TDD Contract Job Trends

Test-Driven Development (TDD)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring TDD skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 6 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 219 136 138
Rank change year-on-year -83 +2 -24
Contract jobs citing TDD 706 693 667
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.29% 2.11% 1.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.53% 2.33% 2.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 464 474 407
10th Percentile £377 £354 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% -2.33% -10.42%
75th Percentile £571 £638 £654
90th Percentile £650 £750 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £488 £484
% change year-on-year -5.64% +0.78% -12.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 41 33
10th Percentile £43.50 - £61.64
25th Percentile £46.80 £52.50 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile £76.60 £67.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.17% -1.15% -

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

TDD 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 46,176 29,707 32,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.53% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,774 18,450 19,527
10th Percentile £325 £297 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,315 1,863 1,324
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +53.08% -38.77% -3.91%
75th Percentile £65.41 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.40 £65.00 £74.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +73.52% -47.49% -

TDD
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing TDD relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

TDD job vacancy trend in the UK

TDD
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing TDD.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing TDD

TDD
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing TDD over the 6 months to 6 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for TDD in the UK

TDD
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing TDD.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing TDD

TDD
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing TDD over the 6 months to 6 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for TDD in the UK

TDD
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 TDD within the UK over the 6 months to 6 October 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 -82 594 £500 -4.76% 711
UK excluding London -85 338 £460 -5.64% 473
London -65 299 £535 -8.94% 326
Work from Home -104 208 £475 -9.52% 443
North of England -58 137 £460 -6.66% 149
Midlands -14 70 £460 -0.54% 59
West Midlands -1 69 £460 -8.00% 31
Scotland -11 52 £463 -7.50% 43
North West -54 51 £537 +26.35% 87
Yorkshire -47 46 £472 -11.15% 21
North East -16 42 £450 -13.46% 41
East of England -20 33 £539 +30.55% 38
South West -34 26 £525 +1.20% 47
South East -90 26 £358 -20.56% 97
Wales - 5 £425 - 24
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 20

