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 2 August 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Aug 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 300 257 239
Rank change year-on-year -43 -18 -108
Contract jobs citing BDD 281 364 585
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.85% 0.93% 1.09%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.94% 1.09% 1.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 258 389
10th Percentile £352 £361 £398
25th Percentile £412 £427 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £533 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.19% -7.30% +1.77%
75th Percentile £589 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £500 £503
% change year-on-year -15.00% -0.50% -4.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 18
10th Percentile - - £68.88
25th Percentile - - £70.00
Median hourly rate - £56.25 £73.75
Median % change year-on-year - -23.73% +27.16%
75th Percentile - - £75.00
90th Percentile - - £81.09
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £56.25 £72.50
% change year-on-year - -22.41% +34.26%

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 29,972 33,531 47,751
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.41% 85.45% 89.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,760 21,562 32,735
10th Percentile £300 £310 £320
25th Percentile £404 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £734 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,662 1,890 1,565
10th Percentile £14.20 £14.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £18.15 £18.57
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.90% -4.71% +62.40%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £74.59 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £41.25 £40.00
% change year-on-year -44.24% +3.13% +86.05%

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 2 August 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 2 August 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 -51 213 £508 -6.02% 323
London -82 117 £590 +7.27% 137
UK excluding London +8 110 £425 -15.00% 202
Work from Home +16 87 £500 +0.81% 214
North of England -11 35 £438 -7.89% 67
South East +26 26 £350 - 57
Scotland +9 19 £431 -13.05% 3
Midlands 0 14 £461 +2.50% 30
North West -5 14 £410 -18.00% 44
Yorkshire -9 14 £520 +15.50% 17
South West +19 13 £413 -30.08% 18
West Midlands +1 13 £463 +2.78% 15
North East -2 7 £420 - 6
East of England +2 2 £375 -25.00% 14
Wales +5 1 - - 8
East Midlands - 1 £219 - 15

