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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 146 162
Rank change year-on-year +22 +16 -42
Contract jobs citing User Stories 939 522 556
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.10% 1.92% 1.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.46% 2.12% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 635 343 377
10th Percentile £358 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
75th Percentile £575 £622 £600
90th Percentile £650 £725 £649
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% +0.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 2 5
10th Percentile £35.00 £54.90 -
25th Percentile £67.50 £57.00 £31.71
Median hourly rate £72.50 £61.75 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.41% +87.12% -48.44%
75th Percentile £83.00 £67.75 £33.07
90th Percentile £90.57 £70.60 £56.73
UK median hourly rate £73.38 £53.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +37.16% +62.12% -48.44%

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 38,234 24,648 31,320
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.43% 90.68% 85.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,071 15,798 20,362
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £735 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,374 1,309 2,214
10th Percentile £15.57 £14.39 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.98 £16.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -34.02% -8.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £71.70 £73.60
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.29%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +19 537 £520 -0.95% 104
North of England -23 135 £475 -0.11% 36
Midlands -10 100 £469 +1.90% 24
South East -31 76 £450 -10.00% 48
West Midlands -7 74 £475 +2.98% 18
North West -23 65 £441 -15.95% 18
Yorkshire -27 49 £500 +14.29% 15
South West -1 43 £488 +2.63% 19
East of England -5 31 £495 +13.14% 10
East Midlands -7 26 £440 +1.73% 6
North East -25 22 £425 -2.86% 5
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
1 159 (16.93%) Confluence
2 26 (2.77%) CMS
3 20 (2.13%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.64%) Camunda
5 5 (0.53%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.32%) Cloud Foundry
6 3 (0.32%) Drupal
6 3 (0.32%) Kentico
6 3 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.32%) SAS
7 2 (0.21%) JBoss
7 2 (0.21%) Sitecore CMS
7 2 (0.21%) WordPress
8 1 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 1 (0.11%) Apache
8 1 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.11%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.11%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 42 (4.47%) MS Visio
2 36 (3.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.92%) Microsoft Office
4 15 (1.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.64%) Notion
6 3 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.11%) InVision
8 1 (0.11%) Sketch
8 1 (0.11%) Trello
8 1 (0.11%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 17 (1.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 13 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.64%) Adobe Campaign
3 6 (0.64%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.53%) Teamcenter
5 4 (0.43%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.43%) Eloqua
5 4 (0.43%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.43%) Oracle Receivables
5 4 (0.43%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.32%) Actimize
6 3 (0.32%) Dynamics GP
6 3 (0.32%) Dynamics SL
6 3 (0.32%) Infor CloudSuite
6 3 (0.32%) NetSuite
6 3 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.32%) Oracle Financials
6 3 (0.32%) Sage X3
6 3 (0.32%) SAP SD
7 2 (0.21%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 209 (22.26%) Azure
2 84 (8.95%) Azure DevOps
3 81 (8.63%) AWS
4 76 (8.09%) Power Platform
5 31 (3.30%) GCP
6 29 (3.09%) GitHub
7 25 (2.66%) SaaS
8 23 (2.45%) Dynamics 365
