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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 147 163
Rank change year-on-year +21 +16 -41
Contract jobs citing User Stories 902 509 561
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.03% 1.92% 1.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.38% 2.11% 1.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 609 328 376
10th Percentile £358 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £536
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -5.83% +2.14%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £595
90th Percentile £650 £725 £646
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 2 6
10th Percentile £35.00 £54.90 £31.71
25th Percentile £67.50 £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 37,874 24,162 31,847
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.36% 90.93% 85.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,840 15,529 20,666
10th Percentile £325 £300 £305
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.80% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £517 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.28% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,373 1,216 2,288
10th Percentile £15.32 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.95 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -3.85%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 +14 515 £525 - 162
North of England -21 123 £475 +2.70% 67
Midlands -10 98 £475 +2.98% 36
South East -32 78 £450 -11.11% 75
West Midlands -14 75 £475 +2.70% 22
North West -19 59 £436 -17.30% 37
Yorkshire -28 45 £501 +14.57% 25
South West -9 42 £486 +2.37% 29
East of England -11 30 £498 +16.99% 17
East Midlands -14 23 £455 +5.20% 13
North East -28 20 £425 -2.02% 6
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
1 151 (16.74%) Confluence
2 25 (2.77%) CMS
3 17 (1.88%) SharePoint
4 5 (0.55%) Camunda
4 5 (0.55%) Jupyter
5 4 (0.44%) SAS
6 3 (0.33%) Cloud Foundry
6 3 (0.33%) Drupal
6 3 (0.33%) Kentico
6 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.22%) JBoss
7 2 (0.22%) Sitecore CMS
7 2 (0.22%) WordPress
8 1 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 1 (0.11%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 41 (4.55%) MS Visio
2 37 (4.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (2.33%) Microsoft Office
4 15 (1.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.67%) Notion
6 3 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.11%) InVision
7 1 (0.11%) Sketch
7 1 (0.11%) Trello
7 1 (0.11%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 14 (1.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.67%) Adobe Campaign
3 6 (0.67%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.55%) Teamcenter
5 4 (0.44%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.44%) Eloqua
5 4 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.33%) Actimize
6 3 (0.33%) Dynamics GP
6 3 (0.33%) Dynamics SL
6 3 (0.33%) Infor CloudSuite
6 3 (0.33%) NetSuite
6 3 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
6 3 (0.33%) Sage X3
6 3 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.22%) Exchequer
7 2 (0.22%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 193 (21.40%) Azure
2 77 (8.54%) AWS
2 77 (8.54%) Azure DevOps
3 71 (7.87%) Power Platform
4 26 (2.88%) GitHub
5 25 (2.77%) GCP
6 24 (2.66%) SaaS
7 20 (2.22%) Dynamics 365
8 19 (2.11%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 16 (1.77%) Microsoft 365
9 16 (1.77%) PowerApps
10 15 (1.66%) Power Automate
10 15 (1.66%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
11 14 (1.55%) Entra ID
12 13 (1.44%) Azure Data Factory
12 13 (1.44%) Figma
13 12 (1.33%) Lucidchart
14 10 (1.11%) Miro
15 9 (1.00%) Snowflake
16 6 (0.67%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.89%) Network Security
