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 28 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 340 290 282
Rank change year-on-year -50 -8 -69
Contract jobs citing BDD 345 263 343
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.86% 0.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.80% 0.95% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 203 168 254
10th Percentile £350 £358 £352
25th Percentile £400 £412 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -6.54% -10.83%
75th Percentile £550 £581 £638
90th Percentile £685 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £460 £525
% change year-on-year -1.52% -12.38% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £45.00 - £56.25
75th Percentile £46.88 - -
90th Percentile £48.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.25 - £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 43,357 27,782 37,042
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.94% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,993 17,554 23,597
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.23% -4.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,598 1,350 2,559
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.44 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +2.63%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.95 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.45 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.00% -34.42% +8.91%

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 28 June 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 28 June 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 -66 277 £463 -9.76% 67
UK excluding London -31 200 £453 -1.52% 53
London -72 109 £500 -14.89% 24
Work from Home -33 104 £450 -10.00% 46
North of England -30 82 £452 -1.85% 18
Midlands -28 47 £425 -11.69% 11
West Midlands -28 46 £425 -15.00% 9
North West -21 42 £438 +8.83% 9
Scotland +7 30 £451 +12.81% 1
Yorkshire -45 26 £620 +19.29% 4
North East -24 19 £450 +7.14% 5
South West -31 19 £525 +23.53% 1
South East -65 14 £359 -13.09% 19
East of England -19 8 £510 - 4
Wales -16 2 £650 - 2
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 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 49 (14.20%) Confluence
2 6 (1.74%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.87%) Apache
3 3 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.87%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.58%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.29%) Camunda
5 1 (0.29%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (0.87%) Notion
2 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.29%) Mingle
3 1 (0.29%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.32%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.87%) Findur
4 2 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.58%) Workday HCM
5 1 (0.29%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 129 (37.39%) AWS
2 106 (30.72%) Azure
3 89 (25.80%) GitHub
4 50 (14.49%) GCP
5 49 (14.20%) Azure DevOps
6 43 (12.46%) GitHub Actions
7 28 (8.12%) Serverless
8 25 (7.25%) Amazon S3
9 23 (6.67%) Amazon EC2
9 23 (6.67%) Amazon SQS
10 20 (5.80%) AWS Lambda
11 19 (5.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 13 (3.77%) BrowserStack
12 13 (3.77%) ChatGPT
13 12 (3.48%) AWS KMS
13 12 (3.48%) GitHub Copilot
13 12 (3.48%) Route 53
14 11 (3.19%) Anthropic Claude
15 10 (2.90%) Power Platform
16 7 (2.03%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.74%) 3GPP
1 6 (1.74%) RTP
1 6 (1.74%) Wireshark
2 3 (0.87%) Internet
2 3 (0.87%) WAN
3 2 (0.58%) DSL
3 2 (0.58%) Firewall
3 2 (0.58%) NaaS
4 1 (0.29%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.29%) HTTP
4 1 (0.29%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.29%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (15.94%) MongoDB
2 48 (13.91%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (6.96%) Relational Database
4 19 (5.51%) DynamoDB
5 18 (5.22%) Amazon RDS
5 18 (5.22%) NoSQL
6 16 (4.64%) Amazon Aurora
6 16 (4.64%) SQL Server
7 14 (4.06%) Db2
8 11 (3.19%) Metadata
9 10 (2.90%) Data Lake
9 10 (2.90%) Oracle Database
10 8 (2.32%) MySQL
11 7 (2.03%) Power BI
12 5 (1.45%) Amazon Athena
12 5 (1.45%) Couchbase
12 5 (1.45%) Tableau
13 3 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
13 3 (0.87%) Looker
13 3 (0.87%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 114 (33.04%) Cucumber
2 95 (27.54%) Git
3 92 (26.67%) Jenkins
3 92 (26.67%) Selenium
4 71 (20.58%) GitLab
5 67 (19.42%) JUnit
6 66 (19.13%) JIRA
7 44 (12.75%) Postman
7 44 (12.75%) REST Assured
8 41 (11.88%) WebDriver
9 40 (11.59%) Mockito
10 30 (8.70%) JMeter
10 30 (8.70%) SonarQube
11 21 (6.09%) Cypress.io
11 21 (6.09%) Maven
12 19 (5.51%) SpecFlow
13 18 (5.22%) Gatling
14 16 (4.64%) TeamCity
15 12 (3.48%) Bitbucket
15 12 (3.48%) DbUnit
General
1 96 (27.83%) Social Skills
2 75 (21.74%) Finance
3 69 (20.00%) Public Sector
4 49 (14.20%) Analytical Skills
5 39 (11.30%) Banking
6 12 (3.48%) Front Office
7 9 (2.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (2.61%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.32%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.32%) Military
8 8 (2.32%) Retail
9 5 (1.45%) Aviation
9 5 (1.45%) Fire and Rescue
