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

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 342 286 280
Rank change year-on-year -56 -6 -77
Contract jobs citing BDD 324 254 343
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.86% 0.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.76% 0.94% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 157 259
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £400 £410 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% -4.76% -12.50%
75th Percentile £552 £575 £631
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £444 £516
% change year-on-year +4.23% -14.04% +3.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £46.25 - -
Median hourly rate £47.50 - £56.25
75th Percentile £48.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 - £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 42,574 26,968 37,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.80% 91.03% 85.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,549 17,103 23,600
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £506 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.28% -3.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,556 1,231 2,598
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.01
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.32 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +67.02% -29.21% +6.23%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +76.94% -34.02% +17.29%

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 June 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 June 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 -61 264 £475 -5.00% 79
UK excluding London -36 188 £463 +4.23% 64
London -78 107 £500 -13.42% 27
Work from Home -20 96 £450 -10.00% 57
North of England -41 76 £453 +2.08% 15
Midlands -32 43 £425 -11.69% 14
West Midlands -33 42 £425 -15.00% 7
North West -16 38 £453 +14.25% 10
Scotland +5 28 £451 +20.33% 1
Yorkshire -54 25 £620 +19.29% 3
South West -21 19 £525 +27.27% 6
North East -23 17 £450 +7.14% 2
South East -64 13 £359 -24.53% 20
East of England -23 8 £510 - 2
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 7
Wales -13 2 £650 -

