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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 145 160
Rank change year-on-year +19 +15 -39
Contract jobs citing User Stories 983 547 514
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.16% 1.98% 1.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.53% 2.18% 1.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 652 357 351
10th Percentile £360 £357 £358
25th Percentile £414 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% +2.86%
75th Percentile £580 £619 £600
90th Percentile £650 £725 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 3 4
10th Percentile £36.50 £34.70 -
25th Percentile £56.25 £41.75 £31.71
Median hourly rate £71.25 £53.50 £32.36
Median % change year-on-year +33.18% +65.35% -49.45%
75th Percentile £82.52 £63.00 £33.02
90th Percentile £88.00 £68.70 £33.05
UK median hourly rate £72.50 £53.50 £32.36
% change year-on-year +35.51% +65.35% -49.45%

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 38,782 25,081 28,761
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.18% 90.77% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,156 16,055 18,761
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £760
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,506 1,391 1,691
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.31 £17.87 £18.21
Median hourly rate £44.23 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +75.86% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.50 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%

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 6 August 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 6 August 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 6 August 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 +13 564 £525 - 206
North of England -9 139 £500 +11.11% 67
Midlands -4 111 £460 +6.36% 34
West Midlands +2 87 £475 +4.40% 29
South East -27 77 £450 -5.26% 80
North West -12 72 £489 -2.30% 37
Yorkshire -30 50 £500 +8.11% 17
South West -17 44 £486 -2.75% 25
East of England +1 33 £495 +13.14% 18
East Midlands -9 24 £440 +6.02% 5
North East -29 18 £425 -4.23% 17
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 (15.97%) Confluence
2 26 (2.64%) CMS
3 22 (2.24%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.61%) Camunda
5 5 (0.51%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.31%) Cloud Foundry
6 3 (0.31%) Headless CMS
6 3 (0.31%) Kentico
6 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.31%) SAS
7 2 (0.20%) JBoss
8 1 (0.10%) Apache
8 1 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.10%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.10%) Drupal
8 1 (0.10%) Moodle
8 1 (0.10%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.10%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.10%) Totara
Applications
1 42 (4.27%) MS Visio
2 27 (2.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.71%) Notion
6 3 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.10%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.10%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (2.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.73%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.61%) Adobe Campaign
3 6 (0.61%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.51%) Teamcenter
5 4 (0.41%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.41%) Eloqua
5 4 (0.41%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.31%) Actimize
6 3 (0.31%) Dynamics GP
6 3 (0.31%) Dynamics SL
6 3 (0.31%) Infor CloudSuite
6 3 (0.31%) NetSuite
6 3 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.31%) Sage X3
6 3 (0.31%) SAP SD
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
7 2 (0.20%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 208 (21.16%) Azure
2 99 (10.07%) Power Platform
3 91 (9.26%) AWS
4 86 (8.75%) Azure DevOps
5 40 (4.07%) Dynamics 365
6 33 (3.36%) GCP
7 30 (3.05%) GitHub
8 29 (2.95%) PowerApps
9 25 (2.54%) Power Automate
10 24 (2.44%) SaaS
11 23 (2.34%) Microsoft 365
12 22 (2.24%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 16 (1.63%) Entra ID
