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 30 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 134 83 93
Rank change year-on-year -51 +10 -18
Contract jobs citing Retail 668 791 876
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.11% 2.80% 2.40%
As % of the General category 3.44% 4.54% 4.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 396 426 504
10th Percentile £206 £280 £275
25th Percentile £394 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £629 £638 £644
90th Percentile £738 £765 £745
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £520
% change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 9 29
10th Percentile £15.25 £17.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.17 £18.13 £18.50
Median hourly rate £16.67 £32.50 £19.81
Median % change year-on-year -48.72% +64.06% -
75th Percentile £19.50 £38.75 £21.46
90th Percentile £25.15 £50.00 £29.75
UK median hourly rate £17.00 £32.50 £19.81
% change year-on-year -47.69% +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 19,392 17,428 21,657
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 61.32% 61.76% 59.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,289 10,550 14,617
10th Percentile £283 £300 £275
25th Percentile £402 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £626 £650 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £753
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,238 596 1,010
10th Percentile £14.11 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.93 £18.47 £16.75
Median hourly rate £23.50 £30.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.67% -9.09% +28.35%
75th Percentile £46.00 £58.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.95 £74.25 £70.50
UK median hourly rate £23.50 £27.39 £33.00
% change year-on-year -14.19% -17.02% +32.00%

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 30 December 2025.

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 30 December 2025.

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 30 December 2025. 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 -39 344 £550 - 465
South East -20 99 £518 -5.77% 627
North of England -54 77 £498 +6.13% 597
Midlands -45 63 £450 -10.00% 482
East Midlands -2 43 £479 -4.25% 224
East of England -17 42 £565 +2.73% 353
Yorkshire -37 40 £500 +17.65% 248
North West -32 32 £498 +7.57% 305
South West +3 20 £180 -55.99% 255
West Midlands -49 19 £375 -28.57% 234
North East -5 6 £206 -65.63% 44
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 (4.19%) Confluence
2 17 (2.54%) CMS
3 16 (2.40%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (0.90%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.75%) Camunda
6 5 (0.75%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (0.60%) WordPress
8 2 (0.30%) 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 25 (3.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (1.35%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
5 5 (0.75%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.45%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.30%) Trello
8 1 (0.15%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.15%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.15%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 25 (3.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (1.50%) SAP Retail
2 10 (1.50%) Shopify
3 9 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
4 8 (1.20%) Oracle Retail
5 6 (0.90%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.75%) SAP Payroll
7 4 (0.60%) Dynamics AX
7 4 (0.60%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.45%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.45%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.45%) SAP GTS
8 3 (0.45%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.30%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.30%) Magento
9 2 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
9 2 (0.30%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 2 (0.30%) Sprinklr
