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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 95 80
Rank change year-on-year -30 -15 +3
Contract jobs citing Retail 830 676 984
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.11% 2.77% 2.64%
As % of the General category 3.79% 4.33% 4.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 517 371 563
10th Percentile £206 £306 £278
25th Percentile £380 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £520
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -0.95%
75th Percentile £619 £630 £644
90th Percentile £738 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £513
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 15 81
10th Percentile £12.93 £15.67 £11.13
25th Percentile £15.25 £18.13 £12.15
Median hourly rate £16.92 £31.50 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.29% +96.88% -19.23%
75th Percentile £22.52 £43.25 £21.37
90th Percentile £47.20 £62.60 £21.46
UK median hourly rate £17.21 £32.50 £16.00
% change year-on-year -47.05% +103.13% -19.23%

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 21,908 15,598 21,814
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.80% 63.92% 58.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,766 10,146 14,117
10th Percentile £304 £300 £275
25th Percentile £408 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,401 649 1,757
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.61 £15.39
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.75 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.87% +2.68% -20.00%
75th Percentile £61.18 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £28.75 £27.50
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -21.43%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 -19 456 £525 -4.55% 378
South East -16 117 £416 -22.56% 227
North of England -40 104 £500 +11.11% 239
Midlands -43 76 £495 -1.00% 166
North West -17 58 £500 - 127
Yorkshire -41 42 £513 +38.51% 90
East of England -22 41 £475 -9.52% 113
East Midlands -13 40 £495 -1.00% 88
West Midlands -52 35 £500 +12.68% 78
South West -23 20 £318 -6.62% 77
North East -16 4 £206 -72.50% 27
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 36 (4.34%) Confluence
2 16 (1.93%) SharePoint
3 12 (1.45%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 9 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.96%) CMS
6 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.36%) SAS
7 2 (0.24%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.24%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.24%) WordPress
8 1 (0.12%) CICS
8 1 (0.12%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.12%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 33 (3.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (2.29%) Microsoft Project
3 16 (1.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
5 13 (1.57%) Chatbot
6 11 (1.33%) MS Visio
7 6 (0.72%) Photoshop
8 5 (0.60%) Adobe Illustrator
9 3 (0.36%) InDesign
10 2 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.24%) Trello
11 1 (0.12%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.12%) Adobe After Effects
11 1 (0.12%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.12%) Maya
11 1 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.12%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 19 (2.29%) Shopify
2 16 (1.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (1.20%) SAP Retail
5 8 (0.96%) Oracle Retail
6 6 (0.72%) Finacle
6 6 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 5 (0.60%) SAP Payroll
8 4 (0.48%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.48%) Temenos T24
9 3 (0.36%) SAP MM
9 3 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 2 (0.24%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
10 2 (0.24%) Sprinklr
11 1 (0.12%) Adobe Campaign
11 1 (0.12%) OpenText VIM for SAP
11 1 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
11 1 (0.12%) Sage X3
11 1 (0.12%) SAP CAR
Cloud Services
1 86 (10.36%) Azure
2 55 (6.63%) Power Platform
3 51 (6.14%) AWS
3 51 (6.14%) GCP
4 25 (3.01%) Dynamics 365