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 46 (14.20%) Confluence
2 5 (1.54%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.62%) Apache
3 2 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.62%) OpenStack
3 2 (0.62%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.31%) Camunda
4 1 (0.31%) nginx
4 1 (0.31%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (0.93%) Notion
2 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.31%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.31%) Mingle
3 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.47%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.93%) Findur
3 2 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.62%) Workday HCM
4 1 (0.31%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 117 (36.11%) AWS
2 99 (30.56%) Azure
3 85 (26.23%) GitHub
4 47 (14.51%) GCP
5 45 (13.89%) Azure DevOps
6 41 (12.65%) GitHub Actions
7 26 (8.02%) Serverless
8 24 (7.41%) Amazon S3
9 23 (7.10%) Amazon SQS
10 22 (6.79%) Amazon EC2
11 20 (6.17%) AWS Lambda
12 18 (5.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 14 (4.32%) BrowserStack
14 12 (3.70%) AWS KMS
14 12 (3.70%) Route 53
15 11 (3.40%) ChatGPT
16 10 (3.09%) GitHub Copilot
17 9 (2.78%) Anthropic Claude
17 9 (2.78%) Power Platform
18 7 (2.16%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.85%) 3GPP
1 6 (1.85%) RTP
1 6 (1.85%) Wireshark
2 3 (0.93%) WAN
3 2 (0.62%) DSL
3 2 (0.62%) Firewall
3 2 (0.62%) Internet
3 2 (0.62%) NaaS
4 1 (0.31%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.31%) HTTP
4 1 (0.31%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.31%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (14.81%) PostgreSQL
2 46 (14.20%) MongoDB
3 22 (6.79%) Relational Database
4 18 (5.56%) DynamoDB
5 17 (5.25%) Amazon RDS
6 16 (4.94%) Amazon Aurora
7 15 (4.63%) NoSQL
8 14 (4.32%) SQL Server
9 12 (3.70%) Db2
10 11 (3.40%) Metadata
11 10 (3.09%) Oracle Database
12 9 (2.78%) Data Lake
12 9 (2.78%) MySQL
13 6 (1.85%) Power BI
14 4 (1.23%) Amazon Athena
14 4 (1.23%) Tableau
15 3 (0.93%) Couchbase
15 3 (0.93%) MariaDB
16 2 (0.62%) Apache Cassandra
16 2 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 107 (33.02%) Cucumber
2 91 (28.09%) Git
3 87 (26.85%) Jenkins
3 87 (26.85%) Selenium
4 66 (20.37%) GitLab
5 64 (19.75%) JUnit
6 62 (19.14%) JIRA
7 43 (13.27%) REST Assured
8 40 (12.35%) WebDriver
9 38 (11.73%) Postman
10 35 (10.80%) Mockito
11 30 (9.26%) SonarQube
12 27 (8.33%) JMeter
13 18 (5.56%) Cypress.io
13 18 (5.56%) Maven
13 18 (5.56%) SpecFlow
14 16 (4.94%) Gatling
15 15 (4.63%) TeamCity
16 12 (3.70%) DbUnit
16 12 (3.70%) Serenity BDD
General
1 90 (27.78%) Social Skills
2 72 (22.22%) Finance
3 63 (19.44%) Public Sector
4 46 (14.20%) Analytical Skills
5 36 (11.11%) Banking
6 12 (3.70%) Front Office
7 9 (2.78%) Investment Banking
7 9 (2.78%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (2.16%) Military
9 6 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.85%) Retail
10 5 (1.54%) Aviation
10 5 (1.54%) Fire and Rescue
10 5 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.54%) Police
11 4 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.93%) Billing
13 2 (0.62%) Automotive
13 2 (0.62%) Law
13 2 (0.62%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 98 (30.25%) Developer
2 67 (20.68%) Java Developer
3 61 (18.83%) Senior
4 57 (17.59%) Test Engineer
5 42 (12.96%) Lead
6 33 (10.19%) Software Engineer
7 30 (9.26%) Test Automation Engineer
8 26 (8.02%) Tester
9 20 (6.17%) Automation Tester
9 20 (6.17%) Java Engineer
10 19 (5.86%) Senior Developer
11 18 (5.56%) Senior Java Developer
11 18 (5.56%) Test Leader
12 14 (4.32%) QA Engineer
13 13 (4.01%) Analyst
14 12 (3.70%) Automation Test Lead
14 12 (3.70%) Senior Software Engineer
14 12 (3.70%) Senior Tester
15 11 (3.40%) Architect
15 11 (3.40%) Salesforce Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (27.16%) Spring
2 71 (21.91%) Spring Boot
3 61 (18.83%) Playwright
4 56 (17.28%) REST
5 48 (14.81%) Kafka
6 43 (13.27%) Gherkin
7 41 (12.65%) RESTful
8 30 (9.26%) AngularJS
9 29 (8.95%) .NET
10 27 (8.33%) Node.js
11 26 (8.02%) React
12 25 (7.72%) WireMock
13 22 (6.79%) ActiveMQ
14 21 (6.48%) Spring Cloud
15 18 (5.56%) SOAP
15 18 (5.56%) Web Services
16 17 (5.25%) JPA
17 16 (4.94%) Hibernate
18 14 (4.32%) Spring Batch
19 13 (4.01%) JAX-RS
Miscellaneous
1 34 (10.49%) Distributed Systems
2 30 (9.26%) Cloud Native
3 26 (8.02%) Product Ownership
4 16 (4.94%) Distributed Architecture
5 12 (3.70%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (3.40%) Equity Derivative
7 10 (3.09%) Derivative
8 7 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (2.16%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.54%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.54%) Robotics
9 5 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.23%) Distributed Applications
11 3 (0.93%) Equities
11 3 (0.93%) Fixed Income
11 3 (0.93%) Public Cloud
12 2 (0.62%) Linux Command Line
12 2 (0.62%) PKI
12 2 (0.62%) Taxonomies
12 2 (0.62%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 47 (14.51%) Linux
2 16 (4.94%) Unix
3 10 (3.09%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.54%) Android
4 5 (1.54%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.62%) Mac OS
5 2 (0.62%) VMS
5 2 (0.62%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 201 (62.04%) TDD
2 199 (61.42%) Agile
3 196 (60.49%) CI/CD
4 186 (57.41%) Test Automation
5 128 (39.51%) Microservices
6 120 (37.04%) DevOps
7 68 (20.99%) Scrum
8 64 (19.75%) Test Strategy
9 63 (19.44%) API Testing
10 62 (19.14%) Problem-Solving
11 61 (18.83%) Software Engineering
12 60 (18.52%) Continuous Improvement
13 46 (14.20%) AI
14 44 (13.58%) SDLC
15 43 (13.27%) Mentoring
16 41 (12.65%) Observability
17 39 (12.04%) Containerisation
18 37 (11.42%) Continuous Integration
19 35 (10.80%) Validation
20 33 (10.19%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 200 (61.73%) Java
2 85 (26.23%) SQL
3 69 (21.30%) Python
4 50 (15.43%) C#
4 50 (15.43%) JavaScript
5 29 (8.95%) TypeScript
6 16 (4.94%) C++
7 7 (2.16%) Apex Code
7 7 (2.16%) Kotlin
8 6 (1.85%) Groovy
8 6 (1.85%) T-SQL
9 5 (1.54%) Ruby
10 4 (1.23%) Go
10 4 (1.23%) Perl
11 2 (0.62%) Bash
11 2 (0.62%) PromQL
11 2 (0.62%) Scala
11 2 (0.62%) VBA
12 1 (0.31%) Cypher
12 1 (0.31%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 83 (25.62%) Security Cleared
2 67 (20.68%) SC Cleared
3 23 (7.10%) Degree
4 19 (5.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (4.32%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (3.09%) ISTQB
7 7 (2.16%) DV Cleared
8 5 (1.54%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.54%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.62%) CSPO
9 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.31%) ISEB
10 1 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (17.90%) QA
2 39 (12.04%) Accessibility
3 14 (4.32%) Data Quality
4 8 (2.47%) WCAG
5 4 (1.23%) GDPR
6 1 (0.31%) EMIR
6 1 (0.31%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.31%) MiFID
System Software
1 90 (27.78%) Docker
2 9 (2.78%) Postfix
3 1 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 70 (21.60%) Kubernetes
2 45 (13.89%) Grafana
3 37 (11.42%) Prometheus
4 28 (8.64%) Terraform
5 8 (2.47%) Ansible
6 3 (0.93%) Istio
6 3 (0.93%) Kibana
7 2 (0.62%) Amdocs OSS
7 2 (0.62%) Consul
7 2 (0.62%) Rancher
7 2 (0.62%) Zipkin
8 1 (0.31%) Argo
8 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.31%) EMC VPLEX
8 1 (0.31%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.31%) HP ALM
8 1 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 24 (7.41%) Oracle
2 17 (5.25%) Salesforce
3 15 (4.63%) Atlassian
4 14 (4.32%) Google
4 14 (4.32%) Sybase
5 11 (3.40%) Jaspersoft
5 11 (3.40%) Splunk
6 8 (2.47%) Checkmarx
6 8 (2.47%) Conga
6 8 (2.47%) GoCardless
6 8 (2.47%) IBM
7 7 (2.16%) Microsoft
8 6 (1.85%) Databricks
8 6 (1.85%) Dynatrace
9 5 (1.54%) ServiceNow
10 4 (1.23%) Veracode
11 3 (0.93%) OpenLink
12 2 (0.62%) Bloomberg
12 2 (0.62%) SAP
12 2 (0.62%) Workday