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 21 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 362 288 259
Rank change year-on-year -74 -29 -15
Contract jobs citing BDD 330 293 360
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 0.89% 0.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.73% 0.99% 1.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 203 195 253
10th Percentile £306 £361 £363
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £533
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -6.19% -7.30%
75th Percentile £538 £601 £650
90th Percentile £675 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £500
% change year-on-year -2.17% -8.00% -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £82.50 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £85.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year -47.06% +51.11% -25.00%
75th Percentile £46.88 £87.50 -
90th Percentile £48.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.25 - £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 45,356 29,667 33,233
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.68% 90.51% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,834 18,495 21,131
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,855 1,741 1,763
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.31 £17.33 £18.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -37.90% -1.22%
75th Percentile £67.94 £49.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year +83.17% -42.17% +12.54%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 -77 271 £461 -10.32% 82
UK excluding London -45 181 £450 -2.17% 55
London -86 114 £494 -15.96% 37
Work from Home -52 102 £475 -5.00% 59
North of England -50 74 £450 -13.42% 17
Midlands -21 42 £425 -8.11% 9
West Midlands -23 41 £425 -11.69% 7
North West -30 35 £456 +8.12% 8
Scotland -13 25 £465 +7.83% 2
Yorkshire -38 23 £525 - 5
North East -20 20 £450 -2.17% 5
South East -70 17 £285 -1.04% 19
South West -47 14 £525 +27.27% 7
East of England -8 8 £510 +36.00% 3
Wales -13 4 £531 - 1
Northern Ireland - 1 - -

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 37 (11.21%) Confluence
2 5 (1.52%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.21%) Apache
4 3 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.91%) CMS
4 3 (0.91%) Headless CMS
4 3 (0.91%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.30%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (0.91%) Notion
2 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.30%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (2.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.42%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.91%) Findur
3 3 (0.91%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 112 (33.94%) AWS
2 103 (31.21%) Azure
3 90 (27.27%) GitHub
4 49 (14.85%) Azure DevOps
5 45 (13.64%) GCP
5 45 (13.64%) GitHub Actions
6 26 (7.88%) Serverless
7 19 (5.76%) Amazon S3
7 19 (5.76%) Amazon SQS
8 18 (5.45%) GitHub Copilot
9 17 (5.15%) Amazon EC2
9 17 (5.15%) AWS Lambda
10 14 (4.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 14 (4.24%) ChatGPT
11 12 (3.64%) Anthropic Claude
12 10 (3.03%) Power Automate
13 9 (2.73%) AWS KMS
13 9 (2.73%) Dynamics 365
13 9 (2.73%) Power Platform
14 8 (2.42%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.12%) RTP
1 7 (2.12%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.82%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.91%) DSL
3 3 (0.91%) Internet
4 2 (0.61%) Firewall
4 2 (0.61%) NaaS
4 2 (0.61%) WAN
5 1 (0.30%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (16.36%) MongoDB
2 36 (10.91%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (6.97%) NoSQL
4 20 (6.06%) Relational Database
5 17 (5.15%) SQL Server
6 15 (4.55%) Db2
6 15 (4.55%) DynamoDB
7 13 (3.94%) Amazon RDS
8 12 (3.64%) Amazon Aurora
9 11 (3.33%) Metadata
10 8 (2.42%) MySQL
11 7 (2.12%) Power BI
12 6 (1.82%) BigQuery
12 6 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
13 5 (1.52%) Couchbase
13 5 (1.52%) Data Lake
13 5 (1.52%) Tableau
14 4 (1.21%) Amazon Athena
15 3 (0.91%) Apache Iceberg
15 3 (0.91%) Looker
Development Applications
1 112 (33.94%) Cucumber
2 91 (27.58%) Git
3 90 (27.27%) Selenium
4 78 (23.64%) Jenkins
5 60 (18.18%) GitLab
6 59 (17.88%) JUnit
7 54 (16.36%) JIRA
8 45 (13.64%) Postman
9 42 (12.73%) REST Assured
10 37 (11.21%) WebDriver
11 31 (9.39%) Mockito
12 25 (7.58%) Cypress.io
13 23 (6.97%) SonarQube
14 21 (6.36%) JMeter
15 20 (6.06%) SpecFlow
16 18 (5.45%) Gatling
17 17 (5.15%) Maven
18 15 (4.55%) TeamCity
19 9 (2.73%) Bitbucket
19 9 (2.73%) IntelliJ
General
1 105 (31.82%) Social Skills
2 76 (23.03%) Finance
3 64 (19.39%) Public Sector
4 53 (16.06%) Analytical Skills
5 42 (12.73%) Banking
6 15 (4.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (3.94%) Front Office
8 9 (2.73%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.12%) Retail
10 6 (1.82%) Military
11 5 (1.52%) Aviation
11 5 (1.52%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (1.52%) Police
12 3 (0.91%) Automotive
12 3 (0.91%) Billing
12 3 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.91%) Legal Technology
