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 23 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 98 79
Rank change year-on-year -3 -19 +7
Contract jobs citing Retail 993 630 993
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.39% 2.64% 2.73%
As % of the General category 4.42% 4.13% 4.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 582 332 548
10th Percentile £263 £322 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year - +2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £627 £638 £625
90th Percentile £738 £748 £725
UK median daily rate £503 £525 £505
% change year-on-year -4.24% +3.96% -5.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 18 86
10th Percentile £13.03 £15.25 £11.44
25th Percentile £15.38 £16.30 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £25.75 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.45% +60.94% -22.42%
75th Percentile £22.90 £53.13 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £70.50 £21.46
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £30.25 £16.00
% change year-on-year -30.58% +89.06% -20.99%

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 22,457 15,262 21,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.07% 64.05% 58.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,832 9,892 13,639
10th Percentile £311 £285 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £628 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,513 662 1,778
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.66 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.22 £16.95 £15.47
Median hourly rate £30.81 £27.39 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% -8.71% -7.12%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £51.91
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.40
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%

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 23 May 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 23 May 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 23 May 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 -8 547 £540 -3.05% 470
North of England -37 131 £510 +10.27% 262
South East -10 127 £463 -7.50% 277
Midlands -26 91 £495 +2.59% 154
North West -1 80 £510 +7.37% 142
East Midlands +2 54 £495 -1.00% 77
East of England -3 52 £538 +7.50% 110
Yorkshire -52 49 £513 +38.51% 106
West Midlands -48 37 £500 +12.68% 77
South West -18 31 £333 -33.50% 85
North East -27 2 £190 -74.67% 18
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 37 (3.73%) Confluence
2 14 (1.41%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 7 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (0.70%) CMS
5 4 (0.40%) SAS
6 3 (0.30%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.20%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.20%) CICS
8 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.10%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 33 (3.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 22 (2.22%) Microsoft Office
3 20 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 19 (1.91%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (1.31%) Chatbot
6 11 (1.11%) MS Visio
7 10 (1.01%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.81%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.50%) InDesign
10 4 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.20%) Notion
11 2 (0.20%) UserZoom
12 1 (0.10%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
12 1 (0.10%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.10%) Maya
12 1 (0.10%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.10%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
12 1 (0.10%) Trello
Business Applications
1 20 (2.01%) Shopify
2 16 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.81%) SAP Retail
4 7 (0.70%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 7 (0.70%) Oracle Retail
5 6 (0.60%) Finacle
6 5 (0.50%) SAP CRM
6 5 (0.50%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.40%) Magento
8 3 (0.30%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.20%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
9 2 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
9 2 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.20%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.20%) Temenos T24
