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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 105 74
Rank change year-on-year +20 -31 +14
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,359 688 969
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.03% 2.50% 2.84%
As % of the General category 5.48% 3.92% 4.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 816 362 533
10th Percentile £308 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £418
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 £735
UK median daily rate £538 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +7.45% -2.39% -4.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 97 40 70
10th Percentile £12.98 £15.18 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.81 £15.25 £12.63
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 £51.50 £21.46
UK median hourly rate £20.50 £16.30 £16.30
% change year-on-year +25.77% - -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 24,793 17,544 19,580
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.30% 63.79% 57.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,857 11,215 12,627
10th Percentile £313 £281 £300
25th Percentile £416 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -5.12% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £656
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 1,857 927 1,344
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.31 £14.06
25th Percentile £18.75 £16.39 £17.44
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.88 £59.66
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £70.25
UK median hourly rate £32.90 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +30.83% -32.93% +22.79%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +41 789 £550 - 537
South East +13 174 £525 -6.25% 288
North of England -25 170 £550 +10.00% 258
Midlands +1 112 £500 +17.65% 201
North West -4 109 £563 +12.50% 128
East of England +13 62 £550 - 91
East Midlands +13 60 £500 +21.21% 87
West Midlands -26 52 £613 +36.11% 113
Yorkshire -41 50 £500 - 105
South West -34 39 £325 -8.59% 86
North East -41 11 £155 -64.89% 30
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 38 (2.80%) Confluence
2 19 (1.40%) CMS
3 14 (1.03%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 9 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.52%) SharePoint
6 4 (0.29%) SAS
6 4 (0.29%) 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 49 (3.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (2.35%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.96%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 12 (0.88%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.74%) Photoshop
8 9 (0.66%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.44%) InDesign
10 5 (0.37%) MS Visio
11 3 (0.22%) CPLEX
11 3 (0.22%) Notion
11 3 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
12 1 (0.074%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.074%) Maya
12 1 (0.074%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.074%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.074%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 38 (2.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.99%) Shopify
3 11 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.66%) Oracle Retail
5 8 (0.59%) Magento
6 7 (0.52%) SAP CRM
7 6 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.44%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.37%) SAP Retail
8 5 (0.37%) SAP SD
9 4 (0.29%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
10 3 (0.22%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 3 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.22%) SAP CAR
10 3 (0.22%) SAP ERP
11 2 (0.15%) Cognos Controller
11 2 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
11 2 (0.15%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 174 (12.80%) Azure
2 131 (9.64%) AWS
3 67 (4.93%) GCP
4 64 (4.71%) Power Platform
5 43 (3.16%) Snowflake
6 39 (2.87%) GitHub
7 29 (2.13%) Azure DevOps
8 28 (2.06%) Entra ID
9 24 (1.77%) GitHub Actions
