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 2 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 150 90 108
Rank change year-on-year -60 +18 -28
Contract jobs citing Retail 718 864 967
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.87% 2.78% 2.15%
As % of the General category 3.16% 4.49% 3.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 425 442 560
10th Percentile £206 £265 £263
25th Percentile £390 £410 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -6.98%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £628
90th Percentile £731 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 12 43
10th Percentile £12.95 £16.44 £11.00
25th Percentile £16.17 £18.13 £11.95
Median hourly rate £16.34 £32.50 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.74% +71.05% -4.09%
75th Percentile £19.50 £41.25 £20.75
90th Percentile £24.38 £74.63 £22.69
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.34 £18.13 £14.62
% change year-on-year -9.90% +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 22,707 19,264 26,512
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.09% 62.00% 58.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,252 11,463 17,188
10th Percentile £285 £281 £265
25th Percentile £400 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £730 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £481 £500
% change year-on-year -1.14% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,385 621 1,614
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.62 £13.02
25th Percentile £16.25 £20.12 £15.13
Median hourly rate £22.50 £28.60 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -21.33% +11.24% +2.84%
75th Percentile £47.00 £53.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.75 £67.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.28 £26.50 £24.65
% change year-on-year -19.72% +7.51% +7.91%

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 2 February 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 2 February 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 2 February 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 -65 656 £506 -3.57% 1,117
London -37 353 £550 - 363
UK excluding London -47 310 £495 -1.00% 877
Work from Home -69 181 £520 -3.26% 424
South East -26 91 £518 -5.77% 300
North of England -46 74 £500 +11.11% 197
Midlands -48 68 £479 -4.25% 178
East Midlands -6 45 £495 -1.00% 91
Yorkshire -46 40 £506 +26.56% 74
East of England -21 37 £529 -3.86% 95
North West -29 32 £525 +16.67% 110
West Midlands -52 22 £275 -47.62% 87
Scotland -2 20 £450 -12.20% 27
South West -17 15 £183 -56.55% 80
Wales 0 3 £625 +331.03% 23
North East -15 3 £213 -64.58% 14
Northern Ireland -1 2 - - 8

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 34 (4.74%) Confluence
2 18 (2.51%) CMS
3 16 (2.23%) SharePoint
4 9 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (1.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.70%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.56%) Camunda
7 4 (0.56%) WordPress
8 3 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.28%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.28%) Magnolia
9 2 (0.28%) SAS
10 1 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.14%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 22 (3.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.53%) Microsoft Project
3 10 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (1.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (1.39%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.70%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.28%) Trello
6 1 (0.14%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.14%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.14%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.14%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 21 (2.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (1.67%) Shopify
3 11 (1.53%) SAP Retail
4 7 (0.97%) Oracle Retail
5 6 (0.84%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 6 (0.84%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.70%) SAP Payroll
7 4 (0.56%) Dynamics AX
7 4 (0.56%) Finacle
7 4 (0.56%) ResourceLink
7 4 (0.56%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.42%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.42%) SAP MDG
