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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 149 149
Rank change year-on-year +25 0 -27
Contract jobs citing User Stories 880 474 588
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.04% 1.91% 1.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.40% 2.09% 1.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 601 308 400
10th Percentile £355 £357 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £530
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% -4.25% +0.95%
75th Percentile £575 £620 £591
90th Percentile £650 £725 £638
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 2 6
10th Percentile £35.00 £54.90 £31.71
25th Percentile £61.25 £57.00 £32.03
Median hourly rate £72.50 £61.75 £33.04
Median % change year-on-year +17.41% +86.92% -48.38%
75th Percentile £83.00 £67.75 £57.77
90th Percentile £90.57 £70.60 £69.25
UK median hourly rate £73.38 £53.50 £33.04
% change year-on-year +37.16% +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 36,727 22,725 32,193
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.21% 91.37% 85.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,194 14,704 20,811
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £729 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,299 1,073 2,390
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £27.13 £37.63
Median % change year-on-year +73.27% -27.91% +5.54%
75th Percentile £68.55 £56.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.40 £37.50
% change year-on-year +73.07% -32.27% +7.05%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +21 507 £514 -4.81% 83
North of England -27 123 £469 +4.22% 47
Midlands -5 98 £475 +2.70% 27
West Midlands -7 76 £475 +1.33% 17
South East -40 71 £450 -10.00% 60
North West -9 64 £403 -23.33% 23
South West -2 42 £480 -1.54% 20
Yorkshire -45 40 £518 +18.29% 18
East of England -12 28 £538 +34.38% 7
East Midlands -16 22 £459 +6.07% 10
North East -26 20 £425 -2.02% 11
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
1 157 (17.84%) Confluence
2 24 (2.73%) CMS
3 17 (1.93%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.14%) 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%) 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 41 (4.66%) MS Visio
2 39 (4.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 27 (3.07%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (2.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.68%) 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 13 (1.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.68%) Adobe Campaign
3 6 (0.68%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.57%) Teamcenter
5 4 (0.45%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.45%) Eloqua
5 4 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.45%) 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%) NetSuite
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%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 183 (20.80%) Azure
2 76 (8.64%) AWS
3 68 (7.73%) Azure DevOps
4 64 (7.27%) Power Platform
5 24 (2.73%) GitHub
6 21 (2.39%) GCP
6 21 (2.39%) SaaS
6 21 (2.39%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 19 (2.16%) Dynamics 365
8 15 (1.70%) Microsoft 365
8 15 (1.70%) PowerApps
9 14 (1.59%) Entra ID
9 14 (1.59%) Power Automate
10 13 (1.48%) Figma
10 13 (1.48%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
11 12 (1.36%) Lucidchart
12 11 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
13 9 (1.02%) Miro
14 8 (0.91%) Snowflake
15 6 (0.68%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.91%) Network Security
2 6 (0.68%) 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 43 (4.89%) Power BI
2 29 (3.30%) Metadata
3 24 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
4 14 (1.59%) Relational Database
5 11 (1.25%) SQL Server
5 11 (1.25%) Tableau
6 10 (1.14%) NoSQL
7 8 (0.91%) BigQuery
7 8 (0.91%) Data Lake
7 8 (0.91%) PostgreSQL
8 7 (0.80%) Delta Lake
9 6 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (0.57%) Big Data
10 5 (0.57%) Parquet
10 5 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 4 (0.45%) Data Mining
12 3 (0.34%) OLAP
12 3 (0.34%) Redis
13 2 (0.23%) DynamoDB
13 2 (0.23%) Electronic Patient Records
Development Applications
1 221 (25.11%) JIRA
2 27 (3.07%) Postman
3 23 (2.61%) Git
4 19 (2.16%) GitLab
5 11 (1.25%) Jenkins
6 10 (1.14%) Selenium
7 9 (1.02%) Gradle
8 7 (0.80%) Team Foundation Server
9 6 (0.68%) SonarQube
10 5 (0.57%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (0.57%) Balsamiq
10 5 (0.57%) Cucumber
10 5 (0.57%) REST Assured
10 5 (0.57%) Zephyr
11 4 (0.45%) JUnit
12 3 (0.34%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 2 (0.23%) Artifactory
13 2 (0.23%) Axure RP
13 2 (0.23%) Maven
13 2 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 329 (37.39%) Social Skills
2 229 (26.02%) Analytical Skills
3 224 (25.45%) Finance
4 112 (12.73%) Banking
5 109 (12.39%) Public Sector
6 72 (8.18%) Documentation Skills
7 60 (6.82%) Retail
8 38 (4.32%) Presentation Skills
9 32 (3.64%) Marketing
10 27 (3.07%) Legal
11 22 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
12 20 (2.27%) Investment Banking
13 19 (2.16%) Organisational Skills
14 18 (2.05%) Military
14 18 (2.05%) Retail Banking
