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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 135 160
Rank change year-on-year +7 +25 -34
Contract jobs citing User Stories 988 562 514
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.16% 2.04% 1.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.54% 2.24% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 654 371 346
10th Percentile £363 £352 £357
25th Percentile £418 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% +2.86%
75th Percentile £588 £621 £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 3 2
10th Percentile £35.00 £34.70 £33.01
25th Percentile £54.38 £41.75 £33.02
Median hourly rate £70.00 £53.50 £33.04
Median % change year-on-year +30.84% +61.95% -51.06%
75th Percentile £82.68 £63.00 £33.05
90th Percentile £88.00 £68.70 £33.06
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £53.50 £33.04
% change year-on-year +30.84% +61.95% -51.06%

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 38,860 25,068 28,450
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.96% 90.79% 85.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,105 15,945 18,530
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £627 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,559 1,442 1,597
10th Percentile £14.28 £14.20 £14.15
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.87 £18.16
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +5.94%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% +0.86%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +11 570 £525 - 306
North of England -27 138 £500 +8.11% 93
Midlands +4 122 £450 +5.88% 63
West Midlands +14 93 £450 -2.17% 51
South East -57 68 £450 -2.70% 71
North West -16 67 £500 +5.60% 51
Yorkshire -31 53 £500 +2.30% 22
South West -17 41 £486 -2.75% 38
East of England -1 33 £495 +9.94% 23
East Midlands -18 29 £440 +22.22% 12
North East -25 19 £423 -4.79% 22
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
1 161 (16.30%) Confluence
2 26 (2.63%) CMS
3 20 (2.02%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.61%) Camunda
5 5 (0.51%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.30%) Cloud Foundry
6 3 (0.30%) Headless CMS
6 3 (0.30%) Kentico
6 3 (0.30%) SAS
7 2 (0.20%) JBoss
7 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
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%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.10%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.10%) Totara
Applications
1 44 (4.45%) MS Visio
2 31 (3.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
5 7 (0.71%) Notion
6 4 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.10%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.10%) Trello
Business Applications
1 21 (2.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (1.62%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.61%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.51%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.30%) Actimize
5 3 (0.30%) Dynamics AX
5 3 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.30%) SAP SD
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.20%) Dynamics SL
6 2 (0.20%) Infor CloudSuite
6 2 (0.20%) NetSuite
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
1 198 (20.04%) Azure
2 105 (10.63%) Power Platform
3 92 (9.31%) AWS
4 86 (8.70%) Azure DevOps
5 39 (3.95%) Dynamics 365
6 30 (3.04%) GCP
7 29 (2.94%) PowerApps
8 27 (2.73%) SaaS
9 26 (2.63%) GitHub
9 26 (2.63%) Power Automate
10 25 (2.53%) Microsoft 365
11 22 (2.23%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 16 (1.62%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 15 (1.52%) Snowflake
14 14 (1.42%) Figma
15 13 (1.32%) Entra ID
16 11 (1.11%) Lucidchart
17 10 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
18 9 (0.91%) Serverless
