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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 142 166
Rank change year-on-year +17 +24 -47
Contract jobs citing User Stories 972 538 528
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.14% 1.95% 1.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.52% 2.15% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 644 353 353
10th Percentile £358 £356 £358
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% +2.86%
75th Percentile £579 £625 £600
90th Percentile £650 £725 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 2 4
10th Percentile £35.00 £54.90 -
25th Percentile £58.75 £57.00 £31.71
Median hourly rate £72.50 £61.75 £32.36
Median % change year-on-year +17.41% +90.85% -49.45%
75th Percentile £82.68 £67.75 £33.02
90th Percentile £88.00 £70.60 £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 38,641 24,977 29,189
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.26% 90.76% 85.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,154 16,016 19,101
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £419
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 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,462 1,371 1,780
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.25 £13.87
25th Percentile £20.92 £17.98 £17.72
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -39.40% -2.35%
75th Percentile £68.75 £52.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 +15 553 £525 - 150
North of England -6 140 £488 +8.33% 45
Midlands +1 109 £463 +2.78% 29
West Midlands -2 85 £475 +2.98% 23
South East -37 76 £450 -10.00% 64
North West -16 69 £474 -5.20% 23
Yorkshire -30 51 £500 +11.11% 10
South West -13 45 £485 +2.11% 24
East of England +1 33 £495 +13.14% 12
East Midlands -14 24 £440 +6.02% 6
North East -29 21 £425 -4.23% 15
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
1 154 (15.84%) Confluence
2 25 (2.57%) CMS
3 21 (2.16%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.62%) Camunda
5 5 (0.51%) Jupyter
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 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.21%) 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%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.10%) Totara
Applications
1 41 (4.22%) MS Visio
2 27 (2.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.62%) Notion
6 3 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.10%) Trello
Business Applications
1 20 (2.06%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.75%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.62%) Adobe Campaign
3 6 (0.62%) 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 (0.21%) Oracle Financials
7 2 (0.21%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 205 (21.09%) Azure
2 93 (9.57%) Power Platform
3 88 (9.05%) AWS
4 82 (8.44%) Azure DevOps
5 34 (3.50%) Dynamics 365
5 34 (3.50%) GCP
6 30 (3.09%) GitHub
7 27 (2.78%) PowerApps
8 24 (2.47%) Power Automate
9 22 (2.26%) SaaS
10 21 (2.16%) Microsoft 365
10 21 (2.16%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 18 (1.85%) Entra ID
12 15 (1.54%) Figma
12 15 (1.54%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 14 (1.44%) Lucidchart
13 14 (1.44%) Snowflake
14 11 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
15 8 (0.82%) Google Analytics
16 7 (0.72%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.82%) Network Security
2 6 (0.62%) 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 (0.21%) Intranet
5 2 (0.21%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.21%) WAN
5 2 (0.21%) 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%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (5.66%) Power BI
2 41 (4.22%) Metadata
3 31 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
4 17 (1.75%) Relational Database
5 11 (1.13%) SQL Server
6 10 (1.03%) Data Lake
7 9 (0.93%) Delta Lake
7 9 (0.93%) Parquet
7 9 (0.93%) Tableau
8 8 (0.82%) Big Data
8 8 (0.82%) BigQuery
9 7 (0.72%) PostgreSQL
10 5 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (0.51%) Data Hub
10 5 (0.51%) Data Mining
10 5 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 3 (0.31%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.31%) OLAP
11 3 (0.31%) SAP BW
11 3 (0.31%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 228 (23.46%) JIRA
2 27 (2.78%) Postman
3 22 (2.26%) Git
4 19 (1.95%) GitLab
5 11 (1.13%) Gradle
5 11 (1.13%) Jenkins
5 11 (1.13%) Selenium
6 8 (0.82%) Cucumber
6 8 (0.82%) Team Foundation Server
7 7 (0.72%) Balsamiq
8 5 (0.51%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.51%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.51%) REST Assured
9 4 (0.41%) Maven
9 4 (0.41%) Zephyr
10 3 (0.31%) JUnit
10 3 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.21%) JMeter
11 2 (0.21%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.21%) TeamCity
General
1 384 (39.51%) Social Skills
2 261 (26.85%) Finance
3 258 (26.54%) Analytical Skills
4 128 (13.17%) Banking
5 126 (12.96%) Public Sector
6 72 (7.41%) Documentation Skills
7 60 (6.17%) Retail
8 39 (4.01%) Marketing
9 37 (3.81%) Legal
10 29 (2.98%) Investment Banking
11 28 (2.88%) Presentation Skills
12 24 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
13 22 (2.26%) Manufacturing
14 19 (1.95%) Retail Banking
15 18 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
16 17 (1.75%) Front Office
16 17 (1.75%) Military
17 16 (1.65%) Pharmaceutical
18 15 (1.54%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 496 (51.03%) Analyst
