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 15 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 137 184 143
Rank change year-on-year +47 -41 -30
Contract jobs citing User Stories 650 405 676
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.09% 1.39% 1.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.35% 1.58% 2.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 466 257 468
10th Percentile £352 £350 £388
25th Percentile £413 £420 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -1.87%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £600
90th Percentile £661 £685 £688
UK median daily rate £495 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -5.71% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 0 4
10th Percentile £31.49 - £50.38
25th Percentile £47.39 - £50.94
Median hourly rate £56.69 - £52.50
75th Percentile £74.26 - £57.20
90th Percentile £84.01 - £63.42
UK median hourly rate £56.69 £29.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year +95.49% -44.76% -4.55%

All Process and 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 27,657 25,687 33,367
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 88.93% 88.34% 88.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,611 15,867 22,695
10th Percentile £300 £310 £313
25th Percentile £406 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -3.62% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £531
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% -3.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,806 869 1,403
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.09
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +19.30%
75th Percentile £53.94 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.40 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.79
% change year-on-year -22.62% -25.79% +25.12%

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 15 December 2025.

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 15 December 2025.

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 15 December 2025. 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 +47 365 £500 -9.09% 116
North of England +22 112 £500 +11.11% 89
South East +4 74 £465 -7.10% 128
Yorkshire +6 57 £513 -3.30% 32
Midlands +2 57 £425 +5.59% 76
North West -8 44 £500 +19.40% 50
West Midlands -6 32 £490 +4.81% 40
East Midlands +1 25 £368 -4.55% 33
South West -8 19 £500 -16.67% 38
North East -1 13 £525 +25.00% 8
East of England -18 12 £426 +9.94% 54
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
1 122 (18.77%) Confluence
2 19 (2.92%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.54%) CMS
4 8 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.77%) nginx
7 4 (0.62%) Anypoint
7 4 (0.62%) Drupal
7 4 (0.62%) JBoss
7 4 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
7 4 (0.62%) WordPress
8 2 (0.31%) Apache
8 2 (0.31%) Traefik
8 2 (0.31%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 1 (0.15%) Appian
9 1 (0.15%) Kentico
9 1 (0.15%) SAS
9 1 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 33 (5.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (4.31%) MS Visio
3 19 (2.92%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (2.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.77%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.62%) Adobe XD
6 4 (0.62%) Notion
6 4 (0.62%) Sketch
6 4 (0.62%) Trello
7 2 (0.31%) InVision
7 2 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.15%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 26 (4.00%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (1.38%) Payment Gateway
2 9 (1.38%) Temenos T24
3 7 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.77%) NetSuite
5 4 (0.62%) Endur
5 4 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.62%) SAP HR
5 4 (0.62%) SAP PM
6 3 (0.46%) ProductWriter
7 2 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
7 2 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
7 2 (0.31%) Primavera
8 1 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
8 1 (0.15%) Fidessa
8 1 (0.15%) HFM