10 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 101 (10.17%) Azure
2 76 (7.65%) AWS
3 55 (5.54%) GCP
4 49 (4.93%) Power Platform
5 28 (2.82%) Snowflake
6 23 (2.32%) GitHub
7 21 (2.11%) Dynamics 365
8 18 (1.81%) Azure DevOps
9 17 (1.71%) Microsoft 365
10 15 (1.51%) Figma
10 15 (1.51%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (1.41%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 12 (1.21%) BigCommerce
12 12 (1.21%) Entra ID
13 11 (1.11%) Google Workspace
13 11 (1.11%) SaaS
14 10 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
14 10 (1.01%) Miro
15 9 (0.91%) Cloud Run
16 8 (0.81%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.51%) WAN
2 14 (1.41%) Firewall
2 14 (1.41%) VPN
3 10 (1.01%) ATM
4 9 (0.91%) Wireless
5 8 (0.81%) Network Security
5 8 (0.81%) RFID
5 8 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (0.70%) Cisco Nexus
6 7 (0.70%) LAN
7 6 (0.60%) BGP
7 6 (0.60%) OSPF
8 5 (0.50%) Cisco Firepower
8 5 (0.50%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.40%) Cisco ASA
9 4 (0.40%) EIGRP
9 4 (0.40%) MPLS
9 4 (0.40%) VSAN
10 3 (0.30%) Broadband
10 3 (0.30%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (4.53%) Power BI
2 28 (2.82%) BigQuery
3 17 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
4 14 (1.41%) MySQL
4 14 (1.41%) SQL Server
5 11 (1.11%) Tableau
6 10 (1.01%) Data Lake
6 10 (1.01%) Metadata
7 7 (0.70%) Relational Database
8 6 (0.60%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.50%) Data Vault
9 5 (0.50%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.40%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
10 4 (0.40%) Semantic Layer
11 3 (0.30%) Big Data
11 3 (0.30%) OLAP
11 3 (0.30%) Oracle OLAP
11 3 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
11 3 (0.30%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 75 (7.55%) JIRA
2 16 (1.61%) Git
3 15 (1.51%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.81%) GitLab
5 4 (0.40%) Maven
5 4 (0.40%) Subversion
6 3 (0.30%) ERwin
6 3 (0.30%) JMeter
6 3 (0.30%) Selenium
7 2 (0.20%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.20%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.20%) Eclipse
7 2 (0.20%) git-flow
7 2 (0.20%) MLflow
7 2 (0.20%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.20%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.10%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.10%) Gatling
8 1 (0.10%) Hudson
8 1 (0.10%) REST Assured
General
1 284 (28.60%) Social Skills
2 250 (25.18%) Finance
3 98 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (8.96%) Banking
5 64 (6.45%) Marketing
6 45 (4.53%) Organisational Skills
7 43 (4.33%) Manufacturing
7 43 (4.33%) Retail Banking
8 36 (3.63%) Investment Banking
9 32 (3.22%) Corporate Banking
10 26 (2.62%) Public Sector
10 26 (2.62%) Telecoms
11 24 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
11 24 (2.42%) Presentation Skills
12 21 (2.11%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (1.71%) Legal
14 15 (1.51%) Advertising
15 13 (1.31%) Back Office
16 12 (1.21%) French Language
17 11 (1.11%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 155 (15.61%) Architect
2 140 (14.10%) Analyst
3 125 (12.59%) Senior
4 106 (10.67%) Project Manager
5 84 (8.46%) Business Analyst
6 71 (7.15%) Lead
7 65 (6.55%) Solutions Architect
8 58 (5.84%) Senior Manager
9 41 (4.13%) Technical Manager
10 35 (3.52%) Designer
11 33 (3.32%) Senior Project Manager
12 32 (3.22%) Consultant
13 31 (3.12%) Enterprise Architect
14 30 (3.02%) Product Manager
15 28 (2.82%) Developer
16 26 (2.62%) Data Architect
17 21 (2.11%) Data Engineer
18 20 (2.01%) Programme Manager
18 20 (2.01%) Service Manager
19 19 (1.91%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (2.92%) VML
2 28 (2.82%) Middleware
3 24 (2.42%) REST
4 22 (2.22%) React
5 21 (2.11%) Spring
6 16 (1.61%) Node.js
7 15 (1.51%) Spring Boot
8 13 (1.31%) AngularJS
9 10 (1.01%) Kafka
10 9 (0.91%) CSS
11 8 (0.81%) OpenTelemetry
11 8 (0.81%) PySpark
11 8 (0.81%) RESTful
12 7 (0.70%) LangChain
12 7 (0.70%) MACH
12 7 (0.70%) OAuth
12 7 (0.70%) OAuth2
12 7 (0.70%) OpenID
13 6 (0.60%) HTML
13 6 (0.60%) jQuery
Miscellaneous
1 70 (7.05%) Product Ownership
2 31 (3.12%) EPoS
3 29 (2.92%) Driving Licence
4 28 (2.82%) Cloud Native
5 25 (2.52%) FMCG
5 25 (2.52%) Onboarding
6 22 (2.22%) Data Centre
7 19 (1.91%) Data Structures
8 18 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
