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 5 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 96 77
Rank change year-on-year 0 -19 +10
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,052 647 993
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.51% 2.69% 2.70%
As % of the General category 4.61% 4.18% 4.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 618 334 545
10th Percentile £272 £325 £278
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year - +2.44% -3.30%
75th Percentile £638 £629 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £511 £521 £505
% change year-on-year -1.92% +3.22% -6.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 22 87
10th Percentile £13.28 - £11.50
25th Percentile £15.38 £15.25 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £19.40 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.25% +21.25% -21.59%
75th Percentile £22.50 £47.94 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £66.28 £21.46
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £23.83 £16.00
% change year-on-year -11.86% +48.91% -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 22,811 15,463 21,153
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.38% 64.21% 57.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,957 9,953 13,561
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £630 £648 £650
90th Percentile £740 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £511 £525
% change year-on-year +0.36% -2.73% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,569 713 1,811
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.27 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.00 £28.00 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -9.68% -2.88%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.75 £52.20
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £30.75 £27.94 £30.16
% change year-on-year +10.06% -7.36% -7.20%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +7 590 £539 -2.05% 614
South East -9 137 £500 - 309
North of England -39 134 £513 +2.50% 305
Midlands -10 95 £495 +10.00% 175
North West 0 83 £550 +10.00% 181
East Midlands -3 55 £495 +6.74% 93
East of England -2 51 £509 -3.05% 102
Yorkshire -48 48 £506 +6.58% 101
West Midlands -37 40 £500 +14.29% 82
South West -17 32 £326 -34.75% 84
North East -28 3 £173 -76.98% 25
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 36 (3.42%) Confluence
2 13 (1.24%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 13 (1.24%) CMS
3 11 (1.05%) SharePoint
4 9 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.38%) SAS
6 2 (0.19%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.19%) CICS
6 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.095%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 29 (2.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (2.38%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.81%) Microsoft Project
4 17 (1.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.24%) Chatbot
6 11 (1.05%) MS Visio
7 10 (0.95%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.76%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.57%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.48%) InDesign
11 3 (0.29%) Notion
11 3 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
12 2 (0.19%) UserZoom
13 1 (0.095%) 3ds Max
13 1 (0.095%) Adobe After Effects
13 1 (0.095%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.095%) Maya
13 1 (0.095%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.095%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.095%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (2.09%) Shopify
2 19 (1.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.86%) SAP Retail
5 7 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 6 (0.57%) Finacle
6 6 (0.57%) Oracle Retail
6 6 (0.57%) SAP CRM
7 5 (0.48%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.38%) Magento
8 4 (0.38%) NetSuite
9 3 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
9 3 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
10 2 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
10 2 (0.19%) SAP CAR
10 2 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.19%) SAP MM
10 2 (0.19%) SAP SD
11 1 (0.095%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
Cloud Services
1 118 (11.22%) Azure
2 86 (8.17%) AWS
