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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 89 91
Rank change year-on-year -52 +2 -4
Contract jobs citing Retail 832 820 1,047
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.89% 2.83% 2.36%
As % of the General category 3.34% 4.49% 4.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 521 436 604
10th Percentile £191 £296 £279
25th Percentile £350 £412 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -5.66%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -10.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 17 72
10th Percentile £12.87 £16.98 £11.13
25th Percentile £14.75 £21.25 £12.15
Median hourly rate £16.50 £32.50 £15.90
Median % change year-on-year -49.23% +104.40% -19.74%
75th Percentile £29.19 £55.25 £21.37
90th Percentile £50.05 £81.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.34 £22.50 £13.47
% change year-on-year -27.40% +67.04% -32.00%

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 24,900 18,253 25,823
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.46% 62.89% 58.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,511 11,733 16,452
10th Percentile £301 £300 £266
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,539 698 1,835
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.03 £19.93 £15.16
Median hourly rate £25.15 £29.15 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.72% +12.12% -25.71%
75th Percentile £57.50 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.55 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £27.85 £25.00
% change year-on-year -14.45% +11.40% -20.05%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -51 751 £500 -4.76% 1,108
London -38 415 £525 -4.55% 362
UK excluding London -43 346 £450 -10.00% 867
Work from Home -85 201 £488 -7.14% 379
South East -36 103 £413 -23.26% 242
North of England -44 89 £500 +11.11% 224
Midlands -45 70 £495 -1.00% 186
North West -34 43 £500 +11.11% 111
East Midlands -8 42 £495 -1.00% 118
Yorkshire -29 42 £513 +28.13% 91
East of England -22 38 £492 -1.60% 88
West Midlands -57 27 £496 -5.59% 68
Scotland +5 23 £450 -15.49% 41
South West -17 19 £261 -26.41% 84
North East -10 4 £206 -72.50% 25
Northern Ireland -3 2 £190 -44.48% 9
Wales -12 2 £235 +60.19% 22

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 36 (4.33%) Confluence
2 15 (1.80%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.56%) CMS
4 12 (1.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 10 (1.20%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (0.48%) WordPress
7 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.36%) SAS
8 2 (0.24%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.24%) Magnolia
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.12%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.12%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 27 (3.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (2.16%) Microsoft Project
3 14 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
4 13 (1.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (1.44%) Chatbot
6 10 (1.20%) MS Visio
7 4 (0.48%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.36%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.24%) InDesign
9 2 (0.24%) Trello
10 1 (0.12%) 3ds Max
10 1 (0.12%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.12%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.12%) Maya
10 1 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
10 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.12%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 16 (1.92%) SAP S/4HANA
1 16 (1.92%) Shopify
2 12 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (1.44%) SAP Retail
3 9 (1.08%) Oracle Retail
4 6 (0.72%) Finacle
4 6 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 5 (0.60%) SAP Payroll
6 4 (0.48%) ResourceLink
6 4 (0.48%) SAP MDG
6 4 (0.48%) Temenos T24
7 3 (0.36%) SAP MM
7 3 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 2 (0.24%) BambooHR
8 2 (0.24%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.24%) Sage X3
8 2 (0.24%) Sprinklr
9 1 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.12%) SAP CAR