9 22 (2.34%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 18 (1.92%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
11 17 (1.81%) PowerApps
12 16 (1.70%) Entra ID
12 16 (1.70%) Figma
12 16 (1.70%) Power Automate
13 15 (1.60%) Lucidchart
14 14 (1.49%) Microsoft 365
15 13 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
16 11 (1.17%) Snowflake
17 10 (1.06%) Miro
18 7 (0.75%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.85%) Network Security
2 6 (0.64%) Firewall
3 4 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
4 3 (0.32%) DNS
4 3 (0.32%) HTTP
4 3 (0.32%) WebEx
5 2 (0.21%) Broadband
5 2 (0.21%) Intranet
5 2 (0.21%) Wireless
6 1 (0.11%) 5G
6 1 (0.11%) BGP
6 1 (0.11%) FTP
6 1 (0.11%) NFC
6 1 (0.11%) NGFW
6 1 (0.11%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.11%) VLAN
6 1 (0.11%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (5.64%) Power BI
2 39 (4.15%) Metadata
3 35 (3.73%) Data Warehouse
4 17 (1.81%) Relational Database
5 11 (1.17%) Data Lake
6 10 (1.06%) Tableau
7 9 (0.96%) Delta Lake
7 9 (0.96%) Parquet
7 9 (0.96%) PostgreSQL
7 9 (0.96%) SQL Server
8 8 (0.85%) NoSQL
9 6 (0.64%) BigQuery
10 5 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (0.53%) Big Data
10 5 (0.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 4 (0.43%) Data Hub
11 4 (0.43%) Data Mining
12 3 (0.32%) OLAP
13 2 (0.21%) SAP BW
13 2 (0.21%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 231 (24.60%) JIRA
2 29 (3.09%) Postman
3 24 (2.56%) Git
4 20 (2.13%) GitLab
5 13 (1.38%) Selenium
6 12 (1.28%) Jenkins
7 10 (1.06%) Gradle
8 7 (0.75%) Balsamiq
8 7 (0.75%) Cucumber
8 7 (0.75%) REST Assured
8 7 (0.75%) Team Foundation Server
9 5 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (0.53%) JUnit
10 4 (0.43%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.43%) Zephyr
11 3 (0.32%) Maven
11 3 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.21%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.21%) SoapUI
12 2 (0.21%) SonarQube
General
1 365 (38.87%) Social Skills
2 252 (26.84%) Analytical Skills
3 245 (26.09%) Finance
4 122 (12.99%) Public Sector
5 113 (12.03%) Banking
6 73 (7.77%) Documentation Skills
7 59 (6.28%) Retail
8 38 (4.05%) Marketing
9 36 (3.83%) Legal
10 32 (3.41%) Presentation Skills
11 24 (2.56%) Investment Banking
12 23 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
13 21 (2.24%) Manufacturing
14 19 (2.02%) Organisational Skills
15 17 (1.81%) Military
16 15 (1.60%) Aerospace
16 15 (1.60%) Front Office
17 14 (1.49%) Pharmaceutical
17 14 (1.49%) Retail Banking
18 13 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 485 (51.65%) Analyst
2 437 (46.54%) Business Analyst
3 128 (13.63%) Senior
4 124 (13.21%) Product Owner
5 81 (8.63%) Developer
6 77 (8.20%) Senior Analyst
7 72 (7.67%) Senior Business Analyst
8 70 (7.45%) Technical Analyst
9 69 (7.35%) Product Manager
10 61 (6.50%) Technical Business Analyst
11 41 (4.37%) Lead
12 38 (4.05%) Salesforce Business Analyst
13 37 (3.94%) Salesforce Analyst
14 33 (3.51%) Data Analyst
15 29 (3.09%) Data Business Analyst
16 26 (2.77%) Implementation Analyst
17 22 (2.34%) Systems Analyst
18 21 (2.24%) Banking Analyst
18 21 (2.24%) Consultant
18 21 (2.24%) Digital Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (3.51%) REST
2 31 (3.30%) JSON
3 19 (2.02%) React
3 19 (2.02%) RESTful
4 17 (1.81%) AngularJS
5 16 (1.70%) ADO
6 13 (1.38%) Kafka
6 13 (1.38%) Lightning Web Components
6 13 (1.38%) XML
7 12 (1.28%) Spring Boot
8 11 (1.17%) HTML
9 9 (0.96%) .NET
9 9 (0.96%) Middleware
9 9 (0.96%) Node.js
9 9 (0.96%) OAuth
10 8 (0.85%) CSS
10 8 (0.85%) OpenID
10 8 (0.85%) Oracle Fusion
11 7 (0.75%) SOAP
11 7 (0.75%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 334 (35.57%) Product Ownership
2 38 (4.05%) Onboarding
3 35 (3.73%) Analytical Mindset
4 28 (2.98%) CMDB
4 28 (2.98%) Data Protection Act
5 26 (2.77%) Self-Motivation
6 22 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
7 21 (2.24%) Cloud Native
7 21 (2.24%) Data Structures
8 16 (1.70%) Management Information System
