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

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 139 162
Rank change year-on-year +15 +23 -44
Contract jobs citing User Stories 981 552 514
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.16% 1.99% 1.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.54% 2.19% 1.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 649 362 350
10th Percentile £358 £358 £360
25th Percentile £413 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -8.26% +3.81%
75th Percentile £580 £619 £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 4
10th Percentile £35.00 £34.70 -
25th Percentile £58.75 £41.75 £31.71
Median hourly rate £72.50 £53.50 £32.36
Median % change year-on-year +35.51% +65.35% -49.45%
75th Percentile £82.68 £63.00 £33.02
90th Percentile £88.00 £68.70 £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 38,664 25,206 28,667
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.24% 90.74% 85.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,131 16,135 18,803
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £420
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 £757
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,474 1,396 1,685
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.87 £18.16
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £51.14 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.85 £70.08 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +15 560 £525 - 215
North of England -12 138 £490 +8.89% 56
Midlands +2 113 £463 +4.82% 37
West Midlands +1 89 £475 +3.26% 30
South East -45 76 £450 -7.69% 86
North West -14 70 £481 -3.85% 32
Yorkshire -26 51 £500 +11.11% 13
South West -8 46 £485 +2.11% 29
East of England +5 33 £495 +13.14% 19
East Midlands -17 24 £440 +6.02% 6
North East -27 18 £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
1 155 (15.80%) Confluence
2 25 (2.55%) CMS
3 22 (2.24%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.61%) 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 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.20%) 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 40 (4.08%) MS Visio
2 27 (2.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.61%) Notion
6 3 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.10%) Trello
Business Applications
1 21 (2.14%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.73%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.61%) Adobe Campaign
3 6 (0.61%) 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 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
7 2 (0.20%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 208 (21.20%) Azure
2 97 (9.89%) Power Platform
3 90 (9.17%) AWS
4 84 (8.56%) Azure DevOps
5 38 (3.87%) Dynamics 365
6 34 (3.47%) GCP
7 30 (3.06%) GitHub
8 29 (2.96%) PowerApps
9 25 (2.55%) Power Automate
10 22 (2.24%) Microsoft 365
10 22 (2.24%) SaaS
11 21 (2.14%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 17 (1.73%) Entra ID
13 15 (1.53%) Figma
13 15 (1.53%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 15 (1.53%) Snowflake
14 14 (1.43%) Lucidchart
15 11 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
16 8 (0.82%) Google Analytics
17 7 (0.71%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.82%) Network Security
2 6 (0.61%) 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 (0.20%) Intranet
5 2 (0.20%) SD-WAN
5 2 (0.20%) WAN
5 2 (0.20%) 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%) SSH
6 1 (0.10%) SSL
6 1 (0.10%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (5.71%) Power BI
2 40 (4.08%) Metadata
3 32 (3.26%) Data Warehouse
4 17 (1.73%) Relational Database
5 13 (1.33%) SQL Server
6 9 (0.92%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.92%) Parquet
6 9 (0.92%) Tableau
7 8 (0.82%) Big Data
7 8 (0.82%) BigQuery
7 8 (0.82%) Delta Lake
7 8 (0.82%) PostgreSQL
8 5 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (0.51%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.51%) Data Mining
8 5 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 3 (0.31%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.31%) OLAP
9 3 (0.31%) SAP BW
9 3 (0.31%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 230 (23.45%) JIRA
2 27 (2.75%) Postman
3 22 (2.24%) Git
4 19 (1.94%) GitLab
5 11 (1.12%) Gradle
5 11 (1.12%) Jenkins
5 11 (1.12%) Selenium
6 8 (0.82%) Cucumber
6 8 (0.82%) Team Foundation Server
7 7 (0.71%) 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 (0.20%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.20%) JMeter
11 2 (0.20%) TeamCity
General
1 388 (39.55%) Social Skills
2 268 (27.32%) Finance
3 264 (26.91%) Analytical Skills
4 133 (13.56%) Banking
5 126 (12.84%) Public Sector
6 72 (7.34%) Documentation Skills
7 61 (6.22%) Retail
8 41 (4.18%) Marketing
9 37 (3.77%) Legal
10 31 (3.16%) Investment Banking
11 28 (2.85%) Presentation Skills
12 27 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
13 22 (2.24%) Manufacturing
14 19 (1.94%) Front Office
14 19 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (1.94%) Retail Banking
15 18 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
16 17 (1.73%) Military
17 16 (1.63%) Pharmaceutical
