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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 340 273 277
Rank change year-on-year -67 +4 -141
Contract jobs citing BDD 265 284 343
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.70% 0.90% 0.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.80% 1.01% 0.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 166 165 240
10th Percentile £374 £356 £350
25th Percentile £406 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% - -14.89%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £808 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +8.33% -10.00% -8.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £82.50 - -
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £90.00
75th Percentile £87.50 - -
90th Percentile - - -
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 33,213 28,195 38,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.59% 88.98% 87.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,058 17,139 25,095
10th Percentile £305 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £644
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,026 893 1,862
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.94 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £37.01
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -12.19% +15.66%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.65 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £30.62 £39.55
% change year-on-year -21.61% -22.59% +52.12%

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 23 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 23 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 -62 229 £500 - 155
UK excluding London -60 131 £488 +8.33% 143
London -43 103 £514 -9.27% 32
North of England -28 102 £500 +11.11% 27
Work from Home -17 71 £475 -9.52% 140
Yorkshire -46 49 £550 +10.00% 5
North West -18 32 £431 +7.75% 19
North East +4 23 £460 +26.90% 3
Midlands -46 8 £394 -23.73% 16
South East -36 7 £550 +10.00% 43
West Midlands -46 6 £488 -5.57% 8
Wales +1 4 £375 - 7
Scotland +1 3 - - 6
South West -23 3 £400 -23.81% 23
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 3
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 8
East of England -23 1 £375 +20.00% 21

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 25 (9.43%) Confluence
2 4 (1.51%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.75%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.75%) nginx
3 2 (0.75%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.38%) Cloud Foundry
4 1 (0.38%) CMS
Applications
1 6 (2.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 6 (2.26%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.13%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.75%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.38%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 82 (30.94%) AWS
2 59 (22.26%) Azure
3 33 (12.45%) GitHub
4 25 (9.43%) Serverless
5 21 (7.92%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (6.79%) AWS Lambda
6 18 (6.79%) GCP
7 13 (4.91%) GitHub Actions
8 11 (4.15%) Amazon S3
8 11 (4.15%) SaaS
9 9 (3.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 9 (3.40%) Amazon ECS
10 8 (3.02%) Amazon SQS
10 8 (3.02%) AWS Step Functions
11 7 (2.64%) Amazon EventBridge
11 7 (2.64%) Apigee
11 7 (2.64%) BrowserStack
11 7 (2.64%) Datadog
12 6 (2.26%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (2.26%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.89%) Cisco IPT
2 3 (1.13%) HTTP
3 1 (0.38%) FTP
3 1 (0.38%) Internet
3 1 (0.38%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (13.58%) MongoDB
2 27 (10.19%) PostgreSQL
3 19 (7.17%) MySQL
4 16 (6.04%) NoSQL
5 14 (5.28%) SQL Server
6 12 (4.53%) Amazon RDS
7 10 (3.77%) Relational Database
8 9 (3.40%) DynamoDB
8 9 (3.40%) Redis
9 6 (2.26%) BigQuery
9 6 (2.26%) RDBMS
10 5 (1.89%) Amazon Aurora
11 3 (1.13%) Apache Cassandra
11 3 (1.13%) Data Lake
11 3 (1.13%) DB2
11 3 (1.13%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
12 2 (0.75%) Big Data
13 1 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
13 1 (0.38%) GIS
Development Applications
1 92 (34.72%) Cucumber
2 62 (23.40%) Jenkins
2 62 (23.40%) Selenium
3 56 (21.13%) Git
4 52 (19.62%) JIRA
5 49 (18.49%) GitLab
6 39 (14.72%) Postman
7 29 (10.94%) Mockito
8 26 (9.81%) REST Assured
9 22 (8.30%) Cypress.io
10 17 (6.42%) JUnit
11 15 (5.66%) JMeter
11 15 (5.66%) SonarQube
12 14 (5.28%) Bitbucket
13 12 (4.53%) Gradle
13 12 (4.53%) WebDriver
14 10 (3.77%) Maven
15 9 (3.40%) TestRail
16 7 (2.64%) SpecFlow
17 6 (2.26%) Zephyr
General
1 71 (26.79%) Social Skills
2 55 (20.75%) Public Sector
3 35 (13.21%) Finance
4 24 (9.06%) Banking
5 12 (4.53%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (1.89%) Front Office
6 5 (1.89%) Legal
6 5 (1.89%) Military
7 4 (1.51%) Electronics
