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

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 87 93
Rank change year-on-year -48 +6 -18
Contract jobs citing Retail 631 732 852
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.03% 2.74% 2.34%
As % of the General category 3.35% 4.42% 3.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 382 390 488
10th Percentile £206 £267 £271
25th Percentile £401 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £636
90th Percentile £735 £766 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 8 30
10th Percentile £14.19 £17.57 £10.60
25th Percentile £16.17 £18.13 £13.58
Median hourly rate £17.00 £32.50 £19.81
Median % change year-on-year -47.69% +64.06% -
75th Percentile £19.50 £36.13 £21.42
90th Percentile £24.72 £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 18,828 16,570 21,528
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 60.71% 62.03% 59.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,944 9,986 14,444
10th Percentile £284 £295 £275
25th Percentile £402 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.37% -2.91% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,180 542 1,087
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.49 £14.05
25th Percentile £16.74 £18.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.19 £29.12 £30.48
Median % change year-on-year -20.35% -4.46% +18.53%
75th Percentile £46.00 £55.88 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.07 £74.65 £70.03
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £27.19 £30.00
% change year-on-year -15.40% -9.38% +20.00%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -43 325 £550 - 220
South East -18 90 £518 -5.77% 406
North of England -41 79 £485 +7.78% 286
Midlands -36 65 £463 -7.50% 195
East Midlands +7 46 £495 -1.00% 118
Yorkshire -28 41 £500 +25.00% 128
East of England -23 38 £529 -1.63% 187
North West -30 34 £495 +8.49% 119
West Midlands -53 18 £331 -36.90% 75
South West -17 14 £175 -57.78% 153
North East -7 5 £200 -66.67% 40
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 (4.44%) Confluence
2 15 (2.38%) CMS
2 15 (2.38%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (0.95%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 5 (0.79%) Camunda
5 5 (0.79%) Jupyter
6 4 (0.63%) WordPress
7 3 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.32%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.16%) SAS
9 1 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.16%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.16%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 24 (3.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (1.27%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.48%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.32%) Trello
7 1 (0.16%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.16%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.16%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 23 (3.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.74%) Shopify
3 10 (1.58%) SAP Retail
4 9 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
5 6 (0.95%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.79%) SAP Payroll
7 4 (0.63%) Dynamics AX
7 4 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 4 (0.63%) Oracle Retail
7 4 (0.63%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.48%) Finacle
8 3 (0.48%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.48%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.48%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.32%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.32%) Magento
9 2 (0.32%) SAP GTS
9 2 (0.32%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 1 (0.16%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 75 (11.89%) Azure
2 41 (6.50%) Power Platform
3 33 (5.23%) AWS
4 26 (4.12%) GCP
5 21 (3.33%) Azure DevOps
6 20 (3.17%) Dynamics 365
