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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 386 277 261
Rank change year-on-year -109 -16 -20
Contract jobs citing BDD 321 311 341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.94% 0.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.70% 1.04% 1.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 207 206 224
10th Percentile £306 £361 £352
25th Percentile £400 £415 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £453 £510 £523
Median % change year-on-year -11.18% -2.39% -5.00%
75th Percentile £538 £605 £625
90th Percentile £657 £700 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £445 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -6.32% +5.56% -10.00%
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 45,960 29,830 33,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.53% 85.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,897 18,534 20,247
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 £625 £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 3,123 1,812 1,459
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.23 £14.96
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.76 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.69% -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 18 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 18 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 -79 264 £453 -12.88% 253
UK excluding London -92 169 £445 -6.32% 152
London -70 116 £500 -9.09% 124
Work from Home -60 94 £475 -5.00% 122
North of England -69 70 £441 -15.95% 49
Midlands -17 42 £438 -8.85% 28
West Midlands -14 41 £438 -12.50% 16
North West -47 29 £438 +3.31% 26
Yorkshire -47 27 £420 -23.64% 12
Scotland -20 22 £470 +1.62% 14
North East -40 18 £450 -2.17% 11
South East -68 16 £275 -4.51% 33
South West -35 13 £513 +24.24% 14
East of England -26 5 £570 +52.00% 6
Wales -10 4 £531 +41.67% 4
Northern Ireland +3 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 29 (9.03%) Confluence
2 4 (1.25%) Apache
2 4 (1.25%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.93%) CMS
3 3 (0.93%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.93%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.31%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (0.93%) Notion
2 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.62%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 10 (3.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.49%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.93%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 111 (34.58%) AWS
2 96 (29.91%) Azure
3 86 (26.79%) GitHub
4 44 (13.71%) Azure DevOps
5 38 (11.84%) GitHub Actions
6 32 (9.97%) GCP
7 25 (7.79%) Serverless
8 24 (7.48%) GitHub Copilot
9 19 (5.92%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.30%) Amazon SQS
11 16 (4.98%) AWS Lambda
12 15 (4.67%) Amazon EC2
13 14 (4.36%) Anthropic Claude
13 14 (4.36%) ChatGPT
14 12 (3.74%) Dynamics 365
14 12 (3.74%) Power Automate
15 11 (3.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 11 (3.43%) Power Platform
16 9 (2.80%) AWS KMS
16 9 (2.80%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.18%) RTP
1 7 (2.18%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.87%) 3GPP
3 5 (1.56%) Internet
4 2 (0.62%) DNS
4 2 (0.62%) DSL
4 2 (0.62%) Firewall
4 2 (0.62%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (16.20%) MongoDB
2 27 (8.41%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (7.17%) NoSQL
4 21 (6.54%) Relational Database
5 17 (5.30%) SQL Server
6 15 (4.67%) Db2
7 12 (3.74%) Amazon RDS
7 12 (3.74%) DynamoDB
7 12 (3.74%) Metadata
8 10 (3.12%) Amazon Aurora
9 8 (2.49%) Power BI
10 7 (2.18%) Data Lake
10 7 (2.18%) MySQL
11 6 (1.87%) BigQuery
11 6 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
12 5 (1.56%) Couchbase
12 5 (1.56%) Tableau
13 3 (0.93%) Amazon Redshift
13 3 (0.93%) Big Data
13 3 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 116 (36.14%) Cucumber
2 97 (30.22%) Git
3 93 (28.97%) Selenium
4 70 (21.81%) Jenkins
5 60 (18.69%) GitLab
6 58 (18.07%) JUnit
7 48 (14.95%) REST Assured
8 45 (14.02%) JIRA
9 43 (13.40%) Postman
10 31 (9.66%) WebDriver
11 29 (9.03%) Mockito
11 29 (9.03%) SonarQube
12 27 (8.41%) Cypress.io
12 27 (8.41%) Gatling
13 20 (6.23%) Maven
13 20 (6.23%) SpecFlow
14 14 (4.36%) JMeter
15 13 (4.05%) TeamCity
16 10 (3.12%) Gradle
17 9 (2.80%) TestNG
General
1 114 (35.51%) Social Skills
2 71 (22.12%) Finance
3 60 (18.69%) Public Sector
4 56 (17.45%) Analytical Skills
5 46 (14.33%) Banking
6 18 (5.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (4.67%) Front Office
8 10 (3.12%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.18%) Military
9 7 (2.18%) Retail
10 5 (1.56%) Aviation
10 5 (1.56%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.56%) Police
11 4 (1.25%) Marketing
12 3 (0.93%) Legal Technology
12 3 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.62%) Law
13 2 (0.62%) Local Government
14 1 (0.31%) Legal
Job Titles
1 95 (29.60%) Developer
2 72 (22.43%) Senior
3 56 (17.45%) Java Developer
4 53 (16.51%) Test Engineer
5 37 (11.53%) Software Engineer
