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

6 months to
9 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 141 160
Rank change year-on-year +13 +19 -38
Contract jobs citing User Stories 990 552 508
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.16% 1.98% 1.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.54% 2.19% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 657 360 347
10th Percentile £362 £358 £357
25th Percentile £414 £413 £447
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% +2.86%
75th Percentile £581 £625 £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 £56.25 £41.75 £31.71
Median hourly rate £70.00 £53.50 £32.36
Median % change year-on-year +30.84% +65.35% -49.45%
75th Percentile £82.68 £63.00 £33.02
90th Percentile £88.00 £68.70 £33.05
UK median hourly rate £71.25 £53.50 £32.36
% change year-on-year +33.18% +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 39,011 25,247 28,576
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.26% 90.77% 85.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,277 16,138 18,662
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 £626 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £756
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,537 1,415 1,657
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £14.13
25th Percentile £19.85 £17.87 £18.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% +1.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.10 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +72.96% -38.57% -3.67%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +6 569 £525 - 215
North of England -8 140 £500 +8.11% 62
Midlands 0 112 £458 +5.78% 36
West Midlands +9 88 £475 +4.40% 29
South East -37 77 £450 -5.26% 75
North West -8 72 £494 -1.15% 31
Yorkshire -21 51 £501 +4.70% 18
South West -15 44 £486 -2.75% 27
East of England +1 33 £495 +13.14% 16
East Midlands -11 24 £440 +6.02% 7
North East -30 18 £425 -4.23% 16
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
1 156 (15.76%) Confluence
2 26 (2.63%) CMS
3 21 (2.12%) 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%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.30%) SAS
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%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.10%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.10%) Totara
Applications
1 42 (4.24%) MS Visio
2 28 (2.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.71%) Notion
6 3 (0.30%) 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 22 (2.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.72%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.61%) Adobe Campaign
3 6 (0.61%) ProductWriter
4 5 (0.51%) 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%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 209 (21.11%) Azure
2 102 (10.30%) Power Platform
3 92 (9.29%) AWS
4 87 (8.79%) Azure DevOps
5 41 (4.14%) Dynamics 365
6 33 (3.33%) GCP
7 30 (3.03%) GitHub
7 30 (3.03%) PowerApps
8 26 (2.63%) Power Automate
9 24 (2.42%) SaaS
10 23 (2.32%) Microsoft 365
11 22 (2.22%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 16 (1.62%) Entra ID
12 16 (1.62%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 15 (1.52%) Figma
13 15 (1.52%) Snowflake
14 14 (1.41%) Lucidchart
15 10 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
16 8 (0.81%) Google Analytics
17 7 (0.71%) Collibra
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%) DNS
4 3 (0.30%) HTTP
4 3 (0.30%) 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%) 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 59 (5.96%) Power BI
2 42 (4.24%) Metadata
3 32 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
4 17 (1.72%) Relational Database
5 13 (1.31%) SQL Server
6 9 (0.91%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.91%) Parquet
6 9 (0.91%) Tableau
7 8 (0.81%) Big Data
7 8 (0.81%) Delta Lake
7 8 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
8 7 (0.71%) BigQuery
9 5 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (0.51%) Data Hub
9 5 (0.51%) Data Mining
9 5 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (0.40%) Star Schema
11 3 (0.30%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.30%) OLAP
11 3 (0.30%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 229 (23.13%) JIRA
2 26 (2.63%) Postman
3 22 (2.22%) Git
4 19 (1.92%) GitLab
5 11 (1.11%) Gradle
6 10 (1.01%) Jenkins
7 9 (0.91%) Selenium
8 8 (0.81%) Team Foundation Server
9 7 (0.71%) Balsamiq
9 7 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 5 (0.51%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (0.51%) 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
1 390 (39.39%) Social Skills
2 270 (27.27%) Finance
3 263 (26.57%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (13.84%) Banking
5 128 (12.93%) Public Sector
6 72 (7.27%) Documentation Skills
7 62 (6.26%) Retail
8 41 (4.14%) Marketing
9 35 (3.54%) Legal
10 31 (3.13%) Investment Banking
11 29 (2.93%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (2.83%) Presentation Skills
