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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 96 76
Rank change year-on-year -5 -20 +11
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,009 632 1,002
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.42% 2.66% 2.74%
As % of the General category 4.47% 4.15% 4.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 591 337 554
10th Percentile £263 £325 £276
25th Percentile £413 £413 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £505
Median % change year-on-year - +3.96% -4.72%
75th Percentile £632 £638 £625
90th Percentile £738 £750 £725
UK median daily rate £503 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.24% +5.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 19 87
10th Percentile £13.10 £15.25 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.77 £15.78 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.50 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +40.63% -21.59%
75th Percentile £22.50 £52.50 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £69.50 £21.46
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £29.00 £16.00
% change year-on-year -27.59% +81.25% -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 22,594 15,235 21,177
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 54.23% 64.08% 57.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,884 9,879 13,638
10th Percentile £313 £285 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £513 £514 £525
% change year-on-year -0.29% -2.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,539 664 1,801
10th Percentile £14.21 £13.28 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.30 £16.67 £15.46
Median hourly rate £30.58 £27.25 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.22% -9.17% -6.25%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £51.91
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.74
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.45 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.29% -8.50% -7.69%

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 27 May 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 27 May 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 27 May 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 -3 558 £538 -3.97% 545
North of England -29 133 £513 +7.89% 266
South East +4 132 £469 -6.25% 267
Midlands -30 92 £495 +7.03% 159
North West 0 82 £525 +5.00% 141
East Midlands -1 53 £495 -1.00% 78
East of England -2 50 £523 -0.33% 105
Yorkshire -47 48 £513 +38.51% 108
West Midlands -46 39 £514 +17.58% 81
South West -16 31 £333 -33.50% 91
North East -24 3 £173 -76.98% 21
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 (3.57%) Confluence
2 14 (1.39%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.09%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 9 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.69%) CMS
6 3 (0.30%) SAS
6 3 (0.30%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.20%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.20%) CICS
8 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.099%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 30 (2.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 22 (2.18%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.88%) Microsoft Project
4 18 (1.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.29%) Chatbot
6 11 (1.09%) MS Visio
7 10 (0.99%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.79%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.50%) InDesign
10 4 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.20%) Notion
11 2 (0.20%) UserZoom
12 1 (0.099%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.099%) Adobe After Effects
12 1 (0.099%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.099%) Maya
12 1 (0.099%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.099%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
12 1 (0.099%) Trello
Business Applications
1 20 (1.98%) Shopify
2 16 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (1.09%) Dynamics CRM
4 8 (0.79%) SAP Retail
5 7 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 6 (0.59%) Finacle
6 6 (0.59%) Oracle Retail
7 5 (0.50%) SAP CRM
7 5 (0.50%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.40%) Magento
8 4 (0.40%) NetSuite
9 3 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
10 2 (0.20%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
