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

6 months to
30 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 120 133 167
Rank change year-on-year +13 +34 -39
Contract jobs citing User Stories 1,008 572 494
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.19% 2.06% 1.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.58% 2.27% 1.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 658 381 318
10th Percentile £363 £351 £354
25th Percentile £418 £413 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.45% +1.81%
75th Percentile £581 £619 £600
90th Percentile £650 £725 £671
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 4 2
10th Percentile £35.00 £30.45 £33.01
25th Percentile £52.50 £31.12 £33.02
Median hourly rate £70.00 £31.49 £33.04
Median % change year-on-year +122.29% -4.68% -37.67%
75th Percentile £83.00 £36.99 £33.05
90th Percentile £90.57 £46.90 £33.06
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £31.49 £33.04
% change year-on-year +122.29% -4.68% -37.67%

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 39,013 25,190 28,313
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.87% 90.78% 85.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,073 16,045 18,122
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £632 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,593 1,471 1,456
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.87 £18.39
Median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.20% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.03
% change year-on-year +63.02% -40.16% +0.31%

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 30 August 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 30 August 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 30 August 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 +12 581 £525 - 227
North of England -21 142 £500 +8.70% 59
Midlands +4 123 £450 +5.88% 26
West Midlands +16 93 £450 -2.17% 18
South East -45 70 £450 -5.26% 65
North West -33 64 £500 +10.25% 37
Yorkshire -27 60 £500 +2.30% 12
South West -18 43 £486 -2.75% 50
East of England 0 33 £495 +10.00% 12
East Midlands -12 30 £455 +23.81% 8
North East -22 19 £420 -4.00% 10
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
1 165 (16.37%) Confluence
2 27 (2.68%) CMS
3 18 (1.79%) SharePoint
4 10 (0.99%) Camunda
5 5 (0.50%) Jupyter
6 4 (0.40%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.30%) Cloud Foundry
7 3 (0.30%) Headless CMS
7 3 (0.30%) Kentico
8 2 (0.20%) JBoss
8 2 (0.20%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.099%) Apache
9 1 (0.099%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.099%) Apache Solr
9 1 (0.099%) Drupal
9 1 (0.099%) Moodle
9 1 (0.099%) SAS
9 1 (0.099%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.099%) Totara
Applications
1 47 (4.66%) MS Visio
2 32 (3.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
5 7 (0.69%) Notion
6 4 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.099%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.099%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (2.18%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.60%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.50%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.30%) NetSuite
5 3 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.30%) SAP SD
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics SL
6 2 (0.20%) Infor CloudSuite
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.20%) Sage X3
6 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.20%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.20%) Temenos T24
6 2 (0.20%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 204 (20.24%) Azure
2 108 (10.71%) Power Platform
3 94 (9.33%) Azure DevOps
4 93 (9.23%) AWS
5 39 (3.87%) Dynamics 365
6 32 (3.17%) SaaS
7 29 (2.88%) GCP
7 29 (2.88%) PowerApps
8 27 (2.68%) GitHub