8 1 (0.15%) OpenLink RightAngle
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.15%) Summit
8 1 (0.15%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 89 (13.69%) Azure
2 67 (10.31%) AWS
3 53 (8.15%) Power Platform
4 46 (7.08%) Azure DevOps
5 28 (4.31%) GCP
6 27 (4.15%) Dynamics 365
7 24 (3.69%) GitHub
8 20 (3.08%) Microsoft 365
9 19 (2.92%) Figma
10 18 (2.77%) Serverless
11 17 (2.62%) AWS Lambda
11 17 (2.62%) PowerApps
12 16 (2.46%) Miro
12 16 (2.46%) Power Automate
12 16 (2.46%) SaaS
13 15 (2.31%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 15 (2.31%) Snowflake
14 13 (2.00%) GitHub Actions
15 11 (1.69%) Entra ID
15 11 (1.69%) Lucidchart
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.23%) WebEx
2 5 (0.77%) DNS
3 4 (0.62%) Firewall
3 4 (0.62%) HTTP
4 2 (0.31%) BGP
4 2 (0.31%) FTP
4 2 (0.31%) Software-Defined Networking
4 2 (0.31%) VLAN
4 2 (0.31%) VPN
5 1 (0.15%) Calico
5 1 (0.15%) Cisco IPT
5 1 (0.15%) Internet
5 1 (0.15%) LAN
5 1 (0.15%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.15%) WAN
5 1 (0.15%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (7.08%) Power BI
2 21 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
3 20 (3.08%) Tableau
4 16 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (2.00%) BigQuery
6 9 (1.38%) SQL Server
7 8 (1.23%) Metadata
7 8 (1.23%) Relational Database
8 7 (1.08%) Oracle Database
8 7 (1.08%) Star Schema
9 6 (0.92%) Amazon Athena
9 6 (0.92%) Data Vault
9 6 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
10 4 (0.62%) Big Data
10 4 (0.62%) NoSQL
10 4 (0.62%) Redis
10 4 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
11 3 (0.46%) DynamoDB
11 3 (0.46%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 186 (28.62%) JIRA
2 34 (5.23%) Jenkins
3 20 (3.08%) GitLab
4 18 (2.77%) Cucumber
5 14 (2.15%) Git
6 12 (1.85%) Selenium
7 11 (1.69%) JUnit
7 11 (1.69%) Postman
8 9 (1.38%) Zephyr
9 7 (1.08%) JMeter
10 6 (0.92%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (0.77%) SonarQube
12 4 (0.62%) Cypress.io
12 4 (0.62%) ER Studio
12 4 (0.62%) ERwin
12 4 (0.62%) PowerDesigner
12 4 (0.62%) TeamCity
12 4 (0.62%) TestRail
13 3 (0.46%) Axure RP
13 3 (0.46%) Gatling
General
1 278 (42.77%) Social Skills
2 169 (26.00%) Finance
3 134 (20.62%) Analytical Skills
4 74 (11.38%) Public Sector
5 55 (8.46%) Banking
6 38 (5.85%) Documentation Skills
6 38 (5.85%) Marketing
7 32 (4.92%) Retail
8 28 (4.31%) Presentation Skills
9 24 (3.69%) Legal
10 22 (3.38%) Influencing Skills
11 19 (2.92%) Front Office
12 17 (2.62%) Back Office
13 14 (2.15%) Investment Banking
14 13 (2.00%) Telecoms
15 12 (1.85%) Manufacturing
16 9 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
17 8 (1.23%) General Ledger
18 7 (1.08%) Billing
18 7 (1.08%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 298 (45.85%) Analyst
2 277 (42.62%) Business Analyst
3 95 (14.62%) Product Owner
4 74 (11.38%) Senior
5 44 (6.77%) Technical Analyst
6 42 (6.46%) Senior Analyst
6 42 (6.46%) Technical Business Analyst
7 40 (6.15%) Senior Business Analyst
8 31 (4.77%) Developer
9 28 (4.31%) Product Manager
10 27 (4.15%) Lead
11 23 (3.54%) Salesforce Business Analyst
12 21 (3.23%) Consultant
13 20 (3.08%) Salesforce Analyst
14 19 (2.92%) Test Analyst
15 18 (2.77%) Designer
16 17 (2.62%) Architect
17 14 (2.15%) Automation Engineer
17 14 (2.15%) Digital Analyst
17 14 (2.15%) Digital Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (2.62%) XML
2 16 (2.46%) JSON
2 16 (2.46%) RESTful
3 14 (2.15%) Kafka
4 13 (2.00%) SOAP
4 13 (2.00%) Spring
5 12 (1.85%) REST
5 12 (1.85%) Spring Boot
6 11 (1.69%) ADO
6 11 (1.69%) HTML
7 10 (1.54%) Lightning Web Components
7 10 (1.54%) React
8 9 (1.38%) Playwright
9 8 (1.23%) Apache NiFi
9 8 (1.23%) Gherkin
9 8 (1.23%) Node.js
9 8 (1.23%) XMPP
10 7 (1.08%) OAuth
10 7 (1.08%) OAuth2
11 5 (0.77%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 223 (34.31%) Product Ownership
2 28 (4.31%) Onboarding
3 20 (3.08%) Data Structures
4 19 (2.92%) Cloud Native
5 16 (2.46%) Analytical Mindset
6 14 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
6 14 (2.15%) PMI
