User Stories Contracts in England

User Story
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring User Stories skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited User Stories over the 6 months leading up to 2 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 151 158 117
Rank change year-on-year +7 -41 -19
Contract jobs citing User Stories 499 564 1,008
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 1.93% 1.51% 2.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.12% 1.77% 2.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 324 381 698
10th Percentile £358 £350 £400
25th Percentile £416 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £538 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.65% +2.38% -
75th Percentile £625 £588 £602
90th Percentile £725 £638 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - +2.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 6 9
10th Percentile £54.90 £31.71 £40.55
25th Percentile £57.00 £32.03 £51.50
Median hourly rate £61.75 £33.04 £64.00
Median % change year-on-year +86.92% -48.38% +52.38%
75th Percentile £67.75 £57.77 £68.75
90th Percentile £70.60 £69.25 £72.00
UK median hourly rate £53.50 £33.04 £64.00
% change year-on-year +61.95% -48.38% +52.38%

All Process and 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 23,546 31,936 42,525
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 91.13% 85.56% 89.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,157 20,719 29,767
10th Percentile £300 £305 £325
25th Percentile £406 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.86% -4.55% +1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,176 2,324 1,553
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.79 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.87 £16.06 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £38.12 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -34.02% +1.65% +44.23%
75th Percentile £55.00 £61.60 £64.63
90th Percentile £72.50 £73.14 £75.82
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -32.93% +4.17% +38.46%

User Stories
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing User Stories as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for User Stories in England

User Stories
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing User Stories in England.

Daily rate trend for User Stories in England

User Stories
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing User Stories in England over the 6 months to 2 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for User Stories in England

User Stories
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing User Stories in England.

Hourly rate trend for User Stories in England

User Stories
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing User Stories in England over the 6 months to 2 July 2025.

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 2 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
London +7 292 £525 -4.55% 942
North of England +10 71 £475 -5.00% 324
Midlands +18 46 £461 -2.89% 177
South East +24 44 £506 +12.50% 282
North West +23 36 £528 +4.66% 168
West Midlands +9 24 £463 -2.63% 103
Yorkshire -18 24 £450 -10.00% 129
East Midlands +19 22 £433 +1.76% 73
South West +34 19 £488 -14.85% 125
East of England +22 13 £425 +0.06% 123
North East +5 11 £434 -1.42% 27
User Stories
UK

