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“Back office “ in this case means employees who are not billing clients and therefore do not bring any money to the firm. In consulting you have to be billable at a rate a certain percentage above your cost based on your level in the firm. High level people have to bill a lot more than they cost to maintain their target margin. If you’re not billing then you only cost money. There’s no other revenue source in consulting than billing time to a client.

I think back office is just a generic term for non customer facing positions, usually supporting internal operations in a corporate environment, not a specific department or function. So a software developer could be back office depending on context.

Finance, Human Resources, Internal IT, Recruiting, Facilities, etc. Any role that the customer is not directly interfacing with or paying for.