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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 153 145
Rank change year-on-year +30 -8 -23
Contract jobs citing User Stories 871 441 597
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.05% 1.81% 1.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.41% 1.98% 1.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 594 286 407
10th Percentile £355 £357 £352
25th Percentile £413 £413 £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 £697 £658
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 2 6
10th Percentile £41.38 £54.90 £31.71
25th Percentile £61.09 £57.00 £32.03
Median hourly rate £71.25 £61.75 £33.04
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% +86.92% -48.38%
75th Percentile £79.50 £67.75 £57.77
90th Percentile £96.98 £70.60 £69.25
UK median hourly rate £72.50 £53.50 £33.04
% change year-on-year +35.51% +61.95% -48.38%

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 36,103 22,244 31,795
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.13% 91.27% 85.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,869 14,374 20,646
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,268 1,001 2,353
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.79 £18.10 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.25 £28.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +65.79% -24.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.00 £73.75 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £36.50
% change year-on-year +59.85% -24.66% +1.67%

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 9 June 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 June 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 June 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 +49 503 £515 -2.00% 116
North of England -21 125 £469 +4.92% 51
Midlands -9 98 £475 +2.98% 30
West Midlands -5 75 £475 +2.70% 21
South East -38 66 £450 -7.69% 58
North West -5 64 £402 -19.60% 30
South West -6 41 £485 -3.00% 19
Yorkshire -41 41 £525 +27.27% 18
East of England -15 29 £525 +31.25% 9
East Midlands -26 23 £463 +6.94% 9
North East -15 21 £425 -2.02% 8
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
1 159 (18.25%) Confluence
2 22 (2.53%) CMS
3 16 (1.84%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.15%) SAS
5 5 (0.57%) Camunda
5 5 (0.57%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.34%) Cloud Foundry
6 3 (0.34%) Drupal
6 3 (0.34%) Kentico
6 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.23%) Anypoint
7 2 (0.23%) JBoss
7 2 (0.23%) Sitecore CMS
7 2 (0.23%) WordPress
8 1 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 1 (0.11%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 42 (4.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (4.71%) MS Visio
3 26 (2.99%) Microsoft Office
4 17 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.69%) Notion
6 3 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.23%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.23%) InVision
7 2 (0.23%) Sketch
7 2 (0.23%) Zeplin
8 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.11%) Trello
Business Applications
1 14 (1.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 13 (1.49%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.69%) Adobe Campaign
3 6 (0.69%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.57%) Teamcenter
5 4 (0.46%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.46%) Eloqua
5 4 (0.46%) NetSuite
5 4 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.34%) Actimize
6 3 (0.34%) Dynamics GP
6 3 (0.34%) Dynamics SL
6 3 (0.34%) Infor CloudSuite
6 3 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.34%) Oracle Financials
6 3 (0.34%) Sage X3
6 3 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.23%) Exchequer
7 2 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 172 (19.75%) Azure
2 76 (8.73%) AWS
3 69 (7.92%) Power Platform
4 62 (7.12%) Azure DevOps
