Retail Contract Job Trends in England

Retailing
UK > England

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Retail in contract job vacancies in England. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Retail over the 6 months leading up to 11 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 96 78
Rank change year-on-year -1 -18 +10
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,101 650 1,002
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.59% 2.66% 2.67%
As % of the General category 4.75% 4.13% 4.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 648 335 553
10th Percentile £281 £325 £293
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £515
Median % change year-on-year - +1.94% -2.83%
75th Percentile £638 £629 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £505
% change year-on-year +0.96% +2.97% -6.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 25 86
10th Percentile £13.14 £14.18 £11.44
25th Percentile £15.38 £15.25 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £16.30 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.83% +1.88% -19.23%
75th Percentile £22.50 £38.00 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £62.60 £21.46
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £22.50 £16.00
% change year-on-year -6.67% +40.63% -19.23%

All General Skills
England

Retail falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring general skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 23,184 15,739 21,483
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.44% 64.32% 57.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,170 10,135 13,770
10th Percentile £313 £281 £281
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -1.23% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £631 £644 £650
90th Percentile £749 £770 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £507 £525
% change year-on-year +1.08% -3.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,600 736 1,832
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.30 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.85 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.70% -11.59% +2.78%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.75 £52.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £27.70 £30.00
% change year-on-year +13.72% -7.67% -6.25%

Retail
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Retail relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Retail job vacancy trend in England

Retail
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Retail.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Retail

Retail
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Retail in England over the 6 months to 11 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Retail in England

Retail
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Retail.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Retail

Retail
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Retail in England over the 6 months to 11 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Retail in England

Retail
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Retail within the England region over the 6 months to 11 June 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London +10 628 £550 - 385
South East -1 145 £525 -1.18% 255
North of England -44 136 £513 +2.50% 234
Midlands -27 95 £495 +10.00% 134
North West -5 86 £563 +12.50% 119
East Midlands -5 55 £495 +6.74% 78
East of England +1 51 £509 -3.05% 84
Yorkshire -50 47 £500 +5.26% 90
West Midlands -39 40 £500 +14.29% 56
South West -13 33 £333 -22.22% 74
North East -28 3 £173 -76.98% 27
Retail
UK

