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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 138 178
Rank change year-on-year +11 +40 -45
Contract jobs citing User Stories 1,008 566 469
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.17% 2.04% 1.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.56% 2.24% 1.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 657 391 298
10th Percentile £363 £354 £362
25th Percentile £423 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% +0.95%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £603
90th Percentile £650 £725 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 4 1
10th Percentile £35.00 £30.45 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £31.12 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £31.49 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +122.29% -4.78% -37.60%
75th Percentile £85.00 £34.37 -
90th Percentile £98.28 £39.55 -
UK median hourly rate £66.25 £31.49 £33.07
% change year-on-year +110.38% -4.78% -37.60%

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 39,415 25,251 27,687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.67% 91.00% 86.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,982 16,042 16,911
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.71% -2.64% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
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 2,873 1,537 1,195
10th Percentile £13.88 £14.39 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.47 £47.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.35 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £38.86 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +54.51% -40.82% -

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +10 598 £525 - 443
North of England -44 129 £500 - 178
Midlands +17 125 £455 +7.06% 109
West Midlands +20 96 £450 - 73
South East -50 65 £450 -6.25% 119
North West -31 58 £500 +8.70% 95
Yorkshire -27 56 £500 -2.44% 58
South West -19 40 £475 -5.00% 68
East of England -1 32 £498 +10.56% 47
East Midlands -15 29 £461 +28.13% 36
North East -30 16 £420 -14.94% 25
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
1 183 (18.15%) Confluence
2 25 (2.48%) CMS
3 16 (1.59%) SharePoint
4 10 (0.99%) Camunda
5 5 (0.50%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 5 (0.50%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.30%) Cloud Foundry
6 3 (0.30%) Headless CMS
6 3 (0.30%) Kentico
7 2 (0.20%) Smallworld
7 2 (0.20%) Traefik
8 1 (0.099%) Apache
8 1 (0.099%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.099%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.099%) Drupal
8 1 (0.099%) Moodle
8 1 (0.099%) SAS
8 1 (0.099%) Totara
Applications
1 41 (4.07%) MS Visio
2 28 (2.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.69%) Notion
6 4 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.20%) Productboard
8 1 (0.099%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.099%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.099%) Trello
Business Applications
1 24 (2.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.50%) ProductWriter
3 5 (0.50%) Teamcenter
4 3 (0.30%) Aladdin
4 3 (0.30%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.30%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
5 2 (0.20%) Dynamics GP
5 2 (0.20%) Dynamics NAV
5 2 (0.20%) Dynamics SL
5 2 (0.20%) Infor CloudSuite
5 2 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.20%) Sage X3
5 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.20%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.20%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 209 (20.73%) Azure
2 118 (11.71%) Power Platform
3 102 (10.12%) Azure DevOps
4 101 (10.02%) AWS
5 41 (4.07%) Dynamics 365
6 37 (3.67%) SaaS
7 31 (3.08%) GitHub
8 30 (2.98%) GCP
9 29 (2.88%) Power Automate
10 28 (2.78%) PowerApps
11 24 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
