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 16 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 376 273 271
Rank change year-on-year -103 -2 -20
Contract jobs citing BDD 348 324 326
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.97% 0.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.74% 1.08% 1.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 242 214 203
10th Percentile £306 £363 £371
25th Percentile £400 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year -9.98% -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £538 £593 £600
90th Percentile £643 £700 £758
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -7.89% +5.56% -11.76%
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 46,911 30,121 32,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.54% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,189 18,721 19,488
10th Percentile £325 £296 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,476 1,911 1,239
10th Percentile £13.51 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.75 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.24 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.07% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.79 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £66.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.24 £22.27 £40.00
% change year-on-year +67.26% -44.34% -8.88%

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 16 October 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 16 October 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 -97 297 £453 -11.61% 166
UK excluding London -85 170 £438 -7.89% 117
London -62 140 £500 -7.41% 67
Work from Home -75 93 £475 -5.00% 85
North of England -84 71 £450 -13.85% 30
Midlands -8 54 £438 -7.89% 23
West Midlands -4 52 £438 -12.50% 16
Yorkshire -44 34 £475 -11.63% 9
North West -47 24 £441 +4.56% 11
North East -42 17 £450 -5.26% 10
Scotland -30 15 £470 +1.62% 13
South East -64 15 £275 -4.51% 26
South West -38 12 £500 +17.65% 9
Wales -8 6 £419 +11.67% 1
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 9
East Midlands -8 1 £402 +30.73% 7

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 33 (9.48%) Confluence
2 4 (1.15%) Apache
2 4 (1.15%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.86%) CMS
3 3 (0.86%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.86%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.86%) Mingle
1 3 (0.86%) Notion
2 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 12 (3.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (2.01%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.86%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 139 (39.94%) AWS
2 116 (33.33%) Azure
3 98 (28.16%) GitHub
4 49 (14.08%) Azure DevOps
5 47 (13.51%) GitHub Actions
6 36 (10.34%) GCP
7 30 (8.62%) Serverless
8 29 (8.33%) GitHub Copilot
9 19 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
10 18 (5.17%) Amazon S3
11 16 (4.60%) Dynamics 365
12 15 (4.31%) Amazon SQS
13 13 (3.74%) Amazon EC2
13 13 (3.74%) Power Automate
13 13 (3.74%) Power Platform
14 10 (2.87%) Snowflake
15 9 (2.59%) Anthropic Claude
15 9 (2.59%) Azure Functions
16 8 (2.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 8 (2.30%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.01%) Internet
2 5 (1.44%) DNS
2 5 (1.44%) RTP
2 5 (1.44%) Wireshark
3 4 (1.15%) 3GPP
3 4 (1.15%) Firewall
4 2 (0.57%) BGP
4 2 (0.57%) DSL
4 2 (0.57%) HTTP
4 2 (0.57%) Intrusion Detection
4 2 (0.57%) Network Security
4 2 (0.57%) SD-WAN
4 2 (0.57%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.57%) VPN
4 2 (0.57%) WAN
5 1 (0.29%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (15.52%) MongoDB
2 29 (8.33%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (7.18%) NoSQL
4 20 (5.75%) SQL Server
5 17 (4.89%) Relational Database
6 11 (3.16%) Data Lake
7 10 (2.87%) Amazon RDS
8 9 (2.59%) DynamoDB
8 9 (2.59%) MySQL
9 8 (2.30%) Db2
9 8 (2.30%) Power BI
10 7 (2.01%) BigQuery
10 7 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
11 6 (1.72%) Amazon Aurora
12 5 (1.44%) Couchbase
12 5 (1.44%) Metadata
12 5 (1.44%) Tableau
12 5 (1.44%) ZAP BI
13 4 (1.15%) Big Data
13 4 (1.15%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 151 (43.39%) Cucumber
2 111 (31.90%) Selenium
3 108 (31.03%) Git
4 84 (24.14%) Jenkins
5 74 (21.26%) GitLab
6 67 (19.25%) JUnit
7 53 (15.23%) JIRA
8 51 (14.66%) REST Assured
9 49 (14.08%) Postman
10 38 (10.92%) Gatling
11 32 (9.20%) Cypress.io
11 32 (9.20%) SonarQube
12 30 (8.62%) WebDriver
13 29 (8.33%) Mockito
14 23 (6.61%) SpecFlow
15 22 (6.32%) Maven
16 15 (4.31%) Gradle
16 15 (4.31%) JMeter
17 10 (2.87%) Serenity BDD
17 10 (2.87%) TeamCity
General
1 137 (39.37%) Social Skills
2 78 (22.41%) Finance
3 71 (20.40%) Public Sector
4 59 (16.95%) Analytical Skills
5 48 (13.79%) Banking
6 22 (6.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (2.87%) Front Office
8 8 (2.30%) Military
9 7 (2.01%) Retail
10 6 (1.72%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.15%) Marketing
11 4 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.86%) Aviation
12 3 (0.86%) Fire and Rescue
12 3 (0.86%) Legal Technology
12 3 (0.86%) Local Government
12 3 (0.86%) Police
