Retail Contract Job Trends

Retailing
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Retail in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Retail over the 6 months leading up to 27 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 151 90 103
Rank change year-on-year -61 +13 -23
Contract jobs citing Retail 700 838 962
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.84% 2.70% 2.17%
As % of the General category 3.10% 4.35% 3.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 411 427 558
10th Percentile £206 £263 £263
25th Percentile £400 £413 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -7.75%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £635
90th Percentile £738 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 10 40
10th Percentile £12.95 £15.82 £10.96
25th Percentile £16.17 £18.13 £12.69
Median hourly rate £16.34 £30.75 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -46.88% +57.69% -1.56%
75th Percentile £19.50 £34.88 £20.89
90th Percentile £24.61 £39.75 £23.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.34 £18.13 £15.65
% change year-on-year -9.90% +15.85% -21.00%

All General Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 22,609 19,273 26,097
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.39% 61.99% 58.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,209 11,476 16,945
10th Percentile £285 £282 £265
25th Percentile £401 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £486 £500
% change year-on-year -2.16% -2.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,377 632 1,490
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.00 £15.32
Median hourly rate £22.85 £27.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.91% +5.77% +4.00%
75th Percentile £47.50 £53.75 £55.47
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.73 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.30 £26.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -19.62% +6.00% +11.56%

Retail
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Retail relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Retail job vacancy trend in the UK

Retail
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Retail.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Retail

Retail
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Retail over the 6 months to 27 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Retail in the UK

Retail
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Retail.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Retail

Retail
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Retail over the 6 months to 27 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Retail in the UK

Retail
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Retail within the UK over the 6 months to 27 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
England -48 643 £500 -4.76% 1,235
London -37 343 £550 - 256
UK excluding London -48 305 £495 -1.00% 1,136
Work from Home -75 172 £532 -3.32% 538
South East -35 87 £520 -5.45% 397
North of England -50 75 £495 +10.00% 226
Midlands -45 69 £479 -4.25% 187
East Midlands -4 46 £495 -1.00% 94
Yorkshire -34 41 £506 +26.56% 87
East of England -15 36 £529 +0.71% 157
North West -31 32 £495 +10.00% 113
West Midlands -46 22 £275 -47.62% 93
Scotland +3 19 £450 -14.29% 38
South West -14 15 £183 -56.55% 115
Wales -3 3 £625 +331.03% 45
North East -16 3 £213 -64.58% 27
Northern Ireland -5 1 - - 18