5 20 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
5 20 (2.41%) GitHub
5 20 (2.41%) Snowflake
6 18 (2.17%) Microsoft 365
7 13 (1.57%) Entra ID
7 13 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
7 13 (1.57%) SaaS
8 12 (1.45%) BigCommerce
8 12 (1.45%) Google Workspace
9 11 (1.33%) Figma
9 11 (1.33%) Miro
10 9 (1.08%) Azure Data Factory
10 9 (1.08%) Cloud Run
10 9 (1.08%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 8 (0.96%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 17 (2.05%) VPN
2 16 (1.93%) RFID
3 13 (1.57%) Firewall
3 13 (1.57%) WAN
4 11 (1.33%) Wireless
5 8 (0.96%) LAN
5 8 (0.96%) NFC
6 6 (0.72%) Cisco Nexus
6 6 (0.72%) Wi-Fi
7 5 (0.60%) BGP
7 5 (0.60%) OSPF
8 4 (0.48%) EIGRP
8 4 (0.48%) VoIP
9 3 (0.36%) Cisco Firepower
9 3 (0.36%) MPLS
9 3 (0.36%) Network Security
9 3 (0.36%) SD-WAN
9 3 (0.36%) WLAN
10 2 (0.24%) Cisco ASA
10 2 (0.24%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (5.66%) Power BI
2 24 (2.89%) BigQuery
3 17 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
4 15 (1.81%) SQL Server
5 12 (1.45%) MySQL
5 12 (1.45%) Tableau
6 10 (1.20%) Metadata
7 8 (0.96%) Data Lake
8 6 (0.72%) Data Vault
9 5 (0.60%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (0.60%) Relational Database
10 4 (0.48%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.48%) NoSQL
11 3 (0.36%) Looker
11 3 (0.36%) OLAP
11 3 (0.36%) Oracle OLAP
11 3 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
11 3 (0.36%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (0.24%) MongoDB
12 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 69 (8.31%) JIRA
2 9 (1.08%) Git
2 9 (1.08%) Jenkins
3 7 (0.84%) GitLab
4 5 (0.60%) ERwin
5 4 (0.48%) Maven
6 3 (0.36%) Selenium
6 3 (0.36%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.24%) MLflow
7 2 (0.24%) PowerDesigner
7 2 (0.24%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.12%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.12%) Gatling
8 1 (0.12%) HP UFT
8 1 (0.12%) Hudson
8 1 (0.12%) JMeter
8 1 (0.12%) Mockito
8 1 (0.12%) Zephyr
General
1 269 (32.41%) Social Skills
2 211 (25.42%) Finance
3 102 (12.29%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (8.31%) Banking
5 59 (7.11%) Marketing
6 40 (4.82%) Manufacturing
6 40 (4.82%) Organisational Skills
7 29 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
8 27 (3.25%) Public Sector
9 26 (3.13%) Presentation Skills
10 24 (2.89%) Investment Banking
11 23 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
11 23 (2.77%) Retail Banking
12 22 (2.65%) Corporate Banking
13 17 (2.05%) Telecoms
14 13 (1.57%) Legal
15 9 (1.08%) Back Office
16 8 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
17 7 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 6 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 142 (17.11%) Analyst
2 115 (13.86%) Architect
3 106 (12.77%) Project Manager
4 105 (12.65%) Senior
5 83 (10.00%) Business Analyst
6 68 (8.19%) Lead
7 45 (5.42%) Senior Manager
8 44 (5.30%) Solutions Architect
9 34 (4.10%) Consultant
10 32 (3.86%) Technical Manager
11 25 (3.01%) Senior Project Manager
12 23 (2.77%) Designer
12 23 (2.77%) Enterprise Architect
13 21 (2.53%) Data Architect
13 21 (2.53%) Programme Manager
14 16 (1.93%) IT Manager
14 16 (1.93%) Product Manager
15 15 (1.81%) Data Engineer
15 15 (1.81%) Developer
15 15 (1.81%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (3.25%) VML
2 24 (2.89%) Middleware
3 19 (2.29%) REST
4 15 (1.81%) Spring
5 13 (1.57%) React
6 12 (1.45%) AngularJS
7 10 (1.20%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.08%) CSS
8 9 (1.08%) PySpark
9 8 (0.96%) .NET
9 8 (0.96%) Node.js
10 7 (0.84%) HTML
10 7 (0.84%) LangChain
10 7 (0.84%) scikit-learn
11 6 (0.72%) jQuery
11 6 (0.72%) OpenTelemetry
12 5 (0.60%) Kafka
12 5 (0.60%) OAuth
12 5 (0.60%) OAuth2
12 5 (0.60%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 55 (6.63%) Product Ownership
2 27 (3.25%) Cloud Native
2 27 (3.25%) Self-Motivation
3 24 (2.89%) Driving Licence
4 22 (2.65%) Data Centre
5 21 (2.53%) Onboarding
6 20 (2.41%) Management Information System
7 19 (2.29%) FMCG
8 16 (1.93%) Data Structures
8 16 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
