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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 109 84
Rank change year-on-year +12 -25 +8
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,239 737 1,087
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.46% 2.48% 2.48%
As % of the General category 4.54% 3.90% 4.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 728 380 607
10th Percentile £252 £308 £300
25th Percentile £409 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £516 £505
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% +2.23% -5.43%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -3.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 31 87
10th Percentile £13.02 £13.90 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.50 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +40.63% -19.23%
75th Percentile £22.50 £52.50 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £87.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.92 £15.50 £15.95
% change year-on-year +9.16% -2.82% -19.49%

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 27,294 18,909 25,012
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.15% 63.53% 57.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,471 11,934 15,663
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.29% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £471 £488
% change year-on-year +6.27% -3.48% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,831 906 2,015
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.48 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.20 £16.73 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.70 £30.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.52% -9.18% -0.07%
75th Percentile £60.80 £53.95 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.09 £75.00 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £24.34 £29.50
% change year-on-year +29.25% -17.49% +11.36%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 +9 1,136 £525 - 1,197
London +13 657 £540 -1.82% 447
UK excluding London +5 492 £500 - 902
Work from Home -28 271 £500 - 431
South East +5 150 £525 -1.18% 286
North of England -37 133 £519 +3.75% 207
Midlands -13 96 £500 +9.59% 168
North West +4 87 £563 +12.50% 115
East Midlands -2 55 £495 +7.03% 93
East of England +3 54 £538 -2.27% 102
Yorkshire -64 43 £500 - 69
West Midlands -28 41 £514 +14.32% 75
South West -16 33 £333 -26.11% 84
Scotland -4 20 £500 -6.54% 40
Northern Ireland +2 3 £196 -42.66% 30
Wales -15 3 £190 +29.52% 15
North East -36 3 £173 -76.98% 27

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 35 (2.82%) Confluence
2 17 (1.37%) CMS
3 15 (1.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 12 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.56%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.40%) SAS
7 3 (0.24%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.16%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.16%) CICS
9 1 (0.081%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 33 (2.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (2.02%) Microsoft Office
3 16 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 16 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (1.05%) Chatbot
5 11 (0.89%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.81%) Photoshop
7 8 (0.65%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 8 (0.65%) Adobe Illustrator
8 5 (0.40%) InDesign
9 3 (0.24%) Notion
9 3 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
10 2 (0.16%) UserZoom
11 1 (0.081%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.081%) Adobe After Effects
11 1 (0.081%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.081%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.081%) Maya
11 1 (0.081%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.081%) Trello
Business Applications
1 25 (2.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (1.86%) Shopify
3 14 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.73%) Oracle Retail
4 9 (0.73%) SAP Retail
5 7 (0.56%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 7 (0.56%) SAP CRM
6 6 (0.48%) Finacle
7 5 (0.40%) NetSuite
7 5 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.40%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.32%) Magento
8 4 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
9 3 (0.24%) SAP CAR
9 3 (0.24%) SAP SD
