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 13 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 342 292 304
Rank change year-on-year -50 +12 -161
Contract jobs citing BDD 293 255 317
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.87% 0.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.80% 0.96% 0.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 175 157 220
10th Percentile £352 £363 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -15.25%
75th Percentile £550 £638 £588
90th Percentile £675 £788 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -7.14%
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 - - -19.64%

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 36,854 26,627 38,581
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.05% 90.37% 86.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,339 16,995 25,088
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,197 898 2,338
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.48 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £32.50 £31.50
% change year-on-year -15.82% +3.17% -10.00%

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 13 March 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 17 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 13 March 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 -49 255 £475 -9.52% 121
UK excluding London -60 144 £475 -5.00% 106
London -35 122 £475 -18.10% 31
North of England -40 82 £481 +6.94% 34
Work from Home -29 81 £425 -19.05% 76
North West -14 33 £453 +15.86% 17
Yorkshire -59 32 £525 - 8
Midlands -45 30 £425 -12.37% 16
West Midlands -42 29 £425 -12.37% 12
North East -3 20 £475 +21.79% 9
South West -27 10 £463 -13.95% 6
South East -64 9 £367 -26.60% 34
Scotland +8 8 £375 -14.29% 9
Wales -6 3 £525 - 1
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 1
East of England -27 1 £500 +60.00% 6
East Midlands - 1 £308 - 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 44 (15.02%) Confluence
2 4 (1.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 4 (1.37%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.68%) nginx
3 2 (0.68%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.34%) CMS
4 1 (0.34%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 4 (1.37%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.34%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.68%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.34%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 113 (38.57%) AWS
2 80 (27.30%) Azure
3 52 (17.75%) GitHub
4 34 (11.60%) GCP
5 30 (10.24%) Azure DevOps
6 29 (9.90%) GitHub Actions
7 27 (9.22%) Serverless
8 19 (6.48%) AWS Lambda
9 18 (6.14%) Amazon S3
10 13 (4.44%) BrowserStack
11 11 (3.75%) Amazon SQS
12 10 (3.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 10 (3.41%) Amazon EC2
12 10 (3.41%) SaaS
13 7 (2.39%) Amazon EKS
14 5 (1.71%) Amazon Cognito
14 5 (1.71%) AWS KMS
14 5 (1.71%) AWS Step Functions
14 5 (1.71%) Route 53
15 4 (1.37%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.71%) Cisco IPT
2 3 (1.02%) WAN
3 2 (0.68%) HTTP
3 2 (0.68%) NaaS
4 1 (0.34%) DSL
4 1 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.34%) FTP
4 1 (0.34%) Internet
4 1 (0.34%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.34%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (13.99%) PostgreSQL
2 30 (10.24%) MongoDB
3 17 (5.80%) SQL Server
4 14 (4.78%) MySQL
5 12 (4.10%) Amazon RDS
5 12 (4.10%) Relational Database
6 10 (3.41%) Oracle Database
7 9 (3.07%) DynamoDB
7 9 (3.07%) NoSQL
8 7 (2.39%) Data Lake
9 6 (2.05%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (1.37%) Redis
11 3 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (1.02%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.68%) Apache Cassandra
12 2 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
12 2 (0.68%) Flink
12 2 (0.68%) InfluxDB
12 2 (0.68%) TimescaleDB
13 1 (0.34%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 116 (39.59%) Cucumber
2 83 (28.33%) Jenkins
3 82 (27.99%) Selenium
4 73 (24.91%) JIRA
5 69 (23.55%) Git
6 67 (22.87%) GitLab
7 46 (15.70%) JUnit
8 43 (14.68%) Postman
9 31 (10.58%) REST Assured
10 28 (9.56%) JMeter
11 27 (9.22%) WebDriver
12 25 (8.53%) Mockito
13 23 (7.85%) Cypress.io
14 19 (6.48%) SonarQube
15 11 (3.75%) Bitbucket
15 11 (3.75%) Gatling
15 11 (3.75%) Maven
16 8 (2.73%) Serenity BDD
16 8 (2.73%) SpecFlow
16 8 (2.73%) TestRail
General
1 78 (26.62%) Social Skills
2 58 (19.80%) Public Sector
3 49 (16.72%) Finance
4 26 (8.87%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (7.51%) Banking
6 8 (2.73%) Organisational Skills
7 6 (2.05%) Front Office
7 6 (2.05%) Military
8 5 (1.71%) Legal
9 4 (1.37%) Electronics
9 4 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.02%) Billing
10 3 (1.02%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (0.68%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.68%) Retail
11 2 (0.68%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.34%) Marketing
