User Stories Contract Job Trends in England

User Story
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring User Stories skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 24 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
24 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 137 164
Rank change year-on-year +10 +27 -39
Contract jobs citing User Stories 991 568 500
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.17% 2.05% 1.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.56% 2.25% 1.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 655 376 327
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £585 £619 £600
90th Percentile £650 £725 £658
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £524
% change year-on-year - -4.53% -0.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 5 2
10th Percentile £35.00 £30.60 £33.01
25th Percentile £53.44 - £33.02
Median hourly rate £70.00 £31.49 £33.04
Median % change year-on-year +122.29% -4.68% -51.06%
75th Percentile £82.84 £53.50 £33.05
90th Percentile £89.28 £64.90 £33.06
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £42.50 £33.04
% change year-on-year +64.73% +28.64% -51.06%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

User Stories 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 in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 38,743 25,202 28,504
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.81% 90.84% 85.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,962 16,051 18,351
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £424
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £627 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £751
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,572 1,476 1,524
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.25 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.17 £17.87 £18.08
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% -3.67%

User Stories
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing User Stories relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

User Stories job vacancy trend in England

User Stories
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing User Stories.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing User Stories

User Stories
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing User Stories in England over the 6 months to 24 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for User Stories in England

User Stories
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing User Stories.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing User Stories

User Stories
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing User Stories in England over the 6 months to 24 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for User Stories in England

User Stories
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing User Stories within the England region over the 6 months to 24 August 2026. 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
London +10 565 £525 - 145
North of England -19 140 £500 +7.53% 56
Midlands +10 124 £450 +5.88% 26
West Midlands +14 95 £450 -2.44% 20
South East -48 71 £450 - 60
North West -19 66 £500 +9.65% 30
Yorkshire -21 56 £500 +2.30% 14
South West -16 43 £486 -2.75% 40
East of England -1 33 £495 +10.00% 15
East Midlands -12 29 £440 +22.22% 6
North East -24 19 £420 -4.00% 13
User Stories
UK