10 23 (1.69%) Dynamics 365
11 20 (1.47%) Figma
12 16 (1.18%) SaaS
13 15 (1.10%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
14 13 (0.96%) Azure Data Factory
15 11 (0.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 11 (0.81%) Salesforce Service Cloud
16 10 (0.74%) Google Workspace
17 9 (0.66%) dbt
17 9 (0.66%) Microsoft 365
17 9 (0.66%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.25%) WAN
2 16 (1.18%) Firewall
3 15 (1.10%) Wireless
4 14 (1.03%) ATM
4 14 (1.03%) VPN
5 13 (0.96%) Network Security
6 11 (0.81%) LAN
7 9 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
8 8 (0.59%) BGP
8 8 (0.59%) IPsec
8 8 (0.59%) OSPF
9 7 (0.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 7 (0.52%) RFID
9 7 (0.52%) VLAN
10 6 (0.44%) Cisco Firepower
10 6 (0.44%) SD-WAN
11 5 (0.37%) Cisco ASA
11 5 (0.37%) Cisco Nexus
11 5 (0.37%) Structured Cabling
11 5 (0.37%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (4.64%) Power BI
2 31 (2.28%) BigQuery
3 20 (1.47%) Data Warehouse
4 19 (1.40%) Data Lake
5 15 (1.10%) Metadata
5 15 (1.10%) MySQL
5 15 (1.10%) NoSQL
5 15 (1.10%) Tableau
6 12 (0.88%) Relational Database
6 12 (0.88%) SQL Server
7 11 (0.81%) MongoDB
8 10 (0.74%) Power Query
9 8 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
9 8 (0.59%) PostgreSQL
9 8 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 7 (0.52%) Looker
10 7 (0.52%) Redis
11 6 (0.44%) Couchbase
11 6 (0.44%) SAP HANA
11 6 (0.44%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 69 (5.08%) JIRA
2 26 (1.91%) Git
3 17 (1.25%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.59%) Subversion
5 6 (0.44%) Claude Code
6 4 (0.29%) Cypress.io
6 4 (0.29%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.29%) Maven
7 2 (0.15%) git-flow
7 2 (0.15%) GitLab
7 2 (0.15%) Hudson
7 2 (0.15%) JMeter
7 2 (0.15%) MLflow
7 2 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.15%) Postman
7 2 (0.15%) Selenium
7 2 (0.15%) webpack
8 1 (0.074%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.074%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.074%) TestRail
General
1 380 (27.96%) Social Skills
2 309 (22.74%) Finance
3 132 (9.71%) Analytical Skills
4 107 (7.87%) Banking
5 94 (6.92%) Marketing
6 84 (6.18%) Manufacturing
7 57 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
8 52 (3.83%) Retail Banking
9 40 (2.94%) Investment Banking
10 37 (2.72%) Corporate Banking
11 28 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
12 23 (1.69%) Legal
12 23 (1.69%) Telecoms
13 22 (1.62%) Advertising
13 22 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
13 22 (1.62%) Public Sector
14 21 (1.55%) Documentation Skills
15 19 (1.40%) French Language
16 18 (1.32%) Spanish Language
17 13 (0.96%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 232 (17.07%) Architect
2 183 (13.47%) Analyst
3 165 (12.14%) Senior
4 127 (9.35%) Solutions Architect
5 119 (8.76%) Project Manager
6 95 (6.99%) Business Analyst
6 95 (6.99%) Lead
7 68 (5.00%) Developer
8 54 (3.97%) Senior Manager
9 50 (3.68%) Designer
10 44 (3.24%) Product Manager
11 39 (2.87%) Consultant
12 35 (2.58%) Technical Manager
13 33 (2.43%) Enterprise Architect
13 33 (2.43%) Programme Manager
13 33 (2.43%) Senior Developer
13 33 (2.43%) Supply Chain Architect
14 31 (2.28%) Data Architect
15 29 (2.13%) Senior Project Manager
16 26 (1.91%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (4.71%) REST
2 33 (2.43%) React
3 30 (2.21%) Middleware
4 29 (2.13%) Spring
5 25 (1.84%) Kafka
6 21 (1.55%) Spring Boot
6 21 (1.55%) VML
7 20 (1.47%) Django
7 20 (1.47%) Node.js
8 18 (1.32%) RESTful
9 17 (1.25%) HTML
10 16 (1.18%) CSS
11 15 (1.10%) MACH
12 14 (1.03%) OAuth
12 14 (1.03%) SOAP
13 13 (0.96%) Jakarta EE
14 11 (0.81%) .NET
15 9 (0.66%) OAuth2
16 8 (0.59%) AngularJS
16 8 (0.59%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 74 (5.45%) Product Ownership
2 63 (4.64%) FMCG
3 48 (3.53%) EPoS
4 45 (3.31%) Onboarding
5 39 (2.87%) Cloud Native
6 34 (2.50%) Driving Licence
7 29 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
8 28 (2.06%) Data Centre
9 26 (1.91%) Mobile App
10 21 (1.55%) Data Structures
