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

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 82 94
Rank change year-on-year -59 +12 -16
Contract jobs citing Retail 659 758 870
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.98% 2.90% 2.29%
As % of the General category 3.31% 4.64% 3.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 401 397 510
10th Percentile £230 £273 £263
25th Percentile £400 £413 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £520
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -0.95%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £735 £773 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 11 42
10th Percentile £12.95 £16.25 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.17 £18.13 £11.85
Median hourly rate £16.34 £32.50 £19.25
Median % change year-on-year -49.74% +68.83% -2.83%
75th Percentile £19.50 £37.00 £20.75
90th Percentile £23.50 £48.75 £22.85
UK median hourly rate £16.34 £32.50 £19.00
% change year-on-year -49.74% +71.05% -4.09%

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 19,902 16,352 22,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 59.70% 62.61% 58.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,652 9,880 14,818
10th Percentile £290 £294 £263
25th Percentile £402 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,235 529 1,488
10th Percentile £14.01 £15.62 £13.23
25th Percentile £16.50 £20.00 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.85 £30.21 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -24.36% +17.50% -1.12%
75th Percentile £49.25 £57.62 £53.78
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £25.71
% change year-on-year -21.34% +12.80% +2.84%

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 4 February 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 4 February 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 4 February 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 -48 356 £550 - 304
South East -26 91 £518 -5.77% 283
North of England -55 74 £500 +11.11% 187
Midlands -53 67 £463 -7.50% 155
East Midlands -12 44 £495 -1.00% 77
Yorkshire -40 40 £506 +26.56% 68
East of England -25 37 £529 -3.86% 96
North West -29 32 £525 +16.67% 107
West Midlands -55 22 £275 -47.62% 78
South West -12 16 £185 -50.34% 81
North East -15 3 £213 -64.58% 13
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 (4.25%) Confluence
2 16 (2.43%) CMS
3 15 (2.28%) SharePoint
4 9 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (1.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.76%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.61%) Camunda
7 4 (0.61%) WordPress
8 3 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.30%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.30%) SAS
10 1 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.15%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 21 (3.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.67%) Microsoft Project
3 10 (1.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (1.52%) MS Visio
4 9 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.46%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.30%) Trello
7 1 (0.15%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.15%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.15%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.15%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 20 (3.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (1.82%) Shopify
3 11 (1.67%) SAP Retail
4 10 (1.52%) Dynamics CRM
5 6 (0.91%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 6 (0.91%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.76%) Oracle Retail
6 5 (0.76%) SAP Payroll
7 4 (0.61%) Dynamics AX
7 4 (0.61%) Finacle
7 4 (0.61%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.46%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.46%) SAP MDG
8 3 (0.46%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 2 (0.30%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.30%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.30%) SAP GTS
