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

6 months to
27 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 140 181
Rank change year-on-year +12 +41 -46
Contract jobs citing User Stories 996 572 473
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.15% 2.05% 1.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.54% 2.25% 1.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 647 394 301
10th Percentile £363 £354 £360
25th Percentile £425 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% +0.95%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £603
90th Percentile £650 £725 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 4 1
10th Percentile £35.00 £30.45 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £31.12 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £31.49 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +122.29% -4.78% -37.60%
75th Percentile £85.00 £34.37 -
90th Percentile £98.28 £39.55 -
UK median hourly rate £66.25 £31.49 £33.07
% change year-on-year +110.38% -4.78% -37.60%

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 39,218 25,382 28,205
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.59% 90.90% 86.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,880 16,110 17,293
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,852 1,550 1,234
10th Percentile £13.90 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.87 £20.26
Median hourly rate £41.03 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.14% -41.51% -2.27%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.41 £66.61
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.28 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +57.06% -40.82% -

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 27 September 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 27 September 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 27 September 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 +14 589 £525 - 438
North of England -29 127 £500 - 159
Midlands +14 125 £455 +7.06% 96
West Midlands +16 95 £450 - 63
South East -56 66 £450 -5.76% 104
North West -34 58 £500 +8.70% 88
Yorkshire -32 54 £500 -2.44% 50
South West -13 39 £481 -3.75% 60
East of England +4 31 £498 +10.56% 46
East Midlands -15 30 £460 +25.17% 33
North East -28 16 £420 -14.94% 21
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
1 177 (17.77%) Confluence
2 25 (2.51%) CMS
3 15 (1.51%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.00%) Camunda
5 6 (0.60%) Jupyter
6 5 (0.50%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.30%) Cloud Foundry
7 3 (0.30%) Headless CMS
7 3 (0.30%) Kentico
8 2 (0.20%) Smallworld
8 2 (0.20%) Traefik
9 1 (0.10%) Apache
9 1 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.10%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.10%) Drupal
9 1 (0.10%) Moodle
9 1 (0.10%) SAS
9 1 (0.10%) Totara
Applications
1 39 (3.92%) MS Visio
2 25 (2.51%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.70%) 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%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.10%) Trello
Business Applications
1 24 (2.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.50%) ProductWriter
3 5 (0.50%) Teamcenter
4 3 (0.30%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.30%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
5 2 (0.20%) Dynamics GP
5 2 (0.20%) Dynamics NAV
5 2 (0.20%) Dynamics SL
5 2 (0.20%) Infor CloudSuite
5 2 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.20%) Sage X3
5 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.20%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.20%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 204 (20.48%) Azure
2 115 (11.55%) Power Platform
3 99 (9.94%) AWS
4 97 (9.74%) Azure DevOps
5 41 (4.12%) Dynamics 365
6 36 (3.61%) SaaS
7 30 (3.01%) GitHub
8 29 (2.91%) GCP
