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 12 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 353 287 255
Rank change year-on-year -66 -32 -13
Contract jobs citing BDD 342 288 359
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.64% 0.87% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.76% 0.97% 1.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 189 250
10th Percentile £306 £357 £369
25th Percentile £398 £413 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £458 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -8.35% -6.98% -6.52%
75th Percentile £538 £588 £650
90th Percentile £675 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £500
% change year-on-year +2.86% -12.50% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £82.50 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £85.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year -47.06% +51.11% -25.00%
75th Percentile £46.88 £87.50 -
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 45,292 29,826 33,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.48% 85.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,883 18,657 21,289
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,827 1,696 1,836
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.80 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.77% -1.96%
75th Percentile £68.00 £47.66 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.51 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.84 £42.50
% change year-on-year +92.47% -46.26% +17.24%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 -56 285 £458 -10.73% 196
UK excluding London -31 195 £450 +2.86% 106
London -74 114 £488 -17.37% 108
Work from Home -33 109 £475 -5.00% 96
North of England -37 77 £452 -0.77% 28
Midlands -12 52 £425 -7.86% 25
West Midlands -7 51 £425 -8.11% 15
North West -32 37 £475 +15.85% 17
Scotland -2 25 £465 +7.83% 7
Yorkshire -33 24 £550 +5.82% 7
North East -27 20 £450 -1.10% 5
South East -72 19 £309 -9.19% 24
South West -40 14 £525 +27.27% 6
East of England -12 8 £510 +36.00% 8
Wales -9 3 £650 - 5
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 5

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 48 (14.04%) Confluence
2 5 (1.46%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.17%) Apache
4 3 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.88%) CMS
4 3 (0.88%) Headless CMS
4 3 (0.88%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.29%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (0.88%) Notion
2 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.29%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (2.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.34%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.88%) Findur
3 3 (0.88%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 122 (35.67%) AWS
2 116 (33.92%) Azure
3 94 (27.49%) GitHub
4 54 (15.79%) Azure DevOps
5 53 (15.50%) GCP
6 49 (14.33%) GitHub Actions
7 25 (7.31%) Serverless
8 22 (6.43%) Amazon SQS
9 21 (6.14%) Amazon S3
10 19 (5.56%) Amazon EC2
11 17 (4.97%) GitHub Copilot
12 16 (4.68%) AWS Lambda
13 15 (4.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 14 (4.09%) ChatGPT
15 12 (3.51%) Anthropic Claude
16 11 (3.22%) AWS KMS
17 10 (2.92%) Power Automate
17 10 (2.92%) Route 53
18 9 (2.63%) Dynamics 365
18 9 (2.63%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.05%) RTP
1 7 (2.05%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.75%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.88%) DSL
3 3 (0.88%) Internet
4 2 (0.58%) Firewall
4 2 (0.58%) NaaS
4 2 (0.58%) WAN
5 1 (0.29%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (16.08%) MongoDB
2 45 (13.16%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (6.43%) NoSQL
4 20 (5.85%) Relational Database
5 18 (5.26%) SQL Server
6 17 (4.97%) DynamoDB
7 15 (4.39%) Amazon RDS
7 15 (4.39%) Db2
8 14 (4.09%) Amazon Aurora
9 11 (3.22%) Metadata
10 8 (2.34%) MySQL
11 7 (2.05%) Power BI
12 6 (1.75%) BigQuery
12 6 (1.75%) Data Warehouse
13 5 (1.46%) Couchbase
13 5 (1.46%) Data Lake
13 5 (1.46%) Tableau
14 4 (1.17%) Amazon Athena
15 3 (0.88%) Apache Iceberg
15 3 (0.88%) Looker
Development Applications
1 122 (35.67%) Cucumber
2 101 (29.53%) Selenium
3 99 (28.95%) Git
4 83 (24.27%) Jenkins
5 68 (19.88%) JUnit
6 64 (18.71%) GitLab
6 64 (18.71%) JIRA
7 46 (13.45%) Postman
7 46 (13.45%) WebDriver
8 42 (12.28%) REST Assured
9 34 (9.94%) Mockito
10 29 (8.48%) JMeter
11 26 (7.60%) Cypress.io
11 26 (7.60%) SonarQube
12 22 (6.43%) SpecFlow
13 20 (5.85%) Gatling
14 19 (5.56%) Maven
15 15 (4.39%) TeamCity
16 10 (2.92%) DbUnit
17 9 (2.63%) Bitbucket
General
1 109 (31.87%) Social Skills
2 73 (21.35%) Finance
3 66 (19.30%) Public Sector
4 57 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
5 41 (11.99%) Banking
6 13 (3.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (3.51%) Front Office
8 11 (3.22%) Organisational Skills
9 9 (2.63%) Investment Banking
10 7 (2.05%) Military
10 7 (2.05%) Retail
11 5 (1.46%) Aviation
11 5 (1.46%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.46%) Police
12 4 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
12 4 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.88%) Automotive
