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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 350 286 255
Rank change year-on-year -64 -31 -14
Contract jobs citing BDD 337 292 358
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.88% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.74% 0.97% 1.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 203 195 252
10th Percentile £306 £360 £363
25th Percentile £400 £417 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £534
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -6.37% -7.13%
75th Percentile £538 £622 £650
90th Percentile £675 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £500
% change year-on-year -2.17% -8.00% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £82.50 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £85.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year -47.06% +51.11% -25.00%
75th Percentile £46.88 £87.50 -
90th Percentile £48.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.25 - £56.25
% change year-on-year - - -22.41%

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 45,350 29,954 33,125
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.75% 90.50% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,857 18,668 21,203
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £424 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.31%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,845 1,726 1,796
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.03
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.31 £18.23
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.97
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -38.61% -1.28%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.13% -45.88% +13.33%

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 17 August 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 17 August 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 -61 280 £463 -11.01% 163
UK excluding London -32 192 £450 -2.17% 94
London -78 113 £500 -15.25% 83
Work from Home -48 104 £475 -5.00% 85
North of England -38 76 £450 -13.42% 29
Midlands -9 51 £425 -8.11% 20
West Midlands -15 50 £425 -11.69% 15
North West -24 37 £475 +14.18% 16
Scotland -5 25 £465 +7.83% 7
Yorkshire -29 23 £525 - 8
North East -26 20 £450 -2.17% 6
South East -69 17 £285 -16.18% 25
South West -41 14 £525 +27.27% 3
East of England -14 8 £510 +36.00% 8
Wales -11 4 £531 - 1
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 4