9 14 (1.69%) Mainframe
10 13 (1.57%) EPoS
11 11 (1.33%) Mobile App
12 10 (1.20%) IoT
13 9 (1.08%) Virtual Team
14 8 (0.96%) Reference Data
15 7 (0.84%) AI Agents
15 7 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
15 7 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
15 7 (0.84%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 33 (3.98%) Windows
2 18 (2.17%) Linux
3 8 (0.96%) Mac OS
4 5 (0.60%) Android
5 4 (0.48%) Unix
5 4 (0.48%) Windows Server
5 4 (0.48%) zOS
6 3 (0.36%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.12%) VMS
7 1 (0.12%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (23.13%) Stakeholder Management
2 181 (21.81%) Agile
3 163 (19.64%) Problem-Solving
4 113 (13.61%) E-Commerce
5 106 (12.77%) Migration
6 102 (12.29%) Project Management
7 97 (11.69%) Roadmaps
8 87 (10.48%) Analytics
9 83 (10.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 78 (9.40%) Customer Experience
11 71 (8.55%) AI
11 71 (8.55%) ERP
12 70 (8.43%) Workshop Facilitation
13 67 (8.07%) Project Delivery
14 65 (7.83%) Change Management
15 63 (7.59%) Continuous Improvement
15 63 (7.59%) Scrum
16 62 (7.47%) Business Intelligence
17 57 (6.87%) Decision-Making
18 55 (6.63%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 57 (6.87%) SQL
2 53 (6.39%) Python
3 26 (3.13%) Java
4 18 (2.17%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.57%) PowerShell
6 9 (1.08%) Shell Script
7 8 (0.96%) Bash
8 7 (0.84%) C#
8 7 (0.84%) Kusto Query Language
9 5 (0.60%) TypeScript
10 4 (0.48%) VBA
11 3 (0.36%) Kotlin
11 3 (0.36%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.36%) Scala
12 2 (0.24%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.24%) Google Apps Script
12 2 (0.24%) R
12 2 (0.24%) SOQL
12 2 (0.24%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 47 (5.66%) Degree
2 31 (3.73%) Security Cleared
3 22 (2.65%) PMP
3 22 (2.65%) SC Cleared
4 17 (2.05%) PMI Certification
5 8 (0.96%) CSPO
5 8 (0.96%) Master's Degree
6 7 (0.84%) APMP
6 7 (0.84%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (0.72%) CCNP
7 6 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (0.72%) CISSP
7 6 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.72%) MBA
8 4 (0.48%) CCIE
8 4 (0.48%) CISM
8 4 (0.48%) CRISC
8 4 (0.48%) DBS Check
9 3 (0.36%) IIBA
9 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (4.70%) Data Quality
2 36 (4.34%) QA
3 31 (3.73%) PMO
4 29 (3.49%) GDPR
5 17 (2.05%) SLA
6 12 (1.45%) Accessibility
7 8 (0.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.72%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.60%) NIST
10 4 (0.48%) IFRS
11 3 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.24%) GRC
12 2 (0.24%) NCSC
13 1 (0.12%) GAAP
13 1 (0.12%) GxP
13 1 (0.12%) IFRS 9
13 1 (0.12%) ISO 8583
13 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (2.17%) Active Directory
2 15 (1.81%) Docker
3 5 (0.60%) VMware NSX
4 4 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.12%) RACF
7 1 (0.12%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 20 (2.41%) Terraform
2 12 (1.45%) Kubernetes
3 7 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
3 7 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
3 7 (0.84%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 6 (0.72%) Argo
4 6 (0.72%) Istio
5 5 (0.60%) Grafana
6 4 (0.48%) SCCM
7 2 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.24%) CA Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
7 2 (0.24%) MOM
7 2 (0.24%) PingFederate
8 1 (0.12%) Ansible
8 1 (0.12%) Cacti
8 1 (0.12%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.12%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.12%) ZABBIX
8 1 (0.12%) zSecure
Vendors
1 78 (9.40%) Microsoft
2 66 (7.95%) SAP
3 49 (5.90%) Google
3 49 (5.90%) Oracle
4 42 (5.06%) Salesforce
5 34 (4.10%) Databricks
6 27 (3.25%) Adobe
7 19 (2.29%) ServiceNow
8 15 (1.81%) Sitecore
9 11 (1.33%) IFS
10 10 (1.20%) Cisco
11 8 (0.96%) Palo Alto
11 8 (0.96%) Temenos
11 8 (0.96%) VMware
12 7 (0.84%) CheckPoint
12 7 (0.84%) Workday
12 7 (0.84%) Zscaler
13 6 (0.72%) Apple
13 6 (0.72%) Avaloq
13 6 (0.72%) GoldenSource