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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 120 90
Rank change year-on-year +37 -30 0
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,491 678 829
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.20% 2.43% 2.59%
As % of the General category 5.65% 3.80% 4.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 868 383 435
10th Percentile £313 £297 £285
25th Percentile £450 £425 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - -
75th Percentile £675 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 61 15
10th Percentile £12.76 £15.25 £14.55
25th Percentile £13.39 £15.48 £16.00
Median hourly rate £14.50 £16.34 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year -11.23% +0.21% -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £19.50 £30.06
90th Percentile £43.75 £25.15 £58.00
UK median hourly rate £14.50 £16.34 £16.30
% change year-on-year -11.23% +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 26,383 17,845 18,857
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 56.67% 63.93% 58.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,357 11,333 11,308
10th Percentile £313 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
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 2,466 1,067 808
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.67 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.50 £16.39 £17.39
Median hourly rate £29.00 £25.08 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.65% -28.36% +16.67%
75th Percentile £56.21 £45.38 £61.60
90th Percentile £78.73 £70.60 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £25.01 £32.14
% change year-on-year +9.98% -22.20% +11.79%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 +46 831 £575 +4.55% 1,192
North of England -8 186 £550 +10.00% 313
Midlands +34 165 £513 +19.05% 236
South East -11 159 £575 +4.55% 257
North West +4 116 £550 +10.00% 172
East Midlands +18 89 £500 +19.40% 115
East of England +17 83 £538 -2.27% 103
West Midlands +7 75 £550 +20.55% 121
Yorkshire -36 52 £475 -19.15% 121
South West -15 51 £500 +177.78% 86
North East -26 18 £525 +288.89% 21
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 48 (3.22%) Confluence
2 27 (1.81%) CMS
3 20 (1.34%) SharePoint
4 17 (1.14%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.47%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 4 (0.27%) Apache
6 4 (0.27%) SAS
6 4 (0.27%) Sitecore CMS
6 4 (0.27%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.20%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.13%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.13%) WordPress
9 1 (0.067%) CICS
9 1 (0.067%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.067%) Mendix
9 1 (0.067%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.067%) Mule
9 1 (0.067%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 71 (4.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (3.62%) Microsoft Office
3 25 (1.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (0.94%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.74%) MS Visio
7 7 (0.47%) Photoshop
8 6 (0.40%) Adobe Illustrator
8 6 (0.40%) CPLEX
9 5 (0.34%) InDesign
10 4 (0.27%) Notion
11 1 (0.067%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.067%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.067%) Chatbot
11 1 (0.067%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.067%) Revit
11 1 (0.067%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.067%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.067%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 56 (3.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.81%) Shopify
3 13 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.60%) Magento
4 9 (0.60%) Oracle Retail
5 8 (0.54%) SAP Retail
6 7 (0.47%) SAP CRM
7 6 (0.40%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.40%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.34%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.34%) Workday HCM
9 4 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
9 4 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