7 15 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
8 14 (2.22%) GitHub
9 12 (1.90%) SaaS
10 11 (1.74%) Figma
11 10 (1.58%) GitHub Actions
11 10 (1.58%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 10 (1.58%) Snowflake
12 8 (1.27%) Entra ID
12 8 (1.27%) Vertex AI
13 7 (1.11%) OCI
13 7 (1.11%) Serverless
13 7 (1.11%) SuccessFactors
14 6 (0.95%) BigCommerce
14 6 (0.95%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 19 (3.01%) RFID
2 18 (2.85%) NFC
2 18 (2.85%) Wireless
3 10 (1.58%) VPN
4 8 (1.27%) Firewall
5 7 (1.11%) WAN
6 6 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.63%) BGP
7 4 (0.63%) Cisco Nexus
7 4 (0.63%) EIGRP
7 4 (0.63%) OSPF
7 4 (0.63%) VoIP
8 3 (0.48%) LAN
9 2 (0.32%) MPLS
9 2 (0.32%) SAN
9 2 (0.32%) WLAN
10 1 (0.16%) FTP
10 1 (0.16%) Intranet
10 1 (0.16%) SMS
10 1 (0.16%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (5.39%) Power BI
2 16 (2.54%) BigQuery
3 15 (2.38%) Data Warehouse
4 11 (1.74%) SQL Server
5 10 (1.58%) Metadata
6 9 (1.43%) Tableau
7 7 (1.11%) Data Lake
8 4 (0.63%) Data Vault
8 4 (0.63%) Delta Lake
8 4 (0.63%) MongoDB
8 4 (0.63%) Power Query
8 4 (0.63%) Redis
8 4 (0.63%) Relational Database
8 4 (0.63%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 3 (0.48%) MySQL
9 3 (0.48%) SAP BW
9 3 (0.48%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
10 2 (0.32%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 62 (9.83%) JIRA
2 10 (1.58%) Jenkins
3 8 (1.27%) Git
4 6 (0.95%) GitLab
5 4 (0.63%) Selenium
5 4 (0.63%) Storybook
6 2 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.32%) ERwin
6 2 (0.32%) JMeter
6 2 (0.32%) JUnit
6 2 (0.32%) MLflow
6 2 (0.32%) Mockito
6 2 (0.32%) Postman
6 2 (0.32%) PowerDesigner
6 2 (0.32%) SoapUI
6 2 (0.32%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.32%) Xcode
6 2 (0.32%) Zephyr
7 1 (0.16%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.16%) Cucumber
General
1 229 (36.29%) Social Skills
2 126 (19.97%) Finance
3 75 (11.89%) Analytical Skills
4 48 (7.61%) Banking
5 46 (7.29%) Marketing
6 39 (6.18%) Organisational Skills
7 34 (5.39%) Public Sector
8 33 (5.23%) Manufacturing
9 22 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
9 22 (3.49%) Retail Banking
10 19 (3.01%) Corporate Banking
11 18 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
11 18 (2.85%) Investment Banking
12 17 (2.69%) Legal
12 17 (2.69%) Presentation Skills
13 10 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (1.58%) Telecoms
14 6 (0.95%) Publishing
15 4 (0.63%) Automotive
15 4 (0.63%) Law
Job Titles
1 126 (19.97%) Analyst
2 72 (11.41%) Project Manager
3 67 (10.62%) Architect
4 64 (10.14%) Senior
5 60 (9.51%) Business Analyst
6 54 (8.56%) Lead
7 31 (4.91%) Solutions Architect
8 26 (4.12%) Consultant
8 26 (4.12%) Senior Manager
9 19 (3.01%) Product Manager
10 18 (2.85%) Programme Manager
11 14 (2.22%) Developer
12 13 (2.06%) Service Manager
12 13 (2.06%) Support Analyst
12 13 (2.06%) Technical Manager
13 12 (1.90%) Help Desk Analyst
13 12 (1.90%) SAP Consultant
13 12 (1.90%) Senior Analyst
14 11 (1.74%) Senior Project Manager
15 10 (1.58%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (3.33%) React
2 17 (2.69%) VML
3 16 (2.54%) Node.js
4 13 (2.06%) PySpark
5 12 (1.90%) REST
6 10 (1.58%) HTML
7 8 (1.27%) .NET
7 8 (1.27%) AngularJS
8 7 (1.11%) React Native
8 7 (1.11%) scikit-learn
8 7 (1.11%) Spring
8 7 (1.11%) Spring Boot
9 6 (0.95%) OpenTelemetry
10 5 (0.79%) CSS
10 5 (0.79%) Kafka
10 5 (0.79%) LangChain
10 5 (0.79%) Matplotlib
10 5 (0.79%) RESTful
10 5 (0.79%) XGBoost
10 5 (0.79%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 30 (4.75%) Product Ownership
2 24 (3.80%) Self-Motivation
3 23 (3.65%) Legacy Systems
4 22 (3.49%) IoT
5 16 (2.54%) FMCG
5 16 (2.54%) Onboarding
6 14 (2.22%) EPoS
7 13 (2.06%) Management Information System
8 11 (1.74%) Data Centre
8 11 (1.74%) Data Structures
9 10 (1.58%) Mobile App
10 9 (1.43%) Analytical Mindset
10 9 (1.43%) Cloud Native
