon EC2
13 14 (4.42%) Anthropic Claude
13 14 (4.42%) ChatGPT
14 12 (3.79%) Power Automate
15 11 (3.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 11 (3.47%) Dynamics 365
16 10 (3.15%) Power Platform
17 9 (2.84%) AWS KMS
18 8 (2.52%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.21%) RTP
1 7 (2.21%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.89%) 3GPP
3 5 (1.58%) Internet
4 2 (0.63%) DSL
4 2 (0.63%) Firewall
4 2 (0.63%) HTTP
5 1 (0.32%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (16.40%) MongoDB
2 28 (8.83%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (7.26%) NoSQL
4 21 (6.62%) Relational Database
5 16 (5.05%) SQL Server
6 15 (4.73%) Db2
7 12 (3.79%) Amazon RDS
7 12 (3.79%) DynamoDB
7 12 (3.79%) Metadata
8 10 (3.15%) Amazon Aurora
9 7 (2.21%) MySQL
9 7 (2.21%) Power BI
10 6 (1.89%) BigQuery
10 6 (1.89%) Data Lake
10 6 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
11 5 (1.58%) Couchbase
11 5 (1.58%) Tableau
12 3 (0.95%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (0.95%) Apache Iceberg
12 3 (0.95%) Looker
Development Applications
1 113 (35.65%) Cucumber
2 93 (29.34%) Git
3 90 (28.39%) Selenium
4 70 (22.08%) Jenkins
5 58 (18.30%) GitLab
6 56 (17.67%) JUnit
7 47 (14.83%) REST Assured
8 46 (14.51%) JIRA
9 43 (13.56%) Postman
10 32 (10.09%) WebDriver
11 29 (9.15%) Mockito
12 27 (8.52%) Cypress.io
13 26 (8.20%) SonarQube
14 24 (7.57%) Gatling
15 20 (6.31%) Maven
15 20 (6.31%) SpecFlow
16 14 (4.42%) JMeter
17 13 (4.10%) TeamCity
18 10 (3.15%) Gradle
19 9 (2.84%) TestNG
General
1 110 (34.70%) Social Skills
2 67 (21.14%) Finance
3 61 (19.24%) Public Sector
4 56 (17.67%) Analytical Skills
5 44 (13.88%) Banking
6 18 (5.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (4.42%) Front Office
8 9 (2.84%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.21%) Military
9 7 (2.21%) Retail
10 5 (1.58%) Aviation
10 5 (1.58%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.58%) Police
11 4 (1.26%) Marketing
12 3 (0.95%) Legal Technology
12 3 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.63%) Law
13 2 (0.63%) Local Government
14 1 (0.32%) Legal
Job Titles
1 95 (29.97%) Developer
2 71 (22.40%) Senior
3 57 (17.98%) Java Developer
4 55 (17.35%) Test Engineer
5 35 (11.04%) Software Engineer
6 32 (10.09%) Test Automation Engineer
7 26 (8.20%) Lead
7 26 (8.20%) Senior Developer
8 23 (7.26%) Analyst
9 19 (5.99%) Java Engineer
10 18 (5.68%) Senior Java Developer
11 15 (4.73%) Tester
12 14 (4.42%) QA Engineer
13 13 (4.10%) Automation Tester
13 13 (4.10%) Test Leader
14 12 (3.79%) Quality Engineer
14 12 (3.79%) Senior Software Engineer
14 12 (3.79%) Test Analyst
15 11 (3.47%) Python Developer
15 11 (3.47%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (20.82%) Playwright
1 66 (20.82%) Spring
2 61 (19.24%) REST
3 58 (18.30%) Spring Boot
4 54 (17.03%) Gherkin
4 54 (17.03%) Kafka
5 40 (12.62%) RESTful
6 28 (8.83%) .NET
7 23 (7.26%) Node.js
7 23 (7.26%) React
8 22 (6.94%) Terraform
9 21 (6.62%) AngularJS
9 21 (6.62%) WireMock
10 20 (6.31%) ActiveMQ
11 18 (5.68%) SOAP
12 16 (5.05%) HTML
13 14 (4.42%) JAX-RS
14 13 (4.10%) JSON
14 13 (4.10%) pytest
14 13 (4.10%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 36 (11.36%) Product Ownership
2 28 (8.83%) Distributed Systems
3 27 (8.52%) Cloud Native
4 17 (5.36%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.42%) Equity Derivative
6 13 (4.10%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.15%) Derivative
8 8 (2.52%) Onboarding
9 7 (2.21%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.89%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.58%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.58%) Distributed Architecture
11 5 (1.58%) NHS
11 5 (1.58%) Robotics
