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 21 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 153 154
Rank change year-on-year +25 +1 -31
Contract jobs citing User Stories 811 416 583
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.05% 1.70% 1.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.41% 1.86% 1.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 567 263 408
10th Percentile £352 £351 £353
25th Percentile £413 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £675 £652
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +3.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 2 7
10th Percentile £43.31 £54.90 £31.71
25th Percentile £54.73 £57.00 £32.36
Median hourly rate £70.00 £61.75 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.36% +17.62% -18.60%
75th Percentile £74.26 £67.75 £59.88
90th Percentile - £70.60 £68.60
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £53.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year +30.84% +1.90% -18.60%

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 33,718 22,322 32,052
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.24% 91.07% 86.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,550 14,669 21,082
10th Percentile £315 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £521 £525
% change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,104 894 2,218
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.84 £12.85
25th Percentile £20.32 £18.51 £15.86
Median hourly rate £41.94 £31.64 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.55% -9.60% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67.25 £64.31 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.18 £72.33
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%

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 21 April 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 21 April 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 21 April 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 +45 460 £500 -4.76% 122
North of England +18 146 £475 +5.56% 44
Midlands -13 85 £490 +5.95% 33
North West -2 70 £400 -20.00% 19
West Midlands -21 64 £492 +3.58% 22
South East -56 62 £454 -10.32% 71
Yorkshire -29 52 £518 +21.76% 17
North East +3 26 £475 +18.75% 9
South West -23 26 £475 -17.39% 18
East of England -23 22 £525 +40.00% 26
East Midlands -20 21 £463 +17.01% 10
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
1 161 (19.85%) Confluence
2 26 (3.21%) SharePoint
3 17 (2.10%) CMS
4 11 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
5 9 (1.11%) SAS
6 4 (0.49%) Jupyter
7 3 (0.37%) Anypoint
7 3 (0.37%) Camunda
8 2 (0.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.25%) Drupal
8 2 (0.25%) JBoss
8 2 (0.25%) Sitecore CMS
8 2 (0.25%) WordPress
9 1 (0.12%) Apache
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Solr
9 1 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 48 (5.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (5.43%) MS Visio
3 26 (3.21%) Microsoft Office
4 21 (2.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.62%) Adobe XD
5 5 (0.62%) Sketch
6 3 (0.37%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.37%) InVision
6 3 (0.37%) Notion
6 3 (0.37%) Zeplin
7 2 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.12%) Trello
Business Applications
1 17 (2.10%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.74%) Adobe Campaign
2 6 (0.74%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.49%) Eloqua
5 3 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
5 3 (0.37%) ProductWriter
5 3 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.37%) Temenos T24
6 2 (0.25%) Actimize
6 2 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 2 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
6 2 (0.25%) Exchequer
6 2 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.25%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.25%) Shopify
6 2 (0.25%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 132 (16.28%) Azure
2 71 (8.75%) AWS
