BDD Contracts

Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring BDD skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited BDD over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 295 284 180
Rank change year-on-year -11 -104 -46
Contract jobs citing BDD 247 342 873
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.84% 0.79% 1.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.93% 0.91% 1.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 157 252 636
10th Percentile £383 £328 £421
25th Percentile £413 £431 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -14.58% +9.09%
75th Percentile £656 £625 £695
90th Percentile £775 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £506 £500
% change year-on-year -1.23% +1.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 24
10th Percentile - - £61.63
25th Percentile - - £70.00
Median hourly rate - £56.25 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year - -22.41% +10.62%
75th Percentile - - £75.00
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £56.25 £72.50
% change year-on-year - -22.41% +48.72%

All Process and 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 26,594 37,597 53,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.84% 86.31% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,149 24,227 37,238
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £743 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,443 1,746
10th Percentile £14.41 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.21 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%
75th Percentile £60.38 £59.98 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £37.34 £36.00
% change year-on-year -26.35% +3.72% +80.00%

BDD
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing BDD as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for BDD in the UK

BDD
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing BDD.

Daily rate trend for BDD in the UK

BDD
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing BDD over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for BDD in the UK

BDD
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing BDD.

Hourly rate trend for BDD in the UK

BDD
Top 14 Contract 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 1 May 2025. 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 -9 202 £525 -2.78% 208
London -34 115 £586 +8.31% 102
UK excluding London +64 97 £500 -1.23% 139
Work from Home +12 78 £500 +1.68% 155
North of England +39 49 £500 - 38
Yorkshire +24 30 £520 -5.50% 8
South East +36 20 £500 -9.09% 41
Midlands +26 12 £481 +13.24% 25
West Midlands +19 12 £481 +6.94% 16
North West +16 11 £426 -14.80% 25
Scotland +14 9 £400 -19.35% 9
North East +6 9 £390 - 5
South West +34 5 £525 -11.02% 11
Wales -1 2 - - 6