9 2 (0.30%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.30%) Sprinklr
10 1 (0.15%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 80 (12.14%) Azure
2 42 (6.37%) Power Platform
3 39 (5.92%) AWS
4 32 (4.86%) GCP
5 21 (3.19%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (3.19%) Dynamics 365
6 16 (2.43%) GitHub
6 16 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
7 15 (2.28%) Snowflake
8 14 (2.12%) Figma
9 13 (1.97%) SaaS
10 11 (1.67%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (1.67%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 8 (1.21%) dbt
11 8 (1.21%) Entra ID
11 8 (1.21%) Vertex AI
12 7 (1.06%) BigCommerce
12 7 (1.06%) Serverless
12 7 (1.06%) SuccessFactors
13 6 (0.91%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 21 (3.19%) RFID
2 18 (2.73%) NFC
2 18 (2.73%) Wireless
3 10 (1.52%) VPN
4 8 (1.21%) Firewall
5 7 (1.06%) 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%) Broadband
10 1 (0.15%) FTP
10 1 (0.15%) HTTPS
10 1 (0.15%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (5.16%) Power BI
2 20 (3.03%) BigQuery
2 20 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
3 15 (2.28%) Metadata
3 15 (2.28%) SQL Server
4 12 (1.82%) Tableau
5 8 (1.21%) Data Lake
5 8 (1.21%) MySQL
6 7 (1.06%) Data Vault
7 5 (0.76%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (0.76%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (0.61%) Delta Lake
8 4 (0.61%) MongoDB
8 4 (0.61%) Redis
8 4 (0.61%) Relational Database
8 4 (0.61%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 3 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.46%) Oracle OLAP
9 3 (0.46%) Power Query
9 3 (0.46%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 66 (10.02%) JIRA
2 12 (1.82%) Jenkins
3 8 (1.21%) GitLab
4 5 (0.76%) ERwin
4 5 (0.76%) Git
4 5 (0.76%) Selenium
5 4 (0.61%) Storybook
6 3 (0.46%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.30%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.30%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.30%) JMeter
7 2 (0.30%) JUnit
7 2 (0.30%) MLflow
7 2 (0.30%) Mockito
7 2 (0.30%) Postman
7 2 (0.30%) PowerDesigner
7 2 (0.30%) SoapUI
7 2 (0.30%) Xcode
7 2 (0.30%) Zephyr
8 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
General
1 236 (35.81%) Social Skills
2 135 (20.49%) Finance
3 77 (11.68%) Analytical Skills
4 53 (8.04%) Marketing
5 52 (7.89%) Banking
6 41 (6.22%) Organisational Skills
7 34 (5.16%) Manufacturing
8 33 (5.01%) Public Sector
9 23 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
10 20 (3.03%) Retail Banking
11 19 (2.88%) Corporate Banking
12 18 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
12 18 (2.73%) Presentation Skills
13 16 (2.43%) Investment Banking
14 15 (2.28%) Legal
15 13 (1.97%) Telecoms
16 11 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 6 (0.91%) Publishing
18 4 (0.61%) Advertising
18 4 (0.61%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 127 (19.27%) Analyst
2 81 (12.29%) Project Manager
3 72 (10.93%) Senior
4 68 (10.32%) Architect
5 61 (9.26%) Business Analyst
6 58 (8.80%) Lead
7 34 (5.16%) Senior Manager
8 31 (4.70%) Solutions Architect
9 29 (4.40%) Consultant
10 21 (3.19%) Product Manager
11 19 (2.88%) Technical Manager
12 18 (2.73%) Programme Manager
13 16 (2.43%) Senior Project Manager
14 15 (2.28%) Developer
15 14 (2.12%) Support Analyst
16 13 (1.97%) E-Commerce Manager
16 13 (1.97%) Help Desk Analyst
17 12 (1.82%) Data Engineer
17 12 (1.82%) SAP Consultant
17 12 (1.82%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (2.88%) React
1 19 (2.88%) VML
2 15 (2.28%) Node.js
3 11 (1.67%) REST
4 10 (1.52%) PySpark
5 9 (1.37%) HTML
6 8 (1.21%) .NET
6 8 (1.21%) AngularJS
6 8 (1.21%) Spring
6 8 (1.21%) Spring Boot
7 7 (1.06%) OpenTelemetry
7 7 (1.06%) scikit-learn
8 6 (0.91%) LangChain
8 6 (0.91%) Middleware
9 5 (0.76%) CSS
9 5 (0.76%) Kafka
9 5 (0.76%) Matplotlib
9 5 (0.76%) RESTful
9 5 (0.76%) XGBoost
9 5 (0.76%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 35 (5.31%) Product Ownership
