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

6 months to
12 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 94 89
Rank change year-on-year -46 -5 +3
Contract jobs citing Retail 900 792 1,059
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.96% 2.71% 2.41%
As % of the General category 3.53% 4.29% 4.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 552 422 610
10th Percentile £200 £278 £281
25th Percentile £363 £408 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £505
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +3.96% -3.81%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -7.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 20 80
10th Percentile £12.95 £15.12 £11.13
25th Percentile £15.25 £18.13 £12.15
Median hourly rate £16.92 £32.50 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.94% +103.13% -19.23%
75th Percentile £23.39 £58.31 £21.37
90th Percentile £46.25 £87.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.71 £18.13 £14.62
% change year-on-year -7.83% +24.05% -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 25,470 18,457 25,560
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.54% 63.07% 58.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,820 11,811 16,189
10th Percentile £304 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £644 £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 1,586 753 1,897
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.41 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £27.00 £28.75 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.09% +4.55% -21.43%
75th Percentile £59.00 £56.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -5.66% +1.92% -15.42%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -32 819 £500 -4.76% 1,054
London -24 451 £525 -4.55% 339
UK excluding London -27 377 £463 -7.50% 824
Work from Home -55 223 £500 -4.76% 352
South East -13 116 £416 -22.56% 225
North of England -47 101 £500 +11.11% 211
Midlands -41 75 £495 -1.00% 169
North West -21 55 £488 -3.70% 111
Yorkshire -41 42 £513 +38.51% 84
East Midlands -13 40 £495 -1.00% 95
East of England -28 40 £475 -9.52% 113
West Midlands -60 34 £481 +8.45% 74
Scotland +5 21 £450 -15.49% 37
South West -19 20 £318 -6.62% 81
North East -18 4 £206 -72.50% 21
Northern Ireland -2 2 £190 -44.48% 11
Wales -12 2 £235 +60.19% 16

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 (4.11%) Confluence
2 16 (1.78%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 12 (1.33%) CMS
5 10 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (0.44%) SAS
7 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.33%) WordPress
8 2 (0.22%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.22%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.22%) Magnolia
9 1 (0.11%) CICS
9 1 (0.11%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.11%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 31 (3.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (2.11%) Microsoft Project
3 16 (1.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
5 13 (1.44%) Chatbot
6 10 (1.11%) MS Visio
7 6 (0.67%) Photoshop
8 5 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
9 3 (0.33%) InDesign
10 2 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.22%) Trello
11 1 (0.11%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
11 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.11%) Maya
11 1 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.11%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 18 (2.00%) Shopify
2 15 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (1.11%) SAP Retail
5 8 (0.89%) Oracle Retail
6 6 (0.67%) Finacle
6 6 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 5 (0.56%) SAP Payroll
8 4 (0.44%) ResourceLink
8 4 (0.44%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.44%) Temenos T24
9 3 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
9 3 (0.33%) SAP MM
9 3 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 2 (0.22%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.22%) NetSuite
10 2 (0.22%) Sage X3
10 2 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
10 2 (0.22%) Sprinklr
11 1 (0.11%) SAP CAR
Cloud Services
