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 12 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 130 165
Rank change year-on-year +7 +35 -34
Contract jobs citing User Stories 1,025 583 505
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.21% 2.10% 1.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.61% 2.31% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 671 395 320
10th Percentile £363 £353 £360
25th Percentile £419 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £580 £608 £600
90th Percentile £650 £725 £669
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 4 2
10th Percentile £35.00 £30.45 £33.01
25th Percentile £52.50 £31.12 £33.02
Median hourly rate £70.00 £31.49 £33.04
Median % change year-on-year +122.29% -4.68% -37.67%
75th Percentile £83.00 £34.37 £33.05
90th Percentile £90.57 £39.55 £33.06
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £31.49 £33.04
% change year-on-year +122.29% -4.68% -37.67%

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 39,332 25,280 28,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.86% 90.86% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,139 16,057 17,805
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,708 1,495 1,348
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.36 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.88 £66.53
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.65 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.92%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 +8 595 £525 - 343
North of England -23 144 £500 +3.63% 70
Midlands +6 129 £450 +5.88% 33
West Midlands +16 99 £450 - 21
South East -45 67 £450 -5.26% 74
North West -23 64 £500 +8.11% 38
Yorkshire -25 60 £500 +0.50% 17
South West -16 45 £475 -5.00% 43
East of England 0 30 £498 +10.49% 17
East Midlands -17 30 £455 +23.81% 12
North East -28 21 £425 -2.86% 15
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
1 176 (17.17%) Confluence
2 25 (2.44%) CMS
3 18 (1.76%) SharePoint
4 10 (0.98%) Camunda
5 6 (0.59%) Jupyter
6 4 (0.39%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.29%) Cloud Foundry
7 3 (0.29%) Headless CMS
7 3 (0.29%) Kentico
8 2 (0.20%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.098%) Apache
9 1 (0.098%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.098%) Apache Solr
9 1 (0.098%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.098%) Drupal
9 1 (0.098%) JBoss
9 1 (0.098%) Moodle
9 1 (0.098%) SAS
9 1 (0.098%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.098%) Totara
Applications
1 44 (4.29%) MS Visio
2 33 (3.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.68%) Notion
5 5 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.098%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.098%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.098%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (2.15%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (1.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.49%) ProductWriter
3 5 (0.49%) Teamcenter
4 4 (0.39%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.29%) NetSuite
5 3 (0.29%) SAP SD
6 2 (0.20%) Aladdin
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics NAV
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics SL
6 2 (0.20%) Endur
6 2 (0.20%) Infor CloudSuite
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
Cloud Services
1 202 (19.71%) Azure
2 110 (10.73%) Power Platform
3 104 (10.15%) AWS
4 94 (9.17%) Azure DevOps
5 41 (4.00%) Dynamics 365
6 37 (3.61%) SaaS
7 30 (2.93%) GCP
7 30 (2.93%) GitHub
8 29 (2.83%) PowerApps
9 26 (2.54%) Power Automate
10 25 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
11 24 (2.34%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 21 (2.05%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 15 (1.46%) Snowflake