9 5 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.45%) Police
10 4 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.87%) Billing
11 3 (0.87%) Marketing
12 2 (0.58%) Automotive
12 2 (0.58%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 111 (32.17%) Developer
2 75 (21.74%) Java Developer
3 66 (19.13%) Senior
4 57 (16.52%) Test Engineer
5 43 (12.46%) Lead
6 36 (10.43%) Software Engineer
7 30 (8.70%) Test Automation Engineer
8 29 (8.41%) Tester
9 23 (6.67%) Automation Tester
10 21 (6.09%) Senior Developer
10 21 (6.09%) Senior Java Developer
11 20 (5.80%) Java Engineer
12 19 (5.51%) Test Leader
13 16 (4.64%) Analyst
14 13 (3.77%) QA Engineer
14 13 (3.77%) Senior Tester
15 12 (3.48%) Automation Test Lead
15 12 (3.48%) Senior Software Engineer
16 11 (3.19%) Salesforce Engineer
16 11 (3.19%) Senior Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (26.96%) Spring
2 73 (21.16%) Spring Boot
3 63 (18.26%) Playwright
4 62 (17.97%) REST
5 55 (15.94%) Kafka
6 48 (13.91%) Gherkin
7 42 (12.17%) RESTful
8 33 (9.57%) .NET
9 30 (8.70%) AngularJS
9 30 (8.70%) WireMock
10 26 (7.54%) Node.js
10 26 (7.54%) React
11 25 (7.25%) ActiveMQ
12 21 (6.09%) Spring Cloud
13 20 (5.80%) SOAP
14 17 (4.93%) JPA
14 17 (4.93%) Web Services
15 16 (4.64%) Hibernate
15 16 (4.64%) JAX-RS
16 14 (4.06%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 35 (10.14%) Distributed Systems
2 32 (9.28%) Cloud Native
3 30 (8.70%) Product Ownership
4 16 (4.64%) Distributed Architecture
5 13 (3.77%) Enterprise Software
5 13 (3.77%) Equity Derivative
6 10 (2.90%) Derivative
7 8 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (2.03%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.45%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.45%) Robotics
9 5 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.16%) Distributed Applications
11 3 (0.87%) Equities
11 3 (0.87%) Fixed Income
11 3 (0.87%) Public Cloud
11 3 (0.87%) Taxonomies
11 3 (0.87%) Virtual Team
12 2 (0.58%) Data Protection Act
12 2 (0.58%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 50 (14.49%) Linux
2 20 (5.80%) Unix
3 10 (2.90%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.45%) Android
4 5 (1.45%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.87%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.58%) VMS
6 2 (0.58%) Windows
7 1 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 219 (63.48%) Agile
2 215 (62.32%) TDD
3 209 (60.58%) CI/CD
4 199 (57.68%) Test Automation
5 138 (40.00%) Microservices
6 126 (36.52%) DevOps
7 74 (21.45%) Scrum
8 68 (19.71%) Test Strategy
9 67 (19.42%) Problem-Solving
10 66 (19.13%) Continuous Improvement
11 65 (18.84%) API Testing
12 64 (18.55%) Software Engineering
13 47 (13.62%) AI
13 47 (13.62%) Mentoring
14 45 (13.04%) SDLC
15 43 (12.46%) Containerisation
16 41 (11.88%) Observability
17 38 (11.01%) Continuous Integration
18 35 (10.14%) Kanban
19 34 (9.86%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 215 (62.32%) Java
2 89 (25.80%) SQL
3 69 (20.00%) Python
4 56 (16.23%) JavaScript
5 55 (15.94%) C#
6 28 (8.12%) TypeScript
7 16 (4.64%) C++
8 8 (2.32%) Groovy
8 8 (2.32%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.03%) Apex Code
10 6 (1.74%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.16%) Go
11 4 (1.16%) Perl
12 3 (0.87%) Ruby
12 3 (0.87%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.58%) Bash
13 2 (0.58%) Bicep
13 2 (0.58%) PromQL
13 2 (0.58%) Scala
13 2 (0.58%) VBA
Qualifications
1 93 (26.96%) Security Cleared
2 76 (22.03%) SC Cleared
3 22 (6.38%) Degree
4 21 (6.09%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (3.48%) ISTQB
7 8 (2.32%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.74%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (1.45%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.45%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.87%) CSPO
11 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 1 (0.29%) ISEB
12 1 (0.29%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (17.39%) QA
2 42 (12.17%) Accessibility
3 15 (4.35%) Data Quality
4 11 (3.19%) WCAG
5 8 (2.32%) GDPR
6 2 (0.58%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.29%) EMIR
7 1 (0.29%) MiFID
7 1 (0.29%) SEPA
System Software
1 95 (27.54%) Docker
2 9 (2.61%) Postfix
3 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 79 (22.90%) Kubernetes
2 45 (13.04%) Grafana
3 37 (10.72%) Prometheus
4 31 (8.99%) Terraform
5 7 (2.03%) Ansible
6 3 (0.87%) Istio
6 3 (0.87%) Kibana
7 2 (0.58%) Amdocs OSS
7 2 (0.58%) Consul
7 2 (0.58%) Rancher
7 2 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.58%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.29%) Argo
8 1 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.29%) EMC VPLEX
8 1 (0.29%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 24 (6.96%) Oracle
2 17 (4.93%) Salesforce
3 16 (4.64%) Sybase
4 15 (4.35%) Atlassian
4 15 (4.35%) Google
5 11 (3.19%) Jaspersoft
5 11 (3.19%) Splunk
6 10 (2.90%) IBM
7 9 (2.61%) Microsoft
8 8 (2.32%) Checkmarx
8 8 (2.32%) Conga
8 8 (2.32%) GoCardless
9 6 (1.74%) Databricks
9 6 (1.74%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.45%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.16%) Veracode
12 3 (0.87%) OpenLink
13 2 (0.58%) Bloomberg
13 2 (0.58%) CA Agile Central
13 2 (0.58%) SAP