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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 136 166
Rank change year-on-year +18 +30 -37
Contract jobs citing User Stories 1,026 575 495
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.22% 2.08% 1.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.61% 2.29% 1.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 671 386 310
10th Percentile £363 £353 £356
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.45% +1.81%
75th Percentile £580 £622 £600
90th Percentile £650 £725 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 4 2
10th Percentile £35.00 £30.45 £33.01
25th Percentile £52.50 £31.12 £33.02
Median hourly rate £70.00 £31.49 £33.04
Median % change year-on-year +122.29% -4.68% -37.67%
75th Percentile £83.00 £34.37 £33.05
90th Percentile £90.57 £39.55 £33.06
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £31.49 £33.04
% change year-on-year +122.29% -4.68% -37.67%

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 39,321 25,058 28,015
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.90% 90.80% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,195 15,905 17,612
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £636 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £752
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,661 1,475 1,343
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.27 £14.84
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.83 £20.24
Median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.96% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £66.61
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.03 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.17% -41.51% +1.96%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +5 592 £525 - 461
North of England -15 145 £500 +8.11% 101
Midlands +5 130 £450 +5.88% 55
West Midlands +19 100 £450 - 44
North West -24 65 £500 +9.89% 57
South East -56 65 £450 -6.25% 87
Yorkshire -14 61 £500 +1.01% 25
South West -19 47 £475 -5.00% 57
East of England 0 32 £495 +9.94% 24
East Midlands -14 30 £455 +23.81% 11
North East -30 20 £423 -3.43% 19
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
1 173 (16.86%) Confluence
2 26 (2.53%) CMS
3 17 (1.66%) SharePoint
4 11 (1.07%) Camunda
5 5 (0.49%) Jupyter
6 4 (0.39%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.29%) Cloud Foundry
7 3 (0.29%) Headless CMS
7 3 (0.29%) Kentico
8 2 (0.19%) JBoss
8 2 (0.19%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.097%) Apache
9 1 (0.097%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.097%) Apache Solr
9 1 (0.097%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.097%) Drupal
9 1 (0.097%) Moodle
9 1 (0.097%) SAS
9 1 (0.097%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.097%) Totara
Applications
1 45 (4.39%) MS Visio
2 32 (3.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
5 7 (0.68%) Notion
6 5 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.097%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.097%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.097%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (2.14%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (1.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.49%) ProductWriter
3 5 (0.49%) Teamcenter
4 4 (0.39%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.29%) NetSuite
5 3 (0.29%) SAP SD
6 2 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
6 2 (0.19%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.19%) Dynamics NAV
6 2 (0.19%) Dynamics SL
6 2 (0.19%) Endur
6 2 (0.19%) Infor CloudSuite
6 2 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.19%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.19%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.19%) Temenos T24
6 2 (0.19%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 209 (20.37%) Azure
2 107 (10.43%) Power Platform
3 103 (10.04%) AWS
4 96 (9.36%) Azure DevOps
5 41 (4.00%) Dynamics 365