Retail
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 33 (3.00%) Confluence
2 14 (1.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 14 (1.27%) CMS
3 9 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (0.73%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.36%) SAS
6 3 (0.27%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.18%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.18%) CICS
8 1 (0.091%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 31 (2.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
3 16 (1.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 16 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (1.18%) Chatbot
5 11 (1.00%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.91%) Photoshop
7 8 (0.73%) Adobe Illustrator
8 7 (0.64%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.45%) InDesign
10 3 (0.27%) Notion
10 3 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.18%) UserZoom
12 1 (0.091%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.091%) Adobe After Effects
12 1 (0.091%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.091%) Maya
12 1 (0.091%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.091%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.091%) Trello
Business Applications
1 23 (2.09%) Shopify
2 20 (1.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (1.09%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.82%) SAP Retail
5 7 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 7 (0.64%) Oracle Retail
6 6 (0.54%) Finacle
6 6 (0.54%) SAP CRM
7 5 (0.45%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.36%) Magento
8 4 (0.36%) NetSuite
8 4 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
9 3 (0.27%) SAP CAR
10 2 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
10 2 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 2 (0.18%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.18%) SAP MM
10 2 (0.18%) SAP SD
11 1 (0.091%) SAP MDM
Cloud Services
1 120 (10.90%) Azure
2 92 (8.36%) AWS
3 63 (5.72%) GCP
4 58 (5.27%) Power Platform
5 34 (3.09%) Snowflake
6 27 (2.45%) GitHub
7 21 (1.91%) Dynamics 365
8 20 (1.82%) Azure DevOps
9 19 (1.73%) GitHub Actions
10 18 (1.63%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.63%) Figma
11 12 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
11 12 (1.09%) BigCommerce
11 12 (1.09%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 11 (1.00%) Google Workspace
12 11 (1.00%) Microsoft 365
12 11 (1.00%) SaaS
13 10 (0.91%) dbt
13 10 (0.91%) Miro
14 9 (0.82%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.18%) ATM
1 13 (1.18%) WAN
2 12 (1.09%) Firewall
3 11 (1.00%) Network Security
4 10 (0.91%) VPN
5 9 (0.82%) RFID
5 9 (0.82%) Wireless
6 7 (0.64%) LAN
6 7 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.54%) Cisco Firepower
7 6 (0.54%) Cisco Nexus
8 5 (0.45%) Cisco ASA
8 5 (0.45%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.45%) VSAN
9 4 (0.36%) BGP
9 4 (0.36%) OSPF
10 3 (0.27%) Broadband
10 3 (0.27%) IPsec
10 3 (0.27%) MPLS
11 2 (0.18%) EIGRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (5.00%) Power BI
2 29 (2.63%) BigQuery
3 19 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
4 17 (1.54%) SQL Server
5 16 (1.45%) MySQL
6 14 (1.27%) Tableau
7 12 (1.09%) Metadata
8 11 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 9 (0.82%) NoSQL
10 7 (0.64%) Relational Database
11 6 (0.54%) Data Vault
11 6 (0.54%) MongoDB
12 4 (0.36%) Big Data
12 4 (0.36%) Looker
12 4 (0.36%) PostgreSQL
12 4 (0.36%) Semantic Layer
12 4 (0.36%) Snowflake Schema
13 3 (0.27%) DynamoDB
13 3 (0.27%) OLAP
13 3 (0.27%) Oracle OLAP
Development Applications
1 72 (6.54%) JIRA
2 18 (1.63%) Git
3 16 (1.45%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.73%) GitLab
5 4 (0.36%) Maven
5 4 (0.36%) Subversion
6 3 (0.27%) Cypress.io
6 3 (0.27%) Eclipse
6 3 (0.27%) ERwin
6 3 (0.27%) JMeter
6 3 (0.27%) Selenium
6 3 (0.27%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.18%) git-flow
7 2 (0.18%) Hudson
7 2 (0.18%) MLflow
7 2 (0.18%) Postman
7 2 (0.18%) WebDriver
7 2 (0.18%) webpack
8 1 (0.091%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.091%) Zephyr
General
1 317 (28.79%) Social Skills
2 267 (24.25%) Finance
3 104 (9.45%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (8.63%) Banking
5 70 (6.36%) Marketing
6 55 (5.00%) Manufacturing
7 53 (4.81%) Organisational Skills
8 43 (3.91%) Retail Banking
9 37 (3.36%) Investment Banking
10 33 (3.00%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (2.45%) Telecoms
12 25 (2.27%) Public Sector
13 24 (2.18%) Documentation Skills
14 21 (1.91%) Presentation Skills
15 20 (1.82%) Influencing Skills
16 19 (1.73%) Legal
17 16 (1.45%) Advertising
17 16 (1.45%) French Language
18 14 (1.27%) Spanish Language
19 13 (1.18%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 174 (15.80%) Architect
2 150 (13.62%) Analyst
3 134 (12.17%) Senior
4 110 (9.99%) Project Manager
5 84 (7.63%) Lead
6 83 (7.54%) Business Analyst
7 82 (7.45%) Solutions Architect
8 58 (5.27%) Senior Manager
9 42 (3.81%) Designer
9 42 (3.81%) Technical Manager
10 41 (3.72%) Developer
11 35 (3.18%) Enterprise Architect
12 34 (3.09%) Product Manager
12 34 (3.09%) Senior Project Manager
