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

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 87 95
Rank change year-on-year -48 +8 -21
Contract jobs citing Retail 656 751 853
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.07% 2.75% 2.37%
As % of the General category 3.40% 4.43% 4.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 391 400 486
10th Percentile £206 £270 £275
25th Percentile £397 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £735 £765 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £513
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 8 27
10th Percentile £15.25 £17.57 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.17 £18.13 £16.91
Median hourly rate £17.00 £32.50 £19.81
Median % change year-on-year -47.69% +64.06% -
75th Percentile £19.50 £36.13 £21.46
90th Percentile £25.15 £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 19,286 16,953 21,325
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 60.94% 61.99% 59.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,266 10,242 14,341
10th Percentile £285 £300 £275
25th Percentile £402 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £656
90th Percentile £738 £775 £753
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £543
% change year-on-year -4.76% -3.31% -1.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,202 572 1,030
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.54 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.00 £18.37 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.58 £30.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.42% -9.09% +28.11%
75th Percentile £47.38 £57.62 £58.94
90th Percentile £71.50 £74.99 £70.51
UK median hourly rate £23.58 £27.50 £32.41
% change year-on-year -14.27% -15.15% +29.64%

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 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 7 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 7 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 -40 335 £550 - 249
South East -21 95 £517 -6.09% 212
North of England -44 79 £485 +4.86% 218
Midlands -37 67 £463 -7.50% 154
East Midlands 0 46 £495 -1.00% 77
Yorkshire -41 41 £500 +17.65% 102
East of England -23 40 £533 -3.18% 133
North West -25 34 £495 +8.49% 97
West Midlands -55 20 £375 -28.57% 77
South West +2 18 £180 -56.57% 79
North East -12 5 £200 -66.67% 20
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 29 (4.42%) Confluence
2 16 (2.44%) CMS
3 15 (2.29%) SharePoint
4 8 (1.22%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (0.91%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.76%) Camunda
6 5 (0.76%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (0.61%) 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 (3.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (1.37%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (1.22%) MS Visio
5 7 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
6 3 (0.46%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.30%) Trello
8 1 (0.15%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.15%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.15%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 25 (3.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.68%) SAP Retail
2 11 (1.68%) Shopify
3 9 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
4 6 (0.91%) Payment Gateway
5 5 (0.76%) SAP Payroll
6 4 (0.61%) Dynamics AX
6 4 (0.61%) Oracle Retail
6 4 (0.61%) Temenos T24
7 3 (0.46%) NetSuite
7 3 (0.46%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.46%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.46%) SAP MDG
7 3 (0.46%) SAP MM
8 2 (0.30%) BambooHR
8 2 (0.30%) Finacle
8 2 (0.30%) Magento
8 2 (0.30%) SAP GTS
8 2 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 2 (0.30%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 76 (11.59%) Azure
