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 5 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 346 278 306
Rank change year-on-year -68 +28 -161
Contract jobs citing BDD 286 262 316
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.87% 0.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.78% 0.96% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 170 155 217
10th Percentile £350 £363 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -14.89%
75th Percentile £539 £634 £588
90th Percentile £653 £800 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £481
% change year-on-year -5.00% +3.90% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
Median hourly rate - - £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £56.25
% change year-on-year - - -19.64%

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 36,798 27,287 38,212
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.45% 90.16% 86.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,332 17,120 24,896
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -2.03% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,175 894 2,252
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £16.11
Median hourly rate £28.00 £32.50 £32.85
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% -1.05% -6.16%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.63 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £33.28
% change year-on-year -20.81% -4.57% -4.91%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 -60 249 £475 -9.52% 136
UK excluding London -69 140 £475 -5.00% 110
London -40 119 £475 -23.39% 37
North of England -40 82 £475 +5.56% 38
Work from Home -32 77 £440 -16.19% 82
Yorkshire -67 34 £513 -2.38% 10
North West -21 31 £431 +8.98% 21
Midlands -42 28 £425 -12.37% 22
West Midlands -38 26 £475 -2.06% 18
North East 0 20 £450 +15.38% 7
South West -32 10 £463 -13.95% 8
South East -57 9 £367 -26.60% 30
Scotland +11 6 £400 -8.57% 5
Wales -1 4 £375 - 1
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 4
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 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 42 (14.69%) Confluence
2 4 (1.40%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.05%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.70%) nginx
4 2 (0.70%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.35%) CMS
5 1 (0.35%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 4 (1.40%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.35%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.70%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 105 (36.71%) AWS
2 74 (25.87%) Azure
3 47 (16.43%) GitHub
4 28 (9.79%) Azure DevOps
5 26 (9.09%) GCP
6 25 (8.74%) Serverless
7 24 (8.39%) GitHub Actions
8 19 (6.64%) AWS Lambda
9 18 (6.29%) Amazon S3
10 13 (4.55%) BrowserStack
11 10 (3.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 10 (3.50%) Amazon EC2
11 10 (3.50%) Amazon SQS
12 9 (3.15%) SaaS
13 8 (2.80%) Amazon EKS
14 5 (1.75%) Amazon Cognito
14 5 (1.75%) AWS KMS
14 5 (1.75%) AWS Step Functions
14 5 (1.75%) Route 53
15 4 (1.40%) BlazeMeter
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.75%) Cisco IPT
2 2 (0.70%) HTTP
2 2 (0.70%) WAN
3 1 (0.35%) DSL
3 1 (0.35%) Fibre Channel
3 1 (0.35%) FTP
3 1 (0.35%) Internet
3 1 (0.35%) iSCSI
3 1 (0.35%) LAN
3 1 (0.35%) NaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (12.94%) PostgreSQL
2 31 (10.84%) MongoDB
3 17 (5.94%) SQL Server
4 13 (4.55%) MySQL
5 12 (4.20%) Amazon RDS
6 11 (3.85%) Relational Database
7 10 (3.50%) Oracle Database
8 9 (3.15%) DynamoDB
9 8 (2.80%) NoSQL
10 7 (2.45%) Data Lake
11 5 (1.75%) Amazon Aurora
12 3 (1.05%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (1.05%) Delta Lake
12 3 (1.05%) Redis
13 2 (0.70%) Apache Cassandra
14 1 (0.35%) Big Data
14 1 (0.35%) BigQuery
14 1 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
14 1 (0.35%) InfluxDB
14 1 (0.35%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 112 (39.16%) Cucumber
2 79 (27.62%) Jenkins
2 79 (27.62%) Selenium
3 73 (25.52%) JIRA
4 67 (23.43%) Git
5 65 (22.73%) GitLab
6 45 (15.73%) Postman
7 41 (14.34%) JUnit
8 31 (10.84%) REST Assured
9 27 (9.44%) Mockito
10 26 (9.09%) JMeter
11 24 (8.39%) WebDriver
12 23 (8.04%) Cypress.io
13 18 (6.29%) SonarQube
14 12 (4.20%) Bitbucket
14 12 (4.20%) Maven
15 11 (3.85%) Gatling
16 8 (2.80%) Serenity BDD
16 8 (2.80%) TestRail
17 7 (2.45%) SpecFlow
General
1 74 (25.87%) Social Skills
2 60 (20.98%) Public Sector
3 48 (16.78%) Finance
4 26 (9.09%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (7.69%) Banking
6 8 (2.80%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (2.45%) Military
8 6 (2.10%) Front Office
9 5 (1.75%) Legal
10 4 (1.40%) Electronics
11 3 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.70%) Billing
12 2 (0.70%) Retail
12 2 (0.70%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.35%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.35%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 85 (29.72%) Developer