10 1 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 78 (11.68%) Azure
2 42 (6.29%) Power Platform
3 34 (5.09%) AWS
4 28 (4.19%) GCP
5 22 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
6 21 (3.14%) Dynamics 365
7 16 (2.40%) Microsoft 365
8 14 (2.10%) SaaS
9 13 (1.95%) GitHub
10 11 (1.65%) Figma
11 10 (1.50%) GitHub Actions
11 10 (1.50%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 9 (1.35%) Snowflake
13 8 (1.20%) Entra ID
13 8 (1.20%) Vertex AI
14 7 (1.05%) OCI
14 7 (1.05%) Power Automate
14 7 (1.05%) Serverless
14 7 (1.05%) SuccessFactors
15 6 (0.90%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 19 (2.84%) RFID
2 18 (2.69%) NFC
2 18 (2.69%) Wireless
3 11 (1.65%) VPN
4 10 (1.50%) Firewall
5 7 (1.05%) WAN
5 7 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
6 5 (0.75%) Cisco Nexus
7 4 (0.60%) BGP
7 4 (0.60%) EIGRP
7 4 (0.60%) LAN
7 4 (0.60%) OSPF
7 4 (0.60%) VoIP
8 2 (0.30%) Broadband
8 2 (0.30%) DNS
8 2 (0.30%) MPLS
8 2 (0.30%) SAN
8 2 (0.30%) WLAN
9 1 (0.15%) HTTPS
9 1 (0.15%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (5.09%) Power BI
2 17 (2.54%) BigQuery
3 14 (2.10%) Data Warehouse
4 12 (1.80%) Metadata
5 11 (1.65%) Tableau
6 10 (1.50%) SQL Server
7 7 (1.05%) Data Lake
8 4 (0.60%) Delta Lake
8 4 (0.60%) MongoDB
8 4 (0.60%) Power Query
8 4 (0.60%) Redis
8 4 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 3 (0.45%) Data Vault
9 3 (0.45%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.45%) SAP BW
9 3 (0.45%) Snowflake Schema
9 3 (0.45%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
10 2 (0.30%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 59 (8.83%) JIRA
2 10 (1.50%) Jenkins
3 9 (1.35%) Git
4 6 (0.90%) GitLab
5 4 (0.60%) Selenium
5 4 (0.60%) Storybook
6 3 (0.45%) Postman
7 2 (0.30%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.30%) ERwin
7 2 (0.30%) JMeter
7 2 (0.30%) JUnit
7 2 (0.30%) MLflow
7 2 (0.30%) Mockito
7 2 (0.30%) PowerDesigner
7 2 (0.30%) SoapUI
7 2 (0.30%) Xcode
7 2 (0.30%) Zephyr
8 1 (0.15%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 242 (36.23%) Social Skills
2 132 (19.76%) Finance
3 75 (11.23%) Analytical Skills
4 51 (7.63%) Marketing
5 50 (7.49%) Banking
6 40 (5.99%) Public Sector
7 35 (5.24%) Organisational Skills
8 34 (5.09%) Manufacturing
9 26 (3.89%) Retail Banking
10 22 (3.29%) Corporate Banking
10 22 (3.29%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (3.14%) Investment Banking
12 19 (2.84%) Legal
13 17 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
14 16 (2.40%) Presentation Skills
15 11 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 9 (1.35%) Telecoms
17 6 (0.90%) Publishing
18 5 (0.75%) Automotive
18 5 (0.75%) Law
Job Titles
1 129 (19.31%) Analyst
2 75 (11.23%) Architect
2 75 (11.23%) Project Manager
3 64 (9.58%) Senior
4 58 (8.68%) Business Analyst
5 53 (7.93%) Lead
6 31 (4.64%) Solutions Architect
7 28 (4.19%) Consultant
8 24 (3.59%) Senior Manager
9 20 (2.99%) Programme Manager
10 19 (2.84%) Product Manager
11 16 (2.40%) Developer
12 14 (2.10%) Administrator
13 13 (1.95%) Senior Analyst
14 12 (1.80%) Help Desk Analyst
14 12 (1.80%) SAP Consultant
14 12 (1.80%) Support Analyst
15 11 (1.65%) Data Analyst
15 11 (1.65%) Product Owner
15 11 (1.65%) Technical Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.44%) React
2 16 (2.40%) Node.js
3 13 (1.95%) PySpark
3 13 (1.95%) REST
3 13 (1.95%) VML
4 11 (1.65%) HTML
5 8 (1.20%) .NET
5 8 (1.20%) AngularJS
6 7 (1.05%) React Native
6 7 (1.05%) scikit-learn
6 7 (1.05%) Spring
6 7 (1.05%) Spring Boot
7 6 (0.90%) CSS
7 6 (0.90%) OpenTelemetry
7 6 (0.90%) Oracle Fusion
8 5 (0.75%) CSS3
8 5 (0.75%) Kafka
8 5 (0.75%) LangChain
8 5 (0.75%) RESTful
8 5 (0.75%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 36 (5.39%) Product Ownership
2 24 (3.59%) Self-Motivation
3 22 (3.29%) IoT
3 22 (3.29%) Legacy Systems
4 16 (2.40%) Onboarding
5 15 (2.25%) Cloud Native
5 15 (2.25%) EPoS
5 15 (2.25%) FMCG
6 13 (1.95%) Mobile App
7 12 (1.80%) Management Information System
8 11 (1.65%) Data Centre
9 10 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
10 9 (1.35%) Data Structures
