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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 90 91
Rank change year-on-year -46 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing Retail 852 800 1,055
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.91% 2.75% 2.38%
As % of the General category 3.39% 4.39% 4.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 533 427 603
10th Percentile £191 £291 £288
25th Percentile £353 £408 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £629 £638
90th Percentile £723 £730 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -7.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 18 74
10th Percentile £12.87 £17.27 £11.13
25th Percentile £14.75 £23.19 £12.15
Median hourly rate £16.50 £33.00 £15.95
Median % change year-on-year -50.00% +106.90% -19.49%
75th Percentile £29.19 £64.44 £21.37
90th Percentile £50.05 £87.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.34 £22.50 £14.62
% change year-on-year -27.40% +53.95% -26.22%

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 25,119 18,234 25,765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.22% 62.79% 58.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,660 11,696 16,405
10th Percentile £300 £300 £268
25th Percentile £406 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £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 1,557 715 1,850
10th Percentile £13.71 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.14 £19.00 £15.38
Median hourly rate £25.38 £29.07 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.69% +11.81% -25.71%
75th Percentile £59.00 £58.56 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.15 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £27.70 £25.00
% change year-on-year -13.36% +10.80% -19.35%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 -43 773 £500 -4.76% 1,108
London -42 427 £525 -4.55% 362
UK excluding London -33 355 £463 -7.50% 867
Work from Home -66 209 £500 -4.76% 379
South East -21 110 £420 -21.86% 242
North of England -47 89 £500 +11.11% 224
Midlands -46 73 £495 -1.00% 186
East Midlands -7 44 £495 -1.00% 118
North West -40 43 £500 +11.11% 111
Yorkshire -32 42 £513 +28.13% 91
East of England -16 38 £475 -9.52% 88
West Midlands -57 28 £529 +8.48% 68
Scotland +8 21 £450 -15.49% 41
South West -19 20 £299 -12.13% 84
North East -10 4 £206 -72.50% 25
Northern Ireland +1 2 £190 -44.48% 9
Wales -13 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 37 (4.34%) Confluence
2 15 (1.76%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.53%) CMS
4 12 (1.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 10 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (0.47%) WordPress
7 3 (0.35%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.35%) SAS
8 2 (0.23%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.23%) Magnolia
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.12%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.12%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 27 (3.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (2.11%) Microsoft Project
3 14 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
4 13 (1.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (1.29%) Chatbot
6 10 (1.17%) MS Visio
7 5 (0.59%) Photoshop
8 4 (0.47%) Adobe Illustrator
9 3 (0.35%) InDesign
10 2 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.23%) Trello
11 1 (0.12%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.12%) Adobe After Effects
11 1 (0.12%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.12%) Maya
11 1 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.12%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 18 (2.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (2.00%) Shopify
3 13 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
4 12 (1.41%) SAP Retail
5 9 (1.06%) Oracle Retail
6 6 (0.70%) Finacle
6 6 (0.70%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 5 (0.59%) SAP Payroll
8 4 (0.47%) ResourceLink
8 4 (0.47%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.47%) Temenos T24
9 3 (0.35%) SAP MM
9 3 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 2 (0.23%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.23%) NetSuite
10 2 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
10 2 (0.23%) Sage X3
