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 23 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 107 75
Rank change year-on-year +21 -32 +13
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,346 691 1,002
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.00% 2.53% 2.85%
As % of the General category 5.43% 3.97% 4.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 810 353 549
10th Percentile £308 £301 £300
25th Percentile £425 £410 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - -0.94%
75th Percentile £675 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £538 £507 £509
% change year-on-year +6.12% -0.44% -4.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 38 75
10th Percentile £12.98 - £12.15
25th Percentile £15.24 £15.25 £12.50
Median hourly rate £21.00 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +28.83% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £25.15 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £54.20 £21.46
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £16.30 £16.30
% change year-on-year +28.83% - -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 24,805 17,396 20,224
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.27% 63.62% 57.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,882 11,107 12,994
10th Percentile £313 £281 £300
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £748 £752 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,814 911 1,473
10th Percentile £14.25 £13.25 £13.85
25th Percentile £19.03 £16.46 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.28 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.34% -28.00% +21.67%
75th Percentile £65.00 £51.58 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.81 £26.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +26.17% -25.71% +14.68%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 +29 785 £550 - 513
South East +12 173 £525 -8.70% 279
North of England -19 169 £550 +10.00% 216
North West +6 109 £575 +15.00% 116
Midlands -2 108 £500 +17.65% 172
East of England +10 62 £550 +10.00% 90
East Midlands +7 57 £500 +21.21% 80
West Midlands -26 51 £606 +42.65% 91
Yorkshire -44 51 £500 -4.76% 78
South West -36 36 £322 -9.23% 85
North East -33 9 £155 -81.17% 24
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 (2.75%) Confluence
2 19 (1.41%) CMS
3 15 (1.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 9 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.52%) SharePoint
6 4 (0.30%) SAS
6 4 (0.30%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.15%) Anypoint
7 2 (0.15%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.15%) CICS
8 1 (0.074%) Apache
8 1 (0.074%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.074%) Mule
Applications
1 46 (3.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (2.38%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 19 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.97%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 13 (0.97%) Chatbot
6 10 (0.74%) Photoshop
7 9 (0.67%) Adobe Illustrator
8 6 (0.45%) InDesign
9 3 (0.22%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.22%) MS Visio
9 3 (0.22%) Notion
9 3 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
10 2 (0.15%) UserZoom
11 1 (0.074%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.074%) Maya
11 1 (0.074%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.074%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 38 (2.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (2.01%) Shopify
3 11 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.74%) Oracle Retail
5 8 (0.59%) Magento
6 7 (0.52%) SAP CRM
7 6 (0.45%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.45%) SAP Retail
8 5 (0.37%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.37%) SAP SD
9 4 (0.30%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
10 3 (0.22%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 3 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 3 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.22%) SAP CAR
10 3 (0.22%) SAP ERP
11 2 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
11 2 (0.15%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 168 (12.48%) Azure
2 129 (9.58%) AWS
3 68 (5.05%) GCP
