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

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 136 159
Rank change year-on-year +17 +23 -33
Contract jobs citing User Stories 1,001 560 508
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.18% 2.02% 1.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.57% 2.23% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 665 370 347
10th Percentile £363 £352 £357
25th Percentile £415 £413 £447
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% +2.86%
75th Percentile £588 £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 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 38,995 25,146 28,578
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.11% 90.84% 85.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,229 16,020 18,598
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 £625 £629 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £755
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,544 1,434 1,645
10th Percentile £14.45 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.87 £18.35
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £68.60 £50.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £41.50
% change year-on-year +67.00% -39.40% -1.19%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +13 575 £525 - 368
North of England -17 138 £500 +8.11% 71
Midlands +7 122 £450 +5.88% 52
West Midlands +14 93 £450 -2.17% 43
South East -42 75 £438 -5.41% 75
North West -19 68 £500 +5.60% 38
Yorkshire -30 52 £501 +2.56% 21
South West -24 42 £486 -2.75% 30
East of England +3 33 £495 +9.94% 22
East Midlands -15 29 £440 +22.22% 9
North East -29 19 £423 -4.79% 14
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
1 162 (16.18%) Confluence
2 26 (2.60%) CMS
3 20 (2.00%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.60%) Camunda
5 5 (0.50%) 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 (0.100%) Apache
8 1 (0.100%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.100%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.100%) Drupal
8 1 (0.100%) Moodle
8 1 (0.100%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.100%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.100%) Totara
Applications
1 44 (4.40%) MS Visio
2 31 (3.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
5 7 (0.70%) Notion
6 3 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.100%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.100%) Trello
Business Applications
1 21 (2.10%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.60%) Adobe Campaign
3 6 (0.60%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.50%) Teamcenter
5 4 (0.40%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.40%) Eloqua
5 4 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.30%) Actimize
6 3 (0.30%) Dynamics GP
6 3 (0.30%) Dynamics SL
6 3 (0.30%) Infor CloudSuite
6 3 (0.30%) NetSuite
6 3 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.30%) Sage X3
6 3 (0.30%) SAP SD
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
7 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 201 (20.08%) Azure
2 106 (10.59%) Power Platform
3 91 (9.09%) AWS
4 88 (8.79%) Azure DevOps
5 40 (4.00%) Dynamics 365
6 30 (3.00%) GCP
7 29 (2.90%) PowerApps
8 27 (2.70%) Power Automate
8 27 (2.70%) SaaS
9 26 (2.60%) GitHub
10 24 (2.40%) Microsoft 365
11 22 (2.20%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 16 (1.60%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 15 (1.50%) Snowflake
14 14 (1.40%) Entra ID
14 14 (1.40%) Figma
15 13 (1.30%) Lucidchart
16 9 (0.90%) Azure Data Factory
16 9 (0.90%) Serverless
17 8 (0.80%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.70%) Network Security
2 5 (0.50%) 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 (0.100%) 5G
6 1 (0.100%) FTP
6 1 (0.100%) Internet
6 1 (0.100%) NFC
6 1 (0.100%) NGFW
6 1 (0.100%) SSH
6 1 (0.100%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (6.29%) Power BI
2 41 (4.10%) Metadata
3 30 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
4 17 (1.70%) Relational Database
5 13 (1.30%) SQL Server
6 9 (0.90%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.90%) Parquet
6 9 (0.90%) Tableau
7 8 (0.80%) Big Data
7 8 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
8 7 (0.70%) Delta Lake
9 6 (0.60%) BigQuery
10 5 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (0.50%) Data Hub
10 5 (0.50%) Data Mining
10 5 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 4 (0.40%) Star Schema
12 3 (0.30%) NoSQL
12 3 (0.30%) OLAP
12 3 (0.30%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 238 (23.78%) JIRA
2 25 (2.50%) Postman
3 21 (2.10%) Git
4 18 (1.80%) GitLab
5 11 (1.10%) Gradle
6 10 (1.00%) Jenkins
7 9 (0.90%) Selenium
8 7 (0.70%) Cucumber
8 7 (0.70%) Team Foundation Server
9 6 (0.60%) Balsamiq
10 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (0.50%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.40%) Maven
11 4 (0.40%) REST Assured
11 4 (0.40%) Zephyr
12 3 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
13 2 (0.20%) JUnit
13 2 (0.20%) Mockito
13 2 (0.20%) SoapUI
13 2 (0.20%) SonarQube
General
1 401 (40.06%) Social Skills
2 276 (27.57%) Finance
3 267 (26.67%) Analytical Skills
4 138 (13.79%) Banking
5 128 (12.79%) Public Sector
6 77 (7.69%) Documentation Skills
7 63 (6.29%) Retail
8 42 (4.20%) Marketing