Retail
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 34 (4.86%) Confluence
2 17 (2.43%) CMS
3 16 (2.29%) SharePoint
4 9 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (0.86%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.71%) Camunda
6 5 (0.71%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.57%) WordPress
8 3 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.29%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.29%) Magnolia
9 2 (0.29%) SAS
10 1 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.14%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 22 (3.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 10 (1.43%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.57%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.29%) Trello
6 1 (0.14%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.14%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.14%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.14%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 21 (3.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 13 (1.86%) Shopify
3 11 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (1.43%) SAP Retail
5 6 (0.86%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 6 (0.86%) Oracle Retail
5 6 (0.86%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.71%) SAP Payroll
7 4 (0.57%) Dynamics AX
7 4 (0.57%) Finacle
7 4 (0.57%) ResourceLink
7 4 (0.57%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.43%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.43%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.43%) SAP MDG
8 3 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 2 (0.29%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.29%) Magento
9 2 (0.29%) SAP GTS
9 2 (0.29%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 88 (12.57%) Azure
2 48 (6.86%) AWS
3 44 (6.29%) Power Platform
4 36 (5.14%) GCP
5 24 (3.43%) Dynamics 365
6 21 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
7 16 (2.29%) GitHub
7 16 (2.29%) Microsoft 365
7 16 (2.29%) Snowflake
8 15 (2.14%) SaaS
9 13 (1.86%) Figma
10 11 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (1.57%) OCI
10 11 (1.57%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 9 (1.29%) Power Automate
12 8 (1.14%) Entra ID
12 8 (1.14%) SuccessFactors
12 8 (1.14%) Vertex AI
13 7 (1.00%) BigCommerce
13 7 (1.00%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 20 (2.86%) RFID
2 18 (2.57%) NFC
2 18 (2.57%) Wireless
3 12 (1.71%) Firewall
4 10 (1.43%) VPN
5 7 (1.00%) WAN
6 6 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.57%) BGP
7 4 (0.57%) Cisco Nexus
7 4 (0.57%) EIGRP
7 4 (0.57%) OSPF
7 4 (0.57%) VoIP
8 3 (0.43%) LAN
9 2 (0.29%) MPLS
9 2 (0.29%) SAN
9 2 (0.29%) WLAN
10 1 (0.14%) FTP
10 1 (0.14%) Multicast
10 1 (0.14%) SMS
10 1 (0.14%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (5.14%) Power BI
2 20 (2.86%) BigQuery
3 18 (2.57%) Data Warehouse
4 15 (2.14%) SQL Server
5 14 (2.00%) Metadata
5 14 (2.00%) Tableau
6 8 (1.14%) MySQL
7 7 (1.00%) Data Lake
8 6 (0.86%) Data Vault
8 6 (0.86%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (0.71%) MongoDB
9 5 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
9 5 (0.71%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.71%) Snowflake Schema
10 4 (0.57%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.57%) Power Query
10 4 (0.57%) Redis
10 4 (0.57%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 3 (0.43%) Oracle Database
11 3 (0.43%) Oracle OLAP
Development Applications
1 69 (9.86%) JIRA
2 13 (1.86%) Jenkins
3 10 (1.43%) GitLab
4 9 (1.29%) Git
5 5 (0.71%) ERwin
5 5 (0.71%) Selenium
6 4 (0.57%) Storybook
7 3 (0.43%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.29%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.29%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.29%) JMeter
8 2 (0.29%) JUnit
8 2 (0.29%) MLflow
8 2 (0.29%) Mockito
8 2 (0.29%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (0.29%) Postman
8 2 (0.29%) PowerDesigner
8 2 (0.29%) SoapUI
8 2 (0.29%) Xcode
8 2 (0.29%) Zephyr
General
1 242 (34.57%) Social Skills
2 145 (20.71%) Finance
3 79 (11.29%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (8.86%) Banking
5 49 (7.00%) Marketing
6 39 (5.57%) Public Sector
7 38 (5.43%) Organisational Skills
8 33 (4.71%) Manufacturing
9 29 (4.14%) Retail Banking
10 24 (3.43%) Corporate Banking
10 24 (3.43%) Documentation Skills
11 23 (3.29%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (3.14%) Investment Banking
13 21 (3.00%) Legal
14 18 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (1.86%) Telecoms
16 10 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 6 (0.86%) Financial Institution
17 6 (0.86%) Publishing
18 4 (0.57%) Billing
Job Titles
1 133 (19.00%) Analyst
2 83 (11.86%) Project Manager
3 76 (10.86%) Architect
4 69 (9.86%) Senior
5 64 (9.14%) Business Analyst
6 57 (8.14%) Lead
7 36 (5.14%) Solutions Architect
8 30 (4.29%) Consultant
9 29 (4.14%) Senior Manager
10 20 (2.86%) Developer
10 20 (2.86%) Technical Manager
