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 14 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 138 87 96
Rank change year-on-year -51 +9 -23
Contract jobs citing Retail 646 734 836
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.04% 2.74% 2.32%
As % of the General category 3.36% 4.42% 3.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 393 391 480
10th Percentile £206 £268 £263
25th Percentile £406 £413 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £520
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -5.45%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £766 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 8 30
10th Percentile £14.19 £17.57 £10.60
25th Percentile £16.17 £18.13 £13.58
Median hourly rate £17.00 £32.50 £19.81
Median % change year-on-year -47.69% +64.06% -
75th Percentile £19.50 £36.13 £21.42
90th Percentile £24.72 £41.75 £29.75
UK median hourly rate £17.50 £32.50 £19.81
% change year-on-year -46.15% +64.06% -

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 19,216 16,625 21,300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 60.72% 62.07% 59.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,230 10,022 14,301
10th Percentile £285 £294 £275
25th Percentile £403 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,183 550 1,082
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.47 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.67 £18.54 £16.15
Median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £30.49
Median % change year-on-year -23.33% -1.60% +18.58%
75th Percentile £46.00 £57.44 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.88 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £27.35 £30.24
% change year-on-year -15.90% -9.55% +20.95%

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 14 January 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 14 January 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 14 January 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 -42 331 £550 - 225
South East -19 91 £520 -5.45% 379
North of England -44 82 £495 +10.00% 282
Midlands -29 67 £479 -4.25% 188
East Midlands +5 47 £495 -1.00% 109
Yorkshire -36 41 £500 +25.00% 121
East of England -18 39 £525 -2.33% 174
North West -23 37 £495 +8.49% 124
West Midlands -52 19 £331 -36.90% 77
South West -17 16 £183 -55.97% 144
North East -11 5 £200 -66.67% 38
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 28 (4.33%) Confluence
2 15 (2.32%) CMS
2 15 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.24%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (0.93%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 5 (0.77%) Camunda
5 5 (0.77%) Jupyter
6 4 (0.62%) WordPress
7 3 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.31%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.15%) SAS
9 1 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.15%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 24 (3.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (1.24%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.46%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.31%) Trello
7 1 (0.15%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.15%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.15%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 23 (3.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (1.86%) Shopify
3 10 (1.55%) SAP Retail
4 9 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
5 6 (0.93%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.77%) SAP Payroll
7 4 (0.62%) Dynamics AX
7 4 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 4 (0.62%) Oracle Retail
7 4 (0.62%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.46%) Finacle
8 3 (0.46%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.46%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.46%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.31%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.31%) Magento
9 2 (0.31%) SAP GTS
9 2 (0.31%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 1 (0.15%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 77 (11.92%) Azure