19 8 (0.81%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.71%) Network Security
2 5 (0.51%) Firewall
3 4 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
4 3 (0.30%) Broadband
4 3 (0.30%) HTTP
5 2 (0.20%) DNS
5 2 (0.20%) Intranet
5 2 (0.20%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.20%) WAN
5 2 (0.20%) WebEx
5 2 (0.20%) Wireless
6 1 (0.10%) 5G
6 1 (0.10%) FTP
6 1 (0.10%) Internet
6 1 (0.10%) NFC
6 1 (0.10%) NGFW
6 1 (0.10%) SSH
6 1 (0.10%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (6.38%) Power BI
2 39 (3.95%) Metadata
3 29 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
4 14 (1.42%) SQL Server
5 12 (1.21%) Relational Database
6 9 (0.91%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.91%) Parquet
7 8 (0.81%) Big Data
7 8 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (0.81%) Tableau
8 7 (0.71%) Delta Lake
9 6 (0.61%) BigQuery
10 5 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (0.51%) Data Hub
10 5 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 4 (0.40%) Star Schema
12 3 (0.30%) ClickHouse
12 3 (0.30%) NoSQL
12 3 (0.30%) SAP BW
13 2 (0.20%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 237 (23.99%) JIRA
2 24 (2.43%) Postman
3 21 (2.13%) Git
4 18 (1.82%) GitLab
5 11 (1.11%) Gradle
6 10 (1.01%) Jenkins
7 9 (0.91%) Selenium
8 7 (0.71%) Cucumber
8 7 (0.71%) Team Foundation Server
9 5 (0.51%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (0.51%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.40%) Balsamiq
10 4 (0.40%) Maven
10 4 (0.40%) REST Assured
10 4 (0.40%) Zephyr
11 3 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.20%) JUnit
12 2 (0.20%) Mockito
12 2 (0.20%) SoapUI
12 2 (0.20%) SonarQube
General
1 399 (40.38%) Social Skills
2 275 (27.83%) Finance
3 266 (26.92%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (14.17%) Banking
5 127 (12.85%) Public Sector
6 79 (8.00%) Documentation Skills
7 63 (6.38%) Retail
8 38 (3.85%) Marketing
9 36 (3.64%) Legal
10 31 (3.14%) Investment Banking
11 30 (3.04%) Influencing Skills
12 26 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
13 25 (2.53%) Manufacturing
14 19 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 17 (1.72%) Retail Banking
16 16 (1.62%) Pharmaceutical
17 15 (1.52%) Aerospace
17 15 (1.52%) Front Office
17 15 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
18 14 (1.42%) Military
Job Titles
1 505 (51.11%) Analyst
2 457 (46.26%) Business Analyst
3 132 (13.36%) Senior
4 124 (12.55%) Product Owner
5 98 (9.92%) Developer
6 78 (7.89%) Senior Analyst
6 78 (7.89%) Technical Analyst
7 74 (7.49%) Product Manager
7 74 (7.49%) Senior Business Analyst
8 66 (6.68%) Technical Business Analyst
9 58 (5.87%) Lead
10 41 (4.15%) Salesforce Business Analyst
11 40 (4.05%) Salesforce Analyst
12 29 (2.94%) Consultant
13 25 (2.53%) Financial Analyst
14 23 (2.33%) Data Analyst
14 23 (2.33%) Digital Business Analyst
15 22 (2.23%) Finance Business Analyst
15 22 (2.23%) Systems Analyst
16 21 (2.13%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (3.64%) REST
2 35 (3.54%) JSON
3 20 (2.02%) RESTful
4 15 (1.52%) Kafka
5 14 (1.42%) React
6 13 (1.32%) AngularJS
6 13 (1.32%) HTML
7 12 (1.21%) Lightning Web Components
7 12 (1.21%) Spring Boot
8 11 (1.11%) ADO
9 10 (1.01%) .NET
9 10 (1.01%) Middleware
9 10 (1.01%) OAuth
9 10 (1.01%) Vue
9 10 (1.01%) XML
10 9 (0.91%) CSS
10 9 (0.91%) OpenID
11 8 (0.81%) SailPoint
11 8 (0.81%) SOAP
12 7 (0.71%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 351 (35.53%) Product Ownership
2 46 (4.66%) Onboarding
3 37 (3.74%) Analytical Mindset
4 29 (2.94%) Data Protection Act
5 26 (2.63%) Cloud Native
6 25 (2.53%) CMDB
7 24 (2.43%) Self-Motivation
8 21 (2.13%) AI Agents
8 21 (2.13%) Management Information System
9 20 (2.02%) Data Structures
10 19 (1.92%) Virtual Team
11 18 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
12 16 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
