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 18 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
18 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 486 550 591
Rank change year-on-year +64 +41 +28
Contract jobs citing Backlog Refinement 85 137 259
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.20% 0.24% 0.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.23% 0.27% 0.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 50 99 168
10th Percentile £400 £406 £396
25th Percentile £438 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -2.24% -0.94% +11.58%
75th Percentile £584 £620 £620
90th Percentile £626 £678 £663
UK excluding London median daily rate £448 £450 £525
% change year-on-year -0.44% -14.29% +23.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £67.93 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £67.93 -

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 36,673 51,121 79,325
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.13% 89.77% 90.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,631 35,432 55,673
10th Percentile £300 £325 £344
25th Percentile £413 £438 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +7.07%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £480
% change year-on-year - +4.17% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,440 1,683 1,892
10th Percentile £12.75 £10.63 £12.50
25th Percentile £15.99 £16.01 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.05 £36.00 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +0.13% +40.19% +7.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.54
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% -4.99%

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 18 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 18 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 +55 71 £525 - 26
UK excluding London +42 41 £448 -0.44% 19
London +72 38 £550 -8.33% 11
Work from Home +85 31 £513 -10.87% 12
South East +17 12 £445 -14.38% 5
Scotland +47 10 £475 +2.70% 3
North of England +34 10 £520 +12.43% 1
Yorkshire +18 5 £598 +38.55%
Midlands +20 3 £413 -8.22% 4
North West +18 3 £413 -15.28% 1
South West +8 3 - - 3
East of England -2 3 £500 +17.65% 3
West Midlands +19 2 - - 4
North East +14 2 - -
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 16 (18.82%) Confluence
2 2 (2.35%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.35%) Appian
2 2 (2.35%) CMS
2 2 (2.35%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (2.35%) Trello
2 1 (1.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (1.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (2.35%) SAP CO
1 2 (2.35%) SAP FI
1 2 (2.35%) SAP FI/CO
1 2 (2.35%) SAP S/4HANA
1 2 (2.35%) SAP SD
1 2 (2.35%) VisionPLUS
1 2 (2.35%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 24 (28.24%) Azure
2 16 (18.82%) AWS
3 15 (17.65%) Azure DevOps
4 9 (10.59%) GCP
5 4 (4.71%) Amazon EC2
5 4 (4.71%) Amazon EKS
5 4 (4.71%) Amazon S3
6 3 (3.53%) Amazon SQS
6 3 (3.53%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (3.53%) Serverless
7 2 (2.35%) Azure API Management
7 2 (2.35%) Azure Data Factory
7 2 (2.35%) Azure Logic Apps
7 2 (2.35%) Azure Service Bus
7 2 (2.35%) NuGet
7 2 (2.35%) PaaS
7 2 (2.35%) Unqork
7 2 (2.35%) Veeva
8 1 (1.18%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.18%) Network Security
1 1 (1.18%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.53%) DynamoDB
2 2 (2.35%) Azure SQL Database
2 2 (2.35%) MongoDB
2 2 (2.35%) NoSQL
2 2 (2.35%) Relational Database
2 2 (2.35%) SQL Server
2 2 (2.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
3 1 (1.18%) Big Data
3 1 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.18%) GIS
3 1 (1.18%) Oracle Database
3 1 (1.18%) Power BI
3 1 (1.18%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 22 (25.88%) JIRA
2 5 (5.88%) Git
3 3 (3.53%) Cucumber
3 3 (3.53%) Cypress.io
3 3 (3.53%) GitLab
3 3 (3.53%) Gradle
3 3 (3.53%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.53%) JMeter
