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 13 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 340 257 283
Rank change year-on-year -83 +26 -144
Contract jobs citing BDD 255 292 349
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.70% 0.93% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.79% 1.05% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 168 243
10th Percentile £375 £356 £350
25th Percentile £408 £413 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -14.68%
75th Percentile £575 £620 £600
90th Percentile £675 £816 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £450 £494
% change year-on-year +8.61% -8.86% -8.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £82.50 - -
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £90.00
75th Percentile £87.50 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

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 32,128 27,808 37,611
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.80% 88.68% 87.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,262 16,883 24,972
10th Percentile £304 £306 £304
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £743 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,977 884 1,589
10th Percentile £14.52 £15.62 £14.17
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £18.16
Median hourly rate £25.15 £31.69 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.64% -21.75% +15.71%
75th Percentile £56.00 £61.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.39 £74.66 £76.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.00 £43.75
% change year-on-year -20.58% -31.43% +51.38%

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 13 January 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 17 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 13 January 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 -95 218 £500 - 121
UK excluding London -51 124 £489 +8.61% 103
North of England -29 99 £500 +11.11% 25
London -65 98 £514 -10.65% 32
Work from Home -26 66 £475 -9.52% 111
Yorkshire -34 49 £550 +22.22% 9
North West -18 29 £413 +3.13% 14
North East +7 23 £460 +26.90% 2
South East -33 6 £550 +10.00% 37
Midlands -43 5 £394 -22.41% 10
Wales 0 4 £375 - 5
Scotland -1 4 £545 +28.24% 3
West Midlands -36 3 £488 -3.94% 7
South West -38 3 £400 -25.58% 9
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 3
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 2
East of England -19 1 £375 +20.00% 14