9 1 (0.12%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 89 (10.70%) Azure
2 55 (6.61%) AWS
3 54 (6.49%) Power Platform
4 50 (6.01%) GCP
5 23 (2.76%) Azure DevOps
5 23 (2.76%) Dynamics 365
5 23 (2.76%) Snowflake
6 21 (2.52%) GitHub
7 18 (2.16%) Microsoft 365
8 15 (1.80%) SaaS
9 14 (1.68%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (1.44%) Google Workspace
11 11 (1.32%) Cloud Run
11 11 (1.32%) Figma
12 10 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
12 10 (1.20%) Entra ID
12 10 (1.20%) Miro
12 10 (1.20%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
13 9 (1.08%) BigCommerce
13 9 (1.08%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.80%) RFID
2 14 (1.68%) VPN
3 11 (1.32%) Firewall
3 11 (1.32%) WAN
3 11 (1.32%) Wireless
4 8 (0.96%) NFC
5 7 (0.84%) LAN
6 6 (0.72%) Cisco Nexus
6 6 (0.72%) Wi-Fi
7 5 (0.60%) BGP
7 5 (0.60%) OSPF
8 4 (0.48%) EIGRP
8 4 (0.48%) VoIP
9 3 (0.36%) MPLS
10 2 (0.24%) Cisco Firepower
10 2 (0.24%) Network Security
10 2 (0.24%) SAN
10 2 (0.24%) SD-WAN
10 2 (0.24%) VSAN
10 2 (0.24%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (5.53%) Power BI
2 25 (3.00%) BigQuery
3 17 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (1.56%) SQL Server
4 13 (1.56%) Tableau
5 12 (1.44%) MySQL
6 8 (0.96%) Metadata
7 7 (0.84%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.84%) Data Vault
8 6 (0.72%) Delta Lake
8 6 (0.72%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (0.60%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
9 5 (0.60%) Relational Database
10 4 (0.48%) Redis
10 4 (0.48%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 3 (0.36%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.36%) OLAP
11 3 (0.36%) Oracle OLAP
11 3 (0.36%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 70 (8.41%) JIRA
2 14 (1.68%) Git
3 10 (1.20%) GitLab
4 9 (1.08%) Jenkins
5 5 (0.60%) ERwin
6 4 (0.48%) Maven
6 4 (0.48%) MLflow
7 3 (0.36%) Selenium
7 3 (0.36%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.24%) PowerDesigner
8 2 (0.24%) WebDriver
9 1 (0.12%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.12%) HP UFT
9 1 (0.12%) JMeter
9 1 (0.12%) Mockito
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle APEX
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.12%) Xcode
General
1 287 (34.50%) Social Skills
2 202 (24.28%) Finance
3 96 (11.54%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (9.62%) Banking
5 57 (6.85%) Marketing
6 39 (4.69%) Manufacturing
7 37 (4.45%) Organisational Skills
7 37 (4.45%) Public Sector
8 33 (3.97%) Retail Banking
9 30 (3.61%) Investment Banking
10 28 (3.37%) Corporate Banking
11 26 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
12 21 (2.52%) Influencing Skills
12 21 (2.52%) Presentation Skills
13 15 (1.80%) Legal
14 13 (1.56%) Telecoms
15 9 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 8 (0.96%) Private Banking
17 7 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
17 7 (0.84%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 150 (18.03%) Analyst
2 107 (12.86%) Project Manager
3 98 (11.78%) Senior
4 94 (11.30%) Architect
5 80 (9.62%) Business Analyst
6 64 (7.69%) Lead
7 40 (4.81%) Senior Manager
8 36 (4.33%) Consultant
8 36 (4.33%) Solutions Architect
9 30 (3.61%) Technical Manager
10 23 (2.76%) Developer
11 22 (2.64%) Senior Project Manager
12 21 (2.52%) Programme Manager
13 19 (2.28%) Data Architect
14 18 (2.16%) Data Analyst
14 18 (2.16%) Service Manager
15 15 (1.80%) Designer
16 14 (1.68%) Data Engineer
16 14 (1.68%) IT Manager
16 14 (1.68%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (2.88%) Middleware
1 24 (2.88%) REST
2 21 (2.52%) VML
3 17 (2.04%) Spring
4 13 (1.56%) React
5 12 (1.44%) AngularJS
5 12 (1.44%) Spring Boot
6 11 (1.32%) PySpark
7 9 (1.08%) CSS
7 9 (1.08%) HTML
7 9 (1.08%) scikit-learn
8 8 (0.96%) .NET
8 8 (0.96%) Node.js
9 7 (0.84%) PyTorch
10 6 (0.72%) jQuery
10 6 (0.72%) JSON
10 6 (0.72%) Kafka
10 6 (0.72%) LangChain
10 6 (0.72%) OpenTelemetry
11 5 (0.60%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 54 (6.49%) Product Ownership
2 39 (4.69%) Driving Licence
3 27 (3.25%) EPoS
4 25 (3.00%) Cloud Native
4 25 (3.00%) Self-Motivation
5 23 (2.76%) Onboarding
6 20 (2.40%) FMCG
6 20 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