3 3 (3.53%) JUnit
3 3 (3.53%) Maven
3 3 (3.53%) Mocha
3 3 (3.53%) REST Assured
3 3 (3.53%) Selenium
3 3 (3.53%) SoapUI
3 3 (3.53%) TestNG
3 3 (3.53%) WebDriver
4 1 (1.18%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 19 (22.35%) Social Skills
2 15 (17.65%) Finance
3 13 (15.29%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (9.41%) Banking
5 7 (8.24%) Presentation Skills
6 6 (7.06%) Public Sector
7 3 (3.53%) Retail
8 2 (2.35%) Back Office
8 2 (2.35%) Marketing
9 1 (1.18%) French Language
9 1 (1.18%) Investment Banking
9 1 (1.18%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (1.18%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 22 (25.88%) Product Owner
2 17 (20.00%) Analyst
3 16 (18.82%) Developer
4 12 (14.12%) Business Analyst
5 9 (10.59%) Java Developer
5 9 (10.59%) Scrum Master
6 8 (9.41%) Senior
7 6 (7.06%) Product Analyst
8 5 (5.88%) Backend Developer
9 4 (4.71%) Data Engineer
9 4 (4.71%) Digital Product Owner
9 4 (4.71%) Project Manager
10 3 (3.53%) Senior Developer
11 2 (2.35%) Consultant
11 2 (2.35%) CRM Project Manager
11 2 (2.35%) Product Manager
11 2 (2.35%) SAP Consultant
11 2 (2.35%) SAP FI/CO Consultant
11 2 (2.35%) Senior Analyst
11 2 (2.35%) Senior Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (9.41%) Spring
2 7 (8.24%) .NET
2 7 (8.24%) Kafka
2 7 (8.24%) RESTful
2 7 (8.24%) SOAP
2 7 (8.24%) Spring Boot
3 5 (5.88%) Middleware
3 5 (5.88%) Node.js
3 5 (5.88%) REST
4 3 (3.53%) Chai
4 3 (3.53%) JAXB
4 3 (3.53%) JAX-RS
4 3 (3.53%) React
4 3 (3.53%) Web Services
5 2 (2.35%) .NET Core
5 2 (2.35%) CSS
5 2 (2.35%) Express.js
5 2 (2.35%) HTML
5 2 (2.35%) MERN Stack
5 2 (2.35%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 39 (45.88%) Product Ownership
2 6 (7.06%) Data Structures
2 6 (7.06%) Legacy Systems
3 5 (5.88%) Distributed Systems
4 4 (4.71%) Management Information System
4 4 (4.71%) Wiki
5 3 (3.53%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (2.35%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 1 (1.18%) Blockchain
7 1 (1.18%) CMDB
7 1 (1.18%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (1.18%) Distributed Applications
7 1 (1.18%) Freedom of Information
7 1 (1.18%) Freedom of Information Act
7 1 (1.18%) Replication
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (82.35%) Agile
2 41 (48.24%) Scrum
3 35 (41.18%) Sprint Planning
4 34 (40.00%) Product Backlog
5 32 (37.65%) User Stories
6 25 (29.41%) Problem-Solving
7 21 (24.71%) Backlog Prioritisation
8 19 (22.35%) Acceptance Criteria
9 17 (20.00%) DevOps
9 17 (20.00%) Roadmaps
9 17 (20.00%) Sprint Review
10 16 (18.82%) Sprint Retrospective
10 16 (18.82%) Workshop Facilitation
11 14 (16.47%) Translating Business Requirements
12 13 (15.29%) Microservices
13 12 (14.12%) User Acceptance Testing
14 11 (12.94%) Continuous Improvement
14 11 (12.94%) SDLC
15 10 (11.76%) CRM
16 9 (10.59%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 15 (17.65%) Java
2 7 (8.24%) C#
3 6 (7.06%) SQL
4 5 (5.88%) JavaScript
4 5 (5.88%) Python
5 3 (3.53%) Kotlin
5 3 (3.53%) Scala
6 2 (2.35%) Bicep
6 2 (2.35%) C
6 2 (2.35%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 10 (11.76%) Security Cleared
2 9 (10.59%) Degree
3 8 (9.41%) SC Cleared
4 3 (3.53%) CSPO
4 3 (3.53%) DV Cleared
5 2 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (1.18%) Master's Degree
6 1 (1.18%) PgMP
6 1 (1.18%) PMI Certification
6 1 (1.18%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.53%) Data Quality
2 2 (2.35%) Accessibility
2 2 (2.35%) QA
3 1 (1.18%) GDPR
3 1 (1.18%) PMO
System Software
1 8 (9.41%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (10.59%) Kubernetes
2 3 (3.53%) Grafana
3 2 (2.35%) Terraform
4 1 (1.18%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.18%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 6 (7.06%) Microsoft
2 4 (4.71%) SAP
3 3 (3.53%) Oracle
3 3 (3.53%) Salesforce
3 3 (3.53%) ServiceNow
3 3 (3.53%) Splunk
4 2 (2.35%) IBM
4 2 (2.35%) OpenText
4 2 (2.35%) Pega
5 1 (1.18%) Databricks
5 1 (1.18%) Guidewire
5 1 (1.18%) NCR