14 14 (1.37%) Entra ID
15 13 (1.27%) Figma
16 11 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
16 11 (1.07%) Lucidchart
17 10 (0.98%) OpenShift
17 10 (0.98%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.39%) Wi-Fi
2 3 (0.29%) Broadband
2 3 (0.29%) HTTP
2 3 (0.29%) Intranet
3 2 (0.20%) SD-WAN
3 2 (0.20%) WAN
3 2 (0.20%) Wireless
4 1 (0.098%) 5G
4 1 (0.098%) Internet
4 1 (0.098%) NFC
4 1 (0.098%) SSH
4 1 (0.098%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (6.63%) Power BI
2 37 (3.61%) Metadata
3 25 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
3 25 (2.44%) Relational Database
4 19 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
4 19 (1.85%) SQL Server
5 9 (0.88%) Data Lake
5 9 (0.88%) Parquet
6 8 (0.78%) Big Data
7 7 (0.68%) Delta Lake
7 7 (0.68%) Tableau
8 5 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (0.49%) BigQuery
8 5 (0.49%) ClickHouse
8 5 (0.49%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (0.49%) Star Schema
9 3 (0.29%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.29%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.29%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 251 (24.49%) JIRA
2 36 (3.51%) Git
3 26 (2.54%) Jenkins
4 24 (2.34%) GitLab
5 22 (2.15%) Maven
5 22 (2.15%) Postman
6 20 (1.95%) Gradle
7 17 (1.66%) JUnit
8 16 (1.56%) Mockito
8 16 (1.56%) SonarQube
9 11 (1.07%) Selenium
10 10 (0.98%) REST Assured
11 9 (0.88%) Sonatype Nexus
12 8 (0.78%) Bitbucket Server
12 8 (0.78%) Cucumber
13 7 (0.68%) Team Foundation Server
14 6 (0.59%) Bitbucket
15 5 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 3 (0.29%) Zephyr
17 2 (0.20%) Terragrunt
General
1 421 (41.07%) Social Skills
2 290 (28.29%) Finance
3 276 (26.93%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (14.54%) Banking
5 142 (13.85%) Public Sector
6 74 (7.22%) Documentation Skills
7 67 (6.54%) Retail
8 36 (3.51%) Influencing Skills
9 35 (3.41%) Legal
10 32 (3.12%) Marketing
11 31 (3.02%) Investment Banking
12 27 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
13 25 (2.44%) Organisational Skills
14 24 (2.34%) Manufacturing
15 20 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 19 (1.85%) Front Office
17 17 (1.66%) Retail Banking
18 16 (1.56%) Telecoms
19 14 (1.37%) Aerospace
19 14 (1.37%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 521 (50.83%) Analyst
2 469 (45.76%) Business Analyst
3 158 (15.41%) Senior
4 116 (11.32%) Developer
4 116 (11.32%) Product Owner
5 89 (8.68%) Senior Analyst
6 87 (8.49%) Senior Business Analyst
7 77 (7.51%) Technical Analyst
8 72 (7.02%) Product Manager
9 63 (6.15%) Lead
9 63 (6.15%) Technical Business Analyst
10 39 (3.80%) Salesforce Analyst
10 39 (3.80%) Salesforce Business Analyst
11 32 (3.12%) Consultant
12 28 (2.73%) Senior Developer
13 25 (2.44%) Financial Analyst
14 24 (2.34%) Java Developer
15 23 (2.24%) Digital Business Analyst
16 22 (2.15%) Data Analyst
16 22 (2.15%) Finance Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (4.78%) REST
2 36 (3.51%) JSON
3 30 (2.93%) Spring Boot
4 29 (2.83%) RESTful
5 24 (2.34%) Terraform
6 22 (2.15%) Spring
7 21 (2.05%) Kafka
8 20 (1.95%) AngularJS
8 20 (1.95%) HTML
8 20 (1.95%) React
9 17 (1.66%) Hibernate
9 17 (1.66%) JPA
10 15 (1.46%) CSS
10 15 (1.46%) SOAP
11 13 (1.27%) Lightning Web Components
12 12 (1.17%) .NET
12 12 (1.17%) OAuth
13 11 (1.07%) OpenID
14 10 (0.98%) Vue
15 9 (0.88%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 357 (34.83%) Product Ownership
2 47 (4.59%) Onboarding
3 34 (3.32%) Analytical Mindset
4 33 (3.22%) Cloud Native
5 32 (3.12%) Data Protection Act
6 29 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
7 26 (2.54%) Data Structures
8 24 (2.34%) CMDB
9 22 (2.15%) Management Information System
10 20 (1.95%) AI Agents
10 20 (1.95%) Virtual Team
11 18 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (1.27%) Mobile App