13 3 (0.88%) Billing
13 3 (0.88%) Legal Technology
13 3 (0.88%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 104 (30.41%) Developer
2 72 (21.05%) Senior
3 64 (18.71%) Java Developer
4 58 (16.96%) Test Engineer
5 38 (11.11%) Lead
6 34 (9.94%) Test Automation Engineer
7 32 (9.36%) Software Engineer
8 27 (7.89%) Tester
9 24 (7.02%) Analyst
10 22 (6.43%) Automation Tester
11 21 (6.14%) Senior Developer
11 21 (6.14%) Test Leader
12 18 (5.26%) Senior Java Developer
13 15 (4.39%) Java Engineer
14 13 (3.80%) QA Engineer
14 13 (3.80%) Senior Tester
15 12 (3.51%) Senior Software Engineer
16 11 (3.22%) Architect
16 11 (3.22%) Python Developer
16 11 (3.22%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 81 (23.68%) Spring
2 67 (19.59%) Playwright
3 66 (19.30%) REST
4 60 (17.54%) Spring Boot
5 57 (16.67%) Kafka
6 53 (15.50%) Gherkin
7 41 (11.99%) RESTful
8 35 (10.23%) .NET
9 32 (9.36%) WireMock
10 27 (7.89%) AngularJS
10 27 (7.89%) Node.js
11 25 (7.31%) ActiveMQ
11 25 (7.31%) React
12 21 (6.14%) SOAP
13 17 (4.97%) JAX-RS
14 15 (4.39%) HTML
14 15 (4.39%) JPA
14 15 (4.39%) JSON
15 14 (4.09%) Hibernate
15 14 (4.09%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.99%) Distributed Systems
2 35 (10.23%) Product Ownership
3 29 (8.48%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.68%) Distributed Architecture
4 16 (4.68%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.09%) Equity Derivative
6 10 (2.92%) Derivative
6 10 (2.92%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (2.05%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.75%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.75%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.46%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.46%) Robotics
9 5 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.46%) Taxonomies
10 4 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.17%) Distributed Applications
11 3 (0.88%) AI Agents
11 3 (0.88%) Legacy Code
11 3 (0.88%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 47 (13.74%) Linux
2 21 (6.14%) Unix
3 7 (2.05%) Mac OS X
4 6 (1.75%) Android
4 6 (1.75%) Apple iOS
5 4 (1.17%) Windows
6 2 (0.58%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.58%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 229 (66.96%) Agile
2 226 (66.08%) CI/CD
3 219 (64.04%) TDD
4 206 (60.23%) Test Automation
5 129 (37.72%) Microservices
6 123 (35.96%) DevOps
7 79 (23.10%) Scrum
8 76 (22.22%) Continuous Improvement
9 72 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
9 72 (21.05%) Test Strategy
10 70 (20.47%) API Testing
11 60 (17.54%) AI
12 58 (16.96%) Software Engineering
13 47 (13.74%) Stakeholder Management
14 46 (13.45%) Mentoring
15 43 (12.57%) Continuous Integration
16 39 (11.40%) Containerisation
16 39 (11.40%) End-to-End Testing
16 39 (11.40%) Software Testing
17 38 (11.11%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 193 (56.43%) Java
2 88 (25.73%) SQL
3 75 (21.93%) Python
4 59 (17.25%) JavaScript
5 57 (16.67%) C#
6 31 (9.06%) TypeScript
7 14 (4.09%) C++
8 8 (2.34%) Groovy
9 7 (2.05%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.05%) Kotlin
10 6 (1.75%) Ruby
11 5 (1.46%) Go
11 5 (1.46%) R
11 5 (1.46%) T-SQL
12 4 (1.17%) Bash
12 4 (1.17%) Perl
12 4 (1.17%) Scala
13 3 (0.88%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.58%) Cypher
14 2 (0.58%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 88 (25.73%) Security Cleared
2 71 (20.76%) SC Cleared
3 23 (6.73%) Degree
4 21 (6.14%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (5.26%) ISTQB
6 15 (4.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (2.34%) DV Cleared
7 8 (2.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 6 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.88%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.88%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.88%) CSPO
9 3 (0.88%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 2 (0.58%) ISEB
11 1 (0.29%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.29%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (20.76%) QA
2 48 (14.04%) Accessibility
3 25 (7.31%) WCAG
4 16 (4.68%) Data Quality
5 14 (4.09%) GDPR
6 3 (0.88%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.29%) EMIR
7 1 (0.29%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.29%) MiFID
7 1 (0.29%) SEPA
7 1 (0.29%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 91 (26.61%) Docker
2 7 (2.05%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 72 (21.05%) Kubernetes
2 39 (11.40%) Grafana
3 31 (9.06%) Prometheus
4 21 (6.14%) Terraform
5 6 (1.75%) Ansible
6 4 (1.17%) Kibana
7 3 (0.88%) Istio
8 2 (0.58%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.58%) Argo
8 2 (0.58%) Consul
8 2 (0.58%) Rancher
8 2 (0.58%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (7.02%) Microsoft
2 18 (5.26%) Salesforce
3 16 (4.68%) Sybase
4 15 (4.39%) IBM
5 14 (4.09%) Google
6 13 (3.80%) Oracle
7 11 (3.22%) Atlassian
8 9 (2.63%) Jaspersoft
9 8 (2.34%) Checkmarx
9 8 (2.34%) Conga
9 8 (2.34%) GoCardless
10 6 (1.75%) Dynatrace
11 5 (1.46%) Databricks
11 5 (1.46%) Splunk
12 4 (1.17%) ServiceNow
13 3 (0.88%) CA Agile Central
13 3 (0.88%) Guidewire
13 3 (0.88%) OpenAI
13 3 (0.88%) OpenLink
14 2 (0.58%) Amdocs