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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 371 272 284
Rank change year-on-year -99 +12 -32
Contract jobs citing BDD 335 323 319
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.98% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.72% 1.08% 0.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 213 204
10th Percentile £306 £358 £355
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -2.20% -7.05%
75th Percentile £537 £588 £608
90th Percentile £639 £700 £755
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -7.89% +5.56% -10.45%
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 46,343 29,774 32,275
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.43% 90.67% 85.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,026 18,502 19,486
10th Percentile £325 £296 £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 £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,222 1,849 1,345
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.29 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.19 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.86 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.51% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.27 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +75.98% -48.10% +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 30 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 30 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 -94 280 £450 -13.42% 182
UK excluding London -87 172 £438 -7.89% 139
London -73 127 £500 -7.41% 74
Work from Home -75 90 £475 -5.00% 102
North of England -93 69 £445 -15.24% 37
Midlands -3 49 £438 -5.41% 29
West Midlands -8 48 £438 -12.50% 17
Yorkshire -52 30 £420 -23.64% 11
North West -50 25 £441 +4.56% 15
Scotland -18 21 £470 +1.62% 15
North East -38 18 £450 -7.69% 11
South East -67 15 £275 -4.51% 18
South West -40 12 £500 +21.21% 16
Wales -9 5 £425 +13.33% 4
East of England -24 4 £585 +56.00% 7
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 13

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 30 (8.96%) Confluence
2 4 (1.19%) Apache
2 4 (1.19%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.90%) CMS
3 3 (0.90%) Headless CMS
3 3 (0.90%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.90%) Mingle
1 3 (0.90%) Notion
2 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 11 (3.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.39%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.90%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 124 (37.01%) AWS
2 105 (31.34%) Azure
3 94 (28.06%) GitHub
4 45 (13.43%) Azure DevOps
5 42 (12.54%) GitHub Actions
6 33 (9.85%) GCP
7 28 (8.36%) Serverless
8 26 (7.76%) GitHub Copilot
9 20 (5.97%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.07%) Amazon SQS
10 17 (5.07%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (4.48%) Amazon EC2
12 14 (4.18%) Anthropic Claude
13 13 (3.88%) ChatGPT
13 13 (3.88%) Dynamics 365
13 13 (3.88%) Power Automate
14 11 (3.28%) Power Platform
15 10 (2.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 10 (2.99%) Snowflake
16 9 (2.69%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.09%) RTP
1 7 (2.09%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.79%) 3GPP
3 5 (1.49%) Internet
4 2 (0.60%) DNS
4 2 (0.60%) DSL
4 2 (0.60%) Firewall
4 2 (0.60%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (16.42%) MongoDB
2 29 (8.66%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (7.16%) NoSQL
4 20 (5.97%) Relational Database
5 18 (5.37%) SQL Server
6 14 (4.18%) Db2
7 12 (3.58%) Amazon RDS
8 11 (3.28%) DynamoDB
8 11 (3.28%) Metadata
9 10 (2.99%) Data Lake
10 9 (2.69%) Amazon Aurora
11 8 (2.39%) MySQL
12 7 (2.09%) BigQuery
12 7 (2.09%) Data Warehouse
12 7 (2.09%) Power BI
13 5 (1.49%) Couchbase
13 5 (1.49%) Tableau
14 4 (1.19%) Apache Iceberg
14 4 (1.19%) Big Data
15 3 (0.90%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 134 (40.00%) Cucumber
2 104 (31.04%) Git
2 104 (31.04%) Selenium
3 75 (22.39%) Jenkins
4 68 (20.30%) GitLab
5 64 (19.10%) JUnit
6 49 (14.63%) REST Assured
7 47 (14.03%) JIRA
8 45 (13.43%) Postman
9 34 (10.15%) Gatling
10 32 (9.55%) SonarQube
11 30 (8.96%) Cypress.io
11 30 (8.96%) Mockito
11 30 (8.96%) WebDriver
12 22 (6.57%) Maven
13 21 (6.27%) SpecFlow
14 14 (4.18%) JMeter
15 12 (3.58%) Gradle
15 12 (3.58%) TeamCity
16 9 (2.69%) TestNG
General
1 127 (37.91%) Social Skills
2 76 (22.69%) Finance
3 65 (19.40%) Public Sector
4 59 (17.61%) Analytical Skills
5 49 (14.63%) Banking
6 21 (6.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (4.48%) Front Office
8 9 (2.69%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.39%) Military
10 7 (2.09%) Retail
11 5 (1.49%) Aviation
11 5 (1.49%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.49%) Police
12 4 (1.19%) Marketing
12 4 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.90%) Legal Technology
13 3 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.60%) Law
14 2 (0.60%) Local Government
15 1 (0.30%) Legal
Job Titles
1 93 (27.76%) Developer