10 2 (0.23%) Sprinklr
11 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
11 1 (0.12%) SAP SRM
Cloud Services
1 90 (10.56%) Azure
2 56 (6.57%) AWS
2 56 (6.57%) Power Platform
3 53 (6.22%) GCP
4 25 (2.93%) Snowflake
5 24 (2.82%) Dynamics 365
6 22 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (2.46%) GitHub
8 18 (2.11%) Microsoft 365
9 15 (1.76%) SaaS
10 14 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (1.41%) Entra ID
11 12 (1.41%) Google Workspace
12 11 (1.29%) Cloud Run
12 11 (1.29%) Figma
13 10 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
13 10 (1.17%) BigCommerce
13 10 (1.17%) Miro
13 10 (1.17%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
14 9 (1.06%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.88%) RFID
2 15 (1.76%) VPN
3 11 (1.29%) Firewall
3 11 (1.29%) WAN
3 11 (1.29%) Wireless
4 8 (0.94%) NFC
5 7 (0.82%) LAN
6 6 (0.70%) Cisco Nexus
6 6 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
7 5 (0.59%) BGP
7 5 (0.59%) OSPF
8 4 (0.47%) EIGRP
8 4 (0.47%) VoIP
9 3 (0.35%) MPLS
10 2 (0.23%) Cisco ASA
10 2 (0.23%) Network Security
10 2 (0.23%) SAN
10 2 (0.23%) SSL
10 2 (0.23%) VSAN
10 2 (0.23%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (5.63%) Power BI
2 27 (3.17%) BigQuery
3 16 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (1.53%) SQL Server
4 13 (1.53%) Tableau
5 12 (1.41%) MySQL
6 9 (1.06%) Metadata
7 7 (0.82%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.82%) Data Vault
8 6 (0.70%) Delta Lake
8 6 (0.70%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (0.59%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.59%) Oracle Reports
9 5 (0.59%) Relational Database
10 4 (0.47%) Redis
11 3 (0.35%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.35%) Oracle OLAP
11 3 (0.35%) SAP BW
11 3 (0.35%) SAP HANA
11 3 (0.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 70 (8.22%) JIRA
2 14 (1.64%) Git
3 10 (1.17%) GitLab
4 9 (1.06%) Jenkins
5 5 (0.59%) ERwin
6 4 (0.47%) Maven
6 4 (0.47%) MLflow
7 3 (0.35%) Selenium
7 3 (0.35%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.23%) PowerDesigner
8 2 (0.23%) WebDriver
9 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.12%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.12%) Gatling
9 1 (0.12%) Hudson
9 1 (0.12%) JMeter
9 1 (0.12%) Mockito
9 1 (0.12%) Xcode
9 1 (0.12%) Zephyr
General
1 294 (34.51%) Social Skills
2 207 (24.30%) Finance
3 100 (11.74%) Analytical Skills
4 77 (9.04%) Banking
5 57 (6.69%) Marketing
6 39 (4.58%) Manufacturing
7 38 (4.46%) Public Sector
8 37 (4.34%) Organisational Skills
9 31 (3.64%) Retail Banking
10 29 (3.40%) Investment Banking
11 27 (3.17%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (3.17%) Documentation Skills
12 24 (2.82%) Presentation Skills
13 22 (2.58%) Influencing Skills
14 14 (1.64%) Legal
15 13 (1.53%) Telecoms
16 9 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 8 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
17 8 (0.94%) Private Banking
18 7 (0.82%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 155 (18.19%) Analyst
2 105 (12.32%) Project Manager
3 101 (11.85%) Senior
4 98 (11.50%) Architect
5 85 (9.98%) Business Analyst
6 68 (7.98%) Lead
7 42 (4.93%) Senior Manager
8 38 (4.46%) Consultant
9 37 (4.34%) Solutions Architect
10 32 (3.76%) Technical Manager
11 22 (2.58%) Developer
11 22 (2.58%) Senior Project Manager
12 21 (2.46%) Data Architect
13 20 (2.35%) Programme Manager
14 18 (2.11%) Data Analyst
14 18 (2.11%) Service Manager
15 15 (1.76%) Designer
15 15 (1.76%) Product Manager
16 14 (1.64%) Data Engineer
16 14 (1.64%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (2.93%) Middleware
2 23 (2.70%) REST
2 23 (2.70%) VML
3 17 (2.00%) Spring
4 12 (1.41%) AngularJS
4 12 (1.41%) React
4 12 (1.41%) Spring Boot
5 11 (1.29%) PySpark
6 9 (1.06%) CSS
6 9 (1.06%) HTML
6 9 (1.06%) scikit-learn
7 8 (0.94%) .NET
7 8 (0.94%) Node.js
8 7 (0.82%) PyTorch
9 6 (0.70%) jQuery
9 6 (0.70%) JSON
9 6 (0.70%) Kafka
9 6 (0.70%) LangChain
9 6 (0.70%) OpenTelemetry
10 5 (0.59%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 55 (6.46%) Product Ownership
2 37 (4.34%) Driving Licence
3 27 (3.17%) Self-Motivation
4 25 (2.93%) Cloud Native
4 25 (2.93%) EPoS
5 23 (2.70%) Onboarding
6 20 (2.35%) Data Centre
6 20 (2.35%) FMCG
6 20 (2.35%) Management Information System