1 90 (10.00%) Azure
2 59 (6.56%) AWS
3 58 (6.44%) Power Platform
4 54 (6.00%) GCP
5 27 (3.00%) Dynamics 365
6 24 (2.67%) Snowflake
7 20 (2.22%) Azure DevOps
7 20 (2.22%) GitHub
8 19 (2.11%) Microsoft 365
9 15 (1.67%) SaaS
10 13 (1.44%) Entra ID
10 13 (1.44%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (1.33%) Google Workspace
12 11 (1.22%) BigCommerce
12 11 (1.22%) Cloud Run
12 11 (1.22%) Figma
12 11 (1.22%) Miro
13 10 (1.11%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
14 9 (1.00%) SuccessFactors
15 8 (0.89%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.89%) VPN
2 16 (1.78%) RFID
3 12 (1.33%) Firewall
3 12 (1.33%) WAN
4 11 (1.22%) Wireless
5 8 (0.89%) NFC
6 7 (0.78%) LAN
7 6 (0.67%) Cisco Nexus
7 6 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.56%) BGP
8 5 (0.56%) OSPF
9 4 (0.44%) EIGRP
9 4 (0.44%) VoIP
10 3 (0.33%) Cisco Firepower
10 3 (0.33%) MPLS
10 3 (0.33%) SD-WAN
11 2 (0.22%) Cisco ASA
11 2 (0.22%) Network Security
11 2 (0.22%) SSL
11 2 (0.22%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (5.56%) Power BI
2 24 (2.67%) BigQuery
3 17 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (1.44%) SQL Server
4 13 (1.44%) Tableau
5 12 (1.33%) MySQL
6 10 (1.11%) Metadata
7 8 (0.89%) Data Vault
8 6 (0.67%) Data Lake
8 6 (0.67%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (0.56%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.56%) Relational Database
10 4 (0.44%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.44%) Oracle Reports
11 3 (0.33%) Looker
11 3 (0.33%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.33%) OLAP
11 3 (0.33%) Oracle OLAP
11 3 (0.33%) Snowflake Schema
11 3 (0.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 71 (7.89%) JIRA
2 14 (1.56%) Git
3 10 (1.11%) GitLab
4 9 (1.00%) Jenkins
5 5 (0.56%) ERwin
6 4 (0.44%) Maven
7 3 (0.33%) Selenium
7 3 (0.33%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.22%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.22%) Hudson
8 2 (0.22%) MLflow
8 2 (0.22%) PowerDesigner
8 2 (0.22%) WebDriver
9 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.11%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.11%) Gatling
9 1 (0.11%) JMeter
9 1 (0.11%) Mockito
9 1 (0.11%) Xcode
9 1 (0.11%) Zephyr
General
1 298 (33.11%) Social Skills
2 220 (24.44%) Finance
3 105 (11.67%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (9.00%) Banking
5 59 (6.56%) Marketing
6 42 (4.67%) Organisational Skills
7 41 (4.56%) Manufacturing
8 33 (3.67%) Retail Banking
9 32 (3.56%) Public Sector
10 31 (3.44%) Investment Banking
11 29 (3.22%) Corporate Banking
12 28 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
13 26 (2.89%) Presentation Skills
14 25 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
15 17 (1.89%) Telecoms
16 16 (1.78%) Legal
17 10 (1.11%) Pharmaceutical
18 8 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 8 (0.89%) Private Banking
19 7 (0.78%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 159 (17.67%) Analyst
2 117 (13.00%) Architect
3 111 (12.33%) Project Manager
4 106 (11.78%) Senior
5 90 (10.00%) Business Analyst
6 72 (8.00%) Lead
7 43 (4.78%) Solutions Architect
8 42 (4.67%) Senior Manager
9 36 (4.00%) Consultant
10 33 (3.67%) Technical Manager
11 23 (2.56%) Enterprise Architect
11 23 (2.56%) Senior Project Manager
12 22 (2.44%) Data Architect
12 22 (2.44%) Designer
13 21 (2.33%) Programme Manager
14 20 (2.22%) Developer
15 18 (2.00%) Data Analyst
16 17 (1.89%) IT Manager
17 16 (1.78%) Senior Analyst
17 16 (1.78%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (3.00%) Middleware
2 26 (2.89%) VML
3 23 (2.56%) REST
4 17 (1.89%) Spring
5 15 (1.67%) React
6 12 (1.33%) AngularJS
6 12 (1.33%) Spring Boot
7 11 (1.22%) PySpark
8 9 (1.00%) CSS
9 8 (0.89%) .NET
9 8 (0.89%) HTML
9 8 (0.89%) Node.js
10 7 (0.78%) Kafka
10 7 (0.78%) scikit-learn
11 6 (0.67%) jQuery
11 6 (0.67%) LangChain
11 6 (0.67%) OpenTelemetry
12 5 (0.56%) JSON
12 5 (0.56%) SAML
12 5 (0.56%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 59 (6.56%) Product Ownership
2 32 (3.56%) Driving Licence
3 29 (3.22%) Cloud Native
4 26 (2.89%) Self-Motivation
5 23 (2.56%) EPoS
5 23 (2.56%) Onboarding
6 21 (2.33%) Data Centre
