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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 109 78
Rank change year-on-year +28 -31 +8
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,402 678 937
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.11% 2.46% 2.80%
As % of the General category 5.62% 3.84% 4.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 830 358 514
10th Percentile £312 £300 £300
25th Percentile £438 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £513 £519
Median % change year-on-year +7.32% -1.20% -2.12%
75th Percentile £675 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £540 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +8.00% - -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 41 67
10th Percentile £12.98 - £12.15
25th Percentile £13.81 £15.25 £12.75
Median hourly rate £18.75 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +15.03% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £25.15 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £51.25 £21.46
UK median hourly rate £18.75 £16.30 £16.30
% change year-on-year +15.03% - -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 24,964 17,654 19,265
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 55.31% 63.94% 57.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,922 11,267 12,408
10th Percentile £313 £280 £300
25th Percentile £418 £402 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -5.12% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £662
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 1,914 944 1,252
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.35 £18.00
Median hourly rate £33.98 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +35.11% -34.02% +30.32%
75th Percentile £63.75 £50.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £70.39
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 +43 808 £550 - 896
North of England -13 182 £550 +10.00% 364
South East +16 177 £525 -8.70% 376
Midlands +11 123 £500 +16.14% 265
North West -1 116 £550 +10.00% 208
East Midlands +20 69 £500 +21.21% 113
East of England +15 63 £544 +3.57% 102
West Midlands -21 54 £606 +34.72% 152
Yorkshire -38 54 £500 - 116
South West -41 36 £325 -8.59% 132
North East -34 12 £155 -64.89% 43
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 42 (3.00%) Confluence
2 18 (1.28%) CMS
3 13 (0.93%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 10 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.64%) SharePoint
6 4 (0.29%) SAS
6 4 (0.29%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.14%) Anypoint
7 2 (0.14%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.14%) CICS
8 1 (0.071%) Apache
8 1 (0.071%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.071%) Mule
Applications
1 52 (3.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (1.07%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.93%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 13 (0.93%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.57%) Photoshop
7 7 (0.50%) Adobe Illustrator
8 6 (0.43%) MS Visio
9 5 (0.36%) InDesign
10 4 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.21%) CPLEX
11 3 (0.21%) Notion
12 1 (0.071%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.071%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 38 (2.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.93%) Shopify
3 11 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.64%) Oracle Retail
5 8 (0.57%) Magento
6 7 (0.50%) SAP CRM
7 6 (0.43%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.43%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.36%) SAP Retail
8 5 (0.36%) SAP SD
9 4 (0.29%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
10 3 (0.21%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 3 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.21%) SAP CAR
10 3 (0.21%) SAP ERP
11 2 (0.14%) Cognos Controller
11 2 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 2 (0.14%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 177 (12.62%) Azure
2 135 (9.63%) AWS
3 68 (4.85%) Power Platform
4 67 (4.78%) GCP
5 46 (3.28%) Snowflake
6 42 (3.00%) GitHub
7 30 (2.14%) Azure DevOps
8 28 (2.00%) Entra ID
9 26 (1.85%) GitHub Actions
10 23 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
