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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 346 284 311
Rank change year-on-year -62 +27 -167
Contract jobs citing BDD 292 253 316
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.86% 0.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.80% 0.95% 0.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 174 155 218
10th Percentile £350 £363 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -15.25%
75th Percentile £550 £638 £588
90th Percentile £675 £792 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
Median hourly rate - - £56.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £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 36,537 26,694 38,745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.12% 90.29% 86.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,174 17,018 25,183
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.28% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,160 902 2,347
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.51 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £77.10 £71.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £31.76 £31.80
% change year-on-year -16.40% -0.13% -9.14%

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 10 March 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 10 March 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 -60 254 £475 -9.52% 122
UK excluding London -58 143 £475 -5.00% 95
London -25 122 £475 -21.81% 31
North of England -37 83 £488 +2.63% 32
Work from Home -33 79 £440 -16.19% 77
North West -15 33 £453 +14.54% 14
Yorkshire -58 32 £525 - 9
Midlands -47 29 £425 -12.37% 16
West Midlands -43 27 £450 -7.21% 13
North East -2 21 £475 +21.79% 9
South West -29 10 £463 -13.95% 7
South East -52 9 £367 -26.60% 29
Scotland +7 8 £375 -14.29% 5
Wales -1 3 £525 - 1
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 3
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 1

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 44 (15.07%) Confluence
2 4 (1.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.03%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.68%) nginx
4 2 (0.68%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.34%) CMS
5 1 (0.34%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 4 (1.37%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.34%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.68%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.34%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 107 (36.64%) AWS
2 77 (26.37%) Azure
3 48 (16.44%) GitHub
4 30 (10.27%) Azure DevOps
4 30 (10.27%) GCP
5 26 (8.90%) GitHub Actions
5 26 (8.90%) Serverless
6 19 (6.51%) AWS Lambda
7 18 (6.16%) Amazon S3
8 13 (4.45%) BrowserStack
9 10 (3.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 10 (3.42%) Amazon EC2
9 10 (3.42%) Amazon SQS
10 9 (3.08%) SaaS
11 8 (2.74%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (1.71%) Amazon Cognito
12 5 (1.71%) AWS KMS
12 5 (1.71%) AWS Step Functions
12 5 (1.71%) Route 53
13 4 (1.37%) BlazeMeter
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.71%) Cisco IPT
2 2 (0.68%) HTTP
2 2 (0.68%) WAN
3 1 (0.34%) DSL
3 1 (0.34%) Fibre Channel
3 1 (0.34%) FTP
3 1 (0.34%) Internet
3 1 (0.34%) iSCSI
3 1 (0.34%) LAN
3 1 (0.34%) NaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (13.36%) PostgreSQL
2 31 (10.62%) MongoDB
3 17 (5.82%) SQL Server
4 14 (4.79%) MySQL
5 12 (4.11%) Amazon RDS
5 12 (4.11%) Relational Database
6 10 (3.42%) Oracle Database
7 9 (3.08%) DynamoDB
8 8 (2.74%) NoSQL
9 7 (2.40%) Data Lake
10 6 (2.05%) Amazon Aurora
11 4 (1.37%) Redis
12 3 (1.03%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (1.03%) Delta Lake
13 2 (0.68%) Apache Cassandra
14 1 (0.34%) Big Data
14 1 (0.34%) BigQuery
14 1 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
14 1 (0.34%) InfluxDB
14 1 (0.34%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 115 (39.38%) Cucumber
2 81 (27.74%) Jenkins
2 81 (27.74%) Selenium
3 73 (25.00%) JIRA
4 66 (22.60%) Git
5 65 (22.26%) GitLab
6 44 (15.07%) Postman
7 42 (14.38%) JUnit
8 31 (10.62%) REST Assured
9 27 (9.25%) JMeter
10 26 (8.90%) Mockito
11 25 (8.56%) WebDriver
12 23 (7.88%) Cypress.io
13 18 (6.16%) SonarQube
14 11 (3.77%) Bitbucket
14 11 (3.77%) Gatling
14 11 (3.77%) Maven
15 8 (2.74%) Serenity BDD
15 8 (2.74%) SpecFlow
15 8 (2.74%) TestRail
General
1 76 (26.03%) Social Skills
2 57 (19.52%) Public Sector
3 47 (16.10%) Finance
4 26 (8.90%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (7.88%) Banking
6 8 (2.74%) Organisational Skills
7 6 (2.05%) Front Office
7 6 (2.05%) Military
8 5 (1.71%) Legal
9 4 (1.37%) Electronics
9 4 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.03%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (0.68%) Billing
11 2 (0.68%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.68%) Retail
11 2 (0.68%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.34%) Marketing