10 9 (1.35%) Driving Licence
11 6 (0.90%) Algorithms
11 6 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
11 6 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
11 6 (0.90%) Replication
11 6 (0.90%) Social Media
12 5 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 38 (5.69%) Windows
2 7 (1.05%) Linux
3 6 (0.90%) Mac OS
4 5 (0.75%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.45%) Android
5 3 (0.45%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.30%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.15%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.15%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.15%) VMS
7 1 (0.15%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (23.50%) Stakeholder Management
2 155 (23.20%) Agile
3 104 (15.57%) Problem-Solving
4 81 (12.13%) Project Management
5 79 (11.83%) E-Commerce
6 76 (11.38%) Analytics
7 57 (8.53%) Roadmaps
8 56 (8.38%) Continuous Improvement
9 55 (8.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 53 (7.93%) Workshop Facilitation
11 51 (7.63%) Customer Experience
11 51 (7.63%) Migration
12 49 (7.34%) AI
13 47 (7.04%) DevOps
13 47 (7.04%) ERP
14 46 (6.89%) Waterfall
15 45 (6.74%) CRM
16 44 (6.59%) Business Intelligence
16 44 (6.59%) Data Modelling
16 44 (6.59%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 56 (8.38%) SQL
2 52 (7.78%) Python
3 14 (2.10%) JavaScript
4 13 (1.95%) Java
5 11 (1.65%) PowerShell
6 10 (1.50%) Bash
7 7 (1.05%) TypeScript
8 6 (0.90%) C#
8 6 (0.90%) Kusto Query Language
9 3 (0.45%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.45%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.30%) ABAP
10 2 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (0.30%) PHP
10 2 (0.30%) R
10 2 (0.30%) Swift
10 2 (0.30%) VBA
11 1 (0.15%) JCL
11 1 (0.15%) ProC
11 1 (0.15%) VB
Qualifications
1 28 (4.19%) Degree
2 22 (3.29%) PMP
3 19 (2.84%) PMI Certification
4 18 (2.69%) Security Cleared
5 7 (1.05%) Master's Degree
6 6 (0.90%) ITIL Certification
7 5 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (0.75%) SC Cleared
8 4 (0.60%) CCIE
8 4 (0.60%) CCNP
8 4 (0.60%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (0.60%) CISSP
8 4 (0.60%) CSPO
8 4 (0.60%) MBA
8 4 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.45%) APMP
9 3 (0.45%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.45%) CISM
9 3 (0.45%) CRISC
9 3 (0.45%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (3.44%) QA
2 19 (2.84%) Data Quality
3 16 (2.40%) PMO
4 14 (2.10%) SLA
5 13 (1.95%) Accessibility
6 12 (1.80%) GDPR
7 5 (0.75%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.45%) IFRS
8 3 (0.45%) NCSC
8 3 (0.45%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.30%) COBIT
9 2 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.30%) NIST
10 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.15%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.15%) MiFID
10 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.15%) Solvency II
System Software
1 12 (1.80%) Docker
2 7 (1.05%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
3 3 (0.45%) VMware NSX
4 1 (0.15%) RACF
4 1 (0.15%) Varnish
4 1 (0.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.15%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 18 (2.69%) Terraform
2 12 (1.80%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.75%) Argo
3 5 (0.75%) Grafana
3 5 (0.75%) Istio
3 5 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.45%) Ansible
5 3 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
5 3 (0.45%) SCCM
6 2 (0.30%) Prometheus
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%) ZABBIX
7 1 (0.15%) zSecure
Vendors
1 73 (10.93%) Microsoft
2 60 (8.98%) SAP
3 39 (5.84%) Oracle
3 39 (5.84%) Salesforce
4 27 (4.04%) Google
5 18 (2.69%) Databricks
6 16 (2.40%) Adobe
7 10 (1.50%) HP
8 6 (0.90%) CheckPoint
8 6 (0.90%) Cisco
8 6 (0.90%) Dell
8 6 (0.90%) F5
9 5 (0.75%) Apple
9 5 (0.75%) Meraki
9 5 (0.75%) ServiceNow
9 5 (0.75%) Workday
9 5 (0.75%) Zscaler
10 4 (0.60%) Palo Alto
10 4 (0.60%) Sitecore
10 4 (0.60%) VMware