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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 279 268 243
Rank change year-on-year -11 -25 -117
Contract jobs citing BDD 318 335 510
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.97% 0.87% 1.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.07% 1.01% 1.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 219 332
10th Percentile £360 £354 £363
25th Percentile £413 £416 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £598 £625 £675
90th Percentile £700 £763 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 15
10th Percentile - - £67.75
25th Percentile £82.50 - £70.00
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £75.00
75th Percentile £87.50 - £78.75
90th Percentile - - £88.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £71.25
% change year-on-year - - +22.55%

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 29,782 33,017 44,492
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.52% 85.70% 89.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,496 20,222 30,222
10th Percentile £300 £309 £313
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,816 1,455 1,568
10th Percentile £14.23 £14.90 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £18.92
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.79
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -1.81% +53.66%
75th Percentile £44.05 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £43.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -47.67% +1.18% +84.78%

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
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 20 September 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 20 September 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 -21 249 £520 -1.00% 200
UK excluding London +42 152 £475 +5.56% 148
London -45 114 £550 -2.65% 81
Work from Home +42 95 £500 - 161
North of England -3 78 £522 +16.08% 38
Yorkshire +5 39 £550 +22.22% 12
North West -9 28 £424 +5.88% 24
South East +11 22 £288 -17.71% 57
Scotland +16 20 £463 +0.43% 1
Midlands -4 14 £460 +1.10% 15
South West +15 13 £413 -28.26% 12
North East +4 12 £460 - 2
West Midlands +3 11 £500 +9.89% 8
East Midlands - 3 £308 - 6
Wales +5 2 £375 - 6
East of England -1 2 £375 -25.00% 14
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 5