8 29 (2.91%) Power Automate
9 28 (2.81%) PowerApps
10 25 (2.51%) Microsoft 365
11 21 (2.11%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
12 20 (2.01%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 17 (1.71%) Snowflake
14 15 (1.51%) Entra ID
15 14 (1.41%) Lucidchart
16 12 (1.20%) Figma
17 11 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
17 11 (1.10%) OpenShift
18 10 (1.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
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%) SD-WAN
3 2 (0.20%) WAN
3 2 (0.20%) Wireless
4 1 (0.10%) 5G
4 1 (0.10%) Internet
4 1 (0.10%) NFC
4 1 (0.10%) SSH
4 1 (0.10%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (7.33%) Power BI
2 38 (3.82%) Metadata
3 32 (3.21%) Data Warehouse
4 26 (2.61%) Relational Database
5 21 (2.11%) SQL Server
6 19 (1.91%) PostgreSQL
7 9 (0.90%) Data Lake
8 8 (0.80%) Parquet
9 7 (0.70%) Big Data
10 6 (0.60%) Delta Lake
10 6 (0.60%) Tableau
11 5 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
11 5 (0.50%) ClickHouse
11 5 (0.50%) Data Hub
11 5 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 5 (0.50%) Star Schema
12 4 (0.40%) BigQuery
13 3 (0.30%) Data Mining
13 3 (0.30%) NoSQL
13 3 (0.30%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 241 (24.20%) JIRA
2 37 (3.71%) Git
3 26 (2.61%) GitLab
3 26 (2.61%) Jenkins
4 23 (2.31%) Maven
5 22 (2.21%) Gradle
6 19 (1.91%) JUnit
7 17 (1.71%) Mockito
7 17 (1.71%) SonarQube
8 16 (1.61%) Postman
9 12 (1.20%) REST Assured
10 11 (1.10%) Selenium
11 10 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
12 9 (0.90%) Bitbucket Server
12 9 (0.90%) Cucumber
13 6 (0.60%) Bitbucket
13 6 (0.60%) Team Foundation Server
14 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 2 (0.20%) Cypress.io
15 2 (0.20%) JMeter
General
1 406 (40.76%) Social Skills
2 286 (28.71%) Finance
3 258 (25.90%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (14.36%) Banking
5 132 (13.25%) Public Sector
6 71 (7.13%) Documentation Skills
7 65 (6.53%) Retail
8 44 (4.42%) Influencing Skills
9 34 (3.41%) Legal
10 32 (3.21%) Investment Banking
10 32 (3.21%) Marketing
11 25 (2.51%) Organisational Skills
12 24 (2.41%) Manufacturing
13 23 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
14 20 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (1.81%) Telecoms
16 17 (1.71%) Front Office
16 17 (1.71%) Retail Banking
17 14 (1.41%) Back Office
17 14 (1.41%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 501 (50.30%) Analyst
2 454 (45.58%) Business Analyst
3 155 (15.56%) Senior
4 113 (11.35%) Developer
4 113 (11.35%) Product Owner
5 87 (8.73%) Senior Analyst
5 87 (8.73%) Senior Business Analyst
6 77 (7.73%) Product Manager
7 74 (7.43%) Technical Analyst
8 61 (6.12%) Lead
9 60 (6.02%) Technical Business Analyst
10 33 (3.31%) Consultant
10 33 (3.31%) Salesforce Analyst
10 33 (3.31%) Salesforce Business Analyst
11 28 (2.81%) Senior Developer
12 24 (2.41%) Data Analyst
13 23 (2.31%) Java Developer
14 22 (2.21%) Data Business Analyst
14 22 (2.21%) Financial Analyst
15 21 (2.11%) Systems Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (4.52%) REST
2 37 (3.71%) JSON
3 33 (3.31%) Spring Boot
4 24 (2.41%) Spring
5 23 (2.31%) RESTful
6 22 (2.21%) Kafka
6 22 (2.21%) React
6 22 (2.21%) SOAP
6 22 (2.21%) Terraform
7 21 (2.11%) HTML
8 19 (1.91%) AngularJS
8 19 (1.91%) Hibernate
8 19 (1.91%) JPA
9 16 (1.61%) CSS
10 13 (1.31%) .NET
10 13 (1.31%) Lightning Web Components
11 12 (1.20%) OAuth
11 12 (1.20%) Web Services
12 11 (1.10%) Middleware
12 11 (1.10%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 352 (35.34%) Product Ownership
2 46 (4.62%) Onboarding
3 32 (3.21%) Analytical Mindset
4 30 (3.01%) Cloud Native
4 30 (3.01%) Data Protection Act
5 25 (2.51%) Data Structures
6 22 (2.21%) CMDB
6 22 (2.21%) Management Information System
7 20 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
8 19 (1.91%) AI Agents
