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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 280 266
Rank change year-on-year -72 -14 -82
Contract jobs citing BDD 293 253 345
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.87% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 0.95% 0.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 165 160 263
10th Percentile £346 £362 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £533
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -6.19% -11.17%
75th Percentile £550 £607 £638
90th Percentile £683 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £533
% change year-on-year -1.26% -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 40,493 26,571 36,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.28% 90.99% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,428 17,064 23,633
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.65% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,382 1,097 2,442
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.26 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.40 £28.18 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +50.46% -21.77% +0.06%
75th Percentile £67.25 £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 19 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 19 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 -67 246 £475 -7.32% 92
UK excluding London -38 172 £469 -1.26% 67
London -76 99 £488 -14.47% 31
Work from Home -38 84 £426 -14.90% 65
North of England -35 79 £472 +3.63% 18
North West -11 41 £431 +4.61% 9
West Midlands -35 34 £425 -8.11% 4
Midlands -42 34 £425 -7.86% 13
Yorkshire -49 29 £573 +10.15% 6
Scotland +7 23 £438 +12.90% 1
South West -18 16 £525 - 8
North East -18 12 £426 +9.10% 4
South East -69 12 £358 -28.40% 21
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 37 (12.63%) 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 2 (0.68%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.68%) Notion
2 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.34%) Mingle
2 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
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
1 104 (35.49%) AWS
2 84 (28.67%) Azure
3 65 (22.18%) GitHub
4 44 (15.02%) GCP
5 34 (11.60%) Azure DevOps
6 28 (9.56%) GitHub Actions
7 23 (7.85%) Serverless
8 19 (6.48%) Amazon S3
9 17 (5.80%) Amazon EC2
9 17 (5.80%) AWS Lambda
10 16 (5.46%) Amazon SQS
11 14 (4.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 14 (4.78%) BrowserStack
12 10 (3.41%) SaaS
13 9 (3.07%) AWS KMS
13 9 (3.07%) ChatGPT
13 9 (3.07%) Route 53
14 8 (2.73%) GitHub Copilot
15 7 (2.39%) Anthropic Claude
15 7 (2.39%) 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%) DynamoDB
5 15 (5.12%) MySQL
6 13 (4.44%) Amazon Aurora
6 13 (4.44%) Amazon RDS
7 10 (3.41%) DB2
7 10 (3.41%) Oracle Database
8 9 (3.07%) Metadata
9 7 (2.39%) Data Lake
10 6 (2.05%) NoSQL
11 4 (1.37%) Power BI
12 3 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (1.02%) Delta Lake
12 3 (1.02%) MariaDB
13 2 (0.68%) Flink
13 2 (0.68%) InfluxDB
13 2 (0.68%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 101 (34.47%) Cucumber
2 80 (27.30%) Selenium
3 77 (26.28%) Jenkins
4 76 (25.94%) Git
5 61 (20.82%) JIRA
6 58 (19.80%) GitLab
7 51 (17.41%) JUnit
8 42 (14.33%) Postman
9 40 (13.65%) REST Assured
10 31 (10.58%) WebDriver
11 29 (9.90%) Mockito
12 28 (9.56%) SonarQube
13 25 (8.53%) JMeter
14 15 (5.12%) Maven
15 14 (4.78%) Cypress.io
15 14 (4.78%) TeamCity
16 13 (4.44%) Gatling
17 11 (3.75%) Serenity BDD
17 11 (3.75%) SpecFlow
18 10 (3.41%) IntelliJ
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 40 (13.65%) 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%) Senior Java Developer
12 14 (4.78%) Java Engineer
13 13 (4.44%) Analyst
14 12 (4.10%) Automation Test Lead
14 12 (4.10%) Lead Test Engineer
14 12 (4.10%) QA Engineer
15 10 (3.41%) Business Analyst
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 54 (18.43%) Playwright
4 51 (17.41%) REST
5 40 (13.65%) Kafka
6 38 (12.97%) Gherkin
6 38 (12.97%) RESTful
7 30 (10.24%) .NET
7 30 (10.24%) AngularJS
8 27 (9.22%) React
9 25 (8.53%) Node.js
10 21 (7.17%) WireMock
11 20 (6.83%) ActiveMQ
11 20 (6.83%) Spring Cloud
12 15 (5.12%) Web Services
13 14 (4.78%) JAX-RS
13 14 (4.78%) SOAP
14 13 (4.44%) Hibernate
15 11 (3.75%) JPA
15 11 (3.75%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.24%) Distributed Systems
2 26 (8.87%) Cloud Native
3 25 (8.53%) 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%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.37%) Robotics
9 4 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (1.02%) Onboarding
11 2 (0.68%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.68%) iSeries
11 2 (0.68%) Private Cloud
11 2 (0.68%) Synthetic Data
11 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
1 181 (61.77%) TDD
2 177 (60.41%) Test Automation
3 168 (57.34%) CI/CD
4 167 (57.00%) Agile
5 116 (39.59%) Microservices
6 99 (33.79%) DevOps
7 64 (21.84%) API Testing
8 62 (21.16%) Problem-Solving
8 62 (21.16%) Test Strategy
9 58 (19.80%) Continuous Improvement
10 52 (17.75%) Scrum
11 47 (16.04%) Software Engineering
12 39 (13.31%) AI
13 38 (12.97%) Containerisation
14 37 (12.63%) Mentoring
14 37 (12.63%) SDLC
15 33 (11.26%) Observability
16 32 (10.92%) Software Testing
17 31 (10.58%) Performance Testing
18 29 (9.90%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 185 (63.14%) Java
2 77 (26.28%) SQL
3 69 (23.55%) Python
4 53 (18.09%) JavaScript
5 38 (12.97%) C#
6 28 (9.56%) 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%) Bicep
14 1 (0.34%) Swift
Qualifications
1 71 (24.23%) Security Cleared
2 61 (20.82%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.83%) Degree
4 11 (3.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (3.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (3.41%) ISTQB
6 5 (1.71%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.37%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 2 (0.68%) ISEB
9 1 (0.34%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (20.14%) QA
2 32 (10.92%) Accessibility
3 10 (3.41%) Data Quality
4 7 (2.39%) WCAG
5 2 (0.68%) HL7
6 1 (0.34%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 78 (26.62%) Docker
2 8 (2.73%) Postfix
3 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 61 (20.82%) 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 12 (4.10%) Atlassian
3 12 (4.10%) Google
3 12 (4.10%) Splunk
4 11 (3.75%) Sybase
5 10 (3.41%) ServiceNow
6 9 (3.07%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (2.73%) Checkmarx
7 8 (2.73%) Conga
7 8 (2.73%) GoCardless
7 8 (2.73%) IBM
8 7 (2.39%) Databricks
9 5 (1.71%) Dynatrace
10 4 (1.37%) Veracode
11 3 (1.02%) Adobe
11 3 (1.02%) Microsoft
11 3 (1.02%) OpenLink
12 2 (0.68%) Bloomberg
12 2 (0.68%) SAP