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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 113 90
Rank change year-on-year +36 -23 +4
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,508 694 840
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.24% 2.49% 2.56%
As % of the General category 5.78% 3.88% 4.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 870 372 456
10th Percentile £331 £300 £280
25th Percentile £456 £423 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - -
75th Percentile £675 £638 £638
90th Percentile £739 £749 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +4.76% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 62 30
10th Percentile £12.76 £15.25 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.39 £15.48 £15.35
Median hourly rate £15.24 £16.34 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year -6.70% +0.21% -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £19.50 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £25.15 £40.38
UK median hourly rate £15.04 £16.34 £16.30
% change year-on-year -7.93% +0.21% -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 26,071 17,868 19,180
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 56.02% 64.15% 58.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,297 11,335 11,586
10th Percentile £313 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
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 2,287 1,027 933
10th Percentile £13.51 £13.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.86 £16.17 £17.50
Median hourly rate £30.50 £25.15 £38.85
Median % change year-on-year +21.27% -35.26% +41.27%
75th Percentile £57.00 £45.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £69.79 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £29.50 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +17.30% -28.14% +27.27%

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 25 September 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 +45 839 £570 +3.64% 1,930
North of England -2 198 £550 +10.00% 603
South East -9 166 £575 +4.55% 547
Midlands +35 161 £550 +29.41% 447
North West +5 124 £550 +10.00% 342
East Midlands +21 92 £500 +17.86% 200
East of England +2 77 £550 -6.38% 201
West Midlands +9 68 £575 +35.29% 247
Yorkshire -38 56 £500 -4.76% 217
South West -16 52 £430 +36.51% 195
North East -30 18 £525 +288.89% 49
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 50 (3.32%) Confluence
2 22 (1.46%) CMS
3 19 (1.26%) SharePoint
4 16 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.60%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.33%) SAS
7 4 (0.27%) Apache
7 4 (0.27%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.27%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.13%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.13%) CICS
8 2 (0.13%) WordPress
9 1 (0.066%) Mendix
9 1 (0.066%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.066%) Mule
9 1 (0.066%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 68 (4.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (3.18%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (1.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (0.99%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 12 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.66%) MS Visio
8 9 (0.60%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.53%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.40%) CPLEX
10 6 (0.40%) InDesign
11 4 (0.27%) Chatbot
11 4 (0.27%) Notion
12 1 (0.066%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.066%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.066%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.066%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 50 (3.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.66%) Shopify
3 14 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.66%) Oracle Retail
5 8 (0.53%) Magento
5 8 (0.53%) SAP Retail
6 6 (0.40%) NetSuite
6 6 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.40%) SAP CRM
7 5 (0.33%) SAP MDG
7 5 (0.33%) Workday HCM
8 4 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
8 4 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
8 4 (0.27%) SAP SD
9 3 (0.20%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
9 3 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.20%) SAP IBP
9 3 (0.20%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 206 (13.66%) Azure
2 148 (9.81%) AWS
3 78 (5.17%) Power Platform
4 74 (4.91%) GCP