12 23 (2.28%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 21 (2.08%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 17 (1.69%) Lucidchart
14 17 (1.69%) Snowflake
15 16 (1.59%) Entra ID
16 13 (1.29%) Figma
17 11 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
17 11 (1.09%) Miro
17 11 (1.09%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
2 3 (0.30%) Broadband
2 3 (0.30%) HTTP
2 3 (0.30%) Intranet
3 2 (0.20%) SD-WAN
3 2 (0.20%) WAN
3 2 (0.20%) Wireless
4 1 (0.099%) 5G
4 1 (0.099%) CTI
4 1 (0.099%) Internet
4 1 (0.099%) Network Security
4 1 (0.099%) NFC
4 1 (0.099%) PBX
4 1 (0.099%) SSH
4 1 (0.099%) SSL
4 1 (0.099%) Unified Communications
4 1 (0.099%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 77 (7.64%) Power BI
2 39 (3.87%) Metadata
3 35 (3.47%) Data Warehouse
4 26 (2.58%) Relational Database
5 21 (2.08%) SQL Server
6 19 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
7 9 (0.89%) Data Lake
8 8 (0.79%) Parquet
9 7 (0.69%) Big Data
10 6 (0.60%) Delta Lake
10 6 (0.60%) Tableau
11 5 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
11 5 (0.50%) BigQuery
11 5 (0.50%) ClickHouse
11 5 (0.50%) Data Hub
11 5 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 5 (0.50%) Star Schema
12 3 (0.30%) Data Mining
12 3 (0.30%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.30%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 247 (24.50%) JIRA
2 37 (3.67%) Git
3 26 (2.58%) GitLab
3 26 (2.58%) Jenkins
4 23 (2.28%) Maven
5 22 (2.18%) Gradle
6 19 (1.88%) JUnit
7 17 (1.69%) Mockito
7 17 (1.69%) SonarQube
8 16 (1.59%) Postman
9 12 (1.19%) REST Assured
10 11 (1.09%) Selenium
11 10 (0.99%) Sonatype Nexus
12 9 (0.89%) Bitbucket Server
12 9 (0.89%) Cucumber
13 6 (0.60%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.60%) Team Foundation Server
14 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 3 (0.30%) Balsamiq
16 2 (0.20%) SoapUI
General
1 411 (40.77%) Social Skills
2 293 (29.07%) Finance
3 262 (25.99%) Analytical Skills
4 146 (14.48%) Banking
5 134 (13.29%) Public Sector
6 73 (7.24%) Documentation Skills
7 65 (6.45%) Retail
8 45 (4.46%) Influencing Skills
9 35 (3.47%) Legal
10 34 (3.37%) Investment Banking
11 32 (3.17%) Marketing
12 25 (2.48%) Manufacturing
13 24 (2.38%) Organisational Skills
13 24 (2.38%) Presentation Skills
14 20 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 20 (1.98%) Telecoms
15 18 (1.79%) Front Office
16 17 (1.69%) Retail Banking
17 15 (1.49%) Pharmaceutical
18 14 (1.39%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 510 (50.60%) Analyst
2 460 (45.63%) Business Analyst
3 156 (15.48%) Senior
4 116 (11.51%) Product Owner
5 113 (11.21%) Developer
6 88 (8.73%) Senior Analyst
7 87 (8.63%) Senior Business Analyst
8 79 (7.84%) Product Manager
9 76 (7.54%) Technical Analyst
10 60 (5.95%) Lead
11 59 (5.85%) Technical Business Analyst
12 34 (3.37%) Consultant
13 33 (3.27%) Salesforce Analyst
13 33 (3.27%) Salesforce Business Analyst
14 28 (2.78%) Senior Developer
15 25 (2.48%) Data Analyst
16 23 (2.28%) Data Business Analyst
16 23 (2.28%) Java Developer
17 22 (2.18%) Financial Analyst
18 21 (2.08%) Systems Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (4.46%) REST
2 38 (3.77%) JSON
3 33 (3.27%) Spring Boot
4 24 (2.38%) Spring
5 23 (2.28%) RESTful
6 22 (2.18%) Kafka
6 22 (2.18%) React
6 22 (2.18%) SOAP
6 22 (2.18%) Terraform
7 21 (2.08%) HTML
8 19 (1.88%) AngularJS
8 19 (1.88%) Hibernate
8 19 (1.88%) JPA
9 16 (1.59%) CSS
10 13 (1.29%) .NET
10 13 (1.29%) Lightning Web Components
11 12 (1.19%) Middleware
11 12 (1.19%) OAuth
11 12 (1.19%) Web Services
12 11 (1.09%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 353 (35.02%) Product Ownership
2 47 (4.66%) Onboarding
3 31 (3.08%) Analytical Mindset
3 31 (3.08%) Cloud Native
4 30 (2.98%) Data Protection Act
5 25 (2.48%) Data Structures
6 24 (2.38%) Management Information System
7 22 (2.18%) CMDB
8 20 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
9 19 (1.88%) AI Agents
10 18 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