3 62 (5.89%) GCP
4 53 (5.04%) Power Platform
5 32 (3.04%) Snowflake
6 27 (2.57%) GitHub
7 20 (1.90%) Azure DevOps
7 20 (1.90%) Dynamics 365
8 19 (1.81%) GitHub Actions
9 17 (1.62%) Entra ID
9 17 (1.62%) Figma
10 14 (1.33%) Microsoft 365
11 13 (1.24%) SaaS
11 13 (1.24%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 12 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
12 12 (1.14%) BigCommerce
13 11 (1.05%) Google Workspace
14 10 (0.95%) dbt
14 10 (0.95%) Miro
15 9 (0.86%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.24%) ATM
2 12 (1.14%) Firewall
2 12 (1.14%) WAN
3 10 (0.95%) Network Security
3 10 (0.95%) VPN
4 9 (0.86%) Wireless
5 8 (0.76%) RFID
6 6 (0.57%) Cisco Firepower
6 6 (0.57%) Cisco Nexus
6 6 (0.57%) LAN
6 6 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
7 5 (0.48%) Cisco ASA
7 5 (0.48%) SD-WAN
7 5 (0.48%) VSAN
8 4 (0.38%) BGP
8 4 (0.38%) OSPF
9 3 (0.29%) Broadband
9 3 (0.29%) IPsec
9 3 (0.29%) MPLS
10 2 (0.19%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (4.75%) Power BI
2 28 (2.66%) BigQuery
3 18 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
4 17 (1.62%) MySQL
4 17 (1.62%) SQL Server
5 12 (1.14%) Metadata
5 12 (1.14%) Tableau
6 10 (0.95%) Data Lake
7 8 (0.76%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.57%) Data Vault
8 6 (0.57%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.48%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.38%) Big Data
10 4 (0.38%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.38%) Looker
10 4 (0.38%) PostgreSQL
10 4 (0.38%) Semantic Layer
10 4 (0.38%) Snowflake Schema
11 3 (0.29%) OLAP
11 3 (0.29%) Oracle OLAP
Development Applications
1 76 (7.22%) JIRA
2 16 (1.52%) Git
3 15 (1.43%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.76%) GitLab
5 4 (0.38%) Maven
5 4 (0.38%) Subversion
6 3 (0.29%) ERwin
6 3 (0.29%) JMeter
6 3 (0.29%) Selenium
6 3 (0.29%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.19%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.19%) Eclipse
7 2 (0.19%) git-flow
7 2 (0.19%) Hudson
7 2 (0.19%) MLflow
7 2 (0.19%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.095%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.095%) Mockito
8 1 (0.095%) webpack
8 1 (0.095%) Zephyr
General
1 301 (28.61%) Social Skills
2 256 (24.33%) Finance
3 101 (9.60%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (8.46%) Banking
5 68 (6.46%) Marketing
6 53 (5.04%) Manufacturing
7 50 (4.75%) Organisational Skills
8 41 (3.90%) Retail Banking
9 35 (3.33%) Investment Banking
10 31 (2.95%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (2.57%) Telecoms
12 25 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
12 25 (2.38%) Public Sector
13 22 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
14 19 (1.81%) Influencing Skills
15 17 (1.62%) Legal
16 15 (1.43%) Advertising
17 14 (1.33%) French Language
18 13 (1.24%) Back Office
19 12 (1.14%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 167 (15.87%) Architect
2 141 (13.40%) Analyst
3 130 (12.36%) Senior
4 111 (10.55%) Project Manager
5 81 (7.70%) Business Analyst
6 78 (7.41%) Lead
7 75 (7.13%) Solutions Architect
8 58 (5.51%) Senior Manager
9 44 (4.18%) Technical Manager
10 40 (3.80%) Designer
11 36 (3.42%) Developer
12 34 (3.23%) Product Manager
12 34 (3.23%) Senior Project Manager
13 33 (3.14%) Enterprise Architect
14 29 (2.76%) Consultant
15 27 (2.57%) Data Architect
16 25 (2.38%) Data Engineer
17 24 (2.28%) 2nd Line Support
18 22 (2.09%) Programme Manager
19 19 (1.81%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (2.57%) Middleware
1 27 (2.57%) REST
1 27 (2.57%) VML
2 23 (2.19%) React
3 22 (2.09%) Spring
4 16 (1.52%) Node.js
4 16 (1.52%) Spring Boot
5 15 (1.43%) Kafka
6 14 (1.33%) AngularJS
7 13 (1.24%) CSS
8 11 (1.05%) HTML
9 10 (0.95%) RESTful
10 9 (0.86%) .NET
11 8 (0.76%) OpenTelemetry
11 8 (0.76%) PySpark
12 7 (0.67%) LangChain
12 7 (0.67%) MACH
12 7 (0.67%) OAuth
12 7 (0.67%) OAuth2
12 7 (0.67%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 70 (6.65%) Product Ownership
2 36 (3.42%) FMCG
3 34 (3.23%) EPoS
4 30 (2.85%) Cloud Native
4 30 (2.85%) Driving Licence
5 29 (2.76%) Onboarding
6 20 (1.90%) Data Structures
7 19 (1.81%) Data Centre
8 17 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
8 17 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
9 14 (1.33%) Mainframe