User Stories
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England 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 70 (14.03%) Confluence
2 9 (1.80%) CMS
3 7 (1.40%) Oracle Workflow
4 5 (1.00%) WordPress
5 4 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.60%) JBoss
6 3 (0.60%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.40%) Anypoint
7 2 (0.40%) CICS
7 2 (0.40%) Drupal
7 2 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.40%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.40%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.20%) Apache
8 1 (0.20%) Appian
8 1 (0.20%) Sitecore CMS
8 1 (0.20%) WebLogic
Applications
1 27 (5.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (5.01%) MS Visio
3 14 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (1.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (1.60%) Siemens NX
6 4 (0.80%) Fusion 360
7 3 (0.60%) Sketch
8 2 (0.40%) InVision
8 2 (0.40%) Trello
8 2 (0.40%) UserZoom
9 1 (0.20%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.20%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.20%) ProjectWise
9 1 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.20%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 16 (3.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (2.20%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (2.00%) Teamcenter
4 6 (1.20%) Temenos T24
5 4 (0.80%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.60%) Primavera
6 3 (0.60%) SAP HCM
6 3 (0.60%) Shopify
7 2 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
7 2 (0.40%) Sage CRM
8 1 (0.20%) Bloomberg AIM
8 1 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
8 1 (0.20%) Infor M3
8 1 (0.20%) NetSuite
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle E-Business Tax
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle FAH
8 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.20%) Sage X3
8 1 (0.20%) SAP PLM
8 1 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 78 (15.63%) Azure
2 40 (8.02%) Power Platform
3 35 (7.01%) AWS
4 34 (6.81%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (4.21%) SaaS
6 20 (4.01%) Dynamics 365
7 16 (3.21%) GCP
7 16 (3.21%) GitHub
8 13 (2.61%) Figma
9 9 (1.80%) PowerApps
10 8 (1.60%) Serverless
10 8 (1.60%) Snowflake
11 7 (1.40%) Miro
12 6 (1.20%) dbt
12 6 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
13 5 (1.00%) Entra ID
14 4 (0.80%) Microsoft Purview
14 4 (0.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 4 (0.80%) Vertex AI
15 3 (0.60%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.80%) Firewall
2 2 (0.40%) VPN
2 2 (0.40%) WebEx
3 1 (0.20%) Cisco Nexus
3 1 (0.20%) Converged Networks
3 1 (0.20%) CTI
3 1 (0.20%) HTTP
3 1 (0.20%) Internet
3 1 (0.20%) Intranet
3 1 (0.20%) LAN
3 1 (0.20%) Modbus
3 1 (0.20%) MQTT
3 1 (0.20%) WAN
3 1 (0.20%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (6.41%) Power BI
2 21 (4.21%) Data Warehouse
3 15 (3.01%) Tableau
4 8 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.00%) SQL Server
6 4 (0.80%) BigQuery
6 4 (0.80%) Metadata
6 4 (0.80%) Oracle Database
6 4 (0.80%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.80%) Star Schema
7 3 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (0.60%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.60%) GIS
7 3 (0.60%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.40%) Cognos Query Studio
8 2 (0.40%) DB2
8 2 (0.40%) Hadoop
8 2 (0.40%) MySQL
8 2 (0.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 120 (24.05%) JIRA
2 16 (3.21%) Git
3 11 (2.20%) Jenkins
3 11 (2.20%) Selenium
4 9 (1.80%) Postman
5 8 (1.60%) GitLab
6 7 (1.40%) Cucumber
6 7 (1.40%) JMeter
7 6 (1.20%) Axure RP
7 6 (1.20%) MLflow
8 5 (1.00%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.80%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.80%) Maven
9 4 (0.80%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.60%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.60%) Gatling
10 3 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.60%) TestRail
11 2 (0.40%) SOAtest
11 2 (0.40%) TestCafe
General
1 204 (40.88%) Social Skills
2 138 (27.66%) Finance
3 90 (18.04%) Analytical Skills
4 43 (8.62%) Public Sector
5 42 (8.42%) Banking
6 24 (4.81%) Marketing
6 24 (4.81%) Retail
7 22 (4.41%) Presentation Skills
8 19 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
9 13 (2.61%) Organisational Skills
10 12 (2.40%) Manufacturing
11 11 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
12 10 (2.00%) Back Office
12 10 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 9 (1.80%) Front Office
13 9 (1.80%) Legal
14 8 (1.60%) Financial Institution
14 8 (1.60%) Law
14 8 (1.60%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (1.40%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 253 (50.70%) Analyst
2 234 (46.89%) Business Analyst
3 55 (11.02%) Product Owner
4 50 (10.02%) Senior
5 31 (6.21%) Developer
6 26 (5.21%) Data Business Analyst