10 2 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
10 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.20%) SAP MM
10 2 (0.20%) Temenos T24
11 1 (0.099%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 109 (10.80%) Azure
2 80 (7.93%) AWS
3 58 (5.75%) GCP
4 49 (4.86%) Power Platform
5 30 (2.97%) Snowflake
6 24 (2.38%) GitHub
7 21 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
8 19 (1.88%) Azure DevOps
9 17 (1.68%) Microsoft 365
10 16 (1.59%) GitHub Actions
11 15 (1.49%) Figma
12 14 (1.39%) Entra ID
12 14 (1.39%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
13 12 (1.19%) BigCommerce
13 12 (1.19%) SaaS
14 11 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
14 11 (1.09%) Google Workspace
15 10 (0.99%) Miro
16 9 (0.89%) Cloud Run
16 9 (0.89%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.49%) WAN
2 14 (1.39%) Firewall
2 14 (1.39%) VPN
3 13 (1.29%) ATM
4 9 (0.89%) Wireless
5 8 (0.79%) Cisco Nexus
5 8 (0.79%) Network Security
5 8 (0.79%) RFID
5 8 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (0.69%) LAN
7 6 (0.59%) BGP
7 6 (0.59%) Cisco Firepower
7 6 (0.59%) OSPF
8 5 (0.50%) Cisco ASA
8 5 (0.50%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.50%) VSAN
9 4 (0.40%) EIGRP
9 4 (0.40%) MPLS
10 3 (0.30%) Broadband
10 3 (0.30%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (4.46%) Power BI
2 28 (2.78%) BigQuery
3 18 (1.78%) Data Warehouse
4 14 (1.39%) MySQL
4 14 (1.39%) SQL Server
5 10 (0.99%) Data Lake
5 10 (0.99%) Metadata
5 10 (0.99%) Tableau
6 7 (0.69%) Relational Database
7 6 (0.59%) Data Vault
7 6 (0.59%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.50%) MongoDB
9 4 (0.40%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.40%) Looker
9 4 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
9 4 (0.40%) Semantic Layer
9 4 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
10 3 (0.30%) OLAP
10 3 (0.30%) Oracle OLAP
10 3 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 74 (7.33%) JIRA
2 16 (1.59%) Git
3 15 (1.49%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.79%) GitLab
5 4 (0.40%) Maven
5 4 (0.40%) Subversion
6 3 (0.30%) ERwin
6 3 (0.30%) JMeter
6 3 (0.30%) Selenium
6 3 (0.30%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.20%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.20%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.20%) Eclipse
7 2 (0.20%) git-flow
7 2 (0.20%) MLflow
7 2 (0.20%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.099%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.099%) Hudson
8 1 (0.099%) Mockito
8 1 (0.099%) webpack
General
1 292 (28.94%) Social Skills
2 255 (25.27%) Finance
3 99 (9.81%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (8.82%) Banking
5 64 (6.34%) Marketing
6 49 (4.86%) Manufacturing
7 45 (4.46%) Organisational Skills
8 42 (4.16%) Retail Banking
9 36 (3.57%) Investment Banking
10 32 (3.17%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (2.68%) Telecoms
12 26 (2.58%) Public Sector
13 24 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
14 21 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
15 20 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
16 18 (1.78%) Legal
17 15 (1.49%) Advertising
18 13 (1.29%) Back Office
18 13 (1.29%) French Language
19 11 (1.09%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 161 (15.96%) Architect
2 144 (14.27%) Analyst
3 125 (12.39%) Senior
4 106 (10.51%) Project Manager
5 84 (8.33%) Business Analyst
6 72 (7.14%) Lead
7 69 (6.84%) Solutions Architect
8 59 (5.85%) Senior Manager
9 42 (4.16%) Technical Manager
10 36 (3.57%) Designer
11 33 (3.27%) Senior Project Manager
12 31 (3.07%) Enterprise Architect
12 31 (3.07%) Product Manager
13 30 (2.97%) Consultant
14 28 (2.78%) Developer
15 26 (2.58%) Data Architect
16 23 (2.28%) Data Engineer
17 20 (1.98%) 2nd Line Support
17 20 (1.98%) Programme Manager
17 20 (1.98%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (2.78%) Middleware
1 28 (2.78%) VML
2 24 (2.38%) REST
3 22 (2.18%) React
4 21 (2.08%) Spring
5 16 (1.59%) Node.js
6 15 (1.49%) Spring Boot
7 14 (1.39%) AngularJS
8 10 (0.99%) Kafka
9 9 (0.89%) CSS
9 9 (0.89%) RESTful
10 8 (0.79%) OpenTelemetry
10 8 (0.79%) PySpark
11 7 (0.69%) .NET
11 7 (0.69%) LangChain
11 7 (0.69%) MACH
11 7 (0.69%) OAuth
11 7 (0.69%) OAuth2
11 7 (0.69%) OpenID
12 6 (0.59%) jQuery
Miscellaneous
1 69 (6.84%) Product Ownership
2 34 (3.37%) EPoS
3 30 (2.97%) Driving Licence