11 19 (1.36%) Figma
12 16 (1.14%) SaaS
13 15 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
13 15 (1.07%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
14 13 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 11 (0.78%) Microsoft 365
15 11 (0.78%) Salesforce Service Cloud
15 11 (0.78%) Serverless
16 10 (0.71%) dbt
17 9 (0.64%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.21%) WAN
2 16 (1.14%) Firewall
3 15 (1.07%) Wireless
4 14 (1.00%) ATM
4 14 (1.00%) VPN
5 13 (0.93%) Network Security
6 11 (0.78%) LAN
7 9 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
8 8 (0.57%) BGP
8 8 (0.57%) IPsec
8 8 (0.57%) OSPF
9 7 (0.50%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 7 (0.50%) RFID
9 7 (0.50%) VLAN
10 6 (0.43%) Cisco Firepower
10 6 (0.43%) SD-WAN
11 5 (0.36%) Cisco ASA
11 5 (0.36%) Cisco Nexus
11 5 (0.36%) Structured Cabling
11 5 (0.36%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (4.78%) Power BI
2 30 (2.14%) BigQuery
3 26 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
4 21 (1.50%) Data Lake
5 17 (1.21%) NoSQL
6 15 (1.07%) Metadata
6 15 (1.07%) MySQL
6 15 (1.07%) Tableau
7 14 (1.00%) MongoDB
7 14 (1.00%) SQL Server
8 12 (0.86%) Power Query
8 12 (0.86%) Relational Database
9 10 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
9 10 (0.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 9 (0.64%) PostgreSQL
11 8 (0.57%) Redis
12 7 (0.50%) Looker
13 6 (0.43%) Couchbase
13 6 (0.43%) SAP HANA
13 6 (0.43%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 72 (5.14%) JIRA
2 26 (1.85%) Git
3 18 (1.28%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.57%) Subversion
5 7 (0.50%) Claude Code
6 4 (0.29%) Cypress.io
6 4 (0.29%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.29%) JMeter
6 4 (0.29%) Maven
7 3 (0.21%) GitLab
8 2 (0.14%) git-flow
8 2 (0.14%) Hudson
8 2 (0.14%) MLflow
8 2 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (0.14%) Postman
8 2 (0.14%) Selenium
8 2 (0.14%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.14%) webpack
9 1 (0.071%) Pylint
9 1 (0.071%) TestRail
General
1 392 (27.96%) Social Skills
2 322 (22.97%) Finance
3 142 (10.13%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (7.99%) Banking
5 95 (6.78%) Marketing
6 88 (6.28%) Manufacturing
7 58 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
8 54 (3.85%) Retail Banking
9 42 (3.00%) Investment Banking
10 38 (2.71%) Corporate Banking
11 29 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
12 25 (1.78%) Advertising
12 25 (1.78%) Legal
13 24 (1.71%) Telecoms
14 22 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
14 22 (1.57%) Public Sector
15 21 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
16 19 (1.36%) French Language
17 18 (1.28%) Spanish Language
18 13 (0.93%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 239 (17.05%) Architect
2 191 (13.62%) Analyst
3 167 (11.91%) Senior
4 133 (9.49%) Solutions Architect
5 115 (8.20%) Project Manager
6 101 (7.20%) Lead
7 100 (7.13%) Business Analyst
8 73 (5.21%) Developer
9 51 (3.64%) Senior Manager
10 46 (3.28%) Designer
11 43 (3.07%) Product Manager
12 42 (3.00%) Consultant
13 34 (2.43%) Senior Developer
13 34 (2.43%) Supply Chain Architect
14 33 (2.35%) Enterprise Architect
15 32 (2.28%) Data Architect
15 32 (2.28%) Programme Manager
15 32 (2.28%) Technical Manager
16 28 (2.00%) Senior Project Manager
17 26 (1.85%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (4.49%) REST
2 38 (2.71%) React
3 30 (2.14%) Middleware
3 30 (2.14%) Spring
4 26 (1.85%) Kafka
5 23 (1.64%) Node.js
6 22 (1.57%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.50%) VML
8 20 (1.43%) Django
9 18 (1.28%) RESTful
10 16 (1.14%) HTML
11 15 (1.07%) CSS
11 15 (1.07%) MACH
12 14 (1.00%) OAuth
13 13 (0.93%) Jakarta EE
13 13 (0.93%) Next.js
13 13 (0.93%) SOAP
14 11 (0.78%) .NET
15 9 (0.64%) OAuth2
16 8 (0.57%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 74 (5.28%) Product Ownership
2 63 (4.49%) FMCG
3 52 (3.71%) Onboarding
4 51 (3.64%) EPoS
5 41 (2.92%) Cloud Native
6 34 (2.43%) Driving Licence
7 31 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
8 29 (2.07%) Data Centre
9 25 (1.78%) Mobile App
10 21 (1.50%) Data Structures
10 21 (1.50%) Operational Technology
11 20 (1.43%) Marketing Technology
