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 7 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 113 76
Rank change year-on-year +34 -37 +7
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,431 672 939
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.14% 2.44% 2.81%
As % of the General category 5.66% 3.80% 4.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 840 353 515
10th Percentile £319 £300 £300
25th Percentile £450 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +2.44% -3.30%
75th Percentile £675 £638 £638
90th Percentile £750 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £513 £500
% change year-on-year +7.32% +2.50% -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 40 67
10th Percentile £12.76 £15.18 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.59 £15.25 £12.75
Median hourly rate £18.75 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +15.03% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £25.15 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £39.33 £22.58
UK median hourly rate £18.75 £16.30 £16.30
% change year-on-year +15.03% - -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 25,285 17,686 19,198
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.41% 64.10% 57.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,101 11,292 12,347
10th Percentile £313 £280 £300
25th Percentile £419 £402 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £663
90th Percentile £750 £750 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,968 943 1,249
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.25 £14.14
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.50 £18.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +36.24%
75th Percentile £63.75 £50.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £74.75 £70.28
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +27.07%

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7 August 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 +48 828 £550 - 852
North of England -24 182 £550 +10.00% 347
South East +15 177 £525 -6.25% 350
Midlands +12 127 £527 +22.40% 260
North West +5 116 £550 +10.00% 187
East Midlands +19 70 £500 +21.21% 114
East of England +13 65 £550 +4.76% 110
West Midlands -24 57 £606 +34.72% 146
Yorkshire -35 55 £500 -4.76% 123
South West -31 37 £350 -1.48% 128
North East -37 11 £155 -64.89% 40
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 43 (3.00%) Confluence
2 18 (1.26%) CMS
3 13 (0.91%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 10 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.63%) SharePoint
6 4 (0.28%) SAS
6 4 (0.28%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.14%) Anypoint
7 2 (0.14%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.14%) CICS
8 1 (0.070%) Apache
8 1 (0.070%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.070%) Mule
Applications
1 54 (3.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (2.45%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.91%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 11 (0.77%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.63%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.42%) InDesign
9 6 (0.42%) MS Visio
9 6 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
10 4 (0.28%) Notion
11 3 (0.21%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.070%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.070%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 38 (2.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.89%) Shopify
3 11 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.63%) Oracle Retail
5 8 (0.56%) Magento
6 6 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.42%) SAP CRM
7 5 (0.35%) NetSuite
7 5 (0.35%) SAP MDG
7 5 (0.35%) SAP Retail
8 4 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
8 4 (0.28%) SAP SD
9 3 (0.21%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 3 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.21%) SAP ERP
9 3 (0.21%) SAP IBP
10 2 (0.14%) Finacle
10 2 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
10 2 (0.14%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 179 (12.51%) Azure
2 136 (9.50%) AWS
3 68 (4.75%) GCP
3 68 (4.75%) Power Platform
4 47 (3.28%) Snowflake
5 42 (2.94%) GitHub
6 33 (2.31%) Azure DevOps
7 30 (2.10%) Entra ID
8 26 (1.82%) GitHub Actions