10 2 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
10 2 (0.16%) Sage X3
10 2 (0.16%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.16%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 135 (10.90%) Azure
2 108 (8.72%) AWS
3 70 (5.65%) GCP
4 62 (5.00%) Power Platform
5 43 (3.47%) Snowflake
6 23 (1.86%) Dynamics 365
6 23 (1.86%) GitHub
7 20 (1.61%) Azure DevOps
8 19 (1.53%) Entra ID
9 18 (1.45%) Figma
10 17 (1.37%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 15 (1.21%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (1.13%) SaaS
13 13 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
13 13 (1.05%) dbt
14 12 (0.97%) BigCommerce
15 11 (0.89%) Google Workspace
15 11 (0.89%) Microsoft 365
16 9 (0.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 9 (0.73%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.05%) ATM
1 13 (1.05%) WAN
2 12 (0.97%) Firewall
3 11 (0.89%) Network Security
4 10 (0.81%) VPN
4 10 (0.81%) Wireless
5 9 (0.73%) RFID
6 7 (0.56%) LAN
7 6 (0.48%) Cisco Firepower
7 6 (0.48%) SD-WAN
7 6 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.40%) Cisco ASA
8 5 (0.40%) Cisco Nexus
8 5 (0.40%) VSAN
9 4 (0.32%) BGP
9 4 (0.32%) IPsec
9 4 (0.32%) OSPF
10 3 (0.24%) Broadband
10 3 (0.24%) MPLS
10 3 (0.24%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (4.84%) Power BI
2 27 (2.18%) BigQuery
3 22 (1.78%) Data Warehouse
4 19 (1.53%) MySQL
4 19 (1.53%) Tableau
5 17 (1.37%) SQL Server
6 16 (1.29%) Metadata
7 12 (0.97%) Data Lake
8 11 (0.89%) NoSQL
9 9 (0.73%) Relational Database
10 6 (0.48%) Data Vault
10 6 (0.48%) MongoDB
10 6 (0.48%) PostgreSQL
10 6 (0.48%) Snowflake Schema
11 5 (0.40%) Power Query
12 4 (0.32%) Big Data
12 4 (0.32%) Looker
12 4 (0.32%) Semantic Layer
13 3 (0.24%) Couchbase
13 3 (0.24%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 73 (5.89%) JIRA
2 24 (1.94%) Git
3 12 (0.97%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.48%) GitLab
5 4 (0.32%) Maven
5 4 (0.32%) Subversion
6 3 (0.24%) Cypress.io
6 3 (0.24%) Eclipse
6 3 (0.24%) ERwin
6 3 (0.24%) Hudson
6 3 (0.24%) JMeter
6 3 (0.24%) Selenium
6 3 (0.24%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.16%) git-flow
7 2 (0.16%) MLflow
7 2 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.16%) Postman
7 2 (0.16%) WebDriver
7 2 (0.16%) webpack
8 1 (0.081%) Cucumber
General
1 352 (28.41%) Social Skills
2 291 (23.49%) Finance
3 118 (9.52%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (9.04%) Banking
5 73 (5.89%) Marketing
6 59 (4.76%) Manufacturing
6 59 (4.76%) Organisational Skills
7 58 (4.68%) Retail Banking
8 46 (3.71%) Investment Banking
9 42 (3.39%) Corporate Banking
10 28 (2.26%) Public Sector
11 27 (2.18%) Telecoms
12 26 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
13 22 (1.78%) Presentation Skills
14 21 (1.69%) French Language
14 21 (1.69%) Legal
15 20 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
16 17 (1.37%) Advertising
17 15 (1.21%) Spanish Language
18 14 (1.13%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 193 (15.58%) Architect
2 179 (14.45%) Analyst
3 152 (12.27%) Senior
4 116 (9.36%) Project Manager
5 102 (8.23%) Business Analyst
6 97 (7.83%) Lead
7 90 (7.26%) Solutions Architect
8 60 (4.84%) Senior Manager
9 49 (3.95%) Developer
10 43 (3.47%) Designer
11 40 (3.23%) Technical Manager
12 38 (3.07%) Consultant
12 38 (3.07%) Enterprise Architect
13 35 (2.82%) Product Manager
14 34 (2.74%) Senior Project Manager
15 28 (2.26%) Data Engineer
16 27 (2.18%) 2nd Line Support
17 26 (2.10%) Data Architect
18 25 (2.02%) Data Analyst
18 25 (2.02%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (3.63%) REST
2 33 (2.66%) Middleware
3 27 (2.18%) React
4 26 (2.10%) VML
5 23 (1.86%) Spring
6 20 (1.61%) Kafka
7 17 (1.37%) Node.js
7 17 (1.37%) Spring Boot
8 16 (1.29%) CSS
8 16 (1.29%) HTML
9 15 (1.21%) RESTful
10 11 (0.89%) MACH
11 10 (0.81%) .NET
11 10 (0.81%) AngularJS
11 10 (0.81%) J2EE
11 10 (0.81%) OAuth
12 8 (0.65%) Django
12 8 (0.65%) OAuth2
12 8 (0.65%) OpenID
12 8 (0.65%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 74 (5.97%) Product Ownership
2 46 (3.71%) EPoS
3 44 (3.55%) FMCG
4 41 (3.31%) Driving Licence
5 35 (2.82%) Cloud Native
5 35 (2.82%) Onboarding
6 21 (1.69%) Data Structures
7 20 (1.61%) Data Centre
8 19 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
8 19 (1.53%) Mainframe
8 19 (1.53%) Mobile App
8 19 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