13 16 (1.63%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
14 15 (1.53%) Figma
14 15 (1.53%) Snowflake
15 14 (1.42%) Lucidchart
16 10 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
17 8 (0.81%) Google Analytics
18 7 (0.71%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.81%) Network Security
2 6 (0.61%) Firewall
3 4 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
4 3 (0.31%) Broadband
4 3 (0.31%) DNS
4 3 (0.31%) HTTP
4 3 (0.31%) WebEx
5 2 (0.20%) Intranet
5 2 (0.20%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.20%) WAN
5 2 (0.20%) Wireless
6 1 (0.10%) 5G
6 1 (0.10%) BGP
6 1 (0.10%) FTP
6 1 (0.10%) Internet
6 1 (0.10%) NFC
6 1 (0.10%) NGFW
6 1 (0.10%) SSH
6 1 (0.10%) SSL
6 1 (0.10%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (5.80%) Power BI
2 42 (4.27%) Metadata
3 32 (3.26%) Data Warehouse
4 17 (1.73%) Relational Database
5 13 (1.32%) SQL Server
6 9 (0.92%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.92%) Parquet
6 9 (0.92%) Tableau
7 8 (0.81%) Big Data
7 8 (0.81%) Delta Lake
7 8 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
8 7 (0.71%) BigQuery
9 5 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (0.51%) Data Hub
9 5 (0.51%) Data Mining
9 5 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.31%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.31%) OLAP
10 3 (0.31%) SAP BW
10 3 (0.31%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 230 (23.40%) JIRA
2 27 (2.75%) Postman
3 22 (2.24%) Git
4 19 (1.93%) GitLab
5 11 (1.12%) Gradle
5 11 (1.12%) Jenkins
6 10 (1.02%) Selenium
7 8 (0.81%) Cucumber
7 8 (0.81%) Team Foundation Server
8 7 (0.71%) Balsamiq
9 5 (0.51%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (0.51%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.51%) REST Assured
10 4 (0.41%) Maven
10 4 (0.41%) Zephyr
11 3 (0.31%) JUnit
11 3 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.20%) JMeter
12 2 (0.20%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.20%) TeamCity
General
1 387 (39.37%) Social Skills
2 267 (27.16%) Finance
3 261 (26.55%) Analytical Skills
4 135 (13.73%) Banking
5 125 (12.72%) Public Sector
6 71 (7.22%) Documentation Skills
7 62 (6.31%) Retail
8 41 (4.17%) Marketing
9 36 (3.66%) Legal
10 31 (3.15%) Investment Banking
11 29 (2.95%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (2.85%) Presentation Skills
13 24 (2.44%) Manufacturing
14 19 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (1.93%) Retail Banking
15 17 (1.73%) Front Office
15 17 (1.73%) Military
15 17 (1.73%) Organisational Skills
16 16 (1.63%) Pharmaceutical
17 15 (1.53%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 500 (50.86%) Analyst
2 455 (46.29%) Business Analyst
3 132 (13.43%) Senior
4 124 (12.61%) Product Owner
5 96 (9.77%) Developer
6 77 (7.83%) Senior Analyst
7 76 (7.73%) Technical Analyst
8 73 (7.43%) Product Manager
8 73 (7.43%) Senior Business Analyst
9 66 (6.71%) Technical Business Analyst
10 56 (5.70%) Lead
11 40 (4.07%) Salesforce Business Analyst
12 39 (3.97%) Salesforce Analyst
13 30 (3.05%) Data Analyst
14 27 (2.75%) Consultant
15 24 (2.44%) Data Business Analyst
16 23 (2.34%) Digital Business Analyst
17 22 (2.24%) Systems Analyst
18 21 (2.14%) Financial Analyst
18 21 (2.14%) Implementation Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (3.66%) JSON
2 35 (3.56%) REST
3 19 (1.93%) RESTful
4 15 (1.53%) Kafka
4 15 (1.53%) React
5 13 (1.32%) ADO
5 13 (1.32%) AngularJS
6 12 (1.22%) Lightning Web Components
6 12 (1.22%) Spring Boot
6 12 (1.22%) XML
7 11 (1.12%) .NET
7 11 (1.12%) HTML
8 10 (1.02%) OAuth
9 9 (0.92%) OpenID
10 8 (0.81%) Middleware
10 8 (0.81%) Oracle Fusion
10 8 (0.81%) SailPoint
10 8 (0.81%) SOAP
11 7 (0.71%) CSS
11 7 (0.71%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 345 (35.10%) Product Ownership
2 42 (4.27%) Onboarding
3 37 (3.76%) Analytical Mindset
4 31 (3.15%) Data Protection Act
5 27 (2.75%) Self-Motivation
6 25 (2.54%) Cloud Native
7 24 (2.44%) CMDB
8 21 (2.14%) Data Structures
8 21 (2.14%) Management Information System
9 20 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
10 19 (1.93%) AI Agents
