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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 114 85
Rank change year-on-year +20 -29 +7
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,270 729 1,070
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.49% 2.43% 2.46%
As % of the General category 4.59% 3.82% 4.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 755 374 595
10th Percentile £263 £308 £295
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £516 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% +0.73% -3.30%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 32 86
10th Percentile £13.03 £14.04 £11.88
25th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £19.40 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.25% +21.25% -19.23%
75th Percentile £22.50 £51.88 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £86.50 £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 27,678 19,070 24,743
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.37% 63.50% 56.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,702 11,999 15,483
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £770
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,877 929 2,004
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.55 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.76 £31.13
Median % change year-on-year +15.27% -10.81% +3.75%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £53.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £67.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £24.34 £30.00
% change year-on-year +29.25% -18.87% +17.19%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +13 1,165 £525 - 946
London +16 674 £545 -0.91% 282
UK excluding London +2 504 £500 - 793
Work from Home -30 273 £500 - 323
South East +9 153 £525 -3.45% 257
North of England -45 135 £550 +10.00% 191
Midlands -8 98 £500 +8.11% 157
North West -6 90 £575 +15.00% 103
East of England +8 57 £550 - 99
East Midlands +2 54 £495 +7.03% 95
West Midlands -29 44 £514 +8.30% 62
Yorkshire -56 42 £500 -4.76% 74
South West -22 34 £329 -27.00% 72
Scotland -8 21 £496 -6.85% 28
Northern Ireland +2 3 £196 -64.32% 12
Wales -14 3 £190 +29.52% 10
North East -35 3 £173 -76.98% 20

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 38 (2.99%) Confluence
2 17 (1.34%) CMS
3 15 (1.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 13 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.55%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.39%) SAS
7 3 (0.24%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.16%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.16%) CICS
9 1 (0.079%) Apache
9 1 (0.079%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 32 (2.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 24 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
4 17 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.02%) Chatbot
6 11 (0.87%) MS Visio
7 9 (0.71%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.63%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.63%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.39%) InDesign
10 3 (0.24%) Notion
10 3 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.16%) UserZoom
12 1 (0.079%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.079%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.079%) Maya
12 1 (0.079%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.079%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 28 (2.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (1.81%) Shopify
3 13 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.79%) Oracle Retail
5 9 (0.71%) SAP Retail
6 7 (0.55%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 7 (0.55%) SAP CRM
7 5 (0.39%) Finacle
7 5 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.39%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.31%) Magento
8 4 (0.31%) NetSuite
8 4 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
9 3 (0.24%) SAP CAR
9 3 (0.24%) SAP SD
10 2 (0.16%) Cognos Controller
10 2 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
10 2 (0.16%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.16%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 148 (11.65%) Azure
2 122 (9.61%) AWS
