Backlog Refinement Contracts in the North of England

Backlog Refinement (Backlog Grooming)
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North of 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 19 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 160 172 195
Rank change year-on-year +12 +23 +38
Contract jobs citing Backlog Refinement 18 11 12
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England 0.47% 0.24% 0.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.53% 0.28% 0.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 11 3 8
10th Percentile £425 £434 £404
25th Percentile £442 £467 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £520 £469
Median % change year-on-year +5.77% +10.93% -10.71%
75th Percentile £637 £604 £491
90th Percentile £715 £654 £553
England median daily rate £525 £530 £500
% change year-on-year -0.94% +6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £51.42 - -
25th Percentile £54.10 - -
Median hourly rate £61.81 - -
75th Percentile £68.77 - -
90th Percentile £71.01 - -
England median hourly rate £61.81 - £60.00

All Process and Methodology Skills
North of 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 the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 3,404 3,861 4,836
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 88.67% 83.97% 89.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,182 2,331 3,266
10th Percentile £268 £300 £300
25th Percentile £375 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.87% -1.40% -
75th Percentile £556 £580 £600
90th Percentile £650 £663 £688
England median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 199 333 199
10th Percentile £12.82 £11.44 £15.20
25th Percentile £17.46 £13.06 £17.72
Median hourly rate £22.63 £22.50 £26.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.58% -15.09% +31.64%
75th Percentile £44.78 £46.18 £43.61
90th Percentile £72.50 £66.61 £53.06
England median hourly rate £25.15 £38.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -34.68% -9.41% +63.46%

Backlog Refinement
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

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

Job vacancy trend for Backlog Refinement in the North of England

Backlog Refinement
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

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

Daily rate trend for Backlog Refinement in the North of England

Backlog Refinement
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Backlog Refinement in the North of England over the 6 months to 19 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Backlog Refinement in the North of England

Backlog Refinement
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Backlog Refinement in the North of England over the 6 months to 19 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Backlog Refinement in the North of England

Backlog Refinement
Contract Job Locations in the North of 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 North of England region over the 6 months to 19 July 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
North West +10 8 £573 +38.62% 10
Yorkshire +4 7 £450 -24.69% 6
North East 0 3 £550 - 1
Backlog Refinement
England

Backlog Refinement
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of 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 5 (27.78%) Confluence
2 1 (5.56%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (5.56%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (5.56%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (5.56%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 3 (16.67%) AWS
2 2 (11.11%) Azure
2 2 (11.11%) GCP
3 1 (5.56%) GitHub
3 1 (5.56%) GitHub Actions
3 1 (5.56%) Miro
3 1 (5.56%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 4 (22.22%) Firewall
2 1 (5.56%) DHCP
2 1 (5.56%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (5.56%) DB2
1 1 (5.56%) NoSQL
1 1 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (5.56%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 6 (33.33%) JIRA
2 3 (16.67%) GitLab
3 2 (11.11%) Jenkins
General
1 8 (44.44%) Analytical Skills
2 7 (38.89%) Social Skills
3 6 (33.33%) Finance
4 2 (11.11%) Banking
4 2 (11.11%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (5.56%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 5 (27.78%) Analyst
2 4 (22.22%) Business Analyst
3 3 (16.67%) Developer
3 3 (16.67%) Scrum Master
3 3 (16.67%) Senior
3 3 (16.67%) Technical Analyst
4 2 (11.11%) Automation Developer
4 2 (11.11%) Automation Engineer
4 2 (11.11%) Lead
4 2 (11.11%) Senior Automation Engineer
4 2 (11.11%) SQL Analyst
4 2 (11.11%) Technical Business Analyst
5 1 (5.56%) Agile Scrum Master
5 1 (5.56%) Full-Stack Developer
5 1 (5.56%) Payments Analyst
5 1 (5.56%) Payments Business Analyst
5 1 (5.56%) Product Owner
5 1 (5.56%) Project Manager
5 1 (5.56%) Senior Product Owner
5 1 (5.56%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (11.11%) REST
2 1 (5.56%) JPA
2 1 (5.56%) Lambda Expressions
2 1 (5.56%) Next.js
2 1 (5.56%) OpenAPI
2 1 (5.56%) RAML
2 1 (5.56%) SOAP
2 1 (5.56%) Spring Boot
2 1 (5.56%) Swagger
2 1 (5.56%) Web Services
2 1 (5.56%) WSDL
Miscellaneous
1 7 (38.89%) Product Ownership
2 2 (11.11%) Onboarding
3 1 (5.56%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (5.56%) Legacy Systems
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (88.89%) Agile
2 12 (66.67%) Sprint Planning
3 10 (55.56%) Scrum
4 8 (44.44%) DevOps
4 8 (44.44%) Problem-Solving
4 8 (44.44%) Sprint Review
5 7 (38.89%) Continuous Improvement
6 6 (33.33%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 6 (33.33%) Sprint Retrospective
6 6 (33.33%) Stakeholder Management
7 5 (27.78%) CI/CD
7 5 (27.78%) Test Automation
8 4 (22.22%) Backlog Management
8 4 (22.22%) Configuration Management
8 4 (22.22%) Continuous Delivery
8 4 (22.22%) Data Ingestion
8 4 (22.22%) Decision-Making
8 4 (22.22%) Regulatory Compliance
8 4 (22.22%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 4 (22.22%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 5 (27.78%) Python
2 4 (22.22%) Bash
2 4 (22.22%) SQL
3 1 (5.56%) Java
3 1 (5.56%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 2 (11.11%) CCNA
1 2 (11.11%) CCNP
1 2 (11.11%) Cisco Certification
1 2 (11.11%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (16.67%) Accessibility
2 1 (5.56%) QA
2 1 (5.56%) WCAG
Systems Management
1 4 (22.22%) Ansible
2 3 (16.67%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 5 (27.78%) ServiceNow
2 4 (22.22%) Fortinet
2 4 (22.22%) Infoblox
3 3 (16.67%) Microsoft
4 1 (5.56%) Atlassian
4 1 (5.56%) Google
4 1 (5.56%) MuleSoft
4 1 (5.56%) Oracle