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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 111 80
Rank change year-on-year +19 -31 +14
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,395 794 1,115
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.64% 2.45% 2.59%
As % of the General category 4.81% 3.88% 4.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 845 405 626
10th Percentile £300 £302 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £520
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -1.44% -2.71%
75th Percentile £650 £635 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 42 83
10th Percentile £13.05 £14.58 £12.15
25th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £12.26
Median hourly rate £21.00 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +28.83% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £31.81 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £76.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.92 £15.73 £16.00
% change year-on-year +7.57% -1.69% -19.23%

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 29,012 20,465 24,598
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.85% 63.06% 57.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,395 12,853 15,377
10th Percentile £313 £281 £277
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £472 £490
% change year-on-year +5.88% -3.62% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,002 1,036 1,895
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.36 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.38 £16.30 £15.95
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.17 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.63% -16.41% +6.42%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.56 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £71.88 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £31.89
% change year-on-year +41.30% -27.87% +22.63%

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 11 July 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 11 July 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 11 July 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 +16 1,279 £540 +2.86% 1,240
London +22 742 £550 - 455
UK excluding London +2 551 £525 +5.00% 904
Work from Home -13 310 £500 - 418
South East +10 167 £525 -3.45% 284
North of England -20 159 £550 +7.32% 244
North West +3 106 £575 +15.00% 135
Midlands -17 102 £500 +9.59% 187
East of England +13 60 £550 -4.35% 100
East Midlands -4 53 £495 +7.03% 107
West Midlands -35 49 £550 +22.22% 78
Yorkshire -48 47 £513 -2.38% 87
South West -33 36 £325 -8.59% 72
Scotland -1 21 £496 -3.22% 21
North East -30 6 £173 -79.07% 25
Northern Ireland +7 3 £196 -64.32% 16
Wales -16 3 £190 +29.52% 11

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 (2.58%) Confluence
2 19 (1.36%) CMS
3 15 (1.08%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 12 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.50%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.36%) SAS
7 4 (0.29%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.22%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.14%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.14%) CICS
9 2 (0.14%) Mule
10 1 (0.072%) Apache
10 1 (0.072%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 37 (2.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (2.01%) Microsoft Office
3 20 (1.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (1.22%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.93%) Chatbot
6 11 (0.79%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 10 (0.72%) Photoshop
8 9 (0.65%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.43%) InDesign
9 6 (0.43%) MS Visio
10 3 (0.22%) Notion
10 3 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.14%) UserZoom
12 1 (0.072%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.072%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.072%) Maya
12 1 (0.072%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.072%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 34 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (2.01%) Shopify
3 14 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.72%) Oracle Retail
5 9 (0.65%) SAP CRM
6 7 (0.50%) Magento
7 6 (0.43%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.43%) SAP Retail
8 5 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