9 15 (1.21%) AI Agents
9 15 (1.21%) Management Information System
9 15 (1.21%) Marketing Technology
10 14 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
11 11 (0.89%) Operational Technology
11 11 (0.89%) Smartphone
12 10 (0.81%) Virtual Team
13 9 (0.73%) Mobile Payment
Operating Systems
1 52 (4.20%) Windows
2 24 (1.94%) Linux
3 12 (0.97%) Android
4 9 (0.73%) Unix
5 7 (0.56%) zOS
6 6 (0.48%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.40%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.40%) Windows Server
8 3 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.24%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.24%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.081%) Debian
9 1 (0.081%) SUSE
9 1 (0.081%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.081%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 277 (22.36%) Agile
2 269 (21.71%) Stakeholder Management
3 187 (15.09%) Problem-Solving
4 179 (14.45%) E-Commerce
5 154 (12.43%) Migration
6 147 (11.86%) Roadmaps
7 125 (10.09%) Analytics
8 120 (9.69%) Customer Experience
9 116 (9.36%) Project Management
10 105 (8.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 104 (8.39%) AI
12 93 (7.51%) ERP
13 88 (7.10%) Decision-Making
13 88 (7.10%) Project Delivery
14 86 (6.94%) Change Management
15 85 (6.86%) Continuous Improvement
16 84 (6.78%) Scrum
16 84 (6.78%) User Acceptance Testing
17 82 (6.62%) Business Intelligence
18 81 (6.54%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 100 (8.07%) SQL
2 76 (6.13%) Python
3 49 (3.95%) Java
4 26 (2.10%) JavaScript
5 18 (1.45%) TypeScript
6 10 (0.81%) Shell Script
7 9 (0.73%) C#
7 9 (0.73%) PowerShell
8 7 (0.56%) SOQL
9 6 (0.48%) Apex Code
9 6 (0.48%) Bash
9 6 (0.48%) Kotlin
9 6 (0.48%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.40%) Bicep
10 5 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (0.40%) SOSL
11 4 (0.32%) R
11 4 (0.32%) Scala
12 3 (0.24%) Groovy
12 3 (0.24%) VBA
Qualifications
1 54 (4.36%) Degree
2 41 (3.31%) Security Cleared
3 29 (2.34%) SC Cleared
4 18 (1.45%) PMP
5 10 (0.81%) DBS Check
5 10 (0.81%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (0.65%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (0.65%) CISSP
8 7 (0.56%) APMP
8 7 (0.56%) Master's Degree
9 5 (0.40%) CCNP
9 5 (0.40%) CCSE
9 5 (0.40%) CCSM
9 5 (0.40%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.40%) CISM
9 5 (0.40%) CSPO
9 5 (0.40%) MBA
10 4 (0.32%) City & Guilds
10 4 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (5.00%) QA
2 53 (4.28%) Data Quality
3 38 (3.07%) GDPR
4 33 (2.66%) PMO
5 18 (1.45%) Accessibility
6 15 (1.21%) PCI DSS
7 12 (0.97%) SLA
8 8 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.48%) NIST
10 3 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.24%) PSD2
11 2 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.16%) GAAP
11 2 (0.16%) GRC
11 2 (0.16%) IFRS
11 2 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.16%) WCAG
12 1 (0.081%) Basel III
12 1 (0.081%) COBIT
12 1 (0.081%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 23 (1.86%) Active Directory
2 22 (1.78%) Docker
3 6 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
3 6 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.16%) Firmware
5 2 (0.16%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.081%) RACF
Systems Management
1 30 (2.42%) Terraform
2 22 (1.78%) Kubernetes
3 13 (1.05%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 6 (0.48%) Ansible
4 6 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (0.40%) Grafana
5 5 (0.40%) SCCM
5 5 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.24%) FortiGate
7 2 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.16%) Argo
7 2 (0.16%) CA Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.16%) Istio
7 2 (0.16%) MOM
7 2 (0.16%) PingFederate
8 1 (0.081%) CSIRT
8 1 (0.081%) Nagios
8 1 (0.081%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.081%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 103 (8.31%) Microsoft
2 84 (6.78%) SAP
3 76 (6.13%) Oracle
4 55 (4.44%) Google
4 55 (4.44%) Salesforce
5 43 (3.47%) Databricks
6 35 (2.82%) Adobe
7 22 (1.78%) ServiceNow
8 15 (1.21%) Cisco
8 15 (1.21%) IFS
9 14 (1.13%) Sitecore
10 13 (1.05%) IBM
10 13 (1.05%) Splunk
11 12 (0.97%) Zscaler
12 11 (0.89%) MuleSoft
13 10 (0.81%) Fortinet
13 10 (0.81%) Palo Alto
13 10 (0.81%) VMware
14 8 (0.65%) Dynatrace
15 7 (0.56%) Workday