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 26 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 374 261 278
Rank change year-on-year -113 +17 -22
Contract jobs citing BDD 333 325 331
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.98% 0.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 1.09% 1.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 218 214 215
10th Percentile £306 £361 £356
25th Percentile £400 £415 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year -9.98% -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £538 £593 £620
90th Percentile £650 £700 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £439 £475 £456
% change year-on-year -7.63% +4.11% -9.20%
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 46,293 29,942 32,892
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 90.52% 85.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,017 18,609 19,950
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £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 3,198 1,849 1,396
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.33 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £66.00 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.78% -47.67% +1.18%

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 26 September 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 26 September 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 -91 278 £450 -13.40% 263
UK excluding London -85 174 £439 -7.63% 185
London -75 123 £500 -8.26% 112
Work from Home -53 91 £475 -5.00% 144
North of England -84 70 £445 -15.24% 62
Midlands -10 48 £438 -5.41% 35
West Midlands -8 47 £438 -12.50% 24
Yorkshire -51 29 £416 -24.45% 17
North West -44 27 £445 +5.45% 30
Scotland -22 21 £470 +1.62% 17
North East -39 18 £450 -6.49% 15
South East -77 16 £275 -4.51% 34
South West -39 13 £513 +24.24% 14
Wales -7 5 £425 +13.33% 4
East of England -32 4 £585 +56.00% 8
Northern Ireland 0 1 - - 12

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 29 (8.71%) Confluence
2 4 (1.20%) Apache
2 4 (1.20%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.90%) CMS
3 3 (0.90%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.90%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.90%) Notion
2 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.60%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 11 (3.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.40%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.90%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 123 (36.94%) AWS
2 103 (30.93%) Azure
3 93 (27.93%) GitHub
4 44 (13.21%) Azure DevOps
5 42 (12.61%) GitHub Actions
6 33 (9.91%) GCP
7 28 (8.41%) Serverless
8 25 (7.51%) GitHub Copilot
9 20 (6.01%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.11%) Amazon SQS
10 17 (5.11%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (4.50%) Amazon EC2
12 14 (4.20%) Anthropic Claude
13 13 (3.90%) ChatGPT
13 13 (3.90%) Dynamics 365
13 13 (3.90%) Power Automate
14 10 (3.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 10 (3.00%) Power Platform
14 10 (3.00%) Snowflake
15 9 (2.70%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.10%) RTP
1 7 (2.10%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.80%) 3GPP
3 5 (1.50%) Internet
4 2 (0.60%) DNS
4 2 (0.60%) DSL
4 2 (0.60%) Firewall
4 2 (0.60%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (16.82%) MongoDB
2 28 (8.41%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (7.21%) NoSQL
4 20 (6.01%) Relational Database
5 18 (5.41%) SQL Server
6 14 (4.20%) Db2
7 12 (3.60%) Amazon RDS
8 11 (3.30%) DynamoDB
8 11 (3.30%) Metadata
9 9 (2.70%) Amazon Aurora
9 9 (2.70%) Data Lake
10 8 (2.40%) MySQL
11 7 (2.10%) BigQuery
11 7 (2.10%) Data Warehouse
11 7 (2.10%) Power BI
12 5 (1.50%) Couchbase
12 5 (1.50%) Tableau
13 4 (1.20%) Apache Iceberg
13 4 (1.20%) Big Data
14 3 (0.90%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 130 (39.04%) Cucumber
2 104 (31.23%) Git
2 104 (31.23%) Selenium
3 76 (22.82%) Jenkins
4 67 (20.12%) GitLab
5 63 (18.92%) JUnit
6 48 (14.41%) REST Assured
7 45 (13.51%) JIRA
7 45 (13.51%) Postman
8 34 (10.21%) Gatling
9 32 (9.61%) SonarQube
10 31 (9.31%) WebDriver
11 30 (9.01%) Cypress.io
11 30 (9.01%) Mockito
12 21 (6.31%) Maven
13 20 (6.01%) SpecFlow
14 14 (4.20%) JMeter
15 13 (3.90%) TeamCity
16 12 (3.60%) Gradle
17 9 (2.70%) SoapUI
General
1 126 (37.84%) Social Skills
2 75 (22.52%) Finance
3 65 (19.52%) Public Sector
4 57 (17.12%) Analytical Skills
5 49 (14.71%) Banking
6 21 (6.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (4.20%) Front Office
8 9 (2.70%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.40%) Military
10 7 (2.10%) Retail
11 5 (1.50%) Aviation
11 5 (1.50%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.50%) Police
12 4 (1.20%) Marketing
12 4 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.90%) Legal Technology
13 3 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.60%) Law
14 2 (0.60%) Local Government
15 1 (0.30%) Legal
Job Titles
1 95 (28.53%) Developer
