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 8 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 91 81
Rank change year-on-year -40 -10 +4
Contract jobs citing Retail 810 687 975
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.07% 2.82% 2.61%
As % of the General category 3.67% 4.43% 4.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 512 376 559
10th Percentile £200 £307 £281
25th Percentile £363 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £520
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -0.95%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £744 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £505
% change year-on-year -4.76% +3.96% -4.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 15 77
10th Percentile £12.87 £16.40 £11.13
25th Percentile £14.75 £19.69 £12.15
Median hourly rate £16.50 £32.50 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.23% +103.13% -19.23%
75th Percentile £23.39 £50.00 £21.37
90th Percentile £50.05 £62.60 £21.46
UK median hourly rate £16.92 £33.00 £16.00
% change year-on-year -48.73% +106.25% -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 22,053 15,508 21,809
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 56.41% 63.68% 58.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,895 10,101 14,140
10th Percentile £303 £300 £275
25th Percentile £408 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,405 635 1,727
10th Percentile £14.30 £14.28 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £18.13 £15.38
Median hourly rate £27.50 £29.07 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.40% +5.71% -21.43%
75th Percentile £61.18 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £26.70
% change year-on-year -11.14% +8.63% -23.73%

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 8 April 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 8 April 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 8 April 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 -28 450 £525 -4.55% 362
South East -11 113 £416 -22.56% 242
North of England -40 95 £500 +11.11% 224
Midlands -36 77 £495 -1.00% 186
North West -25 50 £475 -5.00% 111
East Midlands -5 44 £495 -1.00% 118
Yorkshire -33 41 £513 +33.12% 91
East of England -19 39 £475 -9.52% 88
West Midlands -61 32 £481 +8.45% 68
South West -26 21 £318 -6.62% 84
North East -16 4 £206 -72.50% 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 37 (4.57%) Confluence
2 15 (1.85%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.60%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 11 (1.36%) CMS
5 10 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (0.49%) WordPress
7 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.37%) SAS
8 2 (0.25%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.25%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.12%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.12%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 31 (3.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (2.35%) Microsoft Project
3 15 (1.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (1.73%) Microsoft Office
5 12 (1.48%) Chatbot
6 10 (1.23%) MS Visio
7 6 (0.74%) Photoshop
8 5 (0.62%) Adobe Illustrator
9 3 (0.37%) InDesign
10 2 (0.25%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.25%) Trello
11 1 (0.12%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.12%) Adobe After Effects
11 1 (0.12%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.12%) Maya
11 1 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.12%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 18 (2.22%) Shopify
2 16 (1.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (1.23%) SAP Retail
5 8 (0.99%) Oracle Retail
6 6 (0.74%) Finacle
6 6 (0.74%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 5 (0.62%) SAP Payroll
8 4 (0.49%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.49%) Temenos T24
9 3 (0.37%) SAP MM
9 3 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 2 (0.25%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.25%) Sprinklr
11 1 (0.12%) Endur
11 1 (0.12%) OpenText VIM for SAP
11 1 (0.12%) SAP CAR
11 1 (0.12%) SAP CRM
11 1 (0.12%) SAP MDM