4 65 (4.83%) Power Platform
5 44 (3.27%) Snowflake
6 39 (2.90%) GitHub
7 28 (2.08%) Entra ID
8 26 (1.93%) Azure DevOps
9 24 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
10 23 (1.71%) Dynamics 365
11 22 (1.63%) Figma
12 16 (1.19%) SaaS
13 15 (1.11%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
14 12 (0.89%) Azure Data Factory
15 11 (0.82%) Google Workspace
15 11 (0.82%) Salesforce Service Cloud
16 10 (0.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 10 (0.74%) dbt
16 10 (0.74%) Microsoft 365
17 9 (0.67%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.19%) Firewall
1 16 (1.19%) WAN
2 15 (1.11%) Wireless
3 14 (1.04%) ATM
3 14 (1.04%) VPN
4 13 (0.97%) Network Security
5 10 (0.74%) LAN
6 8 (0.59%) BGP
6 8 (0.59%) IPsec
6 8 (0.59%) OSPF
6 8 (0.59%) RFID
6 8 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (0.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 7 (0.52%) VLAN
8 6 (0.45%) Cisco Firepower
8 6 (0.45%) SD-WAN
9 5 (0.37%) Cisco ASA
9 5 (0.37%) Cisco Nexus
9 5 (0.37%) Structured Cabling
9 5 (0.37%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (4.68%) Power BI
2 31 (2.30%) BigQuery
3 19 (1.41%) Data Lake
3 19 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
4 16 (1.19%) MySQL
5 15 (1.11%) Metadata
5 15 (1.11%) NoSQL
6 14 (1.04%) Tableau
7 12 (0.89%) Relational Database
8 11 (0.82%) SQL Server
9 10 (0.74%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
10 8 (0.59%) PostgreSQL
10 8 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 7 (0.52%) Power Query
11 7 (0.52%) Redis
12 6 (0.45%) Couchbase
12 6 (0.45%) Looker
12 6 (0.45%) SAP HANA
12 6 (0.45%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 70 (5.20%) JIRA
2 26 (1.93%) Git
3 18 (1.34%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.59%) Subversion
5 5 (0.37%) Claude Code
6 4 (0.30%) Cypress.io
6 4 (0.30%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.30%) Maven
7 3 (0.22%) GitLab
8 2 (0.15%) git-flow
8 2 (0.15%) Hudson
8 2 (0.15%) JMeter
8 2 (0.15%) MLflow
8 2 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (0.15%) Postman
8 2 (0.15%) Selenium
8 2 (0.15%) webpack
9 1 (0.074%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.074%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.074%) TestRail
General
1 379 (28.16%) Social Skills
2 306 (22.73%) Finance
3 128 (9.51%) Analytical Skills
4 103 (7.65%) Banking
5 93 (6.91%) Marketing
6 81 (6.02%) Manufacturing
7 58 (4.31%) Organisational Skills
8 50 (3.71%) Retail Banking
9 39 (2.90%) Investment Banking
10 36 (2.67%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
12 25 (1.86%) Telecoms
13 23 (1.71%) Public Sector
14 22 (1.63%) Legal
14 22 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
15 21 (1.56%) Advertising
15 21 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
16 19 (1.41%) French Language
17 18 (1.34%) Spanish Language
18 13 (0.97%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 227 (16.86%) Architect
2 177 (13.15%) Analyst
3 168 (12.48%) Senior
4 125 (9.29%) Project Manager
5 122 (9.06%) Solutions Architect
6 95 (7.06%) Lead
7 91 (6.76%) Business Analyst
8 64 (4.75%) Developer
9 60 (4.46%) Senior Manager
10 52 (3.86%) Designer
11 44 (3.27%) Product Manager
12 39 (2.90%) Consultant
13 37 (2.75%) Technical Manager
14 34 (2.53%) Senior Project Manager
15 33 (2.45%) Enterprise Architect
16 32 (2.38%) Programme Manager
17 31 (2.30%) Data Architect
17 31 (2.30%) Supply Chain Architect
18 29 (2.15%) Senior Developer
19 27 (2.01%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (4.61%) REST
2 33 (2.45%) React
3 30 (2.23%) Middleware
3 30 (2.23%) Spring
4 25 (1.86%) Kafka
5 22 (1.63%) Spring Boot
6 21 (1.56%) VML
7 20 (1.49%) Node.js
8 19 (1.41%) Django
9 18 (1.34%) RESTful
10 17 (1.26%) HTML
11 16 (1.19%) CSS
12 14 (1.04%) MACH
12 14 (1.04%) OAuth
12 14 (1.04%) SOAP
13 13 (0.97%) Jakarta EE
14 11 (0.82%) .NET
15 9 (0.67%) AngularJS
15 9 (0.67%) OAuth2
16 8 (0.59%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 71 (5.27%) Product Ownership
2 63 (4.68%) FMCG
3 49 (3.64%) EPoS
4 43 (3.19%) Onboarding
5 40 (2.97%) Cloud Native
6 34 (2.53%) Driving Licence
7 29 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
8 27 (2.01%) Data Centre
9 26 (1.93%) Mobile App
10 21 (1.56%) Data Structures