12 1 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 88 (30.14%) Developer
2 53 (18.15%) Senior
3 51 (17.47%) Java Developer
4 49 (16.78%) Test Engineer
5 39 (13.36%) Lead
6 26 (8.90%) Software Engineer
7 24 (8.22%) Tester
8 21 (7.19%) Test Automation Engineer
9 20 (6.85%) Senior Developer
10 18 (6.16%) QA Engineer
11 17 (5.82%) Automation Tester
12 16 (5.48%) Java Engineer
12 16 (5.48%) Senior Java Developer
13 15 (5.14%) Test Leader
14 13 (4.45%) Lead Test Engineer
15 11 (3.77%) Analyst
15 11 (3.77%) Automation Engineer
16 10 (3.42%) Automation Test Lead
17 9 (3.08%) Business Analyst
17 9 (3.08%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (21.58%) Spring
2 57 (19.52%) REST
3 56 (19.18%) Spring Boot
4 47 (16.10%) Playwright
5 40 (13.70%) Node.js
5 40 (13.70%) RESTful
6 36 (12.33%) React
7 35 (11.99%) Gherkin
8 34 (11.64%) Kafka
9 29 (9.93%) .NET
10 26 (8.90%) AngularJS
10 26 (8.90%) WireMock
11 19 (6.51%) CSS
12 17 (5.82%) ActiveMQ
12 17 (5.82%) Jest
13 16 (5.48%) SOAP
14 15 (5.14%) Web Services
15 14 (4.79%) JAX-RS
16 13 (4.45%) Spring Cloud
17 12 (4.11%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.25%) Product Ownership
2 21 (7.19%) Distributed Systems
3 17 (5.82%) Cloud Native
4 15 (5.14%) Distributed Architecture
5 7 (2.40%) Mobile App
5 7 (2.40%) Onboarding
6 6 (2.05%) Client/Server
6 6 (2.05%) Equities
7 5 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 5 (1.71%) NHS
7 5 (1.71%) Public Cloud
8 4 (1.37%) Distributed Applications
9 3 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.03%) Educational Technology
9 3 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
10 2 (0.68%) Greenfield Project
10 2 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
10 2 (0.68%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.68%) Private Cloud
10 2 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 38 (13.01%) Linux
2 20 (6.85%) Unix
3 11 (3.77%) Mac OS X
4 4 (1.37%) Windows
5 3 (1.03%) Android
6 2 (0.68%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.68%) VMS
7 1 (0.34%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.34%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 186 (63.70%) Agile
2 179 (61.30%) TDD
3 178 (60.96%) Test Automation
4 169 (57.88%) CI/CD
5 131 (44.86%) Microservices
6 87 (29.79%) DevOps
7 68 (23.29%) API Testing
8 65 (22.26%) Problem-Solving
9 62 (21.23%) Test Strategy
10 61 (20.89%) Continuous Improvement
11 60 (20.55%) Scrum
12 51 (17.47%) Software Engineering
13 49 (16.78%) Containerisation
14 41 (14.04%) Mentoring
15 39 (13.36%) SDLC
16 36 (12.33%) Performance Testing
17 34 (11.64%) Non-Functional Testing
18 32 (10.96%) Kanban
19 31 (10.62%) Continuous Integration
19 31 (10.62%) Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 177 (60.62%) Java
2 60 (20.55%) JavaScript
3 56 (19.18%) SQL
4 48 (16.44%) Python
5 40 (13.70%) TypeScript
6 31 (10.62%) C#
7 11 (3.77%) C++
8 8 (2.74%) Ruby
9 7 (2.40%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.40%) PHP
10 6 (2.05%) JSX
11 4 (1.37%) Go
11 4 (1.37%) Scala
11 4 (1.37%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.68%) Bash
12 2 (0.68%) Groovy
12 2 (0.68%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.34%) Swift
13 1 (0.34%) VBScript
13 1 (0.34%) XPath
Qualifications
1 76 (26.03%) Security Cleared
2 63 (21.58%) SC Cleared
3 14 (4.79%) BPSS Clearance
3 14 (4.79%) Degree
4 10 (3.42%) ISTQB
5 7 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.05%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (1.03%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.68%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.68%) ISEB
10 1 (0.34%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (23.63%) QA
2 39 (13.36%) Accessibility
3 10 (3.42%) WCAG
4 8 (2.74%) GDPR
5 5 (1.71%) PERC
6 2 (0.68%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.68%) HL7
7 1 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.34%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 80 (27.40%) Docker
2 4 (1.37%) Postfix
3 1 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 60 (20.55%) Kubernetes
2 30 (10.27%) Grafana
3 26 (8.90%) Terraform
4 23 (7.88%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.37%) Ansible
6 2 (0.68%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.68%) Kibana
6 2 (0.68%) Rancher
6 2 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.34%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.34%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.34%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.34%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 21 (7.19%) Oracle
2 13 (4.45%) Splunk
3 11 (3.77%) Atlassian
4 9 (3.08%) ServiceNow
5 8 (2.74%) Salesforce
6 7 (2.40%) Databricks
7 6 (2.05%) Microsoft
8 5 (1.71%) Jaspersoft
9 4 (1.37%) Adobe
9 4 (1.37%) Google
9 4 (1.37%) Veracode
10 3 (1.03%) CA Agile Central
10 3 (1.03%) Dynatrace
10 3 (1.03%) Red Hat
11 2 (0.68%) IBM
11 2 (0.68%) SAP
11 2 (0.68%) VMware
11 2 (0.68%) Workday
12 1 (0.34%) Amdocs
12 1 (0.34%) BT