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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 386 279 260
Rank change year-on-year -107 -19 -9
Contract jobs citing BDD 322 303 351
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.93% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.70% 1.03% 1.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 199 235
10th Percentile £306 £362 £356
25th Percentile £400 £413 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £550 £631 £650
90th Percentile £667 £705 £758
UK excluding London median daily rate £445 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -6.32% +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 45,945 29,375 32,666
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.44% 90.50% 85.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,954 18,237 20,159
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £403 £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 £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 3,063 1,777 1,475
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.42 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.47 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £66.70 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.08 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.13% -47.67% +6.17%

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 15 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 15 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 -100 264 £459 -11.73% 281
UK excluding London -84 168 £445 -6.32% 165
London -76 118 £500 -9.42% 146
Work from Home -58 94 £488 -2.50% 151
North of England -70 71 £445 -15.24% 57
Midlands -16 40 £438 -8.85% 29
West Midlands -22 39 £438 -12.50% 19
North West -43 29 £438 +3.31% 32
Yorkshire -41 27 £500 -9.09% 16
Scotland -14 23 £468 +1.08% 19
North East -28 19 £450 -2.17% 10
South East -70 16 £275 -4.51% 30
South West -50 12 £525 +27.27% 14
East of England -26 5 £570 +52.00% 8
Wales -9 4 £531 +41.67% 4
Northern Ireland +4 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 30 (9.32%) Confluence
2 4 (1.24%) Apache
2 4 (1.24%) 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 (3.11%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.48%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.93%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.62%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 109 (33.85%) AWS
2 100 (31.06%) Azure
3 85 (26.40%) GitHub
4 47 (14.60%) Azure DevOps
5 41 (12.73%) GitHub Actions
6 33 (10.25%) GCP
7 25 (7.76%) Serverless
8 23 (7.14%) GitHub Copilot
9 19 (5.90%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.28%) Amazon SQS
11 16 (4.97%) AWS Lambda
12 15 (4.66%) Amazon EC2
13 14 (4.35%) Anthropic Claude
13 14 (4.35%) ChatGPT
14 12 (3.73%) Power Automate
15 11 (3.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 11 (3.42%) Dynamics 365
16 10 (3.11%) Power Platform
17 9 (2.80%) AWS KMS
17 9 (2.80%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.17%) RTP
1 7 (2.17%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.86%) 3GPP
3 5 (1.55%) 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 53 (16.46%) MongoDB
2 28 (8.70%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (7.14%) NoSQL
4 21 (6.52%) Relational Database
5 17 (5.28%) SQL Server
6 15 (4.66%) Db2
7 12 (3.73%) Amazon RDS
7 12 (3.73%) DynamoDB
7 12 (3.73%) Metadata
8 10 (3.11%) Amazon Aurora
9 7 (2.17%) Data Lake
9 7 (2.17%) MySQL
9 7 (2.17%) Power BI
10 6 (1.86%) BigQuery
10 6 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
11 5 (1.55%) Couchbase
11 5 (1.55%) Tableau
12 3 (0.93%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (0.93%) Big Data
12 3 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 113 (35.09%) Cucumber
2 94 (29.19%) Git
3 90 (27.95%) Selenium
4 70 (21.74%) Jenkins
5 58 (18.01%) GitLab
6 56 (17.39%) JUnit
7 47 (14.60%) REST Assured
8 46 (14.29%) JIRA
9 43 (13.35%) Postman
10 32 (9.94%) WebDriver
11 29 (9.01%) Mockito
12 27 (8.39%) Cypress.io
13 26 (8.07%) SonarQube
14 24 (7.45%) Gatling
15 20 (6.21%) Maven
15 20 (6.21%) SpecFlow
16 14 (4.35%) JMeter
17 13 (4.04%) TeamCity
18 10 (3.11%) Gradle
19 9 (2.80%) TestNG
General
1 112 (34.78%) Social Skills
2 69 (21.43%) Finance
3 61 (18.94%) Public Sector
4 56 (17.39%) Analytical Skills
5 45 (13.98%) Banking
6 18 (5.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (4.35%) Front Office
8 10 (3.11%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.17%) Military
9 7 (2.17%) Retail
10 5 (1.55%) Aviation
10 5 (1.55%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.55%) Police