11 5 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.58%) Taxonomies
12 4 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.26%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 3 (0.95%) Legacy Code
14 2 (0.63%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 43 (13.56%) Linux
2 22 (6.94%) Unix
3 5 (1.58%) Android
3 5 (1.58%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.58%) Mac OS X
4 3 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.95%) Windows
5 2 (0.63%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.32%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 214 (67.51%) Agile
2 207 (65.30%) CI/CD
3 201 (63.41%) TDD
4 194 (61.20%) Test Automation
5 108 (34.07%) DevOps
6 105 (33.12%) Microservices
7 76 (23.97%) Scrum
8 71 (22.40%) AI
9 70 (22.08%) Problem-Solving
10 66 (20.82%) Software Engineering
11 62 (19.56%) Continuous Improvement
12 59 (18.61%) API Testing
12 59 (18.61%) Test Strategy
13 48 (15.14%) Software Testing
13 48 (15.14%) Stakeholder Management
14 42 (13.25%) Continuous Integration
14 42 (13.25%) SDLC
15 38 (11.99%) Mentoring
16 37 (11.67%) Integration Testing
17 36 (11.36%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 193 (60.88%) Java
2 87 (27.44%) SQL
3 76 (23.97%) Python
4 61 (19.24%) JavaScript
5 50 (15.77%) C#
6 30 (9.46%) TypeScript
7 12 (3.79%) Bash
7 12 (3.79%) Ruby
8 10 (3.15%) C++
9 7 (2.21%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.21%) Groovy
10 6 (1.89%) R
11 5 (1.58%) Kotlin
11 5 (1.58%) Scala
12 4 (1.26%) Perl
13 3 (0.95%) Go
13 3 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.95%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.63%) Cypher
14 2 (0.63%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 78 (24.61%) Security Cleared
2 63 (19.87%) SC Cleared
3 24 (7.57%) BPSS Clearance
4 22 (6.94%) Degree
5 20 (6.31%) ISTQB
6 16 (5.05%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (3.15%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.84%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 7 (2.21%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (1.58%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.95%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.95%) CSPO
12 2 (0.63%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.63%) ISEB
13 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 1 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
13 1 (0.32%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (23.97%) QA
2 54 (17.03%) Accessibility
3 34 (10.73%) WCAG
4 16 (5.05%) Data Quality
5 15 (4.73%) GDPR
6 3 (0.95%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.32%) EMIR
7 1 (0.32%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.32%) MiFID
7 1 (0.32%) SEPA
7 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.32%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 77 (24.29%) Docker
2 5 (1.58%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 62 (19.56%) Kubernetes
2 20 (6.31%) Grafana
3 15 (4.73%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.89%) Ansible
5 4 (1.26%) Kibana
6 3 (0.95%) Istio
7 2 (0.63%) Argo
7 2 (0.63%) Consul
7 2 (0.63%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.32%) Control-M
8 1 (0.32%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 26 (8.20%) Microsoft
2 16 (5.05%) Sybase
3 15 (4.73%) IBM
3 15 (4.73%) Salesforce
4 13 (4.10%) Oracle
5 12 (3.79%) Google
6 9 (2.84%) Databricks
7 8 (2.52%) Conga
7 8 (2.52%) GoCardless
8 7 (2.21%) Atlassian
9 6 (1.89%) Jaspersoft
10 5 (1.58%) Checkmarx
10 5 (1.58%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.95%) CA Agile Central
11 3 (0.95%) Guidewire
11 3 (0.95%) ION Trading
11 3 (0.95%) Splunk
12 2 (0.63%) Bloomberg
12 2 (0.63%) FactSet
12 2 (0.63%) OpenLink