11 17 (1.69%) Virtual Team
12 15 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
13 14 (1.39%) Mobile App
14 12 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
15 11 (1.09%) FMCG
16 10 (0.99%) Life Science
16 10 (0.99%) NHS
16 10 (0.99%) Operational Technology
17 9 (0.89%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 17 (1.69%) Linux
2 9 (0.89%) Unix
3 6 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (0.60%) Windows
4 4 (0.40%) Android
4 4 (0.40%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.30%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 699 (69.35%) Agile
2 447 (44.35%) Stakeholder Management
3 422 (41.87%) Acceptance Criteria
4 335 (33.23%) Requirements Gathering
5 284 (28.17%) Workshop Facilitation
6 266 (26.39%) Scrum
7 254 (25.20%) Business Analysis
8 250 (24.80%) User Acceptance Testing
9 211 (20.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 210 (20.83%) Continuous Improvement
11 207 (20.54%) DevOps
12 192 (19.05%) Problem-Solving
13 185 (18.35%) Roadmaps
14 184 (18.25%) Sprint Planning
15 179 (17.76%) Product Backlog
16 167 (16.57%) Backlog Management
17 163 (16.17%) Backlog Prioritisation
18 159 (15.77%) Validation
19 153 (15.18%) Backlog Refinement
20 148 (14.68%) AI
Programming Languages
1 162 (16.07%) SQL
2 68 (6.75%) Python
3 66 (6.55%) Java
4 56 (5.56%) JavaScript
5 23 (2.28%) C#
6 15 (1.49%) TypeScript
7 11 (1.09%) Apex Code
8 10 (0.99%) Scala
9 8 (0.79%) Kotlin
10 6 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 5 (0.50%) Korn
12 3 (0.30%) R
12 3 (0.30%) SOQL
12 3 (0.30%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.20%) Bash
13 2 (0.20%) Magik
13 2 (0.20%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.20%) Ruby
13 2 (0.20%) SOSL
14 1 (0.099%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 164 (16.27%) Security Cleared
2 131 (13.00%) SC Cleared
3 85 (8.43%) Degree
4 35 (3.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 22 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (1.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (1.59%) PMI Certification
8 15 (1.49%) IIBA
9 14 (1.39%) PMP
10 13 (1.29%) CBAP
11 12 (1.19%) CSPO
12 11 (1.09%) DV Cleared
13 8 (0.79%) CISSP
14 5 (0.50%) AWS Certification
14 5 (0.50%) ISEB
14 5 (0.50%) ISTQB
15 3 (0.30%) Azure Certification
15 3 (0.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 3 (0.30%) Master's Degree
16 2 (0.20%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (11.11%) QA
2 74 (7.34%) Data Quality
3 38 (3.77%) Accessibility
4 16 (1.59%) GDPR
5 15 (1.49%) GRC
6 9 (0.89%) ISO 20022
7 7 (0.69%) GxP
8 6 (0.60%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 6 (0.60%) WCAG
9 5 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.50%) NIST
9 5 (0.50%) SEPA
10 4 (0.40%) ISO 15022
11 3 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.30%) Solvency II
12 2 (0.20%) Basel III
12 2 (0.20%) PMO
12 2 (0.20%) SLA
13 1 (0.099%) IFRS
System Software
1 44 (4.37%) Docker
2 14 (1.39%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.69%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (0.50%) IAG
5 2 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.099%) Ceph
6 1 (0.099%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 28 (2.78%) Kubernetes
2 17 (1.69%) Ansible
3 9 (0.89%) Grafana
3 9 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
4 8 (0.79%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.30%) Argo
5 3 (0.30%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.20%) Istio
7 1 (0.099%) Check_MK
7 1 (0.099%) Kibana
7 1 (0.099%) Podman
Vendors
1 155 (15.38%) Microsoft
2 81 (8.04%) Salesforce
3 43 (4.27%) SAP
4 41 (4.07%) ServiceNow
5 20 (1.98%) Databricks
5 20 (1.98%) Google
6 17 (1.69%) Oracle
7 11 (1.09%) IBM
8 10 (0.99%) Veracode
9 9 (0.89%) CyberArk
9 9 (0.89%) Pega
10 7 (0.69%) Adobe
10 7 (0.69%) Splunk
10 7 (0.69%) Zscaler
11 6 (0.60%) Guidewire
11 6 (0.60%) Okta
12 5 (0.50%) Alteryx
12 5 (0.50%) Atlassian
12 5 (0.50%) ION Trading
12 5 (0.50%) MuleSoft