11 1 (0.12%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 85 (10.49%) Azure
2 53 (6.54%) Power Platform
3 49 (6.05%) AWS
3 49 (6.05%) GCP
4 24 (2.96%) Dynamics 365
5 21 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
6 20 (2.47%) GitHub
7 19 (2.35%) Snowflake
8 18 (2.22%) Microsoft 365
9 13 (1.60%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (1.60%) SaaS
10 12 (1.48%) Entra ID
10 12 (1.48%) Google Workspace
11 11 (1.36%) BigCommerce
11 11 (1.36%) Figma
12 10 (1.23%) Miro
13 9 (1.11%) Cloud Run
13 9 (1.11%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
14 8 (0.99%) Azure Logic Apps
14 8 (0.99%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 17 (2.10%) VPN
2 16 (1.98%) RFID
3 12 (1.48%) Firewall
3 12 (1.48%) WAN
4 11 (1.36%) Wireless
5 8 (0.99%) NFC
6 7 (0.86%) LAN
7 6 (0.74%) Cisco Nexus
7 6 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.62%) BGP
8 5 (0.62%) OSPF
9 4 (0.49%) EIGRP
9 4 (0.49%) VoIP
10 3 (0.37%) Cisco Firepower
10 3 (0.37%) MPLS
10 3 (0.37%) SD-WAN
11 2 (0.25%) SAN
11 2 (0.25%) SSL
11 2 (0.25%) VSAN
11 2 (0.25%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (5.56%) Power BI
2 24 (2.96%) BigQuery
3 16 (1.98%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (1.60%) SQL Server
5 12 (1.48%) MySQL
6 11 (1.36%) Tableau
7 10 (1.23%) Metadata
8 8 (0.99%) Data Vault
9 6 (0.74%) Data Lake
10 5 (0.62%) PostgreSQL
10 5 (0.62%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.49%) Delta Lake
11 4 (0.49%) NoSQL
12 3 (0.37%) Looker
12 3 (0.37%) OLAP
12 3 (0.37%) Oracle OLAP
12 3 (0.37%) Oracle Reports
12 3 (0.37%) Snowflake Schema
12 3 (0.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 2 (0.25%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 70 (8.64%) JIRA
2 9 (1.11%) Git
2 9 (1.11%) Jenkins
3 7 (0.86%) GitLab
4 5 (0.62%) ERwin
5 4 (0.49%) Maven
6 3 (0.37%) Selenium
6 3 (0.37%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.25%) MLflow
7 2 (0.25%) PowerDesigner
7 2 (0.25%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.12%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.12%) Gatling
8 1 (0.12%) HP UFT
8 1 (0.12%) Hudson
8 1 (0.12%) JMeter
8 1 (0.12%) Mockito
8 1 (0.12%) Zephyr
General
1 270 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 202 (24.94%) Finance
3 93 (11.48%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (8.27%) Banking
5 61 (7.53%) Marketing
6 39 (4.81%) Organisational Skills
7 38 (4.69%) Manufacturing
8 31 (3.83%) Public Sector
9 27 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
10 25 (3.09%) Presentation Skills
11 24 (2.96%) Influencing Skills
12 23 (2.84%) Investment Banking
13 22 (2.72%) Retail Banking
14 21 (2.59%) Corporate Banking
15 14 (1.73%) Telecoms
16 11 (1.36%) Legal
17 9 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 8 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
19 7 (0.86%) Publishing
20 6 (0.74%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 140 (17.28%) Analyst
2 108 (13.33%) Architect
3 102 (12.59%) Project Manager
4 100 (12.35%) Senior
5 80 (9.88%) Business Analyst
6 64 (7.90%) Lead
7 44 (5.43%) Senior Manager
8 41 (5.06%) Solutions Architect
9 34 (4.20%) Consultant
10 32 (3.95%) Technical Manager
11 23 (2.84%) Senior Project Manager
12 22 (2.72%) Data Architect
13 21 (2.59%) Designer
13 21 (2.59%) Enterprise Architect
13 21 (2.59%) Programme Manager
14 17 (2.10%) Service Manager
15 16 (1.98%) IT Manager
16 15 (1.85%) Data Engineer
16 15 (1.85%) Product Manager
17 13 (1.60%) E-Commerce Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (3.09%) VML
2 22 (2.72%) Middleware
3 19 (2.35%) REST
4 15 (1.85%) Spring
5 12 (1.48%) AngularJS
5 12 (1.48%) React
6 10 (1.23%) Spring Boot
7 9 (1.11%) PySpark
8 8 (0.99%) .NET
8 8 (0.99%) CSS
8 8 (0.99%) HTML
8 8 (0.99%) Node.js
9 7 (0.86%) scikit-learn
10 6 (0.74%) jQuery
10 6 (0.74%) LangChain
10 6 (0.74%) OpenTelemetry
11 5 (0.62%) OAuth
11 5 (0.62%) OAuth2
11 5 (0.62%) PyTorch
11 5 (0.62%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 55 (6.79%) Product Ownership
2 27 (3.33%) Self-Motivation
3 26 (3.21%) Driving Licence
4 25 (3.09%) Cloud Native
5 21 (2.59%) Data Centre
5 21 (2.59%) Onboarding
6 20 (2.47%) FMCG
6 20 (2.47%) Management Information System