3 66 (8.14%) Power Platform
4 49 (6.04%) Azure DevOps
5 25 (3.08%) Salesforce Service Cloud
6 24 (2.96%) Microsoft 365
7 23 (2.84%) GitHub
8 22 (2.71%) Dynamics 365
9 21 (2.59%) GCP
10 19 (2.34%) SaaS
11 17 (2.10%) PowerApps
12 16 (1.97%) Power Automate
13 15 (1.85%) Figma
14 13 (1.60%) Entra ID
14 13 (1.60%) Lucidchart
14 13 (1.60%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
15 12 (1.48%) Miro
16 11 (1.36%) Azure Data Factory
17 10 (1.23%) GitHub Actions
18 8 (0.99%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.36%) WebEx
2 9 (1.11%) Firewall
3 8 (0.99%) Network Security
4 6 (0.74%) HTTP
5 5 (0.62%) DNS
6 4 (0.49%) FTP
7 3 (0.37%) BGP
7 3 (0.37%) VLAN
8 2 (0.25%) Software-Defined Networking
9 1 (0.12%) Cisco IPT
9 1 (0.12%) NGFW
9 1 (0.12%) VPN
9 1 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (6.54%) Power BI
2 24 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
3 20 (2.47%) Metadata
4 16 (1.97%) Tableau
5 13 (1.60%) SQL Server
6 11 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
7 10 (1.23%) BigQuery
7 10 (1.23%) NoSQL
7 10 (1.23%) Relational Database
8 6 (0.74%) Data Lake
8 6 (0.74%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
9 4 (0.49%) Big Data
10 3 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
10 3 (0.37%) Data Mining
10 3 (0.37%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.37%) OLAP
10 3 (0.37%) Parquet
11 2 (0.25%) Oracle OLAP
11 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 208 (25.65%) JIRA
2 24 (2.96%) Postman
3 23 (2.84%) Jenkins
4 15 (1.85%) Git
5 11 (1.36%) GitLab
5 11 (1.36%) Selenium
6 10 (1.23%) Cucumber
6 10 (1.23%) Zephyr
7 8 (0.99%) JUnit
8 6 (0.74%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.62%) Axure RP
9 5 (0.62%) Balsamiq
9 5 (0.62%) JMeter
9 5 (0.62%) TeamCity
9 5 (0.62%) TestRail
10 4 (0.49%) REST Assured
10 4 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (0.49%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 3 (0.37%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.37%) SpecFlow
General
1 329 (40.57%) Social Skills
2 214 (26.39%) Finance
3 212 (26.14%) Analytical Skills
4 113 (13.93%) Public Sector
5 88 (10.85%) Banking
6 63 (7.77%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (5.67%) Presentation Skills
8 45 (5.55%) Retail
9 31 (3.82%) Marketing
10 30 (3.70%) Legal
11 23 (2.84%) Influencing Skills
12 17 (2.10%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (1.97%) Front Office
14 14 (1.73%) Financial Institution
14 14 (1.73%) Military
15 12 (1.48%) Retail Banking
16 11 (1.36%) Investment Banking
17 10 (1.23%) Back Office
18 8 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
19 7 (0.86%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 448 (55.24%) Analyst
2 423 (52.16%) Business Analyst
3 132 (16.28%) Senior
4 91 (11.22%) Senior Analyst
5 85 (10.48%) Senior Business Analyst
6 83 (10.23%) Product Owner
7 53 (6.54%) Developer
8 52 (6.41%) Technical Analyst
9 49 (6.04%) Technical Business Analyst
10 47 (5.80%) Product Manager
11 42 (5.18%) Salesforce Business Analyst
12 41 (5.06%) Salesforce Analyst
13 27 (3.33%) Lead
14 26 (3.21%) Data Analyst
15 25 (3.08%) SC Cleared Business Analyst
16 24 (2.96%) Data Business Analyst
16 24 (2.96%) Designer
17 23 (2.84%) Implementation Analyst
18 21 (2.59%) Financial Analyst
19 20 (2.47%) Senior Salesforce Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (3.70%) REST
2 16 (1.97%) React
3 15 (1.85%) RESTful
4 14 (1.73%) ADO
4 14 (1.73%) XML
5 12 (1.48%) VML
6 11 (1.36%) XMPP
7 10 (1.23%) HTML
7 10 (1.23%) JSON
7 10 (1.23%) Kafka
8 9 (1.11%) Node.js
9 8 (0.99%) CSS
9 8 (0.99%) Spring
10 7 (0.86%) AngularJS
10 7 (0.86%) Lightning Web Components
10 7 (0.86%) Spring Boot
11 6 (0.74%) .NET
11 6 (0.74%) FHIR
12 5 (0.62%) ASP.NET
12 5 (0.62%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 264 (32.55%) Product Ownership
2 23 (2.84%) Self-Motivation
3 22 (2.71%) Analytical Mindset
4 21 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 20 (2.47%) Data Protection Act
5 20 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