4 29 (2.87%) FMCG
5 28 (2.78%) Cloud Native
6 25 (2.48%) Onboarding
7 23 (2.28%) Data Centre
8 19 (1.88%) Data Structures
9 17 (1.68%) Management Information System
9 17 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
10 16 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
11 14 (1.39%) Mainframe
12 13 (1.29%) Mobile App
13 11 (1.09%) Smartphone
14 10 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (0.99%) Virtual Team
15 9 (0.89%) AI Agents
15 9 (0.89%) CCTV
16 7 (0.69%) Enterprise Cloud
17 6 (0.59%) Mobile Payment
Operating Systems
1 47 (4.66%) Windows
2 22 (2.18%) Linux
3 8 (0.79%) Android
4 6 (0.59%) Unix
5 5 (0.50%) Mac OS
5 5 (0.50%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.40%) zOS
7 3 (0.30%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.30%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.099%) Debian
8 1 (0.099%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.099%) SUSE
8 1 (0.099%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.099%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.099%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (21.90%) Agile
2 219 (21.70%) Stakeholder Management
3 171 (16.95%) Problem-Solving
4 153 (15.16%) E-Commerce
5 125 (12.39%) Migration
6 121 (11.99%) Roadmaps
7 106 (10.51%) Project Management
8 104 (10.31%) Analytics
9 100 (9.91%) Customer Experience
10 81 (8.03%) ERP
10 81 (8.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 79 (7.83%) Continuous Improvement
12 77 (7.63%) Change Management
13 76 (7.53%) Project Delivery
14 75 (7.43%) Scrum
15 71 (7.04%) Decision-Making
16 70 (6.94%) AI
16 70 (6.94%) User Acceptance Testing
17 66 (6.54%) Workshop Facilitation
18 63 (6.24%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 64 (6.34%) SQL
2 54 (5.35%) Python
3 31 (3.07%) Java
4 23 (2.28%) JavaScript
5 12 (1.19%) TypeScript
6 10 (0.99%) PowerShell
6 10 (0.99%) Shell Script
7 6 (0.59%) C#
8 5 (0.50%) Bash
9 4 (0.40%) Bicep
9 4 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
9 4 (0.40%) Scala
9 4 (0.40%) SOQL
10 3 (0.30%) Apex Code
10 3 (0.30%) Kotlin
10 3 (0.30%) R
10 3 (0.30%) SOSL
10 3 (0.30%) VBA
11 2 (0.20%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.20%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 49 (4.86%) Degree
2 41 (4.06%) Security Cleared
3 26 (2.58%) SC Cleared
4 18 (1.78%) PMP
5 11 (1.09%) PMI Certification
6 8 (0.79%) CCNP
6 8 (0.79%) Cisco Certification
6 8 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (0.79%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.69%) APMP
7 7 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.69%) CISSP
7 7 (0.69%) CSPO
7 7 (0.69%) Master's Degree
8 5 (0.50%) CCSE
8 5 (0.50%) CCSM
8 5 (0.50%) CISM
8 5 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.50%) MBA
9 4 (0.40%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (4.26%) Data Quality
2 41 (4.06%) QA
3 34 (3.37%) GDPR
4 32 (3.17%) PMO
5 14 (1.39%) Accessibility
5 14 (1.39%) SLA
6 10 (0.99%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.50%) NIST
9 2 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.20%) GRC
9 2 (0.20%) IFRS
9 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.20%) WCAG
10 1 (0.099%) COBIT
10 1 (0.099%) GAAP
10 1 (0.099%) GxP
10 1 (0.099%) ISO 8583
10 1 (0.099%) NCSC
System Software
1 23 (2.28%) Docker
2 19 (1.88%) Active Directory
3 6 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.30%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 23 (2.28%) Terraform
2 17 (1.68%) Kubernetes
3 7 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
3 7 (0.69%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 6 (0.59%) Argo
4 6 (0.59%) Istio
5 5 (0.50%) SCCM
5 5 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.40%) Grafana
7 2 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.20%) Ansible
7 2 (0.20%) CA Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.20%) FortiGate
7 2 (0.20%) MOM
7 2 (0.20%) PingFederate
8 1 (0.099%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 88 (8.72%) Microsoft
2 69 (6.84%) SAP
3 61 (6.05%) Oracle
4 49 (4.86%) Salesforce
5 45 (4.46%) Google
6 39 (3.87%) Databricks
7 26 (2.58%) Adobe
8 19 (1.88%) ServiceNow
9 14 (1.39%) Cisco
9 14 (1.39%) IFS
9 14 (1.39%) Sitecore
10 11 (1.09%) VMware
11 10 (0.99%) Palo Alto
11 10 (0.99%) Zscaler
12 9 (0.89%) CheckPoint
12 9 (0.89%) Fortinet
13 8 (0.79%) Temenos
14 7 (0.69%) Splunk
14 7 (0.69%) Workday
15 6 (0.59%) Avaloq