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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 97 77
Rank change year-on-year 0 -20 +10
Contract jobs citing Retail 981 646 993
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.38% 2.69% 2.73%
As % of the General category 4.40% 4.20% 4.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 577 337 546
10th Percentile £260 £324 £284
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year - +2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £505
% change year-on-year -4.76% +3.96% -5.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 18 86
10th Percentile £13.02 £15.25 £11.44
25th Percentile £15.63 £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 £23.21 £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 22,317 15,380 21,160
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.04% 64.14% 58.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,762 9,956 13,647
10th Percentile £310 £287 £281
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £626 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £510 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,495 664 1,773
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.80 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.22 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £31.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.73% -8.33% -6.25%
75th Percentile £61.34 £55.06 £51.91
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.25
UK median hourly rate £30.08 £27.57 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.10% -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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -1 541 £540 -2.26% 494
North of England -36 129 £511 +13.61% 273
South East -9 127 £463 -7.50% 280
Midlands -27 89 £495 -1.00% 154
North West -7 79 £510 +7.37% 151
East Midlands +2 52 £495 -1.00% 77
East of England -2 50 £509 +1.80% 112
Yorkshire -46 48 £513 +33.12% 108
West Midlands -42 37 £500 +5.26% 77
South West -12 31 £333 -33.50% 96
North East -29 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 (3.77%) Confluence
2 14 (1.43%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 7 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (0.71%) CMS
5 4 (0.41%) SAS
6 3 (0.31%) 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 (3.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 21 (2.14%) Microsoft Office
3 20 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 19 (1.94%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (1.33%) Chatbot
6 11 (1.12%) MS Visio
7 10 (1.02%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.82%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.51%) InDesign
10 4 (0.41%) 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 (2.04%) Shopify
2 16 (1.63%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.82%) SAP Retail
4 7 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 7 (0.71%) Oracle Retail
5 6 (0.61%) Finacle
6 5 (0.51%) SAP CRM
6 5 (0.51%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.41%) Magento
8 3 (0.31%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.31%) 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%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 100 (10.19%) Azure
2 75 (7.65%) AWS
3 54 (5.50%) GCP
4 49 (4.99%) Power Platform
5 27 (2.75%) Snowflake
6 23 (2.34%) GitHub
7 21 (2.14%) Dynamics 365
8 18 (1.83%) Azure DevOps
9 17 (1.73%) Microsoft 365
10 15 (1.53%) Figma
10 15 (1.53%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (1.43%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 12 (1.22%) BigCommerce
12 12 (1.22%) Entra ID
13 11 (1.12%) Google Workspace
14 10 (1.02%) Miro
14 10 (1.02%) SaaS
15 9 (0.92%) Azure Data Factory
15 9 (0.92%) Cloud Run
16 8 (0.82%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.43%) Firewall
1 14 (1.43%) WAN
2 13 (1.33%) VPN
3 10 (1.02%) ATM
4 9 (0.92%) Wireless
5 8 (0.82%) RFID
5 8 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (0.71%) Cisco Nexus
6 7 (0.71%) LAN
6 7 (0.71%) Network Security
7 5 (0.51%) BGP
7 5 (0.51%) Cisco Firepower
7 5 (0.51%) OSPF
8 4 (0.41%) Cisco ASA
8 4 (0.41%) SD-WAN
8 4 (0.41%) VSAN
9 3 (0.31%) EIGRP
9 3 (0.31%) MPLS
9 3 (0.31%) VoIP
10 2 (0.20%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (4.59%) Power BI
2 28 (2.85%) BigQuery
3 17 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (1.33%) MySQL
4 13 (1.33%) SQL Server
5 11 (1.12%) Tableau
6 10 (1.02%) Data Lake
6 10 (1.02%) Metadata
7 7 (0.71%) Relational Database
8 6 (0.61%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.51%) Data Vault
9 5 (0.51%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.41%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.41%) PostgreSQL
10 4 (0.41%) Semantic Layer
11 3 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.31%) Big Data
11 3 (0.31%) DynamoDB
11 3 (0.31%) Looker
11 3 (0.31%) Oracle OLAP
Development Applications
1 75 (7.65%) JIRA
2 16 (1.63%) Git
3 15 (1.53%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.82%) GitLab
5 4 (0.41%) Maven
5 4 (0.41%) Subversion
6 3 (0.31%) ERwin
6 3 (0.31%) JMeter
6 3 (0.31%) 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%) HP UFT
8 1 (0.10%) Mockito
8 1 (0.10%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.10%) Toad
General
1 284 (28.95%) Social Skills
2 249 (25.38%) Finance
3 98 (9.99%) Analytical Skills
4 88 (8.97%) Banking
5 63 (6.42%) Marketing
6 45 (4.59%) Organisational Skills
7 43 (4.38%) Manufacturing
7 43 (4.38%) Retail Banking