User Stories
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 156 (15.74%) Confluence
2 26 (2.62%) CMS
3 18 (1.82%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.61%) Camunda
5 5 (0.50%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.30%) Cloud Foundry
6 3 (0.30%) Headless CMS
6 3 (0.30%) Kentico
7 2 (0.20%) JBoss
7 2 (0.20%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.10%) Apache
8 1 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.10%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.10%) Drupal
8 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.10%) Moodle
8 1 (0.10%) SAS
8 1 (0.10%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.10%) Totara
Applications
1 44 (4.44%) MS Visio
2 32 (3.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
5 7 (0.71%) Notion
6 4 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.10%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.10%) Trello
Business Applications
1 23 (2.32%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.61%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.50%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.30%) Dynamics AX
5 3 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.30%) SAP SD
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics SL
6 2 (0.20%) Infor CloudSuite
6 2 (0.20%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.20%) Sage X3
6 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.20%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.20%) Temenos T24
6 2 (0.20%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 199 (20.08%) Azure
2 107 (10.80%) Power Platform
3 92 (9.28%) AWS
4 90 (9.08%) Azure DevOps
5 41 (4.14%) Dynamics 365
6 30 (3.03%) PowerApps
6 30 (3.03%) SaaS
7 28 (2.83%) GCP
7 28 (2.83%) GitHub
8 27 (2.72%) Power Automate
9 24 (2.42%) Microsoft 365
10 22 (2.22%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 18 (1.82%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
12 16 (1.61%) Snowflake
13 15 (1.51%) Figma
14 14 (1.41%) Entra ID
15 12 (1.21%) Lucidchart
16 10 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
17 9 (0.91%) Miro
17 9 (0.91%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.71%) Network Security
2 5 (0.50%) Firewall
3 4 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
4 3 (0.30%) Broadband
4 3 (0.30%) HTTP
5 2 (0.20%) Intranet
5 2 (0.20%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.20%) WAN
5 2 (0.20%) Wireless
6 1 (0.10%) 5G
6 1 (0.10%) DNS
6 1 (0.10%) Internet
6 1 (0.10%) NFC
6 1 (0.10%) NGFW
6 1 (0.10%) SSH
6 1 (0.10%) SSL
6 1 (0.10%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (6.46%) Power BI
2 39 (3.94%) Metadata
3 27 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
4 14 (1.41%) Relational Database
5 13 (1.31%) SQL Server
6 9 (0.91%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.91%) Parquet
7 8 (0.81%) Big Data
7 8 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (0.81%) Tableau
8 7 (0.71%) Delta Lake
9 5 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (0.50%) BigQuery
9 5 (0.50%) Data Hub
9 5 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (0.40%) Star Schema
11 3 (0.30%) ClickHouse
11 3 (0.30%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.30%) SAP BW
12 2 (0.20%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 235 (23.71%) JIRA
2 24 (2.42%) Postman
3 21 (2.12%) Git
4 18 (1.82%) GitLab
5 11 (1.11%) Gradle
6 10 (1.01%) Jenkins
6 10 (1.01%) Selenium
7 7 (0.71%) Cucumber
7 7 (0.71%) Team Foundation Server
8 6 (0.61%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 4 (0.40%) Balsamiq
10 4 (0.40%) Maven
10 4 (0.40%) REST Assured
10 4 (0.40%) Zephyr
11 3 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.20%) JMeter
12 2 (0.20%) Mockito
12 2 (0.20%) SoapUI
12 2 (0.20%) SonarQube
General
1 407 (41.07%) Social Skills
2 273 (27.55%) Finance
3 264 (26.64%) Analytical Skills
4 138 (13.93%) Banking
5 128 (12.92%) Public Sector
6 77 (7.77%) Documentation Skills
7 63 (6.36%) Retail
8 37 (3.73%) Marketing
9 34 (3.43%) Legal
10 30 (3.03%) Influencing Skills
10 30 (3.03%) Investment Banking
11 26 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
12 25 (2.52%) Manufacturing
13 20 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
15 17 (1.72%) Retail Banking
16 16 (1.61%) Pharmaceutical
17 15 (1.51%) Aerospace
17 15 (1.51%) Front Office
18 14 (1.41%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 505 (50.96%) Analyst
2 455 (45.91%) Business Analyst
3 133 (13.42%) Senior
4 122 (12.31%) Product Owner
5 98 (9.89%) Developer
6 80 (8.07%) Technical Analyst
7 78 (7.87%) Senior Analyst
8 74 (7.47%) Senior Business Analyst
9 73 (7.37%) Product Manager
10 68 (6.86%) Technical Business Analyst
11 59 (5.95%) Lead
12 40 (4.04%) Salesforce Analyst
12 40 (4.04%) Salesforce Business Analyst
13 31 (3.13%) Consultant
14 25 (2.52%) Financial Analyst