13 13 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
13 13 (1.32%) Life Science
14 12 (1.21%) Mobile App
15 11 (1.11%) FMCG
15 11 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 10 (1.01%) Operational Technology
17 9 (0.91%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 11 (1.11%) Linux
2 5 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 5 (0.51%) Unix
2 5 (0.51%) Windows
3 4 (0.40%) Android
3 4 (0.40%) Apple iOS
4 3 (0.30%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 655 (66.30%) Agile
2 399 (40.38%) Acceptance Criteria
3 395 (39.98%) Stakeholder Management
4 293 (29.66%) Requirements Gathering
5 253 (25.61%) Workshop Facilitation
6 247 (25.00%) Scrum
7 236 (23.89%) User Acceptance Testing
8 223 (22.57%) Business Analysis
9 206 (20.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 193 (19.53%) DevOps
11 192 (19.43%) Problem-Solving
12 189 (19.13%) Sprint Planning
13 177 (17.91%) Continuous Improvement
13 177 (17.91%) Roadmaps
14 164 (16.60%) Product Backlog
15 160 (16.19%) Backlog Management
16 141 (14.27%) Backlog Refinement
17 140 (14.17%) AI
17 140 (14.17%) Backlog Prioritisation
17 140 (14.17%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 142 (14.37%) SQL
2 75 (7.59%) Python
3 50 (5.06%) Java
4 48 (4.86%) JavaScript
5 20 (2.02%) C#
6 12 (1.21%) Apex Code
7 10 (1.01%) Scala
8 7 (0.71%) Kotlin
9 5 (0.51%) Korn
9 5 (0.51%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (0.30%) PowerShell
10 3 (0.30%) R
10 3 (0.30%) Ruby
10 3 (0.30%) SOQL
10 3 (0.30%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.20%) Bash
11 2 (0.20%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.20%) SOSL
12 1 (0.10%) X++
Qualifications
1 169 (17.11%) Security Cleared
2 140 (14.17%) SC Cleared
3 74 (7.49%) Degree
4 32 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (1.72%) IIBA
5 17 (1.72%) Microsoft Certification
6 16 (1.62%) CSPO
7 15 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (1.21%) CBAP
8 12 (1.21%) DV Cleared
9 11 (1.11%) PMI Certification
10 9 (0.91%) PMP
11 8 (0.81%) CISSP
12 7 (0.71%) ISEB
12 7 (0.71%) ISTQB
13 6 (0.61%) Master's Degree
14 4 (0.40%) AWS Certification
14 4 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 3 (0.30%) Azure Certification
15 3 (0.30%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (11.54%) QA
2 66 (6.68%) Data Quality
3 41 (4.15%) Accessibility
4 18 (1.82%) GDPR
5 16 (1.62%) GRC
6 10 (1.01%) NIST
7 9 (0.91%) GxP
8 8 (0.81%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 7 (0.71%) SLA
10 6 (0.61%) ISO 20022
10 6 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 5 (0.51%) Solvency II
11 5 (0.51%) WCAG
12 4 (0.40%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.40%) SEPA
13 3 (0.30%) HL7
14 2 (0.20%) COBIT
14 2 (0.20%) ISO 15022
14 2 (0.20%) PMO
14 2 (0.20%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 30 (3.04%) Docker
2 13 (1.32%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.61%) IAG
5 2 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.10%) Ceph
6 1 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 25 (2.53%) Kubernetes
2 21 (2.13%) Terraform
3 16 (1.62%) Ansible
4 7 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.30%) HP ALM
5 3 (0.30%) SCCM
6 2 (0.20%) Argo
6 2 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.10%) CASB
7 1 (0.10%) Check_MK
7 1 (0.10%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.10%) Podman
Vendors
1 149 (15.08%) Microsoft
2 84 (8.50%) Salesforce
3 51 (5.16%) ServiceNow
4 50 (5.06%) SAP
5 23 (2.33%) Google
6 18 (1.82%) Databricks
7 14 (1.42%) Splunk
7 14 (1.42%) Zscaler
8 13 (1.32%) Oracle
9 9 (0.91%) Cisco
9 9 (0.91%) Pega
10 8 (0.81%) CyberArk
11 7 (0.71%) Adobe
12 6 (0.61%) Fortinet
13 5 (0.51%) Alteryx
13 5 (0.51%) IBM
13 5 (0.51%) ION Trading
13 5 (0.51%) Kronos
13 5 (0.51%) Okta
13 5 (0.51%) Ping Identity