2 77 (22.99%) Senior
3 57 (17.01%) Test Engineer
4 52 (15.52%) Java Developer
5 37 (11.04%) Software Engineer
6 30 (8.96%) Test Automation Engineer
7 28 (8.36%) Lead
7 28 (8.36%) Senior Developer
8 23 (6.87%) Analyst
9 21 (6.27%) Quality Engineer
10 20 (5.97%) Java Engineer
11 16 (4.78%) QA Engineer
11 16 (4.78%) Senior Java Developer
12 14 (4.18%) Senior Test Engineer
12 14 (4.18%) Test Leader
13 13 (3.88%) Test Analyst
13 13 (3.88%) Tester
14 12 (3.58%) Senior Software Engineer
15 11 (3.28%) Architect
15 11 (3.28%) SC Cleared Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (23.28%) Playwright
2 75 (22.39%) Spring
3 63 (18.81%) Gherkin
4 62 (18.51%) REST
4 62 (18.51%) Spring Boot
5 58 (17.31%) Kafka
6 42 (12.54%) RESTful
7 32 (9.55%) .NET
8 28 (8.36%) React
8 28 (8.36%) WireMock
9 25 (7.46%) Node.js
9 25 (7.46%) Terraform
10 21 (6.27%) AngularJS
11 19 (5.67%) ActiveMQ
12 18 (5.37%) HTML
12 18 (5.37%) SOAP
13 14 (4.18%) .NET Core
13 14 (4.18%) pytest
13 14 (4.18%) RabbitMQ
13 14 (4.18%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 36 (10.75%) Product Ownership
2 29 (8.66%) Cloud Native
3 25 (7.46%) Distributed Systems
4 19 (5.67%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.18%) Legacy Systems
6 13 (3.88%) Equity Derivative
7 12 (3.58%) Onboarding
8 9 (2.69%) Derivative
9 8 (2.39%) Management Information System
9 8 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
10 7 (2.09%) AI Agents
10 7 (2.09%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.49%) NHS
11 5 (1.49%) Robotics
11 5 (1.49%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 5 (1.49%) Taxonomies
12 4 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.19%) Distributed Architecture
13 3 (0.90%) Legacy Applications
13 3 (0.90%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 45 (13.43%) Linux
2 24 (7.16%) Unix
3 6 (1.79%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.49%) Android
4 5 (1.49%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.90%) Windows
6 2 (0.60%) AIX
7 1 (0.30%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (69.25%) Agile
1 232 (69.25%) CI/CD
2 219 (65.37%) TDD
3 212 (63.28%) Test Automation
4 121 (36.12%) Microservices
5 115 (34.33%) DevOps
6 88 (26.27%) Scrum
7 75 (22.39%) AI
8 74 (22.09%) Problem-Solving
8 74 (22.09%) Software Engineering
9 68 (20.30%) Continuous Improvement
10 67 (20.00%) Test Strategy
11 66 (19.70%) Software Testing
12 63 (18.81%) API Testing
13 60 (17.91%) Stakeholder Management
14 46 (13.73%) SDLC
15 45 (13.43%) Continuous Integration
16 44 (13.13%) Integration Testing
17 41 (12.24%) Coaching
17 41 (12.24%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 209 (62.39%) Java
2 85 (25.37%) SQL
3 80 (23.88%) Python
4 70 (20.90%) JavaScript
5 60 (17.91%) C#
6 38 (11.34%) TypeScript
7 13 (3.88%) Bash
7 13 (3.88%) Ruby
8 9 (2.69%) C++
9 7 (2.09%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.09%) Groovy
9 7 (2.09%) Scala
10 6 (1.79%) Kotlin
10 6 (1.79%) R
11 4 (1.19%) Go
11 4 (1.19%) Perl
12 3 (0.90%) Bicep
12 3 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.90%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.60%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 82 (24.48%) Security Cleared
2 66 (19.70%) SC Cleared
3 32 (9.55%) BPSS Clearance
4 24 (7.16%) Degree
5 21 (6.27%) ISTQB
6 19 (5.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (3.28%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.69%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 8 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (1.79%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.90%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.90%) CSPO
12 2 (0.60%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.60%) ISEB
12 2 (0.60%) Master's Degree
13 1 (0.30%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 1 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (27.16%) QA
2 68 (20.30%) Accessibility
3 45 (13.43%) WCAG
4 16 (4.78%) GDPR
5 15 (4.48%) Data Quality
6 4 (1.19%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.60%) SEPA
8 1 (0.30%) EMIR
8 1 (0.30%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.30%) MiFID
8 1 (0.30%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 90 (26.87%) Docker
2 4 (1.19%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 76 (22.69%) Kubernetes
2 20 (5.97%) Grafana
3 14 (4.18%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.79%) Ansible
5 5 (1.49%) Kibana
6 3 (0.90%) Istio
7 2 (0.60%) Argo
7 2 (0.60%) Consul
7 2 (0.60%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.30%) Control-M
8 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 31 (9.25%) Microsoft
2 16 (4.78%) Oracle
3 15 (4.48%) IBM
3 15 (4.48%) Salesforce
3 15 (4.48%) Sybase
4 14 (4.18%) Databricks
5 13 (3.88%) Google
6 8 (2.39%) Conga
6 8 (2.39%) GoCardless
7 6 (1.79%) Atlassian
7 6 (1.79%) OpenAI
7 6 (1.79%) Splunk
8 5 (1.49%) Jaspersoft
9 4 (1.19%) CA Agile Central
9 4 (1.19%) Checkmarx
9 4 (1.19%) ION Trading
10 3 (0.90%) Guidewire
11 2 (0.60%) FactSet
11 2 (0.60%) OneLogin
11 2 (0.60%) Solace