14 12 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
15 11 (1.07%) FMCG
15 11 (1.07%) Life Science
15 11 (1.07%) Operational Technology
16 10 (0.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 10 (0.98%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 16 (1.56%) Linux
2 8 (0.78%) Unix
3 6 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (0.59%) Windows
4 4 (0.39%) Android
4 4 (0.39%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.29%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 700 (68.29%) Agile
2 428 (41.76%) Stakeholder Management
3 417 (40.68%) Acceptance Criteria
4 324 (31.61%) Requirements Gathering
5 279 (27.22%) Workshop Facilitation
6 267 (26.05%) Scrum
7 248 (24.20%) User Acceptance Testing
8 242 (23.61%) Business Analysis
9 208 (20.29%) Problem-Solving
10 207 (20.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 205 (20.00%) DevOps
12 204 (19.90%) Continuous Improvement
13 198 (19.32%) Sprint Planning
14 175 (17.07%) Roadmaps
15 168 (16.39%) Product Backlog
16 165 (16.10%) Backlog Management
17 157 (15.32%) Backlog Refinement
18 149 (14.54%) Backlog Prioritisation
19 148 (14.44%) AI
19 148 (14.44%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 152 (14.83%) SQL
2 75 (7.32%) Python
3 67 (6.54%) Java
4 58 (5.66%) JavaScript
5 23 (2.24%) C#
6 15 (1.46%) TypeScript
7 13 (1.27%) Apex Code
8 10 (0.98%) Scala
9 8 (0.78%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (0.49%) Korn
11 3 (0.29%) R
11 3 (0.29%) SOQL
11 3 (0.29%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.20%) Bash
12 2 (0.20%) Magik
12 2 (0.20%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.20%) Ruby
12 2 (0.20%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.20%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 174 (16.98%) Security Cleared
2 141 (13.76%) SC Cleared
3 75 (7.32%) Degree
4 34 (3.32%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (1.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
6 15 (1.46%) IIBA
7 14 (1.37%) CSPO
8 11 (1.07%) CBAP
8 11 (1.07%) DV Cleared
8 11 (1.07%) PMI Certification
9 10 (0.98%) PMP
10 8 (0.78%) CISSP
11 7 (0.68%) ISTQB
12 5 (0.49%) AWS Certification
12 5 (0.49%) ISEB
13 4 (0.39%) Master's Degree
14 3 (0.29%) Azure Certification
14 3 (0.29%) DBS Check
14 3 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 122 (11.90%) QA
2 67 (6.54%) Data Quality
3 39 (3.80%) Accessibility
4 17 (1.66%) GDPR
5 15 (1.46%) GRC
6 8 (0.78%) ISO 20022
7 6 (0.59%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 6 (0.59%) GxP
7 6 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.59%) NIST
8 5 (0.49%) WCAG
9 4 (0.39%) ISO 15022
9 4 (0.39%) SEPA
10 3 (0.29%) HL7
10 3 (0.29%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.29%) Solvency II
11 2 (0.20%) COBIT
11 2 (0.20%) PMO
11 2 (0.20%) SLA
11 2 (0.20%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 41 (4.00%) Docker
2 13 (1.27%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.59%) IAG
5 2 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.098%) Ceph
6 1 (0.098%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 26 (2.54%) Kubernetes
2 17 (1.66%) Ansible
3 9 (0.88%) Grafana
4 8 (0.78%) Prometheus
4 8 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.29%) Argo
5 3 (0.29%) HP ALM
6 1 (0.098%) Check_MK
6 1 (0.098%) Jamf Pro
6 1 (0.098%) Kibana
6 1 (0.098%) Podman
6 1 (0.098%) SCCM
Vendors
1 152 (14.83%) Microsoft
2 85 (8.29%) Salesforce
3 49 (4.78%) SAP
4 43 (4.20%) ServiceNow
5 21 (2.05%) Google
6 17 (1.66%) Databricks
7 15 (1.46%) Oracle
8 11 (1.07%) IBM
9 9 (0.88%) Veracode
10 8 (0.78%) CyberArk
11 7 (0.68%) Adobe
11 7 (0.68%) Pega
11 7 (0.68%) Splunk
11 7 (0.68%) Zscaler
12 5 (0.49%) Alteryx
12 5 (0.49%) ION Trading
12 5 (0.49%) Kronos
12 5 (0.49%) MuleSoft
12 5 (0.49%) Okta
12 5 (0.49%) Ping Identity