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 7 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Oct 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 115 90
Rank change year-on-year +39 -25 +2
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,506 687 811
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.24% 2.46% 2.53%
As % of the General category 5.73% 3.85% 4.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 870 378 428
10th Percentile £319 £300 £285
25th Percentile £450 £427 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - -
75th Percentile £675 £648 £638
90th Percentile £738 £741 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 125 62 19
10th Percentile £12.76 £15.25 £13.83
25th Percentile £13.45 £15.48 £16.00
Median hourly rate £15.00 £16.34 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year -8.17% +0.21% -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £19.50 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £25.15 £56.00
UK median hourly rate £15.02 £16.34 £16.30
% change year-on-year -8.05% +0.21% -17.72%

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 26,286 17,862 18,891
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 56.47% 63.91% 58.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,330 11,337 11,341
10th Percentile £313 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -5.66% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £750 £738 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,416 1,048 851
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.51 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.62 £16.29 £18.00
Median hourly rate £29.01 £25.15 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.35% -29.15% +19.33%
75th Percentile £56.00 £45.19 £61.52
90th Percentile £77.50 £70.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £27.85 £25.08 £33.52
% change year-on-year +11.07% -25.19% +21.89%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 +41 827 £575 +4.55% 2,079
North of England -3 198 £550 +10.00% 651
Midlands +38 164 £525 +20.41% 455
South East -11 163 £581 +8.14% 601
North West +22 127 £550 +10.00% 346
East Midlands +17 88 £500 +14.68% 201
East of England +13 84 £538 -8.51% 225
West Midlands +7 75 £575 +31.43% 253
South West -21 53 £453 +82.83% 185
Yorkshire -35 53 £475 -9.52% 257
North East -24 18 £525 +288.89% 58
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 49 (3.25%) Confluence
2 25 (1.66%) CMS
3 21 (1.39%) SharePoint
4 18 (1.20%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.53%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.33%) SAS
7 4 (0.27%) Apache
7 4 (0.27%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.27%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.20%) Sitecore CMS
9 2 (0.13%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.13%) CICS
9 2 (0.13%) WordPress
10 1 (0.066%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.066%) Mendix
10 1 (0.066%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.066%) Mule
10 1 (0.066%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 73 (4.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (3.59%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (1.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (0.93%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 13 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.73%) MS Visio
7 10 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
8 8 (0.53%) Photoshop
9 7 (0.46%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.40%) CPLEX
11 5 (0.33%) InDesign
12 4 (0.27%) Notion
13 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
14 1 (0.066%) 3ds Max
14 1 (0.066%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.066%) Siemens NX
14 1 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.066%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 54 (3.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.86%) Shopify
3 13 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.60%) Magento
4 9 (0.60%) Oracle Retail
5 8 (0.53%) SAP Retail
6 7 (0.46%) SAP CRM
7 6 (0.40%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.40%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.33%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.33%) Workday HCM
9 4 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
9 4 (0.27%) SAP CAR
9 4 (0.27%) SAP SD
10 3 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
10 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