13 33 (3.00%) Consultant
14 26 (2.36%) 2nd Line Support
14 26 (2.36%) Data Engineer
15 24 (2.18%) Data Architect
15 24 (2.18%) Programme Manager
16 19 (1.73%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (2.91%) REST
2 28 (2.54%) Middleware
3 26 (2.36%) React
3 26 (2.36%) Spring
3 26 (2.36%) VML
4 20 (1.82%) Spring Boot
5 17 (1.54%) Node.js
6 16 (1.45%) Kafka
7 14 (1.27%) AngularJS
7 14 (1.27%) CSS
8 13 (1.18%) HTML
9 12 (1.09%) RESTful
10 10 (0.91%) .NET
10 10 (0.91%) J2EE
10 10 (0.91%) MACH
11 8 (0.73%) OpenTelemetry
12 7 (0.64%) LangChain
12 7 (0.64%) OAuth
12 7 (0.64%) OAuth2
12 7 (0.64%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 67 (6.09%) Product Ownership
2 40 (3.63%) FMCG
3 36 (3.27%) EPoS
4 30 (2.72%) Cloud Native
4 30 (2.72%) Driving Licence
4 30 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 21 (1.91%) Data Structures
6 19 (1.73%) Data Centre
7 18 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
7 18 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
8 15 (1.36%) Mobile App
9 14 (1.27%) Mainframe
10 13 (1.18%) Management Information System
11 12 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
11 12 (1.09%) Marketing Technology
12 11 (1.00%) AI Agents
12 11 (1.00%) Operational Technology
12 11 (1.00%) Smartphone
13 10 (0.91%) Virtual Team
14 9 (0.82%) CCTV
Operating Systems
1 51 (4.63%) Windows
2 21 (1.91%) Linux
3 11 (1.00%) Android
4 6 (0.54%) Mac OS
4 6 (0.54%) Unix
5 5 (0.45%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.36%) Apple iOS
6 4 (0.36%) zOS
7 3 (0.27%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.091%) Debian
8 1 (0.091%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.091%) SUSE
8 1 (0.091%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.091%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.091%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 245 (22.25%) Stakeholder Management
2 241 (21.89%) Agile
3 173 (15.71%) Problem-Solving
4 163 (14.80%) E-Commerce
5 140 (12.72%) Migration
6 131 (11.90%) Roadmaps
7 110 (9.99%) Customer Experience
8 109 (9.90%) Analytics
9 107 (9.72%) Project Management
10 91 (8.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 88 (7.99%) ERP
12 86 (7.81%) AI
13 80 (7.27%) Change Management
13 80 (7.27%) Project Delivery
14 78 (7.08%) Continuous Improvement
15 77 (6.99%) Scrum
16 76 (6.90%) Decision-Making
16 76 (6.90%) Workshop Facilitation
17 74 (6.72%) User Acceptance Testing
18 73 (6.63%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 74 (6.72%) SQL
2 60 (5.45%) Python
3 41 (3.72%) Java
4 24 (2.18%) JavaScript
5 16 (1.45%) TypeScript
6 10 (0.91%) Shell Script
7 9 (0.82%) C#
7 9 (0.82%) PowerShell
8 5 (0.45%) SOQL
9 4 (0.36%) Bash
9 4 (0.36%) Bicep
9 4 (0.36%) Kotlin
9 4 (0.36%) PL/SQL
9 4 (0.36%) Scala
10 3 (0.27%) Apex Code
10 3 (0.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (0.27%) R
10 3 (0.27%) SOSL
10 3 (0.27%) VBA
Qualifications
1 52 (4.72%) Degree
2 38 (3.45%) Security Cleared
3 27 (2.45%) SC Cleared
4 19 (1.73%) PMP
5 11 (1.00%) PMI Certification
6 10 (0.91%) DBS Check
7 9 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (0.64%) APMP
8 7 (0.64%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (0.64%) CISSP
8 7 (0.64%) Master's Degree
9 6 (0.54%) CCNP
9 6 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (0.45%) CCSE
10 5 (0.45%) CCSM
10 5 (0.45%) CISM
10 5 (0.45%) CSPO
10 5 (0.45%) MBA
11 4 (0.36%) City & Guilds
11 4 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (4.27%) QA
2 40 (3.63%) Data Quality
3 34 (3.09%) GDPR
4 32 (2.91%) PMO
5 17 (1.54%) Accessibility
6 14 (1.27%) PCI DSS
7 10 (0.91%) SLA
8 8 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.45%) NIST
10 2 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.18%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.18%) GAAP
10 2 (0.18%) GRC
10 2 (0.18%) IFRS
10 2 (0.18%) PSD2
10 2 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.18%) WCAG
11 1 (0.091%) COBIT
11 1 (0.091%) GxP
11 1 (0.091%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 24 (2.18%) Docker
2 23 (2.09%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
3 6 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.18%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.091%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 26 (2.36%) Terraform
2 20 (1.82%) Kubernetes
3 12 (1.09%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 7 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.54%) Argo
5 6 (0.54%) Istio
5 6 (0.54%) SCCM
6 4 (0.36%) Grafana
6 4 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.18%) Ansible
7 2 (0.18%) CA Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.18%) FortiGate
7 2 (0.18%) MOM
7 2 (0.18%) PingFederate
8 1 (0.091%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 95 (8.63%) Microsoft
2 75 (6.81%) SAP
3 68 (6.18%) Oracle
4 52 (4.72%) Google
5 49 (4.45%) Salesforce
6 39 (3.54%) Databricks
7 32 (2.91%) Adobe
8 20 (1.82%) ServiceNow
9 14 (1.27%) IFS
9 14 (1.27%) Sitecore
10 12 (1.09%) Cisco
11 11 (1.00%) Zscaler
12 10 (0.91%) VMware
13 9 (0.82%) Fortinet
13 9 (0.82%) Palo Alto
14 8 (0.73%) MuleSoft
14 8 (0.73%) Splunk
15 7 (0.64%) CheckPoint
15 7 (0.64%) IBM
16 6 (0.54%) Temenos