6 36 (3.51%) SaaS
7 30 (2.92%) GCP
8 29 (2.83%) GitHub
8 29 (2.83%) PowerApps
9 26 (2.53%) Power Automate
10 24 (2.34%) Microsoft 365
10 24 (2.34%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 21 (2.05%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
12 15 (1.46%) Figma
13 14 (1.36%) Entra ID
13 14 (1.36%) Snowflake
14 11 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
14 11 (1.07%) Lucidchart
15 10 (0.97%) Miro
15 10 (0.97%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.39%) Wi-Fi
2 3 (0.29%) Broadband
2 3 (0.29%) HTTP
2 3 (0.29%) Intranet
3 2 (0.19%) SD-WAN
3 2 (0.19%) WAN
3 2 (0.19%) Wireless
4 1 (0.097%) 5G
4 1 (0.097%) Internet
4 1 (0.097%) NFC
4 1 (0.097%) SSH
4 1 (0.097%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (6.34%) Power BI
2 39 (3.80%) Metadata
3 27 (2.63%) Data Warehouse
4 20 (1.95%) Relational Database
4 20 (1.95%) SQL Server
5 14 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
6 9 (0.88%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.88%) Parquet
7 8 (0.78%) Big Data
8 7 (0.68%) Delta Lake
9 6 (0.58%) Tableau
10 5 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (0.49%) BigQuery
10 5 (0.49%) ClickHouse
10 5 (0.49%) Data Hub
10 5 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 5 (0.49%) Star Schema
11 3 (0.29%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.29%) SAP BW
12 2 (0.19%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 251 (24.46%) JIRA
2 29 (2.83%) Git
3 24 (2.34%) GitLab
3 24 (2.34%) Jenkins
4 23 (2.24%) Postman
5 17 (1.66%) Gradle
5 17 (1.66%) Maven
6 15 (1.46%) JUnit
7 14 (1.36%) Mockito
7 14 (1.36%) SonarQube
8 11 (1.07%) Selenium
9 10 (0.97%) REST Assured
10 9 (0.88%) Sonatype Nexus
11 8 (0.78%) Bitbucket Server
12 7 (0.68%) Cucumber
12 7 (0.68%) Team Foundation Server
13 6 (0.58%) Bitbucket
14 5 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 4 (0.39%) Balsamiq
16 3 (0.29%) Zephyr
General
1 423 (41.23%) Social Skills
2 289 (28.17%) Finance
3 281 (27.39%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (14.52%) Banking
5 139 (13.55%) Public Sector
6 78 (7.60%) Documentation Skills
7 66 (6.43%) Retail
8 36 (3.51%) Influencing Skills
9 34 (3.31%) Legal
9 34 (3.31%) Marketing
10 29 (2.83%) Investment Banking
11 27 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
12 26 (2.53%) Manufacturing
13 23 (2.24%) Organisational Skills
14 21 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 17 (1.66%) Front Office
15 17 (1.66%) Retail Banking
15 17 (1.66%) Telecoms
16 16 (1.56%) Pharmaceutical
17 15 (1.46%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 527 (51.36%) Analyst
2 474 (46.20%) Business Analyst
3 151 (14.72%) Senior
4 119 (11.60%) Product Owner
5 114 (11.11%) Developer
6 88 (8.58%) Senior Analyst
7 85 (8.28%) Senior Business Analyst
8 77 (7.50%) Technical Analyst
9 69 (6.73%) Product Manager
10 64 (6.24%) Lead
10 64 (6.24%) Technical Business Analyst
11 40 (3.90%) Salesforce Analyst
11 40 (3.90%) Salesforce Business Analyst
12 33 (3.22%) Consultant
13 27 (2.63%) Senior Developer
14 25 (2.44%) Financial Analyst
15 23 (2.24%) Data Analyst
15 23 (2.24%) Digital Business Analyst
16 22 (2.14%) Finance Business Analyst
16 22 (2.14%) Systems Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (4.39%) REST
2 36 (3.51%) JSON
3 27 (2.63%) RESTful
4 25 (2.44%) Spring Boot
5 23 (2.24%) Terraform
6 22 (2.14%) Kafka
7 20 (1.95%) HTML
7 20 (1.95%) React
8 19 (1.85%) AngularJS
9 17 (1.66%) Spring
10 15 (1.46%) CSS
10 15 (1.46%) Hibernate
10 15 (1.46%) JPA
11 14 (1.36%) SOAP
12 13 (1.27%) Lightning Web Components
13 12 (1.17%) .NET
13 12 (1.17%) OAuth
14 11 (1.07%) OpenID
15 10 (0.97%) Vue
16 9 (0.88%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 356 (34.70%) Product Ownership
2 48 (4.68%) Onboarding
3 35 (3.41%) Analytical Mindset
4 33 (3.22%) Data Protection Act
5 32 (3.12%) Cloud Native
6 28 (2.73%) Self-Motivation
7 25 (2.44%) CMDB
7 25 (2.44%) Data Structures
8 22 (2.14%) Management Information System
9 20 (1.95%) AI Agents