2 6 (0.67%) Firewall
3 3 (0.33%) DNS
3 3 (0.33%) WebEx
3 3 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (0.22%) Broadband
4 2 (0.22%) HTTP
4 2 (0.22%) Wireless
5 1 (0.11%) 5G
5 1 (0.11%) BGP
5 1 (0.11%) FTP
5 1 (0.11%) NFC
5 1 (0.11%) NGFW
5 1 (0.11%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (5.54%) Power BI
2 32 (3.55%) Data Warehouse
2 32 (3.55%) Metadata
3 17 (1.88%) Relational Database
4 10 (1.11%) Tableau
5 9 (1.00%) Data Lake
5 9 (1.00%) NoSQL
5 9 (1.00%) SQL Server
6 8 (0.89%) Delta Lake
6 8 (0.89%) PostgreSQL
7 7 (0.78%) Parquet
8 6 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (0.55%) BigQuery
9 5 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (0.44%) Big Data
10 4 (0.44%) Data Mining
11 3 (0.33%) Data Hub
11 3 (0.33%) OLAP
11 3 (0.33%) Redis
12 2 (0.22%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 216 (23.95%) JIRA
2 28 (3.10%) Postman
3 24 (2.66%) Git
4 19 (2.11%) GitLab
5 12 (1.33%) Jenkins
5 12 (1.33%) Selenium
6 9 (1.00%) Gradle
7 7 (0.78%) Cucumber
7 7 (0.78%) Team Foundation Server
8 6 (0.67%) REST Assured
9 5 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (0.55%) Balsamiq
10 4 (0.44%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.44%) JUnit
10 4 (0.44%) Zephyr
11 3 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.22%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.22%) SoapUI
12 2 (0.22%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.22%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 346 (38.36%) Social Skills
2 236 (26.16%) Analytical Skills
3 234 (25.94%) Finance
4 117 (12.97%) Public Sector
5 106 (11.75%) Banking
6 70 (7.76%) Documentation Skills
7 55 (6.10%) Retail
8 34 (3.77%) Marketing
9 33 (3.66%) Legal
9 33 (3.66%) Presentation Skills
10 24 (2.66%) Investment Banking
11 21 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (2.33%) Manufacturing
12 19 (2.11%) Organisational Skills
13 16 (1.77%) Military
14 15 (1.66%) Aerospace
14 15 (1.66%) Front Office
15 14 (1.55%) Retail Banking
16 12 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 12 (1.33%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 458 (50.78%) Analyst
2 418 (46.34%) Business Analyst
3 122 (13.53%) Product Owner
4 119 (13.19%) Senior
5 79 (8.76%) Developer
6 73 (8.09%) Senior Analyst
7 68 (7.54%) Senior Business Analyst
8 65 (7.21%) Product Manager
9 60 (6.65%) Technical Analyst
10 52 (5.76%) Technical Business Analyst
11 39 (4.32%) Lead
12 38 (4.21%) Salesforce Business Analyst
13 37 (4.10%) Salesforce Analyst
14 30 (3.33%) Data Analyst
15 29 (3.22%) Implementation Analyst
16 27 (2.99%) Data Business Analyst
17 21 (2.33%) Consultant
17 21 (2.33%) Digital Business Analyst
17 21 (2.33%) Systems Analyst
18 20 (2.22%) Project Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (3.77%) REST
2 26 (2.88%) JSON
3 18 (2.00%) React
3 18 (2.00%) RESTful
4 16 (1.77%) ADO
4 16 (1.77%) AngularJS
5 13 (1.44%) XML
6 12 (1.33%) Lightning Web Components
7 11 (1.22%) Spring Boot
8 10 (1.11%) .NET
8 10 (1.11%) Kafka
9 9 (1.00%) HTML
9 9 (1.00%) Node.js
10 8 (0.89%) Middleware
10 8 (0.89%) OAuth
10 8 (0.89%) Oracle Fusion
10 8 (0.89%) SOAP
11 7 (0.78%) CSS
11 7 (0.78%) OpenID
11 7 (0.78%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 312 (34.59%) Product Ownership
2 36 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 31 (3.44%) Analytical Mindset
4 28 (3.10%) CMDB
5 27 (2.99%) Data Protection Act
6 24 (2.66%) Self-Motivation
7 22 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
8 20 (2.22%) Cloud Native
9 17 (1.88%) Data Structures
10 15 (1.66%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 14 (1.55%) Management Information System
12 13 (1.44%) Virtual Team
13 12 (1.33%) AI Agents
13 12 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
14 11 (1.22%) Life Science
15 10 (1.11%) Reinsurance