11 4 (1.24%) 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 97 (30.12%) Developer
2 72 (22.36%) Senior
3 57 (17.70%) Java Developer
4 55 (17.08%) Test Engineer
5 37 (11.49%) Software Engineer
6 32 (9.94%) Test Automation Engineer
7 27 (8.39%) Senior Developer
8 26 (8.07%) Lead
9 23 (7.14%) Analyst
10 19 (5.90%) Java Engineer
11 18 (5.59%) Senior Java Developer
12 15 (4.66%) Tester
13 14 (4.35%) QA Engineer
14 13 (4.04%) Automation Tester
14 13 (4.04%) Test Leader
15 12 (3.73%) Quality Engineer
15 12 (3.73%) Senior Software Engineer
15 12 (3.73%) Test Analyst
16 11 (3.42%) Python Developer
16 11 (3.42%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (20.50%) Playwright
1 66 (20.50%) Spring
2 63 (19.57%) REST
3 58 (18.01%) Spring Boot
4 54 (16.77%) Gherkin
4 54 (16.77%) Kafka
5 40 (12.42%) RESTful
6 31 (9.63%) .NET
7 25 (7.76%) React
8 24 (7.45%) Node.js
9 23 (7.14%) Terraform
10 21 (6.52%) AngularJS
10 21 (6.52%) WireMock
11 20 (6.21%) ActiveMQ
12 18 (5.59%) SOAP
13 16 (4.97%) HTML
14 14 (4.35%) JAX-RS
15 13 (4.04%) .NET Core
15 13 (4.04%) pytest
15 13 (4.04%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 36 (11.18%) Product Ownership
2 28 (8.70%) Cloud Native
2 28 (8.70%) Distributed Systems
3 18 (5.59%) Enterprise Software
4 14 (4.35%) Equity Derivative
5 13 (4.04%) Legacy Systems
6 10 (3.11%) Derivative
6 10 (3.11%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.17%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.86%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.55%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.55%) Distributed Architecture
9 5 (1.55%) NHS
9 5 (1.55%) Robotics
9 5 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.55%) Taxonomies
10 4 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.24%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 3 (0.93%) Legacy Code
12 2 (0.62%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 43 (13.35%) Linux
2 22 (6.83%) Unix
3 5 (1.55%) Android
3 5 (1.55%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.55%) 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 (67.39%) Agile
2 211 (65.53%) CI/CD
3 206 (63.98%) TDD
4 197 (61.18%) Test Automation
5 111 (34.47%) DevOps
6 106 (32.92%) Microservices
7 77 (23.91%) Scrum
8 72 (22.36%) AI
9 71 (22.05%) Problem-Solving
10 68 (21.12%) Software Engineering
11 63 (19.57%) Continuous Improvement
12 60 (18.63%) API Testing
13 59 (18.32%) Test Strategy
14 48 (14.91%) Software Testing
14 48 (14.91%) Stakeholder Management
15 43 (13.35%) Continuous Integration
15 43 (13.35%) SDLC
16 38 (11.80%) Mentoring
17 37 (11.49%) Integration Testing
18 36 (11.18%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 195 (60.56%) Java
2 87 (27.02%) SQL
3 78 (24.22%) Python
4 62 (19.25%) JavaScript
5 53 (16.46%) C#
6 32 (9.94%) TypeScript
7 12 (3.73%) Bash
7 12 (3.73%) Ruby
8 10 (3.11%) C++
9 7 (2.17%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.17%) Groovy
10 6 (1.86%) R
10 6 (1.86%) Scala
11 5 (1.55%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.24%) 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 78 (24.22%) Security Cleared
2 63 (19.57%) SC Cleared
3 24 (7.45%) BPSS Clearance
4 22 (6.83%) Degree
5 20 (6.21%) ISTQB
6 16 (4.97%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (3.11%) DV Cleared
8 9 (2.80%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 7 (2.17%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (1.55%) 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 77 (23.91%) QA
2 54 (16.77%) Accessibility
3 34 (10.56%) WCAG
4 16 (4.97%) Data Quality
5 15 (4.66%) GDPR
6 3 (0.93%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.31%) EMIR
7 1 (0.31%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.31%) MiFID
7 1 (0.31%) SEPA
7 1 (0.31%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.31%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 77 (23.91%) Docker
2 5 (1.55%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 62 (19.25%) Kubernetes
2 20 (6.21%) Grafana
3 15 (4.66%) Prometheus
4 6 (1.86%) Ansible
5 5 (1.55%) 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 27 (8.39%) Microsoft
2 16 (4.97%) Sybase
3 15 (4.66%) IBM
3 15 (4.66%) Salesforce
4 13 (4.04%) Oracle
5 12 (3.73%) Google
6 10 (3.11%) Databricks
7 8 (2.48%) Conga
7 8 (2.48%) GoCardless
8 7 (2.17%) Atlassian
9 6 (1.86%) Jaspersoft
10 5 (1.55%) Checkmarx
10 5 (1.55%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.93%) CA Agile Central
11 3 (0.93%) Guidewire
11 3 (0.93%) ION Trading
11 3 (0.93%) Splunk
12 2 (0.62%) Dynatrace
12 2 (0.62%) FactSet
12 2 (0.62%) Solace