9 26 (2.58%) Power Automate
10 24 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
11 23 (2.28%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 20 (1.98%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 16 (1.59%) Snowflake
14 15 (1.49%) Figma
15 13 (1.29%) Entra ID
16 11 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
16 11 (1.09%) Lucidchart
17 9 (0.89%) OpenShift
17 9 (0.89%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.40%) Network Security
1 4 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
2 3 (0.30%) Broadband
2 3 (0.30%) HTTP
2 3 (0.30%) Intranet
3 2 (0.20%) Firewall
3 2 (0.20%) SD-WAN
3 2 (0.20%) WAN
3 2 (0.20%) Wireless
4 1 (0.099%) 5G
4 1 (0.099%) Internet
4 1 (0.099%) NFC
4 1 (0.099%) NGFW
4 1 (0.099%) SSH
4 1 (0.099%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (6.55%) Power BI
2 39 (3.87%) Metadata
3 27 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
4 18 (1.79%) SQL Server
5 14 (1.39%) Relational Database
6 9 (0.89%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.89%) Parquet
7 8 (0.79%) Big Data
7 8 (0.79%) Tableau
8 7 (0.69%) Delta Lake
8 7 (0.69%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (0.50%) BigQuery
9 5 (0.50%) Data Hub
9 5 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 5 (0.50%) Star Schema
10 4 (0.40%) ClickHouse
11 3 (0.30%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.30%) SAP BW
12 2 (0.20%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 243 (24.11%) JIRA
2 24 (2.38%) Postman
3 23 (2.28%) GitLab
4 22 (2.18%) Git
5 16 (1.59%) Gradle
5 16 (1.59%) Jenkins
6 11 (1.09%) Selenium
7 9 (0.89%) Maven
7 9 (0.89%) REST Assured
8 8 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
9 7 (0.69%) Bitbucket Server
9 7 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 7 (0.69%) JUnit
9 7 (0.69%) Mockito
9 7 (0.69%) SonarQube
9 7 (0.69%) Team Foundation Server
10 6 (0.60%) Bitbucket
11 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 4 (0.40%) Balsamiq
13 3 (0.30%) Zephyr
General
1 413 (40.97%) Social Skills
2 282 (27.98%) Finance
3 270 (26.79%) Analytical Skills
4 147 (14.58%) Banking
5 128 (12.70%) Public Sector
6 78 (7.74%) Documentation Skills
7 65 (6.45%) Retail
8 37 (3.67%) Marketing
9 34 (3.37%) Influencing Skills
9 34 (3.37%) Legal
10 30 (2.98%) Investment Banking
11 27 (2.68%) Presentation Skills
12 25 (2.48%) Manufacturing
13 21 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
15 17 (1.69%) Front Office
15 17 (1.69%) Retail Banking
16 16 (1.59%) Pharmaceutical
17 15 (1.49%) Aerospace
18 14 (1.39%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 523 (51.88%) Analyst
2 471 (46.73%) Business Analyst
3 139 (13.79%) Senior
4 118 (11.71%) Product Owner
5 104 (10.32%) Developer
6 83 (8.23%) Senior Analyst
7 80 (7.94%) Senior Business Analyst
7 80 (7.94%) Technical Analyst
8 73 (7.24%) Product Manager
9 67 (6.65%) Technical Business Analyst
10 60 (5.95%) Lead
11 41 (4.07%) Salesforce Analyst
11 41 (4.07%) Salesforce Business Analyst
12 31 (3.08%) Consultant
13 26 (2.58%) Financial Analyst
14 24 (2.38%) Data Analyst
15 23 (2.28%) Finance Business Analyst
16 22 (2.18%) Digital Business Analyst
16 22 (2.18%) Senior Developer
16 22 (2.18%) Systems Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (3.67%) REST
2 36 (3.57%) JSON
3 22 (2.18%) Terraform
4 21 (2.08%) Kafka
5 20 (1.98%) RESTful
6 19 (1.88%) HTML
6 19 (1.88%) React
7 17 (1.69%) Spring Boot
8 14 (1.39%) CSS
9 12 (1.19%) AngularJS
9 12 (1.19%) Lightning Web Components
10 11 (1.09%) .NET
10 11 (1.09%) OAuth
11 10 (0.99%) ADO
11 10 (0.99%) OpenID
11 10 (0.99%) Vue
12 9 (0.89%) Middleware
12 9 (0.89%) SailPoint
12 9 (0.89%) Spring
12 9 (0.89%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 354 (35.12%) Product Ownership
2 44 (4.37%) Onboarding
3 36 (3.57%) Analytical Mindset
4 33 (3.27%) Data Protection Act
5 26 (2.58%) Data Structures
6 25 (2.48%) Cloud Native
7 24 (2.38%) CMDB