3 75 (5.91%) GCP
4 67 (5.28%) Power Platform
5 45 (3.54%) Snowflake
6 25 (1.97%) GitHub
7 23 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
8 21 (1.65%) Azure DevOps
9 20 (1.57%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.42%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 16 (1.26%) Figma
11 16 (1.26%) GitHub Actions
12 15 (1.18%) SaaS
13 14 (1.10%) dbt
14 12 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
15 11 (0.87%) Google Workspace
15 11 (0.87%) Microsoft 365
16 10 (0.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 10 (0.79%) BigCommerce
16 10 (0.79%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.02%) ATM
1 13 (1.02%) Firewall
1 13 (1.02%) WAN
2 12 (0.94%) Network Security
3 11 (0.87%) VPN
3 11 (0.87%) Wireless
4 9 (0.71%) RFID
5 7 (0.55%) LAN
6 6 (0.47%) Cisco Firepower
6 6 (0.47%) SD-WAN
6 6 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
7 5 (0.39%) BGP
7 5 (0.39%) Cisco ASA
7 5 (0.39%) Cisco Nexus
7 5 (0.39%) IPsec
7 5 (0.39%) OSPF
7 5 (0.39%) VSAN
8 4 (0.31%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 4 (0.31%) Internet
8 4 (0.31%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (5.12%) Power BI
2 25 (1.97%) BigQuery
3 23 (1.81%) Data Warehouse
4 21 (1.65%) MySQL
5 20 (1.57%) Tableau
6 16 (1.26%) Metadata
7 15 (1.18%) SQL Server
8 12 (0.94%) NoSQL
9 11 (0.87%) Data Lake
9 11 (0.87%) Relational Database
10 8 (0.63%) PostgreSQL
11 7 (0.55%) Data Vault
11 7 (0.55%) MongoDB
12 6 (0.47%) Snowflake Schema
13 5 (0.39%) Power Query
14 4 (0.31%) Big Data
14 4 (0.31%) Looker
14 4 (0.31%) Redis
14 4 (0.31%) SAP HANA
14 4 (0.31%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 80 (6.30%) JIRA
2 23 (1.81%) Git
3 12 (0.94%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.39%) GitLab
5 4 (0.31%) Maven
5 4 (0.31%) 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%) Oracle Forms
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%) Postman
7 2 (0.16%) WebDriver
7 2 (0.16%) webpack
8 1 (0.079%) Cucumber
General
1 362 (28.50%) Social Skills
2 297 (23.39%) Finance
3 120 (9.45%) Analytical Skills
4 115 (9.06%) Banking
5 74 (5.83%) Marketing
6 69 (5.43%) Manufacturing
7 60 (4.72%) Retail Banking
8 59 (4.65%) Organisational Skills
9 47 (3.70%) Investment Banking
10 44 (3.46%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (2.13%) Public Sector
11 27 (2.13%) Telecoms
12 26 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
13 23 (1.81%) French Language
14 22 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
15 21 (1.65%) Legal
16 20 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
17 18 (1.42%) Spanish Language
18 17 (1.34%) Advertising
19 14 (1.10%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 204 (16.06%) Architect
2 185 (14.57%) Analyst
3 156 (12.28%) Senior
4 115 (9.06%) Project Manager
5 106 (8.35%) Business Analyst
6 97 (7.64%) Lead
7 96 (7.56%) Solutions Architect
8 63 (4.96%) Senior Manager
9 49 (3.86%) Developer
10 42 (3.31%) Designer
11 41 (3.23%) Technical Manager
12 39 (3.07%) Consultant
13 38 (2.99%) Enterprise Architect
14 36 (2.83%) Product Manager
14 36 (2.83%) Senior Project Manager
15 29 (2.28%) 2nd Line Support
16 28 (2.20%) Data Engineer
17 27 (2.13%) Data Analyst
17 27 (2.13%) Data Architect
18 26 (2.05%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (4.17%) REST
2 35 (2.76%) Middleware
3 29 (2.28%) React
4 24 (1.89%) VML
5 23 (1.81%) Spring
6 21 (1.65%) Kafka
7 17 (1.34%) Spring Boot
8 16 (1.26%) CSS
8 16 (1.26%) HTML
8 16 (1.26%) Node.js
9 15 (1.18%) RESTful
10 13 (1.02%) OAuth
11 12 (0.94%) MACH
12 11 (0.87%) .NET
12 11 (0.87%) J2EE
12 11 (0.87%) SOAP
13 10 (0.79%) Django
14 9 (0.71%) AngularJS
15 8 (0.63%) OAuth2
15 8 (0.63%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 79 (6.22%) Product Ownership
2 48 (3.78%) FMCG
3 46 (3.62%) EPoS
4 41 (3.23%) Driving Licence
5 38 (2.99%) Cloud Native
6 37 (2.91%) Onboarding
7 25 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
8 21 (1.65%) Data Structures
9 20 (1.57%) Data Centre
9 20 (1.57%) Mobile App
10 18 (1.42%) Mainframe
10 18 (1.42%) Marketing Technology
11 17 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
11 17 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
12 16 (1.26%) Management Information System