2 43 (6.55%) Power Platform
3 32 (4.88%) AWS
4 25 (3.81%) GCP
5 22 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
6 21 (3.20%) Dynamics 365
7 16 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
8 14 (2.13%) GitHub
9 12 (1.83%) SaaS
10 11 (1.68%) Figma
11 10 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
11 10 (1.52%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 10 (1.52%) Snowflake
12 8 (1.22%) Entra ID
12 8 (1.22%) Vertex AI
13 7 (1.07%) OCI
13 7 (1.07%) Power Automate
13 7 (1.07%) Serverless
13 7 (1.07%) SuccessFactors
14 6 (0.91%) BigCommerce
Communications & Networking
1 19 (2.90%) RFID
2 18 (2.74%) NFC
2 18 (2.74%) Wireless
3 10 (1.52%) VPN
4 8 (1.22%) Firewall
5 7 (1.07%) WAN
6 6 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.61%) BGP
7 4 (0.61%) Cisco Nexus
7 4 (0.61%) EIGRP
7 4 (0.61%) OSPF
7 4 (0.61%) VoIP
8 3 (0.46%) LAN
9 2 (0.30%) MPLS
9 2 (0.30%) SAN
9 2 (0.30%) WLAN
10 1 (0.15%) DNS
10 1 (0.15%) HTTPS
10 1 (0.15%) Intranet
10 1 (0.15%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (5.34%) Power BI
2 17 (2.59%) BigQuery
3 15 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (1.52%) Metadata
4 10 (1.52%) SQL Server
4 10 (1.52%) Tableau
5 7 (1.07%) Data Lake
6 4 (0.61%) Data Vault
6 4 (0.61%) Delta Lake
6 4 (0.61%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.61%) Power Query
6 4 (0.61%) Redis
6 4 (0.61%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
6 4 (0.61%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 3 (0.46%) SAP BW
7 3 (0.46%) Star Schema
8 2 (0.30%) MySQL
8 2 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
8 2 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 61 (9.30%) JIRA
2 10 (1.52%) Jenkins
3 8 (1.22%) Git
4 6 (0.91%) GitLab
5 4 (0.61%) Selenium
5 4 (0.61%) Storybook
6 3 (0.46%) 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%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.30%) Xcode
7 2 (0.30%) Zephyr
8 1 (0.15%) Android Studio
8 1 (0.15%) Cucumber
General
1 238 (36.28%) Social Skills
2 131 (19.97%) Finance
3 75 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
4 50 (7.62%) Banking
5 49 (7.47%) Marketing
6 39 (5.95%) Public Sector
7 38 (5.79%) Organisational Skills
8 33 (5.03%) Manufacturing
9 23 (3.51%) Retail Banking
10 22 (3.35%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (3.05%) Corporate Banking
12 19 (2.90%) Investment Banking
13 18 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
14 17 (2.59%) Legal
15 16 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
16 10 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 10 (1.52%) Telecoms
17 6 (0.91%) Publishing
18 4 (0.61%) Automotive
18 4 (0.61%) Law
Job Titles
1 133 (20.27%) Analyst
2 75 (11.43%) Project Manager
3 68 (10.37%) Architect
4 66 (10.06%) Senior
5 61 (9.30%) Business Analyst
6 54 (8.23%) Lead
7 30 (4.57%) Solutions Architect
8 29 (4.42%) Consultant
9 26 (3.96%) Senior Manager
10 19 (2.90%) Product Manager
10 19 (2.90%) Programme Manager
11 14 (2.13%) Developer
11 14 (2.13%) Senior Analyst
12 13 (1.98%) SAP Consultant
12 13 (1.98%) Service Manager
12 13 (1.98%) Support Analyst
13 12 (1.83%) Administrator
13 12 (1.83%) Help Desk Analyst
13 12 (1.83%) Technical Manager
14 11 (1.68%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (3.20%) React
2 16 (2.44%) Node.js
2 16 (2.44%) VML
3 13 (1.98%) PySpark
4 12 (1.83%) REST
5 10 (1.52%) HTML
6 8 (1.22%) .NET
6 8 (1.22%) AngularJS
7 7 (1.07%) React Native
7 7 (1.07%) scikit-learn
7 7 (1.07%) Spring
7 7 (1.07%) Spring Boot
8 6 (0.91%) OpenTelemetry
9 5 (0.76%) CSS
9 5 (0.76%) LangChain
9 5 (0.76%) Matplotlib
9 5 (0.76%) Oracle Fusion
9 5 (0.76%) RESTful
9 5 (0.76%) XGBoost
9 5 (0.76%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 30 (4.57%) Product Ownership
2 24 (3.66%) Self-Motivation
