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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 343 275 294
Rank change year-on-year -68 +19 -148
Contract jobs citing BDD 287 268 321
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.88% 0.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.80% 0.97% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 173 155 223
10th Percentile £355 £356 £350
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £495
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +6.06% -15.53%
75th Percentile £550 £634 £591
90th Percentile £675 £800 £699
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
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 36,087 27,535 38,701
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.65% 89.98% 86.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,916 17,126 25,279
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £412 £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 £723 £739 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £491 £500
% change year-on-year -1.83% -1.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,149 888 2,215
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.13 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -2.99% -4.29%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.75 £59.47
90th Percentile £72.71 £75.08 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.81% -9.26% -

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 28 February 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 28 February 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 -63 252 £475 -9.52% 106
UK excluding London -70 142 £475 -5.00% 87
London -29 120 £475 -24.00% 31
North of England -42 86 £481 +10.00% 28
Work from Home -27 77 £445 -15.24% 75
Yorkshire -60 38 £525 +2.44% 6
North West -26 30 £431 +19.56% 16
Midlands -36 28 £425 -16.25% 14
West Midlands -32 26 £475 -6.40% 14
North East -2 21 £445 +14.10% 6
South West -32 9 £444 -17.44% 11
South East -48 8 £367 -26.60% 26
Scotland +7 6 £400 -8.57% 3
Wales -4 4 £375 - 2
East Midlands - 2 £310 -
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 41 (14.29%) Confluence
2 4 (1.39%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.05%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.70%) nginx
4 2 (0.70%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.35%) CMS
5 1 (0.35%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 4 (1.39%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.35%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.70%) Workday HCM
2 1 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 103 (35.89%) AWS
2 72 (25.09%) Azure
3 45 (15.68%) GitHub
4 28 (9.76%) Azure DevOps
5 26 (9.06%) GCP
6 24 (8.36%) Serverless
7 23 (8.01%) GitHub Actions
8 18 (6.27%) Amazon S3
8 18 (6.27%) AWS Lambda
9 13 (4.53%) BrowserStack
10 10 (3.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 10 (3.48%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (3.48%) Amazon SQS
11 9 (3.14%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (2.79%) SaaS
13 5 (1.74%) Amazon Cognito
13 5 (1.74%) AWS KMS
13 5 (1.74%) AWS Step Functions
13 5 (1.74%) Route 53
14 4 (1.39%) BlazeMeter
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.74%) Cisco IPT
2 2 (0.70%) HTTP
2 2 (0.70%) WAN
3 1 (0.35%) Fibre Channel
3 1 (0.35%) FTP
3 1 (0.35%) Internet
3 1 (0.35%) iSCSI
3 1 (0.35%) LAN
3 1 (0.35%) NaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (12.54%) PostgreSQL
2 32 (11.15%) MongoDB
3 16 (5.57%) SQL Server
4 12 (4.18%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (4.18%) MySQL
5 11 (3.83%) Relational Database
6 10 (3.48%) Oracle Database
7 9 (3.14%) DynamoDB
8 8 (2.79%) NoSQL
9 7 (2.44%) Data Lake
10 5 (1.74%) Amazon Aurora
11 3 (1.05%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (1.05%) Delta Lake
11 3 (1.05%) Redis
12 2 (0.70%) Apache Cassandra
13 1 (0.35%) Big Data
13 1 (0.35%) BigQuery
13 1 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
13 1 (0.35%) InfluxDB
13 1 (0.35%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 113 (39.37%) Cucumber
2 80 (27.87%) Selenium
3 77 (26.83%) Jenkins
4 70 (24.39%) JIRA
5 64 (22.30%) Git
6 63 (21.95%) GitLab
7 44 (15.33%) Postman
8 38 (13.24%) JUnit
9 33 (11.50%) REST Assured
10 28 (9.76%) Mockito
11 25 (8.71%) JMeter
12 24 (8.36%) WebDriver
13 23 (8.01%) Cypress.io
14 18 (6.27%) SonarQube
15 12 (4.18%) Maven
16 11 (3.83%) Bitbucket
16 11 (3.83%) Gatling
17 8 (2.79%) Serenity BDD
17 8 (2.79%) TestRail
18 7 (2.44%) SpecFlow
General
1 72 (25.09%) Social Skills
2 60 (20.91%) Public Sector
3 47 (16.38%) Finance
4 26 (9.06%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (7.67%) Banking
6 8 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (2.44%) Military
8 6 (2.09%) Front Office
9 5 (1.74%) Legal
10 4 (1.39%) Electronics
11 3 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.70%) Billing
12 2 (0.70%) Retail