6 21 (2.33%) Management Information System
7 20 (2.22%) FMCG
8 18 (2.00%) Mainframe
9 17 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
10 16 (1.78%) Data Structures
11 14 (1.56%) Mobile App
12 10 (1.11%) IoT
13 9 (1.00%) Virtual Team
14 8 (0.89%) Algorithms
14 8 (0.89%) Reference Data
15 7 (0.78%) Clustering
15 7 (0.78%) Enterprise Software
15 7 (0.78%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 35 (3.89%) Windows
2 19 (2.11%) Linux
3 9 (1.00%) Mac OS
4 6 (0.67%) zOS
5 5 (0.56%) Android
6 4 (0.44%) Unix
6 4 (0.44%) Windows Server
7 3 (0.33%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.11%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.11%) VMS
8 1 (0.11%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (23.00%) Stakeholder Management
2 200 (22.22%) Agile
3 176 (19.56%) Problem-Solving
4 115 (12.78%) E-Commerce
5 109 (12.11%) Project Management
6 107 (11.89%) Migration
7 100 (11.11%) Roadmaps
8 93 (10.33%) Analytics
9 92 (10.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 86 (9.56%) Customer Experience
11 78 (8.67%) AI
12 73 (8.11%) Project Delivery
13 72 (8.00%) ERP
13 72 (8.00%) Workshop Facilitation
14 70 (7.78%) Continuous Improvement
15 69 (7.67%) Change Management
16 67 (7.44%) Decision-Making
17 66 (7.33%) Scrum
18 63 (7.00%) Business Intelligence
19 62 (6.89%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 71 (7.89%) SQL
2 62 (6.89%) Python
3 29 (3.22%) Java
4 19 (2.11%) JavaScript
5 14 (1.56%) PowerShell
6 9 (1.00%) Bash
6 9 (1.00%) Shell Script
7 8 (0.89%) Kusto Query Language
8 7 (0.78%) C#
8 7 (0.78%) TypeScript
9 5 (0.56%) Kotlin
10 4 (0.44%) VBA
11 3 (0.33%) Apex Code
11 3 (0.33%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.33%) Scala
11 3 (0.33%) SOQL
11 3 (0.33%) SOSL
12 2 (0.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.22%) Google Apps Script
12 2 (0.22%) R
Qualifications
1 48 (5.33%) Degree
2 31 (3.44%) Security Cleared
3 21 (2.33%) PMP
3 21 (2.33%) SC Cleared
4 16 (1.78%) PMI Certification
5 8 (0.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (0.89%) CSPO
6 7 (0.78%) APMP
6 7 (0.78%) CISSP
6 7 (0.78%) Master's Degree
7 6 (0.67%) CCNP
7 6 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.67%) MBA
8 4 (0.44%) CCIE
8 4 (0.44%) CISM
8 4 (0.44%) CRISC
8 4 (0.44%) DBS Check
9 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.33%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (5.22%) Data Quality
2 46 (5.11%) QA
3 31 (3.44%) GDPR
4 30 (3.33%) PMO
5 18 (2.00%) SLA
6 12 (1.33%) Accessibility
7 8 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.67%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.56%) NIST
10 4 (0.44%) IFRS
11 3 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.22%) GRC
12 2 (0.22%) NCSC
13 1 (0.11%) COBIT
13 1 (0.11%) GAAP
13 1 (0.11%) IFRS 9
13 1 (0.11%) Solvency II
13 1 (0.11%) WCAG
System Software
1 19 (2.11%) Active Directory
2 15 (1.67%) Docker
3 5 (0.56%) VMware NSX
4 4 (0.44%) RACF
4 4 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.11%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 21 (2.33%) Terraform
2 12 (1.33%) Kubernetes
3 7 (0.78%) Grafana
3 7 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
3 7 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
3 7 (0.78%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 6 (0.67%) Argo
4 6 (0.67%) Istio
5 4 (0.44%) SCCM
6 2 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (0.22%) CA Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
6 2 (0.22%) MOM
6 2 (0.22%) PingFederate
7 1 (0.11%) Ansible
7 1 (0.11%) Control-M
7 1 (0.11%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.11%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.11%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.11%) zSecure
Vendors
1 86 (9.56%) Microsoft
2 64 (7.11%) SAP
3 51 (5.67%) Google
4 50 (5.56%) Oracle
5 40 (4.44%) Salesforce
6 35 (3.89%) Databricks
7 27 (3.00%) Adobe
8 19 (2.11%) ServiceNow
9 14 (1.56%) Sitecore
10 12 (1.33%) Cisco
11 11 (1.22%) IFS
12 10 (1.11%) IBM
13 8 (0.89%) Palo Alto
13 8 (0.89%) Splunk
13 8 (0.89%) Temenos
13 8 (0.89%) VMware
14 7 (0.78%) CheckPoint
14 7 (0.78%) Workday
14 7 (0.78%) Zscaler
15 6 (0.67%) GoldenSource