2 53 (18.53%) Senior
3 51 (17.83%) Java Developer
3 51 (17.83%) Test Engineer
4 36 (12.59%) Lead
5 25 (8.74%) Software Engineer
6 23 (8.04%) Tester
7 22 (7.69%) Test Automation Engineer
8 21 (7.34%) Senior Developer
9 17 (5.94%) QA Engineer
9 17 (5.94%) Senior Java Developer
10 16 (5.59%) Automation Tester
11 15 (5.24%) Java Engineer
12 13 (4.55%) Lead Test Engineer
12 13 (4.55%) Test Leader
13 12 (4.20%) Analyst
14 10 (3.50%) Automation Engineer
14 10 (3.50%) Senior Test Engineer
15 9 (3.15%) Automation Test Lead
15 9 (3.15%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (21.33%) Spring
2 56 (19.58%) REST
2 56 (19.58%) Spring Boot
3 47 (16.43%) Playwright
4 40 (13.99%) RESTful
5 39 (13.64%) Node.js
6 35 (12.24%) React
7 34 (11.89%) Kafka
8 32 (11.19%) Gherkin
9 27 (9.44%) .NET
10 25 (8.74%) WireMock
11 24 (8.39%) AngularJS
12 18 (6.29%) ActiveMQ
12 18 (6.29%) CSS
13 17 (5.94%) Jest
14 16 (5.59%) SOAP
15 15 (5.24%) Web Services
16 14 (4.90%) JAX-RS
17 13 (4.55%) Spring Cloud
18 12 (4.20%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.44%) Product Ownership
2 19 (6.64%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (5.59%) Cloud Native
4 14 (4.90%) Distributed Architecture
5 7 (2.45%) Mobile App
5 7 (2.45%) Onboarding
6 6 (2.10%) Client/Server
6 6 (2.10%) Equities
7 5 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 5 (1.75%) NHS
8 4 (1.40%) Distributed Applications
8 4 (1.40%) Public Cloud
9 3 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.05%) Educational Technology
10 2 (0.70%) Enterprise Software
10 2 (0.70%) Greenfield Project
10 2 (0.70%) Hybrid Cloud
10 2 (0.70%) iSeries
10 2 (0.70%) Private Cloud
10 2 (0.70%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 38 (13.29%) Linux
2 22 (7.69%) Unix
3 13 (4.55%) Mac OS X
4 4 (1.40%) Windows
5 3 (1.05%) Android
6 2 (0.70%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.35%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.35%) VMS
7 1 (0.35%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (64.34%) Agile
2 178 (62.24%) Test Automation
3 171 (59.79%) TDD
4 164 (57.34%) CI/CD
5 130 (45.45%) Microservices
6 84 (29.37%) DevOps
7 66 (23.08%) API Testing
8 64 (22.38%) Problem-Solving
9 60 (20.98%) Continuous Improvement
9 60 (20.98%) Test Strategy
10 59 (20.63%) Scrum
11 50 (17.48%) Containerisation
11 50 (17.48%) Software Engineering
12 40 (13.99%) Mentoring
13 39 (13.64%) SDLC
14 36 (12.59%) Performance Testing
15 34 (11.89%) Non-Functional Testing
16 33 (11.54%) Functional Testing
17 30 (10.49%) Continuous Integration
17 30 (10.49%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 173 (60.49%) Java
2 60 (20.98%) JavaScript
3 54 (18.88%) SQL
4 45 (15.73%) Python
5 40 (13.99%) TypeScript
6 28 (9.79%) C#
7 11 (3.85%) C++
8 8 (2.80%) Ruby
9 7 (2.45%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.45%) PHP
10 6 (2.10%) JSX
11 4 (1.40%) Go
11 4 (1.40%) Scala
11 4 (1.40%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.70%) Bash
12 2 (0.70%) Groovy
12 2 (0.70%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.35%) Swift
13 1 (0.35%) VBScript
13 1 (0.35%) XPath
Qualifications
1 79 (27.62%) Security Cleared
2 64 (22.38%) SC Cleared
3 14 (4.90%) BPSS Clearance
4 13 (4.55%) Degree
5 12 (4.20%) ISTQB
6 6 (2.10%) AWS Certification
6 6 (2.10%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (1.40%) ISEB
7 4 (1.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (1.05%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.70%) AWS Certified Developer
10 1 (0.35%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (24.13%) QA
2 40 (13.99%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.85%) WCAG
4 8 (2.80%) GDPR
5 5 (1.75%) PERC
6 2 (0.70%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.70%) HL7
7 1 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 76 (26.57%) Docker
2 4 (1.40%) Postfix
3 1 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 55 (19.23%) Kubernetes
2 30 (10.49%) Grafana
3 24 (8.39%) Terraform
4 22 (7.69%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.40%) Ansible
6 2 (0.70%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.70%) Kibana
6 2 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.35%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.35%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.35%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.35%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.35%) Rancher
Vendors
1 23 (8.04%) Oracle
2 14 (4.90%) Splunk
3 11 (3.85%) Atlassian
4 9 (3.15%) ServiceNow
5 8 (2.80%) Salesforce
6 7 (2.45%) Databricks
7 6 (2.10%) Microsoft
8 5 (1.75%) Jaspersoft
9 4 (1.40%) Adobe
9 4 (1.40%) Veracode
10 3 (1.05%) Dynatrace
10 3 (1.05%) Google
10 3 (1.05%) Red Hat
11 2 (0.70%) CA Agile Central
11 2 (0.70%) IBM
11 2 (0.70%) SAP
11 2 (0.70%) VMware
11 2 (0.70%) Workday
12 1 (0.35%) Amdocs
12 1 (0.35%) BT