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 16 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 334 281 283
Rank change year-on-year -53 +2 -60
Contract jobs citing BDD 362 282 346
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.87% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.81% 0.96% 0.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 186 250
10th Percentile £317 £357 £357
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -7.41% -10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £595 £650
90th Percentile £678 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £510
% change year-on-year - -11.76% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate £45.00 - £56.25
75th Percentile £46.88 - -
90th Percentile £48.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.25 - £56.25
% change year-on-year - - -21.05%

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 44,779 29,366 36,386
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.09% 90.39% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,858 18,449 23,259
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,648 1,547 2,431
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.22 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.21 £17.45 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.29%
75th Percentile £68.50 £52.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.65 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.34 £38.12
% change year-on-year +84.88% -36.15% -3.74%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 -40 295 £463 -9.76% 52
UK excluding London -20 211 £450 - 40
London -73 115 £475 -19.32% 22
Work from Home -47 111 £456 -8.75% 31
North of England -37 85 £453 -0.44% 11
Midlands -22 52 £425 -7.86% 8
West Midlands -18 51 £425 -8.11% 4
North West -22 44 £438 +8.83% 7
Scotland -1 30 £451 +4.64%
Yorkshire -43 27 £620 +18.10% 3
North East -25 20 £450 +7.14% 2
South West -23 19 £525 +23.53% 3
South East -68 18 £358 -10.50% 11
East of England -14 8 £510 - 2
Wales -7 2 £650 - 2
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 3

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 53 (14.64%) Confluence
2 5 (1.38%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.10%) Apache
3 4 (1.10%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.55%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.28%) Camunda
6 1 (0.28%) CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (0.83%) Notion
2 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.28%) Mingle
3 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.21%) Payment Gateway
2 6 (1.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.83%) Findur
3 3 (0.83%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 135 (37.29%) AWS
2 112 (30.94%) Azure
3 95 (26.24%) GitHub
4 53 (14.64%) Azure DevOps
5 51 (14.09%) GCP
6 49 (13.54%) GitHub Actions
7 30 (8.29%) Serverless
8 26 (7.18%) Amazon S3
9 25 (6.91%) Amazon SQS
10 23 (6.35%) Amazon EC2
11 21 (5.80%) AWS Lambda
12 19 (5.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 13 (3.59%) AWS KMS
13 13 (3.59%) ChatGPT
13 13 (3.59%) GitHub Copilot
14 12 (3.31%) BrowserStack
14 12 (3.31%) Route 53
15 11 (3.04%) Anthropic Claude
16 10 (2.76%) Power Platform
17 8 (2.21%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.66%) 3GPP
1 6 (1.66%) RTP
1 6 (1.66%) Wireshark
2 3 (0.83%) DSL
2 3 (0.83%) Internet
2 3 (0.83%) WAN
3 2 (0.55%) Firewall
3 2 (0.55%) NaaS
4 1 (0.28%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.28%) HTTP
4 1 (0.28%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.28%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (17.13%) MongoDB
2 51 (14.09%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (6.91%) Relational Database
4 20 (5.52%) DynamoDB
4 20 (5.52%) NoSQL
5 19 (5.25%) SQL Server
6 18 (4.97%) Amazon RDS
7 16 (4.42%) Amazon Aurora
8 15 (4.14%) Db2
9 11 (3.04%) Data Lake
9 11 (3.04%) Metadata
10 10 (2.76%) Oracle Database
11 8 (2.21%) MySQL
12 7 (1.93%) Power BI
13 5 (1.38%) Amazon Athena
13 5 (1.38%) BigQuery
13 5 (1.38%) Couchbase
13 5 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
13 5 (1.38%) Tableau
14 3 (0.83%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 117 (32.32%) Cucumber
2 99 (27.35%) Selenium
3 97 (26.80%) Git
4 96 (26.52%) Jenkins
5 72 (19.89%) GitLab
6 71 (19.61%) JIRA
7 66 (18.23%) JUnit
8 45 (12.43%) WebDriver
9 44 (12.15%) REST Assured
10 43 (11.88%) Postman
11 42 (11.60%) Mockito
12 30 (8.29%) SonarQube
13 28 (7.73%) JMeter
14 24 (6.63%) Cypress.io
15 23 (6.35%) SpecFlow
16 22 (6.08%) Maven
17 20 (5.52%) Gatling
18 17 (4.70%) TeamCity
19 12 (3.31%) DbUnit
19 12 (3.31%) Serenity BDD
General
1 100 (27.62%) Social Skills
2 79 (21.82%) Finance
3 71 (19.61%) Public Sector
4 52 (14.36%) Analytical Skills
5 41 (11.33%) Banking
6 12 (3.31%) Front Office
7 11 (3.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 10 (2.76%) Organisational Skills
9 9 (2.49%) Retail
10 8 (2.21%) Investment Banking
10 8 (2.21%) Military
11 5 (1.38%) Aviation
11 5 (1.38%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.38%) Police