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 (6.92%) Confluence
2 3 (0.94%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.31%) Apache
3 1 (0.31%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 4 (1.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (0.94%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.26%) Endur
2 1 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 111 (34.91%) Azure
2 94 (29.56%) AWS
3 49 (15.41%) Azure DevOps
4 44 (13.84%) GitHub
5 25 (7.86%) Serverless
6 16 (5.03%) GCP
7 15 (4.72%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (4.40%) Amazon EC2
9 13 (4.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 13 (4.09%) Amazon SQS
10 12 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (3.46%) Amazon S3
11 11 (3.46%) Route 53
12 10 (3.14%) PaaS
13 9 (2.83%) Amazon ECS
13 9 (2.83%) OpenShift
13 9 (2.83%) SaaS
14 7 (2.20%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (2.20%) Amazon EMR
14 7 (2.20%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.63%) Firewall
1 2 (0.63%) HTTP
1 2 (0.63%) Kerberos
1 2 (0.63%) MQTT
1 2 (0.63%) X.509
2 1 (0.31%) DSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (17.30%) PostgreSQL
2 39 (12.26%) MongoDB
3 33 (10.38%) NoSQL
4 24 (7.55%) Relational Database
5 23 (7.23%) Redis
6 18 (5.66%) SQL Server
7 13 (4.09%) Amazon Aurora
7 13 (4.09%) Amazon RDS
7 13 (4.09%) DynamoDB
7 13 (4.09%) MySQL
8 10 (3.14%) RDBMS
9 6 (1.89%) BigQuery
10 4 (1.26%) Apache Cassandra
10 4 (1.26%) Big Data
11 3 (0.94%) DB2
12 2 (0.63%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.63%) Data Warehouse
12 2 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
12 2 (0.63%) Parquet
12 2 (0.63%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 83 (26.10%) Git
2 78 (24.53%) Jenkins
3 77 (24.21%) Cucumber
4 53 (16.67%) Selenium
5 44 (13.84%) JIRA
6 32 (10.06%) Mockito
7 24 (7.55%) Maven
8 22 (6.92%) GitLab
8 22 (6.92%) Postman
9 21 (6.60%) Gradle
9 21 (6.60%) JUnit
10 18 (5.66%) Cypress.io
11 15 (4.72%) JMeter
12 13 (4.09%) Xcode
13 12 (3.77%) REST Assured
13 12 (3.77%) SonarQube
13 12 (3.77%) WebDriver
14 11 (3.46%) Bitbucket
14 11 (3.46%) SpecFlow
15 8 (2.52%) Artifactory
General
1 93 (29.25%) Social Skills
2 67 (21.07%) Public Sector
3 50 (15.72%) Banking
4 47 (14.78%) Finance
5 32 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
6 31 (9.75%) Investment Banking
7 9 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (1.89%) Telecoms
9 5 (1.57%) Electronics
9 5 (1.57%) Front Office
9 5 (1.57%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.57%) Marketing
10 4 (1.26%) Military
11 2 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.31%) Aviation
12 1 (0.31%) Back Office
12 1 (0.31%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.31%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.31%) Retail
Job Titles
1 156 (49.06%) Developer
2 80 (25.16%) Java Developer
3 57 (17.92%) Senior
4 38 (11.95%) Lead
4 38 (11.95%) Senior Developer
5 27 (8.49%) Senior Java Developer
6 26 (8.18%) Lead Developer
7 25 (7.86%) Test Engineer
8 22 (6.92%) .NET Developer
9 16 (5.03%) Analyst
10 15 (4.72%) Scala Developer
11 14 (4.40%) Test Automation Engineer
11 14 (4.40%) Tester
12 13 (4.09%) Lead Java Developer
13 12 (3.77%) Lead .NET Developer
14 11 (3.46%) Architect
14 11 (3.46%) Business Analyst
14 11 (3.46%) C# Developer
14 11 (3.46%) QA Engineer
14 11 (3.46%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (21.70%) Kafka
2 64 (20.13%) RESTful
3 48 (15.09%) .NET
3 48 (15.09%) REST
4 47 (14.78%) Spring Boot
5 45 (14.15%) ActiveMQ
6 40 (12.58%) Spring
7 28 (8.81%) Node.js
7 28 (8.81%) Playwright
8 27 (8.49%) HTML
9 26 (8.18%) AngularJS
10 24 (7.55%) .NET Core
10 24 (7.55%) Web Services
11 23 (7.23%) CSS
11 23 (7.23%) JAX-RS
12 21 (6.60%) React
13 16 (5.03%) Gherkin
13 16 (5.03%) JSON
14 14 (4.40%) RabbitMQ
15 13 (4.09%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 42 (13.21%) Product Ownership
2 21 (6.60%) Cloud Native
3 20 (6.29%) Mobile App
4 15 (4.72%) Algorithms
5 14 (4.40%) Distributed Systems
6 10 (3.14%) Enterprise Software
7 9 (2.83%) N-Tier
8 7 (2.20%) Mobile Banking
9 6 (1.89%) Credit Risk
9 6 (1.89%) iPad
9 6 (1.89%) iPhone
9 6 (1.89%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.57%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.57%) Data Structures
10 5 (1.57%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.26%) Derivative
11 4 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (1.26%) Management Information System
11 4 (1.26%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 36 (11.32%) Linux
2 25 (7.86%) Unix
3 19 (5.97%) Mac OS X
4 17 (5.35%) Android
5 14 (4.40%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 258 (81.13%) Agile
2 234 (73.58%) TDD
3 156 (49.06%) CI/CD
4 151 (47.48%) Test Automation
5 141 (44.34%) Microservices
6 112 (35.22%) Scrum
7 111 (34.91%) DevOps
8 71 (22.33%) Software Engineering
9 63 (19.81%) Problem-Solving
10 54 (16.98%) Containerisation
11 44 (13.84%) Kanban
11 44 (13.84%) SOLID
11 44 (13.84%) User Experience
12 42 (13.21%) Clean Code
12 42 (13.21%) Continuous Deployment
13 40 (12.58%) Design Patterns
14 38 (11.95%) Continuous Integration
15 36 (11.32%) Pair Programming
16 33 (10.38%) OO
17 32 (10.06%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 177 (55.66%) Java
2 68 (21.38%) SQL
3 54 (16.98%) C#
4 53 (16.67%) Python
5 49 (15.41%) JavaScript
6 28 (8.81%) TypeScript
7 25 (7.86%) Scala
8 14 (4.40%) Swift
9 13 (4.09%) Objective-C
10 12 (3.77%) Kotlin
11 9 (2.83%) C++
12 8 (2.52%) Go
12 8 (2.52%) PowerShell
13 7 (2.20%) C
13 7 (2.20%) Ruby
14 6 (1.89%) Bash
15 4 (1.26%) Shell Script
16 3 (0.94%) T-SQL
17 2 (0.63%) VBA
17 2 (0.63%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 64 (20.13%) Security Cleared
2 54 (16.98%) SC Cleared
3 34 (10.69%) Degree
4 16 (5.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (4.40%) Numerate Degree
6 12 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (3.14%) ISTQB
8 5 (1.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 4 (1.26%) ISEB
9 4 (1.26%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.94%) MCPD
10 3 (0.94%) MCSD
10 3 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.63%) SAFe Agilist
11 2 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.31%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.31%) Azure Certification
12 1 (0.31%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.31%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (19.50%) QA
2 40 (12.58%) Accessibility
3 10 (3.14%) WCAG
4 4 (1.26%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.63%) Disclosure Scotland
5 2 (0.63%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.31%) GDPR
6 1 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.31%) NIST
System Software
1 84 (26.42%) Docker
2 6 (1.89%) Postfix
3 1 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 63 (19.81%) Kubernetes
2 31 (9.75%) Terraform
3 23 (7.23%) Ansible
4 17 (5.35%) Grafana
5 14 (4.40%) Prometheus
6 5 (1.57%) Kustomize
7 3 (0.94%) Kibana
8 1 (0.31%) logstash
Vendors
1 15 (4.72%) Microsoft
2 14 (4.40%) Oracle
3 12 (3.77%) Atlassian
4 6 (1.89%) CA Agile Central
4 6 (1.89%) Databricks
4 6 (1.89%) Jaspersoft
4 6 (1.89%) Splunk
5 5 (1.57%) Gigya
5 5 (1.57%) SAP
6 4 (1.26%) OpenLink
7 3 (0.94%) Google
7 3 (0.94%) MuleSoft
7 3 (0.94%) Red Hat
7 3 (0.94%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.63%) Bloomberg
8 2 (0.63%) Dell
8 2 (0.63%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.63%) Reuters
9 1 (0.31%) ESRI
9 1 (0.31%) MicroStrategy