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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 120 159 147
Rank change year-on-year +39 -12 -24
Contract jobs citing User Stories 867 434 598
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.06% 1.80% 1.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.42% 1.97% 1.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 592 282 408
10th Percentile £355 £356 £353
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £699 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 2 6
10th Percentile £41.38 £54.90 £31.71
25th Percentile £61.09 £57.00 £32.03
Median hourly rate £71.25 £61.75 £33.04
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% +86.92% -48.78%
75th Percentile £79.50 £67.75 £57.77
90th Percentile £96.98 £70.60 £69.25
UK median hourly rate £72.50 £53.50 £33.04
% change year-on-year +35.51% +61.95% -48.78%

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 35,884 22,080 31,645
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.08% 91.32% 85.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,739 14,300 20,579
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,242 984 2,330
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.82
25th Percentile £20.80 £18.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £28.53 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +66.52% -23.93% +1.99%
75th Percentile £68.00 £59.45 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.00 £74.63 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £27.76 £36.50
% change year-on-year +58.36% -23.95% +1.39%

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 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 6 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 6 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 +41 497 £516 -1.81% 153
North of England -20 126 £466 +4.25% 56
Midlands -1 99 £475 +2.98% 32
West Midlands -5 75 £475 +2.70% 25
South East -42 66 £450 -7.69% 61
North West -9 64 £402 -19.60% 35
Yorkshire -43 43 £510 +23.64% 15
South West 0 41 £485 -0.51% 25
East of England -10 29 £525 +31.25% 9
East Midlands -21 24 £463 +6.94% 7
North East -17 20 £425 -2.02% 7
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
1 158 (18.22%) Confluence
2 22 (2.54%) CMS
3 16 (1.85%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.15%) SAS
5 5 (0.58%) Camunda
5 5 (0.58%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.35%) Cloud Foundry
6 3 (0.35%) Drupal
6 3 (0.35%) Kentico
6 3 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.23%) Anypoint
7 2 (0.23%) JBoss
7 2 (0.23%) Sitecore CMS
7 2 (0.23%) WordPress
8 1 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 41 (4.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (4.61%) MS Visio
3 25 (2.88%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.69%) Notion
6 3 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.23%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.23%) InVision
7 2 (0.23%) Sketch
7 2 (0.23%) Zeplin
8 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.12%) Trello
Business Applications
1 14 (1.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 13 (1.50%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.69%) Adobe Campaign
3 6 (0.69%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.58%) Teamcenter
5 4 (0.46%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.46%) Eloqua
5 4 (0.46%) NetSuite
5 4 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.35%) Actimize
6 3 (0.35%) Dynamics GP
6 3 (0.35%) Dynamics SL
6 3 (0.35%) Infor CloudSuite
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
6 3 (0.35%) Sage X3
6 3 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.23%) Exchequer
7 2 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 172 (19.84%) Azure
2 78 (9.00%) AWS
3 68 (7.84%) Power Platform
4 60 (6.92%) Azure DevOps
5 24 (2.77%) GitHub
6 23 (2.65%) SaaS
7 21 (2.42%) Dynamics 365