6 31 (9.66%) Test Automation Engineer
7 28 (8.72%) Senior Developer
8 27 (8.41%) Lead
9 23 (7.17%) Analyst
10 19 (5.92%) Java Engineer
11 18 (5.61%) Senior Java Developer
12 15 (4.67%) Quality Engineer
13 14 (4.36%) QA Engineer
13 14 (4.36%) Tester
14 13 (4.05%) Test Leader
15 12 (3.74%) Automation Tester
15 12 (3.74%) Senior Software Engineer
15 12 (3.74%) Test Analyst
16 11 (3.43%) Senior Test Engineer
17 10 (3.12%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (21.50%) Playwright
1 69 (21.50%) Spring
2 61 (19.00%) REST
3 59 (18.38%) Spring Boot
4 57 (17.76%) Gherkin
5 53 (16.51%) Kafka
6 40 (12.46%) RESTful
7 30 (9.35%) .NET
8 25 (7.79%) React
9 24 (7.48%) Node.js
10 23 (7.17%) WireMock
11 22 (6.85%) Terraform
12 20 (6.23%) ActiveMQ
12 20 (6.23%) AngularJS
13 18 (5.61%) SOAP
14 16 (4.98%) HTML
15 13 (4.05%) JAX-RS
15 13 (4.05%) JPA
15 13 (4.05%) pytest
15 13 (4.05%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 37 (11.53%) Product Ownership
2 29 (9.03%) Cloud Native
3 26 (8.10%) Distributed Systems
4 18 (5.61%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.36%) Equity Derivative
6 13 (4.05%) Legacy Systems
7 11 (3.43%) Onboarding
8 10 (3.12%) Derivative
9 7 (2.18%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.87%) AI Agents
10 6 (1.87%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.56%) NHS
11 5 (1.56%) Robotics
11 5 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.56%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 5 (1.56%) Taxonomies
12 4 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.25%) Distributed Architecture
13 3 (0.93%) Legacy Code
14 2 (0.62%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 43 (13.40%) Linux
2 22 (6.85%) Unix
3 5 (1.56%) Android
3 5 (1.56%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.56%) Mac OS X
4 3 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.93%) Windows
5 2 (0.62%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.31%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 217 (67.60%) Agile
2 210 (65.42%) CI/CD
3 206 (64.17%) TDD
4 198 (61.68%) Test Automation
5 109 (33.96%) DevOps
5 109 (33.96%) Microservices
6 79 (24.61%) Scrum
7 74 (23.05%) AI
8 71 (22.12%) Problem-Solving
9 69 (21.50%) Software Engineering
10 62 (19.31%) Continuous Improvement
11 61 (19.00%) Test Strategy
12 60 (18.69%) API Testing
13 52 (16.20%) Software Testing
14 51 (15.89%) Stakeholder Management
15 45 (14.02%) SDLC
16 43 (13.40%) Continuous Integration
17 39 (12.15%) Integration Testing
18 37 (11.53%) Mentoring
19 36 (11.21%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 196 (61.06%) Java
2 85 (26.48%) SQL
3 78 (24.30%) Python
4 63 (19.63%) JavaScript
5 53 (16.51%) C#
6 33 (10.28%) TypeScript
7 12 (3.74%) Bash
7 12 (3.74%) Ruby
8 10 (3.12%) C++
9 7 (2.18%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.18%) Groovy
10 6 (1.87%) R
10 6 (1.87%) Scala
11 5 (1.56%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.25%) Perl
13 3 (0.93%) Go
13 3 (0.93%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.93%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.62%) Cypher
14 2 (0.62%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 74 (23.05%) Security Cleared
2 59 (18.38%) SC Cleared
3 27 (8.41%) BPSS Clearance
4 22 (6.85%) Degree
5 20 (6.23%) ISTQB
6 16 (4.98%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (3.12%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.80%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 7 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (1.56%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.93%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.93%) CSPO
12 2 (0.62%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.62%) ISEB
13 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 1 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
13 1 (0.31%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (25.23%) QA
2 58 (18.07%) Accessibility
3 37 (11.53%) WCAG
4 17 (5.30%) Data Quality
5 15 (4.67%) GDPR
6 4 (1.25%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.62%) SEPA
8 1 (0.31%) EMIR
8 1 (0.31%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.31%) MiFID
8 1 (0.31%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.31%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 79 (24.61%) Docker
2 5 (1.56%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 63 (19.63%) Kubernetes
2 19 (5.92%) Grafana
3 14 (4.36%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.87%) Ansible
5 5 (1.56%) Kibana
6 3 (0.93%) Istio
7 2 (0.62%) Argo
7 2 (0.62%) Consul
7 2 (0.62%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.31%) Control-M
8 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 28 (8.72%) Microsoft
2 16 (4.98%) Sybase
3 15 (4.67%) IBM
3 15 (4.67%) Salesforce
4 13 (4.05%) Oracle
5 12 (3.74%) Google
6 11 (3.43%) Databricks
7 8 (2.49%) Conga
7 8 (2.49%) GoCardless
8 7 (2.18%) Atlassian
9 6 (1.87%) Jaspersoft
10 5 (1.56%) Checkmarx
10 5 (1.56%) OpenAI
11 4 (1.25%) ION Trading
12 3 (0.93%) CA Agile Central
12 3 (0.93%) Guidewire
12 3 (0.93%) Splunk
13 2 (0.62%) Dynatrace
13 2 (0.62%) FactSet
13 2 (0.62%) Solace