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 (13.06%) Confluence
2 5 (1.48%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.19%) Apache
4 3 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.89%) CMS
4 3 (0.89%) Headless CMS
4 3 (0.89%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.30%) Camunda
Applications
1 3 (0.89%) Notion
2 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.30%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 9 (2.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.37%) Payment Gateway
3 3 (0.89%) Findur
3 3 (0.89%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 120 (35.61%) AWS
2 112 (33.23%) Azure
3 95 (28.19%) GitHub
4 53 (15.73%) GCP
5 50 (14.84%) GitHub Actions
6 49 (14.54%) Azure DevOps
7 25 (7.42%) Serverless
8 21 (6.23%) Amazon S3
8 21 (6.23%) Amazon SQS
9 18 (5.34%) Amazon EC2
9 18 (5.34%) GitHub Copilot
10 16 (4.75%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (4.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 14 (4.15%) ChatGPT
13 12 (3.56%) Anthropic Claude
14 11 (3.26%) AWS KMS
15 10 (2.97%) Power Automate
15 10 (2.97%) Route 53
16 9 (2.67%) Dynamics 365
16 9 (2.67%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.08%) RTP
1 7 (2.08%) Wireshark
2 6 (1.78%) 3GPP
3 3 (0.89%) DSL
3 3 (0.89%) Internet
4 2 (0.59%) Firewall
4 2 (0.59%) NaaS
4 2 (0.59%) WAN
5 1 (0.30%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (16.02%) MongoDB
2 45 (13.35%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (6.53%) NoSQL
4 20 (5.93%) Relational Database
5 17 (5.04%) DynamoDB
5 17 (5.04%) SQL Server
6 15 (4.45%) Amazon RDS
6 15 (4.45%) Db2
7 14 (4.15%) Amazon Aurora
8 11 (3.26%) Metadata
9 8 (2.37%) MySQL
10 7 (2.08%) Power BI
11 6 (1.78%) BigQuery
11 6 (1.78%) Data Warehouse
12 5 (1.48%) Couchbase
12 5 (1.48%) Data Lake
12 5 (1.48%) Tableau
13 4 (1.19%) Amazon Athena
14 3 (0.89%) Apache Iceberg
14 3 (0.89%) Looker
Development Applications
1 120 (35.61%) Cucumber
2 99 (29.38%) Selenium
3 98 (29.08%) Git
4 83 (24.63%) Jenkins
5 69 (20.47%) JUnit
6 62 (18.40%) GitLab
7 60 (17.80%) JIRA
8 46 (13.65%) Postman
9 45 (13.35%) WebDriver
10 41 (12.17%) REST Assured
11 34 (10.09%) Mockito
12 29 (8.61%) JMeter
13 27 (8.01%) Cypress.io
14 25 (7.42%) SonarQube
15 21 (6.23%) SpecFlow
16 19 (5.64%) Maven
17 18 (5.34%) Gatling
18 15 (4.45%) TeamCity
19 10 (2.97%) DbUnit
20 9 (2.67%) jMock
General
1 109 (32.34%) Social Skills
2 74 (21.96%) Finance
3 66 (19.58%) Public Sector
4 56 (16.62%) Analytical Skills
5 41 (12.17%) Banking
6 14 (4.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (3.56%) Front Office
8 11 (3.26%) Organisational Skills
9 9 (2.67%) Investment Banking
10 7 (2.08%) Retail
11 6 (1.78%) Military
12 5 (1.48%) Aviation
12 5 (1.48%) Fire and Rescue
12 5 (1.48%) Police
13 4 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.89%) Automotive
14 3 (0.89%) Billing
14 3 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.89%) Legal Technology
14 3 (0.89%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 107 (31.75%) Developer
2 72 (21.36%) Senior
3 66 (19.58%) Java Developer
4 57 (16.91%) Test Engineer
5 35 (10.39%) Lead
6 33 (9.79%) Test Automation Engineer
7 31 (9.20%) Software Engineer
8 27 (8.01%) Tester
9 22 (6.53%) Automation Tester
9 22 (6.53%) Senior Developer
10 21 (6.23%) Analyst
11 19 (5.64%) Test Leader
12 18 (5.34%) Senior Java Developer
13 15 (4.45%) Java Engineer
14 13 (3.86%) QA Engineer
14 13 (3.86%) Senior Tester
15 11 (3.26%) Architect
15 11 (3.26%) Python Developer
15 11 (3.26%) Senior Software Engineer
15 11 (3.26%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 82 (24.33%) Spring
2 66 (19.58%) REST
3 65 (19.29%) Playwright
4 62 (18.40%) Spring Boot
5 57 (16.91%) Kafka
6 52 (15.43%) Gherkin
7 43 (12.76%) RESTful
8 31 (9.20%) .NET
8 31 (9.20%) WireMock
9 28 (8.31%) AngularJS
10 27 (8.01%) Node.js
11 26 (7.72%) React
12 25 (7.42%) ActiveMQ
13 21 (6.23%) SOAP
14 17 (5.04%) JAX-RS
15 16 (4.75%) HTML
16 15 (4.45%) JPA
16 15 (4.45%) JSON
17 14 (4.15%) Hibernate
17 14 (4.15%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 41 (12.17%) Distributed Systems
2 34 (10.09%) Product Ownership
3 29 (8.61%) Cloud Native
4 18 (5.34%) Enterprise Software
5 16 (4.75%) Distributed Architecture
6 14 (4.15%) Equity Derivative
7 11 (3.26%) Legacy Systems
8 10 (2.97%) Derivative
9 7 (2.08%) Onboarding
10 6 (1.78%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.78%) Virtual Team
11 5 (1.48%) Mobile App
11 5 (1.48%) Robotics
11 5 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.48%) Taxonomies
12 4 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.19%) Distributed Applications
12 4 (1.19%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 3 (0.89%) AI Agents
13 3 (0.89%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 49 (14.54%) Linux
2 24 (7.12%) Unix
3 7 (2.08%) Mac OS X
4 6 (1.78%) Android
4 6 (1.78%) Apple iOS
5 5 (1.48%) Windows
6 2 (0.59%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.59%) VMS
7 1 (0.30%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 225 (66.77%) Agile
2 220 (65.28%) CI/CD
3 219 (64.99%) TDD
4 207 (61.42%) Test Automation
5 126 (37.39%) Microservices
6 118 (35.01%) DevOps
7 76 (22.55%) Continuous Improvement
8 75 (22.26%) Scrum
9 72 (21.36%) Problem-Solving
10 70 (20.77%) Test Strategy
11 67 (19.88%) API Testing
12 61 (18.10%) AI
13 59 (17.51%) Software Engineering
14 46 (13.65%) Mentoring
15 45 (13.35%) Stakeholder Management
16 44 (13.06%) Continuous Integration
17 40 (11.87%) End-to-End Testing
18 39 (11.57%) SDLC
18 39 (11.57%) Validation
19 38 (11.28%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 196 (58.16%) Java
2 91 (27.00%) SQL
3 74 (21.96%) Python
4 60 (17.80%) JavaScript
5 52 (15.43%) C#
6 33 (9.79%) TypeScript
7 14 (4.15%) C++
8 8 (2.37%) Groovy
9 7 (2.08%) Apex Code
9 7 (2.08%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.08%) Ruby
10 6 (1.78%) R
11 5 (1.48%) Go
12 4 (1.19%) Bash
12 4 (1.19%) Perl
12 4 (1.19%) Scala
12 4 (1.19%) T-SQL
13 3 (0.89%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.59%) Cypher
14 2 (0.59%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 87 (25.82%) Security Cleared
2 70 (20.77%) SC Cleared
3 22 (6.53%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (6.23%) Degree
5 19 (5.64%) ISTQB
6 15 (4.45%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.67%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 8 (2.37%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.78%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.89%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.89%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.89%) CSPO
10 3 (0.89%) ISEB
10 3 (0.89%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 1 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.30%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (21.07%) QA
2 47 (13.95%) Accessibility
3 24 (7.12%) WCAG
4 16 (4.75%) Data Quality
5 14 (4.15%) GDPR
6 3 (0.89%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.30%) EMIR
7 1 (0.30%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.30%) MiFID
7 1 (0.30%) SEPA
7 1 (0.30%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 89 (26.41%) Docker
2 7 (2.08%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 71 (21.07%) Kubernetes
2 38 (11.28%) Grafana
3 30 (8.90%) Prometheus
4 21 (6.23%) Terraform
5 6 (1.78%) Ansible
6 4 (1.19%) Kibana
7 3 (0.89%) Istio
8 2 (0.59%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.59%) Argo
8 2 (0.59%) Consul
8 2 (0.59%) Rancher
8 2 (0.59%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (7.42%) Microsoft
2 18 (5.34%) Salesforce
3 16 (4.75%) Sybase
4 15 (4.45%) IBM
5 14 (4.15%) Google
5 14 (4.15%) Oracle
6 11 (3.26%) Atlassian
7 9 (2.67%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (2.37%) Checkmarx
8 8 (2.37%) Conga
8 8 (2.37%) GoCardless
9 6 (1.78%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.48%) Databricks
11 4 (1.19%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.19%) Splunk
12 3 (0.89%) CA Agile Central
12 3 (0.89%) Guidewire
12 3 (0.89%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.89%) OpenLink
13 2 (0.59%) Amdocs