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 17 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 140 176 137
Rank change year-on-year +36 -39 -29
Contract jobs citing User Stories 650 434 743
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.18% 1.40% 1.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.41% 1.62% 2.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 463 269 513
10th Percentile £353 £359 £388
25th Percentile £413 £422 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% +0.95% -
75th Percentile £588 £613 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £687
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 1 6
10th Percentile £31.49 - £47.13
25th Percentile £40.12 - £50.31
Median hourly rate £74.26 £33.07 £52.75
Median % change year-on-year +124.55% -37.31% +0.48%
75th Percentile - - £64.30
90th Percentile £91.80 - £68.16
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £33.07 £52.75
% change year-on-year +124.55% -37.31% +0.48%

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 26,975 26,819 35,366
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 90.28% 86.81% 88.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,111 16,369 24,234
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -3.43% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £643 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,784 960 1,488
10th Percentile £14.75 £15.10 £14.42
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.25 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.48% -16.29% +27.14%
75th Percentile £46.81 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £74.76 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.84
% change year-on-year -28.14% -20.16% +25.24%

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 17 November 2025.

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 17 November 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 17 November 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 +49 360 £500 -9.09% 257
North of England +23 115 £513 +13.89% 51
South East -3 70 £465 -7.10% 205
Midlands +9 57 £425 - 57
Yorkshire +8 55 £520 -2.58% 20
North West -6 48 £530 +28.48% 27
East Midlands +7 29 £388 -1.59% 23
West Midlands -11 28 £475 +3.26% 34
South West +16 26 £500 -16.67% 44
North East +1 14 £488 +16.07% 4
East of England -18 8 £438 +2.94% 52
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
1 109 (16.77%) Confluence
2 20 (3.08%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.69%) CMS
4 9 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
6 5 (0.77%) nginx
6 5 (0.77%) WordPress
7 4 (0.62%) Drupal
7 4 (0.62%) JBoss
7 4 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.46%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.31%) Apache
9 2 (0.31%) Traefik
9 2 (0.31%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.15%) Appian
10 1 (0.15%) Kentico
10 1 (0.15%) SAS
10 1 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 27 (4.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (3.85%) MS Visio
3 19 (2.92%) Microsoft Office
4 15 (2.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.77%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.77%) Siemens NX
7 4 (0.62%) Adobe XD
7 4 (0.62%) Sketch
7 4 (0.62%) Trello
8 2 (0.31%) Fusion 360
8 2 (0.31%) InVision
8 2 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.15%) Notion
9 1 (0.15%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 23 (3.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (1.38%) Payment Gateway
3 8 (1.23%) Temenos T24
4 6 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
5 5 (0.77%) Teamcenter
6 4 (0.62%) Endur
6 4 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.62%) SAP HR
6 4 (0.62%) SAP PM
7 3 (0.46%) ProductWriter
8 2 (0.31%) HFM
8 2 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
8 2 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
8 2 (0.31%) Primavera
8 2 (0.31%) Sage CRM
8 2 (0.31%) Shopify