9 14 (1.49%) Virtual Team
10 13 (1.38%) AI Agents
10 13 (1.38%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 13 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
10 13 (1.38%) Life Science
11 11 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
11 11 (1.17%) Mobile App
12 10 (1.06%) Reinsurance
13 9 (0.96%) FMCG
13 9 (0.96%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.06%) Linux
2 6 (0.64%) Windows
3 5 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.43%) Android
4 4 (0.43%) Apple iOS
4 4 (0.43%) Unix
5 3 (0.32%) CentOS
6 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 609 (64.86%) Agile
2 389 (41.43%) Acceptance Criteria
3 343 (36.53%) Stakeholder Management
4 242 (25.77%) Requirements Gathering
5 228 (24.28%) Scrum
6 214 (22.79%) User Acceptance Testing
7 207 (22.04%) Workshop Facilitation
8 189 (20.13%) DevOps
9 186 (19.81%) Business Analysis
10 185 (19.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 179 (19.06%) Problem-Solving
12 166 (17.68%) Sprint Planning
13 165 (17.57%) Roadmaps
14 162 (17.25%) Product Backlog
15 156 (16.61%) Continuous Improvement
16 141 (15.02%) Backlog Management
17 130 (13.84%) Decision-Making
17 130 (13.84%) Validation
18 125 (13.31%) Backlog Prioritisation
19 123 (13.10%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 132 (14.06%) SQL
2 74 (7.88%) Python
3 52 (5.54%) Java
4 44 (4.69%) JavaScript
5 17 (1.81%) C#
6 10 (1.06%) Apex Code
7 7 (0.75%) Kotlin
7 7 (0.75%) PowerShell
7 7 (0.75%) TypeScript
8 6 (0.64%) Korn
9 4 (0.43%) Scala
9 4 (0.43%) T-SQL
10 3 (0.32%) Bash
10 3 (0.32%) R
10 3 (0.32%) Ruby
11 2 (0.21%) Google Apps Script
11 2 (0.21%) PHP
11 2 (0.21%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.21%) SOQL
11 2 (0.21%) VBA
Qualifications
1 167 (17.78%) Security Cleared
2 133 (14.16%) SC Cleared
3 72 (7.67%) Degree
4 30 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (1.70%) CBAP
6 15 (1.60%) CSPO
6 15 (1.60%) IIBA
7 14 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (0.96%) DV Cleared
8 9 (0.96%) ISTQB
9 8 (0.85%) CISSP
10 7 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (0.75%) PMI Certification
11 6 (0.64%) ISEB
12 5 (0.53%) AWS Certification
13 4 (0.43%) Azure Certification
13 4 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 4 (0.43%) Master's Degree
13 4 (0.43%) PMP
14 3 (0.32%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (12.46%) QA
2 62 (6.60%) Data Quality
3 47 (5.01%) Accessibility
4 19 (2.02%) GDPR
5 11 (1.17%) GRC
6 10 (1.06%) NIST
7 9 (0.96%) GxP
8 8 (0.85%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 8 (0.85%) WCAG
9 7 (0.75%) ISO 20022
10 6 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 6 (0.64%) SLA
11 5 (0.53%) Solvency II
12 4 (0.43%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.43%) SEPA
13 3 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 3 (0.32%) HL7
14 2 (0.21%) COBIT
14 2 (0.21%) SNOMED CT
14 2 (0.21%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 25 (2.66%) Docker
2 13 (1.38%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (0.53%) IAG
5 3 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.11%) Ceph
6 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 28 (2.98%) Kubernetes
2 17 (1.81%) Terraform
3 16 (1.70%) Ansible
4 7 (0.75%) SCCM
5 6 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.32%) HP ALM
6 3 (0.32%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.11%) Argo
8 1 (0.11%) CASB
8 1 (0.11%) Check_MK
8 1 (0.11%) Grafana
8 1 (0.11%) Kibana
8 1 (0.11%) Podman
Vendors
1 127 (13.53%) Microsoft
2 86 (9.16%) Salesforce
3 55 (5.86%) ServiceNow
4 51 (5.43%) SAP
5 24 (2.56%) Databricks
6 22 (2.34%) Google
7 18 (1.92%) Oracle
8 12 (1.28%) Adobe
8 12 (1.28%) Zscaler
9 10 (1.06%) Cisco
9 10 (1.06%) Pega
9 10 (1.06%) Splunk
10 8 (0.85%) Workday
11 6 (0.64%) Fortinet
11 6 (0.64%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
12 5 (0.53%) Alteryx
12 5 (0.53%) CyberArk
12 5 (0.53%) ION Trading
12 5 (0.53%) Kronos
12 5 (0.53%) MuleSoft