8 36 (3.67%) Investment Banking
9 32 (3.26%) Corporate Banking
10 26 (2.65%) Public Sector
10 26 (2.65%) Telecoms
11 24 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
11 24 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
12 21 (2.14%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (1.63%) Legal
14 15 (1.53%) Advertising
15 13 (1.33%) Back Office
16 12 (1.22%) French Language
17 11 (1.12%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 152 (15.49%) Architect
2 141 (14.37%) Analyst
3 123 (12.54%) Senior
4 104 (10.60%) Project Manager
5 84 (8.56%) Business Analyst
6 71 (7.24%) Lead
7 63 (6.42%) Solutions Architect
8 56 (5.71%) Senior Manager
9 41 (4.18%) Technical Manager
10 35 (3.57%) Designer
11 31 (3.16%) Consultant
11 31 (3.16%) Enterprise Architect
11 31 (3.16%) Senior Project Manager
12 28 (2.85%) Developer
12 28 (2.85%) Product Manager
13 26 (2.65%) Data Architect
14 21 (2.14%) Data Engineer
15 20 (2.04%) Programme Manager
15 20 (2.04%) Service Manager
16 18 (1.83%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (2.96%) VML
2 27 (2.75%) Middleware
3 24 (2.45%) REST
4 22 (2.24%) React
5 21 (2.14%) Spring
6 16 (1.63%) Node.js
7 15 (1.53%) Spring Boot
8 13 (1.33%) AngularJS
9 9 (0.92%) CSS
9 9 (0.92%) Kafka
10 8 (0.82%) OpenTelemetry
10 8 (0.82%) PySpark
10 8 (0.82%) RESTful
11 7 (0.71%) LangChain
11 7 (0.71%) MACH
11 7 (0.71%) OAuth
11 7 (0.71%) OAuth2
11 7 (0.71%) OpenID
12 6 (0.61%) GraphQL
12 6 (0.61%) jQuery
Miscellaneous
1 69 (7.03%) Product Ownership
2 31 (3.16%) EPoS
3 29 (2.96%) Driving Licence
4 28 (2.85%) Cloud Native
5 25 (2.55%) FMCG
5 25 (2.55%) Onboarding
6 22 (2.24%) Data Centre
7 19 (1.94%) Data Structures
7 19 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
8 18 (1.83%) Management Information System
9 14 (1.43%) Mainframe
10 13 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
10 13 (1.33%) Mobile App
11 10 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
11 10 (1.02%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.92%) AI Agents
12 9 (0.92%) CCTV
12 9 (0.92%) Smartphone
13 7 (0.71%) Enterprise Cloud
14 6 (0.61%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 46 (4.69%) Windows
2 21 (2.14%) Linux
3 8 (0.82%) Android
4 6 (0.61%) Mac OS
4 6 (0.61%) Unix
5 5 (0.51%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.41%) zOS
7 3 (0.31%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.31%) 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 (22.22%) Agile
2 209 (21.30%) Stakeholder Management
3 171 (17.43%) Problem-Solving
4 146 (14.88%) E-Commerce
5 121 (12.33%) Migration
6 114 (11.62%) Roadmaps
7 102 (10.40%) Project Management
8 101 (10.30%) Analytics
9 97 (9.89%) Customer Experience
10 82 (8.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 79 (8.05%) ERP
12 76 (7.75%) Continuous Improvement
13 75 (7.65%) Scrum
14 73 (7.44%) Change Management
15 72 (7.34%) Project Delivery
16 70 (7.14%) AI
17 69 (7.03%) Decision-Making
18 66 (6.73%) User Acceptance Testing
18 66 (6.73%) Workshop Facilitation
19 62 (6.32%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 62 (6.32%) SQL
2 52 (5.30%) Python
3 32 (3.26%) Java
4 23 (2.34%) JavaScript
5 12 (1.22%) TypeScript
6 10 (1.02%) PowerShell
6 10 (1.02%) Shell Script
7 5 (0.51%) Bash
7 5 (0.51%) C#
8 4 (0.41%) Bicep
8 4 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
8 4 (0.41%) Scala
8 4 (0.41%) SOQL
8 4 (0.41%) VBA
9 3 (0.31%) Apex Code
9 3 (0.31%) Kotlin
9 3 (0.31%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.31%) SOSL
10 2 (0.20%) Korn
10 2 (0.20%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 52 (5.30%) Degree
2 41 (4.18%) Security Cleared
3 26 (2.65%) SC Cleared
4 17 (1.73%) PMP
5 11 (1.12%) PMI Certification
6 8 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (0.82%) CSPO
7 7 (0.71%) APMP
7 7 (0.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.71%) CCNP
7 7 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
7 7 (0.71%) CISSP
7 7 (0.71%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.71%) Master's Degree
8 5 (0.51%) CISM
8 5 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.51%) MBA
9 4 (0.41%) CCSE
9 4 (0.41%) CCSM
9 4 (0.41%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (4.18%) QA
2 40 (4.08%) Data Quality
3 34 (3.47%) GDPR
4 33 (3.36%) PMO
5 14 (1.43%) Accessibility
5 14 (1.43%) SLA
6 10 (1.02%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.51%) NIST
9 4 (0.41%) IFRS
10 2 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.20%) GRC
10 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.20%) WCAG
11 1 (0.10%) COBIT
11 1 (0.10%) GAAP
11 1 (0.10%) GxP
11 1 (0.10%) ISO 8583
11 1 (0.10%) Solvency II
System Software
1 23 (2.34%) Docker
2 17 (1.73%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.31%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 22 (2.24%) Terraform
2 16 (1.63%) Kubernetes
3 8 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (0.71%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.61%) Argo
5 6 (0.61%) Istio
6 5 (0.51%) SCCM
6 5 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.41%) 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 84 (8.56%) Microsoft
2 69 (7.03%) SAP
3 61 (6.22%) Oracle
4 46 (4.69%) Salesforce
5 45 (4.59%) Google
6 39 (3.98%) Databricks
7 26 (2.65%) Adobe
8 16 (1.63%) ServiceNow
9 14 (1.43%) IFS
9 14 (1.43%) Sitecore
10 12 (1.22%) Cisco
11 10 (1.02%) VMware
12 9 (0.92%) Palo Alto
13 8 (0.82%) CheckPoint
13 8 (0.82%) Fortinet
13 8 (0.82%) Temenos
13 8 (0.82%) Zscaler
14 7 (0.71%) Splunk
14 7 (0.71%) Workday
15 6 (0.61%) GoldenSource