2 41 (6.35%) Power Platform
3 35 (5.42%) AWS
4 26 (4.02%) GCP
5 21 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
6 20 (3.10%) Dynamics 365
7 15 (2.32%) Microsoft 365
8 14 (2.17%) GitHub
8 14 (2.17%) SaaS
9 11 (1.70%) Figma
10 10 (1.55%) GitHub Actions
10 10 (1.55%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
10 10 (1.55%) Snowflake
11 8 (1.24%) Entra ID
11 8 (1.24%) Vertex AI
12 7 (1.08%) BigCommerce
12 7 (1.08%) OCI
12 7 (1.08%) Serverless
12 7 (1.08%) SuccessFactors
13 6 (0.93%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 19 (2.94%) RFID
2 18 (2.79%) NFC
2 18 (2.79%) Wireless
3 10 (1.55%) VPN
4 8 (1.24%) Firewall
5 7 (1.08%) WAN
6 6 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.62%) BGP
7 4 (0.62%) Cisco Nexus
7 4 (0.62%) EIGRP
7 4 (0.62%) OSPF
7 4 (0.62%) VoIP
8 3 (0.46%) LAN
9 2 (0.31%) MPLS
9 2 (0.31%) SAN
9 2 (0.31%) WLAN
10 1 (0.15%) Broadband
10 1 (0.15%) FTP
10 1 (0.15%) Intranet
10 1 (0.15%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (5.26%) Power BI
2 17 (2.63%) BigQuery
3 15 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 11 (1.70%) SQL Server
5 10 (1.55%) Metadata
5 10 (1.55%) Tableau
6 7 (1.08%) Data Lake
7 4 (0.62%) Data Vault
7 4 (0.62%) Delta Lake
7 4 (0.62%) MongoDB
7 4 (0.62%) Power Query
7 4 (0.62%) Redis
7 4 (0.62%) Relational Database
7 4 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
7 4 (0.62%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 3 (0.46%) MySQL
8 3 (0.46%) SAP BW
8 3 (0.46%) Star Schema
9 2 (0.31%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.31%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 62 (9.60%) JIRA
2 10 (1.55%) Jenkins
3 8 (1.24%) Git
4 6 (0.93%) GitLab
5 4 (0.62%) Selenium
5 4 (0.62%) Storybook
6 2 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.31%) ERwin
6 2 (0.31%) JMeter
6 2 (0.31%) JUnit
6 2 (0.31%) MLflow
6 2 (0.31%) Mockito
6 2 (0.31%) Postman
6 2 (0.31%) PowerDesigner
6 2 (0.31%) SoapUI
6 2 (0.31%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.31%) Xcode
6 2 (0.31%) Zephyr
7 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.15%) Cucumber
General
1 235 (36.38%) Social Skills
2 130 (20.12%) Finance
3 75 (11.61%) Analytical Skills
4 48 (7.43%) Banking
5 46 (7.12%) Marketing
6 40 (6.19%) Organisational Skills
7 37 (5.73%) Manufacturing
8 34 (5.26%) Public Sector
9 22 (3.41%) Influencing Skills
9 22 (3.41%) Retail Banking
10 19 (2.94%) Corporate Banking
11 18 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
11 18 (2.79%) Investment Banking
12 17 (2.63%) Legal
12 17 (2.63%) Presentation Skills
13 11 (1.70%) Telecoms
14 10 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 6 (0.93%) Publishing
16 5 (0.77%) Automotive
17 4 (0.62%) Law
Job Titles
1 130 (20.12%) Analyst
2 75 (11.61%) Project Manager
3 70 (10.84%) Architect
4 67 (10.37%) Senior
5 63 (9.75%) Business Analyst
6 54 (8.36%) Lead
7 31 (4.80%) Solutions Architect
8 29 (4.49%) Senior Manager
9 28 (4.33%) Consultant
10 19 (2.94%) Product Manager
11 18 (2.79%) Programme Manager
12 14 (2.17%) Developer
12 14 (2.17%) Senior Project Manager
12 14 (2.17%) Service Manager
13 13 (2.01%) Support Analyst
13 13 (2.01%) Technical Manager
14 12 (1.86%) Help Desk Analyst
14 12 (1.86%) SAP Consultant
14 12 (1.86%) Senior Analyst
15 11 (1.70%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (3.25%) React
2 18 (2.79%) VML
3 16 (2.48%) Node.js
4 13 (2.01%) PySpark
5 12 (1.86%) REST
6 10 (1.55%) HTML
7 8 (1.24%) .NET
7 8 (1.24%) AngularJS
8 7 (1.08%) React Native
8 7 (1.08%) scikit-learn
8 7 (1.08%) Spring
8 7 (1.08%) Spring Boot
9 6 (0.93%) OpenTelemetry
10 5 (0.77%) CSS
10 5 (0.77%) Kafka
10 5 (0.77%) LangChain
10 5 (0.77%) Matplotlib
10 5 (0.77%) RESTful
10 5 (0.77%) XGBoost
10 5 (0.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 30 (4.64%) Product Ownership
2 24 (3.72%) Self-Motivation
3 23 (3.56%) Legacy Systems
4 22 (3.41%) IoT
5 18 (2.79%) Onboarding
6 16 (2.48%) FMCG
7 14 (2.17%) EPoS
8 13 (2.01%) Data Centre
8 13 (2.01%) Data Structures
8 13 (2.01%) Management Information System