12 4 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.83%) Automotive
13 3 (0.83%) Billing
13 3 (0.83%) Marketing
14 2 (0.55%) Law
Job Titles
1 116 (32.04%) Developer
2 78 (21.55%) Java Developer
3 74 (20.44%) Senior
4 61 (16.85%) Test Engineer
5 42 (11.60%) Lead
6 36 (9.94%) Software Engineer
7 34 (9.39%) Test Automation Engineer
8 28 (7.73%) Tester
9 26 (7.18%) Senior Developer
10 24 (6.63%) Senior Java Developer
11 23 (6.35%) Automation Tester
12 20 (5.52%) Analyst
13 19 (5.25%) Java Engineer
13 19 (5.25%) Test Leader
14 13 (3.59%) QA Engineer
14 13 (3.59%) Senior Software Engineer
14 13 (3.59%) Senior Tester
15 12 (3.31%) Architect
15 12 (3.31%) Automation Test Lead
16 11 (3.04%) Salesforce Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 94 (25.97%) Spring
2 74 (20.44%) Spring Boot
3 68 (18.78%) Playwright
4 64 (17.68%) REST
5 61 (16.85%) Kafka
6 50 (13.81%) Gherkin
7 45 (12.43%) RESTful
8 35 (9.67%) .NET
9 31 (8.56%) AngularJS
10 30 (8.29%) WireMock
11 29 (8.01%) ActiveMQ
12 27 (7.46%) Node.js
13 26 (7.18%) React
14 24 (6.63%) SOAP
15 21 (5.80%) Spring Cloud
16 20 (5.52%) JAX-RS
17 18 (4.97%) Web Services
18 17 (4.70%) JPA
19 16 (4.42%) Hibernate
20 14 (3.87%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 37 (10.22%) Distributed Systems
2 34 (9.39%) Cloud Native
3 32 (8.84%) Product Ownership
4 16 (4.42%) Distributed Architecture
5 15 (4.14%) Enterprise Software
6 13 (3.59%) Equity Derivative
7 10 (2.76%) Derivative
8 8 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (1.93%) Mobile App
9 7 (1.93%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.38%) Robotics
10 5 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.38%) Taxonomies
10 5 (1.38%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.10%) Distributed Applications
12 3 (0.83%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.83%) Fixed Income
12 3 (0.83%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.83%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 53 (14.64%) Linux
2 25 (6.91%) Unix
3 12 (3.31%) Mac OS X
4 7 (1.93%) Android
4 7 (1.93%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.83%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.83%) Windows
6 2 (0.55%) VMS
7 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 235 (64.92%) Agile
2 229 (63.26%) TDD
3 228 (62.98%) CI/CD
4 207 (57.18%) Test Automation
5 147 (40.61%) Microservices
6 132 (36.46%) DevOps
7 79 (21.82%) Scrum
8 75 (20.72%) Problem-Solving
9 72 (19.89%) Continuous Improvement
10 69 (19.06%) Test Strategy
11 67 (18.51%) API Testing
12 65 (17.96%) Software Engineering
13 55 (15.19%) AI
14 48 (13.26%) Mentoring
15 44 (12.15%) Containerisation
15 44 (12.15%) Continuous Integration
15 44 (12.15%) SDLC
16 42 (11.60%) Observability
17 40 (11.05%) Stakeholder Management
18 39 (10.77%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 220 (60.77%) Java
2 91 (25.14%) SQL
3 72 (19.89%) Python
4 59 (16.30%) C#
5 58 (16.02%) JavaScript
6 32 (8.84%) TypeScript
7 15 (4.14%) C++
8 8 (2.21%) Groovy
8 8 (2.21%) Kotlin
9 7 (1.93%) Apex Code
10 6 (1.66%) T-SQL
11 5 (1.38%) Go
12 4 (1.10%) Perl
12 4 (1.10%) R
12 4 (1.10%) Ruby
13 3 (0.83%) Scala
13 3 (0.83%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.55%) Bash
14 2 (0.55%) Cypher
14 2 (0.55%) VBA
Qualifications
1 92 (25.41%) Security Cleared
2 75 (20.72%) SC Cleared
3 23 (6.35%) Degree
4 21 (5.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (3.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (3.87%) ISTQB
6 8 (2.21%) DV Cleared
7 7 (1.93%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (1.38%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.38%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.83%) CSPO
9 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.28%) ISEB
10 1 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (19.06%) QA
2 45 (12.43%) Accessibility
3 16 (4.42%) Data Quality
4 14 (3.87%) WCAG
5 10 (2.76%) GDPR
6 2 (0.55%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.28%) EMIR
7 1 (0.28%) MiFID
7 1 (0.28%) SEPA
7 1 (0.28%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 98 (27.07%) Docker
2 9 (2.49%) Postfix
3 1 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 82 (22.65%) Kubernetes
2 46 (12.71%) Grafana
3 37 (10.22%) Prometheus
4 32 (8.84%) Terraform
5 7 (1.93%) Ansible
6 4 (1.10%) Kibana
7 3 (0.83%) Istio
8 2 (0.55%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.55%) Argo
8 2 (0.55%) Consul
8 2 (0.55%) Rancher
8 2 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.55%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.28%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.28%) EMC VPLEX
Vendors
1 26 (7.18%) Oracle
2 21 (5.80%) Salesforce
3 16 (4.42%) Sybase
4 15 (4.14%) Google
4 15 (4.14%) Microsoft
5 14 (3.87%) Atlassian
6 11 (3.04%) IBM
6 11 (3.04%) Jaspersoft
6 11 (3.04%) Splunk
7 8 (2.21%) Checkmarx
7 8 (2.21%) Conga
7 8 (2.21%) GoCardless
8 6 (1.66%) Databricks
8 6 (1.66%) Dynatrace
9 5 (1.38%) ServiceNow
10 4 (1.10%) Veracode
11 3 (0.83%) CA Agile Central
11 3 (0.83%) Guidewire
11 3 (0.83%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.83%) OpenLink