7 15 (1.85%) Data Structures
7 15 (1.85%) EPoS
7 15 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
8 12 (1.48%) Mainframe
9 11 (1.36%) Mobile App
10 9 (1.11%) IoT
10 9 (1.11%) Virtual Team
11 8 (0.99%) Reference Data
12 7 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (0.86%) Social Media
13 6 (0.74%) Algorithms
13 6 (0.74%) Learning Management System
Operating Systems
1 37 (4.57%) Windows
2 19 (2.35%) Linux
3 9 (1.11%) Mac OS
4 5 (0.62%) Android
5 4 (0.49%) Unix
5 4 (0.49%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.37%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.37%) zOS
7 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.12%) VMS
7 1 (0.12%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (23.21%) Stakeholder Management
2 179 (22.10%) Agile
3 158 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
4 113 (13.95%) E-Commerce
5 98 (12.10%) Migration
6 94 (11.60%) Project Management
7 90 (11.11%) Roadmaps
8 88 (10.86%) Analytics
9 81 (10.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 74 (9.14%) Customer Experience
11 69 (8.52%) ERP
11 69 (8.52%) Workshop Facilitation
12 66 (8.15%) AI
12 66 (8.15%) Continuous Improvement
13 65 (8.02%) Project Delivery
13 65 (8.02%) Scrum
14 64 (7.90%) Change Management
15 58 (7.16%) Business Intelligence
16 57 (7.04%) DevOps
17 54 (6.67%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 55 (6.79%) SQL
2 54 (6.67%) Python
3 26 (3.21%) Java
4 18 (2.22%) JavaScript
5 14 (1.73%) PowerShell
6 9 (1.11%) Bash
6 9 (1.11%) Shell Script
7 8 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
8 7 (0.86%) C#
9 4 (0.49%) TypeScript
9 4 (0.49%) VBA
10 3 (0.37%) Kotlin
10 3 (0.37%) Scala
11 2 (0.25%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 2 (0.25%) Google Apps Script
11 2 (0.25%) PHP
11 2 (0.25%) R
11 2 (0.25%) SOQL
11 2 (0.25%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 45 (5.56%) Degree
2 29 (3.58%) Security Cleared
3 21 (2.59%) PMP
4 19 (2.35%) SC Cleared
5 16 (1.98%) PMI Certification
6 7 (0.86%) APMP
6 7 (0.86%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (0.86%) CSPO
6 7 (0.86%) Master's Degree
7 6 (0.74%) CCNP
7 6 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (0.74%) CISSP
7 6 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.74%) MBA
8 4 (0.49%) CCIE
8 4 (0.49%) CISM
8 4 (0.49%) CRISC
9 3 (0.37%) DBS Check
9 3 (0.37%) ITIL Certification
9 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.32%) Data Quality
2 34 (4.20%) QA
3 30 (3.70%) PMO
4 25 (3.09%) GDPR
5 18 (2.22%) SLA
6 12 (1.48%) Accessibility
7 8 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.74%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.62%) NIST
10 4 (0.49%) IFRS
11 3 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.25%) GRC
12 2 (0.25%) NCSC
13 1 (0.12%) GAAP
13 1 (0.12%) GxP
13 1 (0.12%) IFRS 9
13 1 (0.12%) ISO 8583
13 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 17 (2.10%) Active Directory
2 15 (1.85%) Docker
3 5 (0.62%) VMware NSX
4 4 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.37%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.12%) RACF
7 1 (0.12%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 20 (2.47%) Terraform
2 12 (1.48%) Kubernetes
3 7 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
3 7 (0.86%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 6 (0.74%) Argo
4 6 (0.74%) Istio
4 6 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (0.62%) Grafana
6 4 (0.49%) SCCM
7 2 (0.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.25%) CA Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
7 2 (0.25%) MOM
7 2 (0.25%) PingFederate
8 1 (0.12%) Ansible
8 1 (0.12%) Control-M
8 1 (0.12%) Nmap
8 1 (0.12%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.12%) ZABBIX
8 1 (0.12%) zSecure
Vendors
1 78 (9.63%) Microsoft
2 62 (7.65%) SAP
3 48 (5.93%) Google
4 45 (5.56%) Oracle
5 37 (4.57%) Salesforce
6 33 (4.07%) Databricks
7 27 (3.33%) Adobe
8 18 (2.22%) ServiceNow
9 14 (1.73%) Sitecore
10 9 (1.11%) Cisco
10 9 (1.11%) IFS
11 8 (0.99%) Palo Alto
11 8 (0.99%) Temenos
11 8 (0.99%) VMware
12 7 (0.86%) CheckPoint
12 7 (0.86%) Workday
12 7 (0.86%) Zscaler
13 6 (0.74%) Apple
13 6 (0.74%) Avaloq
13 6 (0.74%) GoldenSource