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 (7.83%) Confluence
2 4 (1.42%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.36%) Apache
Applications
1 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.71%) Trello
2 1 (0.36%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (1.42%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 111 (39.50%) Azure
2 89 (31.67%) AWS
3 53 (18.86%) Azure DevOps
4 39 (13.88%) GitHub
5 18 (6.41%) Serverless
6 16 (5.69%) GitHub Actions
7 14 (4.98%) Amazon S3
8 12 (4.27%) OpenShift
9 11 (3.91%) Amazon EC2
10 9 (3.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 9 (3.20%) Amazon SQS
10 9 (3.20%) GCP
10 9 (3.20%) Power Platform
11 8 (2.85%) AWS KMS
11 8 (2.85%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 8 (2.85%) Route 53
12 6 (2.14%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (2.14%) Azure Data Factory
12 6 (2.14%) Azure Service Bus
13 5 (1.78%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.42%) Firewall
2 2 (0.71%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.71%) MQTT
2 2 (0.71%) SAN
2 2 (0.71%) X.509
3 1 (0.36%) DSL
3 1 (0.36%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (17.79%) PostgreSQL
2 30 (10.68%) NoSQL
3 22 (7.83%) Relational Database
4 21 (7.47%) Redis
5 19 (6.76%) SQL Server
6 16 (5.69%) MongoDB
7 10 (3.56%) Amazon Aurora
8 9 (3.20%) Amazon RDS
8 9 (3.20%) DynamoDB
9 4 (1.42%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (1.42%) MySQL
9 4 (1.42%) RDBMS
10 3 (1.07%) Big Data
10 3 (1.07%) Delta Lake
10 3 (1.07%) Power BI
11 2 (0.71%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.71%) Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.71%) Parquet
12 1 (0.36%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 75 (26.69%) Git
2 70 (24.91%) Jenkins
3 69 (24.56%) Cucumber
4 44 (15.66%) Selenium
5 42 (14.95%) JIRA
6 25 (8.90%) JUnit
7 24 (8.54%) Postman
8 20 (7.12%) Maven
9 19 (6.76%) Cypress.io
10 13 (4.63%) Gradle
10 13 (4.63%) Mockito
10 13 (4.63%) REST Assured
11 12 (4.27%) GitLab
11 12 (4.27%) JMeter
11 12 (4.27%) SpecFlow
12 10 (3.56%) Xcode
13 9 (3.20%) Bitbucket
13 9 (3.20%) SonarQube
13 9 (3.20%) WebDriver
14 8 (2.85%) DbUnit
General
1 97 (34.52%) Social Skills
2 56 (19.93%) Banking
3 49 (17.44%) Finance
3 49 (17.44%) Public Sector
4 41 (14.59%) Analytical Skills
5 39 (13.88%) Investment Banking
6 9 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (1.78%) Electronics
7 5 (1.78%) Front Office
7 5 (1.78%) Manufacturing
7 5 (1.78%) Marketing
7 5 (1.78%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.07%) Military
9 2 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.36%) Aviation
10 1 (0.36%) Back Office
10 1 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 132 (46.98%) Developer
2 50 (17.79%) Java Developer
3 40 (14.23%) Senior
4 37 (13.17%) Lead
5 30 (10.68%) Lead Developer
6 23 (8.19%) .NET Developer
7 21 (7.47%) Senior Developer
8 20 (7.12%) Test Engineer
9 18 (6.41%) Scala Developer
9 18 (6.41%) Tester
10 17 (6.05%) Analyst
10 17 (6.05%) Lead Java Developer
11 13 (4.63%) Automation Tester
11 13 (4.63%) C# Developer
12 12 (4.27%) Business Analyst
12 12 (4.27%) Lead .NET Developer
13 11 (3.91%) Data Engineer
13 11 (3.91%) Software Engineer
14 10 (3.56%) Java Engineer
14 10 (3.56%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (21.00%) RESTful
2 52 (18.51%) Kafka
3 51 (18.15%) .NET
4 46 (16.37%) REST
5 36 (12.81%) Spring
6 30 (10.68%) ActiveMQ
7 29 (10.32%) Spring Boot
8 28 (9.96%) .NET Core
9 27 (9.61%) AngularJS
10 24 (8.54%) Web Services
11 22 (7.83%) HTML
11 22 (7.83%) Playwright
12 20 (7.12%) Node.js
12 20 (7.12%) React
13 19 (6.76%) CSS
14 15 (5.34%) RabbitMQ
15 14 (4.98%) Hibernate
16 13 (4.63%) Gherkin
17 11 (3.91%) ASP.NET
17 11 (3.91%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 41 (14.59%) Product Ownership
2 19 (6.76%) Algorithms
3 16 (5.69%) Mobile App
4 15 (5.34%) Cloud Native
4 15 (5.34%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (3.56%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (2.14%) Credit Risk
6 6 (2.14%) Derivative
6 6 (2.14%) iPad
6 6 (2.14%) iPhone
6 6 (2.14%) Mobile Banking
6 6 (2.14%) Virtual Team
7 5 (1.78%) N-Tier
8 4 (1.42%) AI Agents
8 4 (1.42%) Client/Server
8 4 (1.42%) Data Structures
8 4 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.42%) Market Risk
8 4 (1.42%) Private Cloud
9 3 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.34%) Linux
2 14 (4.98%) Android
3 11 (3.91%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.36%) Unix
4 1 (0.36%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (80.78%) Agile
2 205 (72.95%) TDD
3 138 (49.11%) CI/CD
4 117 (41.64%) Test Automation
5 116 (41.28%) DevOps
6 111 (39.50%) Scrum
7 92 (32.74%) Microservices
8 67 (23.84%) Software Engineering
9 57 (20.28%) Problem-Solving
10 50 (17.79%) Kanban
11 42 (14.95%) SOLID
12 41 (14.59%) User Experience
13 40 (14.23%) Design Patterns
14 38 (13.52%) Clean Code
14 38 (13.52%) Continuous Integration
15 37 (13.17%) OO
16 36 (12.81%) Containerisation
17 35 (12.46%) Computer Science
18 30 (10.68%) Continuous Improvement
19 29 (10.32%) API Testing
Programming Languages
1 130 (46.26%) Java
2 73 (25.98%) SQL
3 58 (20.64%) C#
4 47 (16.73%) Python
5 43 (15.30%) JavaScript
6 25 (8.90%) Scala
7 24 (8.54%) TypeScript
8 12 (4.27%) Go
9 11 (3.91%) Swift
10 10 (3.56%) Objective-C
10 10 (3.56%) PowerShell
11 9 (3.20%) Kotlin
12 6 (2.14%) C++
13 5 (1.78%) Bash
13 5 (1.78%) Ruby
13 5 (1.78%) T-SQL
14 4 (1.42%) C
14 4 (1.42%) Haskell
14 4 (1.42%) Shell Script
15 2 (0.71%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 42 (14.95%) Degree
2 35 (12.46%) Security Cleared
3 33 (11.74%) SC Cleared
4 20 (7.12%) Numerate Degree
5 12 (4.27%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (3.56%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.78%) ISTQB
7 5 (1.78%) MCPD
7 5 (1.78%) MCSD
7 5 (1.78%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (1.07%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (1.07%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.71%) ISEB
9 2 (0.71%) SAFe Agilist
9 2 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.36%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (20.64%) QA
2 38 (13.52%) Accessibility
3 9 (3.20%) WCAG
4 3 (1.07%) Data Quality
4 3 (1.07%) PCI DSS
5 2 (0.71%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.36%) GDPR
6 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.36%) NIST
6 1 (0.36%) SEPA
System Software
1 71 (25.27%) Docker
2 8 (2.85%) Postfix
3 1 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 52 (18.51%) Kubernetes
2 27 (9.61%) Ansible
3 24 (8.54%) Terraform
4 17 (6.05%) Grafana
5 15 (5.34%) Prometheus
6 4 (1.42%) Kustomize
7 3 (1.07%) Kibana
8 2 (0.71%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.71%) Puppet
8 2 (0.71%) vRealize
9 1 (0.36%) logstash
Vendors
1 17 (6.05%) Microsoft
2 12 (4.27%) Atlassian
3 8 (2.85%) Jaspersoft
3 8 (2.85%) Oracle
4 7 (2.49%) CA Agile Central
4 7 (2.49%) Databricks
5 6 (2.14%) SAP
6 5 (1.78%) Splunk
7 4 (1.42%) OpenLink
8 3 (1.07%) Google
9 2 (0.71%) 3PAR
9 2 (0.71%) Bloomberg
9 2 (0.71%) Brocade
9 2 (0.71%) Cisco
9 2 (0.71%) Dell
9 2 (0.71%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.71%) EMC
9 2 (0.71%) HP
9 2 (0.71%) Reuters
9 2 (0.71%) VMware