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 28 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 185 139
Rank change year-on-year +51 -46 -22
Contract jobs citing User Stories 713 386 656
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.17% 1.46% 1.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.47% 1.63% 2.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 507 245 466
10th Percentile £338 £352 £375
25th Percentile £408 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.81% -0.95% -2.78%
75th Percentile £571 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £685 £675
UK median daily rate £488 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -4.41% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 0 6
10th Percentile £31.49 - £50.63
25th Percentile £48.86 - £51.25
Median hourly rate £60.61 - £59.25
75th Percentile £74.26 - £67.17
90th Percentile £82.06 - £70.03
UK median hourly rate £60.61 £29.00 £59.25
% change year-on-year +109.00% -51.05% +7.73%

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 28,832 23,662 32,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 87.89% 89.43% 87.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,449 14,467 21,997
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.53% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £642 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,786 760 1,829
10th Percentile £15.05 £15.62 £13.99
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -6.85% +4.29%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.98
% change year-on-year -22.62% -9.67% +12.44%

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 28 January 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 28 January 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 28 January 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 +59 393 £500 -4.76% 66
North of England +16 130 £500 +11.11% 42
South East -14 71 £475 -6.86% 93
Midlands +3 68 £450 -5.26% 50
North West +6 59 £402 -10.67% 16
Yorkshire -5 59 £516 +8.68% 18
West Midlands -8 40 £475 - 26
East Midlands -8 28 £359 -6.75% 24
South West -19 23 £495 -17.50% 21
North East -5 14 £500 +25.00% 8
East of England -10 14 £513 +59.55% 33
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
1 155 (21.74%) Confluence
2 21 (2.95%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.54%) CMS
4 8 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (1.12%) SAS
5 6 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.70%) nginx
7 3 (0.42%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.28%) Apache
8 2 (0.28%) Sitecore CMS
8 2 (0.28%) Traefik
8 2 (0.28%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 1 (0.14%) Drupal
9 1 (0.14%) Kentico
9 1 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 44 (6.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (4.77%) MS Visio
3 32 (4.49%) Microsoft Office
4 24 (3.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.70%) Adobe XD
5 5 (0.70%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.70%) Sketch
6 4 (0.56%) Notion
6 4 (0.56%) Trello
7 3 (0.42%) InVision
7 3 (0.42%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 21 (2.95%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (1.26%) Payment Gateway
3 8 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.70%) NetSuite
5 3 (0.42%) Endur
5 3 (0.42%) ProductWriter
6 2 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
6 2 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.28%) Primavera
6 2 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.28%) Shopify
6 2 (0.28%) Temenos T24
7 1 (0.14%) Bloomberg AIM
7 1 (0.14%) HFM
7 1 (0.14%) OpenLink RightAngle
7 1 (0.14%) SAP BPC
7 1 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.14%) thinkFolio
7 1 (0.14%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 104 (14.59%) Azure
2 77 (10.80%) AWS
3 62 (8.70%) Power Platform
4 46 (6.45%) Azure DevOps
5 29 (4.07%) GCP
6 25 (3.51%) GitHub