8 3 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.13%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.38%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.38%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.38%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.38%) Marketing
9 1 (0.38%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.38%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.38%) Retail
9 1 (0.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 97 (36.60%) Developer
2 62 (23.40%) Java Developer
3 50 (18.87%) Senior
4 45 (16.98%) Test Engineer
5 28 (10.57%) Senior Developer
6 24 (9.06%) Senior Java Developer
6 24 (9.06%) Software Engineer
7 22 (8.30%) Lead
7 22 (8.30%) Test Automation Engineer
8 15 (5.66%) QA Engineer
9 13 (4.91%) Tester
10 11 (4.15%) Java Engineer
11 10 (3.77%) Analyst
11 10 (3.77%) Automation Engineer
12 9 (3.40%) Automation Tester
12 9 (3.40%) Senior Test Engineer
13 8 (3.02%) Angular Developer
13 8 (3.02%) Architect
13 8 (3.02%) Lead Test Engineer
13 8 (3.02%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (20.38%) Spring Boot
2 52 (19.62%) REST
3 38 (14.34%) React
3 38 (14.34%) RESTful
4 37 (13.96%) Node.js
5 36 (13.58%) Kafka
5 36 (13.58%) Playwright
6 35 (13.21%) Spring
7 28 (10.57%) Gherkin
8 24 (9.06%) ActiveMQ
8 24 (9.06%) JAX-RS
9 21 (7.92%) .NET
10 19 (7.17%) CSS
11 18 (6.79%) AngularJS
12 16 (6.04%) Jest
13 14 (5.28%) WireMock
14 13 (4.91%) HTML
15 12 (4.53%) JSON
16 11 (4.15%) SOAP
17 10 (3.77%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 31 (11.70%) Product Ownership
2 17 (6.42%) Cloud Native
3 10 (3.77%) Mobile App
4 7 (2.64%) Distributed Systems
4 7 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.26%) Distributed Architecture
5 6 (2.26%) Equities
5 6 (2.26%) N-Tier
6 5 (1.89%) Client/Server
6 5 (1.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (1.89%) NHS
7 4 (1.51%) Greenfield Project
7 4 (1.51%) Public Cloud
8 3 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (1.13%) Educational Technology
8 3 (1.13%) Mobile Banking
8 3 (1.13%) Private Cloud
9 2 (0.75%) AS400
9 2 (0.75%) iSeries
Operating Systems
1 39 (14.72%) Linux
2 29 (10.94%) Unix
3 20 (7.55%) Mac OS X
4 4 (1.51%) Android
5 3 (1.13%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.75%) Windows
7 1 (0.38%) VMS
7 1 (0.38%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (69.43%) Agile
2 171 (64.53%) TDD
3 165 (62.26%) Test Automation
4 138 (52.08%) CI/CD
5 125 (47.17%) Microservices
6 61 (23.02%) DevOps
7 59 (22.26%) Scrum
8 54 (20.38%) API Testing
9 52 (19.62%) Problem-Solving
10 51 (19.25%) Software Engineering
11 50 (18.87%) Containerisation
12 42 (15.85%) Continuous Improvement
13 38 (14.34%) Test Strategy
14 35 (13.21%) Non-Functional Testing
14 35 (13.21%) SDLC
15 34 (12.83%) Functional Testing
16 33 (12.45%) Mentoring
17 32 (12.08%) Continuous Deployment
18 29 (10.94%) Performance Testing
18 29 (10.94%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 170 (64.15%) Java
2 59 (22.26%) JavaScript
3 47 (17.74%) SQL
4 46 (17.36%) Python
5 36 (13.58%) TypeScript
6 20 (7.55%) C#
7 11 (4.15%) Ruby
8 10 (3.77%) C++
9 9 (3.40%) Scala
10 8 (3.02%) Kotlin
11 7 (2.64%) PHP
12 6 (2.26%) JSX
13 4 (1.51%) Bash
13 4 (1.51%) C
14 3 (1.13%) Go
14 3 (1.13%) Objective-C
14 3 (1.13%) Swift
15 1 (0.38%) Groovy
15 1 (0.38%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.38%) XPath
Qualifications
1 73 (27.55%) Security Cleared
2 58 (21.89%) SC Cleared
3 15 (5.66%) BPSS Clearance
4 14 (5.28%) ISTQB
5 10 (3.77%) Degree
6 5 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.89%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 3 (1.13%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.13%) ISEB
8 2 (0.75%) AWS Certified Developer
8 2 (0.75%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.38%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.38%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (23.02%) QA
2 31 (11.70%) Accessibility
3 11 (4.15%) WCAG
4 8 (3.02%) GDPR
5 5 (1.89%) PERC
6 3 (1.13%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.75%) HL7
8 1 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.38%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 63 (23.77%) Docker
Systems Management
1 41 (15.47%) Kubernetes
2 22 (8.30%) Terraform
3 8 (3.02%) Grafana
4 7 (2.64%) Ansible
5 4 (1.51%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.75%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.38%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.38%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.38%) Kibana
7 1 (0.38%) Kustomize
7 1 (0.38%) Rancher
Vendors
1 10 (3.77%) Oracle
2 8 (3.02%) Atlassian
3 7 (2.64%) Microsoft
4 6 (2.26%) Salesforce
4 6 (2.26%) Splunk
5 5 (1.89%) Gigya
5 5 (1.89%) Red Hat
5 5 (1.89%) ServiceNow
6 4 (1.51%) Adobe
7 3 (1.13%) Databricks
7 3 (1.13%) Veracode
8 2 (0.75%) IBM
8 2 (0.75%) SAP
8 2 (0.75%) Workday
9 1 (0.38%) Bloomberg
9 1 (0.38%) CA Agile Central
9 1 (0.38%) HP
9 1 (0.38%) Marketo
9 1 (0.38%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.38%) Reuters