9 24 (1.68%) Dynamics 365
10 19 (1.33%) Figma
11 16 (1.12%) SaaS
12 15 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
12 15 (1.05%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
13 13 (0.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 13 (0.91%) Microsoft 365
14 11 (0.77%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 11 (0.77%) Serverless
15 10 (0.70%) dbt
15 10 (0.70%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.47%) WAN
2 19 (1.33%) Firewall
3 16 (1.12%) VPN
3 16 (1.12%) Wireless
4 14 (0.98%) ATM
4 14 (0.98%) Network Security
5 13 (0.91%) LAN
6 11 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.56%) BGP
7 8 (0.56%) IPsec
7 8 (0.56%) OSPF
7 8 (0.56%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.49%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 7 (0.49%) RFID
8 7 (0.49%) VLAN
9 6 (0.42%) Cisco Firepower
9 6 (0.42%) VSAN
10 5 (0.35%) Cisco ASA
10 5 (0.35%) Cisco Nexus
10 5 (0.35%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (4.68%) Power BI
2 31 (2.17%) BigQuery
3 26 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
4 21 (1.47%) Data Lake
5 18 (1.26%) NoSQL
6 16 (1.12%) MongoDB
7 15 (1.05%) Metadata
7 15 (1.05%) MySQL
7 15 (1.05%) Tableau
8 14 (0.98%) SQL Server
9 12 (0.84%) Power Query
9 12 (0.84%) Relational Database
10 10 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
10 10 (0.70%) PostgreSQL
10 10 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 8 (0.56%) Redis
12 7 (0.49%) Couchbase
12 7 (0.49%) Looker
13 6 (0.42%) SAP HANA
13 6 (0.42%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 73 (5.10%) JIRA
2 26 (1.82%) Git
3 18 (1.26%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.56%) Subversion
5 7 (0.49%) Claude Code
6 4 (0.28%) Cypress.io
6 4 (0.28%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.28%) JMeter
6 4 (0.28%) Maven
7 3 (0.21%) GitLab
7 3 (0.21%) Hudson
8 2 (0.14%) git-flow
8 2 (0.14%) MLflow
8 2 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (0.14%) Postman
8 2 (0.14%) Selenium
8 2 (0.14%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.14%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.14%) webpack
9 1 (0.070%) Pylint
General
1 397 (27.74%) Social Skills
2 335 (23.41%) Finance
3 150 (10.48%) Analytical Skills
4 115 (8.04%) Banking
5 101 (7.06%) Marketing
6 87 (6.08%) Manufacturing
7 61 (4.26%) Organisational Skills
8 55 (3.84%) Retail Banking
9 43 (3.00%) Investment Banking
10 39 (2.73%) Corporate Banking
11 32 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.96%) Legal
12 28 (1.96%) Telecoms
13 27 (1.89%) Advertising
14 23 (1.61%) Public Sector
15 22 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
16 21 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
17 19 (1.33%) French Language
18 18 (1.26%) Spanish Language
19 13 (0.91%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 246 (17.19%) Architect
2 197 (13.77%) Analyst
3 168 (11.74%) Senior
4 137 (9.57%) Solutions Architect
5 117 (8.18%) Project Manager
6 101 (7.06%) Business Analyst
6 101 (7.06%) Lead
7 75 (5.24%) Developer
8 50 (3.49%) Senior Manager
9 46 (3.21%) Designer
10 45 (3.14%) Consultant
11 44 (3.07%) Product Manager
12 36 (2.52%) Supply Chain Architect
13 35 (2.45%) Enterprise Architect
14 34 (2.38%) Programme Manager
14 34 (2.38%) Senior Developer
15 32 (2.24%) Data Architect
15 32 (2.24%) Technical Manager
16 26 (1.82%) Data Analyst
16 26 (1.82%) Senior Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (4.54%) REST
2 37 (2.59%) React
3 31 (2.17%) Spring
4 30 (2.10%) Middleware
5 28 (1.96%) Kafka
6 23 (1.61%) Node.js
6 23 (1.61%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.47%) VML
8 20 (1.40%) Django
9 18 (1.26%) RESTful
10 16 (1.12%) MACH
11 15 (1.05%) HTML
12 14 (0.98%) CSS
12 14 (0.98%) Next.js
12 14 (0.98%) OAuth
12 14 (0.98%) SOAP
13 13 (0.91%) Jakarta EE
14 10 (0.70%) .NET
15 9 (0.63%) OAuth2
16 8 (0.56%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 78 (5.45%) Product Ownership
2 64 (4.47%) FMCG
3 52 (3.63%) EPoS
3 52 (3.63%) Onboarding
4 42 (2.94%) Cloud Native
5 31 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
6 29 (2.03%) Data Centre
7 27 (1.89%) Mobile App
8 23 (1.61%) Driving Licence
9 22 (1.54%) Data Structures
10 21 (1.47%) Marketing Technology
10 21 (1.47%) Operational Technology
11 20 (1.40%) Greenfield Project
11 20 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