9 10 (1.55%) Cloud Native
9 10 (1.55%) Mobile App
10 9 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
10 9 (1.39%) Driving Licence
11 6 (0.93%) Algorithms
11 6 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
11 6 (0.93%) Replication
12 5 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (0.77%) Mainframe
12 5 (0.77%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 32 (4.95%) Windows
2 8 (1.24%) Linux
3 6 (0.93%) Mac OS
4 5 (0.77%) Apple iOS
5 4 (0.62%) Android
6 3 (0.46%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.31%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.15%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.15%) Mac OS X
8 1 (0.15%) VMS
8 1 (0.15%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (23.99%) Agile
1 155 (23.99%) Stakeholder Management
2 102 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
3 84 (13.00%) Project Management
4 79 (12.23%) E-Commerce
5 73 (11.30%) Analytics
6 60 (9.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 59 (9.13%) Migration
8 58 (8.98%) Workshop Facilitation
9 57 (8.82%) Roadmaps
10 52 (8.05%) Continuous Improvement
11 49 (7.59%) Data Modelling
12 48 (7.43%) AI
13 46 (7.12%) Customer Experience
14 45 (6.97%) DevOps
14 45 (6.97%) Scrum
15 44 (6.81%) Business Intelligence
16 42 (6.50%) CRM
16 42 (6.50%) Logistics
16 42 (6.50%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 58 (8.98%) SQL
2 48 (7.43%) Python
3 13 (2.01%) Java
3 13 (2.01%) JavaScript
4 10 (1.55%) PowerShell
5 9 (1.39%) Bash
6 6 (0.93%) C#
6 6 (0.93%) Kusto Query Language
7 5 (0.77%) TypeScript
8 4 (0.62%) Shell Script
9 3 (0.46%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.31%) ABAP
10 2 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (0.31%) PHP
10 2 (0.31%) R
10 2 (0.31%) Swift
10 2 (0.31%) VBA
11 1 (0.15%) CLIST
11 1 (0.15%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.15%) Scala
Qualifications
1 28 (4.33%) Degree
2 21 (3.25%) PMP
3 19 (2.94%) PMI Certification
4 17 (2.63%) Security Cleared
5 9 (1.39%) Master's Degree
6 6 (0.93%) ITIL Certification
6 6 (0.93%) MBA
7 5 (0.77%) SC Cleared
8 4 (0.62%) APMP
8 4 (0.62%) CCIE
8 4 (0.62%) CCNP
8 4 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (0.62%) CISSP
8 4 (0.62%) CSPO
9 3 (0.46%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.46%) CISM
9 3 (0.46%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.46%) CRISC
9 3 (0.46%) GIAC
9 3 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (3.72%) Data Quality
2 21 (3.25%) QA
3 17 (2.63%) PMO
4 12 (1.86%) Accessibility
4 12 (1.86%) GDPR
4 12 (1.86%) SLA
5 5 (0.77%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.46%) IFRS
6 3 (0.46%) NCSC
6 3 (0.46%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.31%) COBIT
7 2 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.31%) NIST
8 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.15%) IFRS 9
8 1 (0.15%) MiFID
8 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.15%) Solvency II
System Software
1 11 (1.70%) Docker
2 7 (1.08%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
3 3 (0.46%) VMware NSX
4 1 (0.15%) RACF
4 1 (0.15%) Varnish
4 1 (0.15%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 17 (2.63%) Terraform
2 11 (1.70%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.77%) Argo
3 5 (0.77%) Istio
4 4 (0.62%) Grafana
4 4 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
5 3 (0.46%) SCCM
5 3 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.31%) Ansible
7 1 (0.15%) AirWatch
7 1 (0.15%) Cacti
7 1 (0.15%) Control-M
7 1 (0.15%) Nmap
7 1 (0.15%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.15%) ZABBIX
7 1 (0.15%) zSecure
Vendors
1 68 (10.53%) Microsoft
2 60 (9.29%) SAP
3 42 (6.50%) Salesforce
4 35 (5.42%) Oracle
5 23 (3.56%) Google
6 18 (2.79%) Adobe
7 17 (2.63%) Databricks
8 8 (1.24%) HP
8 8 (1.24%) ServiceNow
9 7 (1.08%) Sitecore
10 6 (0.93%) CheckPoint
10 6 (0.93%) Dell
10 6 (0.93%) F5
11 5 (0.77%) Cisco
11 5 (0.77%) Dynatrace
11 5 (0.77%) Meraki
11 5 (0.77%) Temenos
11 5 (0.77%) Zscaler
12 4 (0.62%) BMC
12 4 (0.62%) MicroStrategy