10 21 (1.55%) Operational Technology
10 21 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
11 20 (1.47%) Marketing Technology
12 18 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
13 16 (1.18%) IoT
14 13 (0.96%) AI Agents
14 13 (0.96%) Mainframe
15 12 (0.88%) Distributed Systems
15 12 (0.88%) Graphic Design
15 12 (0.88%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.83%) Windows
2 21 (1.55%) Linux
3 11 (0.81%) Unix
4 10 (0.74%) Android
5 7 (0.52%) Apple iOS
6 6 (0.44%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.37%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.37%) Windows 10
7 5 (0.37%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.29%) zOS
9 2 (0.15%) Debian
10 1 (0.074%) SUSE
10 1 (0.074%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.074%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 343 (25.24%) Stakeholder Management
2 323 (23.77%) Agile
3 218 (16.04%) E-Commerce
4 184 (13.54%) Problem-Solving
5 169 (12.44%) Roadmaps
6 168 (12.36%) Migration
7 144 (10.60%) Analytics
8 141 (10.38%) AI
9 137 (10.08%) Customer Experience
10 118 (8.68%) Logistics
11 112 (8.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 109 (8.02%) Continuous Improvement
12 109 (8.02%) Decision-Making
13 107 (7.87%) CI/CD
14 105 (7.73%) CRM
15 104 (7.65%) Project Management
16 102 (7.51%) ERP
17 94 (6.92%) Project Delivery
18 93 (6.84%) User Acceptance Testing
19 92 (6.77%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 104 (7.65%) SQL
2 91 (6.70%) Python
3 53 (3.90%) Java
4 27 (1.99%) TypeScript
5 25 (1.84%) JavaScript
6 11 (0.81%) C#
7 10 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (0.59%) PowerShell
9 7 (0.52%) ABAP
9 7 (0.52%) R
10 6 (0.44%) Bicep
10 6 (0.44%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.44%) Scala
11 5 (0.37%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.37%) Groovy
11 5 (0.37%) SOQL
12 4 (0.29%) Bash
12 4 (0.29%) Kotlin
13 3 (0.22%) SOSL
13 3 (0.22%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 60 (4.42%) Degree
2 36 (2.65%) Security Cleared
3 21 (1.55%) PMP
4 20 (1.47%) SC Cleared
5 11 (0.81%) DBS Check
5 11 (0.81%) PMI Certification
6 8 (0.59%) CISSP
7 7 (0.52%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.44%) CISM
8 6 (0.44%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
9 5 (0.37%) CCNP
9 5 (0.37%) CCSE
9 5 (0.37%) CCSM
9 5 (0.37%) CSPO
10 4 (0.29%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.29%) City & Guilds
10 4 (0.29%) PhD
11 3 (0.22%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (4.56%) QA
2 51 (3.75%) Data Quality
3 37 (2.72%) GDPR
4 27 (1.99%) PMO
5 22 (1.62%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.18%) PCI DSS
7 11 (0.81%) SLA
8 8 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.44%) NIST
10 4 (0.29%) WCAG
11 3 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.22%) GAAP
11 3 (0.22%) GRC
11 3 (0.22%) IFRS
11 3 (0.22%) PSD2
12 2 (0.15%) California Consumer Privacy Act
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 (2.58%) Docker
2 32 (2.35%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.96%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.37%) Firmware
5 5 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.15%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 43 (3.16%) Terraform
2 33 (2.43%) Kubernetes
3 13 (0.96%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 10 (0.74%) Ansible
5 6 (0.44%) FortiGate
5 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.29%) 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%) CloudHub
10 1 (0.074%) CSIRT
10 1 (0.074%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 114 (8.39%) Microsoft
2 97 (7.14%) SAP
3 65 (4.78%) Oracle
4 59 (4.34%) Databricks
5 57 (4.19%) Salesforce
6 47 (3.46%) Google
7 36 (2.65%) Adobe
8 24 (1.77%) Zscaler
9 16 (1.18%) ServiceNow
10 15 (1.10%) Cisco
10 15 (1.10%) MuleSoft
11 14 (1.03%) IFS
11 14 (1.03%) Workday
12 13 (0.96%) Fortinet
12 13 (0.96%) Palo Alto
13 12 (0.88%) VMware
14 11 (0.81%) Braze
15 10 (0.74%) IBM
15 10 (0.74%) Splunk
16 9 (0.66%) Sitecore