13 2 (0.57%) Law
13 2 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.29%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 90 (25.86%) Developer
2 78 (22.41%) Senior
3 57 (16.38%) Test Engineer
4 48 (13.79%) Java Developer
5 33 (9.48%) Software Engineer
6 30 (8.62%) Senior Developer
6 30 (8.62%) Test Automation Engineer
7 29 (8.33%) Lead
8 27 (7.76%) Quality Engineer
9 24 (6.90%) Java Engineer
10 22 (6.32%) Analyst
11 19 (5.46%) QA Engineer
12 15 (4.31%) Automation Engineer
12 15 (4.31%) Senior Java Developer
13 14 (4.02%) Senior Test Engineer
14 13 (3.74%) Architect
14 13 (3.74%) Test Analyst
14 13 (3.74%) Test Leader
15 12 (3.45%) Tester
16 11 (3.16%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (25.57%) Playwright
2 77 (22.13%) Spring
3 69 (19.83%) REST
4 63 (18.10%) Gherkin
5 62 (17.82%) Spring Boot
6 60 (17.24%) Kafka
7 46 (13.22%) RESTful
8 35 (10.06%) React
9 34 (9.77%) .NET
10 32 (9.20%) WireMock
11 30 (8.62%) Terraform
12 28 (8.05%) Node.js
13 21 (6.03%) AngularJS
13 21 (6.03%) HTML
14 20 (5.75%) pytest
15 19 (5.46%) RabbitMQ
16 17 (4.89%) ActiveMQ
16 17 (4.89%) SOAP
17 16 (4.60%) JSON
18 15 (4.31%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 38 (10.92%) Product Ownership
2 34 (9.77%) Cloud Native
3 27 (7.76%) Distributed Systems
4 22 (6.32%) Enterprise Software
5 15 (4.31%) Legacy Systems
6 13 (3.74%) Onboarding
7 10 (2.87%) AI Agents
8 9 (2.59%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (2.30%) Management Information System
10 7 (2.01%) Equity Derivative
10 7 (2.01%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.44%) NHS
11 5 (1.44%) Taxonomies
12 4 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.15%) Derivative
12 4 (1.15%) Distributed Architecture
12 4 (1.15%) Mainframe
12 4 (1.15%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 3 (0.86%) Data Centre
13 3 (0.86%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 41 (11.78%) Linux
2 23 (6.61%) Unix
3 7 (2.01%) macOS
4 5 (1.44%) Android
4 5 (1.44%) Apple iOS
5 4 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.86%) AIX
6 3 (0.86%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 255 (73.28%) Agile
2 248 (71.26%) CI/CD
3 228 (65.52%) TDD
3 228 (65.52%) Test Automation
4 134 (38.51%) Microservices
5 125 (35.92%) DevOps
6 96 (27.59%) Scrum
7 78 (22.41%) Software Engineering
8 77 (22.13%) Problem-Solving
8 77 (22.13%) Software Testing
9 75 (21.55%) Continuous Improvement
10 73 (20.98%) AI
11 72 (20.69%) API Testing
12 71 (20.40%) Test Strategy
13 67 (19.25%) Stakeholder Management
14 51 (14.66%) SDLC
15 50 (14.37%) Integration Testing
16 48 (13.79%) Coaching
17 45 (12.93%) Continuous Integration
18 44 (12.64%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 212 (60.92%) Java
2 85 (24.43%) JavaScript
3 84 (24.14%) Python
4 80 (22.99%) SQL
5 66 (18.97%) C#
6 50 (14.37%) TypeScript
7 16 (4.60%) Bash
8 14 (4.02%) Ruby
9 7 (2.01%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.01%) Groovy
9 7 (2.01%) Scala
10 6 (1.72%) R
11 5 (1.44%) Go
11 5 (1.44%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.15%) C++
13 3 (0.86%) Bicep
13 3 (0.86%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.86%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.57%) Cypher
14 2 (0.57%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 89 (25.57%) Security Cleared
2 73 (20.98%) SC Cleared
3 35 (10.06%) BPSS Clearance
4 25 (7.18%) Degree
5 22 (6.32%) ISTQB
6 19 (5.46%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (3.74%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.59%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 8 (2.30%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (1.72%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 5 (1.44%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.86%) CSPO
13 2 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 2 (0.57%) Azure Certification
13 2 (0.57%) ISEB
13 2 (0.57%) Master's Degree
14 1 (0.29%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (28.16%) QA
2 80 (22.99%) Accessibility
3 51 (14.66%) WCAG
4 16 (4.60%) GDPR
5 11 (3.16%) Data Quality
6 3 (0.86%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.57%) SEPA
7 2 (0.57%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.29%) EMIR
8 1 (0.29%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.29%) MiFID
8 1 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 101 (29.02%) Docker
2 2 (0.57%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 89 (25.57%) Kubernetes
2 18 (5.17%) Grafana
3 12 (3.45%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.72%) Ansible
5 5 (1.44%) Kibana
6 3 (0.86%) Istio
7 2 (0.57%) Argo
7 2 (0.57%) Consul
7 2 (0.57%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.29%) Control-M
8 1 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 35 (10.06%) Microsoft
2 19 (5.46%) Oracle
3 18 (5.17%) Databricks
4 16 (4.60%) Salesforce
5 13 (3.74%) Google
5 13 (3.74%) IBM
6 9 (2.59%) Sybase
7 8 (2.30%) Conga
7 8 (2.30%) GoCardless
8 6 (1.72%) OpenAI
9 5 (1.44%) Atlassian
9 5 (1.44%) Splunk
10 4 (1.15%) CA Agile Central
10 4 (1.15%) ION Trading
10 4 (1.15%) OutSystems
11 3 (0.86%) Guidewire
11 3 (0.86%) Jaspersoft
11 3 (0.86%) OneLogin
12 2 (0.57%) FactSet
12 2 (0.57%) HP