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 16 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 336 260 275
Rank change year-on-year -76 +15 -142
Contract jobs citing BDD 288 325 366
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.78% 0.95% 0.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.89% 1.08% 0.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 189 192 237
10th Percentile £370 £357 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -12.34%
75th Percentile £583 £620 £650
90th Percentile £675 £800 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +8.33% -10.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £82.50 - £76.25
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £77.50
75th Percentile £87.50 - £84.38
90th Percentile - - £87.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

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 32,471 30,121 39,108
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.45% 87.99% 88.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,452 18,385 26,091
10th Percentile £300 £306 £308
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £745 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,090 1,000 1,510
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.61 £14.49
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £19.02
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.85
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -25.88% +25.29%
75th Percentile £48.75 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.04 £32.39 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.87% -27.21% +39.06%

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 16 December 2025.

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 17 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 16 December 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 -68 243 £513 -1.44% 88
UK excluding London -57 137 £488 +8.33% 67
London -41 111 £525 -7.49% 31
North of England -14 100 £500 +11.11% 24
Work from Home -16 76 £494 -5.95% 59
Yorkshire -31 50 £550 +10.00% 7
North West -29 29 £418 +4.38% 15
North East +6 23 £460 +26.90% 2
South East -27 13 £395 -21.00% 23
Scotland +5 8 £470 +10.59% 1
Midlands -33 6 £313 -38.57% 9
Wales +3 4 £375 -
West Midlands -28 4 £475 -6.63% 8
South West -28 4 £425 -19.05% 5
East Midlands - 2 £310 - 1
East of England -25 1 £375 +20.00% 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 23 (7.99%) Confluence
2 3 (1.04%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.35%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.35%) Cloud Foundry
3 1 (0.35%) CMS
3 1 (0.35%) nginx
Applications
1 6 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 6 (2.08%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.04%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 93 (32.29%) AWS
2 76 (26.39%) Azure
3 40 (13.89%) GitHub
4 29 (10.07%) Azure DevOps
5 23 (7.99%) Serverless
6 22 (7.64%) GCP
7 20 (6.94%) GitHub Actions
8 16 (5.56%) AWS Lambda
9 10 (3.47%) SaaS
10 9 (3.13%) Amazon ECS
10 9 (3.13%) Amazon S3
11 8 (2.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (2.78%) Amazon EKS
11 8 (2.78%) Amazon SQS
12 7 (2.43%) Apigee
12 7 (2.43%) Datadog
13 6 (2.08%) Amazon EventBridge
13 6 (2.08%) AWS Step Functions
13 6 (2.08%) PaaS
14 5 (1.74%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.74%) Cisco IPT
2 4 (1.39%) HTTP
3 2 (0.69%) MQTT
4 1 (0.35%) DSL
4 1 (0.35%) FTP
4 1 (0.35%) Internet
4 1 (0.35%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (13.89%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (13.54%) MongoDB
3 21 (7.29%) NoSQL
4 20 (6.94%) MySQL
5 18 (6.25%) SQL Server
6 15 (5.21%) Redis
7 13 (4.51%) Relational Database
8 11 (3.82%) Amazon RDS
9 8 (2.78%) DynamoDB
10 7 (2.43%) RDBMS
11 6 (2.08%) Amazon Aurora
11 6 (2.08%) BigQuery
12 4 (1.39%) Apache Cassandra
13 3 (1.04%) Data Lake
13 3 (1.04%) DB2
13 3 (1.04%) Delta Lake
14 2 (0.69%) Amazon Athena
14 2 (0.69%) Big Data
14 2 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
14 2 (0.69%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 90 (31.25%) Cucumber
2 72 (25.00%) Jenkins
3 67 (23.26%) Git
4 59 (20.49%) Selenium
5 51 (17.71%) JIRA
6 40 (13.89%) GitLab
7 34 (11.81%) Postman
8 26 (9.03%) Mockito
8 26 (9.03%) REST Assured
9 25 (8.68%) Cypress.io
10 17 (5.90%) Bitbucket
11 15 (5.21%) Gradle
12 14 (4.86%) JUnit
13 13 (4.51%) JMeter
13 13 (4.51%) Maven
14 12 (4.17%) SonarQube
15 10 (3.47%) WebDriver
16 9 (3.13%) TestRail
17 8 (2.78%) SpecFlow
18 7 (2.43%) Subversion
General
1 78 (27.08%) Social Skills
2 55 (19.10%) Public Sector
3 34 (11.81%) Finance
4 33 (11.46%) Banking
5 17 (5.90%) Analytical Skills
6 13 (4.51%) Investment Banking
7 8 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (2.43%) Front Office
9 5 (1.74%) Legal
9 5 (1.74%) Military
10 4 (1.39%) Electronics
11 1 (0.35%) Back Office
11 1 (0.35%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.35%) Marketing