2 449 (46.19%) Business Analyst
3 131 (13.48%) Senior
4 128 (13.17%) Product Owner
5 93 (9.57%) Developer
6 76 (7.82%) Senior Analyst
6 76 (7.82%) Technical Analyst
7 72 (7.41%) Senior Business Analyst
8 71 (7.30%) Product Manager
9 66 (6.79%) Technical Business Analyst
10 51 (5.25%) Lead
11 41 (4.22%) Salesforce Business Analyst
12 40 (4.12%) Salesforce Analyst
13 29 (2.98%) Data Analyst
14 24 (2.47%) Consultant
14 24 (2.47%) Data Business Analyst
15 23 (2.37%) Digital Business Analyst
15 23 (2.37%) Systems Analyst
16 22 (2.26%) Implementation Analyst
17 21 (2.16%) Financial Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (3.60%) JSON
2 33 (3.40%) REST
3 18 (1.85%) RESTful
4 16 (1.65%) React
5 15 (1.54%) Kafka
6 14 (1.44%) AngularJS
7 13 (1.34%) ADO
8 12 (1.23%) HTML
8 12 (1.23%) Spring Boot
8 12 (1.23%) XML
9 10 (1.03%) Lightning Web Components
9 10 (1.03%) OAuth
10 9 (0.93%) .NET
10 9 (0.93%) Middleware
10 9 (0.93%) OpenID
11 8 (0.82%) CSS
11 8 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
11 8 (0.82%) SailPoint
12 7 (0.72%) SOAP
12 7 (0.72%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 344 (35.39%) Product Ownership
2 41 (4.22%) Onboarding
3 35 (3.60%) Analytical Mindset
4 29 (2.98%) Data Protection Act
5 27 (2.78%) Self-Motivation
6 26 (2.67%) CMDB
7 24 (2.47%) Cloud Native
8 21 (2.16%) Data Structures
8 21 (2.16%) Management Information System
9 20 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
10 18 (1.85%) AI Agents
10 18 (1.85%) Virtual Team
11 14 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
12 13 (1.34%) Life Science
12 13 (1.34%) Mobile App
13 12 (1.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 11 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (1.13%) FMCG
15 10 (1.03%) Operational Technology
15 10 (1.03%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 12 (1.23%) Linux
2 6 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 6 (0.62%) 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
1 640 (65.84%) Agile
2 389 (40.02%) Acceptance Criteria
3 369 (37.96%) Stakeholder Management
4 274 (28.19%) Requirements Gathering
5 232 (23.87%) Scrum
5 232 (23.87%) User Acceptance Testing
6 224 (23.05%) Workshop Facilitation
7 202 (20.78%) Business Analysis
8 195 (20.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 187 (19.24%) Problem-Solving
10 184 (18.93%) DevOps
11 179 (18.42%) Sprint Planning
12 178 (18.31%) Roadmaps
13 171 (17.59%) Continuous Improvement
13 171 (17.59%) Product Backlog
14 151 (15.53%) Backlog Management
15 137 (14.09%) Backlog Prioritisation
16 136 (13.99%) Decision-Making
17 132 (13.58%) Analytics
18 131 (13.48%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 137 (14.09%) SQL
2 80 (8.23%) Python
3 53 (5.45%) Java
4 47 (4.84%) JavaScript
5 17 (1.75%) C#
6 10 (1.03%) Apex Code
7 8 (0.82%) Kotlin
8 7 (0.72%) Scala
9 6 (0.62%) Korn
9 6 (0.62%) PowerShell
9 6 (0.62%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.31%) Bash
10 3 (0.31%) R
10 3 (0.31%) Ruby
10 3 (0.31%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.21%) Google Apps Script
11 2 (0.21%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.21%) SOQL
11 2 (0.21%) VBA
12 1 (0.10%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 171 (17.59%) Security Cleared
2 140 (14.40%) SC Cleared
3 73 (7.51%) Degree
4 37 (3.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (1.54%) CSPO
6 14 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (1.44%) Microsoft Certification
7 12 (1.23%) DV Cleared
7 12 (1.23%) IIBA
8 11 (1.13%) PMI Certification
9 10 (1.03%) CBAP
10 9 (0.93%) PMP
11 8 (0.82%) CISSP
12 7 (0.72%) ISTQB
13 6 (0.62%) ISEB
14 5 (0.51%) AWS Certification
14 5 (0.51%) Master's Degree
15 4 (0.41%) Azure Certification
15 4 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 3 (0.31%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (11.42%) QA
2 69 (7.10%) Data Quality
3 41 (4.22%) Accessibility
4 19 (1.95%) GDPR
5 12 (1.23%) GRC
6 10 (1.03%) NIST
7 9 (0.93%) GxP
8 8 (0.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 6 (0.62%) ISO 20022
9 6 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.62%) SLA
9 6 (0.62%) WCAG
10 5 (0.51%) Solvency II
11 4 (0.41%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.41%) SEPA
12 3 (0.31%) HL7
13 2 (0.21%) COBIT
13 2 (0.21%) ISO 15022
13 2 (0.21%) SNOMED CT
13 2 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 28 (2.88%) Docker
2 16 (1.65%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.62%) IAG
5 3 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.10%) Ceph
6 1 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 28 (2.88%) Kubernetes
2 21 (2.16%) Terraform
3 16 (1.65%) Ansible
4 7 (0.72%) SCCM
5 6 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.31%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.21%) Argo
7 2 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.10%) CASB
8 1 (0.10%) Check_MK
8 1 (0.10%) Grafana
8 1 (0.10%) HP Quality Center
8 1 (0.10%) Kibana
8 1 (0.10%) Podman
Vendors
1 140 (14.40%) Microsoft
2 83 (8.54%) Salesforce
3 53 (5.45%) ServiceNow
4 51 (5.25%) SAP
5 27 (2.78%) Google
6 23 (2.37%) Databricks
7 17 (1.75%) Oracle
8 14 (1.44%) Splunk
8 14 (1.44%) Zscaler
9 12 (1.23%) Adobe
10 10 (1.03%) Cisco
11 9 (0.93%) Pega
12 8 (0.82%) CyberArk
13 6 (0.62%) Fortinet
13 6 (0.62%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 6 (0.62%) Workday
14 5 (0.51%) Alteryx
14 5 (0.51%) Citrix
14 5 (0.51%) ION Trading
14 5 (0.51%) MuleSoft