9 36 (3.60%) Legal
10 31 (3.10%) Influencing Skills
11 30 (3.00%) Investment Banking
12 27 (2.70%) Presentation Skills
13 25 (2.50%) Manufacturing
14 19 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 17 (1.70%) Retail Banking
16 16 (1.60%) Organisational Skills
16 16 (1.60%) Pharmaceutical
17 15 (1.50%) Aerospace
17 15 (1.50%) Front Office
17 15 (1.50%) Military
Job Titles
1 515 (51.45%) Analyst
2 468 (46.75%) Business Analyst
3 131 (13.09%) Senior
4 124 (12.39%) Product Owner
5 99 (9.89%) Developer
6 78 (7.79%) Senior Analyst
7 77 (7.69%) Technical Analyst
8 74 (7.39%) Product Manager
8 74 (7.39%) Senior Business Analyst
9 66 (6.59%) Technical Business Analyst
10 60 (5.99%) Lead
11 42 (4.20%) Salesforce Business Analyst
12 41 (4.10%) Salesforce Analyst
13 29 (2.90%) Data Analyst
14 28 (2.80%) Consultant
15 26 (2.60%) Financial Analyst
16 23 (2.30%) Data Business Analyst
16 23 (2.30%) Digital Business Analyst
16 23 (2.30%) Finance Business Analyst
17 22 (2.20%) Systems Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (3.60%) JSON
1 36 (3.60%) REST
2 20 (2.00%) RESTful
3 15 (1.50%) Kafka
4 14 (1.40%) React
5 13 (1.30%) ADO
5 13 (1.30%) AngularJS
5 13 (1.30%) HTML
6 12 (1.20%) Lightning Web Components
6 12 (1.20%) Spring Boot
7 10 (1.00%) Middleware
7 10 (1.00%) OAuth
7 10 (1.00%) Vue
7 10 (1.00%) XML
8 9 (0.90%) .NET
8 9 (0.90%) CSS
8 9 (0.90%) OpenID
9 8 (0.80%) Oracle Fusion
9 8 (0.80%) SailPoint
9 8 (0.80%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 352 (35.16%) Product Ownership
2 46 (4.60%) Onboarding
3 37 (3.70%) Analytical Mindset
4 30 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
5 26 (2.60%) Cloud Native
6 25 (2.50%) CMDB
6 25 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
7 22 (2.20%) Management Information System
8 21 (2.10%) AI Agents
8 21 (2.10%) Data Structures
9 19 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
9 19 (1.90%) Virtual Team
10 16 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
11 14 (1.40%) Greenfield Project
12 13 (1.30%) Life Science
13 12 (1.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 12 (1.20%) Mobile App
14 11 (1.10%) FMCG
15 10 (1.00%) Operational Technology
15 10 (1.00%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 11 (1.10%) 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
1 661 (66.03%) Agile
2 402 (40.16%) Acceptance Criteria
3 396 (39.56%) Stakeholder Management
4 298 (29.77%) Requirements Gathering
5 256 (25.57%) Workshop Facilitation
6 244 (24.38%) Scrum
7 239 (23.88%) User Acceptance Testing
8 223 (22.28%) Business Analysis
9 209 (20.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 194 (19.38%) DevOps
11 192 (19.18%) Problem-Solving
12 188 (18.78%) Sprint Planning
13 178 (17.78%) Continuous Improvement
14 177 (17.68%) Roadmaps
15 170 (16.98%) Product Backlog
16 158 (15.78%) Backlog Management
17 143 (14.29%) Backlog Prioritisation
17 143 (14.29%) Backlog Refinement
18 142 (14.19%) Validation
19 141 (14.09%) AI
Programming Languages
1 143 (14.29%) SQL
2 74 (7.39%) Python
3 50 (5.00%) Java
4 48 (4.80%) JavaScript
5 19 (1.90%) C#
6 12 (1.20%) Apex Code
7 10 (1.00%) Scala
8 7 (0.70%) Kotlin
9 5 (0.50%) Korn
9 5 (0.50%) 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 (0.100%) X++
Qualifications
1 175 (17.48%) Security Cleared
2 146 (14.59%) SC Cleared
3 76 (7.59%) Degree
4 32 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (1.70%) IIBA
5 17 (1.70%) Microsoft Certification
6 16 (1.60%) CSPO
7 14 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (1.20%) DV Cleared
8 12 (1.20%) PMI Certification
9 10 (1.00%) CBAP
9 10 (1.00%) PMP
10 8 (0.80%) CISSP
11 7 (0.70%) ISEB
11 7 (0.70%) ISTQB
12 6 (0.60%) Master's Degree
13 4 (0.40%) AWS Certification
13 4 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 3 (0.30%) Azure Certification
14 3 (0.30%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (11.49%) QA
2 71 (7.09%) Data Quality
3 41 (4.10%) Accessibility
4 19 (1.90%) GDPR
5 15 (1.50%) GRC
6 10 (1.00%) NIST
7 9 (0.90%) GxP
8 8 (0.80%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 7 (0.70%) SLA
10 6 (0.60%) ISO 20022
10 6 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 5 (0.50%) Solvency II
11 5 (0.50%) 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 (3.00%) Docker
2 13 (1.30%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.60%) IAG
5 2 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.100%) Ceph
6 1 (0.100%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 25 (2.50%) Kubernetes
2 21 (2.10%) Terraform
3 16 (1.60%) Ansible
4 8 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (0.40%) SCCM
6 3 (0.30%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.20%) Argo
7 2 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.100%) CASB
8 1 (0.100%) Check_MK
8 1 (0.100%) Grafana
8 1 (0.100%) HP Quality Center
8 1 (0.100%) Kibana
8 1 (0.100%) Podman
Vendors
1 149 (14.89%) Microsoft
2 90 (8.99%) Salesforce
3 52 (5.19%) ServiceNow
4 51 (5.09%) SAP
5 23 (2.30%) Google
6 19 (1.90%) Databricks
6 19 (1.90%) Oracle
7 14 (1.40%) Splunk
7 14 (1.40%) Zscaler
8 12 (1.20%) Adobe
9 9 (0.90%) Cisco
9 9 (0.90%) Pega
10 8 (0.80%) CyberArk
11 6 (0.60%) Fortinet
11 6 (0.60%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
12 5 (0.50%) Alteryx
12 5 (0.50%) IBM
12 5 (0.50%) ION Trading
12 5 (0.50%) Kronos
12 5 (0.50%) Workday