BDD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 41 (16.60%) Confluence
2 3 (1.21%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.21%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.81%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.40%) Apache
4 1 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 2 (0.81%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.81%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 79 (31.98%) Azure
2 71 (28.74%) AWS
3 45 (18.22%) Azure DevOps
4 30 (12.15%) GitHub
5 18 (7.29%) Cloud Computing
5 18 (7.29%) Slack
6 13 (5.26%) Serverless
7 11 (4.45%) Amazon S3
8 10 (4.05%) Amazon EC2
8 10 (4.05%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (3.64%) Power Platform
9 9 (3.64%) SaaS
10 8 (3.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 8 (3.24%) GCP
11 7 (2.83%) Amazon SQS
11 7 (2.83%) Azure Service Bus
11 7 (2.83%) IaaS
11 7 (2.83%) PaaS
11 7 (2.83%) PowerApps
11 7 (2.83%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 10 (4.05%) HTTP
2 2 (0.81%) Firewall
2 2 (0.81%) SAN
3 1 (0.40%) FIX Connectivity
3 1 (0.40%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (19.84%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (15.79%) MongoDB
3 26 (10.53%) MySQL
4 23 (9.31%) Apache Cassandra
5 21 (8.50%) NoSQL
6 18 (7.29%) Relational Database
6 18 (7.29%) SQL Server
7 10 (4.05%) Redis
8 7 (2.83%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (2.83%) DynamoDB
9 6 (2.43%) RDBMS
10 4 (1.62%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (1.62%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.40%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (0.40%) Couchbase
11 1 (0.40%) Delta Lake
11 1 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.40%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.40%) Power BI
11 1 (0.40%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 83 (33.60%) Cucumber
2 63 (25.51%) Git
3 61 (24.70%) JIRA
4 51 (20.65%) Jenkins
5 43 (17.41%) JUnit
6 36 (14.57%) Selenium
7 31 (12.55%) Postman
8 19 (7.69%) Jasmine
8 19 (7.69%) REST Assured
9 17 (6.88%) Cypress.io
10 12 (4.86%) Maven
11 10 (4.05%) GitLab
11 10 (4.05%) JMeter
11 10 (4.05%) Mockito
12 9 (3.64%) Gradle
12 9 (3.64%) SpecFlow
13 8 (3.24%) WebDriver
14 7 (2.83%) NUnit
15 6 (2.43%) TeamCity
16 5 (2.02%) SonarQube
General
1 77 (31.17%) Social Skills
2 59 (23.89%) Public Sector
3 45 (18.22%) Finance
4 36 (14.57%) Banking
5 33 (13.36%) Analytical Skills
6 28 (11.34%) Investment Banking
7 10 (4.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (2.83%) Electronics
8 7 (2.83%) Manufacturing
8 7 (2.83%) Marketing
8 7 (2.83%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.21%) Front Office
10 2 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.81%) Retail
11 1 (0.40%) Aviation
11 1 (0.40%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.40%) Games
11 1 (0.40%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.40%) Legal
11 1 (0.40%) Military
Job Titles
1 126 (51.01%) Developer
2 63 (25.51%) Senior
3 61 (24.70%) Java Developer
4 42 (17.00%) Lead
5 37 (14.98%) Senior Developer
6 29 (11.74%) Lead Developer
6 29 (11.74%) Test Engineer
7 25 (10.12%) Senior Java Developer
8 22 (8.91%) Lead Java Developer
9 21 (8.50%) Scala Developer
10 19 (7.69%) Tester
11 15 (6.07%) Senior Test Engineer
12 13 (5.26%) .NET Developer
13 11 (4.45%) Automation Tester
13 11 (4.45%) Python Engineer
14 10 (4.05%) C# Developer
14 10 (4.05%) Software Engineer
15 9 (3.64%) Analyst
15 9 (3.64%) Java Engineer
15 9 (3.64%) QA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (19.43%) .NET
2 47 (19.03%) Spring
3 45 (18.22%) Spring Boot
4 40 (16.19%) RESTful
5 36 (14.57%) REST
6 27 (10.93%) Kafka
7 24 (9.72%) Spring Batch
8 21 (8.50%) Spring Security
9 20 (8.10%) .NET Core
9 20 (8.10%) Playwright
9 20 (8.10%) Web Services
10 19 (7.69%) AngularJS
10 19 (7.69%) Swagger
11 18 (7.29%) HTML
12 17 (6.88%) OpenAPI
12 17 (6.88%) pytest
13 16 (6.48%) ActiveMQ
14 15 (6.07%) React
15 12 (4.86%) Gherkin
16 11 (4.45%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 19 (7.69%) Product Ownership
2 17 (6.88%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
3 16 (6.48%) Algorithms
4 10 (4.05%) Cloud Native
5 9 (3.64%) Derivative
5 9 (3.64%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (2.83%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (2.83%) Market Risk
7 6 (2.43%) Mobile App
8 5 (2.02%) N-Tier
8 5 (2.02%) Team-Oriented Environment
9 4 (1.62%) Client/Server
10 3 (1.21%) Credit Risk
10 3 (1.21%) iPad
10 3 (1.21%) iPhone
10 3 (1.21%) Virtual Team
11 2 (0.81%) Data Structures
11 2 (0.81%) Legacy Systems
11 2 (0.81%) Linux Command Line
11 2 (0.81%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 32 (12.96%) Linux
2 25 (10.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (2.43%) Android
3 6 (2.43%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.81%) Windows
5 1 (0.40%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (71.26%) TDD
2 162 (65.59%) Agile
3 125 (50.61%) CI/CD
4 114 (46.15%) Test Automation
5 87 (35.22%) Microservices
6 81 (32.79%) DevOps
7 72 (29.15%) Scrum
8 66 (26.72%) Software Engineering
9 46 (18.62%) Problem-Solving
10 45 (18.22%) Continuous Integration
11 40 (16.19%) Continuous Delivery
12 39 (15.79%) Containerisation
13 30 (12.15%) Design Patterns
13 30 (12.15%) Kanban
13 30 (12.15%) OWASP
14 29 (11.74%) Mentoring
15 28 (11.34%) API Testing
15 28 (11.34%) OO
15 28 (11.34%) Test Scripting
16 26 (10.53%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 104 (42.11%) Java
2 80 (32.39%) SQL
3 45 (18.22%) C#
4 40 (16.19%) JavaScript
5 39 (15.79%) Python
6 27 (10.93%) Bash
7 21 (8.50%) Scala
7 21 (8.50%) TypeScript
8 10 (4.05%) PowerShell
9 6 (2.43%) C++
9 6 (2.43%) Go
10 5 (2.02%) Shell Script
10 5 (2.02%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.62%) Haskell
12 3 (1.21%) Kotlin
12 3 (1.21%) Objective-C
12 3 (1.21%) PHP
12 3 (1.21%) Swift
12 3 (1.21%) VBA
12 3 (1.21%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 49 (19.84%) Security Cleared
2 46 (18.62%) SC Cleared
3 29 (11.74%) Degree
4 14 (5.67%) Numerate Degree
5 9 (3.64%) ISTQB
6 5 (2.02%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 5 (2.02%) MCPD
6 5 (2.02%) MCSD
6 5 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (1.62%) ISEB
8 3 (1.21%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.81%) SAFe Agilist
9 2 (0.81%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.40%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.40%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (19.84%) QA
2 30 (12.15%) Accessibility
3 6 (2.43%) WCAG
4 3 (1.21%) PCI DSS
5 2 (0.81%) Software Quality Assurance
6 1 (0.40%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.40%) GDPR
6 1 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.40%) NIST
6 1 (0.40%) SEPA
System Software
1 67 (27.13%) Docker
2 4 (1.62%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 52 (21.05%) Kubernetes
2 23 (9.31%) Ansible
3 17 (6.88%) Terraform
4 7 (2.83%) Kibana
5 5 (2.02%) Grafana
5 5 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.81%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.81%) Puppet
6 2 (0.81%) vRealize
7 1 (0.40%) Rancher
Vendors
1 15 (6.07%) Microsoft
2 8 (3.24%) SAP
3 6 (2.43%) Atlassian
4 5 (2.02%) Splunk
5 4 (1.62%) Databricks
5 4 (1.62%) Jaspersoft
5 4 (1.62%) Oracle
6 2 (0.81%) 3PAR
6 2 (0.81%) Brocade
6 2 (0.81%) CA Agile Central
6 2 (0.81%) Cisco
6 2 (0.81%) Dell
6 2 (0.81%) Dynatrace
6 2 (0.81%) EMC
6 2 (0.81%) HP
6 2 (0.81%) OpenLink
6 2 (0.81%) VMware
7 1 (0.40%) MuleSoft
7 1 (0.40%) New Relic
7 1 (0.40%) Rapid7