12 1 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 87 (29.69%) Developer
2 51 (17.41%) Senior
3 49 (16.72%) Java Developer
4 48 (16.38%) Test Engineer
5 39 (13.31%) Lead
6 27 (9.22%) Software Engineer
7 26 (8.87%) Tester
8 20 (6.83%) Test Automation Engineer
9 19 (6.48%) Automation Tester
10 18 (6.14%) QA Engineer
11 16 (5.46%) Java Engineer
11 16 (5.46%) Senior Developer
12 15 (5.12%) Test Leader
13 13 (4.44%) Lead Test Engineer
14 12 (4.10%) Senior Java Developer
15 11 (3.75%) Automation Engineer
15 11 (3.75%) Senior Tester
16 10 (3.41%) Analyst
16 10 (3.41%) Automation Test Lead
16 10 (3.41%) Senior Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (22.87%) Spring
2 59 (20.14%) REST
3 58 (19.80%) Spring Boot
4 46 (15.70%) Playwright
5 41 (13.99%) Node.js
5 41 (13.99%) RESTful
6 36 (12.29%) Gherkin
6 36 (12.29%) React
7 33 (11.26%) Kafka
8 29 (9.90%) .NET
9 28 (9.56%) WireMock
10 26 (8.87%) AngularJS
11 19 (6.48%) CSS
12 17 (5.80%) Jest
13 16 (5.46%) SOAP
14 15 (5.12%) ActiveMQ
14 15 (5.12%) Web Services
15 13 (4.44%) Spring Cloud
16 12 (4.10%) HTML
16 12 (4.10%) JAX-RS
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.22%) Product Ownership
2 24 (8.19%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (6.48%) Cloud Native
4 17 (5.80%) Distributed Architecture
5 9 (3.07%) Mobile App
6 7 (2.39%) Onboarding
7 6 (2.05%) Client/Server
7 6 (2.05%) Equities
8 5 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 5 (1.71%) NHS
8 5 (1.71%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.37%) Distributed Applications
10 3 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
10 3 (1.02%) Educational Technology
10 3 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
11 2 (0.68%) Greenfield Project
11 2 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.68%) iSeries
11 2 (0.68%) Private Cloud
11 2 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 35 (11.95%) Linux
2 18 (6.14%) Unix
3 9 (3.07%) Mac OS X
4 4 (1.37%) Windows
5 3 (1.02%) Android
6 2 (0.68%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.68%) VMS
7 1 (0.34%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.34%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (63.14%) Agile
2 181 (61.77%) TDD
3 180 (61.43%) Test Automation
4 171 (58.36%) CI/CD
5 131 (44.71%) Microservices
6 88 (30.03%) DevOps
7 67 (22.87%) API Testing
8 65 (22.18%) Continuous Improvement
8 65 (22.18%) Problem-Solving
9 64 (21.84%) Test Strategy
10 58 (19.80%) Scrum
11 50 (17.06%) Software Engineering
12 48 (16.38%) Containerisation
13 43 (14.68%) Mentoring
14 41 (13.99%) SDLC
15 37 (12.63%) Performance Testing
16 32 (10.92%) End-to-End Testing
16 32 (10.92%) Kanban
16 32 (10.92%) Non-Functional Testing
17 31 (10.58%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 177 (60.41%) Java
2 60 (20.48%) JavaScript
3 56 (19.11%) SQL
4 50 (17.06%) Python
5 40 (13.65%) TypeScript
6 31 (10.58%) C#
7 12 (4.10%) C++
8 9 (3.07%) Kotlin
9 8 (2.73%) Ruby
10 7 (2.39%) PHP
11 6 (2.05%) JSX
12 5 (1.71%) Go
13 4 (1.37%) Scala
13 4 (1.37%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.68%) Groovy
14 2 (0.68%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.34%) Bash
15 1 (0.34%) VBA
15 1 (0.34%) VBScript
15 1 (0.34%) XPath
Qualifications
1 78 (26.62%) Security Cleared
2 65 (22.18%) SC Cleared
3 14 (4.78%) Degree
4 13 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (3.41%) ISTQB
6 7 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (2.05%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 3 (1.02%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.68%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.68%) ISEB
11 1 (0.34%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (23.89%) QA
2 39 (13.31%) Accessibility
3 10 (3.41%) WCAG
4 8 (2.73%) GDPR
5 5 (1.71%) PERC
6 2 (0.68%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.68%) HL7
7 1 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 81 (27.65%) Docker
2 4 (1.37%) Postfix
3 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 61 (20.82%) Kubernetes
2 33 (11.26%) Grafana
3 27 (9.22%) Terraform
4 26 (8.87%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.37%) Ansible
6 2 (0.68%) Amdocs OSS
6 2 (0.68%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.68%) Kibana
6 2 (0.68%) Rancher
6 2 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.34%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.34%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.34%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 21 (7.17%) Oracle
2 13 (4.44%) Splunk
3 11 (3.75%) Atlassian
4 10 (3.41%) ServiceNow
5 9 (3.07%) Salesforce
6 7 (2.39%) Databricks
7 5 (1.71%) Google
7 5 (1.71%) Jaspersoft
7 5 (1.71%) Microsoft
8 4 (1.37%) Adobe
8 4 (1.37%) Dynatrace
8 4 (1.37%) Veracode
9 3 (1.02%) CA Agile Central
10 2 (0.68%) Amdocs
10 2 (0.68%) Ciena
10 2 (0.68%) IBM
10 2 (0.68%) Red Hat
10 2 (0.68%) SAP
10 2 (0.68%) VMware
10 2 (0.68%) Workday