12 3 (0.91%) Marketing
12 3 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 105 (31.82%) Developer
2 69 (20.91%) Senior
3 63 (19.09%) Java Developer
4 56 (16.97%) Test Engineer
5 33 (10.00%) Test Automation Engineer
6 31 (9.39%) Lead
6 31 (9.39%) Software Engineer
7 23 (6.97%) Senior Developer
7 23 (6.97%) Tester
8 21 (6.36%) Analyst
9 19 (5.76%) Automation Tester
10 18 (5.45%) Senior Java Developer
11 16 (4.85%) Java Engineer
11 16 (4.85%) Test Leader
12 13 (3.94%) QA Engineer
13 11 (3.33%) Architect
13 11 (3.33%) Automation Engineer
13 11 (3.33%) Python Developer
13 11 (3.33%) Senior Software Engineer
13 11 (3.33%) Senior Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (22.42%) Spring
2 65 (19.70%) REST
3 64 (19.39%) Playwright
4 62 (18.79%) Spring Boot
5 56 (16.97%) Kafka
6 52 (15.76%) Gherkin
7 42 (12.73%) RESTful
8 31 (9.39%) .NET
9 26 (7.88%) AngularJS
10 25 (7.58%) Node.js
10 25 (7.58%) React
11 23 (6.97%) WireMock
12 22 (6.67%) ActiveMQ
13 21 (6.36%) Terraform
14 19 (5.76%) SOAP
15 16 (4.85%) HTML
15 16 (4.85%) JAX-RS
16 15 (4.55%) JSON
17 13 (3.94%) CSS
17 13 (3.94%) JPA
Miscellaneous
1 35 (10.61%) Distributed Systems
1 35 (10.61%) Product Ownership
2 29 (8.79%) Cloud Native
3 18 (5.45%) Enterprise Software
4 14 (4.24%) Equity Derivative
5 13 (3.94%) Legacy Systems
6 10 (3.03%) Derivative
6 10 (3.03%) Distributed Architecture
7 7 (2.12%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.82%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.82%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.52%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.52%) Robotics
9 5 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.52%) Taxonomies
10 4 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.21%) NHS
10 4 (1.21%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 3 (0.91%) AI Agents
11 3 (0.91%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 47 (14.24%) Linux
2 23 (6.97%) Unix
3 6 (1.82%) Android
3 6 (1.82%) Apple iOS
3 6 (1.82%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.52%) Windows
5 2 (0.61%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.61%) VMS
6 1 (0.30%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (66.97%) Agile
2 212 (64.24%) CI/CD
3 211 (63.94%) TDD
4 200 (60.61%) Test Automation
5 117 (35.45%) DevOps
5 117 (35.45%) Microservices
6 74 (22.42%) Scrum
7 71 (21.52%) Problem-Solving
8 70 (21.21%) Continuous Improvement
9 64 (19.39%) AI
10 62 (18.79%) API Testing
11 61 (18.48%) Software Engineering
11 61 (18.48%) Test Strategy
12 43 (13.03%) Mentoring
13 42 (12.73%) Continuous Integration
14 41 (12.42%) Stakeholder Management
15 39 (11.82%) SDLC
16 38 (11.52%) Software Testing
17 32 (9.70%) Containerisation
17 32 (9.70%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 196 (59.39%) Java
2 92 (27.88%) SQL
3 76 (23.03%) Python
4 61 (18.48%) JavaScript
5 51 (15.45%) C#
6 33 (10.00%) TypeScript
7 14 (4.24%) C++
8 8 (2.42%) Groovy
9 7 (2.12%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.12%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.12%) Ruby
10 6 (1.82%) R
11 5 (1.52%) Bash
11 5 (1.52%) Go
12 4 (1.21%) Perl
12 4 (1.21%) T-SQL
13 3 (0.91%) Scala
13 3 (0.91%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.61%) Cypher
14 2 (0.61%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 80 (24.24%) Security Cleared
2 63 (19.09%) SC Cleared
3 22 (6.67%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (6.36%) Degree
5 19 (5.76%) ISTQB
6 15 (4.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.73%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 8 (2.42%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.91%) CSPO
10 3 (0.91%) ISEB
10 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.61%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.61%) Azure Certification
12 1 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.30%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (21.21%) QA
2 46 (13.94%) Accessibility
3 25 (7.58%) WCAG
4 16 (4.85%) Data Quality
5 14 (4.24%) GDPR
6 3 (0.91%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.30%) EMIR
7 1 (0.30%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.30%) MiFID
7 1 (0.30%) SEPA
7 1 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 79 (23.94%) Docker
2 6 (1.82%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 63 (19.09%) Kubernetes
2 28 (8.48%) Grafana
3 22 (6.67%) Prometheus
4 7 (2.12%) Ansible
5 4 (1.21%) Kibana
6 3 (0.91%) Istio
7 2 (0.61%) Amdocs OSS
7 2 (0.61%) Argo
7 2 (0.61%) Consul
7 2 (0.61%) Rancher
7 2 (0.61%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (7.58%) Microsoft
2 17 (5.15%) Salesforce
3 16 (4.85%) Sybase
4 15 (4.55%) IBM
5 14 (4.24%) Google
5 14 (4.24%) Oracle
6 9 (2.73%) Atlassian
7 8 (2.42%) Checkmarx
7 8 (2.42%) Conga
7 8 (2.42%) GoCardless
8 7 (2.12%) Jaspersoft
9 6 (1.82%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.52%) Databricks
11 4 (1.21%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.21%) Splunk
12 3 (0.91%) CA Agile Central
12 3 (0.91%) Guidewire
12 3 (0.91%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.91%) OpenLink
13 2 (0.61%) Amdocs