5 55 (3.65%) Snowflake
6 49 (3.25%) GitHub
7 37 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
8 34 (2.25%) Entra ID
9 30 (1.99%) GitHub Actions
10 27 (1.79%) Dynamics 365
11 25 (1.66%) SaaS
12 22 (1.46%) dbt
13 20 (1.33%) Figma
14 17 (1.13%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
15 16 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
16 15 (0.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 15 (0.99%) Microsoft 365
17 14 (0.93%) OCI
18 12 (0.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
19 8 (0.53%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.46%) Firewall
1 22 (1.46%) WAN
2 17 (1.13%) VPN
3 14 (0.93%) ATM
3 14 (0.93%) Network Security
3 14 (0.93%) Wireless
4 13 (0.86%) LAN
5 12 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
6 8 (0.53%) BGP
6 8 (0.53%) IPsec
6 8 (0.53%) OSPF
7 7 (0.46%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 7 (0.46%) Internet
7 7 (0.46%) SD-WAN
7 7 (0.46%) VLAN
8 6 (0.40%) Structured Cabling
9 5 (0.33%) DNS
10 4 (0.27%) Broadband
10 4 (0.27%) Cisco Firepower
10 4 (0.27%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (5.17%) Power BI
2 40 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
3 30 (1.99%) BigQuery
4 27 (1.79%) Data Lake
5 22 (1.46%) Metadata
6 21 (1.39%) SQL Server
7 19 (1.26%) MongoDB
7 19 (1.26%) Tableau
8 18 (1.19%) NoSQL
9 14 (0.93%) Amazon Redshift
9 14 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
10 13 (0.86%) Relational Database
11 12 (0.80%) MySQL
11 12 (0.80%) Power Query
11 12 (0.80%) SAP BW
11 12 (0.80%) SAP HANA
12 11 (0.73%) Redis
13 10 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 9 (0.60%) Couchbase
15 8 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 76 (5.04%) JIRA
2 22 (1.46%) Git
3 21 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.53%) Subversion
5 7 (0.46%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.33%) Cypress.io
7 4 (0.27%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.27%) GitLab
7 4 (0.27%) Hudson
7 4 (0.27%) JMeter
8 3 (0.20%) Postman
9 2 (0.13%) git-flow
9 2 (0.13%) MLflow
9 2 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.13%) Selenium
9 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.13%) webpack
10 1 (0.066%) Maven
10 1 (0.066%) Moq
General
1 445 (29.51%) Social Skills
2 337 (22.35%) Finance
3 157 (10.41%) Analytical Skills
4 129 (8.55%) Marketing
5 112 (7.43%) Banking
6 105 (6.96%) Manufacturing
7 62 (4.11%) Organisational Skills
8 56 (3.71%) Retail Banking
9 38 (2.52%) Corporate Banking
9 38 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
10 37 (2.45%) Investment Banking
11 28 (1.86%) Advertising
11 28 (1.86%) Telecoms
12 27 (1.79%) Legal
12 27 (1.79%) Public Sector
13 20 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
14 18 (1.19%) French Language
14 18 (1.19%) Spanish Language
15 17 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (1.06%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 265 (17.57%) Architect
2 203 (13.46%) Analyst
3 161 (10.68%) Senior
4 150 (9.95%) Solutions Architect
5 119 (7.89%) Project Manager
6 109 (7.23%) Business Analyst
7 106 (7.03%) Lead
8 76 (5.04%) Developer
9 52 (3.45%) Product Manager
10 49 (3.25%) Consultant
10 49 (3.25%) Designer
11 43 (2.85%) Senior Manager
12 42 (2.79%) Supply Chain Architect
13 32 (2.12%) Senior Developer
14 31 (2.06%) Data Analyst
15 30 (1.99%) Data Architect
15 30 (1.99%) Enterprise Architect
15 30 (1.99%) Technical Manager
16 26 (1.72%) 2nd Line Support
17 25 (1.66%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (4.24%) REST
2 48 (3.18%) Terraform
3 39 (2.59%) Kafka
4 38 (2.52%) React
5 29 (1.92%) Spring
6 26 (1.72%) Spring Boot
7 24 (1.59%) Node.js
8 22 (1.46%) Middleware
9 21 (1.39%) Django
9 21 (1.39%) MACH
10 20 (1.33%) RESTful
10 20 (1.33%) SOAP
11 19 (1.26%) VML
12 16 (1.06%) HTML
12 16 (1.06%) Next.js
13 15 (0.99%) SAP Fiori
14 12 (0.80%) CSS
14 12 (0.80%) OAuth
14 12 (0.80%) SAPUI5
15 10 (0.66%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 72 (4.77%) Product Ownership
2 70 (4.64%) FMCG
3 57 (3.78%) EPoS
4 52 (3.45%) Onboarding
5 49 (3.25%) Cloud Native
6 33 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
7 29 (1.92%) Mobile App
8 28 (1.86%) Management Information System
9 27 (1.79%) Driving Licence
10 26 (1.72%) Data Centre
10 26 (1.72%) Greenfield Project
11 24 (1.59%) Data Structures
12 23 (1.53%) Marketing Technology
13 22 (1.46%) Operational Technology
14 20 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