7 23 (3.23%) Microsoft 365
8 19 (2.66%) Dynamics 365
9 18 (2.52%) PowerApps
10 17 (2.38%) Power Automate
10 17 (2.38%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 16 (2.24%) SaaS
12 15 (2.10%) Figma
12 15 (2.10%) Serverless
13 14 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
13 14 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
13 14 (1.96%) Miro
13 14 (1.96%) Snowflake
14 12 (1.68%) Lucidchart
15 11 (1.54%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.12%) WebEx
2 4 (0.56%) DNS
2 4 (0.56%) Firewall
2 4 (0.56%) HTTP
3 3 (0.42%) FTP
4 2 (0.28%) BGP
4 2 (0.28%) Software-Defined Networking
4 2 (0.28%) VLAN
4 2 (0.28%) VPN
5 1 (0.14%) Calico
5 1 (0.14%) Cisco IPT
5 1 (0.14%) Internet
5 1 (0.14%) LAN
5 1 (0.14%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.14%) WAN
5 1 (0.14%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (7.15%) Power BI
2 24 (3.37%) Data Warehouse
3 19 (2.66%) Tableau
4 16 (2.24%) BigQuery
5 14 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
6 12 (1.68%) SQL Server
7 10 (1.40%) Metadata
7 10 (1.40%) NoSQL
8 8 (1.12%) Relational Database
9 7 (0.98%) Amazon Athena
9 7 (0.98%) Star Schema
10 6 (0.84%) Data Vault
11 5 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
11 5 (0.70%) Big Data
11 5 (0.70%) Data Lake
11 5 (0.70%) MongoDB
12 4 (0.56%) Oracle Database
12 4 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
13 3 (0.42%) DynamoDB
13 3 (0.42%) Redis
Development Applications
1 208 (29.17%) JIRA
2 36 (5.05%) Jenkins
3 21 (2.95%) GitLab
4 15 (2.10%) Cucumber
5 14 (1.96%) Git
5 14 (1.96%) Postman
6 12 (1.68%) Selenium
7 11 (1.54%) JUnit
8 8 (1.12%) SonarQube
8 8 (1.12%) Zephyr
9 7 (0.98%) JMeter
10 6 (0.84%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (0.70%) Axure RP
11 5 (0.70%) REST Assured
12 4 (0.56%) Cypress.io
12 4 (0.56%) ER Studio
12 4 (0.56%) ERwin
12 4 (0.56%) PowerDesigner
12 4 (0.56%) TeamCity
12 4 (0.56%) TestRail
General
1 296 (41.51%) Social Skills
2 193 (27.07%) Finance
3 156 (21.88%) Analytical Skills
4 82 (11.50%) Public Sector
5 76 (10.66%) Banking
6 48 (6.73%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (5.19%) Presentation Skills
8 32 (4.49%) Retail
9 28 (3.93%) Influencing Skills
10 26 (3.65%) Marketing
11 22 (3.09%) Legal
12 15 (2.10%) Back Office
13 13 (1.82%) Front Office
13 13 (1.82%) Investment Banking
14 12 (1.68%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (1.54%) Financial Institution
15 11 (1.54%) Telecoms
16 9 (1.26%) Military
16 9 (1.26%) Retail Banking
17 8 (1.12%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 361 (50.63%) Analyst
2 342 (47.97%) Business Analyst
3 101 (14.17%) Senior
4 83 (11.64%) Product Owner
5 65 (9.12%) Senior Analyst
6 60 (8.42%) Senior Business Analyst
7 45 (6.31%) Developer
8 42 (5.89%) Technical Analyst
9 40 (5.61%) Technical Business Analyst
10 34 (4.77%) Product Manager
11 27 (3.79%) Lead
12 26 (3.65%) Salesforce Business Analyst
13 24 (3.37%) Designer
13 24 (3.37%) Salesforce Analyst
14 20 (2.81%) Consultant
14 20 (2.81%) Digital Business Analyst
14 20 (2.81%) SC Cleared Business Analyst
15 19 (2.66%) Financial Analyst
16 18 (2.52%) Digital Analyst
16 18 (2.52%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.37%) REST
2 20 (2.81%) RESTful
3 18 (2.52%) JSON
3 18 (2.52%) XML
4 17 (2.38%) React
5 14 (1.96%) HTML
6 13 (1.82%) Kafka
6 13 (1.82%) SOAP
6 13 (1.82%) Spring
7 12 (1.68%) Spring Boot
8 11 (1.54%) ADO
9 9 (1.26%) Web Services
10 8 (1.12%) Apache NiFi
10 8 (1.12%) Lightning Web Components
10 8 (1.12%) Node.js
10 8 (1.12%) OAuth
10 8 (1.12%) Playwright
10 8 (1.12%) VML
10 8 (1.12%) XMPP
11 7 (0.98%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 224 (31.42%) Product Ownership
2 25 (3.51%) Onboarding
3 19 (2.66%) Analytical Mindset
3 19 (2.66%) PMI
4 18 (2.52%) Cloud Native
4 18 (2.52%) Data Structures
5 14 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (1.26%) Management Information System
8 8 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