12 17 (1.19%) Smartphone
13 16 (1.12%) IoT
14 15 (1.05%) Management Information System
15 14 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
16 13 (0.91%) AI Agents
16 13 (0.91%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 55 (3.84%) Windows
2 22 (1.54%) Linux
3 11 (0.77%) Android
3 11 (0.77%) Unix
4 8 (0.56%) Apple iOS
5 7 (0.49%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.35%) Windows 10
7 5 (0.35%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.28%) zOS
9 2 (0.14%) Debian
10 1 (0.070%) SUSE
10 1 (0.070%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.070%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 360 (25.16%) Stakeholder Management
2 330 (23.06%) Agile
3 218 (15.23%) E-Commerce
4 192 (13.42%) Problem-Solving
5 175 (12.23%) Migration
6 173 (12.09%) Roadmaps
7 157 (10.97%) Analytics
8 152 (10.62%) AI
9 137 (9.57%) Logistics
10 130 (9.08%) Customer Experience
11 122 (8.53%) Continuous Improvement
11 122 (8.53%) Decision-Making
12 119 (8.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 115 (8.04%) CI/CD
14 109 (7.62%) CRM
15 106 (7.41%) ERP
16 105 (7.34%) Project Management
17 101 (7.06%) DevOps
18 97 (6.78%) Business Intelligence
19 96 (6.71%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 115 (8.04%) SQL
2 101 (7.06%) Python
3 54 (3.77%) Java
4 32 (2.24%) TypeScript
5 27 (1.89%) JavaScript
6 12 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (0.70%) C#
7 10 (0.70%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.56%) R
9 7 (0.49%) ABAP
9 7 (0.49%) Bash
10 6 (0.42%) Apex Code
10 6 (0.42%) Bicep
10 6 (0.42%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.42%) Scala
10 6 (0.42%) SOQL
11 5 (0.35%) Groovy
12 4 (0.28%) Kotlin
12 4 (0.28%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.28%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 63 (4.40%) Degree
2 39 (2.73%) Security Cleared
3 21 (1.47%) PMP
4 20 (1.40%) SC Cleared
5 11 (0.77%) DBS Check
5 11 (0.77%) PMI Certification
6 8 (0.56%) CISSP
7 6 (0.42%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (0.42%) CISM
7 6 (0.42%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.35%) CCNP
8 5 (0.35%) CCSE
8 5 (0.35%) CCSM
8 5 (0.35%) CSPO
9 4 (0.28%) Azure Certification
9 4 (0.28%) City & Guilds
9 4 (0.28%) PhD
10 3 (0.21%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (4.61%) QA
2 55 (3.84%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.66%) GDPR
4 27 (1.89%) PMO
5 24 (1.68%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.12%) PCI DSS
7 13 (0.91%) SLA
8 8 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.49%) NIST
10 4 (0.28%) GRC
10 4 (0.28%) WCAG
11 3 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.21%) GAAP
11 3 (0.21%) IFRS
11 3 (0.21%) PSD2
12 2 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.14%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.070%) COBIT
13 1 (0.070%) GxP
System Software
1 36 (2.52%) Docker
2 32 (2.24%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
4 8 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.35%) Firmware
6 5 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.21%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.070%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 48 (3.35%) Terraform
2 36 (2.52%) Kubernetes
3 11 (0.77%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 10 (0.70%) Ansible
5 8 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
5 8 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
6 6 (0.42%) FortiGate
7 4 (0.28%) SCCM
8 3 (0.21%) Bosun
8 3 (0.21%) Grafana
9 2 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.14%) AirWatch
9 2 (0.14%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.14%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.14%) logstash
9 2 (0.14%) MOM
9 2 (0.14%) PingFederate
9 2 (0.14%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.070%) CSIRT
10 1 (0.070%) vMotion
Vendors
1 126 (8.81%) Microsoft
2 102 (7.13%) SAP
3 70 (4.89%) Oracle
4 68 (4.75%) Databricks
5 60 (4.19%) Salesforce
6 50 (3.49%) Google
7 35 (2.45%) Adobe
8 24 (1.68%) Zscaler
9 16 (1.12%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.12%) Workday
10 15 (1.05%) Cisco
10 15 (1.05%) MuleSoft
11 14 (0.98%) IFS
12 13 (0.91%) Fortinet
12 13 (0.91%) Palo Alto
12 13 (0.91%) VMware
13 11 (0.77%) Braze
13 11 (0.77%) IBM
14 10 (0.70%) Apple
14 10 (0.70%) New Relic