7 21 (2.42%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 19 (2.19%) GCP
9 17 (1.96%) Microsoft 365
10 16 (1.85%) PowerApps
11 14 (1.61%) Entra ID
11 14 (1.61%) Power Automate
12 13 (1.50%) Figma
13 12 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
13 12 (1.38%) Lucidchart
13 12 (1.38%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
14 10 (1.15%) Miro
15 6 (0.69%) Fivetran
15 6 (0.69%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.92%) Network Security
2 6 (0.69%) Firewall
3 3 (0.35%) DNS
3 3 (0.35%) WebEx
3 3 (0.35%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (0.23%) FTP
4 2 (0.23%) HTTP
4 2 (0.23%) Wireless
5 1 (0.12%) 5G
5 1 (0.12%) BGP
5 1 (0.12%) NFC
5 1 (0.12%) NGFW
5 1 (0.12%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (5.31%) Power BI
2 28 (3.23%) Metadata
3 24 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
4 12 (1.38%) Tableau
5 11 (1.27%) Relational Database
6 10 (1.15%) NoSQL
6 10 (1.15%) SQL Server
7 8 (0.92%) BigQuery
7 8 (0.92%) Data Lake
8 7 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (0.81%) Delta Lake
9 6 (0.69%) PostgreSQL
10 5 (0.58%) Big Data
10 5 (0.58%) Parquet
10 5 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 3 (0.35%) Data Mining
11 3 (0.35%) OLAP
11 3 (0.35%) Redis
12 2 (0.23%) MongoDB
12 2 (0.23%) Oracle OLAP
Development Applications
1 218 (25.14%) JIRA
2 27 (3.11%) Postman
3 22 (2.54%) Git
4 19 (2.19%) GitLab
5 11 (1.27%) Jenkins
6 10 (1.15%) Selenium
7 9 (1.04%) Gradle
8 7 (0.81%) Team Foundation Server
9 6 (0.69%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.69%) Zephyr
10 5 (0.58%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (0.58%) Balsamiq
10 5 (0.58%) REST Assured
11 4 (0.46%) Cucumber
11 4 (0.46%) JUnit
12 3 (0.35%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 2 (0.23%) Artifactory
13 2 (0.23%) Maven
13 2 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
13 2 (0.23%) Terragrunt
General
1 333 (38.41%) Social Skills
2 237 (27.34%) Finance
3 222 (25.61%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (12.57%) Banking
5 108 (12.46%) Public Sector
6 75 (8.65%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (6.46%) Retail
8 41 (4.73%) Presentation Skills
9 31 (3.58%) Marketing
10 23 (2.65%) Legal
11 22 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
12 19 (2.19%) Organisational Skills
13 18 (2.08%) Retail Banking
14 17 (1.96%) Investment Banking
15 15 (1.73%) Military
16 14 (1.61%) Financial Institution
16 14 (1.61%) Manufacturing
17 11 (1.27%) Front Office
18 10 (1.15%) Aerospace
18 10 (1.15%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 464 (53.52%) Analyst
2 430 (49.60%) Business Analyst
3 137 (15.80%) Senior
4 105 (12.11%) Product Owner
5 87 (10.03%) Senior Analyst
6 79 (9.11%) Senior Business Analyst
7 68 (7.84%) Developer
8 57 (6.57%) Product Manager
8 57 (6.57%) Technical Analyst
9 53 (6.11%) Technical Business Analyst
10 42 (4.84%) Salesforce Business Analyst
11 41 (4.73%) Salesforce Analyst
12 35 (4.04%) Lead
13 32 (3.69%) Implementation Analyst
14 27 (3.11%) Data Analyst
15 25 (2.88%) Data Business Analyst
16 24 (2.77%) SC Cleared Business Analyst
17 23 (2.65%) Banking Analyst
18 22 (2.54%) Digital Business Analyst
18 22 (2.54%) Project Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (4.15%) REST
2 19 (2.19%) JSON
3 17 (1.96%) React
3 17 (1.96%) RESTful
4 16 (1.85%) ADO
5 14 (1.61%) XML
6 12 (1.38%) AngularJS
7 11 (1.27%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.04%) VML
9 8 (0.92%) .NET
9 8 (0.92%) HTML
9 8 (0.92%) Node.js
10 7 (0.81%) CSS
10 7 (0.81%) Lightning Web Components
10 7 (0.81%) Spring
11 6 (0.69%) Kafka
11 6 (0.69%) Middleware
11 6 (0.69%) OAuth
11 6 (0.69%) Oracle Fusion
11 6 (0.69%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 287 (33.10%) Product Ownership
2 30 (3.46%) Onboarding
3 26 (3.00%) Analytical Mindset
3 26 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
4 23 (2.65%) Self-Motivation
5 22 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