12 2 (0.70%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.35%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.35%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 88 (30.66%) Developer
2 55 (19.16%) Senior
3 54 (18.82%) Java Developer
4 53 (18.47%) Test Engineer
5 36 (12.54%) Lead
6 24 (8.36%) Software Engineer
6 24 (8.36%) Test Automation Engineer
7 23 (8.01%) Senior Developer
7 23 (8.01%) Tester
8 19 (6.62%) Senior Java Developer
9 16 (5.57%) Automation Tester
9 16 (5.57%) QA Engineer
10 15 (5.23%) Java Engineer
11 13 (4.53%) Lead Test Engineer
11 13 (4.53%) Test Leader
12 12 (4.18%) Analyst
13 10 (3.48%) Automation Engineer
13 10 (3.48%) Senior Test Engineer
14 9 (3.14%) Automation Test Lead
14 9 (3.14%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (20.91%) Spring
2 57 (19.86%) REST
2 57 (19.86%) Spring Boot
3 47 (16.38%) Playwright
4 38 (13.24%) Node.js
4 38 (13.24%) RESTful
5 36 (12.54%) Kafka
6 34 (11.85%) React
7 31 (10.80%) Gherkin
8 27 (9.41%) .NET
8 27 (9.41%) WireMock
9 23 (8.01%) AngularJS
10 19 (6.62%) ActiveMQ
11 18 (6.27%) CSS
12 16 (5.57%) Jest
12 16 (5.57%) SOAP
13 15 (5.23%) JAX-RS
13 15 (5.23%) Web Services
14 13 (4.53%) Spring Cloud
15 11 (3.83%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 26 (9.06%) Product Ownership
2 19 (6.62%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (5.23%) Cloud Native
4 14 (4.88%) Distributed Architecture
5 6 (2.09%) Client/Server
5 6 (2.09%) Equities
5 6 (2.09%) Mobile App
5 6 (2.09%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (1.74%) NHS
7 4 (1.39%) Distributed Applications
7 4 (1.39%) Public Cloud
8 3 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.05%) Educational Technology
9 2 (0.70%) AS400
9 2 (0.70%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (0.70%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (0.70%) iSeries
9 2 (0.70%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.70%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 39 (13.59%) Linux
2 25 (8.71%) Unix
3 15 (5.23%) Mac OS X
4 3 (1.05%) Windows
5 2 (0.70%) Android
6 1 (0.35%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.35%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.35%) VMS
6 1 (0.35%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (64.11%) Agile
2 180 (62.72%) Test Automation
3 173 (60.28%) TDD
4 163 (56.79%) CI/CD
5 133 (46.34%) Microservices
6 81 (28.22%) DevOps
7 67 (23.34%) API Testing
8 63 (21.95%) Problem-Solving
9 60 (20.91%) Continuous Improvement
10 59 (20.56%) Scrum
11 58 (20.21%) Test Strategy
12 51 (17.77%) Containerisation
13 50 (17.42%) Software Engineering
14 39 (13.59%) Mentoring
15 38 (13.24%) Performance Testing
16 37 (12.89%) SDLC
17 36 (12.54%) Non-Functional Testing
18 35 (12.20%) Functional Testing
19 30 (10.45%) Continuous Integration
19 30 (10.45%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 176 (61.32%) Java
2 59 (20.56%) JavaScript
3 52 (18.12%) SQL
4 44 (15.33%) Python
5 39 (13.59%) TypeScript
6 27 (9.41%) C#
7 10 (3.48%) C++
8 8 (2.79%) Ruby
9 7 (2.44%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.44%) PHP
10 6 (2.09%) JSX
11 4 (1.39%) Go
11 4 (1.39%) Scala
11 4 (1.39%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.70%) Bash
12 2 (0.70%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.35%) Groovy
13 1 (0.35%) Swift
13 1 (0.35%) VBScript
13 1 (0.35%) XPath
Qualifications
1 83 (28.92%) Security Cleared
2 67 (23.34%) SC Cleared
3 13 (4.53%) BPSS Clearance
3 13 (4.53%) Degree
4 12 (4.18%) ISTQB
5 6 (2.09%) AWS Certification
5 6 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 3 (1.05%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.05%) ISEB
8 2 (0.70%) AWS Certified Developer
9 1 (0.35%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (23.34%) QA
2 40 (13.94%) Accessibility
3 13 (4.53%) WCAG
4 8 (2.79%) GDPR
5 5 (1.74%) PERC
6 2 (0.70%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.70%) HL7
7 1 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 77 (26.83%) Docker
2 4 (1.39%) Postfix
3 1 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 56 (19.51%) Kubernetes
2 29 (10.10%) Grafana
3 24 (8.36%) Terraform
4 22 (7.67%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.39%) Ansible
6 2 (0.70%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.70%) Kibana
6 2 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.35%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.35%) EMC VPLEX
7 1 (0.35%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.35%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.35%) Rancher
Vendors
1 23 (8.01%) Oracle
2 13 (4.53%) Splunk
3 11 (3.83%) Atlassian
4 8 (2.79%) Salesforce
4 8 (2.79%) ServiceNow
5 7 (2.44%) Databricks
6 5 (1.74%) Jaspersoft
6 5 (1.74%) Microsoft
7 4 (1.39%) Adobe
7 4 (1.39%) Veracode
8 3 (1.05%) Google
8 3 (1.05%) Red Hat
9 2 (0.70%) CA Agile Central
9 2 (0.70%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.70%) IBM
9 2 (0.70%) SAP
9 2 (0.70%) VMware
9 2 (0.70%) Workday
10 1 (0.35%) Amdocs
10 1 (0.35%) BT