5 24 (2.76%) GitHub
6 23 (2.64%) SaaS
7 21 (2.41%) Dynamics 365
8 20 (2.30%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 17 (1.95%) GCP
9 17 (1.95%) Microsoft 365
10 16 (1.84%) PowerApps
11 14 (1.61%) Entra ID
11 14 (1.61%) Power Automate
12 13 (1.49%) Figma
13 12 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
13 12 (1.38%) Lucidchart
13 12 (1.38%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
14 10 (1.15%) Miro
15 7 (0.80%) Snowflake
16 6 (0.69%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.92%) Network Security
2 6 (0.69%) Firewall
3 3 (0.34%) DNS
3 3 (0.34%) WebEx
3 3 (0.34%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (0.23%) FTP
4 2 (0.23%) HTTP
4 2 (0.23%) Wireless
5 1 (0.11%) 5G
5 1 (0.11%) BGP
5 1 (0.11%) NFC
5 1 (0.11%) NGFW
5 1 (0.11%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (5.40%) Power BI
2 28 (3.21%) Metadata
3 24 (2.76%) Data Warehouse
4 12 (1.38%) Tableau
5 11 (1.26%) Relational Database
6 10 (1.15%) NoSQL
6 10 (1.15%) SQL Server
7 8 (0.92%) BigQuery
7 8 (0.92%) Data Lake
8 7 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (0.80%) Delta Lake
9 6 (0.69%) PostgreSQL
10 5 (0.57%) Big Data
10 5 (0.57%) Parquet
10 5 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 4 (0.46%) Data Mining
12 3 (0.34%) OLAP
12 3 (0.34%) Redis
13 2 (0.23%) Data Vault
13 2 (0.23%) Metadata Repository
Development Applications
1 220 (25.26%) JIRA
2 27 (3.10%) Postman
3 22 (2.53%) Git
4 19 (2.18%) GitLab
5 11 (1.26%) Jenkins
6 10 (1.15%) Selenium
7 9 (1.03%) Gradle
8 7 (0.80%) Team Foundation Server
9 6 (0.69%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.69%) Zephyr
10 5 (0.57%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (0.57%) Balsamiq
10 5 (0.57%) REST Assured
11 4 (0.46%) Cucumber
11 4 (0.46%) JUnit
12 3 (0.34%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 2 (0.23%) Artifactory
13 2 (0.23%) Maven
13 2 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
13 2 (0.23%) Terragrunt
General
1 333 (38.23%) Social Skills
2 237 (27.21%) Finance
3 225 (25.83%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (12.86%) Banking
5 107 (12.28%) Public Sector
6 75 (8.61%) Documentation Skills
7 55 (6.31%) Retail
8 40 (4.59%) Presentation Skills
9 30 (3.44%) Marketing
10 23 (2.64%) Legal
11 22 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
12 19 (2.18%) Organisational Skills
13 18 (2.07%) Investment Banking
13 18 (2.07%) Retail Banking
14 15 (1.72%) Military
15 14 (1.61%) Financial Institution
15 14 (1.61%) Manufacturing
16 12 (1.38%) Front Office
17 10 (1.15%) Aerospace
17 10 (1.15%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 466 (53.50%) Analyst
2 432 (49.60%) Business Analyst
3 139 (15.96%) Senior
4 102 (11.71%) Product Owner
5 88 (10.10%) Senior Analyst
6 80 (9.18%) Senior Business Analyst
7 70 (8.04%) Developer
8 58 (6.66%) Technical Analyst
9 57 (6.54%) Product Manager
10 54 (6.20%) Technical Business Analyst
11 41 (4.71%) Salesforce Business Analyst
12 40 (4.59%) Salesforce Analyst
13 36 (4.13%) Lead
14 32 (3.67%) Implementation Analyst
15 27 (3.10%) Data Analyst
16 25 (2.87%) Data Business Analyst
17 24 (2.76%) Banking Analyst
17 24 (2.76%) SC Cleared Business Analyst
18 22 (2.53%) Digital Business Analyst
18 22 (2.53%) Senior Salesforce Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (4.13%) REST
2 19 (2.18%) JSON
3 17 (1.95%) React
3 17 (1.95%) RESTful
4 16 (1.84%) ADO
5 14 (1.61%) XML
6 12 (1.38%) AngularJS
7 11 (1.26%) Spring Boot
8 8 (0.92%) .NET
8 8 (0.92%) HTML
8 8 (0.92%) Lightning Web Components
8 8 (0.92%) Node.js
8 8 (0.92%) VML
9 7 (0.80%) CSS
9 7 (0.80%) Oracle Fusion
9 7 (0.80%) Spring
10 6 (0.69%) Kafka
10 6 (0.69%) Middleware
10 6 (0.69%) OAuth
10 6 (0.69%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 285 (32.72%) Product Ownership
2 30 (3.44%) Onboarding
3 26 (2.99%) Analytical Mindset
3 26 (2.99%) Data Protection Act
4 23 (2.64%) Self-Motivation