9 18 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
9 18 (1.81%) Virtual Team
10 14 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (1.31%) Mobile App
12 12 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
13 11 (1.10%) FMCG
14 10 (1.00%) Life Science
14 10 (1.00%) NHS
14 10 (1.00%) Operational Technology
15 9 (0.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 17 (1.71%) Linux
2 9 (0.90%) Unix
3 6 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (0.60%) Windows
4 4 (0.40%) Android
4 4 (0.40%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.30%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 687 (68.98%) Agile
2 433 (43.47%) Stakeholder Management
3 411 (41.27%) Acceptance Criteria
4 325 (32.63%) Requirements Gathering
5 279 (28.01%) Workshop Facilitation
6 262 (26.31%) Scrum
7 248 (24.90%) Business Analysis
8 241 (24.20%) User Acceptance Testing
9 209 (20.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 208 (20.88%) Continuous Improvement
11 201 (20.18%) DevOps
12 190 (19.08%) Problem-Solving
13 180 (18.07%) Sprint Planning
14 179 (17.97%) Roadmaps
15 174 (17.47%) Product Backlog
16 165 (16.57%) Backlog Management
17 158 (15.86%) Backlog Prioritisation
18 155 (15.56%) Validation
19 148 (14.86%) Backlog Refinement
20 146 (14.66%) AI
Programming Languages
1 157 (15.76%) SQL
2 69 (6.93%) Python
3 66 (6.63%) Java
4 56 (5.62%) JavaScript
5 23 (2.31%) C#
6 15 (1.51%) TypeScript
7 11 (1.10%) Apex Code
8 10 (1.00%) Scala
9 8 (0.80%) Kotlin
10 6 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 5 (0.50%) Korn
12 3 (0.30%) R
12 3 (0.30%) SOQL
12 3 (0.30%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.20%) Bash
13 2 (0.20%) Magik
13 2 (0.20%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.20%) Ruby
13 2 (0.20%) SOSL
14 1 (0.10%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 164 (16.47%) Security Cleared
2 131 (13.15%) SC Cleared
3 81 (8.13%) Degree
4 35 (3.51%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
7 15 (1.51%) IIBA
7 15 (1.51%) PMI Certification
8 14 (1.41%) PMP
9 13 (1.31%) CSPO
10 11 (1.10%) DV Cleared
11 10 (1.00%) CBAP
12 8 (0.80%) CISSP
13 5 (0.50%) AWS Certification
13 5 (0.50%) ISEB
13 5 (0.50%) ISTQB
14 3 (0.30%) Azure Certification
14 3 (0.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 3 (0.30%) Master's Degree
15 2 (0.20%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (10.94%) QA
2 71 (7.13%) Data Quality
3 37 (3.71%) Accessibility
4 16 (1.61%) GDPR
5 15 (1.51%) GRC
6 9 (0.90%) ISO 20022
7 7 (0.70%) GxP
8 6 (0.60%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 6 (0.60%) WCAG
9 5 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.50%) NIST
9 5 (0.50%) SEPA
10 4 (0.40%) ISO 15022
11 3 (0.30%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.30%) Solvency II
12 2 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.20%) PMO
12 2 (0.20%) SLA
13 1 (0.10%) Basel III
13 1 (0.10%) FINREP
System Software
1 44 (4.42%) Docker
2 13 (1.31%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (0.50%) IAG
5 2 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.10%) Ceph
6 1 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 28 (2.81%) Kubernetes
2 17 (1.71%) Ansible
3 9 (0.90%) Grafana
4 8 (0.80%) Prometheus
4 8 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.30%) Argo
5 3 (0.30%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.20%) Istio
7 1 (0.10%) Check_MK
7 1 (0.10%) Kibana
7 1 (0.10%) Podman
Vendors
1 151 (15.16%) Microsoft
2 79 (7.93%) Salesforce
3 43 (4.32%) SAP
4 41 (4.12%) ServiceNow
5 19 (1.91%) Google
6 18 (1.81%) Databricks
7 17 (1.71%) Oracle
8 11 (1.10%) IBM
9 10 (1.00%) Veracode
10 9 (0.90%) CyberArk
10 9 (0.90%) Pega
11 8 (0.80%) Adobe
12 7 (0.70%) Splunk
12 7 (0.70%) Zscaler
13 6 (0.60%) Guidewire
14 5 (0.50%) Alteryx
14 5 (0.50%) ION Trading
14 5 (0.50%) MuleSoft
14 5 (0.50%) Okta
14 5 (0.50%) Planview