10 3 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.20%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 207 (13.75%) Azure
2 147 (9.76%) AWS
3 77 (5.11%) Power Platform
4 71 (4.71%) GCP
5 52 (3.45%) GitHub
5 52 (3.45%) Snowflake
6 39 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
7 32 (2.12%) Entra ID
8 31 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
9 27 (1.79%) SaaS
10 24 (1.59%) dbt
10 24 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
11 20 (1.33%) Figma
12 19 (1.26%) Azure Data Factory
13 17 (1.13%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
14 16 (1.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 16 (1.06%) Microsoft 365
15 14 (0.93%) OCI
16 12 (0.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 10 (0.66%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.46%) WAN
2 20 (1.33%) Firewall
3 16 (1.06%) VPN
4 14 (0.93%) ATM
4 14 (0.93%) Network Security
5 13 (0.86%) LAN
5 13 (0.86%) Wireless
6 12 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (0.46%) BGP
7 7 (0.46%) Internet
7 7 (0.46%) IPsec
7 7 (0.46%) OSPF
7 7 (0.46%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.40%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 6 (0.40%) Structured Cabling
8 6 (0.40%) VLAN
9 5 (0.33%) DNS
10 4 (0.27%) Cisco Firepower
10 4 (0.27%) SMS
10 4 (0.27%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (4.98%) Power BI
2 41 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
3 29 (1.93%) Data Lake
4 27 (1.79%) BigQuery
5 23 (1.53%) SQL Server
6 19 (1.26%) Metadata
6 19 (1.26%) MongoDB
6 19 (1.26%) Tableau
7 18 (1.20%) NoSQL
8 15 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
8 15 (1.00%) PostgreSQL
8 15 (1.00%) SAP BW
9 14 (0.93%) Relational Database
10 13 (0.86%) MySQL
10 13 (0.86%) SAP HANA
11 12 (0.80%) Power Query
12 11 (0.73%) Redis
13 10 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 9 (0.60%) Couchbase
14 9 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 73 (4.85%) JIRA
2 22 (1.46%) Git
2 22 (1.46%) Jenkins
3 8 (0.53%) Subversion
4 7 (0.46%) Claude Code
5 5 (0.33%) Cypress.io
6 4 (0.27%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.27%) GitLab
6 4 (0.27%) JMeter
7 3 (0.20%) Hudson
7 3 (0.20%) Postman
8 2 (0.13%) git-flow
8 2 (0.13%) LSMW
8 2 (0.13%) MLflow
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (0.13%) Selenium
8 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.13%) webpack
9 1 (0.066%) JUnit
General
1 441 (29.28%) Social Skills
2 327 (21.71%) Finance
3 153 (10.16%) Analytical Skills
4 131 (8.70%) Marketing
5 108 (7.17%) Banking
5 108 (7.17%) Manufacturing
6 69 (4.58%) Organisational Skills
7 53 (3.52%) Retail Banking
8 37 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
9 35 (2.32%) Corporate Banking
10 34 (2.26%) Investment Banking
11 30 (1.99%) Advertising
12 28 (1.86%) Legal
12 28 (1.86%) Telecoms
13 25 (1.66%) Public Sector
14 17 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 16 (1.06%) Back Office
15 16 (1.06%) French Language
15 16 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
15 16 (1.06%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 247 (16.40%) Architect
2 205 (13.61%) Analyst
3 155 (10.29%) Senior
4 145 (9.63%) Solutions Architect
5 113 (7.50%) Project Manager
6 106 (7.04%) Business Analyst
6 106 (7.04%) Lead
7 77 (5.11%) Developer
8 53 (3.52%) Consultant
9 52 (3.45%) Product Manager
10 49 (3.25%) Designer
11 42 (2.79%) Supply Chain Architect
12 41 (2.72%) Senior Manager
13 32 (2.12%) Data Analyst
13 32 (2.12%) Senior Developer
14 27 (1.79%) Technical Manager
15 26 (1.73%) EPoS Engineer
16 25 (1.66%) Data Engineer
17 24 (1.59%) 2nd Line Support
17 24 (1.59%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (4.38%) REST
2 47 (3.12%) Terraform
3 40 (2.66%) Kafka
4 37 (2.46%) React
5 30 (1.99%) Spring
6 26 (1.73%) Spring Boot
7 24 (1.59%) Middleware
7 24 (1.59%) Node.js
8 22 (1.46%) Django
9 21 (1.39%) RESTful
10 20 (1.33%) SOAP
11 19 (1.26%) MACH
11 19 (1.26%) Next.js
12 17 (1.13%) SAP Fiori
13 16 (1.06%) VML
14 15 (1.00%) .NET
14 15 (1.00%) HTML
15 13 (0.86%) SAPUI5
16 11 (0.73%) CSS
16 11 (0.73%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 74 (4.91%) Product Ownership
2 72 (4.78%) EPoS
3 70 (4.65%) FMCG
4 53 (3.52%) Onboarding
5 49 (3.25%) Cloud Native
6 41 (2.72%) Driving Licence
7 32 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
8 31 (2.06%) Management Information System
9 30 (1.99%) Mobile App
10 26 (1.73%) Greenfield Project