11 20 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
13 17 (1.21%) Smartphone
14 16 (1.14%) IoT
15 14 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
16 13 (0.93%) AI Agents
16 13 (0.93%) Mainframe
17 12 (0.86%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 53 (3.78%) Windows
2 22 (1.57%) Linux
3 11 (0.78%) Android
3 11 (0.78%) Unix
4 8 (0.57%) Apple iOS
5 6 (0.43%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.36%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.36%) Windows 10
6 5 (0.36%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.29%) zOS
8 2 (0.14%) Debian
9 1 (0.071%) SUSE
9 1 (0.071%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.071%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 353 (25.18%) Stakeholder Management
2 325 (23.18%) Agile
3 218 (15.55%) E-Commerce
4 199 (14.19%) Problem-Solving
5 170 (12.13%) Migration
6 169 (12.05%) Roadmaps
7 152 (10.84%) Analytics
8 149 (10.63%) AI
9 139 (9.91%) Customer Experience
10 130 (9.27%) Logistics
11 119 (8.49%) Decision-Making
12 118 (8.42%) Continuous Improvement
13 114 (8.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 113 (8.06%) CI/CD
15 107 (7.63%) CRM
16 105 (7.49%) Project Management
17 103 (7.35%) ERP
18 96 (6.85%) DevOps
19 95 (6.78%) Business Intelligence
19 95 (6.78%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 113 (8.06%) SQL
2 96 (6.85%) Python
3 53 (3.78%) Java
4 32 (2.28%) TypeScript
5 27 (1.93%) JavaScript
6 12 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (0.78%) C#
8 8 (0.57%) PowerShell
9 7 (0.50%) ABAP
9 7 (0.50%) R
10 6 (0.43%) Bicep
10 6 (0.43%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.43%) Scala
11 5 (0.36%) Apex Code
11 5 (0.36%) Bash
11 5 (0.36%) Groovy
11 5 (0.36%) SOQL
12 4 (0.29%) Kotlin
12 4 (0.29%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.21%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 60 (4.28%) Degree
2 38 (2.71%) Security Cleared
3 21 (1.50%) PMP
4 20 (1.43%) SC Cleared
5 11 (0.78%) DBS Check
5 11 (0.78%) PMI Certification
6 8 (0.57%) CISSP
7 6 (0.43%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (0.43%) CISM
7 6 (0.43%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.36%) CCNP
8 5 (0.36%) CCSE
8 5 (0.36%) CCSM
8 5 (0.36%) CSPO
9 4 (0.29%) Azure Certification
9 4 (0.29%) City & Guilds
9 4 (0.29%) PhD
10 3 (0.21%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (4.64%) QA
2 54 (3.85%) Data Quality
3 37 (2.64%) GDPR
4 25 (1.78%) PMO
5 23 (1.64%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.14%) PCI DSS
7 11 (0.78%) SLA
8 8 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.50%) NIST
10 4 (0.29%) WCAG
11 3 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.21%) GAAP
11 3 (0.21%) GRC
11 3 (0.21%) IFRS
11 3 (0.21%) PSD2
12 2 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.14%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.071%) COBIT
13 1 (0.071%) GxP
System Software
1 36 (2.57%) Docker
2 32 (2.28%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.93%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.36%) Firmware
6 5 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 47 (3.35%) Terraform
2 35 (2.50%) Kubernetes
3 13 (0.93%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 10 (0.71%) Ansible
5 6 (0.43%) FortiGate
5 6 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.29%) SCCM
7 3 (0.21%) Bosun
7 3 (0.21%) Grafana
8 2 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.14%) AirWatch
8 2 (0.14%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.14%) MOM
8 2 (0.14%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.071%) CloudHub
9 1 (0.071%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.071%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.071%) logstash
9 1 (0.071%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 119 (8.49%) Microsoft
2 98 (6.99%) SAP
3 68 (4.85%) Oracle
4 66 (4.71%) Databricks
5 58 (4.14%) Salesforce
6 48 (3.42%) Google
7 34 (2.43%) Adobe
8 24 (1.71%) Zscaler
9 15 (1.07%) Cisco
9 15 (1.07%) MuleSoft
10 14 (1.00%) IFS
10 14 (1.00%) ServiceNow
10 14 (1.00%) Workday
11 13 (0.93%) Fortinet
11 13 (0.93%) Palo Alto
12 12 (0.86%) VMware
13 11 (0.78%) Braze
13 11 (0.78%) IBM
14 10 (0.71%) New Relic
14 10 (0.71%) Splunk