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 26 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 130 180 141
Rank change year-on-year +50 -39 -31
Contract jobs citing User Stories 667 430 712
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.17% 1.39% 1.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.42% 1.59% 2.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 472 269 486
10th Percentile £352 £359 £390
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -
75th Percentile £588 £615 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £685
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 1 6
10th Percentile £31.49 - £47.13
25th Percentile £44.46 - £50.31
Median hourly rate £67.44 £33.07 £52.75
Median % change year-on-year +103.92% -37.31% -4.09%
75th Percentile £74.26 - £64.30
90th Percentile £87.90 - £68.16
UK median hourly rate £67.44 £31.04 £52.75
% change year-on-year +117.29% -41.17% -4.09%

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 27,581 27,123 34,426
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 89.93% 87.40% 88.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,503 16,556 23,537
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £405 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £649 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,803 997 1,447
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.22 £14.62
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.26 £19.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.14% -20.00% +25.00%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%

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 26 November 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 26 November 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 26 November 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 +57 376 £500 -9.05% 114
North of England +16 115 £520 +15.56% 47
South East -1 73 £454 -9.20% 94
Midlands +10 59 £425 -7.61% 41
Yorkshire +10 57 £520 -1.89% 13
North West -5 46 £535 +25.88% 29
West Midlands 0 31 £483 +1.58% 29
East Midlands +8 28 £360 -8.57% 11
South West +3 23 £500 -16.67% 26
North East +1 14 £488 +16.07% 5
East of England -15 9 £425 -10.53% 27
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
1 115 (17.24%) Confluence
2 20 (3.00%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.65%) CMS
4 9 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
6 5 (0.75%) nginx
7 4 (0.60%) Drupal
7 4 (0.60%) JBoss
7 4 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
7 4 (0.60%) WordPress
8 3 (0.45%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.30%) Apache
9 2 (0.30%) Traefik
9 2 (0.30%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.15%) Appian
10 1 (0.15%) Kentico
10 1 (0.15%) SAS
10 1 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 28 (4.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (4.05%) MS Visio
3 18 (2.70%) Microsoft Office
3 18 (2.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.75%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.60%) Adobe XD
6 4 (0.60%) Sketch
6 4 (0.60%) Trello
7 3 (0.45%) Siemens NX
8 2 (0.30%) InVision
8 2 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.15%) Fusion 360
9 1 (0.15%) Notion
9 1 (0.15%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 25 (3.75%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (1.35%) Payment Gateway
3 8 (1.20%) Temenos T24
4 6 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.60%) Endur
5 4 (0.60%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.60%) SAP HR
5 4 (0.60%) SAP PM
6 3 (0.45%) ProductWriter
6 3 (0.45%) Teamcenter
7 2 (0.30%) HFM
7 2 (0.30%) Oracle EBS R12
7 2 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
7 2 (0.30%) Primavera
7 2 (0.30%) Sage CRM
7 2 (0.30%) Shopify
8 1 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
8 1 (0.15%) NetSuite
8 1 (0.15%) OpenLink RightAngle