11 25 (1.66%) Data Centre
12 23 (1.53%) Data Structures
12 23 (1.53%) Marketing Technology
13 21 (1.39%) Operational Technology
13 21 (1.39%) Smartphone
14 20 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
15 17 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
16 15 (1.00%) IoT
17 14 (0.93%) Credit Risk
17 14 (0.93%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 46 (3.05%) Windows
2 16 (1.06%) Linux
3 12 (0.80%) Android
4 8 (0.53%) Unix
5 7 (0.46%) Apple iOS
5 7 (0.46%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.40%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.27%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.20%) zOS
9 2 (0.13%) Debian
10 1 (0.066%) OS/2
10 1 (0.066%) SUSE
10 1 (0.066%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.066%) VMS
10 1 (0.066%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 409 (27.16%) Stakeholder Management
2 341 (22.64%) Agile
3 242 (16.07%) E-Commerce
4 181 (12.02%) Migration
5 178 (11.82%) Analytics
6 174 (11.55%) Logistics
7 164 (10.89%) AI
8 162 (10.76%) Problem-Solving
9 157 (10.42%) Roadmaps
10 143 (9.50%) Decision-Making
11 133 (8.83%) CRM
12 131 (8.70%) Customer Experience
13 129 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
14 120 (7.97%) CI/CD
15 110 (7.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 109 (7.24%) Customer Service
16 109 (7.24%) DevOps
17 107 (7.10%) Project Management
18 103 (6.84%) Business Intelligence
19 101 (6.71%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 138 (9.16%) SQL
2 106 (7.04%) Python
3 50 (3.32%) Java
4 34 (2.26%) TypeScript
5 24 (1.59%) JavaScript
6 13 (0.86%) ABAP
7 12 (0.80%) C#
7 12 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 10 (0.66%) R
9 8 (0.53%) Bash
10 7 (0.46%) PL/SQL
10 7 (0.46%) PowerShell
11 6 (0.40%) Apex Code
12 5 (0.33%) Groovy
12 5 (0.33%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.27%) Bicep
13 4 (0.27%) SOQL
13 4 (0.27%) T-SQL
14 3 (0.20%) Scala
15 2 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 62 (4.12%) Degree
2 31 (2.06%) Security Cleared
3 21 (1.39%) PMP
4 14 (0.93%) ITIL Certification
5 10 (0.66%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (0.60%) SC Cleared
7 8 (0.53%) DBS Check
8 6 (0.40%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (0.40%) CISSP
9 5 (0.33%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.33%) CISM
9 5 (0.33%) City & Guilds
9 5 (0.33%) Six Sigma Green Belt
10 4 (0.27%) SAP Certification
11 3 (0.20%) APMG
11 3 (0.20%) CCNP
11 3 (0.20%) CCSE
11 3 (0.20%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 3 (0.20%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (4.85%) Data Quality
1 73 (4.85%) QA
2 26 (1.73%) GDPR
3 25 (1.66%) Accessibility
4 22 (1.46%) PMO
5 13 (0.86%) PCI DSS
6 8 (0.53%) SLA
7 6 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.33%) NIST
8 5 (0.33%) WCAG
9 4 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.20%) PSD2
11 2 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.13%) GAAP
11 2 (0.13%) GRC
11 2 (0.13%) IFRS
12 1 (0.066%) Basel III
12 1 (0.066%) HL7
12 1 (0.066%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.066%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 35 (2.32%) Docker
2 23 (1.53%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.86%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.33%) Firmware
5 5 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.13%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.066%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 39 (2.59%) Kubernetes
2 10 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
3 9 (0.60%) Ansible
4 7 (0.46%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 5 (0.33%) FortiGate
5 5 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.27%) Bosun
7 3 (0.20%) SCCM
8 2 (0.13%) AirWatch
8 2 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.066%) Argo
9 1 (0.066%) CloudHub
9 1 (0.066%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.066%) Grafana
9 1 (0.066%) vMotion
Vendors
1 156 (10.36%) Microsoft
2 123 (8.17%) SAP
3 78 (5.18%) Salesforce
4 71 (4.71%) Databricks
5 68 (4.52%) Oracle
6 52 (3.45%) Google
7 35 (2.32%) Adobe
8 26 (1.73%) MuleSoft
9 24 (1.59%) Zscaler
10 18 (1.20%) Cisco
10 18 (1.20%) IBM
11 17 (1.13%) Workday
12 13 (0.86%) New Relic
13 12 (0.80%) Apple
13 12 (0.80%) ServiceNow
14 11 (0.73%) Braze
14 11 (0.73%) Fortinet
14 11 (0.73%) Splunk
15 10 (0.66%) Palo Alto
15 10 (0.66%) VMware
4,218 Retail jobs in England