10 21 (1.56%) Operational Technology
10 21 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
11 20 (1.49%) Marketing Technology
12 19 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
13 16 (1.19%) IoT
14 13 (0.97%) AI Agents
14 13 (0.97%) Mainframe
15 12 (0.89%) Distributed Systems
15 12 (0.89%) Graphic Design
16 11 (0.82%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 54 (4.01%) Windows
2 23 (1.71%) Linux
3 11 (0.82%) Android
3 11 (0.82%) Unix
4 7 (0.52%) Apple iOS
5 6 (0.45%) Mac OS
5 6 (0.45%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.37%) Windows 10
6 5 (0.37%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.30%) zOS
8 2 (0.15%) Debian
9 1 (0.074%) SUSE
9 1 (0.074%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.074%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 342 (25.41%) Stakeholder Management
2 327 (24.29%) Agile
3 217 (16.12%) E-Commerce
4 185 (13.74%) Problem-Solving
5 172 (12.78%) Migration
6 168 (12.48%) Roadmaps
7 142 (10.55%) Analytics
8 137 (10.18%) Customer Experience
9 136 (10.10%) AI
10 111 (8.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 109 (8.10%) Logistics
11 109 (8.10%) Project Management
12 108 (8.02%) Continuous Improvement
13 106 (7.88%) Decision-Making
14 104 (7.73%) CI/CD
15 103 (7.65%) CRM
16 100 (7.43%) ERP
17 97 (7.21%) Project Delivery
18 93 (6.91%) User Acceptance Testing
19 90 (6.69%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 99 (7.36%) SQL
2 90 (6.69%) Python
3 54 (4.01%) Java
4 26 (1.93%) TypeScript
5 25 (1.86%) JavaScript
6 11 (0.82%) C#
7 9 (0.67%) PowerShell
8 7 (0.52%) ABAP
8 7 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (0.45%) Bicep
9 6 (0.45%) PL/SQL
9 6 (0.45%) R
9 6 (0.45%) Scala
10 5 (0.37%) Apex Code
10 5 (0.37%) Bash
10 5 (0.37%) Groovy
10 5 (0.37%) Shell Script
10 5 (0.37%) SOQL
11 4 (0.30%) Kotlin
12 3 (0.22%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 62 (4.61%) Degree
2 36 (2.67%) Security Cleared
3 22 (1.63%) PMP
4 20 (1.49%) SC Cleared
5 11 (0.82%) DBS Check
6 10 (0.74%) PMI Certification
7 8 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (0.59%) CISSP
8 6 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.45%) CISM
8 6 (0.45%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (0.45%) ITIL Certification
9 5 (0.37%) CCNP
9 5 (0.37%) CCSE
9 5 (0.37%) CCSM
9 5 (0.37%) CSPO
10 4 (0.30%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.30%) City & Guilds
10 4 (0.30%) PhD
11 3 (0.22%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (4.46%) QA
2 47 (3.49%) Data Quality
3 37 (2.75%) GDPR
4 30 (2.23%) PMO
5 24 (1.78%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.19%) PCI DSS
7 11 (0.82%) SLA
8 8 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.45%) NIST
10 5 (0.37%) WCAG
11 3 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.22%) GAAP
11 3 (0.22%) IFRS
11 3 (0.22%) PSD2
12 2 (0.15%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.15%) GRC
12 2 (0.15%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.074%) COBIT
13 1 (0.074%) GxP
System Software
1 35 (2.60%) Docker
2 32 (2.38%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.97%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.30%) Firmware
7 2 (0.15%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 43 (3.19%) Terraform
2 33 (2.45%) Kubernetes
3 14 (1.04%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 10 (0.74%) Ansible
5 6 (0.45%) FortiGate
5 6 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.30%) SCCM
8 3 (0.22%) Bosun
8 3 (0.22%) Grafana
9 2 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.15%) AirWatch
9 2 (0.15%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.15%) MOM
9 2 (0.15%) PingFederate
10 1 (0.074%) Argo
10 1 (0.074%) CloudHub
10 1 (0.074%) CSIRT
10 1 (0.074%) Istio
10 1 (0.074%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 109 (8.10%) Microsoft
2 98 (7.28%) SAP
3 69 (5.13%) Oracle
4 57 (4.23%) Salesforce
5 55 (4.09%) Databricks
6 49 (3.64%) Google
7 37 (2.75%) Adobe
8 24 (1.78%) Zscaler
9 18 (1.34%) ServiceNow
10 15 (1.11%) Cisco
10 15 (1.11%) MuleSoft
11 14 (1.04%) IFS
11 14 (1.04%) Workday
12 13 (0.97%) Fortinet
12 13 (0.97%) Palo Alto
13 12 (0.89%) VMware
14 11 (0.82%) Braze
15 10 (0.74%) IBM
15 10 (0.74%) Splunk
16 9 (0.67%) Sitecore