8 1 (0.15%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 93 (13.94%) Azure
2 66 (9.90%) AWS
3 54 (8.10%) Azure DevOps
4 46 (6.90%) Power Platform
5 26 (3.90%) GCP
6 25 (3.75%) Dynamics 365
6 25 (3.75%) GitHub
7 19 (2.85%) Figma
7 19 (2.85%) Serverless
8 16 (2.40%) AWS Lambda
8 16 (2.40%) Microsoft 365
8 16 (2.40%) Miro
8 16 (2.40%) PowerApps
8 16 (2.40%) Snowflake
9 15 (2.25%) SaaS
10 14 (2.10%) Power Automate
11 13 (1.95%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 12 (1.80%) GitHub Actions
13 10 (1.50%) CloudBees
13 10 (1.50%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.20%) WebEx
2 6 (0.90%) Firewall
3 5 (0.75%) DNS
4 3 (0.45%) HTTP
4 3 (0.45%) VPN
5 2 (0.30%) BGP
5 2 (0.30%) FTP
5 2 (0.30%) Internet
5 2 (0.30%) LAN
5 2 (0.30%) Software-Defined Networking
5 2 (0.30%) VLAN
5 2 (0.30%) WAN
6 1 (0.15%) Calico
6 1 (0.15%) Cisco IPT
6 1 (0.15%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.15%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (5.55%) Power BI
2 23 (3.45%) Data Warehouse
3 17 (2.55%) Tableau
4 16 (2.40%) BigQuery
4 16 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (1.35%) Star Schema
6 8 (1.20%) Relational Database
6 8 (1.20%) SQL Server
7 7 (1.05%) Oracle Database
8 6 (0.90%) Amazon Athena
8 6 (0.90%) Metadata
9 5 (0.75%) Data Vault
9 5 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (0.60%) Big Data
10 4 (0.60%) NoSQL
10 4 (0.60%) Redis
10 4 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
11 3 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
11 3 (0.45%) DynamoDB
11 3 (0.45%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 183 (27.44%) JIRA
2 33 (4.95%) Jenkins
3 20 (3.00%) GitLab
4 17 (2.55%) Cucumber
5 14 (2.10%) Git
6 11 (1.65%) JUnit
6 11 (1.65%) Selenium
7 9 (1.35%) Postman
8 7 (1.05%) JMeter
8 7 (1.05%) Zephyr
9 6 (0.90%) Cypress.io
9 6 (0.90%) MLflow
9 6 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (0.75%) SonarQube
11 4 (0.60%) ER Studio
11 4 (0.60%) ERwin
11 4 (0.60%) PowerDesigner
12 3 (0.45%) Axure RP
12 3 (0.45%) Maven
12 3 (0.45%) TeamCity
General
1 269 (40.33%) Social Skills
2 166 (24.89%) Finance
3 133 (19.94%) Analytical Skills
4 77 (11.54%) Public Sector
5 53 (7.95%) Banking
6 39 (5.85%) Marketing
7 34 (5.10%) Documentation Skills
8 29 (4.35%) Retail
9 27 (4.05%) Presentation Skills
10 23 (3.45%) Legal
11 22 (3.30%) Influencing Skills
12 18 (2.70%) Back Office
12 18 (2.70%) Front Office
13 14 (2.10%) Investment Banking
14 12 (1.80%) Organisational Skills
14 12 (1.80%) Telecoms
15 11 (1.65%) Billing
16 10 (1.50%) Manufacturing
17 9 (1.35%) Law
18 7 (1.05%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 310 (46.48%) Analyst
2 286 (42.88%) Business Analyst
3 94 (14.09%) Product Owner
4 75 (11.24%) Senior
5 45 (6.75%) Technical Analyst
6 43 (6.45%) Senior Analyst
7 42 (6.30%) Technical Business Analyst
8 40 (6.00%) Senior Business Analyst
9 38 (5.70%) Developer
10 31 (4.65%) Product Manager
11 29 (4.35%) Lead
12 22 (3.30%) Test Analyst
13 18 (2.70%) Consultant
13 18 (2.70%) Salesforce Business Analyst
14 15 (2.25%) Architect
14 15 (2.25%) Digital Analyst
14 15 (2.25%) Digital Business Analyst
14 15 (2.25%) Salesforce Analyst
15 14 (2.10%) Automation Engineer
16 13 (1.95%) Data Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (2.70%) RESTful
2 17 (2.55%) Spring
3 16 (2.40%) SOAP
4 15 (2.25%) JSON
4 15 (2.25%) Kafka
4 15 (2.25%) Spring Boot
4 15 (2.25%) XML
5 14 (2.10%) ADO
6 13 (1.95%) REST
7 10 (1.50%) OAuth
7 10 (1.50%) OAuth2
7 10 (1.50%) React
8 9 (1.35%) HTML
8 9 (1.35%) Lightning Web Components
9 8 (1.20%) Apache NiFi
9 8 (1.20%) Gherkin
9 8 (1.20%) Middleware
9 8 (1.20%) Node.js
9 8 (1.20%) Playwright
9 8 (1.20%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 222 (33.28%) Product Ownership
2 31 (4.65%) Onboarding
3 21 (3.15%) Cloud Native
4 17 (2.55%) Data Structures
5 15 (2.25%) Analytical Mindset
5 15 (2.25%) Reinsurance
6 14 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