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%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 208 (13.95%) Azure
2 145 (9.73%) AWS
3 75 (5.03%) Power Platform
4 72 (4.83%) GCP
5 51 (3.42%) GitHub
5 51 (3.42%) Snowflake
6 39 (2.62%) Azure DevOps
7 31 (2.08%) Entra ID
8 30 (2.01%) GitHub Actions
9 27 (1.81%) SaaS
10 24 (1.61%) dbt
11 23 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
12 20 (1.34%) Figma
13 19 (1.27%) Azure Data Factory
14 17 (1.14%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 17 (1.14%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
15 16 (1.07%) Microsoft 365
16 15 (1.01%) OCI
17 12 (0.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 11 (0.74%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.41%) WAN
2 19 (1.27%) Firewall
3 14 (0.94%) ATM
3 14 (0.94%) Network Security
3 14 (0.94%) VPN
4 13 (0.87%) LAN
4 13 (0.87%) Wireless
5 12 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (0.47%) BGP
6 7 (0.47%) Internet
6 7 (0.47%) IPsec
6 7 (0.47%) OSPF
6 7 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
7 6 (0.40%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 6 (0.40%) SD-WAN
7 6 (0.40%) VLAN
8 5 (0.34%) DNS
8 5 (0.34%) SMS
9 4 (0.27%) Broadband
9 4 (0.27%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (4.90%) Power BI
2 39 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
3 29 (1.95%) Data Lake
4 27 (1.81%) BigQuery
5 23 (1.54%) SQL Server
6 19 (1.27%) Metadata
6 19 (1.27%) MongoDB
6 19 (1.27%) Tableau
7 18 (1.21%) NoSQL
8 16 (1.07%) PostgreSQL
9 15 (1.01%) Relational Database
9 15 (1.01%) SAP BW
10 14 (0.94%) Amazon Redshift
10 14 (0.94%) MySQL
11 13 (0.87%) SAP HANA
12 12 (0.80%) Power Query
13 11 (0.74%) Redis
14 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 9 (0.60%) Couchbase
15 9 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 71 (4.76%) JIRA
2 22 (1.48%) Git
2 22 (1.48%) Jenkins
3 8 (0.54%) Subversion
4 7 (0.47%) Claude Code
5 5 (0.34%) 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%) Pylint
8 2 (0.13%) Selenium
8 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.13%) webpack
General
1 439 (29.44%) Social Skills
2 324 (21.73%) Finance
3 149 (9.99%) Analytical Skills
4 136 (9.12%) Marketing
5 107 (7.18%) Banking
6 106 (7.11%) Manufacturing
7 69 (4.63%) Organisational Skills
8 51 (3.42%) Retail Banking
9 36 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
10 33 (2.21%) Corporate Banking
11 32 (2.15%) Advertising
11 32 (2.15%) Investment Banking
12 26 (1.74%) Legal
13 25 (1.68%) Public Sector
13 25 (1.68%) Telecoms
14 16 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 15 (1.01%) Automotive
15 15 (1.01%) French Language
15 15 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
15 15 (1.01%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 239 (16.03%) Architect
2 201 (13.48%) Analyst
3 152 (10.19%) Senior
4 143 (9.59%) Solutions Architect
5 114 (7.65%) Project Manager
6 105 (7.04%) Lead
7 103 (6.91%) Business Analyst
8 77 (5.16%) Developer
9 54 (3.62%) Consultant
10 53 (3.55%) Product Manager
11 46 (3.09%) Designer
12 43 (2.88%) Supply Chain Architect
13 40 (2.68%) Senior Manager
14 32 (2.15%) Data Analyst
14 32 (2.15%) Senior Developer
15 29 (1.95%) EPoS Engineer
16 26 (1.74%) Technical Manager
17 25 (1.68%) Data Engineer
18 24 (1.61%) 2nd Line Support
18 24 (1.61%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (4.43%) REST
2 46 (3.09%) Terraform
3 39 (2.62%) Kafka
4 36 (2.41%) React
5 30 (2.01%) Spring
6 26 (1.74%) Spring Boot
7 24 (1.61%) Node.js
8 23 (1.54%) Django
9 22 (1.48%) Middleware
9 22 (1.48%) RESTful
10 20 (1.34%) Next.js
10 20 (1.34%) SOAP
11 18 (1.21%) MACH
12 17 (1.14%) SAP Fiori
13 16 (1.07%) .NET
13 16 (1.07%) HTML
14 14 (0.94%) VML
15 13 (0.87%) SAPUI5
16 11 (0.74%) CSS
16 11 (0.74%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 73 (4.90%) Product Ownership
2 72 (4.83%) EPoS
3 69 (4.63%) FMCG
4 54 (3.62%) Onboarding
5 48 (3.22%) Cloud Native
6 44 (2.95%) Driving Licence
7 33 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
7 33 (2.21%) Management Information System
8 30 (2.01%) Mobile App
9 26 (1.74%) Greenfield Project
10 24 (1.61%) Data Centre
11 23 (1.54%) Marketing Technology
12 22 (1.48%) Data Structures
12 22 (1.48%) Smartphone