18 15 (1.53%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 499 (50.87%) Analyst
2 451 (45.97%) Business Analyst
3 134 (13.66%) Senior
4 127 (12.95%) Product Owner
5 96 (9.79%) Developer
6 76 (7.75%) Senior Analyst
7 75 (7.65%) Technical Analyst
8 72 (7.34%) Product Manager
8 72 (7.34%) Senior Business Analyst
9 65 (6.63%) Technical Business Analyst
10 54 (5.50%) Lead
11 41 (4.18%) Salesforce Business Analyst
12 40 (4.08%) Salesforce Analyst
13 30 (3.06%) Data Analyst
14 25 (2.55%) Consultant
15 24 (2.45%) Data Business Analyst
16 23 (2.34%) Digital Business Analyst
16 23 (2.34%) Systems Analyst
17 22 (2.24%) Implementation Analyst
18 21 (2.14%) Financial Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (3.67%) JSON
2 33 (3.36%) REST
3 18 (1.83%) RESTful
4 16 (1.63%) React
5 15 (1.53%) Kafka
6 14 (1.43%) AngularJS
7 13 (1.33%) ADO
8 12 (1.22%) HTML
8 12 (1.22%) Spring Boot
8 12 (1.22%) XML
9 11 (1.12%) .NET
10 10 (1.02%) Lightning Web Components
10 10 (1.02%) OAuth
11 9 (0.92%) OpenID
12 8 (0.82%) CSS
12 8 (0.82%) Middleware
12 8 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
12 8 (0.82%) SailPoint
13 7 (0.71%) SOAP
13 7 (0.71%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 350 (35.68%) Product Ownership
2 42 (4.28%) Onboarding
3 36 (3.67%) Analytical Mindset
4 32 (3.26%) Data Protection Act
5 27 (2.75%) Self-Motivation
6 25 (2.55%) CMDB
7 24 (2.45%) Cloud Native
8 22 (2.24%) Management Information System
9 21 (2.14%) Data Structures
10 20 (2.04%) Legacy Systems
11 19 (1.94%) AI Agents
12 18 (1.83%) Virtual Team
13 14 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
14 13 (1.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 13 (1.33%) Life Science
14 13 (1.33%) Mobile App
15 11 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
15 11 (1.12%) FMCG
16 10 (1.02%) Operational Technology
16 10 (1.02%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 12 (1.22%) Linux
2 6 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 6 (0.61%) 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
1 650 (66.26%) Agile
2 393 (40.06%) Acceptance Criteria
3 373 (38.02%) Stakeholder Management
4 277 (28.24%) Requirements Gathering
5 234 (23.85%) Scrum
6 233 (23.75%) User Acceptance Testing
7 230 (23.45%) Workshop Facilitation
8 204 (20.80%) Business Analysis
9 197 (20.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 190 (19.37%) Problem-Solving
11 188 (19.16%) DevOps
12 184 (18.76%) Sprint Planning
13 177 (18.04%) Roadmaps
14 174 (17.74%) Continuous Improvement
15 172 (17.53%) Product Backlog
16 154 (15.70%) Backlog Management
17 141 (14.37%) Backlog Prioritisation
18 135 (13.76%) Decision-Making
19 134 (13.66%) Backlog Refinement
20 132 (13.46%) AI
Programming Languages
1 140 (14.27%) SQL
2 79 (8.05%) Python
3 53 (5.40%) Java
4 48 (4.89%) JavaScript
5 19 (1.94%) C#
6 10 (1.02%) Apex Code
7 8 (0.82%) Kotlin
7 8 (0.82%) Scala
8 6 (0.61%) Korn
8 6 (0.61%) PowerShell
8 6 (0.61%) TypeScript
9 3 (0.31%) Bash
9 3 (0.31%) R
9 3 (0.31%) Ruby
9 3 (0.31%) T-SQL
10 2 (0.20%) Google Apps Script
10 2 (0.20%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.20%) SOQL
10 2 (0.20%) VBA
11 1 (0.10%) Perl
Qualifications
1 169 (17.23%) Security Cleared
2 139 (14.17%) SC Cleared
3 73 (7.44%) Degree
4 34 (3.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (1.53%) CSPO
5 15 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (1.22%) DV Cleared
7 12 (1.22%) IIBA
8 11 (1.12%) PMI Certification
9 10 (1.02%) CBAP
10 9 (0.92%) PMP
11 8 (0.82%) CISSP
12 7 (0.71%) ISTQB
13 6 (0.61%) ISEB
14 5 (0.51%) Master's Degree
15 4 (0.41%) AWS Certification
15 4 (0.41%) Azure Certification
15 4 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 3 (0.31%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 114 (11.62%) QA
2 68 (6.93%) Data Quality
3 42 (4.28%) Accessibility
4 19 (1.94%) GDPR
5 12 (1.22%) GRC
6 10 (1.02%) NIST
7 9 (0.92%) GxP
8 8 (0.82%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 7 (0.71%) SLA
10 6 (0.61%) ISO 20022
10 6 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 6 (0.61%) WCAG
11 5 (0.51%) Solvency II
12 4 (0.41%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.41%) SEPA
13 3 (0.31%) 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 28 (2.85%) Docker
2 16 (1.63%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.61%) IAG
5 3 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.10%) Ceph
6 1 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 28 (2.85%) Kubernetes
2 21 (2.14%) Terraform
3 16 (1.63%) Ansible
4 7 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (0.61%) SCCM
6 3 (0.31%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.20%) Argo
7 2 (0.20%) 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
1 144 (14.68%) Microsoft
2 85 (8.66%) Salesforce
3 53 (5.40%) ServiceNow
4 51 (5.20%) SAP
5 27 (2.75%) Google
6 21 (2.14%) Databricks
7 18 (1.83%) Oracle
8 14 (1.43%) Splunk
8 14 (1.43%) Zscaler
9 12 (1.22%) Adobe
10 10 (1.02%) Cisco
11 9 (0.92%) Pega
12 8 (0.82%) CyberArk
13 6 (0.61%) Fortinet
13 6 (0.61%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 6 (0.61%) Workday
14 5 (0.51%) Citrix
14 5 (0.51%) IBM
14 5 (0.51%) ION Trading
14 5 (0.51%) Kronos