6 26 (5.21%) Technical Analyst
7 25 (5.01%) Consultant
8 24 (4.81%) Senior Analyst
8 24 (4.81%) Technical Business Analyst
9 23 (4.61%) Senior Business Analyst
10 22 (4.41%) Architect
10 22 (4.41%) Data Analyst
11 21 (4.21%) Product Manager
12 17 (3.41%) Tester
13 13 (2.61%) Lead
14 12 (2.40%) Agile Business Analyst
15 11 (2.20%) Designer
16 10 (2.00%) Digital Product Owner
16 10 (2.00%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (2.61%) ADO
2 11 (2.20%) CSS
2 11 (2.20%) Middleware
3 9 (1.80%) HTML
4 8 (1.60%) AngularJS
4 8 (1.60%) Web Services
5 7 (1.40%) XML
6 6 (1.20%) SOAP
6 6 (1.20%) Spring Boot
7 5 (1.00%) .NET
7 5 (1.00%) JSON
7 5 (1.00%) React
7 5 (1.00%) REST
7 5 (1.00%) Spring
8 4 (0.80%) Gherkin
8 4 (0.80%) NumPy
8 4 (0.80%) OAuth
8 4 (0.80%) pytest
8 4 (0.80%) RESTful
8 4 (0.80%) SAP TM
Miscellaneous
1 126 (25.25%) Product Ownership
2 20 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 16 (3.21%) Reinsurance
4 15 (3.01%) Management Information System
5 12 (2.40%) SCADA
6 8 (1.60%) Cloud Native
6 8 (1.60%) Mobile App
7 7 (1.40%) PMI
8 6 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
8 6 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.20%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 5 (1.00%) CMDB
9 5 (1.00%) Derivative
9 5 (1.00%) Fixed Income
9 5 (1.00%) Virtual Team
10 4 (0.80%) Data Structures
10 4 (0.80%) Marketing Technology
10 4 (0.80%) Public Cloud
11 3 (0.60%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.60%) Linux
2 5 (1.00%) Windows
3 2 (0.40%) Android
3 2 (0.40%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.40%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 353 (70.74%) Agile
2 110 (22.04%) Scrum
3 108 (21.64%) Acceptance Criteria
3 108 (21.64%) Stakeholder Management
4 98 (19.64%) Business Analysis
5 96 (19.24%) Problem-Solving
6 86 (17.23%) Requirements Gathering
7 81 (16.23%) Roadmaps
8 76 (15.23%) Workshop Facilitation
9 65 (13.03%) Product Backlog
10 64 (12.83%) User Acceptance Testing
11 62 (12.42%) DevOps
12 60 (12.02%) User Experience
13 58 (11.62%) Analytics
14 56 (11.22%) Epics
15 54 (10.82%) Continuous Improvement
16 53 (10.62%) Sprint Planning
17 52 (10.42%) Backlog Management
17 52 (10.42%) Migration
18 51 (10.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 57 (11.42%) SQL
2 30 (6.01%) Java
2 30 (6.01%) Python
3 22 (4.41%) JavaScript
4 10 (2.00%) C#
5 8 (1.60%) TypeScript
6 6 (1.20%) VBA
7 5 (1.00%) PowerShell
8 4 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 4 (0.80%) R
9 3 (0.60%) Bash
9 3 (0.60%) Go
9 3 (0.60%) Groovy
9 3 (0.60%) Ruby
10 2 (0.40%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.40%) COBOL
10 2 (0.40%) JCL
10 2 (0.40%) REXX
10 2 (0.40%) RPG
11 1 (0.20%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 66 (13.23%) Security Cleared
2 59 (11.82%) Degree
3 44 (8.82%) SC Cleared
4 13 (2.61%) CBAP
5 10 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.80%) PMI Certification
7 7 (1.40%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.20%) IIBA
9 5 (1.00%) Master's Degree
10 4 (0.80%) CSPO
11 3 (0.60%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.60%) ISTQB
11 3 (0.60%) PMP
12 2 (0.40%) SAP Certification
13 1 (0.20%) APMP
13 1 (0.20%) CFA
13 1 (0.20%) MBA
13 1 (0.20%) Six Sigma Black Belt
13 1 (0.20%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (14.23%) QA
2 13 (2.61%) Accessibility
3 11 (2.20%) Data Quality
4 8 (1.60%) GDPR
5 6 (1.20%) MiFID
6 4 (0.80%) GRC
6 4 (0.80%) PMO
7 3 (0.60%) Basel III
7 3 (0.60%) COBIT
7 3 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.60%) Software Quality Assurance
8 2 (0.40%) COREP
8 2 (0.40%) FINREP
8 2 (0.40%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.40%) HL7
8 2 (0.40%) IFRS
8 2 (0.40%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.40%) WCAG
9 1 (0.20%) EMIR
9 1 (0.20%) UCITS
System Software
1 13 (2.61%) Docker
2 3 (0.60%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 13 (2.61%) Terraform
2 10 (2.00%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.40%) Ansible
4 6 (1.20%) HP ALM
4 6 (1.20%) Puppet
5 3 (0.60%) Grafana
5 3 (0.60%) Kubeflow
5 3 (0.60%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.60%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.40%) CloudHub
6 2 (0.40%) HP Data Protector
6 2 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.40%) NetBackup
6 2 (0.40%) SCCM
6 2 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.20%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.20%) Rancher
Vendors
1 55 (11.02%) Microsoft
2 35 (7.01%) Salesforce
3 33 (6.61%) Oracle
4 31 (6.21%) SAP
5 11 (2.20%) MuleSoft
6 9 (1.80%) ServiceNow
6 9 (1.80%) Siemens
7 6 (1.20%) Adobe
7 6 (1.20%) HP
7 6 (1.20%) Temenos
7 6 (1.20%) Virgin Media
8 5 (1.00%) FIS
8 5 (1.00%) Palantir
8 5 (1.00%) Workday
9 4 (0.80%) Alteryx
9 4 (0.80%) Ariba
9 4 (0.80%) Autodesk
9 4 (0.80%) Informatica
9 4 (0.80%) Murex
9 4 (0.80%) Sitecore