8 8 (1.12%) Mobile App
8 8 (1.12%) NHS
8 8 (1.12%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 7 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (0.84%) CMDB
10 6 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (0.84%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 6 (0.84%) Low-Code
11 5 (0.70%) Derivative
11 5 (0.70%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 20 (2.81%) Windows
2 16 (2.24%) Linux
3 7 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 7 (0.98%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.70%) VMS
5 1 (0.14%) Android
5 1 (0.14%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 508 (71.25%) Agile
2 241 (33.80%) Acceptance Criteria
3 222 (31.14%) Stakeholder Management
4 203 (28.47%) Scrum
5 173 (24.26%) Requirements Gathering
6 169 (23.70%) Workshop Facilitation
7 160 (22.44%) Business Analysis
8 141 (19.78%) Problem-Solving
9 136 (19.07%) DevOps
10 120 (16.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 120 (16.83%) User Acceptance Testing
11 111 (15.57%) Roadmaps
12 94 (13.18%) Sprint Planning
13 92 (12.90%) Migration
14 91 (12.76%) Backlog Management
15 89 (12.48%) Data Modelling
16 88 (12.34%) Product Backlog
17 87 (12.20%) Use Case
18 83 (11.64%) Analytics
19 80 (11.22%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 89 (12.48%) SQL
2 58 (8.13%) Python
3 34 (4.77%) Java
4 20 (2.81%) Bash
5 14 (1.96%) C#
5 14 (1.96%) PowerShell
6 12 (1.68%) JavaScript
7 9 (1.26%) Scala
7 9 (1.26%) TypeScript
8 8 (1.12%) Perl
9 5 (0.70%) Korn
10 4 (0.56%) Apex Code
11 3 (0.42%) Go
11 3 (0.42%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.42%) VBA
11 3 (0.42%) XPath
12 2 (0.28%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.14%) PHP
13 1 (0.14%) R
13 1 (0.14%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 120 (16.83%) Security Cleared
2 97 (13.60%) SC Cleared
3 95 (13.32%) Degree
4 42 (5.89%) CBAP
5 27 (3.79%) IIBA
6 23 (3.23%) PMI Certification
7 22 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
8 20 (2.81%) CSPO
9 8 (1.12%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (1.12%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.84%) CCNA
10 6 (0.84%) CFA
10 6 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (0.84%) DV Cleared
10 6 (0.84%) MBA
11 5 (0.70%) Azure Certification
11 5 (0.70%) CCDP
11 5 (0.70%) CCNP
11 5 (0.70%) ISEB
11 5 (0.70%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (13.04%) QA
2 35 (4.91%) Accessibility
3 26 (3.65%) GDPR
4 20 (2.81%) Data Quality
5 19 (2.66%) WCAG
6 16 (2.24%) PSD2
7 8 (1.12%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.12%) SLA
8 6 (0.84%) ISO 8583
9 5 (0.70%) ISO 20022
9 5 (0.70%) SEPA
10 4 (0.56%) HL7
11 3 (0.42%) GxP
12 2 (0.28%) Basel III
12 2 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.28%) GMP
12 2 (0.28%) NCSC
12 2 (0.28%) PMO
13 1 (0.14%) EU AI Act
13 1 (0.14%) PERC
System Software
1 26 (3.65%) Docker
2 9 (1.26%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.14%) etcd
4 1 (0.14%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 25 (3.51%) Kubernetes
2 19 (2.66%) Ansible
3 14 (1.96%) NetBackup
4 12 (1.68%) Terraform
5 5 (0.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 5 (0.70%) Progress Chef
6 4 (0.56%) Grafana
6 4 (0.56%) Puppet
7 3 (0.42%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.28%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (0.28%) Istio
9 1 (0.14%) Argo
9 1 (0.14%) CASB
9 1 (0.14%) CloudHub
9 1 (0.14%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 113 (15.85%) Microsoft
2 81 (11.36%) Salesforce
3 30 (4.21%) SAP
4 29 (4.07%) Oracle
5 27 (3.79%) ServiceNow
6 21 (2.95%) Red Hat
7 14 (1.96%) Commvault
7 14 (1.96%) Databricks
8 13 (1.82%) VMware
9 11 (1.54%) Cisco
9 11 (1.54%) MuleSoft
10 10 (1.40%) Veritas
11 9 (1.26%) Pega
12 8 (1.12%) Adobe
12 8 (1.12%) Citrix
12 8 (1.12%) Google
13 6 (0.84%) Guidewire
13 6 (0.84%) Workday
14 5 (0.70%) Cognizant
14 5 (0.70%) Zuora