9 1 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
9 1 (0.15%) NetSuite
9 1 (0.15%) OpenLink RightAngle
9 1 (0.15%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 89 (13.69%) Azure
2 68 (10.46%) AWS
3 48 (7.38%) Azure DevOps
4 39 (6.00%) Power Platform
5 28 (4.31%) GCP
6 27 (4.15%) GitHub
7 23 (3.54%) Dynamics 365
8 21 (3.23%) Figma
9 19 (2.92%) Serverless
10 17 (2.62%) Miro
10 17 (2.62%) SaaS
11 16 (2.46%) AWS Lambda
11 16 (2.46%) Snowflake
12 15 (2.31%) PowerApps
13 14 (2.15%) GitHub Actions
14 11 (1.69%) Power Automate
14 11 (1.69%) Salesforce Service Cloud
15 10 (1.54%) CloudBees
15 10 (1.54%) Entra ID
15 10 (1.54%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.23%) WebEx
2 7 (1.08%) Firewall
3 5 (0.77%) DNS
4 3 (0.46%) HTTP
4 3 (0.46%) VPN
5 2 (0.31%) BGP
5 2 (0.31%) Internet
5 2 (0.31%) LAN
5 2 (0.31%) Software-Defined Networking
5 2 (0.31%) VLAN
5 2 (0.31%) WAN
6 1 (0.15%) Calico
6 1 (0.15%) Cisco IPT
6 1 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
6 1 (0.15%) FTP
6 1 (0.15%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.15%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.62%) Power BI
2 24 (3.69%) Data Warehouse
3 19 (2.92%) Tableau
4 16 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
5 15 (2.31%) BigQuery
6 9 (1.38%) Star Schema
7 8 (1.23%) Relational Database
8 7 (1.08%) Oracle Database
9 6 (0.92%) Amazon Athena
9 6 (0.92%) Metadata
9 6 (0.92%) SQL Server
10 5 (0.77%) Data Vault
11 4 (0.62%) Big Data
11 4 (0.62%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.62%) Redis
11 4 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
11 4 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
12 3 (0.46%) DynamoDB
12 3 (0.46%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 175 (26.92%) JIRA
2 32 (4.92%) Jenkins
3 22 (3.38%) GitLab
4 18 (2.77%) Git
5 17 (2.62%) Cucumber
6 11 (1.69%) Selenium
7 10 (1.54%) JUnit
8 9 (1.38%) Postman
9 8 (1.23%) JMeter
10 7 (1.08%) Cypress.io
10 7 (1.08%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (0.92%) MLflow
11 6 (0.92%) Zephyr
12 5 (0.77%) SonarQube
13 4 (0.62%) Artifactory
13 4 (0.62%) ER Studio
13 4 (0.62%) ERwin
13 4 (0.62%) Maven
13 4 (0.62%) PowerDesigner
13 4 (0.62%) REST Assured
General
1 262 (40.31%) Social Skills
2 165 (25.38%) Finance
3 135 (20.77%) Analytical Skills
4 71 (10.92%) Public Sector
5 55 (8.46%) Banking
6 37 (5.69%) Marketing
7 30 (4.62%) Documentation Skills
8 27 (4.15%) Retail
9 23 (3.54%) Presentation Skills
10 20 (3.08%) Influencing Skills
11 19 (2.92%) Legal
12 18 (2.77%) Back Office
12 18 (2.77%) Front Office
13 14 (2.15%) Investment Banking
14 13 (2.00%) Telecoms
15 12 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (1.54%) Billing
16 10 (1.54%) Manufacturing
17 8 (1.23%) Law
18 7 (1.08%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 290 (44.62%) Analyst
2 269 (41.38%) Business Analyst
3 96 (14.77%) Product Owner
4 64 (9.85%) Senior
5 41 (6.31%) Developer
5 41 (6.31%) Technical Analyst
6 38 (5.85%) Technical Business Analyst
7 34 (5.23%) Senior Analyst
8 31 (4.77%) Senior Business Analyst
9 27 (4.15%) Lead
10 25 (3.85%) Product Manager
11 20 (3.08%) Test Analyst
12 18 (2.77%) Architect
13 17 (2.62%) Consultant
14 14 (2.15%) Automation Engineer
14 14 (2.15%) Digital Analyst
14 14 (2.15%) Digital Business Analyst
14 14 (2.15%) Salesforce Business Analyst
15 13 (2.00%) Data Analyst
15 13 (2.00%) Data Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (2.92%) RESTful
2 17 (2.62%) Spring
3 16 (2.46%) SOAP
3 16 (2.46%) Spring Boot
4 15 (2.31%) JSON
4 15 (2.31%) XML
5 14 (2.15%) Kafka
6 13 (2.00%) ADO
6 13 (2.00%) REST
7 11 (1.69%) HTML
7 11 (1.69%) React
8 10 (1.54%) OAuth
8 10 (1.54%) OAuth2
9 9 (1.38%) Lightning Web Components
9 9 (1.38%) Playwright
10 8 (1.23%) AngularJS
10 8 (1.23%) Gherkin
10 8 (1.23%) Middleware
10 8 (1.23%) Node.js
10 8 (1.23%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 214 (32.92%) Product Ownership
2 32 (4.92%) Onboarding
3 21 (3.23%) Cloud Native
4 16 (2.46%) Data Structures
