Backlog Refinement Contracts in England

Backlog Refinement (Backlog Grooming)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring Backlog Refinement skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Backlog Refinement over the 6 months leading up to 29 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 413 472 533
Rank change year-on-year +59 +61 +26
Contract jobs citing Backlog Refinement 60 69 114
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.25% 0.19% 0.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.27% 0.22% 0.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 38 79
10th Percentile £432 £382 £404
25th Percentile £475 £445 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.87% -1.52% -2.33%
75th Percentile £584 £616 £620
90th Percentile £708 £645 £692
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +1.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 2
10th Percentile £51.42 - £61.59
25th Percentile £54.10 - £63.97
Median hourly rate £61.81 - £67.93
75th Percentile £68.77 - £71.90
90th Percentile £71.01 - £74.27
UK median hourly rate £61.81 - £67.93

All Process and Methodology Skills
England

Backlog Refinement 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 21,854 31,539 42,849
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 91.29% 85.92% 90.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,225 20,657 30,069
10th Percentile £305 £300 £325
25th Percentile £410 £413 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +1.85%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £767
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 952 2,292 1,514
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.84 £10.63
25th Percentile £17.87 £16.00 £15.75
Median hourly rate £28.00 £37.18 £37.32
Median % change year-on-year -24.69% -0.38% +49.28%
75th Percentile £60.00 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £36.50 £36.13
% change year-on-year -24.66% +1.04% +40.67%

Backlog Refinement
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Backlog Refinement as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Backlog Refinement in England

Backlog Refinement
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Backlog Refinement in England.

Daily rate trend for Backlog Refinement in England

Backlog Refinement
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Backlog Refinement in England over the 6 months to 29 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Backlog Refinement in England

Backlog Refinement
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Backlog Refinement in England.

Hourly rate trend for Backlog Refinement in England

Backlog Refinement
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Backlog Refinement in England over the 6 months to 29 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Backlog Refinement in England

Backlog Refinement
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 Backlog Refinement within the England region over the 6 months to 29 May 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
London +51 30 £488 -13.33% 69
North of England +15 16 £573 +10.10% 88
South East +39 8 £550 +23.53% 106
Yorkshire +12 7 £450 -24.69% 39
North West +9 7 £616 +49.21% 33
Midlands +11 2 - - 68
East Midlands +8 2 - - 26
North East -1 2 - - 16
South West +41 1 £500 - 40
Backlog Refinement
UK