7 13 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
8 12 (1.85%) Mobile App
9 11 (1.69%) Algorithms
9 11 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
9 11 (1.69%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 9 (1.38%) Reinsurance
11 8 (1.23%) Management Information System
11 8 (1.23%) SCADA
11 8 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
12 7 (1.08%) Derivative
13 6 (0.92%) e-Learning
13 6 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
13 6 (0.92%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 20 (3.08%) Linux
2 18 (2.77%) Windows
3 7 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 7 (1.08%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.77%) VMS
5 1 (0.15%) Android
5 1 (0.15%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 478 (73.54%) Agile
2 196 (30.15%) Scrum
3 183 (28.15%) Acceptance Criteria
4 169 (26.00%) Stakeholder Management
5 136 (20.92%) Requirements Gathering
6 135 (20.77%) Problem-Solving
7 126 (19.38%) Workshop Facilitation
8 124 (19.08%) Business Analysis
9 110 (16.92%) DevOps
9 110 (16.92%) Roadmaps
10 104 (16.00%) Product Backlog
11 102 (15.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 100 (15.38%) User Acceptance Testing
13 98 (15.08%) Backlog Management
14 89 (13.69%) Sprint Planning
15 82 (12.62%) Continuous Improvement
16 78 (12.00%) Data Modelling
17 77 (11.85%) User Experience
18 76 (11.69%) Migration
19 74 (11.38%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 75 (11.54%) SQL
2 56 (8.62%) Python
3 40 (6.15%) Java
4 20 (3.08%) Bash
5 13 (2.00%) PowerShell
6 10 (1.54%) C#
6 10 (1.54%) JavaScript
7 9 (1.38%) Apex Code
7 9 (1.38%) Scala
8 8 (1.23%) Perl
9 4 (0.62%) Korn
9 4 (0.62%) TypeScript
9 4 (0.62%) VBA
10 3 (0.46%) Go
10 3 (0.46%) XPath
11 2 (0.31%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.31%) Ruby
11 2 (0.31%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.15%) PHP
12 1 (0.15%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 85 (13.08%) Security Cleared
2 80 (12.31%) Degree
3 65 (10.00%) SC Cleared
4 24 (3.69%) CSPO
5 22 (3.38%) CBAP
6 19 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
7 17 (2.62%) PMI Certification
8 10 (1.54%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (1.23%) DV Cleared
10 6 (0.92%) CCNA
10 6 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (0.92%) IIBA
11 5 (0.77%) Azure Certification
11 5 (0.77%) CCDP
11 5 (0.77%) CCNP
11 5 (0.77%) CFA
12 4 (0.62%) AWS Certification
12 4 (0.62%) PMP
13 3 (0.46%) ISEB
13 3 (0.46%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (12.77%) QA
2 27 (4.15%) GDPR
3 24 (3.69%) Accessibility
4 18 (2.77%) WCAG
5 16 (2.46%) Data Quality
6 14 (2.15%) PSD2
7 12 (1.85%) PCI DSS
8 9 (1.38%) SLA
9 6 (0.92%) ISO 8583
10 5 (0.77%) SEPA
11 4 (0.62%) FIPS 140-2
12 3 (0.46%) GxP
12 3 (0.46%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.46%) HL7
12 3 (0.46%) ISO 20022
13 2 (0.31%) EMIR
13 2 (0.31%) GMP
13 2 (0.31%) MiFID
13 2 (0.31%) PMO
13 2 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 25 (3.85%) Docker
2 9 (1.38%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.15%) etcd
4 1 (0.15%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 24 (3.69%) Kubernetes
2 19 (2.92%) Ansible
3 14 (2.15%) NetBackup
4 12 (1.85%) Terraform
5 6 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 5 (0.77%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.62%) Grafana
7 4 (0.62%) Puppet
8 3 (0.46%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.31%) FortiGate
9 2 (0.31%) Istio
10 1 (0.15%) Argo
10 1 (0.15%) CASB
10 1 (0.15%) CloudHub
10 1 (0.15%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 94 (14.46%) Microsoft
2 78 (12.00%) Salesforce
3 32 (4.92%) Oracle
4 27 (4.15%) SAP
5 21 (3.23%) Red Hat
5 21 (3.23%) ServiceNow
6 14 (2.15%) Commvault
6 14 (2.15%) MuleSoft
7 13 (2.00%) VMware
8 12 (1.85%) Databricks
9 11 (1.69%) Cisco
10 10 (1.54%) Citrix
10 10 (1.54%) Veritas
11 9 (1.38%) Pega
11 9 (1.38%) Temenos
12 8 (1.23%) Adobe
13 7 (1.08%) Google
14 5 (0.77%) Atlassian
14 5 (0.77%) Charles River
14 5 (0.77%) Workday