8 3 (0.42%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 2 (0.28%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.28%) Sage X3
9 2 (0.28%) SAP GTS
9 2 (0.28%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 89 (12.40%) Azure
2 51 (7.10%) AWS
3 46 (6.41%) Power Platform
4 38 (5.29%) GCP
5 24 (3.34%) Dynamics 365
6 21 (2.92%) Azure DevOps
7 18 (2.51%) Snowflake
8 16 (2.23%) GitHub
8 16 (2.23%) Microsoft 365
9 15 (2.09%) SaaS
10 13 (1.81%) Figma
11 11 (1.53%) GitHub Actions
11 11 (1.53%) OCI
11 11 (1.53%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 9 (1.25%) Power Automate
13 8 (1.11%) dbt
13 8 (1.11%) Entra ID
13 8 (1.11%) SuccessFactors
13 8 (1.11%) Vertex AI
14 7 (0.97%) BigCommerce
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.92%) RFID
2 18 (2.51%) NFC
2 18 (2.51%) Wireless
3 12 (1.67%) Firewall
4 10 (1.39%) VPN
5 7 (0.97%) WAN
6 6 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.56%) BGP
7 4 (0.56%) Cisco Nexus
7 4 (0.56%) EIGRP
7 4 (0.56%) OSPF
7 4 (0.56%) VoIP
8 3 (0.42%) LAN
9 2 (0.28%) MPLS
9 2 (0.28%) SAN
9 2 (0.28%) WLAN
10 1 (0.14%) FTP
10 1 (0.14%) HTTPS
10 1 (0.14%) SMS
10 1 (0.14%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (5.29%) Power BI
2 20 (2.79%) BigQuery
2 20 (2.79%) Data Warehouse
3 15 (2.09%) Metadata
3 15 (2.09%) SQL Server
4 13 (1.81%) Tableau
5 8 (1.11%) Data Lake
5 8 (1.11%) MySQL
6 7 (0.97%) Data Vault
7 6 (0.84%) PostgreSQL
8 5 (0.70%) MongoDB
8 5 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
8 5 (0.70%) Relational Database
8 5 (0.70%) Snowflake Schema
9 4 (0.56%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.56%) Power Query
9 4 (0.56%) Redis
9 4 (0.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 3 (0.42%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.42%) Oracle OLAP
Development Applications
1 72 (10.03%) JIRA
2 13 (1.81%) Jenkins
3 10 (1.39%) GitLab
4 8 (1.11%) Git
5 5 (0.70%) ERwin
5 5 (0.70%) Selenium
6 4 (0.56%) Storybook
7 3 (0.42%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.28%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.28%) JMeter
8 2 (0.28%) JUnit
8 2 (0.28%) MLflow
8 2 (0.28%) Mockito
8 2 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (0.28%) Postman
8 2 (0.28%) PowerDesigner
8 2 (0.28%) SoapUI
8 2 (0.28%) Xcode
8 2 (0.28%) Zephyr
General
1 252 (35.10%) Social Skills
2 150 (20.89%) Finance
3 80 (11.14%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (8.77%) Banking
5 52 (7.24%) Marketing
6 42 (5.85%) Organisational Skills
7 39 (5.43%) Public Sector
8 34 (4.74%) Manufacturing
9 29 (4.04%) Retail Banking
10 25 (3.48%) Corporate Banking
11 23 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
11 23 (3.20%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (3.06%) Investment Banking
13 20 (2.79%) Legal
14 18 (2.51%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (1.81%) Telecoms
16 11 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 6 (0.84%) Financial Institution
17 6 (0.84%) Publishing
18 5 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 134 (18.66%) Analyst
2 91 (12.67%) Project Manager
3 74 (10.31%) Architect
4 70 (9.75%) Senior
5 62 (8.64%) Business Analyst
6 61 (8.50%) Lead
7 34 (4.74%) Solutions Architect
8 33 (4.60%) Senior Manager
9 30 (4.18%) Consultant
10 22 (3.06%) Developer
11 21 (2.92%) Product Manager
11 21 (2.92%) Technical Manager
12 18 (2.51%) Programme Manager
13 16 (2.23%) Senior Project Manager
14 14 (1.95%) Support Analyst
15 13 (1.81%) E-Commerce Manager
15 13 (1.81%) Help Desk Analyst
15 13 (1.81%) SAP Consultant
16 12 (1.67%) Data Engineer
16 12 (1.67%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.20%) React
2 19 (2.65%) VML
3 15 (2.09%) Node.js
4 14 (1.95%) REST
5 12 (1.67%) PySpark
6 10 (1.39%) HTML
7 8 (1.11%) .NET
7 8 (1.11%) AngularJS
7 8 (1.11%) Middleware
7 8 (1.11%) Spring
7 8 (1.11%) Spring Boot
8 7 (0.97%) FastAPI
8 7 (0.97%) Kafka
8 7 (0.97%) OpenTelemetry
8 7 (0.97%) scikit-learn
8 7 (0.97%) XML
9 6 (0.84%) CSS
9 6 (0.84%) JSON
9 6 (0.84%) LangChain
9 6 (0.84%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 38 (5.29%) Product Ownership
2 28 (3.90%) Legacy Systems
3 25 (3.48%) EPoS
4 24 (3.34%) Self-Motivation
5 22 (3.06%) Onboarding
