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 24 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 345 296 283
Rank change year-on-year -49 -13 -50
Contract jobs citing BDD 354 278 352
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.85% 0.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.79% 0.94% 1.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 183 248
10th Percentile £315 £354 £363
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -7.41% -8.86%
75th Percentile £550 £601 £650
90th Percentile £683 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £510
% change year-on-year +2.86% -14.22% +2.00%
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 - - -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 44,871 29,543 34,928
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.02% 90.39% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,803 18,563 22,435
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.46%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,660 1,589 2,131
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £13.46
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.44 £17.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £68.13 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £69.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +82.83% -39.15% -1.95%

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 24 July 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 24 July 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 -47 292 £463 -9.31% 66
UK excluding London -17 210 £450 +2.86% 43
London -87 110 £488 -17.37% 26
Work from Home -32 108 £470 -6.00% 31
North of England -16 85 £464 +9.18% 13
Midlands -14 52 £425 -7.86% 15
West Midlands -23 51 £425 -8.11% 9
North West -15 43 £475 +17.00% 9
Scotland +2 30 £451 +4.64%
Yorkshire -32 27 £620 +19.29% 1
North East -21 21 £450 +7.14% 4
South West -36 19 £525 +23.53% 4
South East -71 18 £358 -10.50% 10
East of England -12 8 £510 - 1
Wales -14 2 £650 -
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 51 (14.41%) Confluence
2 5 (1.41%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.13%) Apache
3 4 (1.13%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.28%) Camunda
5 1 (0.28%) CMS
5 1 (0.28%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (0.85%) Notion
2 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.28%) Mingle
3 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.26%) Payment Gateway
2 7 (1.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.85%) Findur
3 3 (0.85%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 127 (35.88%) AWS
2 108 (30.51%) Azure
3 96 (27.12%) GitHub
4 52 (14.69%) GCP
5 51 (14.41%) Azure DevOps
6 49 (13.84%) GitHub Actions
7 25 (7.06%) Amazon SQS
7 25 (7.06%) Serverless
8 23 (6.50%) Amazon S3
9 22 (6.21%) Amazon EC2
10 18 (5.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 18 (5.08%) AWS Lambda
11 14 (3.95%) ChatGPT
11 14 (3.95%) GitHub Copilot
12 13 (3.67%) AWS KMS
13 12 (3.39%) Anthropic Claude
13 12 (3.39%) BrowserStack
13 12 (3.39%) Route 53
14 9 (2.54%) Power Platform
15 8 (2.26%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.98%) RTP
1 7 (1.98%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.69%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.85%) DSL
3 3 (0.85%) Internet
3 3 (0.85%) WAN
4 2 (0.56%) Firewall
4 2 (0.56%) NaaS
5 1 (0.28%) Fibre Channel
5 1 (0.28%) HTTP
5 1 (0.28%) iSCSI
5 1 (0.28%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (17.80%) MongoDB
2 51 (14.41%) PostgreSQL
3 26 (7.34%) Relational Database
4 21 (5.93%) NoSQL
5 19 (5.37%) DynamoDB
5 19 (5.37%) SQL Server
6 17 (4.80%) Amazon RDS
7 16 (4.52%) Amazon Aurora
7 16 (4.52%) Db2
8 11 (3.11%) Metadata
9 10 (2.82%) Oracle Database
10 9 (2.54%) Data Lake
11 8 (2.26%) MySQL
12 7 (1.98%) Power BI
13 6 (1.69%) BigQuery
13 6 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
14 5 (1.41%) Couchbase
14 5 (1.41%) Tableau
15 4 (1.13%) Amazon Athena
16 3 (0.85%) Looker
Development Applications
1 115 (32.49%) Cucumber
2 99 (27.97%) Selenium
3 95 (26.84%) Git
4 93 (26.27%) Jenkins
5 67 (18.93%) GitLab
5 67 (18.93%) JIRA
6 65 (18.36%) JUnit
7 45 (12.71%) REST Assured
8 44 (12.43%) WebDriver
9 43 (12.15%) Postman
10 42 (11.86%) Mockito
11 28 (7.91%) JMeter
12 27 (7.63%) SonarQube
13 24 (6.78%) Cypress.io
14 23 (6.50%) SpecFlow
15 22 (6.21%) Maven
16 21 (5.93%) Gatling
17 17 (4.80%) TeamCity
18 12 (3.39%) DbUnit
18 12 (3.39%) Serenity BDD
General
1 103 (29.10%) Social Skills
2 76 (21.47%) Finance
3 72 (20.34%) Public Sector
4 54 (15.25%) Analytical Skills
5 40 (11.30%) Banking
6 12 (3.39%) Front Office
6 12 (3.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (2.82%) Organisational Skills
8 9 (2.54%) Military
9 8 (2.26%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.26%) Retail
10 5 (1.41%) Aviation
10 5 (1.41%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.41%) Police
11 4 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.85%) Automotive
12 3 (0.85%) Billing
12 3 (0.85%) Marketing
13 2 (0.56%) Law
Job Titles
1 117 (33.05%) Developer
2 77 (21.75%) Java Developer
2 77 (21.75%) Senior