5 22 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 20 (2.30%) CMDB
7 16 (1.84%) Data Structures
7 16 (1.84%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 15 (1.72%) Cloud Native
8 15 (1.72%) Management Information System
9 13 (1.49%) Virtual Team
10 10 (1.15%) AI Agents
11 9 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
11 9 (1.03%) PMI
11 9 (1.03%) Reinsurance
12 7 (0.80%) Life Science
12 7 (0.80%) Mobile App
12 7 (0.80%) NHS
12 7 (0.80%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.15%) Windows
2 9 (1.03%) Linux
3 4 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.34%) CentOS
4 3 (0.34%) Unix
5 2 (0.23%) Android
5 2 (0.23%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 554 (63.61%) Agile
2 356 (40.87%) Acceptance Criteria
3 298 (34.21%) Stakeholder Management
4 206 (23.65%) Requirements Gathering
5 205 (23.54%) Scrum
6 199 (22.85%) Workshop Facilitation
7 180 (20.67%) User Acceptance Testing
8 175 (20.09%) Business Analysis
9 172 (19.75%) DevOps
10 167 (19.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 155 (17.80%) Problem-Solving
12 147 (16.88%) Roadmaps
13 142 (16.30%) Sprint Planning
14 122 (14.01%) Product Backlog
15 120 (13.78%) Continuous Improvement
16 119 (13.66%) Data Modelling
17 113 (12.97%) Migration
18 109 (12.51%) Analytics
18 109 (12.51%) Backlog Management
19 104 (11.94%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 117 (13.43%) SQL
2 63 (7.23%) Python
3 40 (4.59%) Java
4 29 (3.33%) JavaScript
5 14 (1.61%) C#
6 9 (1.03%) TypeScript
7 8 (0.92%) PowerShell
8 6 (0.69%) Apex Code
9 5 (0.57%) Korn
9 5 (0.57%) Kotlin
10 3 (0.34%) R
10 3 (0.34%) Ruby
10 3 (0.34%) T-SQL
10 3 (0.34%) VBA
11 2 (0.23%) Bash
11 2 (0.23%) Google Apps Script
11 2 (0.23%) PHP
11 2 (0.23%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.23%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.11%) X++
Qualifications
1 162 (18.60%) Security Cleared
2 128 (14.70%) SC Cleared
3 81 (9.30%) Degree
4 31 (3.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 29 (3.33%) CBAP
5 29 (3.33%) IIBA
6 14 (1.61%) CSPO
7 13 (1.49%) PMI Certification
8 11 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
9 10 (1.15%) Master's Degree
10 9 (1.03%) ISTQB
11 7 (0.80%) ISEB
12 5 (0.57%) CISSP
12 5 (0.57%) DV Cleared
13 4 (0.46%) MBA
13 4 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
13 4 (0.46%) PMP
14 3 (0.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 2 (0.23%) DBS Check
15 2 (0.23%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (13.09%) QA
2 52 (5.97%) Data Quality
3 43 (4.94%) Accessibility
4 26 (2.99%) GDPR
5 9 (1.03%) GRC
5 9 (1.03%) NIST
6 7 (0.80%) GxP
6 7 (0.80%) SLA
7 6 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.69%) WCAG
8 5 (0.57%) ISO 20022
8 5 (0.57%) Solvency II
9 4 (0.46%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 4 (0.46%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.34%) GMP
10 3 (0.34%) HL7
10 3 (0.34%) PSD2
11 2 (0.23%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 23 (2.64%) Docker
2 11 (1.26%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.23%) IAG
4 2 (0.23%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.11%) Ceph
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 21 (2.41%) Kubernetes
2 16 (1.84%) Ansible
3 13 (1.49%) Terraform
4 7 (0.80%) SCCM
5 6 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.57%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.11%) Argo
8 1 (0.11%) CASB
8 1 (0.11%) Grafana
8 1 (0.11%) HP ALM
8 1 (0.11%) Kibana
Vendors
1 123 (14.12%) Microsoft
2 84 (9.64%) Salesforce
3 49 (5.63%) SAP
3 49 (5.63%) ServiceNow
4 21 (2.41%) Oracle
5 20 (2.30%) Databricks
6 12 (1.38%) Adobe
6 12 (1.38%) Google
7 10 (1.15%) Cisco
7 10 (1.15%) Splunk
7 10 (1.15%) Workday
7 10 (1.15%) Zscaler
8 7 (0.80%) Pega
9 6 (0.69%) Fortinet
9 6 (0.69%) Guidewire
9 6 (0.69%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
10 5 (0.57%) Citrix
10 5 (0.57%) Cognizant
10 5 (0.57%) MuleSoft
11 4 (0.46%) IBM