Backlog Refinement Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Backlog Refinement (Backlog Grooming)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Backlog Refinement skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 5 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 439 549 525
Rank change year-on-year +110 -24 +54
Permanent jobs citing Backlog Refinement 75 15 37
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.18% 0.041% 0.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.23% 0.046% 0.13%
Number of salaries quoted 32 9 31
10th Percentile £41,250 £43,550 £38,838
25th Percentile £45,313 £47,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £49,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% +11.11% -13.91%
75th Percentile £77,500 £76,250 £61,875
90th Percentile - £79,486 £71,250
UK median annual salary £65,000 £55,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year +18.18% -26.67% +20.00%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Backlog Refinement falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 33,182 32,357 28,969
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 79.09% 88.47% 89.85%
Number of salaries quoted 18,966 14,690 21,477
10th Percentile £27,750 £31,250 £28,329
25th Percentile £33,250 £41,250 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £66,778
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

Backlog Refinement
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Backlog Refinement relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Backlog Refinement job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Backlog Refinement
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Backlog Refinement.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Backlog Refinement

Backlog Refinement
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Backlog Refinement in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 5 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Backlog Refinement in the UK excluding London

Backlog Refinement
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Backlog Refinement within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 5 January 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
South East +37 23 £47,500 -5.00% 30
Scotland - 22 - - 3
Midlands +35 13 £52,500 -30.65% 25
North of England +31 13 £75,000 +30.43% 21
North West +24 7 £75,000 +30.43% 12
West Midlands - 7 £65,000 - 14
East Midlands 0 6 £42,500 -43.86% 10
Yorkshire -4 6 £62,500 - 7
South West +9 4 £51,000 -15.00% 12
North East - 2 £65,000 - 2
Wales - 1 £45,000 - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 1
Backlog Refinement
UK

Backlog Refinement
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 29 (38.67%) Confluence
Applications
1 8 (10.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.67%) Windchill
3 1 (1.33%) Siemens NX
3 1 (1.33%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 2 (2.67%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 40 (53.33%) Azure
2 29 (38.67%) Azure DevOps
3 15 (20.00%) Power Platform
4 11 (14.67%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
4 11 (14.67%) Salesforce Service Cloud
5 10 (13.33%) GitHub
5 10 (13.33%) GitHub Copilot
6 8 (10.67%) Snowflake
7 6 (8.00%) Microsoft 365
8 4 (5.33%) AWS
8 4 (5.33%) GCP
9 3 (4.00%) Azure AI
9 3 (4.00%) Miro
9 3 (4.00%) SaaS
9 3 (4.00%) Vertex AI
10 2 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
11 1 (1.33%) Boomi
11 1 (1.33%) Figma
11 1 (1.33%) Power Automate
11 1 (1.33%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.33%) Bluetooth
1 1 (1.33%) RFID
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (12.00%) Power BI
2 8 (10.67%) Data Warehouse
2 8 (10.67%) Tableau
3 1 (1.33%) MongoDB
3 1 (1.33%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 33 (44.00%) JIRA
2 2 (2.67%) GitLab
2 2 (2.67%) Jenkins
2 2 (2.67%) Robot Framework
2 2 (2.67%) Selenium
2 2 (2.67%) TestRail
3 1 (1.33%) Balsamiq
General
1 43 (57.33%) Social Skills
2 28 (37.33%) Marketing
3 27 (36.00%) Finance
4 23 (30.67%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (12.00%) Law
6 5 (6.67%) Public Sector
7 3 (4.00%) Legal
8 2 (2.67%) Aerospace
8 2 (2.67%) Banking
8 2 (2.67%) Local Government
9 1 (1.33%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 18 (24.00%) Analyst
2 13 (17.33%) Product Owner
3 12 (16.00%) Developer
4 10 (13.33%) Business Analyst
4 10 (13.33%) Senior
5 8 (10.67%) Lead
5 8 (10.67%) Product Manager
6 6 (8.00%) Lead Developer
6 6 (8.00%) Senior Manager
7 4 (5.33%) Agile Product Owner
7 4 (5.33%) Data Business Analyst
7 4 (5.33%) Senior Developer
7 4 (5.33%) Systems Analyst
7 4 (5.33%) Technical Analyst
7 4 (5.33%) UX Analyst
8 3 (4.00%) Product Delivery Manager
8 3 (4.00%) Project Manager
8 3 (4.00%) Senior Project Manager
8 3 (4.00%) Technical Business Analyst
9 2 (2.67%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (14.67%) REST
1 11 (14.67%) SOAP
2 10 (13.33%) Lightning Web Components
3 6 (8.00%) .NET
4 2 (2.67%) .NET Core
4 2 (2.67%) CSS
4 2 (2.67%) Elastic Stack
4 2 (2.67%) HTML
4 2 (2.67%) Spring
4 2 (2.67%) Spring Boot
5 1 (1.33%) EDI
5 1 (1.33%) GraphQL
5 1 (1.33%) OAuth
5 1 (1.33%) OAuth2
5 1 (1.33%) OpenID
5 1 (1.33%) RESTful
5 1 (1.33%) SAML
5 1 (1.33%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 47 (62.67%) Product Ownership
2 13 (17.33%) Analytical Mindset
2 13 (17.33%) Management Information System
3 11 (14.67%) Onboarding
4 9 (12.00%) AI Agents
5 3 (4.00%) Life Science
6 1 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.33%) Virtual Team
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (90.67%) Agile
2 58 (77.33%) Sprint Planning
3 34 (45.33%) Continuous Improvement
4 33 (44.00%) DevOps
5 31 (41.33%) AI
6 29 (38.67%) Sprint Retrospective
7 23 (30.67%) Coaching
8 22 (29.33%) Asset Management
9 21 (28.00%) User Experience
9 21 (28.00%) User Stories
10 20 (26.67%) Stakeholder Management
11 19 (25.33%) CI/CD
11 19 (25.33%) Roadmaps
12 16 (21.33%) Data Modelling
13 15 (20.00%) Acceptance Criteria
14 14 (18.67%) Requirements Gathering
15 13 (17.33%) Scrum
15 13 (17.33%) Test Automation
16 12 (16.00%) Business Analysis
16 12 (16.00%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 13 (17.33%) Python
2 10 (13.33%) Apex Code
2 10 (13.33%) SQL
3 5 (6.67%) C#
4 4 (5.33%) Java
4 4 (5.33%) JavaScript
5 2 (2.67%) Bash
5 2 (2.67%) Kotlin
5 2 (2.67%) Scala
5 2 (2.67%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (1.33%) Perl
Qualifications
1 11 (14.67%) Degree
2 7 (9.33%) Computer Science Degree
2 7 (9.33%) Master's Degree
3 5 (6.67%) Security Cleared
4 3 (4.00%) DV Cleared
4 3 (4.00%) SC Cleared
5 2 (2.67%) ISTQB
5 2 (2.67%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 1 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.33%) OCA
6 1 (1.33%) OCP
6 1 (1.33%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (20.00%) QA
2 12 (16.00%) Accessibility
3 3 (4.00%) PMO
System Software
1 2 (2.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (2.67%) Grafana
1 2 (2.67%) Kubernetes
1 2 (2.67%) Nessus
1 2 (2.67%) Prometheus
1 2 (2.67%) Terraform
2 1 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 11 (14.67%) Salesforce
2 7 (9.33%) Microsoft
3 5 (6.67%) Foundry
4 3 (4.00%) Google
5 1 (1.33%) MuleSoft
5 1 (1.33%) Oracle
5 1 (1.33%) Siemens
5 1 (1.33%) SnapLogic