10 9 (1.43%) Driving Licence
11 6 (0.95%) Algorithms
11 6 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
11 6 (0.95%) Replication
12 5 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (0.79%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 32 (5.07%) Windows
2 8 (1.27%) Linux
3 6 (0.95%) Mac OS
4 5 (0.79%) Apple iOS
5 4 (0.63%) Android
6 3 (0.48%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.32%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.16%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.16%) Mac OS X
8 1 (0.16%) VMS
8 1 (0.16%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 149 (23.61%) Agile
2 148 (23.45%) Stakeholder Management
3 102 (16.16%) Problem-Solving
4 80 (12.68%) Project Management
5 74 (11.73%) E-Commerce
6 72 (11.41%) Analytics
7 56 (8.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 56 (8.87%) Workshop Facilitation
8 55 (8.72%) Migration
9 52 (8.24%) Continuous Improvement
10 51 (8.08%) Roadmaps
11 48 (7.61%) AI
12 46 (7.29%) Customer Experience
13 45 (7.13%) Data Modelling
13 45 (7.13%) Scrum
14 44 (6.97%) Business Intelligence
15 43 (6.81%) DevOps
16 42 (6.66%) Project Delivery
17 41 (6.50%) ERP
17 41 (6.50%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 57 (9.03%) SQL
2 48 (7.61%) Python
3 13 (2.06%) Java
3 13 (2.06%) JavaScript
4 10 (1.58%) PowerShell
5 9 (1.43%) Bash
6 6 (0.95%) C#
6 6 (0.95%) Kusto Query Language
7 5 (0.79%) TypeScript
8 4 (0.63%) Shell Script
9 3 (0.48%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.32%) ABAP
10 2 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (0.32%) PHP
10 2 (0.32%) R
10 2 (0.32%) Swift
10 2 (0.32%) VBA
11 1 (0.16%) CLIST
11 1 (0.16%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.16%) Scala
Qualifications
1 28 (4.44%) Degree
2 21 (3.33%) PMP
3 19 (3.01%) PMI Certification
4 17 (2.69%) Security Cleared
5 9 (1.43%) Master's Degree
6 6 (0.95%) ITIL Certification
6 6 (0.95%) MBA
7 5 (0.79%) SC Cleared
8 4 (0.63%) APMP
8 4 (0.63%) CCIE
8 4 (0.63%) CCNP
8 4 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (0.63%) CISSP
8 4 (0.63%) CSPO
9 3 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.48%) CISM
9 3 (0.48%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.48%) CRISC
9 3 (0.48%) GIAC
9 3 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.49%) Data Quality
2 20 (3.17%) QA
3 17 (2.69%) PMO
4 12 (1.90%) Accessibility
4 12 (1.90%) GDPR
4 12 (1.90%) SLA
5 5 (0.79%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.48%) IFRS
6 3 (0.48%) NCSC
6 3 (0.48%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.32%) COBIT
7 2 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.32%) NIST
8 1 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.16%) IFRS 9
8 1 (0.16%) MiFID
8 1 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.16%) Solvency II
System Software
1 11 (1.74%) Docker
2 7 (1.11%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
3 3 (0.48%) VMware NSX
4 1 (0.16%) RACF
4 1 (0.16%) Varnish
4 1 (0.16%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 17 (2.69%) Terraform
2 11 (1.74%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.79%) Argo
3 5 (0.79%) Istio
4 4 (0.63%) Grafana
4 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.48%) Jamf Pro
5 3 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.32%) Ansible
7 1 (0.16%) AirWatch
7 1 (0.16%) Cacti
7 1 (0.16%) Control-M
7 1 (0.16%) Nmap
7 1 (0.16%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.16%) SCCM
7 1 (0.16%) ZABBIX
7 1 (0.16%) zSecure
Vendors
1 68 (10.78%) Microsoft
2 59 (9.35%) SAP
3 40 (6.34%) Salesforce
4 35 (5.55%) Oracle
5 23 (3.65%) Google
6 17 (2.69%) Adobe
6 17 (2.69%) Databricks
7 8 (1.27%) HP
8 6 (0.95%) CheckPoint
8 6 (0.95%) Dell
8 6 (0.95%) F5
8 6 (0.95%) Sitecore
9 5 (0.79%) Cisco
9 5 (0.79%) Meraki
9 5 (0.79%) ServiceNow
9 5 (0.79%) Temenos
9 5 (0.79%) Zscaler
10 4 (0.63%) Apple
10 4 (0.63%) MicroStrategy
10 4 (0.63%) VMware