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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 332 262 278
Rank change year-on-year -70 +16 -149
Contract jobs citing BDD 277 312 358
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.75% 0.94% 0.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 1.06% 0.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 179 179 244
10th Percentile £374 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -14.89%
75th Percentile £579 £617 £605
90th Percentile £675 £803 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £450 £494
% change year-on-year +8.33% -8.86% -9.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £82.50 - £76.25
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £77.50
75th Percentile £87.50 - £84.38
90th Percentile - - £87.75
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 32,670 29,303 37,803
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.06% 88.34% 87.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,630 17,837 25,180
10th Percentile £304 £308 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,024 946 1,523
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £18.98
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -26.97% +27.14%
75th Percentile £52.72 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.25 £74.60 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £30.45 £45.21
% change year-on-year -22.58% -32.65% +44.86%

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 1 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 1 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 -66 234 £500 - 144
UK excluding London -53 129 £488 +8.33% 80
London -44 109 £520 -8.37% 66
North of England -31 99 £500 +11.11% 34
Work from Home -21 73 £481 -6.28% 88
Yorkshire -43 49 £550 +15.79% 12
North West -23 29 £418 +4.38% 22
North East +8 23 £460 +26.90%
South East -23 9 £500 - 24
Midlands -33 6 £313 -38.42% 10
Scotland +7 5 £545 +28.24% 1
Wales +2 4 £375 -
West Midlands -29 4 £475 -6.40% 7
South West -27 3 £400 -25.58% 8
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 3
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 1
East of England -18 1 £375 +20.00% 2

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 22 (7.94%) Confluence
2 4 (1.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.72%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.72%) nginx
4 1 (0.36%) Cloud Foundry
4 1 (0.36%) CMS
Applications
1 6 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 6 (2.17%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 88 (31.77%) AWS
2 72 (25.99%) Azure
3 36 (13.00%) GitHub
4 24 (8.66%) Azure DevOps
5 23 (8.30%) GCP
6 22 (7.94%) Serverless
7 16 (5.78%) AWS Lambda
7 16 (5.78%) GitHub Actions
8 11 (3.97%) SaaS
9 9 (3.25%) Amazon ECS
9 9 (3.25%) Amazon S3
10 8 (2.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 8 (2.89%) Amazon EKS
10 8 (2.89%) Amazon SQS
11 7 (2.53%) Amazon EventBridge
11 7 (2.53%) Apigee
11 7 (2.53%) AWS Step Functions
11 7 (2.53%) Datadog
12 6 (2.17%) PaaS
13 5 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.81%) Cisco IPT
2 4 (1.44%) HTTP
3 2 (0.72%) MQTT
4 1 (0.36%) DSL
4 1 (0.36%) FTP
4 1 (0.36%) Internet
4 1 (0.36%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (13.72%) MongoDB
2 34 (12.27%) PostgreSQL
3 20 (7.22%) MySQL
4 19 (6.86%) NoSQL
5 17 (6.14%) SQL Server
6 13 (4.69%) Redis
7 11 (3.97%) Amazon RDS
7 11 (3.97%) Relational Database
8 8 (2.89%) DynamoDB
9 7 (2.53%) RDBMS
10 6 (2.17%) BigQuery
11 5 (1.81%) Amazon Aurora
12 4 (1.44%) Apache Cassandra
13 3 (1.08%) Big Data
13 3 (1.08%) DB2
14 2 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
15 1 (0.36%) Amazon Athena
15 1 (0.36%) Data Lake
15 1 (0.36%) Delta Lake
15 1 (0.36%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 89 (32.13%) Cucumber
2 67 (24.19%) Jenkins
3 66 (23.83%) Git
4 61 (22.02%) Selenium
5 47 (16.97%) JIRA
6 42 (15.16%) GitLab
7 36 (13.00%) Postman
8 26 (9.39%) Mockito
8 26 (9.39%) REST Assured
9 23 (8.30%) Cypress.io
10 16 (5.78%) Bitbucket
11 15 (5.42%) Gradle
11 15 (5.42%) JMeter
11 15 (5.42%) JUnit
12 13 (4.69%) Maven
13 12 (4.33%) SonarQube
14 11 (3.97%) WebDriver
15 9 (3.25%) TestRail
16 8 (2.89%) SpecFlow
17 6 (2.17%) Zephyr
General
1 75 (27.08%) Social Skills
2 54 (19.49%) Public Sector
3 36 (13.00%) Finance
4 31 (11.19%) Banking
5 15 (5.42%) Analytical Skills
6 11 (3.97%) Investment Banking
7 8 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.17%) Front Office
9 5 (1.81%) Legal
9 5 (1.81%) Military
10 4 (1.44%) Electronics
11 1 (0.36%) Back Office
11 1 (0.36%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.36%) Marketing
11 1 (0.36%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 109 (39.35%) Developer