15 14 (1.59%) Aerospace
15 14 (1.59%) Manufacturing
16 13 (1.48%) Financial Institution
16 13 (1.48%) Front Office
17 11 (1.25%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 465 (52.84%) Analyst
2 426 (48.41%) Business Analyst
3 137 (15.57%) Senior
4 113 (12.84%) Product Owner
5 84 (9.55%) Senior Analyst
6 80 (9.09%) Developer
7 76 (8.64%) Senior Business Analyst
8 57 (6.48%) Product Manager
8 57 (6.48%) Technical Analyst
9 52 (5.91%) Technical Business Analyst
10 40 (4.55%) Salesforce Business Analyst
11 39 (4.43%) Salesforce Analyst
12 36 (4.09%) Lead
13 31 (3.52%) Implementation Analyst
14 28 (3.18%) Data Analyst
15 25 (2.84%) Data Business Analyst
16 24 (2.73%) Banking Analyst
17 22 (2.50%) Digital Business Analyst
18 21 (2.39%) SC Cleared Business Analyst
18 21 (2.39%) Senior Salesforce Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (3.98%) REST
2 20 (2.27%) JSON
3 19 (2.16%) React
4 18 (2.05%) RESTful
5 16 (1.82%) ADO
6 15 (1.70%) AngularJS
7 13 (1.48%) XML
8 11 (1.25%) Spring Boot
9 9 (1.02%) .NET
9 9 (1.02%) Lightning Web Components
9 9 (1.02%) Node.js
10 8 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
10 8 (0.91%) VML
11 7 (0.80%) CSS
11 7 (0.80%) HTML
11 7 (0.80%) Middleware
11 7 (0.80%) OAuth
11 7 (0.80%) Spring
12 6 (0.68%) Kafka
12 6 (0.68%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 298 (33.86%) Product Ownership
2 31 (3.52%) Onboarding
3 26 (2.95%) Analytical Mindset
4 25 (2.84%) Data Protection Act
5 24 (2.73%) CMDB
6 23 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
6 23 (2.61%) Self-Motivation
7 18 (2.05%) Cloud Native
8 16 (1.82%) Data Structures
9 15 (1.70%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 15 (1.70%) Management Information System
10 13 (1.48%) Virtual Team
11 10 (1.14%) PMI
11 10 (1.14%) Reinsurance
12 9 (1.02%) AI Agents
12 9 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
13 8 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
14 7 (0.80%) FMCG
14 7 (0.80%) Life Science
14 7 (0.80%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.02%) Linux
1 9 (1.02%) Windows
2 5 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (0.34%) Android
3 3 (0.34%) Apple iOS
3 3 (0.34%) CentOS
3 3 (0.34%) Unix
4 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 547 (62.16%) Agile
2 362 (41.14%) Acceptance Criteria
3 308 (35.00%) Stakeholder Management
4 216 (24.55%) Requirements Gathering
5 204 (23.18%) Scrum
6 191 (21.70%) User Acceptance Testing
6 191 (21.70%) Workshop Facilitation
7 179 (20.34%) DevOps
8 175 (19.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 172 (19.55%) Business Analysis
10 150 (17.05%) Problem-Solving
11 149 (16.93%) Roadmaps
12 143 (16.25%) Sprint Planning
13 133 (15.11%) Product Backlog
14 127 (14.43%) Continuous Improvement
15 118 (13.41%) Backlog Management
16 112 (12.73%) Analytics
17 111 (12.61%) Data Modelling
18 109 (12.39%) Backlog Prioritisation
19 106 (12.05%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 114 (12.95%) SQL
2 64 (7.27%) Python
3 42 (4.77%) Java
4 33 (3.75%) JavaScript
5 14 (1.59%) C#
6 9 (1.02%) TypeScript
7 7 (0.80%) Apex Code
7 7 (0.80%) PowerShell
8 5 (0.57%) Korn
9 4 (0.45%) Kotlin
9 4 (0.45%) T-SQL
10 3 (0.34%) R
10 3 (0.34%) Ruby
11 2 (0.23%) Bash
11 2 (0.23%) Google Apps Script
11 2 (0.23%) PHP
11 2 (0.23%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.23%) VBA
12 1 (0.11%) Perl
12 1 (0.11%) X++
Qualifications
1 167 (18.98%) Security Cleared
2 135 (15.34%) SC Cleared
3 78 (8.86%) Degree
4 31 (3.52%) BPSS Clearance
5 27 (3.07%) IIBA
6 26 (2.95%) CBAP
7 13 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (1.48%) CSPO
7 13 (1.48%) PMI Certification
8 10 (1.14%) Master's Degree
9 8 (0.91%) CISSP
9 8 (0.91%) ISTQB
10 6 (0.68%) DV Cleared
11 5 (0.57%) ISEB
12 4 (0.45%) AWS Certification
12 4 (0.45%) Azure Certification
12 4 (0.45%) MBA
12 4 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
13 3 (0.34%) DBS Check
13 3 (0.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (12.39%) QA
2 48 (5.45%) Data Quality
3 41 (4.66%) Accessibility
4 25 (2.84%) GDPR
5 10 (1.14%) GRC
5 10 (1.14%) NIST
6 7 (0.80%) SLA
7 6 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.68%) WCAG
8 5 (0.57%) GxP
8 5 (0.57%) ISO 20022
8 5 (0.57%) Solvency II
9 4 (0.45%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 4 (0.45%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.34%) HL7
10 3 (0.34%) PSD2
11 2 (0.23%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.23%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 24 (2.73%) Docker
2 11 (1.25%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.45%) 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 23 (2.61%) Kubernetes
2 16 (1.82%) Ansible
3 15 (1.70%) Terraform
4 7 (0.80%) SCCM
5 6 (0.68%) 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
1 126 (14.32%) Microsoft
2 84 (9.55%) Salesforce
3 53 (6.02%) ServiceNow
4 49 (5.57%) SAP
5 21 (2.39%) Oracle
6 20 (2.27%) Databricks
7 14 (1.59%) Google
8 12 (1.36%) Adobe
9 10 (1.14%) Cisco
9 10 (1.14%) Splunk
9 10 (1.14%) Zscaler
10 9 (1.02%) Workday
11 8 (0.91%) Pega
12 6 (0.68%) Fortinet
12 6 (0.68%) Guidewire
12 6 (0.68%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 5 (0.57%) Citrix
13 5 (0.57%) Cognizant
13 5 (0.57%) CyberArk
13 5 (0.57%) Kronos