Backlog Refinement
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England 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 9 (15.00%) Confluence
2 3 (5.00%) CMS
3 1 (1.67%) Apache
3 1 (1.67%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.67%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.67%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (3.33%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (3.33%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.67%) Adobe XD
2 1 (1.67%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.67%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 1 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 15 (25.00%) Azure
2 7 (11.67%) AWS
3 6 (10.00%) Azure DevOps
3 6 (10.00%) Power Platform
4 4 (6.67%) GCP
5 3 (5.00%) Dynamics 365
5 3 (5.00%) SaaS
6 2 (3.33%) GitHub
6 2 (3.33%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (1.67%) Figma
7 1 (1.67%) Google Analytics
7 1 (1.67%) Microsoft Purview
7 1 (1.67%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 5 (8.33%) Firewall
2 4 (6.67%) DHCP
2 4 (6.67%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (6.67%) Power BI
2 2 (3.33%) NoSQL
2 2 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (3.33%) Star Schema
3 1 (1.67%) Data Mart
3 1 (1.67%) Data Mining
3 1 (1.67%) Delta Lake
3 1 (1.67%) Relational Database
3 1 (1.67%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 16 (26.67%) JIRA
2 5 (8.33%) Postman
3 4 (6.67%) GitLab
4 3 (5.00%) Jenkins
5 1 (1.67%) MLflow
5 1 (1.67%) Selenium
5 1 (1.67%) SpecFlow
5 1 (1.67%) Visual Studio
5 1 (1.67%) WebDriver
General
1 27 (45.00%) Social Skills
2 12 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
2 12 (20.00%) Finance
3 6 (10.00%) Banking
4 4 (6.67%) Influencing Skills
4 4 (6.67%) Public Sector
5 3 (5.00%) Marketing
5 3 (5.00%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (3.33%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.67%) Aerospace
7 1 (1.67%) Back Office
7 1 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.67%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.67%) Law
Job Titles
1 21 (35.00%) Analyst
2 13 (21.67%) Business Analyst
3 10 (16.67%) Scrum Master
4 7 (11.67%) Senior
4 7 (11.67%) Technical Analyst
5 6 (10.00%) Consultant
5 6 (10.00%) Product Owner
6 5 (8.33%) Developer
6 5 (8.33%) Lead
7 4 (6.67%) Digital Analyst
8 3 (5.00%) Automation Developer
8 3 (5.00%) Data Analyst
8 3 (5.00%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
8 3 (5.00%) Senior Product Owner
8 3 (5.00%) Technical Business Analyst
9 2 (3.33%) Digital Business Analyst
9 2 (3.33%) Project Manager
9 2 (3.33%) Software Developer
9 2 (3.33%) Systems Analyst
9 2 (3.33%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (3.33%) JPA
1 2 (3.33%) Spring Boot
2 1 (1.67%) .NET
2 1 (1.67%) CSS
2 1 (1.67%) Gherkin
2 1 (1.67%) HTML
2 1 (1.67%) JSON
2 1 (1.67%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 22 (36.67%) Product Ownership
2 5 (8.33%) Onboarding
3 2 (3.33%) Analytical Mindset
3 2 (3.33%) Cloud Native
3 2 (3.33%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (1.67%) Equities
4 1 (1.67%) Fixed Income
4 1 (1.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 1 (1.67%) Hedge funds
4 1 (1.67%) Market Risk
4 1 (1.67%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 3 (5.00%) Linux
1 3 (5.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
1 3 (5.00%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (85.00%) Agile
2 44 (73.33%) Sprint Planning
3 31 (51.67%) Scrum
4 25 (41.67%) Sprint Retrospective
5 22 (36.67%) Acceptance Criteria
5 22 (36.67%) DevOps
5 22 (36.67%) User Stories
6 21 (35.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 19 (31.67%) Problem-Solving
8 18 (30.00%) Sprint Review
9 14 (23.33%) Product Backlog
10 12 (20.00%) Backlog Prioritisation
11 11 (18.33%) Backlog Management
11 11 (18.33%) Product Vision
12 10 (16.67%) Kanban
12 10 (16.67%) Stakeholder Management
13 9 (15.00%) User Acceptance Testing
14 8 (13.33%) Product Strategy
14 8 (13.33%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
14 8 (13.33%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 7 (11.67%) SQL
2 5 (8.33%) Bash
2 5 (8.33%) Python
3 2 (3.33%) Java
3 2 (3.33%) JavaScript
3 2 (3.33%) Scala
4 1 (1.67%) C#
4 1 (1.67%) PHP
4 1 (1.67%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 7 (11.67%) Security Cleared
2 6 (10.00%) SC Cleared
3 5 (8.33%) Degree
4 3 (5.00%) CCNA
4 3 (5.00%) CCNP
4 3 (5.00%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (11.67%) Accessibility
1 7 (11.67%) QA
2 1 (1.67%) WCAG
Systems Management
1 5 (8.33%) Ansible
2 3 (5.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 9 (15.00%) Microsoft
1 9 (15.00%) ServiceNow
2 5 (8.33%) Fortinet
2 5 (8.33%) Infoblox
3 2 (3.33%) Google
3 2 (3.33%) Virgin Media
4 1 (1.67%) Adobe
4 1 (1.67%) Atlassian
4 1 (1.67%) Databricks
4 1 (1.67%) Hotjar
4 1 (1.67%) MuleSoft
4 1 (1.67%) Oracle