6 18 (2.08%) CMDB
7 16 (1.85%) Data Structures
8 15 (1.73%) Cloud Native
8 15 (1.73%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 15 (1.73%) Management Information System
9 13 (1.50%) Virtual Team
10 10 (1.15%) AI Agents
11 9 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
11 9 (1.04%) PMI
11 9 (1.04%) Reinsurance
12 7 (0.81%) Life Science
12 7 (0.81%) Mobile App
12 7 (0.81%) NHS
12 7 (0.81%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.15%) Windows
2 9 (1.04%) Linux
3 4 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.35%) CentOS
4 3 (0.35%) Unix
5 2 (0.23%) Android
5 2 (0.23%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 552 (63.67%) Agile
2 360 (41.52%) Acceptance Criteria
3 297 (34.26%) Stakeholder Management
4 205 (23.64%) Scrum
5 202 (23.30%) Requirements Gathering
6 200 (23.07%) Workshop Facilitation
7 180 (20.76%) User Acceptance Testing
8 176 (20.30%) Business Analysis
9 171 (19.72%) DevOps
10 167 (19.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 154 (17.76%) Problem-Solving
12 149 (17.19%) Roadmaps
13 142 (16.38%) Sprint Planning
14 124 (14.30%) Product Backlog
15 119 (13.73%) Data Modelling
16 118 (13.61%) Continuous Improvement
17 112 (12.92%) Migration
18 110 (12.69%) Backlog Management
19 108 (12.46%) Analytics
20 102 (11.76%) Backlog Prioritisation
Programming Languages
1 115 (13.26%) SQL
2 62 (7.15%) Python
3 40 (4.61%) Java
4 29 (3.34%) JavaScript
5 14 (1.61%) C#
6 9 (1.04%) TypeScript
7 8 (0.92%) PowerShell
8 5 (0.58%) Apex Code
8 5 (0.58%) Korn
8 5 (0.58%) Kotlin
9 3 (0.35%) R
9 3 (0.35%) Ruby
9 3 (0.35%) T-SQL
9 3 (0.35%) VBA
10 2 (0.23%) Bash
10 2 (0.23%) Google Apps Script
10 2 (0.23%) PHP
10 2 (0.23%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.23%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.12%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 161 (18.57%) Security Cleared
2 127 (14.65%) SC Cleared
3 79 (9.11%) Degree
4 31 (3.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 29 (3.34%) CBAP
5 29 (3.34%) IIBA
6 15 (1.73%) CSPO
7 13 (1.50%) PMI Certification
8 10 (1.15%) Computer Science Degree
9 9 (1.04%) ISTQB
9 9 (1.04%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.81%) ISEB
11 5 (0.58%) CISSP
11 5 (0.58%) DV Cleared
12 4 (0.46%) MBA
12 4 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
12 4 (0.46%) PMP
13 3 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 2 (0.23%) CompTIA Security+
14 2 (0.23%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (13.15%) QA
2 52 (6.00%) Data Quality
3 43 (4.96%) Accessibility
4 26 (3.00%) GDPR
5 9 (1.04%) GRC
5 9 (1.04%) NIST
6 7 (0.81%) GxP
6 7 (0.81%) SLA
7 6 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.69%) WCAG
8 5 (0.58%) ISO 20022
8 5 (0.58%) Solvency II
9 4 (0.46%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 4 (0.46%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.35%) GMP
10 3 (0.35%) HL7
10 3 (0.35%) PSD2
11 2 (0.23%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 23 (2.65%) Docker
2 11 (1.27%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (0.23%) IAG
4 2 (0.23%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.12%) Ceph
5 1 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 23 (2.65%) Kubernetes
2 16 (1.85%) Ansible
3 13 (1.50%) Terraform
4 7 (0.81%) SCCM
5 6 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.58%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.12%) Argo
8 1 (0.12%) CASB
8 1 (0.12%) Grafana
8 1 (0.12%) HP ALM
8 1 (0.12%) Kibana
Vendors
1 121 (13.96%) Microsoft
2 84 (9.69%) Salesforce
3 49 (5.65%) SAP
4 47 (5.42%) ServiceNow
5 20 (2.31%) Databricks
5 20 (2.31%) Oracle
6 13 (1.50%) Google
7 12 (1.38%) Adobe
8 10 (1.15%) Cisco
8 10 (1.15%) Splunk
8 10 (1.15%) Workday
8 10 (1.15%) Zscaler
9 7 (0.81%) Pega
10 6 (0.69%) Fortinet
10 6 (0.69%) Guidewire
10 6 (0.69%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
11 5 (0.58%) Citrix
11 5 (0.58%) Cognizant
11 5 (0.58%) MuleSoft
12 4 (0.46%) IBM