13 15 (1.18%) AI Agents
14 11 (0.87%) Operational Technology
14 11 (0.87%) Smartphone
14 11 (0.87%) Taxonomies
15 10 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 53 (4.17%) Windows
2 26 (2.05%) Linux
3 12 (0.94%) Android
4 10 (0.79%) Unix
5 7 (0.55%) zOS
6 6 (0.47%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.39%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.39%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.39%) Windows Server
8 3 (0.24%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.079%) Debian
9 1 (0.079%) SUSE
9 1 (0.079%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.079%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 298 (23.46%) Agile
2 288 (22.68%) Stakeholder Management
3 188 (14.80%) Problem-Solving
4 183 (14.41%) E-Commerce
5 162 (12.76%) Migration
6 151 (11.89%) Roadmaps
7 132 (10.39%) Analytics
8 123 (9.69%) Customer Experience
9 115 (9.06%) Project Management
10 111 (8.74%) AI
11 108 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 94 (7.40%) ERP
13 92 (7.24%) Decision-Making
14 90 (7.09%) Project Delivery
15 88 (6.93%) Business Intelligence
15 88 (6.93%) Continuous Improvement
15 88 (6.93%) User Acceptance Testing
16 87 (6.85%) CI/CD
17 86 (6.77%) Scrum
18 85 (6.69%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 108 (8.50%) SQL
2 81 (6.38%) Python
3 50 (3.94%) Java
4 26 (2.05%) JavaScript
5 19 (1.50%) TypeScript
6 10 (0.79%) C#
6 10 (0.79%) Shell Script
7 9 (0.71%) PowerShell
8 7 (0.55%) PL/SQL
8 7 (0.55%) SOQL
9 6 (0.47%) Apex Code
9 6 (0.47%) Bash
9 6 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (0.47%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.39%) Bicep
10 5 (0.39%) SOSL
11 4 (0.31%) ABAP
11 4 (0.31%) Groovy
11 4 (0.31%) R
11 4 (0.31%) Scala
Qualifications
1 57 (4.49%) Degree
2 39 (3.07%) Security Cleared
3 25 (1.97%) SC Cleared
4 17 (1.34%) PMP
5 10 (0.79%) DBS Check
5 10 (0.79%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.71%) CISSP
6 9 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (0.55%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.55%) Master's Degree
8 6 (0.47%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.47%) CISM
9 5 (0.39%) APMP
9 5 (0.39%) CCNP
9 5 (0.39%) CCSE
9 5 (0.39%) CCSM
9 5 (0.39%) CSPO
9 5 (0.39%) MBA
10 4 (0.31%) City & Guilds
11 3 (0.24%) APMG
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (4.80%) QA
2 56 (4.41%) Data Quality
3 39 (3.07%) GDPR
4 32 (2.52%) PMO
5 18 (1.42%) Accessibility
6 15 (1.18%) PCI DSS
7 12 (0.94%) SLA
8 9 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.55%) NIST
10 3 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.24%) GAAP
10 3 (0.24%) IFRS
10 3 (0.24%) PSD2
11 2 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.16%) GRC
11 2 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.16%) WCAG
12 1 (0.079%) COBIT
12 1 (0.079%) GxP
12 1 (0.079%) NCSC
System Software
1 24 (1.89%) Active Directory
2 23 (1.81%) Docker
3 6 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
3 6 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.16%) Firmware
5 2 (0.16%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 33 (2.60%) Terraform
2 25 (1.97%) Kubernetes
3 14 (1.10%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 9 (0.71%) Ansible
5 6 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.39%) Grafana
6 5 (0.39%) SCCM
7 4 (0.31%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.16%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.16%) MOM
8 2 (0.16%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.079%) Argo
9 1 (0.079%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.079%) Istio
9 1 (0.079%) Nagios
9 1 (0.079%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.079%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 102 (8.03%) Microsoft
2 87 (6.85%) SAP
3 77 (6.06%) Oracle
4 60 (4.72%) Salesforce
5 53 (4.17%) Google
6 43 (3.39%) Databricks
7 33 (2.60%) Adobe
8 22 (1.73%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.26%) Cisco
10 14 (1.10%) IBM
10 14 (1.10%) IFS
11 13 (1.02%) Splunk
11 13 (1.02%) Zscaler
12 12 (0.94%) MuleSoft
12 12 (0.94%) Sitecore
13 11 (0.87%) Fortinet
13 11 (0.87%) Palo Alto
14 10 (0.79%) VMware
15 8 (0.63%) Braze
15 8 (0.63%) Dynatrace