TDD
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 48 (6.80%) Confluence
2 11 (1.56%) Apache
2 11 (1.56%) Apache Spark
3 9 (1.27%) Camunda
4 6 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (0.85%) WebLogic
5 3 (0.42%) Mule
5 3 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.28%) Anypoint
6 2 (0.28%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.28%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.14%) Cloud Foundry
7 1 (0.14%) CMS
7 1 (0.14%) MQSeries
7 1 (0.14%) nginx
7 1 (0.14%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 7 (0.99%) Chatbot
2 6 (0.85%) CPLEX
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.14%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 7 (0.99%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.28%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 263 (37.25%) AWS
2 183 (25.92%) Azure
3 141 (19.97%) GitHub
4 73 (10.34%) GitHub Actions
5 65 (9.21%) GCP
6 57 (8.07%) Azure DevOps
6 57 (8.07%) Serverless
7 40 (5.67%) AWS Lambda
8 35 (4.96%) Amazon S3
9 30 (4.25%) Power Platform
10 29 (4.11%) Amazon SQS
11 28 (3.97%) GitHub Copilot
12 22 (3.12%) OpenShift
13 18 (2.55%) Amazon EKS
13 18 (2.55%) Azure Service Bus
13 18 (2.55%) Dynamics 365
14 17 (2.41%) Azure Logic Apps
15 16 (2.27%) Anthropic Claude
15 16 (2.27%) Microsoft Copilot
16 13 (1.84%) Copilot Studio
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.70%) Ethernet
1 12 (1.70%) TCP/IP
2 11 (1.56%) FIX Connectivity
3 7 (0.99%) Internet
3 7 (0.99%) RTP
3 7 (0.99%) Wireshark
4 6 (0.85%) 3GPP
5 3 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.28%) DNS
6 2 (0.28%) Firewall
6 2 (0.28%) HTTP
6 2 (0.28%) VPN
7 1 (0.14%) SSH
7 1 (0.14%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (13.17%) PostgreSQL
2 87 (12.32%) MongoDB
3 61 (8.64%) NoSQL
4 57 (8.07%) Relational Database
5 28 (3.97%) SQL Server
6 25 (3.54%) DynamoDB
7 23 (3.26%) Power BI
8 15 (2.12%) Db2
9 14 (1.98%) Metadata
10 13 (1.84%) Amazon RDS
10 13 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (1.84%) MySQL
11 11 (1.56%) Data Lake
12 9 (1.27%) Amazon Aurora
13 8 (1.13%) Big Data
13 8 (1.13%) Flink
14 7 (0.99%) Couchbase
14 7 (0.99%) Elasticsearch
14 7 (0.99%) Redis
15 6 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 204 (28.90%) Git
2 139 (19.69%) Jenkins
3 110 (15.58%) JUnit
4 95 (13.46%) GitLab
5 84 (11.90%) Cucumber
6 75 (10.62%) JIRA
7 66 (9.35%) Mockito
8 62 (8.78%) Selenium
9 58 (8.22%) Maven
10 57 (8.07%) Gradle
10 57 (8.07%) SonarQube
11 36 (5.10%) REST Assured
12 32 (4.53%) Gatling
13 22 (3.12%) Cypress.io
14 18 (2.55%) Postman
15 15 (2.12%) Visual Studio
16 14 (1.98%) Eclipse
17 13 (1.84%) Bitbucket Server
18 12 (1.70%) fastlane
18 12 (1.70%) Liquibase
General
1 242 (34.28%) Social Skills
2 155 (21.95%) Public Sector
3 141 (19.97%) Finance
4 122 (17.28%) Banking
5 81 (11.47%) Analytical Skills
6 36 (5.10%) Investment Banking
7 35 (4.96%) Front Office
8 25 (3.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 22 (3.12%) Military
10 13 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.27%) Retail
12 7 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
13 6 (0.85%) Police
14 5 (0.71%) Aviation
14 5 (0.71%) Fire and Rescue
14 5 (0.71%) Games
15 4 (0.57%) Marketing
16 3 (0.42%) iGaming
16 3 (0.42%) Law
Job Titles
1 370 (52.41%) Developer
2 171 (24.22%) Java Developer
3 157 (22.24%) Senior
4 90 (12.75%) Software Engineer
5 83 (11.76%) Senior Developer
6 48 (6.80%) Java Engineer
7 43 (6.09%) Lead
8 42 (5.95%) Senior Java Developer
9 41 (5.81%) Software Developer
10 31 (4.39%) Test Engineer
11 28 (3.97%) Full-Stack Developer
12 26 (3.68%) Java Software Engineer
12 26 (3.68%) Quality Engineer
13 24 (3.40%) Data Engineer
13 24 (3.40%) Python Developer
13 24 (3.40%) Senior Software Engineer
14 22 (3.12%) Lead Developer
14 22 (3.12%) Senior Java Engineer
15 19 (2.69%) Architect
16 17 (2.41%) C# Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 184 (26.06%) Spring
2 165 (23.37%) Spring Boot
3 135 (19.12%) REST
4 126 (17.85%) React
5 124 (17.56%) Kafka
6 99 (14.02%) Node.js
7 95 (13.46%) RESTful
8 72 (10.20%) .NET