7 24 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
8 22 (2.18%) Management Information System
9 20 (1.98%) AI Agents
10 18 (1.79%) Virtual Team
11 17 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
13 13 (1.29%) Life Science
13 13 (1.29%) Mobile App
14 11 (1.09%) FMCG
14 11 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 11 (1.09%) Operational Technology
15 10 (0.99%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 11 (1.09%) Linux
2 5 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 5 (0.50%) Unix
2 5 (0.50%) Windows
3 4 (0.40%) Android
3 4 (0.40%) Apple iOS
4 3 (0.30%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 678 (67.26%) Agile
2 415 (41.17%) Acceptance Criteria
3 408 (40.48%) Stakeholder Management
4 312 (30.95%) Requirements Gathering
5 269 (26.69%) Workshop Facilitation
6 256 (25.40%) Scrum
7 249 (24.70%) User Acceptance Testing
8 235 (23.31%) Business Analysis
9 213 (21.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 205 (20.34%) DevOps
11 194 (19.25%) Problem-Solving
12 191 (18.95%) Sprint Planning
13 190 (18.85%) Continuous Improvement
14 181 (17.96%) Roadmaps
15 168 (16.67%) Product Backlog
16 167 (16.57%) Backlog Management
17 147 (14.58%) Backlog Refinement
17 147 (14.58%) Validation
18 144 (14.29%) Backlog Prioritisation
19 142 (14.09%) AI
Programming Languages
1 148 (14.68%) SQL
2 75 (7.44%) Python
3 56 (5.56%) Java
4 55 (5.46%) JavaScript
5 22 (2.18%) C#
6 12 (1.19%) Apex Code
7 10 (0.99%) Scala
8 8 (0.79%) Kotlin
9 5 (0.50%) Korn
9 5 (0.50%) TypeScript
10 4 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 3 (0.30%) R
11 3 (0.30%) SOQL
11 3 (0.30%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.20%) Bash
12 2 (0.20%) Magik
12 2 (0.20%) Ruby
12 2 (0.20%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.20%) SOSL
13 1 (0.099%) BeanShell
Qualifications
1 173 (17.16%) Security Cleared
2 141 (13.99%) SC Cleared
3 76 (7.54%) Degree
4 29 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (1.79%) Microsoft Certification
7 15 (1.49%) CSPO
7 15 (1.49%) IIBA
8 12 (1.19%) DV Cleared
9 11 (1.09%) CBAP
9 11 (1.09%) PMI Certification
10 9 (0.89%) PMP
11 8 (0.79%) CISSP
12 7 (0.69%) ISTQB
13 5 (0.50%) ISEB
13 5 (0.50%) Master's Degree
14 4 (0.40%) AWS Certification
15 3 (0.30%) Azure Certification
15 3 (0.30%) DBS Check
15 3 (0.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (11.51%) QA
2 67 (6.65%) Data Quality
3 39 (3.87%) Accessibility
4 18 (1.79%) GDPR
5 16 (1.59%) GRC
6 10 (0.99%) NIST
7 9 (0.89%) GxP
8 8 (0.79%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 8 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.60%) ISO 20022
9 6 (0.60%) SLA
10 5 (0.50%) Solvency II
10 5 (0.50%) WCAG
11 4 (0.40%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.40%) SEPA
12 3 (0.30%) HL7
13 2 (0.20%) COBIT
13 2 (0.20%) ISO 15022
13 2 (0.20%) PMO
13 2 (0.20%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 29 (2.88%) Docker
2 12 (1.19%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.69%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.60%) IAG
5 2 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.099%) Ceph
6 1 (0.099%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 25 (2.48%) Kubernetes
2 17 (1.69%) Ansible
3 7 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.30%) Argo
4 3 (0.30%) HP ALM
5 2 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
5 2 (0.20%) SCCM
6 1 (0.099%) CASB
6 1 (0.099%) Check_MK
6 1 (0.099%) Podman
Vendors
1 150 (14.88%) Microsoft
2 89 (8.83%) Salesforce
3 50 (4.96%) SAP
4 47 (4.66%) ServiceNow
5 22 (2.18%) Google
6 19 (1.88%) Databricks
7 15 (1.49%) Oracle
8 10 (0.99%) IBM
8 10 (0.99%) Splunk
8 10 (0.99%) Zscaler
9 8 (0.79%) CyberArk
9 8 (0.79%) Pega
9 8 (0.79%) Veracode
10 7 (0.69%) Adobe
11 5 (0.50%) Alteryx
11 5 (0.50%) ION Trading
11 5 (0.50%) Kronos
11 5 (0.50%) MuleSoft
11 5 (0.50%) Okta
11 5 (0.50%) Ping Identity