13 24 (2.42%) Manufacturing
14 20 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 19 (1.92%) Retail Banking
16 17 (1.72%) Front Office
16 17 (1.72%) Military
16 17 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
17 16 (1.62%) Pharmaceutical
18 15 (1.52%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 503 (50.81%) Analyst
2 458 (46.26%) Business Analyst
3 132 (13.33%) Senior
4 124 (12.53%) Product Owner
5 99 (10.00%) Developer
6 77 (7.78%) Senior Analyst
7 76 (7.68%) Technical Analyst
8 73 (7.37%) Product Manager
8 73 (7.37%) Senior Business Analyst
9 66 (6.67%) Technical Business Analyst
10 57 (5.76%) Lead
11 40 (4.04%) Salesforce Business Analyst
12 39 (3.94%) Salesforce Analyst
13 30 (3.03%) Data Analyst
14 28 (2.83%) Consultant
15 24 (2.42%) Data Business Analyst
16 23 (2.32%) Digital Business Analyst
17 22 (2.22%) Systems Analyst
18 21 (2.12%) Financial Analyst
18 21 (2.12%) Implementation Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (3.74%) JSON
2 35 (3.54%) REST
3 20 (2.02%) RESTful
4 15 (1.52%) Kafka
4 15 (1.52%) React
5 13 (1.31%) ADO
5 13 (1.31%) AngularJS
6 12 (1.21%) HTML
6 12 (1.21%) Lightning Web Components
6 12 (1.21%) Spring Boot
6 12 (1.21%) XML
7 11 (1.11%) .NET
8 10 (1.01%) OAuth
9 9 (0.91%) OpenID
10 8 (0.81%) CSS
10 8 (0.81%) Middleware
10 8 (0.81%) Oracle Fusion
10 8 (0.81%) SailPoint
10 8 (0.81%) SOAP
11 7 (0.71%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 346 (34.95%) Product Ownership
2 42 (4.24%) Onboarding
3 37 (3.74%) Analytical Mindset
4 31 (3.13%) Data Protection Act
5 27 (2.73%) Self-Motivation
6 26 (2.63%) Cloud Native
7 25 (2.53%) CMDB
8 21 (2.12%) Data Structures
8 21 (2.12%) Management Information System
9 20 (2.02%) AI Agents
9 20 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
10 18 (1.82%) Virtual Team
11 14 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
12 13 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
12 13 (1.31%) Life Science
12 13 (1.31%) Mobile App
13 12 (1.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 11 (1.11%) FMCG
15 10 (1.01%) Operational Technology
15 10 (1.01%) 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
1 657 (66.36%) Agile
2 397 (40.10%) Acceptance Criteria
3 376 (37.98%) Stakeholder Management
4 282 (28.48%) Requirements Gathering
5 238 (24.04%) Workshop Facilitation
6 237 (23.94%) Scrum
7 231 (23.33%) User Acceptance Testing
8 213 (21.52%) Business Analysis
9 202 (20.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 195 (19.70%) DevOps
11 192 (19.39%) Problem-Solving
12 182 (18.38%) Sprint Planning
13 178 (17.98%) Roadmaps
14 174 (17.58%) Continuous Improvement
15 171 (17.27%) Product Backlog
16 154 (15.56%) Backlog Management
17 143 (14.44%) Backlog Prioritisation
18 137 (13.84%) Backlog Refinement
19 136 (13.74%) AI
19 136 (13.74%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 143 (14.44%) SQL
2 77 (7.78%) Python
3 52 (5.25%) Java
4 48 (4.85%) JavaScript
5 19 (1.92%) C#
6 12 (1.21%) Apex Code
7 10 (1.01%) Scala
8 8 (0.81%) Kotlin
9 6 (0.61%) Korn
10 5 (0.51%) PowerShell
10 5 (0.51%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.30%) R
11 3 (0.30%) Ruby
11 3 (0.30%) SOQL
11 3 (0.30%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.20%) Bash
12 2 (0.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.20%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.20%) SOSL
13 1 (0.10%) Google Apps Script
Qualifications
1 168 (16.97%) Security Cleared
2 139 (14.04%) SC Cleared
3 75 (7.58%) Degree
4 34 (3.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (1.62%) CSPO
5 16 (1.62%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (1.41%) IIBA
7 12 (1.21%) DV Cleared
8 11 (1.11%) PMI Certification
9 9 (0.91%) CBAP
9 9 (0.91%) PMP
10 8 (0.81%) CISSP
11 7 (0.71%) ISTQB
12 6 (0.61%) ISEB
13 5 (0.51%) Master's Degree
14 4 (0.40%) AWS Certification
14 4 (0.40%) Azure Certification
14 4 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 3 (0.30%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (11.72%) QA
2 73 (7.37%) Data Quality
3 43 (4.34%) Accessibility
4 19 (1.92%) GDPR
5 15 (1.52%) 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 29 (2.93%) Docker
2 15 (1.52%) 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 28 (2.83%) Kubernetes
2 22 (2.22%) Terraform
3 16 (1.62%) Ansible
4 7 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (0.51%) SCCM
6 2 (0.20%) Argo
6 2 (0.20%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.10%) CASB
7 1 (0.10%) Check_MK
7 1 (0.10%) Grafana
7 1 (0.10%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.10%) Kibana
7 1 (0.10%) Podman
Vendors
1 146 (14.75%) Microsoft
2 87 (8.79%) Salesforce
3 52 (5.25%) ServiceNow
4 51 (5.15%) SAP
5 24 (2.42%) Google
6 20 (2.02%) Databricks
7 18 (1.82%) Oracle
8 14 (1.41%) Splunk
8 14 (1.41%) Zscaler
9 13 (1.31%) Adobe
10 10 (1.01%) Cisco
11 9 (0.91%) Pega
12 8 (0.81%) CyberArk
13 6 (0.61%) Fortinet
13 6 (0.61%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 6 (0.61%) Workday
14 5 (0.51%) IBM
14 5 (0.51%) ION Trading
14 5 (0.51%) Kronos
14 5 (0.51%) MuleSoft