16 8 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
16 8 (0.89%) Marketing Technology
17 7 (0.78%) Algorithms
17 7 (0.78%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.00%) Linux
2 6 (0.67%) Windows
3 5 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.33%) Android
4 3 (0.33%) Apple iOS
4 3 (0.33%) CentOS
4 3 (0.33%) Unix
5 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 569 (63.08%) Agile
2 372 (41.24%) Acceptance Criteria
3 314 (34.81%) Stakeholder Management
4 221 (24.50%) Requirements Gathering
5 220 (24.39%) Scrum
6 192 (21.29%) Workshop Facilitation
7 190 (21.06%) User Acceptance Testing
8 181 (20.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 176 (19.51%) DevOps
10 172 (19.07%) Business Analysis
11 164 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
12 161 (17.85%) Roadmaps
13 152 (16.85%) Product Backlog
14 151 (16.74%) Sprint Planning
15 146 (16.19%) Continuous Improvement
16 127 (14.08%) Backlog Management
17 121 (13.41%) Validation
18 119 (13.19%) Decision-Making
19 117 (12.97%) Backlog Prioritisation
20 116 (12.86%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 127 (14.08%) SQL
2 72 (7.98%) Python
3 47 (5.21%) Java
4 39 (4.32%) JavaScript
5 18 (2.00%) C#
6 9 (1.00%) Apex Code
7 8 (0.89%) TypeScript
8 7 (0.78%) PowerShell
9 6 (0.67%) Korn
9 6 (0.67%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.55%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.33%) R
11 3 (0.33%) Ruby
11 3 (0.33%) Scala
12 2 (0.22%) Bash
12 2 (0.22%) Google Apps Script
12 2 (0.22%) PHP
12 2 (0.22%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.22%) VBA
13 1 (0.11%) Perl
Qualifications
1 166 (18.40%) Security Cleared
2 133 (14.75%) SC Cleared
3 69 (7.65%) Degree
4 31 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (2.11%) IIBA
6 16 (1.77%) CBAP
7 14 (1.55%) CSPO
8 13 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (0.89%) CISSP
9 8 (0.89%) DV Cleared
9 8 (0.89%) ISTQB
10 7 (0.78%) PMI Certification
11 6 (0.67%) ISEB
11 6 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.55%) AWS Certification
13 4 (0.44%) Azure Certification
13 4 (0.44%) Master's Degree
14 3 (0.33%) DBS Check
14 3 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 3 (0.33%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 113 (12.53%) QA
2 55 (6.10%) Data Quality
3 42 (4.66%) Accessibility
4 18 (2.00%) GDPR
5 11 (1.22%) GRC
6 10 (1.11%) NIST
7 9 (1.00%) GxP
8 8 (0.89%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 6 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.67%) SLA
9 6 (0.67%) WCAG
10 5 (0.55%) Solvency II
11 4 (0.44%) ISO 20022
11 4 (0.44%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.33%) HL7
13 2 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 2 (0.22%) COBIT
13 2 (0.22%) ISO 15022
13 2 (0.22%) SNOMED CT
13 2 (0.22%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 24 (2.66%) Docker
2 11 (1.22%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.44%) IAG
3 4 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.11%) Ceph
5 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 27 (2.99%) Kubernetes
2 16 (1.77%) Ansible
2 16 (1.77%) Terraform
3 7 (0.78%) SCCM
4 6 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (0.55%) HP Quality Center
6 2 (0.22%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.11%) Argo
7 1 (0.11%) CASB
7 1 (0.11%) Grafana
7 1 (0.11%) Kibana
Vendors
1 125 (13.86%) Microsoft
2 85 (9.42%) Salesforce
3 55 (6.10%) ServiceNow
4 50 (5.54%) SAP
5 21 (2.33%) Databricks
6 20 (2.22%) Google
7 18 (2.00%) Oracle
8 12 (1.33%) Adobe
9 10 (1.11%) Cisco
9 10 (1.11%) Splunk
9 10 (1.11%) Zscaler
10 9 (1.00%) Pega
10 9 (1.00%) Workday
11 6 (0.67%) Fortinet
11 6 (0.67%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
12 5 (0.55%) Alteryx
12 5 (0.55%) Citrix
12 5 (0.55%) CyberArk
12 5 (0.55%) ION Trading
12 5 (0.55%) Kronos