9 17 (1.71%) Management Information System
10 14 (1.41%) Mainframe
11 13 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (1.31%) Mobile App
12 10 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (1.01%) Virtual Team
13 9 (0.91%) AI Agents
13 9 (0.91%) CCTV
13 9 (0.91%) Smartphone
14 7 (0.70%) Enterprise Cloud
15 6 (0.60%) Mobile Payment
Operating Systems
1 46 (4.63%) Windows
2 21 (2.11%) Linux
3 9 (0.91%) Android
4 6 (0.60%) Mac OS
4 6 (0.60%) Unix
5 5 (0.50%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.40%) zOS
7 3 (0.30%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.30%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.10%) Debian
8 1 (0.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.10%) SUSE
8 1 (0.10%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.10%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.10%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 218 (21.95%) Agile
2 213 (21.45%) Stakeholder Management
3 171 (17.22%) Problem-Solving
4 148 (14.90%) E-Commerce
5 124 (12.49%) Migration
6 116 (11.68%) Roadmaps
7 102 (10.27%) Project Management
8 101 (10.17%) Analytics
9 98 (9.87%) Customer Experience
10 82 (8.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 80 (8.06%) ERP
12 77 (7.75%) Continuous Improvement
13 75 (7.55%) Change Management
13 75 (7.55%) Scrum
14 72 (7.25%) Project Delivery
15 70 (7.05%) AI
15 70 (7.05%) Decision-Making
16 66 (6.65%) User Acceptance Testing
16 66 (6.65%) Workshop Facilitation
17 62 (6.24%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 63 (6.34%) SQL
2 53 (5.34%) Python
3 32 (3.22%) Java
4 23 (2.32%) JavaScript
5 12 (1.21%) TypeScript
6 10 (1.01%) PowerShell
6 10 (1.01%) Shell Script
7 5 (0.50%) Bash
7 5 (0.50%) C#
8 4 (0.40%) Bicep
8 4 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
8 4 (0.40%) Scala
8 4 (0.40%) SOQL
8 4 (0.40%) VBA
9 3 (0.30%) Apex Code
9 3 (0.30%) Kotlin
9 3 (0.30%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.30%) SOSL
10 2 (0.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (0.20%) R
Qualifications
1 52 (5.24%) Degree
2 41 (4.13%) Security Cleared
3 26 (2.62%) SC Cleared
4 17 (1.71%) PMP
5 11 (1.11%) PMI Certification
6 8 (0.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (0.81%) CSPO
7 7 (0.70%) APMP
7 7 (0.70%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.70%) CCNP
7 7 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
7 7 (0.70%) CISSP
7 7 (0.70%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.70%) Master's Degree
8 5 (0.50%) CISM
8 5 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.50%) MBA
9 4 (0.40%) CCSE
9 4 (0.40%) CCSM
9 4 (0.40%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (4.13%) QA
2 40 (4.03%) Data Quality
3 34 (3.42%) GDPR
4 33 (3.32%) PMO
5 14 (1.41%) Accessibility
6 13 (1.31%) SLA
7 10 (1.01%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.50%) NIST
10 4 (0.40%) IFRS
11 2 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.20%) GRC
11 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.20%) WCAG
12 1 (0.10%) COBIT
12 1 (0.10%) GAAP
12 1 (0.10%) GxP
12 1 (0.10%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.10%) Solvency II
System Software
1 23 (2.32%) Docker
2 17 (1.71%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.30%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 22 (2.22%) Terraform
2 16 (1.61%) Kubernetes
3 8 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (0.70%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.60%) Argo
5 6 (0.60%) Istio
6 5 (0.50%) SCCM
6 5 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.40%) Grafana
8 2 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.20%) Ansible
8 2 (0.20%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.20%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.20%) MOM
8 2 (0.20%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.10%) Control-M
9 1 (0.10%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 85 (8.56%) Microsoft
2 70 (7.05%) SAP
3 62 (6.24%) Oracle
4 46 (4.63%) Google
4 46 (4.63%) Salesforce
5 39 (3.93%) Databricks
6 26 (2.62%) Adobe
7 16 (1.61%) ServiceNow
8 14 (1.41%) IFS
8 14 (1.41%) Sitecore
9 13 (1.31%) Cisco
10 10 (1.01%) VMware
11 9 (0.91%) Palo Alto
12 8 (0.81%) CheckPoint
12 8 (0.81%) Fortinet
12 8 (0.81%) Temenos
12 8 (0.81%) Zscaler
13 7 (0.70%) Splunk
13 7 (0.70%) Workday
14 6 (0.60%) Avaloq