6 19 (2.65%) FMCG
6 19 (2.65%) Management Information System
7 18 (2.51%) IoT
8 16 (2.23%) Cloud Native
8 16 (2.23%) Driving Licence
9 15 (2.09%) Data Structures
10 13 (1.81%) Data Centre
11 10 (1.39%) Mobile App
12 9 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
13 8 (1.11%) Algorithms
14 7 (0.97%) Mainframe
14 7 (0.97%) Social Media
15 6 (0.84%) CMDB
15 6 (0.84%) Reference Data
15 6 (0.84%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 37 (5.15%) Windows
2 12 (1.67%) Linux
3 8 (1.11%) Mac OS
4 6 (0.84%) Android
5 5 (0.70%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.42%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.28%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.14%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.14%) Mac OS X
8 1 (0.14%) VMS
8 1 (0.14%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (24.51%) Agile
2 175 (24.37%) Stakeholder Management
3 120 (16.71%) Problem-Solving
4 96 (13.37%) Project Management
5 83 (11.56%) E-Commerce
6 79 (11.00%) Analytics
7 76 (10.58%) Migration
8 70 (9.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 64 (8.91%) Roadmaps
10 63 (8.77%) Continuous Improvement
11 59 (8.22%) Workshop Facilitation
12 56 (7.80%) Scrum
13 52 (7.24%) AI
14 51 (7.10%) Business Intelligence
14 51 (7.10%) Decision-Making
14 51 (7.10%) Project Delivery
15 48 (6.69%) Data Modelling
15 48 (6.69%) DevOps
16 47 (6.55%) CRM
17 43 (5.99%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 70 (9.75%) SQL
2 60 (8.36%) Python
3 19 (2.65%) Java
4 14 (1.95%) JavaScript
5 12 (1.67%) PowerShell
6 11 (1.53%) Bash
7 9 (1.25%) Shell Script
7 9 (1.25%) TypeScript
8 8 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
9 6 (0.84%) C#
10 5 (0.70%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.28%) ABAP
11 2 (0.28%) PHP
11 2 (0.28%) Swift
11 2 (0.28%) VBA
12 1 (0.14%) CLIST
12 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.14%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.14%) REXX
12 1 (0.14%) Scala
Qualifications
1 40 (5.57%) Degree
2 23 (3.20%) PMP
3 19 (2.65%) Security Cleared
4 17 (2.37%) PMI Certification
5 10 (1.39%) Master's Degree
6 7 (0.97%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (0.97%) MBA
6 7 (0.97%) SC Cleared
7 6 (0.84%) APMP
7 6 (0.84%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.70%) CISSP
9 4 (0.56%) CCIE
9 4 (0.56%) CCNP
9 4 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (0.56%) CISM
9 4 (0.56%) CRISC
9 4 (0.56%) CSPO
10 3 (0.42%) GIAC
10 3 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.32%) QA
2 29 (4.04%) Data Quality
3 21 (2.92%) PMO
4 16 (2.23%) GDPR
5 15 (2.09%) Accessibility
6 13 (1.81%) SLA
7 6 (0.84%) COBIT
8 5 (0.70%) Actionable Recommendations
9 4 (0.56%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.42%) IFRS
10 3 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.42%) NCSC
11 2 (0.28%) NIST
12 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.14%) IFRS 9
12 1 (0.14%) MiFID
12 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.14%) Solvency II
12 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 12 (1.67%) Docker
2 10 (1.39%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.56%) RACF
4 3 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
4 3 (0.42%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.14%) Varnish
5 1 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 23 (3.20%) Terraform
2 12 (1.67%) Kubernetes
3 6 (0.84%) Ansible
3 6 (0.84%) Argo
3 6 (0.84%) Istio
4 4 (0.56%) Grafana
4 4 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
5 3 (0.42%) SCCM
5 3 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.14%) AirWatch
6 1 (0.14%) Cacti
6 1 (0.14%) Control-M
6 1 (0.14%) HP ALM
6 1 (0.14%) Nmap
6 1 (0.14%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 1 (0.14%) ZABBIX
6 1 (0.14%) zSecure
Vendors
1 75 (10.45%) Microsoft
2 60 (8.36%) SAP
3 48 (6.69%) Oracle
4 42 (5.85%) Salesforce
5 33 (4.60%) Google
6 21 (2.92%) Databricks
7 20 (2.79%) Adobe
8 12 (1.67%) Dell
9 11 (1.53%) ServiceNow
10 10 (1.39%) CheckPoint
10 10 (1.39%) F5
10 10 (1.39%) HP
11 9 (1.25%) Dynatrace
12 8 (1.11%) Cisco
12 8 (1.11%) Sitecore
13 6 (0.84%) Apple
13 6 (0.84%) BMC
13 6 (0.84%) Temenos
14 5 (0.70%) Meraki
14 5 (0.70%) MicroStrategy