11 19 (2.71%) Product Manager
12 18 (2.57%) Programme Manager
13 14 (2.00%) Support Analyst
14 13 (1.86%) Data Analyst
14 13 (1.86%) Help Desk Analyst
14 13 (1.86%) SAP Consultant
14 13 (1.86%) Senior Project Manager
15 12 (1.71%) Senior Analyst
15 12 (1.71%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (3.14%) React
2 19 (2.71%) VML
3 15 (2.14%) Node.js
3 15 (2.14%) REST
4 13 (1.86%) PySpark
5 10 (1.43%) HTML
6 9 (1.29%) AngularJS
7 8 (1.14%) .NET
7 8 (1.14%) Spring
7 8 (1.14%) Spring Boot
8 7 (1.00%) FastAPI
8 7 (1.00%) Kafka
8 7 (1.00%) Middleware
8 7 (1.00%) OpenTelemetry
8 7 (1.00%) scikit-learn
8 7 (1.00%) XML
9 6 (0.86%) CSS
9 6 (0.86%) JSON
9 6 (0.86%) LangChain
9 6 (0.86%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 37 (5.29%) Product Ownership
2 29 (4.14%) Legacy Systems
3 23 (3.29%) Onboarding
3 23 (3.29%) Self-Motivation
4 21 (3.00%) EPoS
5 20 (2.86%) IoT
6 19 (2.71%) Management Information System
7 18 (2.57%) FMCG
8 15 (2.14%) Cloud Native
8 15 (2.14%) Driving Licence
9 14 (2.00%) Data Structures
10 13 (1.86%) Data Centre
11 10 (1.43%) Mobile App
12 9 (1.29%) Analytical Mindset
13 8 (1.14%) Algorithms
14 7 (1.00%) Mainframe
14 7 (1.00%) Social Media
15 6 (0.86%) CMDB
15 6 (0.86%) Reference Data
15 6 (0.86%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 37 (5.29%) Windows
2 11 (1.57%) Linux
3 7 (1.00%) Mac OS
4 6 (0.86%) Android
5 5 (0.71%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.43%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.14%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.14%) Mac OS X
8 1 (0.14%) VMS
8 1 (0.14%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (23.71%) Agile
1 166 (23.71%) Stakeholder Management
2 115 (16.43%) Problem-Solving
3 88 (12.57%) Project Management
4 77 (11.00%) E-Commerce
4 77 (11.00%) Migration
5 76 (10.86%) Analytics
6 69 (9.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 63 (9.00%) Continuous Improvement
8 60 (8.57%) Roadmaps
9 59 (8.43%) Workshop Facilitation
10 55 (7.86%) Scrum
11 53 (7.57%) AI
12 51 (7.29%) Decision-Making
13 48 (6.86%) Business Intelligence
13 48 (6.86%) Data Modelling
13 48 (6.86%) DevOps
14 46 (6.57%) CRM
15 44 (6.29%) Project Delivery
16 43 (6.14%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 69 (9.86%) SQL
2 60 (8.57%) Python
3 18 (2.57%) Java
4 14 (2.00%) JavaScript
5 11 (1.57%) PowerShell
6 10 (1.43%) Bash
7 8 (1.14%) Shell Script
8 7 (1.00%) Kusto Query Language
8 7 (1.00%) TypeScript
9 6 (0.86%) C#
10 5 (0.71%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.29%) ABAP
11 2 (0.29%) PHP
11 2 (0.29%) Swift
11 2 (0.29%) VBA
12 1 (0.14%) CLIST
12 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.14%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.14%) R
12 1 (0.14%) VB
Qualifications
1 36 (5.14%) Degree
2 21 (3.00%) PMP
3 19 (2.71%) Security Cleared
4 17 (2.43%) PMI Certification
5 10 (1.43%) Master's Degree
6 7 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (1.00%) MBA
6 7 (1.00%) SC Cleared
7 6 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.71%) APMP
8 5 (0.71%) CISSP
9 4 (0.57%) CCIE
9 4 (0.57%) CCNP
9 4 (0.57%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (0.57%) CISM
9 4 (0.57%) CRISC
9 4 (0.57%) CSPO
10 3 (0.43%) GIAC
10 3 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.29%) Data Quality
2 28 (4.00%) QA
3 17 (2.43%) GDPR
3 17 (2.43%) PMO
4 15 (2.14%) Accessibility
5 13 (1.86%) SLA
6 6 (0.86%) COBIT
7 5 (0.71%) Actionable Recommendations
8 4 (0.57%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.43%) IFRS
9 3 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.43%) NCSC
10 2 (0.29%) NIST
11 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.14%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.14%) MiFID
11 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.14%) Solvency II
11 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 12 (1.71%) Docker
2 10 (1.43%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.57%) RACF
4 3 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
4 3 (0.43%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.14%) Varnish
5 1 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 23 (3.29%) Terraform
2 12 (1.71%) Kubernetes
3 6 (0.86%) Ansible
3 6 (0.86%) Argo
3 6 (0.86%) Istio
4 4 (0.57%) Grafana
4 4 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
5 3 (0.43%) SCCM
5 3 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.14%) AirWatch
6 1 (0.14%) Cacti
6 1 (0.14%) Control-M
6 1 (0.14%) HP ALM
6 1 (0.14%) Nmap
6 1 (0.14%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.14%) ZABBIX
6 1 (0.14%) zSecure
Vendors
1 75 (10.71%) Microsoft
2 59 (8.43%) SAP
3 48 (6.86%) Oracle
4 43 (6.14%) Salesforce
5 32 (4.57%) Google
6 20 (2.86%) Databricks
7 18 (2.57%) Adobe
8 12 (1.71%) Dell
9 11 (1.57%) HP
10 10 (1.43%) CheckPoint
10 10 (1.43%) F5
10 10 (1.43%) ServiceNow
11 9 (1.29%) Dynatrace
12 8 (1.14%) Cisco
12 8 (1.14%) Sitecore
13 6 (0.86%) Apple
13 6 (0.86%) BMC
13 6 (0.86%) Temenos
14 5 (0.71%) Meraki
14 5 (0.71%) MicroStrategy