6 20 (2.40%) Management Information System
7 19 (2.28%) Data Centre
8 15 (1.80%) Mainframe
9 14 (1.68%) Mobile App
10 13 (1.56%) Data Structures
11 9 (1.08%) IoT
11 9 (1.08%) Virtual Team
12 8 (0.96%) Algorithms
12 8 (0.96%) Analytical Mindset
12 8 (0.96%) Reference Data
13 7 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
13 7 (0.84%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 38 (4.57%) Windows
2 19 (2.28%) Linux
3 9 (1.08%) Mac OS
4 5 (0.60%) Android
4 5 (0.60%) zOS
5 4 (0.48%) Apple iOS
5 4 (0.48%) Unix
6 3 (0.36%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.12%) VMS
7 1 (0.12%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 195 (23.44%) Stakeholder Management
2 189 (22.72%) Agile
3 163 (19.59%) Problem-Solving
4 111 (13.34%) E-Commerce
5 100 (12.02%) Project Management
6 96 (11.54%) Migration
7 86 (10.34%) Analytics
7 86 (10.34%) Roadmaps
8 83 (9.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 74 (8.89%) Customer Experience
10 70 (8.41%) ERP
11 69 (8.29%) Continuous Improvement
12 68 (8.17%) AI
12 68 (8.17%) Workshop Facilitation
13 66 (7.93%) Project Delivery
14 63 (7.57%) Change Management
15 62 (7.45%) Decision-Making
16 61 (7.33%) Customer Service
16 61 (7.33%) DevOps
16 61 (7.33%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 75 (9.01%) SQL
2 64 (7.69%) Python
3 28 (3.37%) Java
4 19 (2.28%) JavaScript
5 14 (1.68%) PowerShell
6 11 (1.32%) Bash
7 9 (1.08%) Shell Script
8 8 (0.96%) Kusto Query Language
9 7 (0.84%) C#
10 5 (0.60%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.60%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.60%) TypeScript
11 4 (0.48%) VBA
12 3 (0.36%) Apex Code
12 3 (0.36%) Scala
12 3 (0.36%) SOQL
12 3 (0.36%) SOSL
13 2 (0.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.24%) Korn
13 2 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 48 (5.77%) Degree
2 24 (2.88%) Security Cleared
3 20 (2.40%) PMP
4 15 (1.80%) PMI Certification
5 10 (1.20%) SC Cleared
6 8 (0.96%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (0.96%) Master's Degree
7 7 (0.84%) APMP
7 7 (0.84%) CISSP
7 7 (0.84%) MBA
8 6 (0.72%) CCNP
8 6 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.60%) CSPO
10 4 (0.48%) CCIE
10 4 (0.48%) CISM
10 4 (0.48%) CRISC
11 3 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.36%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (5.41%) QA
2 44 (5.29%) Data Quality
3 30 (3.61%) PMO
4 21 (2.52%) GDPR
5 19 (2.28%) SLA
6 12 (1.44%) Accessibility
7 7 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.72%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.48%) IFRS
9 4 (0.48%) NIST
10 3 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.24%) COBIT
11 2 (0.24%) GRC
11 2 (0.24%) NCSC
11 2 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.12%) GAAP
12 1 (0.12%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.12%) MiFID
12 1 (0.12%) Solvency II
System Software
1 17 (2.04%) Docker
2 15 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.48%) RACF
3 4 (0.48%) VMware NSX
4 3 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.12%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 24 (2.88%) Terraform
2 15 (1.80%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.08%) Grafana
4 7 (0.84%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.72%) Argo
5 6 (0.72%) Istio
5 6 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.48%) SCCM
7 3 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.24%) Ansible
8 2 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.24%) MOM
9 1 (0.12%) Cacti
9 1 (0.12%) Control-M
9 1 (0.12%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.12%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.12%) Nmap
9 1 (0.12%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.12%) ZABBIX
9 1 (0.12%) zSecure
Vendors
1 76 (9.13%) Microsoft
2 63 (7.57%) SAP
3 53 (6.37%) Google
4 52 (6.25%) Oracle
5 33 (3.97%) Salesforce
6 30 (3.61%) Databricks
7 23 (2.76%) Adobe
8 17 (2.04%) ServiceNow
9 11 (1.32%) Cisco
9 11 (1.32%) Sitecore
10 9 (1.08%) IBM
11 8 (0.96%) CheckPoint
11 8 (0.96%) Temenos
12 7 (0.84%) IFS
12 7 (0.84%) Splunk
12 7 (0.84%) VMware
12 7 (0.84%) Workday
13 6 (0.72%) F5
13 6 (0.72%) Palo Alto
13 6 (0.72%) Zscaler