14 20 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
15 17 (1.13%) Smartphone
16 15 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
16 15 (0.99%) IoT
16 15 (0.99%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 49 (3.25%) Windows
2 16 (1.06%) Linux
3 12 (0.80%) Android
4 7 (0.46%) Apple iOS
4 7 (0.46%) Mac OS
4 7 (0.46%) Unix
5 6 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.40%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.27%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.13%) Debian
7 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.13%) zOS
8 1 (0.066%) OS/2
8 1 (0.066%) SUSE
8 1 (0.066%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.066%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 414 (27.45%) Stakeholder Management
2 343 (22.75%) Agile
3 228 (15.12%) E-Commerce
4 184 (12.20%) Migration
5 180 (11.94%) Analytics
6 174 (11.54%) Logistics
7 172 (11.41%) Problem-Solving
8 164 (10.88%) AI
9 162 (10.74%) Roadmaps
10 144 (9.55%) Decision-Making
11 132 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
12 130 (8.62%) CRM
12 130 (8.62%) Customer Experience
13 118 (7.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 117 (7.76%) CI/CD
15 112 (7.43%) Project Management
16 107 (7.10%) Business Intelligence
17 105 (6.96%) Customer Service
17 105 (6.96%) DevOps
18 102 (6.76%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 133 (8.82%) SQL
2 102 (6.76%) Python
3 49 (3.25%) Java
4 35 (2.32%) TypeScript
5 22 (1.46%) JavaScript
6 12 (0.80%) ABAP
6 12 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (0.66%) C#
7 10 (0.66%) R
8 8 (0.53%) Bash
9 7 (0.46%) PowerShell
10 6 (0.40%) Apex Code
10 6 (0.40%) PL/SQL
11 5 (0.33%) Groovy
12 4 (0.27%) Bicep
12 4 (0.27%) Scala
12 4 (0.27%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.27%) SOQL
12 4 (0.27%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.13%) ProC
Qualifications
1 60 (3.98%) Degree
2 41 (2.72%) Security Cleared
3 22 (1.46%) PMP
4 19 (1.26%) SC Cleared
5 11 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
5 11 (0.73%) PMI Certification
6 10 (0.66%) DBS Check
7 6 (0.40%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (0.40%) CISSP
8 5 (0.33%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (0.33%) CISM
8 5 (0.33%) City & Guilds
8 5 (0.33%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (0.33%) Six Sigma Green Belt
9 4 (0.27%) CSPO
10 3 (0.20%) APMG
10 3 (0.20%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.20%) CCSE
10 3 (0.20%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 3 (0.20%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (4.58%) Data Quality
2 68 (4.51%) QA
3 31 (2.06%) GDPR
4 24 (1.59%) Accessibility
5 23 (1.53%) PMO
6 14 (0.93%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.53%) SLA
8 7 (0.46%) NIST
9 6 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 5 (0.33%) WCAG
11 3 (0.20%) GRC
11 3 (0.20%) PSD2
12 2 (0.13%) GAAP
12 2 (0.13%) IFRS
12 2 (0.13%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.066%) Basel III
13 1 (0.066%) GxP
13 1 (0.066%) HL7
System Software
1 35 (2.32%) Docker
2 27 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.86%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.33%) Firmware
5 5 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.13%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.066%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 39 (2.59%) Kubernetes
2 11 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
3 10 (0.66%) Ansible
4 7 (0.46%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.40%) FortiGate
5 6 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.27%) Bosun
6 4 (0.27%) SCCM
7 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.13%) AirWatch
7 2 (0.13%) CA Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
7 2 (0.13%) logstash
7 2 (0.13%) PingFederate
7 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.066%) Argo
8 1 (0.066%) CloudHub
8 1 (0.066%) Grafana
8 1 (0.066%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.066%) vMotion
Vendors
1 150 (9.95%) Microsoft
2 119 (7.89%) SAP
3 81 (5.37%) Salesforce
4 76 (5.04%) Databricks
5 69 (4.58%) Oracle
6 49 (3.25%) Google
7 38 (2.52%) Adobe
8 25 (1.66%) MuleSoft
8 25 (1.66%) Zscaler
9 18 (1.19%) Cisco
9 18 (1.19%) Workday
10 17 (1.13%) ServiceNow
11 15 (0.99%) IBM
12 13 (0.86%) Apple
12 13 (0.86%) New Relic
13 12 (0.80%) Fortinet
14 11 (0.73%) Braze
14 11 (0.73%) Palo Alto
14 11 (0.73%) Splunk
15 10 (0.66%) IFS
3,923 Retail jobs in England