7 19 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
8 15 (1.76%) Data Structures
8 15 (1.76%) Mainframe
9 14 (1.64%) Mobile App
10 9 (1.06%) IoT
10 9 (1.06%) Virtual Team
11 8 (0.94%) Algorithms
11 8 (0.94%) Analytical Mindset
11 8 (0.94%) Reference Data
12 7 (0.82%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (0.82%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 37 (4.34%) Windows
2 19 (2.23%) Linux
3 9 (1.06%) Mac OS
4 5 (0.59%) Android
4 5 (0.59%) zOS
5 4 (0.47%) Apple iOS
5 4 (0.47%) Unix
5 4 (0.47%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
6 1 (0.12%) VMS
6 1 (0.12%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 201 (23.59%) Stakeholder Management
2 190 (22.30%) Agile
3 169 (19.84%) Problem-Solving
4 113 (13.26%) E-Commerce
5 100 (11.74%) Migration
5 100 (11.74%) Project Management
6 91 (10.68%) Analytics
7 88 (10.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 87 (10.21%) Roadmaps
9 75 (8.80%) Customer Experience
10 72 (8.45%) AI
10 72 (8.45%) ERP
11 70 (8.22%) Project Delivery
11 70 (8.22%) Workshop Facilitation
12 69 (8.10%) Change Management
12 69 (8.10%) Continuous Improvement
13 63 (7.39%) Scrum
14 62 (7.28%) Decision-Making
14 62 (7.28%) DevOps
15 61 (7.16%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 75 (8.80%) SQL
2 64 (7.51%) Python
3 30 (3.52%) Java
4 19 (2.23%) JavaScript
5 14 (1.64%) PowerShell
6 11 (1.29%) Bash
7 9 (1.06%) Shell Script
8 8 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
9 7 (0.82%) C#
10 5 (0.59%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.59%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.47%) TypeScript
11 4 (0.47%) VBA
12 3 (0.35%) Apex Code
12 3 (0.35%) Scala
12 3 (0.35%) SOQL
12 3 (0.35%) SOSL
13 2 (0.23%) Bicep
13 2 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.23%) R
Qualifications
1 48 (5.63%) Degree
2 26 (3.05%) Security Cleared
3 20 (2.35%) PMP
4 15 (1.76%) PMI Certification
5 12 (1.41%) SC Cleared
6 8 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (0.94%) Master's Degree
7 7 (0.82%) APMP
7 7 (0.82%) CISSP
7 7 (0.82%) MBA
8 6 (0.70%) CCNP
8 6 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (0.70%) CSPO
9 4 (0.47%) CCIE
9 4 (0.47%) CISM
9 4 (0.47%) CRISC
10 3 (0.35%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.35%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (5.28%) Data Quality
1 45 (5.28%) QA
2 30 (3.52%) PMO
3 27 (3.17%) GDPR
4 19 (2.23%) SLA
5 12 (1.41%) Accessibility
6 8 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.70%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.47%) IFRS
8 4 (0.47%) NIST
9 3 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.23%) GRC
10 2 (0.23%) NCSC
10 2 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.12%) GAAP
11 1 (0.12%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.12%) ISO 8583
11 1 (0.12%) Solvency II
11 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (2.11%) Active Directory
2 17 (2.00%) Docker
3 4 (0.47%) RACF
3 4 (0.47%) VMware NSX
4 3 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.35%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.12%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 23 (2.70%) Terraform
2 15 (1.76%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.06%) Grafana
4 7 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (0.82%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.70%) Argo
5 6 (0.70%) Istio
6 5 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
7 4 (0.47%) SCCM
8 2 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.23%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.23%) MOM
8 2 (0.23%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.12%) Ansible
9 1 (0.12%) Control-M
9 1 (0.12%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.12%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.12%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.12%) zSecure
Vendors
1 79 (9.27%) Microsoft
2 67 (7.86%) SAP
3 53 (6.22%) Google
4 52 (6.10%) Oracle
5 37 (4.34%) Salesforce
6 33 (3.87%) Databricks
7 25 (2.93%) Adobe
8 19 (2.23%) ServiceNow
9 13 (1.53%) Sitecore
10 11 (1.29%) Cisco
11 9 (1.06%) IBM
11 9 (1.06%) IFS
12 8 (0.94%) Temenos
13 7 (0.82%) CheckPoint
13 7 (0.82%) Splunk
13 7 (0.82%) VMware
13 7 (0.82%) Workday
14 6 (0.70%) Apple
14 6 (0.70%) Palo Alto
14 6 (0.70%) Zscaler