11 18 (1.83%) Virtual Team
12 14 (1.42%) Greenfield Project
13 13 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
13 13 (1.32%) Life Science
13 13 (1.32%) Mobile App
14 12 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 11 (1.12%) FMCG
16 10 (1.02%) Operational Technology
16 10 (1.02%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 12 (1.22%) Linux
2 6 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 6 (0.61%) Windows
3 5 (0.51%) Unix
4 4 (0.41%) Android
4 4 (0.41%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.31%) CentOS
6 1 (0.10%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 653 (66.43%) Agile
2 395 (40.18%) Acceptance Criteria
3 374 (38.05%) Stakeholder Management
4 278 (28.28%) Requirements Gathering
5 235 (23.91%) Scrum
6 233 (23.70%) Workshop Facilitation
7 231 (23.50%) User Acceptance Testing
8 209 (21.26%) Business Analysis
9 199 (20.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 194 (19.74%) DevOps
11 191 (19.43%) Problem-Solving
12 181 (18.41%) Sprint Planning
13 178 (18.11%) Roadmaps
14 172 (17.50%) Continuous Improvement
15 170 (17.29%) Product Backlog
16 153 (15.56%) Backlog Management
17 143 (14.55%) Backlog Prioritisation
18 136 (13.84%) Backlog Refinement
18 136 (13.84%) Decision-Making
19 135 (13.73%) AI
Programming Languages
1 141 (14.34%) SQL
2 78 (7.93%) Python
3 53 (5.39%) Java
4 46 (4.68%) JavaScript
5 18 (1.83%) C#
6 12 (1.22%) Apex Code
7 9 (0.92%) Scala
8 8 (0.81%) Kotlin
9 6 (0.61%) Korn
9 6 (0.61%) PowerShell
10 5 (0.51%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.31%) Bash
11 3 (0.31%) R
11 3 (0.31%) Ruby
11 3 (0.31%) SOQL
11 3 (0.31%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.20%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.20%) SOSL
13 1 (0.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.10%) Google Apps Script
Qualifications
1 169 (17.19%) Security Cleared
2 139 (14.14%) SC Cleared
3 75 (7.63%) Degree
4 34 (3.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (1.63%) CSPO
6 15 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
7 14 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
7 14 (1.42%) IIBA
8 12 (1.22%) DV Cleared
9 11 (1.12%) PMI Certification
10 9 (0.92%) CBAP
10 9 (0.92%) PMP
11 8 (0.81%) CISSP
12 7 (0.71%) ISTQB
13 6 (0.61%) ISEB
14 5 (0.51%) Master's Degree
15 4 (0.41%) AWS Certification
15 4 (0.41%) Azure Certification
15 4 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 3 (0.31%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (11.80%) QA
2 71 (7.22%) Data Quality
3 42 (4.27%) Accessibility
4 19 (1.93%) GDPR
5 13 (1.32%) GRC
6 10 (1.02%) NIST
7 9 (0.92%) GxP
8 8 (0.81%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 7 (0.71%) SLA
10 6 (0.61%) ISO 20022
10 6 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 5 (0.51%) Solvency II
11 5 (0.51%) WCAG
12 4 (0.41%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.41%) SEPA
13 3 (0.31%) HL7
14 2 (0.20%) COBIT
14 2 (0.20%) ISO 15022
14 2 (0.20%) PMO
14 2 (0.20%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 28 (2.85%) Docker
2 16 (1.63%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.61%) IAG
5 3 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.10%) Ceph
6 1 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 28 (2.85%) Kubernetes
2 21 (2.14%) Terraform
3 16 (1.63%) Ansible
4 7 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (0.51%) SCCM
6 2 (0.20%) Argo
6 2 (0.20%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.10%) CASB
7 1 (0.10%) Check_MK
7 1 (0.10%) Grafana
7 1 (0.10%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.10%) Kibana
7 1 (0.10%) Podman
Vendors
1 144 (14.65%) Microsoft
2 87 (8.85%) Salesforce
3 52 (5.29%) ServiceNow
4 50 (5.09%) SAP
5 25 (2.54%) Google
6 20 (2.03%) Databricks
7 18 (1.83%) Oracle
8 14 (1.42%) Splunk
8 14 (1.42%) Zscaler
9 13 (1.32%) Adobe
10 10 (1.02%) Cisco
11 9 (0.92%) Pega
12 8 (0.81%) CyberArk
13 6 (0.61%) Fortinet
13 6 (0.61%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 6 (0.61%) Workday
14 5 (0.51%) Citrix
14 5 (0.51%) IBM
14 5 (0.51%) ION Trading
14 5 (0.51%) Kronos