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 3 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 290 288 218
Rank change year-on-year -2 -70 -85
Contract jobs citing BDD 270 345 674
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.86% 0.79% 1.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.95% 0.93% 1.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 174 256 461
10th Percentile £358 £353 £400
25th Percentile £411 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £600
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% -10.42% +8.99%
75th Percentile £584 £650 £695
90th Percentile £750 £750 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £518 £500
% change year-on-year -11.11% +3.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 24
10th Percentile - - £61.63
25th Percentile - - £69.06
Median hourly rate - £56.25 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year - -22.41% +24.70%
75th Percentile - - £75.00
90th Percentile - - £83.09
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £56.25 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -19.64% +20.69%

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 28,438 37,047 49,962
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.78% 85.22% 89.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,912 23,635 34,414
10th Percentile £300 £300 £325
25th Percentile £405 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% +1.38%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,399 2,530 1,711
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.75 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.44 £16.06 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% +4.17% +38.46%
75th Percentile £53.75 £61.30 £64.81
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.66 £38.12 £35.00
% change year-on-year -35.31% +8.91% +64.71%

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 3 July 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 16 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 3 July 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 -13 215 £506 -7.95% 337
UK excluding London +60 118 £460 -11.11% 219
London -39 114 £588 +6.82% 145
Work from Home +34 89 £500 +0.40% 231
North of England +22 45 £460 -9.36% 68
South East +44 24 £400 -21.95% 61
Yorkshire +18 24 £520 -5.50% 21
Scotland +12 17 £400 -19.35% 13
Midlands +23 16 £481 +6.94% 32
West Midlands +17 15 £500 +11.11% 29
North West +8 15 £402 -19.60% 45
South West +26 14 £425 -27.97% 19
North East +3 7 £420 - 2
East of England +21 1 - - 13
Wales +5 1 - - 9
East Midlands +3 1 £219 -44.91% 3