9 14 (1.33%) Mobile App
10 13 (1.24%) Management Information System
11 11 (1.05%) Smartphone
12 10 (0.95%) AI Agents
12 10 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (0.95%) Virtual Team
13 9 (0.86%) CCTV
13 9 (0.86%) Mobile Payment
14 8 (0.76%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 48 (4.56%) Windows
2 21 (2.00%) Linux
3 11 (1.05%) Android
4 6 (0.57%) Unix
5 5 (0.48%) Mac OS
5 5 (0.48%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.38%) Apple iOS
6 4 (0.38%) zOS
7 3 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.095%) Debian
8 1 (0.095%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.095%) SUSE
8 1 (0.095%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.095%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.095%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 233 (22.15%) Agile
2 229 (21.77%) Stakeholder Management
3 174 (16.54%) Problem-Solving
4 160 (15.21%) E-Commerce
5 134 (12.74%) Migration
6 124 (11.79%) Roadmaps
7 108 (10.27%) Analytics
7 108 (10.27%) Customer Experience
7 108 (10.27%) Project Management
8 84 (7.98%) ERP
9 83 (7.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 80 (7.60%) Project Delivery
11 79 (7.51%) Change Management
12 78 (7.41%) Continuous Improvement
13 77 (7.32%) Scrum
14 73 (6.94%) AI
14 73 (6.94%) Decision-Making
15 71 (6.75%) User Acceptance Testing
16 69 (6.56%) Workshop Facilitation
17 67 (6.37%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 72 (6.84%) SQL
2 56 (5.32%) Python
3 34 (3.23%) Java
4 22 (2.09%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.24%) TypeScript
6 10 (0.95%) Shell Script
7 9 (0.86%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.76%) C#
9 4 (0.38%) Bash
9 4 (0.38%) Bicep
9 4 (0.38%) Kotlin
9 4 (0.38%) Scala
9 4 (0.38%) SOQL
10 3 (0.29%) Apex Code
10 3 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (0.29%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.29%) R
10 3 (0.29%) SOSL
10 3 (0.29%) VBA
Qualifications
1 51 (4.85%) Degree
2 39 (3.71%) Security Cleared
3 26 (2.47%) SC Cleared
4 19 (1.81%) PMP
5 11 (1.05%) PMI Certification
6 10 (0.95%) DBS Check
7 9 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (0.67%) APMP
8 7 (0.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (0.67%) CISSP
8 7 (0.67%) Master's Degree
9 6 (0.57%) CCNP
9 6 (0.57%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (0.57%) CSPO
10 5 (0.48%) CCSE
10 5 (0.48%) CCSM
10 5 (0.48%) CISM
10 5 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
10 5 (0.48%) MBA
11 4 (0.38%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (4.18%) QA
2 42 (3.99%) Data Quality
3 34 (3.23%) GDPR
4 32 (3.04%) PMO
5 18 (1.71%) Accessibility
6 13 (1.24%) PCI DSS
7 10 (0.95%) SLA
8 8 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.48%) NIST
10 2 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.19%) GRC
10 2 (0.19%) PSD2
10 2 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.19%) WCAG
11 1 (0.095%) Basel III
11 1 (0.095%) COBIT
11 1 (0.095%) GAAP
11 1 (0.095%) GxP
11 1 (0.095%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 23 (2.19%) Active Directory
1 23 (2.19%) Docker
2 6 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
2 6 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
3 5 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.19%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 26 (2.47%) Terraform
2 20 (1.90%) Kubernetes
3 11 (1.05%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 7 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.57%) Argo
5 6 (0.57%) Istio
6 5 (0.48%) SCCM
7 4 (0.38%) Grafana
7 4 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.19%) Ansible
8 2 (0.19%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.19%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.19%) MOM
8 2 (0.19%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.095%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 91 (8.65%) Microsoft
2 72 (6.84%) SAP
3 61 (5.80%) Oracle
4 51 (4.85%) Google
5 48 (4.56%) Salesforce
6 40 (3.80%) Databricks
7 30 (2.85%) Adobe
8 20 (1.90%) ServiceNow
9 14 (1.33%) IFS
9 14 (1.33%) Sitecore
10 12 (1.14%) Cisco
11 10 (0.95%) VMware
11 10 (0.95%) Zscaler
12 9 (0.86%) Fortinet
12 9 (0.86%) Palo Alto
13 7 (0.67%) CheckPoint
13 7 (0.67%) MuleSoft
13 7 (0.67%) Splunk
14 6 (0.57%) Apple
14 6 (0.57%) Temenos