Backlog Refinement Contracts

Backlog Refinement (Backlog Grooming)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Backlog Refinement skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Backlog Refinement over the 6 months to 6 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
6 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 489 569 602
Rank change year-on-year +80 +33 +6
Contract jobs citing Backlog Refinement 89 147 266
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.21% 0.25% 0.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.24% 0.28% 0.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 107 173
10th Percentile £400 £406 £400
25th Percentile £445 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% - +12.30%
75th Percentile £591 £625 £607
90th Percentile £636 £680 £663
UK excluding London median daily rate £446 £450 £525
% change year-on-year -1.00% -14.29% +23.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £57.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £60.00 -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Backlog Refinement is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,480 53,073 80,381
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.37% 89.85% 90.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,166 36,804 56,457
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.72%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,447 1,751 1,910
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.96 £36.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.11% +44.00% +2.04%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% +75.00% -6.98%

Backlog Refinement
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Backlog Refinement in the UK

Backlog Refinement
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Backlog Refinement in the UK

Backlog Refinement
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Backlog Refinement over the 6 months to 6 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Backlog Refinement in the UK

Backlog Refinement
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Backlog Refinement in the UK

Backlog Refinement
Top 15 Contract Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 6 May 2024. 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
England +46 74 £525 - 34
London +76 41 £550 -4.35% 15
UK excluding London +39 37 £446 -1.00% 26
Work from Home +107 36 £516 -10.22% 15
North of England +30 12 £487 +5.30% 1
South East +5 11 £445 -14.38% 9
Scotland +41 6 £400 -13.51% 6
Yorkshire +24 5 £598 +38.55%
North West +24 4 £413 -15.28% 1
Midlands +28 3 £413 -8.22% 6
South West +24 3 - - 3
North East +19 3 £454 +0.89%
West Midlands +16 2 - - 6
East of England +2 2 £500 +17.65%
East Midlands - 1 £413 -