2 68 (24.55%) Java Developer
3 52 (18.77%) Senior
4 43 (15.52%) Test Engineer
5 30 (10.83%) Senior Developer
6 25 (9.03%) Lead
7 24 (8.66%) Senior Java Developer
8 22 (7.94%) Software Engineer
9 20 (7.22%) Test Automation Engineer
10 15 (5.42%) QA Engineer
11 14 (5.05%) Java Engineer
12 13 (4.69%) Analyst
12 13 (4.69%) Tester
13 10 (3.61%) Angular Developer
13 10 (3.61%) Automation Tester
14 9 (3.25%) Architect
14 9 (3.25%) Automation Engineer
14 9 (3.25%) Senior Test Engineer
15 8 (2.89%) Scala Developer
15 8 (2.89%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (20.58%) REST
2 56 (20.22%) Spring Boot
3 48 (17.33%) RESTful
4 47 (16.97%) Kafka
5 42 (15.16%) Node.js
6 39 (14.08%) React
7 37 (13.36%) Spring
8 30 (10.83%) Playwright
9 27 (9.75%) ActiveMQ
10 26 (9.39%) .NET
10 26 (9.39%) Gherkin
11 24 (8.66%) JAX-RS
12 23 (8.30%) CSS
13 21 (7.58%) AngularJS
14 17 (6.14%) HTML
15 16 (5.78%) JSON
16 14 (5.05%) Jest
17 13 (4.69%) WireMock
18 12 (4.33%) Web Services
19 11 (3.97%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 38 (13.72%) Product Ownership
2 16 (5.78%) Cloud Native
3 10 (3.61%) Mobile App
4 7 (2.53%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (2.17%) Distributed Architecture
5 6 (2.17%) Equities
5 6 (2.17%) N-Tier
5 6 (2.17%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.81%) Algorithms
6 5 (1.81%) Client/Server
6 5 (1.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (1.81%) Greenfield Project
6 5 (1.81%) NHS
7 3 (1.08%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.08%) Educational Technology
7 3 (1.08%) Mobile Banking
7 3 (1.08%) Private Cloud
7 3 (1.08%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 36 (13.00%) Linux
2 29 (10.47%) Unix
3 20 (7.22%) Mac OS X
4 4 (1.44%) Android
5 3 (1.08%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.72%) Windows
7 1 (0.36%) VMS
7 1 (0.36%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 200 (72.20%) Agile
2 192 (69.31%) TDD
3 166 (59.93%) Test Automation
4 148 (53.43%) CI/CD
5 137 (49.46%) Microservices
6 75 (27.08%) DevOps
6 75 (27.08%) Scrum
7 56 (20.22%) Software Engineering
8 54 (19.49%) Problem-Solving
9 53 (19.13%) API Testing
10 52 (18.77%) Containerisation
11 41 (14.80%) Continuous Improvement
12 35 (12.64%) Continuous Deployment
12 35 (12.64%) Kanban
12 35 (12.64%) Non-Functional Testing
12 35 (12.64%) Test Strategy
13 33 (11.91%) Mentoring
14 32 (11.55%) Continuous Integration
14 32 (11.55%) Design Patterns
14 32 (11.55%) Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 176 (63.54%) Java
2 55 (19.86%) JavaScript
3 52 (18.77%) SQL
4 49 (17.69%) Python
5 38 (13.72%) TypeScript
6 23 (8.30%) C#
7 15 (5.42%) Scala
8 9 (3.25%) C++
8 9 (3.25%) Ruby
9 8 (2.89%) Kotlin
10 7 (2.53%) PHP
11 6 (2.17%) JSX
12 5 (1.81%) Go
13 4 (1.44%) Bash
13 4 (1.44%) C
14 3 (1.08%) Objective-C
14 3 (1.08%) Swift
15 2 (0.72%) PL/SQL
16 1 (0.36%) Groovy
16 1 (0.36%) XPath
Qualifications
1 69 (24.91%) Security Cleared
2 54 (19.49%) SC Cleared
3 18 (6.50%) BPSS Clearance
4 15 (5.42%) ISTQB
5 14 (5.05%) Degree
6 7 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (1.81%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (1.08%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.08%) ISEB
9 2 (0.72%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.72%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 2 (0.72%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.72%) Numerate Degree
10 1 (0.36%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (23.47%) QA
2 36 (13.00%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.97%) WCAG
4 8 (2.89%) GDPR
5 5 (1.81%) PERC
6 3 (1.08%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.72%) HL7
8 1 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 70 (25.27%) Docker
Systems Management
1 50 (18.05%) Kubernetes
2 24 (8.66%) Terraform
3 12 (4.33%) Grafana
4 10 (3.61%) Ansible
5 8 (2.89%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.08%) Kustomize
7 2 (0.72%) HP Fortify
7 2 (0.72%) Kibana
8 1 (0.36%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.36%) logstash
8 1 (0.36%) Rancher
8 1 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 13 (4.69%) Oracle
2 8 (2.89%) Microsoft
3 7 (2.53%) Atlassian
4 6 (2.17%) Splunk
5 5 (1.81%) Gigya
5 5 (1.81%) ServiceNow
6 4 (1.44%) Adobe
6 4 (1.44%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.08%) Databricks
7 3 (1.08%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.72%) CA Agile Central
8 2 (0.72%) IBM
9 1 (0.36%) Bloomberg
9 1 (0.36%) Google
9 1 (0.36%) Marketo
9 1 (0.36%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.36%) Reuters
9 1 (0.36%) UiPath
9 1 (0.36%) VMware
9 1 (0.36%) Xamarin