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 21 (8.24%) Confluence
2 4 (1.57%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.78%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.78%) nginx
4 1 (0.39%) Cloud Foundry
4 1 (0.39%) CMS
Applications
1 6 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 6 (2.35%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.18%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 79 (30.98%) AWS
2 60 (23.53%) Azure
3 34 (13.33%) GitHub
4 21 (8.24%) Serverless
5 20 (7.84%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (7.06%) GCP
7 16 (6.27%) AWS Lambda
8 13 (5.10%) GitHub Actions
9 11 (4.31%) SaaS
10 9 (3.53%) Amazon ECS
10 9 (3.53%) Amazon S3
11 8 (3.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (3.14%) Amazon SQS
12 7 (2.75%) Amazon EventBridge
12 7 (2.75%) Apigee
12 7 (2.75%) AWS Step Functions
12 7 (2.75%) BrowserStack
12 7 (2.75%) Datadog
13 6 (2.35%) Amazon EKS
13 6 (2.35%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.96%) Cisco IPT
2 3 (1.18%) HTTP
3 1 (0.39%) DSL
3 1 (0.39%) FTP
3 1 (0.39%) Internet
3 1 (0.39%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (14.12%) MongoDB
2 28 (10.98%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (7.06%) MySQL
4 17 (6.67%) NoSQL
5 14 (5.49%) SQL Server
6 11 (4.31%) Amazon RDS
7 10 (3.92%) Redis
7 10 (3.92%) Relational Database
8 8 (3.14%) DynamoDB
9 6 (2.35%) BigQuery
9 6 (2.35%) RDBMS
10 5 (1.96%) Amazon Aurora
11 3 (1.18%) Apache Cassandra
11 3 (1.18%) DB2
12 2 (0.78%) Big Data
13 1 (0.39%) Amazon Athena
13 1 (0.39%) Data Warehouse
13 1 (0.39%) Delta Lake
13 1 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
13 1 (0.39%) GIS
Development Applications
1 87 (34.12%) Cucumber
2 62 (24.31%) Git
3 61 (23.92%) Jenkins
4 58 (22.75%) Selenium
5 45 (17.65%) JIRA
6 43 (16.86%) GitLab
7 36 (14.12%) Postman
8 26 (10.20%) Mockito
9 25 (9.80%) REST Assured
10 21 (8.24%) Cypress.io
11 15 (5.88%) Bitbucket
12 14 (5.49%) JMeter
12 14 (5.49%) JUnit
13 12 (4.71%) Gradle
13 12 (4.71%) SonarQube
14 11 (4.31%) WebDriver
15 10 (3.92%) Maven
16 9 (3.53%) TestRail
17 7 (2.75%) SpecFlow
18 6 (2.35%) Zephyr
General
1 68 (26.67%) Social Skills
2 53 (20.78%) Public Sector
3 31 (12.16%) Finance
4 25 (9.80%) Banking
5 12 (4.71%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (2.35%) Front Office
8 5 (1.96%) Investment Banking
8 5 (1.96%) Legal
8 5 (1.96%) Military
9 4 (1.57%) Electronics
10 1 (0.39%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.39%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.39%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.39%) Marketing
10 1 (0.39%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.39%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.39%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 97 (38.04%) Developer
2 63 (24.71%) Java Developer
3 51 (20.00%) Senior
4 44 (17.25%) Test Engineer
5 29 (11.37%) Senior Developer
6 24 (9.41%) Senior Java Developer
7 21 (8.24%) Lead
7 21 (8.24%) Software Engineer
7 21 (8.24%) Test Automation Engineer
8 14 (5.49%) QA Engineer
9 12 (4.71%) Tester
10 11 (4.31%) Analyst
10 11 (4.31%) Java Engineer
11 10 (3.92%) Angular Developer
12 9 (3.53%) Automation Tester
12 9 (3.53%) Senior Test Engineer
13 8 (3.14%) Architect
13 8 (3.14%) Automation Engineer
13 8 (3.14%) Lead Test Engineer
13 8 (3.14%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (21.18%) REST
1 54 (21.18%) Spring Boot
2 41 (16.08%) Node.js
2 41 (16.08%) RESTful
3 39 (15.29%) Kafka
4 38 (14.90%) React
5 35 (13.73%) Spring
6 30 (11.76%) Playwright
7 28 (10.98%) Gherkin
8 24 (9.41%) ActiveMQ
8 24 (9.41%) JAX-RS
9 22 (8.63%) .NET
10 20 (7.84%) AngularJS
10 20 (7.84%) CSS
11 14 (5.49%) HTML
11 14 (5.49%) Jest
12 13 (5.10%) WireMock
13 12 (4.71%) JSON
14 10 (3.92%) SOAP
14 10 (3.92%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 36 (14.12%) Product Ownership
2 16 (6.27%) Cloud Native
3 9 (3.53%) Mobile App
4 7 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (2.35%) Distributed Architecture
5 6 (2.35%) Equities
5 6 (2.35%) N-Tier
5 6 (2.35%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.96%) Client/Server
6 5 (1.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (1.96%) Greenfield Project
6 5 (1.96%) NHS
7 3 (1.18%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.18%) Educational Technology
7 3 (1.18%) Mobile Banking
7 3 (1.18%) Public Cloud
8 2 (0.78%) AS400
8 2 (0.78%) iSeries
Operating Systems
1 36 (14.12%) Linux
2 29 (11.37%) Unix
3 20 (7.84%) Mac OS X
4 4 (1.57%) Android
5 3 (1.18%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.78%) Windows
7 1 (0.39%) VMS
7 1 (0.39%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (71.76%) Agile
2 170 (66.67%) TDD
3 159 (62.35%) Test Automation
4 135 (52.94%) CI/CD
5 125 (49.02%) Microservices
6 63 (24.71%) Scrum
7 62 (24.31%) DevOps
8 53 (20.78%) API Testing
9 50 (19.61%) Problem-Solving
9 50 (19.61%) Software Engineering
10 48 (18.82%) Containerisation
11 42 (16.47%) Continuous Improvement
12 35 (13.73%) Non-Functional Testing
13 34 (13.33%) Test Strategy
14 32 (12.55%) Functional Testing
14 32 (12.55%) Kanban
15 31 (12.16%) Continuous Deployment
15 31 (12.16%) Mentoring
16 30 (11.76%) SDLC
17 29 (11.37%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 164 (64.31%) Java
2 56 (21.96%) JavaScript
3 47 (18.43%) SQL
4 46 (18.04%) Python
5 37 (14.51%) TypeScript
6 18 (7.06%) C#
7 11 (4.31%) Ruby
7 11 (4.31%) Scala
8 9 (3.53%) C++
9 8 (3.14%) Kotlin
10 7 (2.75%) PHP
11 6 (2.35%) JSX
12 4 (1.57%) Bash
12 4 (1.57%) C
12 4 (1.57%) Go
13 3 (1.18%) Objective-C
13 3 (1.18%) Swift
14 1 (0.39%) Groovy
14 1 (0.39%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.39%) XPath
Qualifications
1 69 (27.06%) Security Cleared
2 54 (21.18%) SC Cleared
3 17 (6.67%) BPSS Clearance
4 14 (5.49%) ISTQB
5 9 (3.53%) Degree
6 5 (1.96%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 4 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (1.18%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.18%) ISEB
9 2 (0.78%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.78%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.39%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.39%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (24.31%) QA
2 34 (13.33%) Accessibility
3 11 (4.31%) WCAG
4 8 (3.14%) GDPR
5 5 (1.96%) PERC
6 3 (1.18%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.78%) HL7
8 1 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.39%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 62 (24.31%) Docker
Systems Management
1 42 (16.47%) Kubernetes
2 22 (8.63%) Terraform
3 9 (3.53%) Grafana
4 8 (3.14%) Ansible
5 5 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.78%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.78%) Kustomize
7 1 (0.39%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.39%) Kibana
7 1 (0.39%) Rancher
7 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 10 (3.92%) Oracle
2 7 (2.75%) Atlassian
2 7 (2.75%) Microsoft
3 6 (2.35%) Splunk
4 5 (1.96%) Gigya
4 5 (1.96%) ServiceNow
5 4 (1.57%) Adobe
5 4 (1.57%) Red Hat
6 3 (1.18%) Salesforce
7 2 (0.78%) IBM
8 1 (0.39%) Bloomberg
8 1 (0.39%) CA Agile Central
8 1 (0.39%) Databricks
8 1 (0.39%) Google
8 1 (0.39%) Marketo
8 1 (0.39%) MuleSoft
8 1 (0.39%) OpenAI
8 1 (0.39%) Reuters
8 1 (0.39%) VMware
8 1 (0.39%) Xamarin