9 20 (1.95%) Virtual Team
10 18 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
11 16 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
12 13 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
12 13 (1.27%) Life Science
12 13 (1.27%) Mobile App
13 11 (1.07%) FMCG
13 11 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 11 (1.07%) Operational Technology
14 10 (0.97%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 12 (1.17%) Linux
2 6 (0.58%) Windows
3 5 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (0.49%) Unix
4 4 (0.39%) Android
4 4 (0.39%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.29%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 696 (67.84%) Agile
2 424 (41.33%) Acceptance Criteria
3 421 (41.03%) Stakeholder Management
4 324 (31.58%) Requirements Gathering
5 278 (27.10%) Workshop Facilitation
6 270 (26.32%) Scrum
7 246 (23.98%) User Acceptance Testing
8 241 (23.49%) Business Analysis
9 210 (20.47%) DevOps
9 210 (20.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 208 (20.27%) Problem-Solving
11 204 (19.88%) Continuous Improvement
12 201 (19.59%) Sprint Planning
13 177 (17.25%) Roadmaps
14 171 (16.67%) Product Backlog
15 166 (16.18%) Backlog Management
16 154 (15.01%) Backlog Refinement
17 152 (14.81%) Validation
18 145 (14.13%) AI
19 144 (14.04%) Backlog Prioritisation
Programming Languages
1 150 (14.62%) SQL
2 74 (7.21%) Python
3 63 (6.14%) Java
4 57 (5.56%) JavaScript
5 23 (2.24%) C#
6 13 (1.27%) Apex Code
6 13 (1.27%) TypeScript
7 10 (0.97%) Scala
8 8 (0.78%) Kotlin
9 5 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 5 (0.49%) Korn
10 3 (0.29%) R
10 3 (0.29%) SOQL
10 3 (0.29%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.19%) Bash
11 2 (0.19%) Magik
11 2 (0.19%) PowerShell
11 2 (0.19%) Ruby
11 2 (0.19%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.19%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 176 (17.15%) Security Cleared
2 143 (13.94%) SC Cleared
3 77 (7.50%) Degree
4 33 (3.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
7 15 (1.46%) IIBA
8 14 (1.36%) CSPO
9 11 (1.07%) CBAP
9 11 (1.07%) PMI Certification
10 10 (0.97%) DV Cleared
11 9 (0.88%) PMP
12 8 (0.78%) CISSP
13 7 (0.68%) ISTQB
14 5 (0.49%) AWS Certification
14 5 (0.49%) ISEB
15 4 (0.39%) Master's Degree
16 3 (0.29%) Azure Certification
16 3 (0.29%) DBS Check
16 3 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 121 (11.79%) QA
2 69 (6.73%) Data Quality
3 39 (3.80%) Accessibility
4 18 (1.75%) GDPR
5 16 (1.56%) GRC
6 9 (0.88%) GxP
7 8 (0.78%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 8 (0.78%) ISO 20022
8 6 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.58%) NIST
9 5 (0.49%) WCAG
10 4 (0.39%) ISO 15022
10 4 (0.39%) SEPA
10 4 (0.39%) Solvency II
11 3 (0.29%) HL7
11 3 (0.29%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.29%) SLA
12 2 (0.19%) COBIT
12 2 (0.19%) PMO
12 2 (0.19%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 36 (3.51%) Docker
2 13 (1.27%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.58%) IAG
5 2 (0.19%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.097%) Ceph
6 1 (0.097%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 25 (2.44%) Kubernetes
2 17 (1.66%) Ansible
3 8 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
4 7 (0.68%) Grafana
5 6 (0.58%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.29%) Argo
6 3 (0.29%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.097%) Check_MK
7 1 (0.097%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.097%) Kibana
7 1 (0.097%) Podman
7 1 (0.097%) SCCM
Vendors
1 152 (14.81%) Microsoft
2 87 (8.48%) Salesforce
3 51 (4.97%) SAP
4 44 (4.29%) ServiceNow
5 22 (2.14%) Google
6 19 (1.85%) Databricks
7 14 (1.36%) Oracle
8 12 (1.17%) IBM
9 9 (0.88%) Pega
9 9 (0.88%) Veracode
10 8 (0.78%) CyberArk
11 7 (0.68%) Adobe
11 7 (0.68%) Splunk
11 7 (0.68%) Zscaler
12 5 (0.49%) Alteryx
12 5 (0.49%) ION Trading
12 5 (0.49%) Kronos
12 5 (0.49%) MuleSoft
12 5 (0.49%) Okta
12 5 (0.49%) Ping Identity