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 14 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 349 281 309
Rank change year-on-year -68 +28 -170
Contract jobs citing BDD 273 269 313
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.87% 0.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.78% 0.97% 0.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 164 153 217
10th Percentile £363 £355 £325
25th Percentile £400 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £489
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.25% -16.77%
75th Percentile £568 £600 £594
90th Percentile £675 £800 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -2.50% +2.56% -7.14%

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 34,907 27,716 39,026
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.98% 89.51% 87.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,112 17,001 25,591
10th Percentile £310 £306 £300
25th Percentile £409 £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 £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -3.03% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,104 852 2,127
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -2.99% +2.15%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £60.32
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.69
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.62 £35.00
% change year-on-year -17.85% -12.53% +7.69%

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 14 February 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 14 February 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 -64 236 £488 -3.94% 110
UK excluding London -52 141 £488 -2.50% 85
London -37 106 £500 -13.79% 27
North of England -28 100 £495 +11.55% 28
Work from Home -30 71 £475 -9.52% 74
Yorkshire -43 51 £538 +7.50% 7
North West -25 29 £431 +10.23% 19
North East +1 24 £460 +17.95% 2
Midlands -45 14 £438 -15.25% 16
West Midlands -42 12 £475 -7.99% 14
South West -23 8 £425 -19.05% 19
Scotland +4 7 £400 -8.57% 1
South East -40 6 £550 +10.00% 21
Wales -1 4 £375 -
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 1
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 2