9 4 (0.29%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.29%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.29%) SAP SD
10 3 (0.22%) Finacle
10 3 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 3 (0.22%) SAP CAR
10 3 (0.22%) SAP ERP
11 2 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 2 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 2 (0.14%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 166 (11.90%) Azure
2 139 (9.96%) AWS
3 81 (5.81%) GCP
4 67 (4.80%) Power Platform
5 52 (3.73%) Snowflake
6 31 (2.22%) GitHub
7 25 (1.79%) Dynamics 365
8 24 (1.72%) Azure DevOps
9 22 (1.58%) Entra ID
9 22 (1.58%) GitHub Actions
9 22 (1.58%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
10 20 (1.43%) Figma
11 19 (1.36%) SaaS
12 14 (1.00%) dbt
13 13 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
14 12 (0.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 11 (0.79%) Google Workspace
15 11 (0.79%) Microsoft 365
15 11 (0.79%) Salesforce Service Cloud
16 10 (0.72%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.00%) WAN
2 13 (0.93%) ATM
2 13 (0.93%) Firewall
2 13 (0.93%) Network Security
2 13 (0.93%) Wireless
3 11 (0.79%) VPN
4 9 (0.65%) RFID
5 8 (0.57%) LAN
5 8 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (0.43%) Cisco Firepower
6 6 (0.43%) SD-WAN
7 5 (0.36%) BGP
7 5 (0.36%) Cisco ASA
7 5 (0.36%) Cisco Nexus
7 5 (0.36%) IPsec
7 5 (0.36%) OSPF
7 5 (0.36%) VSAN
8 4 (0.29%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 4 (0.29%) Internet
8 4 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (4.66%) Power BI
2 31 (2.22%) BigQuery
3 30 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
4 21 (1.51%) Tableau
5 20 (1.43%) Metadata
5 20 (1.43%) MySQL
6 18 (1.29%) Data Lake
7 16 (1.15%) NoSQL
8 15 (1.08%) SQL Server
9 12 (0.86%) Relational Database
10 8 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
10 8 (0.57%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
10 8 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 7 (0.50%) Power Query
11 7 (0.50%) SAP HANA
12 6 (0.43%) Data Vault
12 6 (0.43%) Looker
12 6 (0.43%) Semantic Layer
13 5 (0.36%) Couchbase
Development Applications
1 72 (5.16%) JIRA
2 31 (2.22%) Git
3 19 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 7 (0.50%) Subversion
5 5 (0.36%) GitLab
6 4 (0.29%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.29%) Maven
7 3 (0.22%) Claude Code
7 3 (0.22%) Cypress.io
7 3 (0.22%) ERwin
7 3 (0.22%) Hudson
7 3 (0.22%) JMeter
7 3 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (0.22%) Selenium
8 2 (0.14%) git-flow
8 2 (0.14%) MLflow
8 2 (0.14%) Postman
8 2 (0.14%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.14%) WebDriver
8 2 (0.14%) webpack
General
1 394 (28.24%) Social Skills
2 325 (23.30%) Finance
3 128 (9.18%) Analytical Skills
4 121 (8.67%) Banking
5 89 (6.38%) Marketing
6 82 (5.88%) Manufacturing
7 63 (4.52%) Retail Banking
8 60 (4.30%) Organisational Skills
9 48 (3.44%) Investment Banking
10 46 (3.30%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (1.94%) Public Sector
11 27 (1.94%) Telecoms
12 25 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
13 24 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
14 23 (1.65%) French Language
14 23 (1.65%) Legal
15 21 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
16 18 (1.29%) Advertising
16 18 (1.29%) Spanish Language
17 14 (1.00%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 232 (16.63%) Architect
2 200 (14.34%) Analyst
3 171 (12.26%) Senior
4 127 (9.10%) Project Manager
5 118 (8.46%) Solutions Architect
6 115 (8.24%) Business Analyst
7 101 (7.24%) Lead
8 64 (4.59%) Senior Manager
9 63 (4.52%) Developer
10 47 (3.37%) Designer
11 44 (3.15%) Product Manager
12 41 (2.94%) Consultant
13 40 (2.87%) Enterprise Architect
14 38 (2.72%) Technical Manager
15 37 (2.65%) Senior Project Manager
16 33 (2.37%) Data Analyst
16 33 (2.37%) Data Architect
17 31 (2.22%) Programme Manager
18 30 (2.15%) Data Engineer
19 29 (2.08%) Supply Chain Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (4.59%) REST
2 37 (2.65%) Middleware
3 34 (2.44%) React
4 27 (1.94%) Spring
5 26 (1.86%) Kafka
6 22 (1.58%) Node.js
6 22 (1.58%) VML
7 19 (1.36%) Spring Boot
8 18 (1.29%) RESTful
9 17 (1.22%) HTML
10 16 (1.15%) CSS
10 16 (1.15%) SOAP
11 15 (1.08%) MACH
12 14 (1.00%) Django
12 14 (1.00%) OAuth
13 13 (0.93%) J2EE
14 11 (0.79%) .NET
14 11 (0.79%) JSON
15 9 (0.65%) AngularJS
15 9 (0.65%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 85 (6.09%) Product Ownership