3 60 (16.95%) Test Engineer
4 43 (12.15%) Lead
5 33 (9.32%) Test Automation Engineer
6 32 (9.04%) Software Engineer
7 28 (7.91%) Tester
8 27 (7.63%) Senior Developer
9 24 (6.78%) Senior Java Developer
10 23 (6.50%) Automation Tester
11 22 (6.21%) Analyst
12 20 (5.65%) Test Leader
13 16 (4.52%) Java Engineer
14 13 (3.67%) Senior Software Engineer
14 13 (3.67%) Senior Tester
15 12 (3.39%) Architect
15 12 (3.39%) Automation Test Lead
16 11 (3.11%) Python Developer
16 11 (3.11%) Senior Automation Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (26.27%) Spring
2 73 (20.62%) Spring Boot
3 67 (18.93%) Playwright
4 64 (18.08%) REST
5 62 (17.51%) Kafka
6 51 (14.41%) Gherkin
7 43 (12.15%) RESTful
8 35 (9.89%) .NET
9 30 (8.47%) ActiveMQ
9 30 (8.47%) AngularJS
10 29 (8.19%) Node.js
10 29 (8.19%) WireMock
11 25 (7.06%) React
12 23 (6.50%) SOAP
13 21 (5.93%) JAX-RS
13 21 (5.93%) Spring Cloud
14 17 (4.80%) JPA
14 17 (4.80%) Web Services
15 16 (4.52%) Hibernate
16 15 (4.24%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 39 (11.02%) Distributed Systems
2 33 (9.32%) Product Ownership
3 30 (8.47%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.52%) Distributed Architecture
5 15 (4.24%) Enterprise Software
6 14 (3.95%) Equity Derivative
7 10 (2.82%) Derivative
8 9 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (1.98%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.41%) Mobile App
10 5 (1.41%) Robotics
10 5 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.41%) Taxonomies
10 5 (1.41%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.13%) Distributed Applications
11 4 (1.13%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.85%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.85%) Fixed Income
12 3 (0.85%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 54 (15.25%) Linux
2 27 (7.63%) Unix
3 12 (3.39%) Mac OS X
4 7 (1.98%) Android
4 7 (1.98%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.85%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.85%) Windows
6 2 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.56%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (65.54%) Agile
2 226 (63.84%) TDD
3 224 (63.28%) CI/CD
4 206 (58.19%) Test Automation
5 144 (40.68%) Microservices
6 129 (36.44%) DevOps
7 80 (22.60%) Scrum
8 76 (21.47%) Problem-Solving
9 73 (20.62%) Continuous Improvement
10 70 (19.77%) Test Strategy
11 68 (19.21%) API Testing
12 62 (17.51%) Software Engineering
13 57 (16.10%) AI
14 47 (13.28%) Mentoring
15 45 (12.71%) Continuous Integration
16 42 (11.86%) Containerisation
16 42 (11.86%) Observability
16 42 (11.86%) SDLC
17 41 (11.58%) Stakeholder Management
18 39 (11.02%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 209 (59.04%) Java
2 90 (25.42%) SQL
3 69 (19.49%) Python
4 58 (16.38%) JavaScript
5 57 (16.10%) C#
6 31 (8.76%) TypeScript
7 14 (3.95%) C++
8 8 (2.26%) Groovy
8 8 (2.26%) Kotlin
9 7 (1.98%) Apex Code
10 6 (1.69%) T-SQL
11 5 (1.41%) Go
11 5 (1.41%) Ruby
12 4 (1.13%) Perl
12 4 (1.13%) R
13 3 (0.85%) Scala
13 3 (0.85%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.56%) Bash
14 2 (0.56%) Cypher
14 2 (0.56%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 94 (26.55%) Security Cleared
2 75 (21.19%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.78%) Degree
4 21 (5.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.24%) Computer Science Degree
5 15 (4.24%) ISTQB
6 8 (2.26%) DV Cleared
7 7 (1.98%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (1.41%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.41%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.85%) CSPO
10 3 (0.85%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.28%) ISEB
11 1 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.28%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (18.93%) QA
2 47 (13.28%) Accessibility
3 16 (4.52%) Data Quality
3 16 (4.52%) WCAG
4 12 (3.39%) GDPR
5 2 (0.56%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.28%) EMIR
6 1 (0.28%) MiFID
6 1 (0.28%) SEPA
6 1 (0.28%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 97 (27.40%) Docker
2 9 (2.54%) Postfix
3 1 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 80 (22.60%) Kubernetes
2 46 (12.99%) Grafana
3 37 (10.45%) Prometheus
4 32 (9.04%) Terraform
5 6 (1.69%) Ansible
6 4 (1.13%) Kibana
7 3 (0.85%) Istio
8 2 (0.56%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.56%) Argo
8 2 (0.56%) Consul
8 2 (0.56%) Rancher
8 2 (0.56%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.28%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.28%) EMC VPLEX
9 1 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (7.06%) Oracle
2 18 (5.08%) Salesforce
3 17 (4.80%) Microsoft
3 17 (4.80%) Sybase
4 16 (4.52%) Google
5 14 (3.95%) Atlassian
6 12 (3.39%) IBM
7 11 (3.11%) Jaspersoft
7 11 (3.11%) Splunk
8 8 (2.26%) Checkmarx
8 8 (2.26%) Conga
8 8 (2.26%) GoCardless
9 6 (1.69%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.41%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.13%) Databricks
12 3 (0.85%) CA Agile Central
12 3 (0.85%) Guidewire
12 3 (0.85%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.85%) OpenLink
13 2 (0.56%) Bloomberg