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 22 (8.15%) Confluence
2 5 (1.85%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.74%) Apache
3 2 (0.74%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.37%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.74%) Trello
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (1.48%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 98 (36.30%) Azure
2 82 (30.37%) AWS
3 55 (20.37%) Azure DevOps
4 35 (12.96%) GitHub
5 19 (7.04%) Serverless
6 17 (6.30%) Amazon S3
7 13 (4.81%) Amazon EC2
8 11 (4.07%) GitHub Actions
8 11 (4.07%) OpenShift
9 10 (3.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 10 (3.70%) Amazon SQS
10 9 (3.33%) AWS KMS
10 9 (3.33%) Power Platform
10 9 (3.33%) Route 53
11 8 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (2.22%) Azure Data Factory
12 6 (2.22%) Azure Service Bus
12 6 (2.22%) GCP
12 6 (2.22%) IaaS
12 6 (2.22%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.48%) Firewall
2 2 (0.74%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.74%) SAN
3 1 (0.37%) HTTP
3 1 (0.37%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (17.41%) PostgreSQL
2 27 (10.00%) NoSQL
3 21 (7.78%) Relational Database
4 19 (7.04%) Redis
5 16 (5.93%) MongoDB
6 15 (5.56%) SQL Server
7 10 (3.70%) Amazon Aurora
7 10 (3.70%) Amazon RDS
7 10 (3.70%) DynamoDB
8 5 (1.85%) MySQL
9 4 (1.48%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (1.48%) RDBMS
10 3 (1.11%) Apache Cassandra
10 3 (1.11%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.74%) Big Data
11 2 (0.74%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.74%) Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.74%) Parquet
11 2 (0.74%) Power BI
12 1 (0.37%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 70 (25.93%) Jenkins
2 69 (25.56%) Cucumber
3 64 (23.70%) Git
4 42 (15.56%) JIRA
5 40 (14.81%) Selenium
6 29 (10.74%) JUnit
7 25 (9.26%) Postman
8 20 (7.41%) Maven
9 19 (7.04%) Cypress.io
10 14 (5.19%) GitLab
10 14 (5.19%) REST Assured
11 13 (4.81%) Mockito
12 12 (4.44%) Gradle
13 11 (4.07%) JMeter
14 10 (3.70%) Xcode
15 9 (3.33%) SonarQube
15 9 (3.33%) SpecFlow
16 8 (2.96%) DbUnit
16 8 (2.96%) jMock
16 8 (2.96%) WebDriver
General
1 92 (34.07%) Social Skills
2 52 (19.26%) Public Sector
3 50 (18.52%) Banking
4 49 (18.15%) Finance
5 41 (15.19%) Analytical Skills
6 34 (12.59%) Investment Banking
7 8 (2.96%) Electronics
7 8 (2.96%) Manufacturing
7 8 (2.96%) Marketing
7 8 (2.96%) Telecoms
8 4 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.48%) Front Office
8 4 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.74%) Military
9 2 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.37%) Aviation
10 1 (0.37%) Legal
10 1 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 134 (49.63%) Developer
2 55 (20.37%) Java Developer
3 46 (17.04%) Senior
4 45 (16.67%) Lead
5 34 (12.59%) Lead Developer
6 28 (10.37%) Senior Developer
7 21 (7.78%) .NET Developer
7 21 (7.78%) Tester
8 20 (7.41%) Lead Java Developer
8 20 (7.41%) Test Engineer
9 18 (6.67%) Scala Developer
10 15 (5.56%) Analyst
11 14 (5.19%) Automation Tester
11 14 (5.19%) C# Developer
12 13 (4.81%) Business Analyst
12 13 (4.81%) Lead .NET Developer
12 13 (4.81%) Senior Java Developer
13 11 (4.07%) Azure Developer
14 10 (3.70%) Data Engineer
15 9 (3.33%) C# .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (18.15%) .NET
2 46 (17.04%) Kafka
3 45 (16.67%) RESTful
4 43 (15.93%) REST
5 41 (15.19%) Spring
6 35 (12.96%) Spring Boot
7 29 (10.74%) .NET Core
8 28 (10.37%) ActiveMQ
9 24 (8.89%) AngularJS
10 23 (8.52%) Web Services
11 21 (7.78%) HTML
12 20 (7.41%) Playwright
12 20 (7.41%) React
13 19 (7.04%) Node.js
14 17 (6.30%) CSS
15 15 (5.56%) RabbitMQ
16 14 (5.19%) Hibernate
17 12 (4.44%) Gherkin
18 11 (4.07%) pytest
19 10 (3.70%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 35 (12.96%) Product Ownership
2 17 (6.30%) Algorithms
3 15 (5.56%) Distributed Systems
4 14 (5.19%) Mobile App
5 12 (4.44%) Cloud Native
6 10 (3.70%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (2.59%) Derivative
8 6 (2.22%) Credit Risk
8 6 (2.22%) iPad
8 6 (2.22%) iPhone
8 6 (2.22%) Mobile Banking
8 6 (2.22%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.85%) Market Risk
9 5 (1.85%) N-Tier
10 4 (1.48%) Client/Server
10 4 (1.48%) Data Structures
10 4 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (1.11%) Management Information System
11 3 (1.11%) Private Cloud
12 2 (0.74%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 17 (6.30%) Linux
2 15 (5.56%) Android
3 12 (4.44%) Apple iOS
4 4 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.37%) Unix
5 1 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 211 (78.15%) Agile
2 194 (71.85%) TDD
3 125 (46.30%) CI/CD
4 105 (38.89%) DevOps
5 104 (38.52%) Test Automation
6 94 (34.81%) Scrum
7 85 (31.48%) Microservices
8 58 (21.48%) Problem-Solving
9 57 (21.11%) Software Engineering
10 41 (15.19%) Kanban
11 39 (14.44%) OO
12 37 (13.70%) Continuous Integration
12 37 (13.70%) Design Patterns
13 36 (13.33%) SOLID
14 34 (12.59%) Computer Science
15 33 (12.22%) User Experience
16 30 (11.11%) API Testing
16 30 (11.11%) Containerisation
17 29 (10.74%) Clean Code
18 27 (10.00%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 126 (46.67%) Java
2 71 (26.30%) SQL
3 54 (20.00%) C#
4 47 (17.41%) JavaScript
5 44 (16.30%) Python
6 23 (8.52%) TypeScript
7 22 (8.15%) Scala
8 14 (5.19%) PowerShell
9 11 (4.07%) Go
9 11 (4.07%) Kotlin
9 11 (4.07%) Swift
10 10 (3.70%) Objective-C
11 7 (2.59%) Bash
12 6 (2.22%) C++
13 5 (1.85%) Ruby
13 5 (1.85%) T-SQL
14 4 (1.48%) C
14 4 (1.48%) Haskell
14 4 (1.48%) Shell Script
15 2 (0.74%) RPG
Qualifications
1 41 (15.19%) Degree
2 36 (13.33%) Security Cleared
3 33 (12.22%) SC Cleared
4 20 (7.41%) Numerate Degree
5 9 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.85%) ISTQB
7 5 (1.85%) MCPD
7 5 (1.85%) MCSD
7 5 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (1.11%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.74%) ISEB
9 2 (0.74%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.74%) SAFe Agilist
9 2 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (18.89%) QA
2 32 (11.85%) Accessibility
3 9 (3.33%) WCAG
4 4 (1.48%) PCI DSS
5 3 (1.11%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.74%) Software Quality Assurance
7 1 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.37%) GDPR
7 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.37%) NIST
7 1 (0.37%) SEPA
System Software
1 70 (25.93%) Docker
2 8 (2.96%) Postfix
3 1 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 45 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 26 (9.63%) Ansible
2 26 (9.63%) Terraform
3 12 (4.44%) Grafana
4 10 (3.70%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.48%) Kibana
6 2 (0.74%) Kustomize
6 2 (0.74%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.74%) Puppet
6 2 (0.74%) vRealize
7 1 (0.37%) Rancher
Vendors
1 22 (8.15%) Microsoft
2 11 (4.07%) Atlassian
3 9 (3.33%) SAP
4 8 (2.96%) Jaspersoft
5 6 (2.22%) CA Agile Central
5 6 (2.22%) Oracle
6 5 (1.85%) Databricks
6 5 (1.85%) Splunk
7 4 (1.48%) OpenLink
8 3 (1.11%) Google
9 2 (0.74%) 3PAR
9 2 (0.74%) Bloomberg
9 2 (0.74%) Brocade
9 2 (0.74%) Cisco
9 2 (0.74%) Dell
9 2 (0.74%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.74%) EMC
9 2 (0.74%) HP
9 2 (0.74%) Reuters
9 2 (0.74%) VMware