2 54 (3.87%) FMCG
3 48 (3.44%) EPoS
4 45 (3.23%) Onboarding
5 42 (3.01%) Cloud Native
6 40 (2.87%) Driving Licence
7 28 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
8 27 (1.94%) Mobile App
9 26 (1.86%) Data Centre
10 23 (1.65%) Data Structures
11 22 (1.58%) Marketing Technology
12 20 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
13 19 (1.36%) Mainframe
13 19 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
14 15 (1.08%) AI Agents
14 15 (1.08%) Management Information System
15 14 (1.00%) Operational Technology
16 11 (0.79%) Smartphone
16 11 (0.79%) Taxonomies
16 11 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 53 (3.80%) Windows
2 26 (1.86%) Linux
3 12 (0.86%) Unix
4 11 (0.79%) Android
5 7 (0.50%) Mac OS
5 7 (0.50%) zOS
6 6 (0.43%) Apple iOS
6 6 (0.43%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.36%) Windows 10
7 5 (0.36%) Windows Server
8 2 (0.14%) Debian
9 1 (0.072%) SUSE
9 1 (0.072%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.072%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 342 (24.52%) Agile
2 334 (23.94%) Stakeholder Management
3 219 (15.70%) E-Commerce
4 194 (13.91%) Problem-Solving
5 184 (13.19%) Migration
6 175 (12.54%) Roadmaps
7 152 (10.90%) Analytics
8 138 (9.89%) Customer Experience
9 137 (9.82%) AI
10 127 (9.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 114 (8.17%) Project Management
12 105 (7.53%) CI/CD
13 104 (7.46%) Decision-Making
14 103 (7.38%) CRM
14 103 (7.38%) Logistics
15 101 (7.24%) ERP
16 99 (7.10%) Continuous Improvement
16 99 (7.10%) Project Delivery
17 93 (6.67%) Business Intelligence
18 92 (6.59%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 125 (8.96%) SQL
2 91 (6.52%) Python
3 56 (4.01%) Java
4 28 (2.01%) JavaScript
5 25 (1.79%) TypeScript
6 11 (0.79%) C#
7 10 (0.72%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.57%) ABAP
8 8 (0.57%) Shell Script
9 7 (0.50%) Apex Code
9 7 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 7 (0.50%) PL/SQL
9 7 (0.50%) SOQL
10 6 (0.43%) Bash
10 6 (0.43%) Bicep
10 6 (0.43%) Kotlin
10 6 (0.43%) R
10 6 (0.43%) Scala
11 5 (0.36%) Groovy
11 5 (0.36%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 62 (4.44%) Degree
2 39 (2.80%) Security Cleared
3 24 (1.72%) SC Cleared
4 17 (1.22%) PMP
5 12 (0.86%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (0.72%) CISSP
6 10 (0.72%) DBS Check
7 9 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (0.57%) PMI Certification
9 7 (0.50%) CISM
10 6 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
11 5 (0.36%) CCNP
11 5 (0.36%) CCSE
11 5 (0.36%) CCSM
11 5 (0.36%) CSPO
12 4 (0.29%) Azure Certification
12 4 (0.29%) City & Guilds
13 3 (0.22%) APMG
13 3 (0.22%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (4.87%) QA
2 67 (4.80%) Data Quality
3 44 (3.15%) GDPR
4 29 (2.08%) PMO
5 21 (1.51%) Accessibility
6 17 (1.22%) PCI DSS
7 14 (1.00%) SLA
8 9 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.50%) NIST
10 4 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.22%) GAAP
11 3 (0.22%) IFRS
11 3 (0.22%) PSD2
12 2 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.14%) GRC
12 2 (0.14%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.14%) WCAG
13 1 (0.072%) GxP
13 1 (0.072%) NCSC
System Software
1 29 (2.08%) Docker
2 26 (1.86%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.22%) Firmware
7 2 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 37 (2.65%) Terraform
2 29 (2.08%) Kubernetes
3 14 (1.00%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 9 (0.65%) Ansible
5 6 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.43%) SCCM
5 6 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.36%) Grafana
7 4 (0.29%) FortiGate
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%) CloudHub
8 2 (0.14%) MOM
8 2 (0.14%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.072%) Argo
9 1 (0.072%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.072%) Istio
9 1 (0.072%) Nagios
9 1 (0.072%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 112 (8.03%) Microsoft
2 96 (6.88%) SAP
3 76 (5.45%) Oracle
4 66 (4.73%) Salesforce
5 56 (4.01%) Databricks
6 54 (3.87%) Google
7 37 (2.65%) Adobe
8 22 (1.58%) ServiceNow
9 19 (1.36%) MuleSoft
10 15 (1.08%) Cisco
10 15 (1.08%) IBM
11 14 (1.00%) IFS
11 14 (1.00%) Splunk
11 14 (1.00%) Zscaler
12 12 (0.86%) VMware
13 11 (0.79%) Fortinet
13 11 (0.79%) Palo Alto
13 11 (0.79%) Workday
14 10 (0.72%) Sitecore
15 9 (0.65%) Apple