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 27 (9.89%) Confluence
2 4 (1.47%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.73%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.73%) nginx
3 2 (0.73%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.37%) CMS
4 1 (0.37%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.37%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 4 (1.47%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.73%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.37%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 83 (30.40%) AWS
2 53 (19.41%) Azure
3 33 (12.09%) GitHub
4 23 (8.42%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (7.69%) Serverless
6 15 (5.49%) AWS Lambda
7 14 (5.13%) Amazon S3
8 13 (4.76%) BrowserStack
8 13 (4.76%) GCP
8 13 (4.76%) GitHub Actions
9 8 (2.93%) SaaS
10 7 (2.56%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (2.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (1.83%) Amazon Cognito
12 5 (1.83%) Amazon SQS
12 5 (1.83%) AWS Step Functions
13 4 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (1.47%) Amazon ECS
13 4 (1.47%) Amazon SageMaker
13 4 (1.47%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.83%) Cisco IPT
2 2 (0.73%) HTTP
3 1 (0.37%) Fibre Channel
3 1 (0.37%) FTP
3 1 (0.37%) Internet
3 1 (0.37%) iSCSI
3 1 (0.37%) LAN
3 1 (0.37%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (15.02%) MongoDB
2 22 (8.06%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (5.13%) MySQL
3 14 (5.13%) SQL Server
4 10 (3.66%) NoSQL
4 10 (3.66%) Oracle Database
4 10 (3.66%) Relational Database
5 8 (2.93%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (2.56%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.83%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.47%) Redis
9 3 (1.10%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (1.10%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.73%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (0.73%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (0.73%) Big Data
11 1 (0.37%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.37%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.37%) DB2
11 1 (0.37%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 96 (35.16%) Cucumber
2 65 (23.81%) Selenium
3 63 (23.08%) Jenkins
4 57 (20.88%) GitLab
5 56 (20.51%) JIRA
6 48 (17.58%) Git
7 41 (15.02%) Postman
8 34 (12.45%) Mockito
9 31 (11.36%) REST Assured
10 22 (8.06%) JUnit
11 21 (7.69%) Cypress.io
12 16 (5.86%) JMeter
13 15 (5.49%) SonarQube
14 13 (4.76%) WebDriver
15 11 (4.03%) Bitbucket
15 11 (4.03%) Gatling
16 9 (3.30%) Maven
16 9 (3.30%) TestRail
17 7 (2.56%) Serenity BDD
18 6 (2.20%) SpecFlow
General
1 63 (23.08%) Public Sector
1 63 (23.08%) Social Skills
2 43 (15.75%) Finance
3 20 (7.33%) Banking
4 17 (6.23%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (2.20%) Military
6 5 (1.83%) Front Office
6 5 (1.83%) Legal
7 4 (1.47%) Electronics
8 3 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.73%) Retail
10 1 (0.37%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.37%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.37%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.37%) Marketing
10 1 (0.37%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.37%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 94 (34.43%) Developer
2 66 (24.18%) Java Developer
3 59 (21.61%) Senior
4 49 (17.95%) Test Engineer
5 33 (12.09%) Senior Developer
6 29 (10.62%) Lead
6 29 (10.62%) Senior Java Developer
7 23 (8.42%) Software Engineer
8 22 (8.06%) Test Automation Engineer
9 18 (6.59%) QA Engineer
10 15 (5.49%) Java Engineer
11 14 (5.13%) Tester
12 12 (4.40%) Lead Test Engineer
13 10 (3.66%) Automation Engineer
13 10 (3.66%) Automation Tester
14 9 (3.30%) Analyst
14 9 (3.30%) Senior Test Engineer
15 8 (2.93%) Test Leader
16 7 (2.56%) Java Software Engineer
16 7 (2.56%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (20.51%) Spring Boot
2 51 (18.68%) REST
3 46 (16.85%) Spring
4 42 (15.38%) Kafka
5 41 (15.02%) Playwright
6 36 (13.19%) Node.js
7 34 (12.45%) RESTful
8 33 (12.09%) React
9 29 (10.62%) Gherkin
10 26 (9.52%) ActiveMQ
11 25 (9.16%) JAX-RS
12 23 (8.42%) .NET
13 17 (6.23%) AngularJS
14 16 (5.86%) Jest
15 15 (5.49%) CSS
15 15 (5.49%) WireMock
16 13 (4.76%) SOAP
17 12 (4.40%) Web Services
18 11 (4.03%) JSON
19 9 (3.30%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 23 (8.42%) Product Ownership
2 12 (4.40%) Cloud Native
3 9 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
4 7 (2.56%) Mobile App
4 7 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.20%) Client/Server
5 6 (2.20%) Distributed Architecture
5 6 (2.20%) Equities
6 5 (1.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (1.83%) NHS
7 4 (1.47%) Public Cloud
8 3 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.10%) Educational Technology
8 3 (1.10%) Private Cloud
9 2 (0.73%) AS400
9 2 (0.73%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (0.73%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (0.73%) iSeries
10 1 (0.37%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 46 (16.85%) Linux
2 35 (12.82%) Unix
3 23 (8.42%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.73%) Android
5 2 (0.73%) Windows
6 1 (0.37%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.37%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.37%) VMS
6 1 (0.37%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 181 (66.30%) Agile
2 172 (63.00%) Test Automation
3 170 (62.27%) TDD
4 140 (51.28%) CI/CD
5 130 (47.62%) Microservices
6 71 (26.01%) DevOps
7 60 (21.98%) Problem-Solving
8 59 (21.61%) API Testing
9 56 (20.51%) Scrum
10 50 (18.32%) Software Engineering
11 46 (16.85%) Containerisation
12 45 (16.48%) Continuous Improvement
13 44 (16.12%) Test Strategy
14 36 (13.19%) SDLC
15 35 (12.82%) Non-Functional Testing
15 35 (12.82%) Performance Testing
16 33 (12.09%) Continuous Deployment
16 33 (12.09%) Functional Testing
16 33 (12.09%) Mentoring
17 31 (11.36%) Pair Programming
Programming Languages
1 184 (67.40%) Java
2 56 (20.51%) JavaScript
3 48 (17.58%) SQL
4 39 (14.29%) Python
5 37 (13.55%) TypeScript
6 22 (8.06%) C#
7 8 (2.93%) C++
7 8 (2.93%) Ruby
8 7 (2.56%) PHP
9 6 (2.20%) JSX
9 6 (2.20%) Kotlin
10 4 (1.47%) Bash
11 3 (1.10%) Go
11 3 (1.10%) Scala
12 2 (0.73%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.73%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.37%) Groovy
13 1 (0.37%) VBA
13 1 (0.37%) VBScript
13 1 (0.37%) XPath
Qualifications
1 74 (27.11%) Security Cleared
2 60 (21.98%) SC Cleared
3 16 (5.86%) BPSS Clearance
4 14 (5.13%) ISTQB
5 11 (4.03%) Degree
6 5 (1.83%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.83%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 3 (1.10%) ISEB
8 2 (0.73%) AWS Certified Developer
8 2 (0.73%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.73%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.37%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (24.54%) QA
2 38 (13.92%) Accessibility
3 13 (4.76%) WCAG
4 8 (2.93%) GDPR
5 5 (1.83%) PERC
6 2 (0.73%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.73%) HL7
7 1 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.37%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 62 (22.71%) Docker
2 2 (0.73%) Postfix
3 1 (0.37%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 44 (16.12%) Kubernetes
2 24 (8.79%) Terraform
3 14 (5.13%) Grafana
4 9 (3.30%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.47%) Ansible
6 2 (0.73%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.73%) Kibana
6 2 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.37%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.37%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.37%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.37%) Kustomize
7 1 (0.37%) Rancher
Vendors
1 22 (8.06%) Oracle
2 12 (4.40%) Splunk
3 7 (2.56%) Atlassian
3 7 (2.56%) Databricks
3 7 (2.56%) Salesforce
4 6 (2.20%) Microsoft
4 6 (2.20%) ServiceNow
5 5 (1.83%) Red Hat
6 4 (1.47%) Adobe
6 4 (1.47%) Veracode
7 3 (1.10%) Google
8 2 (0.73%) IBM
8 2 (0.73%) Jaspersoft
8 2 (0.73%) SAP
8 2 (0.73%) VMware
8 2 (0.73%) Workday
9 1 (0.37%) CA Agile Central
9 1 (0.37%) Marketo
9 1 (0.37%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.37%) Xamarin