11 1 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.35%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.35%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 114 (39.58%) Developer
2 69 (23.96%) Java Developer
3 51 (17.71%) Senior
4 41 (14.24%) Test Engineer
5 29 (10.07%) Senior Developer
6 27 (9.38%) Lead
7 24 (8.33%) Senior Java Developer
8 22 (7.64%) Software Engineer
9 19 (6.60%) Test Automation Engineer
10 15 (5.21%) Analyst
10 15 (5.21%) QA Engineer
11 14 (4.86%) Tester
12 12 (4.17%) Java Engineer
13 11 (3.82%) Automation Tester
14 10 (3.47%) Angular Developer
14 10 (3.47%) Automation Engineer
14 10 (3.47%) Lead Developer
15 9 (3.13%) Architect
15 9 (3.13%) Business Analyst
15 9 (3.13%) Senior Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (20.83%) REST
2 57 (19.79%) Spring Boot
3 54 (18.75%) Kafka
4 49 (17.01%) RESTful
5 41 (14.24%) Node.js
6 39 (13.54%) Spring
7 35 (12.15%) React
8 32 (11.11%) Playwright
9 29 (10.07%) ActiveMQ
10 27 (9.38%) .NET
11 26 (9.03%) Gherkin
12 24 (8.33%) CSS
12 24 (8.33%) JAX-RS
13 21 (7.29%) AngularJS
14 18 (6.25%) HTML
15 16 (5.56%) JSON
16 15 (5.21%) Jest
17 13 (4.51%) WireMock
18 12 (4.17%) GraphQL
18 12 (4.17%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 40 (13.89%) Product Ownership
2 16 (5.56%) Cloud Native
3 11 (3.82%) Mobile App
4 6 (2.08%) Algorithms
4 6 (2.08%) Distributed Architecture
4 6 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
4 6 (2.08%) Equities
4 6 (2.08%) N-Tier
5 5 (1.74%) Client/Server
5 5 (1.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 5 (1.74%) Greenfield Project
5 5 (1.74%) NHS
5 5 (1.74%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.04%) AI Agents
6 3 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (1.04%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (1.04%) Educational Technology
6 3 (1.04%) Mobile Banking
6 3 (1.04%) Private Cloud
6 3 (1.04%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 38 (13.19%) Linux
2 29 (10.07%) Unix
3 20 (6.94%) Mac OS X
4 5 (1.74%) Android
5 4 (1.39%) Apple iOS
6 3 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.69%) Windows
8 1 (0.35%) VMS
8 1 (0.35%) Windows Embedded Compact
Processes & Methodologies
1 213 (73.96%) Agile
2 197 (68.40%) TDD
3 170 (59.03%) Test Automation
4 157 (54.51%) CI/CD
5 142 (49.31%) Microservices
6 86 (29.86%) Scrum
7 78 (27.08%) DevOps
8 59 (20.49%) Problem-Solving
8 59 (20.49%) Software Engineering
9 53 (18.40%) Containerisation
10 50 (17.36%) API Testing
11 41 (14.24%) Continuous Improvement
11 41 (14.24%) Kanban
12 38 (13.19%) Test Strategy
13 37 (12.85%) Continuous Deployment
14 35 (12.15%) Non-Functional Testing
15 34 (11.81%) Continuous Integration
16 33 (11.46%) Design Patterns
17 32 (11.11%) Functional Testing
17 32 (11.11%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 182 (63.19%) Java
2 59 (20.49%) JavaScript
3 52 (18.06%) SQL
4 48 (16.67%) Python
5 37 (12.85%) TypeScript
6 23 (7.99%) C#
7 16 (5.56%) Scala
8 9 (3.13%) C++
9 8 (2.78%) Go
9 8 (2.78%) Kotlin
10 7 (2.43%) PHP
11 6 (2.08%) JSX
11 6 (2.08%) Ruby
12 4 (1.39%) Bash
12 4 (1.39%) C
12 4 (1.39%) Objective-C
12 4 (1.39%) Swift
13 2 (0.69%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.35%) Groovy
14 1 (0.35%) XPath
Qualifications
1 72 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 57 (19.79%) SC Cleared
3 18 (6.25%) BPSS Clearance
4 17 (5.90%) Degree
5 15 (5.21%) ISTQB
6 8 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (1.74%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 4 (1.39%) Numerate Degree
9 3 (1.04%) AWS Certification
9 3 (1.04%) ISEB
10 2 (0.69%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 2 (0.69%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.35%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (22.22%) QA
2 35 (12.15%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.82%) WCAG
4 8 (2.78%) GDPR
5 5 (1.74%) PERC
6 3 (1.04%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.69%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.69%) HL7
8 1 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.35%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 77 (26.74%) Docker
Systems Management
1 54 (18.75%) Kubernetes
2 25 (8.68%) Terraform
3 12 (4.17%) Grafana
4 10 (3.47%) Ansible
5 8 (2.78%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.04%) Kustomize
7 2 (0.69%) HP Fortify
7 2 (0.69%) Kibana
8 1 (0.35%) logstash
8 1 (0.35%) Rancher
8 1 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 13 (4.51%) Oracle
2 8 (2.78%) Microsoft
3 7 (2.43%) Atlassian
4 6 (2.08%) Splunk
5 5 (1.74%) Databricks
5 5 (1.74%) Gigya
5 5 (1.74%) ServiceNow
6 4 (1.39%) CA Agile Central
6 4 (1.39%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.04%) Adobe
7 3 (1.04%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.69%) IBM
8 2 (0.69%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.35%) Bloomberg
9 1 (0.35%) Charles River
9 1 (0.35%) Marketo
9 1 (0.35%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.35%) Reuters
9 1 (0.35%) UiPath
9 1 (0.35%) Xamarin