6 14 (2.10%) Greenfield Project
6 14 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (1.95%) PMI
8 12 (1.80%) Mobile App
9 11 (1.65%) Algorithms
10 10 (1.50%) Management Information System
10 10 (1.50%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 9 (1.35%) Marketing Technology
11 9 (1.35%) SCADA
12 7 (1.05%) Derivative
13 6 (0.90%) Digital Media
13 6 (0.90%) Operational Technology
13 6 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.85%) Linux
1 19 (2.85%) Windows
2 7 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 7 (1.05%) Windows Server
3 5 (0.75%) VMS
4 1 (0.15%) Android
4 1 (0.15%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 492 (73.76%) Agile
2 203 (30.43%) Scrum
3 177 (26.54%) Stakeholder Management
4 175 (26.24%) Acceptance Criteria
5 140 (20.99%) Requirements Gathering
6 134 (20.09%) Problem-Solving
7 118 (17.69%) Roadmaps
8 117 (17.54%) Business Analysis
9 116 (17.39%) Workshop Facilitation
10 115 (17.24%) DevOps
11 110 (16.49%) Product Backlog
12 107 (16.04%) Backlog Management
12 107 (16.04%) User Acceptance Testing
13 99 (14.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 81 (12.14%) Analytics
14 81 (12.14%) Use Case
15 80 (11.99%) Continuous Improvement
15 80 (11.99%) Sprint Planning
16 78 (11.69%) Epics
17 77 (11.54%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 66 (9.90%) SQL
2 54 (8.10%) Python
3 43 (6.45%) Java
4 20 (3.00%) Bash
5 12 (1.80%) PowerShell
6 10 (1.50%) JavaScript
7 8 (1.20%) Apex Code
7 8 (1.20%) Perl
7 8 (1.20%) Scala
8 6 (0.90%) C#
9 5 (0.75%) TypeScript
10 4 (0.60%) Korn
10 4 (0.60%) VBA
11 3 (0.45%) Go
12 2 (0.30%) Ruby
12 2 (0.30%) XPath
13 1 (0.15%) Groovy
13 1 (0.15%) PHP
13 1 (0.15%) SOQL
13 1 (0.15%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 92 (13.79%) Security Cleared
2 85 (12.74%) Degree
3 69 (10.34%) SC Cleared
4 21 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (2.70%) CSPO
6 16 (2.40%) CBAP
6 16 (2.40%) PMI Certification
7 11 (1.65%) Computer Science Degree
8 10 (1.50%) DV Cleared
9 6 (0.90%) CCNA
9 6 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (0.75%) CCDP
10 5 (0.75%) CCNP
10 5 (0.75%) CFA
11 4 (0.60%) Azure Certification
11 4 (0.60%) Master's Degree
11 4 (0.60%) PMP
12 3 (0.45%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.45%) OCP
12 3 (0.45%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (12.74%) QA
2 27 (4.05%) Accessibility
2 27 (4.05%) GDPR
3 18 (2.70%) WCAG
4 15 (2.25%) Data Quality
5 14 (2.10%) PSD2
6 12 (1.80%) PCI DSS
7 6 (0.90%) ISO 8583
8 5 (0.75%) SEPA
8 5 (0.75%) SLA
9 4 (0.60%) FIPS 140-2
10 3 (0.45%) COBIT
10 3 (0.45%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.45%) HL7
10 3 (0.45%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.45%) PMO
11 2 (0.30%) EMIR
11 2 (0.30%) MiFID
11 2 (0.30%) NCSC
11 2 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 24 (3.60%) Docker
2 9 (1.35%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.15%) etcd
4 1 (0.15%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 20 (3.00%) Ansible
1 20 (3.00%) Kubernetes
2 14 (2.10%) NetBackup
2 14 (2.10%) Terraform
3 6 (0.90%) Kubeflow
3 6 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
4 5 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 5 (0.75%) Progress Chef
5 4 (0.60%) Grafana
5 4 (0.60%) Puppet
6 2 (0.30%) CloudHub
6 2 (0.30%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.30%) Istio
7 1 (0.15%) Argo
7 1 (0.15%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 96 (14.39%) Microsoft
2 70 (10.49%) Salesforce
3 33 (4.95%) Oracle
4 25 (3.75%) SAP
5 24 (3.60%) ServiceNow
6 21 (3.15%) Red Hat
7 14 (2.10%) Commvault
8 13 (1.95%) VMware
9 12 (1.80%) MuleSoft
10 11 (1.65%) Citrix
11 10 (1.50%) Cisco
11 10 (1.50%) Databricks
11 10 (1.50%) Veritas
12 9 (1.35%) Adobe
13 8 (1.20%) Pega
13 8 (1.20%) Temenos
14 6 (0.90%) Workday
15 5 (0.75%) Atlassian
15 5 (0.75%) Google
15 5 (0.75%) HubSpot