3 23 (3.51%) Legacy Systems
4 22 (3.35%) IoT
5 16 (2.44%) FMCG
5 16 (2.44%) Onboarding
6 15 (2.29%) EPoS
7 13 (1.98%) Management Information System
8 11 (1.68%) Data Centre
8 11 (1.68%) Mobile App
9 10 (1.52%) Cloud Native
9 10 (1.52%) Data Structures
10 9 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
10 9 (1.37%) Driving Licence
11 6 (0.91%) Algorithms
11 6 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
11 6 (0.91%) Replication
11 6 (0.91%) Social Media
12 5 (0.76%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 37 (5.64%) Windows
2 8 (1.22%) Linux
3 6 (0.91%) Mac OS
4 5 (0.76%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.46%) Android
5 3 (0.46%) 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
1 154 (23.48%) Agile
1 154 (23.48%) Stakeholder Management
2 102 (15.55%) Problem-Solving
3 82 (12.50%) Project Management
4 75 (11.43%) Analytics
4 75 (11.43%) E-Commerce
5 56 (8.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 55 (8.38%) Workshop Facilitation
7 54 (8.23%) Migration
8 53 (8.08%) Continuous Improvement
9 50 (7.62%) Roadmaps
10 49 (7.47%) AI
11 48 (7.32%) Customer Experience
12 46 (7.01%) Business Intelligence
13 45 (6.86%) Data Modelling
13 45 (6.86%) Waterfall
14 44 (6.71%) DevOps
14 44 (6.71%) Scrum
15 43 (6.55%) Project Delivery
16 42 (6.40%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 59 (8.99%) SQL
2 51 (7.77%) Python
3 13 (1.98%) Java
3 13 (1.98%) JavaScript
4 11 (1.68%) PowerShell
5 9 (1.37%) Bash
6 6 (0.91%) C#
6 6 (0.91%) Kusto Query Language
7 5 (0.76%) TypeScript
8 4 (0.61%) Shell Script
9 3 (0.46%) PL/SQL
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%) CLIST
11 1 (0.15%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.15%) Scala
Qualifications
1 28 (4.27%) Degree
2 22 (3.35%) PMP
3 19 (2.90%) PMI Certification
3 19 (2.90%) Security Cleared
4 9 (1.37%) Master's Degree
5 6 (0.91%) ITIL Certification
5 6 (0.91%) MBA
5 6 (0.91%) SC Cleared
6 4 (0.61%) APMP
6 4 (0.61%) CCIE
6 4 (0.61%) CCNP
6 4 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
6 4 (0.61%) CISSP
6 4 (0.61%) CSPO
6 4 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (0.46%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (0.46%) CISM
7 3 (0.46%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (0.46%) CRISC
7 3 (0.46%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (3.20%) Data Quality
1 21 (3.20%) QA
2 18 (2.74%) PMO
3 12 (1.83%) Accessibility
3 12 (1.83%) GDPR
3 12 (1.83%) SLA
4 5 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (0.46%) IFRS
5 3 (0.46%) NCSC
5 3 (0.46%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.30%) COBIT
6 2 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.30%) NIST
7 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.15%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.15%) MiFID
7 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.15%) Solvency II
System Software
1 11 (1.68%) Docker
2 7 (1.07%) 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
4 1 (0.15%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 17 (2.59%) Terraform
2 11 (1.68%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.76%) Argo
3 5 (0.76%) Istio
3 5 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (0.61%) Grafana
5 3 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
5 3 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.30%) Ansible
6 2 (0.30%) SCCM
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 73 (11.13%) Microsoft
2 62 (9.45%) SAP
3 41 (6.25%) Salesforce
4 36 (5.49%) Oracle
5 24 (3.66%) Google
6 18 (2.74%) Adobe
6 18 (2.74%) Databricks
7 9 (1.37%) HP
8 6 (0.91%) CheckPoint
8 6 (0.91%) Dell
8 6 (0.91%) F5
8 6 (0.91%) Sitecore
9 5 (0.76%) Cisco
9 5 (0.76%) Meraki
9 5 (0.76%) ServiceNow
9 5 (0.76%) Zscaler
10 4 (0.61%) Apple
10 4 (0.61%) MicroStrategy
10 4 (0.61%) Temenos
10 4 (0.61%) VMware