4 16 (2.46%) Reinsurance
5 15 (2.31%) Analytical Mindset
5 15 (2.31%) PMI
6 14 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
6 14 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
8 12 (1.85%) Mobile App
9 11 (1.69%) Algorithms
10 10 (1.54%) Management Information System
10 10 (1.54%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 9 (1.38%) Marketing Technology
11 9 (1.38%) SCADA
12 7 (1.08%) Derivative
13 6 (0.92%) Digital Media
13 6 (0.92%) Operational Technology
13 6 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 17 (2.62%) Linux
1 17 (2.62%) Windows
2 6 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 6 (0.92%) Windows Server
3 5 (0.77%) VMS
4 1 (0.15%) Android
4 1 (0.15%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 480 (73.85%) Agile
2 196 (30.15%) Scrum
3 168 (25.85%) Stakeholder Management
4 164 (25.23%) Acceptance Criteria
5 132 (20.31%) Problem-Solving
6 128 (19.69%) Requirements Gathering
7 115 (17.69%) Roadmaps
8 109 (16.77%) DevOps
9 108 (16.62%) Business Analysis
10 106 (16.31%) Product Backlog
11 105 (16.15%) Workshop Facilitation
12 102 (15.69%) User Acceptance Testing
13 100 (15.38%) Backlog Management
14 94 (14.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 82 (12.62%) Analytics
15 82 (12.62%) Use Case
16 79 (12.15%) Sprint Planning
17 75 (11.54%) Continuous Improvement
18 74 (11.38%) Epics
19 73 (11.23%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 65 (10.00%) SQL
2 55 (8.46%) Python
3 43 (6.62%) Java
4 20 (3.08%) Bash
5 14 (2.15%) JavaScript
5 14 (2.15%) PowerShell
6 9 (1.38%) Apex Code
7 8 (1.23%) Perl
7 8 (1.23%) TypeScript
8 7 (1.08%) Scala
9 6 (0.92%) C#
10 5 (0.77%) Go
11 4 (0.62%) Korn
11 4 (0.62%) VBA
12 3 (0.46%) Groovy
13 2 (0.31%) Ruby
13 2 (0.31%) XPath
14 1 (0.15%) PHP
14 1 (0.15%) SOQL
14 1 (0.15%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 87 (13.38%) Security Cleared
2 78 (12.00%) Degree
3 64 (9.85%) SC Cleared
4 18 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
4 18 (2.77%) PMI Certification
5 17 (2.62%) CBAP
6 16 (2.46%) CSPO
7 11 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (1.38%) DV Cleared
9 6 (0.92%) CCNA
9 6 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (0.77%) CCDP
10 5 (0.77%) CCNP
10 5 (0.77%) CFA
11 4 (0.62%) Azure Certification
11 4 (0.62%) PMP
12 3 (0.46%) ISEB
12 3 (0.46%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.46%) OCP
12 3 (0.46%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 84 (12.92%) QA
2 29 (4.46%) Accessibility
3 24 (3.69%) GDPR
4 18 (2.77%) WCAG
5 14 (2.15%) PSD2
6 13 (2.00%) Data Quality
7 12 (1.85%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.92%) ISO 8583
9 5 (0.77%) SEPA
10 4 (0.62%) Basel III
10 4 (0.62%) FIPS 140-2
10 4 (0.62%) MiFID
11 3 (0.46%) COBIT
11 3 (0.46%) HL7
11 3 (0.46%) ISO 20022
11 3 (0.46%) PMO
11 3 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 3 (0.46%) SLA
12 2 (0.31%) IFRS
12 2 (0.31%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 24 (3.69%) Docker
2 9 (1.38%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.15%) etcd
4 1 (0.15%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 22 (3.38%) Ansible
2 19 (2.92%) Kubernetes
3 16 (2.46%) Terraform
4 14 (2.15%) NetBackup
5 6 (0.92%) Kubeflow
5 6 (0.92%) Puppet
5 6 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 5 (0.77%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.62%) Grafana
8 2 (0.31%) CloudHub
8 2 (0.31%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.31%) Istio
9 1 (0.15%) Argo
9 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 95 (14.62%) Microsoft
2 68 (10.46%) Salesforce
3 32 (4.92%) Oracle
4 24 (3.69%) SAP
5 23 (3.54%) ServiceNow
6 20 (3.08%) Red Hat
7 14 (2.15%) Commvault
8 13 (2.00%) VMware
9 12 (1.85%) MuleSoft
10 11 (1.69%) Cisco
10 11 (1.69%) Citrix
11 10 (1.54%) Veritas
12 9 (1.38%) Databricks
13 8 (1.23%) Adobe
13 8 (1.23%) Temenos
14 6 (0.92%) Pega
14 6 (0.92%) Workday
15 5 (0.77%) HubSpot
15 5 (0.77%) Siemens
16 4 (0.62%) Murex