13 21 (1.41%) Operational Technology
14 20 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
15 16 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
16 15 (1.01%) Graphic Design
17 14 (0.94%) Credit Risk
17 14 (0.94%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 45 (3.02%) Windows
2 16 (1.07%) Linux
3 12 (0.80%) Android
4 8 (0.54%) Unix
5 7 (0.47%) Apple iOS
5 7 (0.47%) macOS
6 6 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.40%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.27%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.13%) Debian
8 2 (0.13%) zOS
9 1 (0.067%) OS/2
9 1 (0.067%) SUSE
9 1 (0.067%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.067%) VMS
9 1 (0.067%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 407 (27.30%) Stakeholder Management
2 339 (22.74%) Agile
3 246 (16.50%) E-Commerce
4 180 (12.07%) Migration
5 176 (11.80%) Analytics
6 174 (11.67%) Logistics
7 159 (10.66%) AI
8 155 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
9 152 (10.19%) Roadmaps
10 145 (9.73%) Decision-Making
11 132 (8.85%) CRM
12 128 (8.58%) Customer Experience
13 127 (8.52%) Continuous Improvement
14 122 (8.18%) CI/CD
15 111 (7.44%) DevOps
16 109 (7.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 107 (7.18%) Customer Service
18 102 (6.84%) ERP
18 102 (6.84%) Project Management
19 101 (6.77%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 138 (9.26%) SQL
2 107 (7.18%) Python
3 50 (3.35%) Java
4 33 (2.21%) TypeScript
5 24 (1.61%) JavaScript
6 13 (0.87%) ABAP
7 12 (0.80%) C#
7 12 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 10 (0.67%) R
9 8 (0.54%) Bash
10 7 (0.47%) PL/SQL
10 7 (0.47%) PowerShell
11 6 (0.40%) Apex Code
12 5 (0.34%) Groovy
12 5 (0.34%) 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%) X++
Qualifications
1 64 (4.29%) Degree
2 27 (1.81%) Security Cleared
3 22 (1.48%) PMP
4 14 (0.94%) ITIL Certification
5 11 (0.74%) PMI Certification
6 10 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (0.47%) DBS Check
8 6 (0.40%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (0.40%) CISSP
8 6 (0.40%) SC Cleared
9 5 (0.34%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.34%) CISM
9 5 (0.34%) City & Guilds
9 5 (0.34%) Six Sigma Green Belt
10 4 (0.27%) AWS Certification
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
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (5.03%) Data Quality
2 73 (4.90%) QA
3 24 (1.61%) Accessibility
3 24 (1.61%) GDPR
4 23 (1.54%) PMO
5 13 (0.87%) PCI DSS
6 8 (0.54%) SLA
7 6 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.34%) NIST
8 5 (0.34%) WCAG
9 4 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.20%) PSD2
11 2 (0.13%) GAAP
11 2 (0.13%) GRC
11 2 (0.13%) IFRS
12 1 (0.067%) Basel III
12 1 (0.067%) HL7
12 1 (0.067%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.067%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 34 (2.28%) Docker
2 22 (1.48%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.34%) Firmware
6 4 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.067%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.067%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 39 (2.62%) Kubernetes
2 9 (0.60%) Ansible
3 8 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
4 7 (0.47%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 5 (0.34%) FortiGate
5 5 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.27%) Bosun
7 3 (0.20%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.20%) SCCM
8 2 (0.13%) AirWatch
8 2 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.13%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.067%) Argo
9 1 (0.067%) CloudHub
9 1 (0.067%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.067%) Grafana
9 1 (0.067%) vMotion
Vendors
1 153 (10.26%) Microsoft
2 123 (8.25%) SAP
3 76 (5.10%) Salesforce
4 70 (4.69%) Databricks
5 68 (4.56%) Oracle
6 56 (3.76%) Google
7 33 (2.21%) Adobe
8 26 (1.74%) MuleSoft
9 23 (1.54%) Zscaler
10 17 (1.14%) Cisco
10 17 (1.14%) IBM
10 17 (1.14%) Workday
11 13 (0.87%) New Relic
12 12 (0.80%) Apple
12 12 (0.80%) ServiceNow
13 11 (0.74%) Braze
13 11 (0.74%) Splunk
14 10 (0.67%) Fortinet
14 10 (0.67%) JDA
15 9 (0.60%) VMware