2 77 (23.12%) Senior
3 56 (16.82%) Test Engineer
4 55 (16.52%) Java Developer
5 36 (10.81%) Software Engineer
6 30 (9.01%) Test Automation Engineer
7 29 (8.71%) Senior Developer
8 28 (8.41%) Lead
9 23 (6.91%) Analyst
10 20 (6.01%) Java Engineer
10 20 (6.01%) Quality Engineer
11 17 (5.11%) Senior Java Developer
12 14 (4.20%) QA Engineer
12 14 (4.20%) Test Leader
13 13 (3.90%) Senior Test Engineer
13 13 (3.90%) Test Analyst
13 13 (3.90%) Tester
14 12 (3.60%) Architect
14 12 (3.60%) Senior Software Engineer
15 11 (3.30%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (23.42%) Playwright
2 74 (22.22%) Spring
3 62 (18.62%) Gherkin
4 61 (18.32%) REST
5 60 (18.02%) Spring Boot
6 58 (17.42%) Kafka
7 41 (12.31%) RESTful
8 31 (9.31%) .NET
9 28 (8.41%) React
10 27 (8.11%) WireMock
11 25 (7.51%) Node.js
12 24 (7.21%) Terraform
13 20 (6.01%) ActiveMQ
14 19 (5.71%) AngularJS
15 18 (5.41%) SOAP
16 17 (5.11%) HTML
17 14 (4.20%) .NET Core
17 14 (4.20%) JAX-RS
17 14 (4.20%) pytest
17 14 (4.20%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 36 (10.81%) Product Ownership
2 29 (8.71%) Cloud Native
3 25 (7.51%) Distributed Systems
4 19 (5.71%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.20%) Legacy Systems
6 13 (3.90%) Equity Derivative
7 12 (3.60%) Onboarding
8 9 (2.70%) Derivative
9 8 (2.40%) Management Information System
9 8 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
10 7 (2.10%) AI Agents
10 7 (2.10%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.50%) NHS
11 5 (1.50%) Robotics
11 5 (1.50%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 5 (1.50%) Taxonomies
12 4 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.20%) Distributed Architecture
13 3 (0.90%) Legacy Applications
13 3 (0.90%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 46 (13.81%) Linux
2 25 (7.51%) Unix
3 6 (1.80%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.50%) Android
4 5 (1.50%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.90%) Windows
6 2 (0.60%) AIX
6 2 (0.60%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 231 (69.37%) Agile
2 227 (68.17%) CI/CD
3 218 (65.47%) TDD
4 209 (62.76%) Test Automation
5 119 (35.74%) Microservices
6 113 (33.93%) DevOps
7 88 (26.43%) Scrum
8 75 (22.52%) AI
9 74 (22.22%) Problem-Solving
10 72 (21.62%) Software Engineering
11 67 (20.12%) Continuous Improvement
11 67 (20.12%) Test Strategy
12 63 (18.92%) API Testing
12 63 (18.92%) Software Testing
13 60 (18.02%) Stakeholder Management
14 46 (13.81%) SDLC
15 44 (13.21%) Continuous Integration
16 43 (12.91%) Integration Testing
17 41 (12.31%) Coaching
17 41 (12.31%) Pair Programming
Programming Languages
1 208 (62.46%) Java
2 85 (25.53%) SQL
3 79 (23.72%) Python
4 69 (20.72%) JavaScript
5 58 (17.42%) C#
6 36 (10.81%) TypeScript
7 13 (3.90%) Bash
7 13 (3.90%) Ruby
8 9 (2.70%) C++
9 7 (2.10%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.10%) Groovy
9 7 (2.10%) Scala
10 6 (1.80%) Kotlin
10 6 (1.80%) R
11 4 (1.20%) Go
11 4 (1.20%) Perl
12 3 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.90%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.60%) Cypher
13 2 (0.60%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 81 (24.32%) Security Cleared
2 65 (19.52%) SC Cleared
3 33 (9.91%) BPSS Clearance
4 24 (7.21%) Degree
5 21 (6.31%) ISTQB
6 19 (5.71%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (3.30%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.70%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 8 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (1.80%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.90%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.90%) CSPO
12 2 (0.60%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.60%) ISEB
12 2 (0.60%) Master's Degree
13 1 (0.30%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 1 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 88 (26.43%) QA
2 67 (20.12%) Accessibility
3 44 (13.21%) WCAG
4 16 (4.80%) GDPR
5 15 (4.50%) Data Quality
6 4 (1.20%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.60%) SEPA
8 1 (0.30%) EMIR
8 1 (0.30%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.30%) MiFID
8 1 (0.30%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 89 (26.73%) Docker
2 4 (1.20%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 75 (22.52%) Kubernetes
2 20 (6.01%) Grafana
3 14 (4.20%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.80%) Ansible
5 5 (1.50%) Kibana
6 3 (0.90%) Istio
7 2 (0.60%) Argo
7 2 (0.60%) Consul
7 2 (0.60%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.30%) Control-M
8 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 30 (9.01%) Microsoft
2 16 (4.80%) Oracle
3 15 (4.50%) IBM
3 15 (4.50%) Salesforce
3 15 (4.50%) Sybase
4 13 (3.90%) Databricks
4 13 (3.90%) Google
5 8 (2.40%) Conga
5 8 (2.40%) GoCardless
6 6 (1.80%) Atlassian
6 6 (1.80%) OpenAI
6 6 (1.80%) Splunk
7 5 (1.50%) Jaspersoft
8 4 (1.20%) Checkmarx
8 4 (1.20%) ION Trading
9 3 (0.90%) CA Agile Central
9 3 (0.90%) Guidewire
10 2 (0.60%) Dynatrace
10 2 (0.60%) HP
10 2 (0.60%) Solace