Backlog Refinement
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 17 (19.10%) Confluence
2 2 (2.25%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.25%) CMS
2 2 (2.25%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.12%) Appian
Applications
1 2 (2.25%) Trello
2 1 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (1.12%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (2.25%) SAP CO
1 2 (2.25%) SAP FI
1 2 (2.25%) SAP FI/CO
1 2 (2.25%) SAP S/4HANA
1 2 (2.25%) SAP SD
1 2 (2.25%) VisionPLUS
1 2 (2.25%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 21 (23.60%) Azure
2 15 (16.85%) Azure DevOps
3 12 (13.48%) AWS
4 6 (6.74%) GCP
5 3 (3.37%) Amazon EC2
5 3 (3.37%) Amazon EKS
5 3 (3.37%) Amazon S3
5 3 (3.37%) Amazon SQS
5 3 (3.37%) AWS Lambda
5 3 (3.37%) Azure API Management
5 3 (3.37%) Azure Data Factory
5 3 (3.37%) Azure Logic Apps
5 3 (3.37%) Azure Service Bus
5 3 (3.37%) NuGet
5 3 (3.37%) PaaS
5 3 (3.37%) Serverless
6 2 (2.25%) Veeva
7 1 (1.12%) Power Platform
7 1 (1.12%) Unqork
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.12%) Network Security
1 1 (1.12%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.37%) DynamoDB
2 2 (2.25%) Azure SQL Database
2 2 (2.25%) Big Data
2 2 (2.25%) MongoDB
2 2 (2.25%) NoSQL
2 2 (2.25%) Relational Database
2 2 (2.25%) SQL Server
2 2 (2.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
3 1 (1.12%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.12%) GIS
3 1 (1.12%) Oracle Database
3 1 (1.12%) Power BI
3 1 (1.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 20 (22.47%) JIRA
2 6 (6.74%) Git
3 3 (3.37%) Cucumber
3 3 (3.37%) Cypress.io
3 3 (3.37%) GitLab
3 3 (3.37%) Gradle
3 3 (3.37%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.37%) JMeter
3 3 (3.37%) JUnit
3 3 (3.37%) Maven
3 3 (3.37%) Mocha
3 3 (3.37%) REST Assured
3 3 (3.37%) Selenium
3 3 (3.37%) SoapUI
3 3 (3.37%) TestNG
3 3 (3.37%) WebDriver
4 1 (1.12%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 22 (24.72%) Social Skills
2 15 (16.85%) Finance
3 13 (14.61%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (7.87%) Presentation Skills
4 7 (7.87%) Public Sector
5 6 (6.74%) Banking
6 3 (3.37%) Retail
7 2 (2.25%) Back Office
7 2 (2.25%) Marketing
8 1 (1.12%) French Language
8 1 (1.12%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.12%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.12%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (1.12%) Public Speaking
8 1 (1.12%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 21 (23.60%) Analyst
1 21 (23.60%) Product Owner
2 16 (17.98%) Business Analyst
3 12 (13.48%) Developer
4 10 (11.24%) Scrum Master
5 8 (8.99%) Senior
6 6 (6.74%) Product Analyst
7 5 (5.62%) Java Developer
7 5 (5.62%) Product Manager
8 4 (4.49%) Backend Developer
8 4 (4.49%) Data Engineer
8 4 (4.49%) Digital Product Owner
8 4 (4.49%) Project Manager
8 4 (4.49%) Technical Manager
9 3 (3.37%) Architect
9 3 (3.37%) Senior Developer
9 3 (3.37%) Technical Product Manager
10 2 (2.25%) CRM Project Manager
10 2 (2.25%) SAP FI Consultant
10 2 (2.25%) Web Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (7.87%) .NET
1 7 (7.87%) SOAP
2 6 (6.74%) REST
2 6 (6.74%) RESTful
3 5 (5.62%) Middleware
3 5 (5.62%) Node.js
3 5 (5.62%) Spring
4 4 (4.49%) Spring Boot
5 3 (3.37%) Chai
5 3 (3.37%) GraphQL
5 3 (3.37%) JAXB
5 3 (3.37%) JAX-RS
5 3 (3.37%) Kafka
5 3 (3.37%) YAML
6 2 (2.25%) .NET Core
6 2 (2.25%) CSS
6 2 (2.25%) Express.js
6 2 (2.25%) HTML
6 2 (2.25%) MERN Stack
6 2 (2.25%) React
Miscellaneous
1 40 (44.94%) Product Ownership
2 6 (6.74%) Distributed Systems
2 6 (6.74%) Legacy Systems
3 5 (5.62%) Wiki
4 4 (4.49%) CMDB
4 4 (4.49%) Management Information System
5 3 (3.37%) Data Structures
5 3 (3.37%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (2.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (1.12%) BBC
7 1 (1.12%) Blockchain
7 1 (1.12%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (1.12%) Distributed Applications
7 1 (1.12%) Freedom of Information
7 1 (1.12%) Freedom of Information Act
7 1 (1.12%) Onboarding
7 1 (1.12%) Replication
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (84.27%) Agile
2 39 (43.82%) Scrum
3 36 (40.45%) Product Backlog
3 36 (40.45%) Sprint Planning
3 36 (40.45%) User Stories
4 25 (28.09%) Problem-Solving
5 24 (26.97%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 20 (22.47%) Acceptance Criteria
7 19 (21.35%) Roadmaps
7 19 (21.35%) Workshop Facilitation
8 18 (20.22%) Sprint Retrospective
9 17 (19.10%) DevOps
9 17 (19.10%) Sprint Review
10 13 (14.61%) Translating Business Requirements
10 13 (14.61%) User Acceptance Testing
11 12 (13.48%) SDLC
12 11 (12.36%) Continuous Improvement
13 10 (11.24%) CRM
14 9 (10.11%) Microservices
14 9 (10.11%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 11 (12.36%) Java
2 8 (8.99%) C#
2 8 (8.99%) SQL
3 6 (6.74%) Python
4 5 (5.62%) JavaScript
5 3 (3.37%) Bicep
5 3 (3.37%) Kotlin
5 3 (3.37%) PowerShell
5 3 (3.37%) Scala
6 2 (2.25%) C
Qualifications
1 15 (16.85%) Security Cleared
2 9 (10.11%) Degree
2 9 (10.11%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.37%) CSPO
3 3 (3.37%) DV Cleared
4 2 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.12%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.12%) PgMP
5 1 (1.12%) PMI Certification
5 1 (1.12%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.62%) Data Quality
2 2 (2.25%) Accessibility
2 2 (2.25%) QA
3 1 (1.12%) GDPR
3 1 (1.12%) PMO
System Software
1 5 (5.62%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (5.62%) Kubernetes
2 3 (3.37%) Terraform
3 1 (1.12%) Prometheus
3 1 (1.12%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 8 (8.99%) ServiceNow
2 7 (7.87%) Microsoft
3 4 (4.49%) SAP
4 3 (3.37%) Oracle
4 3 (3.37%) Salesforce
5 1 (1.12%) Databricks
5 1 (1.12%) IBM
5 1 (1.12%) NCR
5 1 (1.12%) OpenText
5 1 (1.12%) Pega
5 1 (1.12%) Splunk