6 16 (1.97%) CMDB
7 14 (1.73%) Management Information System
8 13 (1.60%) Cloud Native
8 13 (1.60%) Data Structures
8 13 (1.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 10 (1.23%) PMI
10 9 (1.11%) NHS
10 9 (1.11%) Virtual Team
11 8 (0.99%) Marketing Technology
11 8 (0.99%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 7 (0.86%) Reinsurance
13 6 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
13 6 (0.74%) Low-Code
13 6 (0.74%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 16 (1.97%) Linux
1 16 (1.97%) Windows
2 9 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 8 (0.99%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.25%) Unix
5 1 (0.12%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 520 (64.12%) Agile
2 328 (40.44%) Acceptance Criteria
3 259 (31.94%) Stakeholder Management
4 206 (25.40%) Workshop Facilitation
5 195 (24.04%) Requirements Gathering
6 183 (22.56%) Scrum
7 182 (22.44%) Business Analysis
8 165 (20.35%) User Acceptance Testing
9 155 (19.11%) Problem-Solving
10 150 (18.50%) DevOps
11 148 (18.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 133 (16.40%) Roadmaps
13 123 (15.17%) Sprint Planning
14 116 (14.30%) Migration
15 115 (14.18%) Data Modelling
16 98 (12.08%) Backlog Management
17 96 (11.84%) Product Backlog
18 95 (11.71%) Analytics
19 92 (11.34%) Continuous Improvement
20 81 (9.99%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 101 (12.45%) SQL
2 59 (7.27%) Python
3 35 (4.32%) Java
4 23 (2.84%) JavaScript
5 17 (2.10%) PowerShell
6 15 (1.85%) C#
7 9 (1.11%) Bash
7 9 (1.11%) Perl
7 9 (1.11%) TypeScript
8 6 (0.74%) Korn
9 5 (0.62%) Apex Code
9 5 (0.62%) Scala
10 4 (0.49%) Kotlin
10 4 (0.49%) T-SQL
10 4 (0.49%) VBA
11 3 (0.37%) R
11 3 (0.37%) XPath
12 2 (0.25%) PHP
12 2 (0.25%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.25%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 160 (19.73%) Security Cleared
2 128 (15.78%) SC Cleared
3 85 (10.48%) Degree
4 36 (4.44%) CBAP
5 35 (4.32%) BPSS Clearance
6 30 (3.70%) IIBA
7 21 (2.59%) CSPO
8 15 (1.85%) PMI Certification
9 11 (1.36%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.74%) CCDP
10 6 (0.74%) CCNA
10 6 (0.74%) CCNP
10 6 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
10 6 (0.74%) ISTQB
10 6 (0.74%) MBA
11 5 (0.62%) DV Cleared
11 5 (0.62%) ISEB
11 5 (0.62%) PMP
12 4 (0.49%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (13.69%) QA
2 45 (5.55%) Data Quality
3 42 (5.18%) Accessibility
4 25 (3.08%) GDPR
5 14 (1.73%) SLA
6 13 (1.60%) WCAG
7 7 (0.86%) NIST
8 6 (0.74%) GxP
8 6 (0.74%) HL7
9 5 (0.62%) PSD2
10 4 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 3 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.37%) GMP
11 3 (0.37%) GRC
11 3 (0.37%) ISO 20022
11 3 (0.37%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.37%) SNOMED CT
11 3 (0.37%) Solvency II
12 2 (0.25%) EU AI Act
12 2 (0.25%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 24 (2.96%) Docker
2 13 (1.60%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.25%) IAG
5 1 (0.12%) Ceph
5 1 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 28 (3.45%) Kubernetes
2 13 (1.60%) Terraform
3 10 (1.23%) Ansible
4 7 (0.86%) SCCM
5 5 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 5 (0.62%) HP Quality Center
5 5 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.37%) Grafana
6 3 (0.37%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.25%) CASB
7 2 (0.25%) FortiGate
7 2 (0.25%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.12%) Argo
8 1 (0.12%) CloudHub
8 1 (0.12%) Kibana
Vendors
1 121 (14.92%) Microsoft
2 84 (10.36%) Salesforce
3 45 (5.55%) ServiceNow
4 41 (5.06%) SAP
5 23 (2.84%) Oracle
6 21 (2.59%) Cisco
7 18 (2.22%) Databricks
8 17 (2.10%) Adobe
9 16 (1.97%) Google
10 13 (1.60%) Citrix
11 12 (1.48%) VMware
12 10 (1.23%) Splunk
13 9 (1.11%) Pega
14 8 (0.99%) MuleSoft
14 8 (0.99%) Red Hat
14 8 (0.99%) Workday
14 8 (0.99%) Zscaler
15 7 (0.86%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
16 6 (0.74%) Guidewire
16 6 (0.74%) Zuora