2 24 (3.64%) Self-Motivation
3 20 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
4 18 (2.73%) FMCG
4 18 (2.73%) IoT
4 18 (2.73%) Management Information System
4 18 (2.73%) Onboarding
5 15 (2.28%) Cloud Native
5 15 (2.28%) Data Structures
5 15 (2.28%) EPoS
6 13 (1.97%) Data Centre
7 11 (1.67%) Mobile App
8 9 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
8 9 (1.37%) Driving Licence
9 8 (1.21%) Social Media
10 6 (0.91%) Algorithms
10 6 (0.91%) CMDB
10 6 (0.91%) Reference Data
10 6 (0.91%) Replication
11 5 (0.76%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 33 (5.01%) Windows
2 12 (1.82%) Linux
3 8 (1.21%) Mac OS
4 6 (0.91%) Android
5 5 (0.76%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.46%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.30%) 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
1 162 (24.58%) Agile
2 159 (24.13%) Stakeholder Management
3 111 (16.84%) Problem-Solving
4 85 (12.90%) Project Management
5 82 (12.44%) E-Commerce
6 76 (11.53%) Analytics
7 66 (10.02%) Migration
7 66 (10.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 61 (9.26%) Roadmaps
9 58 (8.80%) Workshop Facilitation
10 56 (8.50%) Continuous Improvement
11 52 (7.89%) Scrum
12 49 (7.44%) Project Delivery
13 48 (7.28%) AI
14 47 (7.13%) Business Intelligence
14 47 (7.13%) Data Modelling
15 46 (6.98%) DevOps
16 42 (6.37%) CRM
17 41 (6.22%) Customer Experience
18 39 (5.92%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 61 (9.26%) SQL
2 51 (7.74%) Python
3 17 (2.58%) Java
4 13 (1.97%) JavaScript
5 12 (1.82%) PowerShell
6 11 (1.67%) Bash
7 9 (1.37%) Shell Script
8 8 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
9 6 (0.91%) C#
10 5 (0.76%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.46%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.30%) PHP
12 2 (0.30%) Swift
12 2 (0.30%) VBA
13 1 (0.15%) ABAP
13 1 (0.15%) CLIST
13 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.15%) JCL
13 1 (0.15%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.15%) VB
Qualifications
1 36 (5.46%) Degree
2 22 (3.34%) PMP
3 19 (2.88%) Security Cleared
4 17 (2.58%) PMI Certification
5 9 (1.37%) Master's Degree
6 7 (1.06%) MBA
6 7 (1.06%) SC Cleared
7 6 (0.91%) APMP
7 6 (0.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.91%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.76%) CISSP
9 4 (0.61%) CCIE
9 4 (0.61%) CCNP
9 4 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (0.61%) CISM
9 4 (0.61%) CRISC
9 4 (0.61%) CSPO
10 3 (0.46%) GIAC
10 3 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.95%) Data Quality
1 26 (3.95%) QA
2 21 (3.19%) PMO
3 15 (2.28%) Accessibility
4 12 (1.82%) GDPR
4 12 (1.82%) SLA
5 5 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
6 4 (0.61%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.46%) IFRS
7 3 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.46%) NCSC
8 2 (0.30%) COBIT
8 2 (0.30%) NIST
9 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.15%) IFRS 9
9 1 (0.15%) MiFID
9 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.15%) Solvency II
9 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 12 (1.82%) Docker
2 7 (1.06%) 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 18 (2.73%) Terraform
2 12 (1.82%) Kubernetes
3 6 (0.91%) Argo
3 6 (0.91%) Istio
4 4 (0.61%) Grafana
4 4 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
5 3 (0.46%) SCCM
5 3 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.30%) 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%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
7 1 (0.15%) ZABBIX
7 1 (0.15%) zSecure
Vendors
1 68 (10.32%) Microsoft
2 57 (8.65%) SAP
3 41 (6.22%) Salesforce
4 39 (5.92%) Oracle
5 34 (5.16%) Google
6 20 (3.03%) Adobe
7 18 (2.73%) Databricks
8 11 (1.67%) ServiceNow
9 7 (1.06%) Sitecore
10 6 (0.91%) Apple
10 6 (0.91%) BMC
10 6 (0.91%) CheckPoint
10 6 (0.91%) F5
10 6 (0.91%) Temenos
11 5 (0.76%) Cisco
11 5 (0.76%) Dell
11 5 (0.76%) Dynatrace
11 5 (0.76%) HP
11 5 (0.76%) Meraki
11 5 (0.76%) MicroStrategy