8 72 (10.20%) Playwright
9 71 (10.06%) Terraform
10 45 (6.37%) Web Services
11 44 (6.23%) HTML
12 43 (6.09%) AngularJS
13 40 (5.67%) JPA
14 38 (5.38%) CSS
15 35 (4.96%) Hibernate
16 34 (4.82%) OAuth
17 31 (4.39%) OpenAPI
18 30 (4.25%) RabbitMQ
19 29 (4.11%) ActiveMQ
Miscellaneous
1 101 (14.31%) Cloud Native
2 70 (9.92%) Distributed Systems
3 47 (6.66%) Product Ownership
4 37 (5.24%) Enterprise Software
5 30 (4.25%) Legacy Systems
6 21 (2.97%) Derivative
7 19 (2.69%) Data Structures
8 16 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
9 13 (1.84%) Equities
9 13 (1.84%) Mobile App
9 13 (1.84%) NHS
9 13 (1.84%) Onboarding
10 12 (1.70%) Equity Derivative
11 11 (1.56%) TWAP
11 11 (1.56%) VWAP
12 10 (1.42%) Legacy Applications
13 9 (1.27%) AI Agents
13 9 (1.27%) Blog
13 9 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
14 8 (1.13%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 72 (10.20%) Linux
2 30 (4.25%) Unix
3 18 (2.55%) Windows
4 14 (1.98%) Apple iOS
5 7 (0.99%) Android
6 5 (0.71%) Mac OS X
7 3 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.28%) AIX
8 2 (0.28%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 513 (72.66%) CI/CD
2 487 (68.98%) Agile
3 327 (46.32%) Test Automation
4 290 (41.08%) Microservices
5 237 (33.57%) DevOps
6 228 (32.29%) Software Engineering
7 222 (31.44%) BDD
8 188 (26.63%) Scrum
9 137 (19.41%) Containerisation
10 119 (16.86%) Problem-Solving
11 104 (14.73%) Clean Code
11 104 (14.73%) Continuous Improvement
12 103 (14.59%) Continuous Integration
12 103 (14.59%) Event-Driven
13 102 (14.45%) Pair Programming
14 94 (13.31%) SDLC
15 88 (12.46%) Unit Testing
16 87 (12.32%) AI
17 83 (11.76%) Full-Stack Development
18 80 (11.33%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 374 (52.97%) Java
2 182 (25.78%) SQL
3 158 (22.38%) JavaScript
4 150 (21.25%) TypeScript
5 137 (19.41%) Python
6 78 (11.05%) C#
7 42 (5.95%) Kotlin
8 35 (4.96%) Scala
9 25 (3.54%) Ruby
10 22 (3.12%) C++
11 15 (2.12%) Bash
12 12 (1.70%) Swift
13 10 (1.42%) Bicep
14 9 (1.27%) Shell Script
15 8 (1.13%) Go
16 7 (0.99%) Apex Code
17 6 (0.85%) Groovy
18 5 (0.71%) Perl
19 4 (0.57%) PowerShell
19 4 (0.57%) R
Qualifications
1 175 (24.79%) Security Cleared
2 162 (22.95%) SC Cleared
3 66 (9.35%) BPSS Clearance
4 49 (6.94%) Degree
5 34 (4.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (1.84%) DV Cleared
7 10 (1.42%) ISTQB
8 6 (0.85%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (0.71%) AWS Certification
9 5 (0.71%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.42%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.42%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.28%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.28%) ISEB
12 1 (0.14%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.14%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 105 (14.87%) Accessibility
2 86 (12.18%) QA
3 58 (8.22%) WCAG
4 32 (4.53%) Data Quality
5 6 (0.85%) ISO 20022
6 5 (0.71%) ISO 15022
7 4 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
7 4 (0.57%) GDPR
8 3 (0.42%) NCSC
8 3 (0.42%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.28%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.14%) SEPA
10 1 (0.14%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 200 (28.33%) Docker
2 3 (0.42%) Postfix
3 1 (0.14%) Embedded Firmware
3 1 (0.14%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 171 (24.22%) Kubernetes
2 36 (5.10%) Grafana
3 23 (3.26%) Ansible
4 19 (2.69%) Prometheus
5 12 (1.70%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.13%) Kibana
7 2 (0.28%) Control-M
7 2 (0.28%) Istio
7 2 (0.28%) Puppet
8 1 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 59 (8.36%) Microsoft
2 55 (7.79%) Oracle
3 31 (4.39%) Databricks
4 26 (3.68%) IBM
5 22 (3.12%) Splunk
6 21 (2.97%) Google
7 17 (2.41%) MuleSoft
8 14 (1.98%) Salesforce
9 13 (1.84%) Sybase
10 10 (1.42%) Dynatrace
10 10 (1.42%) Palantir
11 9 (1.27%) Veracode
12 8 (1.13%) Conga
12 8 (1.13%) GoCardless
13 6 (0.85%) Jaspersoft
14 5 (0.71%) Atlassian
14 5 (0.71%) Informatica
15 4 (0.57%) Apple
15 4 (0.57%) Checkmarx
16 3 (0.42%) OutSystems