User Stories Contracts in the South East

User Story
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East requiring User Stories skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited User Stories over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 101 133 99
Rank change year-on-year +32 -34 -21
Contract jobs citing User Stories 60 71 136
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 2.00% 1.28% 2.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.18% 1.51% 2.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 43 90
10th Percentile £363 £320 £400
25th Percentile £409 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +8.84% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £579
90th Percentile £638 £629 £650
England median daily rate £500 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% +1.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £53.50 - -
England median hourly rate £61.75 £42.75 £64.50
% change year-on-year +44.44% -33.72% +36.51%

All Process and Methodology Skills
South East

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 the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,748 4,707 5,182
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 91.63% 84.80% 89.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,752 2,740 3,594
10th Percentile £256 £243 £250
25th Percentile £400 £400 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year -0.05% -1.48% +1.55%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £619
90th Percentile £675 £700 £700
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 432 219
10th Percentile £13.85 £13.00 £18.25
25th Percentile £16.34 £18.20 £23.83
Median hourly rate £28.00 £47.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.05% -5.00% +122.72%
75th Percentile £62.50 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.86 £74.83
England median hourly rate £30.00 £35.83 £37.50
% change year-on-year -16.27% -4.45% +53.20%

User Stories
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Job postings citing User Stories as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Job vacancy trend for User Stories in the South East

User Stories
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing User Stories in the South East.

Daily rate trend for User Stories in the South East

User Stories
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing User Stories in the South East over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for User Stories in the South East

User Stories
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing User Stories in the South East.

Hourly rate trend for User Stories in the South East

User Stories
Contract Job Locations in the South East

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 South East region over the 6 months to 30 April 2025. 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
Thames Valley +20 32 £550 +15.79% 19
Berkshire +8 23 £538 +2.38% 10
Hampshire +34 13 £422 -28.40% 15
Buckinghamshire +15 7 £563 +40.63% 5
East Sussex - 6 £638 -
Surrey +11 5 - - 7
Oxfordshire - 2 £400 - 6
User Stories
England

User Stories
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 7 (11.67%) Confluence
2 2 (3.33%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.67%) CMS
Applications
1 2 (3.33%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (3.33%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (3.33%) Primavera
2 1 (1.67%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (1.67%) Oracle EBS R12
2 1 (1.67%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 14 (23.33%) Azure
2 6 (10.00%) Azure DevOps
2 6 (10.00%) Power Platform
3 5 (8.33%) GCP
3 5 (8.33%) SaaS
4 4 (6.67%) AWS
5 3 (5.00%) PowerApps
6 2 (3.33%) AWS CloudFormation
6 2 (3.33%) Azure Data Factory
6 2 (3.33%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (1.67%) dbt
7 1 (1.67%) Figma
7 1 (1.67%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (1.67%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
7 1 (1.67%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 1 (1.67%) Slack
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (6.67%) Power BI
2 2 (3.33%) Azure SQL Database
2 2 (3.33%) Big Data
3 1 (1.67%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.67%) MySQL
3 1 (1.67%) Oracle Reports
3 1 (1.67%) Semantic Layer
3 1 (1.67%) SQL Server
3 1 (1.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (1.67%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 14 (23.33%) JIRA
2 3 (5.00%) JMeter
2 3 (5.00%) TestRail
3 2 (3.33%) Balsamiq
4 1 (1.67%) Axure RP
4 1 (1.67%) Cucumber
4 1 (1.67%) Cypress.io
4 1 (1.67%) Git
4 1 (1.67%) Mocha
4 1 (1.67%) Postman
4 1 (1.67%) SpecFlow
4 1 (1.67%) Team Foundation Server
4 1 (1.67%) Visual Studio
General
1 24 (40.00%) Social Skills
2 13 (21.67%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (18.33%) Finance
4 5 (8.33%) Public Sector
5 3 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (5.00%) Telecoms
6 2 (3.33%) Automotive
6 2 (3.33%) Banking
6 2 (3.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.67%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.67%) Retail
Job Titles
1 27 (45.00%) Analyst
2 25 (41.67%) Business Analyst
3 8 (13.33%) Product Owner
4 7 (11.67%) Data Business Analyst
4 7 (11.67%) Senior
5 5 (8.33%) Data Analyst
5 5 (8.33%) Developer
5 5 (8.33%) QA Engineer
6 4 (6.67%) Product Analyst
6 4 (6.67%) Product Manager
6 4 (6.67%) Senior QA Engineer
7 3 (5.00%) C++ Developer
7 3 (5.00%) Consultant
7 3 (5.00%) Product Business Analyst
7 3 (5.00%) QA Tester
7 3 (5.00%) Tester
8 2 (3.33%) Cloud Software Engineer
8 2 (3.33%) Data Engineer
8 2 (3.33%) Microsoft Engineer
8 2 (3.33%) Transformation Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (5.00%) CSS
1 3 (5.00%) HTML
2 2 (3.33%) Angular 2
2 2 (3.33%) AngularJS
2 2 (3.33%) HTML5
2 2 (3.33%) Node.js
2 2 (3.33%) PySpark
3 1 (1.67%) .NET
3 1 (1.67%) ADO
3 1 (1.67%) ASP.NET
3 1 (1.67%) ASP.NET Core
3 1 (1.67%) Blazor
3 1 (1.67%) Lightning Web Components
3 1 (1.67%) Playwright
3 1 (1.67%) WebdriverIO
Miscellaneous
1 20 (33.33%) Product Ownership
2 3 (5.00%) Management Information System
2 3 (5.00%) Onboarding
3 2 (3.33%) Public Cloud
4 1 (1.67%) Cyberattack
4 1 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (1.67%) Learning Management System
4 1 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (1.67%) Life Science
4 1 (1.67%) N-Tier
4 1 (1.67%) Renewable Energy
4 1 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
Processes & Methodologies
1 39 (65.00%) Agile
2 19 (31.67%) Scrum
3 17 (28.33%) Acceptance Criteria
4 13 (21.67%) Problem-Solving
5 10 (16.67%) Sprint Planning
5 10 (16.67%) Stakeholder Management
6 9 (15.00%) DevOps
6 9 (15.00%) Roadmaps
6 9 (15.00%) Workshop Facilitation
7 8 (13.33%) Analytics
7 8 (13.33%) Continuous Improvement
7 8 (13.33%) Epics
7 8 (13.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 8 (13.33%) User Experience
8 7 (11.67%) End-to-End Testing
8 7 (11.67%) Scaled Agile Framework
9 6 (10.00%) CI/CD
9 6 (10.00%) Product Vision
9 6 (10.00%) Requirements Gathering
9 6 (10.00%) Wireframes
Programming Languages
1 10 (16.67%) SQL
2 6 (10.00%) JavaScript
3 5 (8.33%) TypeScript
4 4 (6.67%) C#
4 4 (6.67%) Python
5 3 (5.00%) Assembly Language
5 3 (5.00%) C++
6 2 (3.33%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 11 (18.33%) Security Cleared
2 6 (10.00%) SC Cleared
3 5 (8.33%) Degree
4 2 (3.33%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.67%) IIBA
5 1 (1.67%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (28.33%) QA
2 2 (3.33%) Software Quality Assurance
Vendors
1 11 (18.33%) Microsoft
2 5 (8.33%) Oracle
3 3 (5.00%) Databricks
3 3 (5.00%) Google
4 2 (3.33%) Palantir
4 2 (3.33%) Salesforce
4 2 (3.33%) SAP
4 2 (3.33%) Virgin Media
5 1 (1.67%) Workday