15 24 (2.42%) Data Analyst
16 22 (2.22%) Digital Business Analyst
16 22 (2.22%) Finance Business Analyst
16 22 (2.22%) Systems Analyst
17 21 (2.12%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (3.83%) REST
2 36 (3.63%) JSON
3 21 (2.12%) Terraform
4 20 (2.02%) RESTful
5 16 (1.61%) Kafka
6 14 (1.41%) HTML
6 14 (1.41%) React
7 13 (1.31%) AngularJS
8 12 (1.21%) Lightning Web Components
8 12 (1.21%) Spring Boot
9 11 (1.11%) OAuth
10 10 (1.01%) .NET
10 10 (1.01%) ADO
10 10 (1.01%) Middleware
10 10 (1.01%) OpenID
10 10 (1.01%) Vue
11 9 (0.91%) CSS
11 9 (0.91%) SailPoint
11 9 (0.91%) XML
12 8 (0.81%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 354 (35.72%) Product Ownership
2 44 (4.44%) Onboarding
3 37 (3.73%) Analytical Mindset
4 32 (3.23%) Data Protection Act
5 25 (2.52%) Cloud Native
5 25 (2.52%) CMDB
6 23 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
7 21 (2.12%) AI Agents
7 21 (2.12%) Data Structures
7 21 (2.12%) Management Information System
8 18 (1.82%) Virtual Team
9 17 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
10 16 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (1.31%) Greenfield Project
11 13 (1.31%) Life Science
12 12 (1.21%) Mobile App
13 11 (1.11%) FMCG
13 11 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 10 (1.01%) Operational Technology
15 9 (0.91%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 11 (1.11%) Linux
2 5 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 5 (0.50%) Unix
2 5 (0.50%) Windows
3 4 (0.40%) Android
3 4 (0.40%) Apple iOS
4 3 (0.30%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 660 (66.60%) Agile
2 402 (40.57%) Acceptance Criteria
3 394 (39.76%) Stakeholder Management
4 296 (29.87%) Requirements Gathering
5 257 (25.93%) Workshop Facilitation
6 248 (25.03%) Scrum
7 237 (23.92%) User Acceptance Testing
8 227 (22.91%) Business Analysis
9 207 (20.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 197 (19.88%) DevOps
11 194 (19.58%) Problem-Solving
12 190 (19.17%) Sprint Planning
13 185 (18.67%) Continuous Improvement
14 179 (18.06%) Roadmaps
15 165 (16.65%) Product Backlog
16 164 (16.55%) Backlog Management
17 143 (14.43%) Backlog Refinement
18 142 (14.33%) AI
18 142 (14.33%) Validation
19 140 (14.13%) Backlog Prioritisation
Programming Languages
1 143 (14.43%) SQL
2 75 (7.57%) Python
3 52 (5.25%) Java
4 50 (5.05%) JavaScript
5 21 (2.12%) C#
6 12 (1.21%) Apex Code
7 10 (1.01%) Scala
8 8 (0.81%) Kotlin
9 5 (0.50%) Korn
9 5 (0.50%) TypeScript
10 4 (0.40%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 3 (0.30%) R
11 3 (0.30%) Ruby
11 3 (0.30%) SOQL
12 2 (0.20%) Bash
12 2 (0.20%) Magik
12 2 (0.20%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.20%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.20%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 172 (17.36%) Security Cleared
2 141 (14.23%) SC Cleared
3 71 (7.16%) Degree
4 29 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
6 16 (1.61%) CSPO
6 16 (1.61%) IIBA
7 15 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (1.21%) DV Cleared
9 11 (1.11%) CBAP
9 11 (1.11%) PMI Certification
10 9 (0.91%) PMP
11 8 (0.81%) CISSP
12 6 (0.61%) ISTQB
13 5 (0.50%) ISEB
13 5 (0.50%) Master's Degree
14 4 (0.40%) AWS Certification
15 3 (0.30%) Azure Certification
15 3 (0.30%) DBS Check
15 3 (0.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (11.60%) QA
2 65 (6.56%) Data Quality
3 40 (4.04%) Accessibility
4 19 (1.92%) GDPR
5 16 (1.61%) GRC
6 10 (1.01%) NIST
7 9 (0.91%) GxP
8 8 (0.81%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 8 (0.81%) SLA
9 7 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 6 (0.61%) ISO 20022
11 5 (0.50%) Solvency II
11 5 (0.50%) WCAG
12 4 (0.40%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.40%) SEPA
13 3 (0.30%) HL7
14 2 (0.20%) COBIT
14 2 (0.20%) ISO 15022
14 2 (0.20%) PMO
14 2 (0.20%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 30 (3.03%) Docker
2 13 (1.31%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.61%) IAG
5 2 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.10%) Ceph
6 1 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 24 (2.42%) Kubernetes
2 16 (1.61%) Ansible
3 7 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.30%) HP ALM
4 3 (0.30%) SCCM
5 2 (0.20%) Argo
5 2 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
6 1 (0.10%) CASB
6 1 (0.10%) Check_MK
6 1 (0.10%) HP Quality Center
6 1 (0.10%) Podman
Vendors
1 150 (15.14%) Microsoft
2 87 (8.78%) Salesforce
3 52 (5.25%) ServiceNow
4 49 (4.94%) SAP
5 23 (2.32%) Google
6 18 (1.82%) Databricks
7 14 (1.41%) Oracle
7 14 (1.41%) Splunk
7 14 (1.41%) Zscaler
8 8 (0.81%) Cisco
8 8 (0.81%) CyberArk
9 7 (0.71%) Adobe
9 7 (0.71%) Pega
10 6 (0.61%) Fortinet
11 5 (0.50%) Alteryx
11 5 (0.50%) IBM
11 5 (0.50%) ION Trading
11 5 (0.50%) Kronos
11 5 (0.50%) Okta
11 5 (0.50%) Ping Identity
301 User Stories jobs in England