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 22 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 122 86
Rank change year-on-year +33 -36 +14
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,602 756 960
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.98% 2.30% 2.47%
As % of the General category 5.41% 3.63% 4.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 934 395 534
10th Percentile £319 £279 £300
25th Percentile £456 £406 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year +7.32% +2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £656 £630 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 49 57
10th Percentile £12.76 £14.50 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.51 £15.25 £12.50
Median hourly rate £16.92 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +3.80% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £25.15 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £33.80 £22.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £14.04 £16.15 £16.00
% change year-on-year -13.08% +0.94% -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 29,628 20,830 22,290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.48% 57.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,566 12,959 13,906
10th Percentile £313 £275 £291
25th Percentile £415 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £748 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,273 1,159 1,303
10th Percentile £13.90 £13.37 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.12 £16.21 £16.50
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -29.15% +29.09%
75th Percentile £56.21 £50.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.23 £22.14 £35.03
% change year-on-year +45.55% -36.80% +40.12%

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 22 August 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 22 August 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 22 August 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 +34 1,470 £550 +7.32% 1,375
London +40 838 £565 +2.73% 428
UK excluding London +6 649 £525 +5.00% 1,148
Work from Home +8 351 £525 +5.00% 470
North of England -18 190 £550 +10.00% 324
South East +11 176 £525 -4.55% 325
Midlands +20 138 £513 +19.05% 240
North West +6 118 £550 +10.00% 171
East Midlands +13 78 £500 +14.68% 130
East of England +13 70 £575 +9.52% 107
West Midlands -8 59 £575 +35.29% 110
Yorkshire -39 55 £500 - 122
South West -31 45 £400 +17.65% 92
Scotland -4 24 £301 -42.63% 59
North East -32 17 £525 +18.64% 35
Wales -17 4 - - 30
Northern Ireland +3 3 £203 -63.18% 6

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 51 (3.18%) Confluence
2 18 (1.12%) CMS
3 11 (0.69%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 11 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
4 9 (0.56%) SharePoint
5 6 (0.37%) SAS
6 4 (0.25%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.19%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.12%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.12%) CICS
8 2 (0.12%) Mule
9 1 (0.062%) Apache
9 1 (0.062%) Mendix
9 1 (0.062%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.062%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 55 (3.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
3 21 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.00%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 14 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.56%) Photoshop
7 8 (0.50%) Adobe Illustrator
7 8 (0.50%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
8 6 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 6 (0.37%) InDesign
9 4 (0.25%) CPLEX
9 4 (0.25%) Notion
10 1 (0.062%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.062%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 49 (3.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.75%) Shopify
3 13 (0.81%) SAP Retail
4 11 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
5 10 (0.62%) Oracle Retail
5 10 (0.62%) SAP CRM
6 8 (0.50%) Magento
7 6 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.31%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.31%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.25%) SAP SD
10 3 (0.19%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 3 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.19%) SAP IBP
10 3 (0.19%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 193 (12.05%) Azure
2 145 (9.05%) AWS
3 79 (4.93%) Power Platform
4 72 (4.49%) GCP
5 54 (3.37%) Snowflake
6 39 (2.43%) GitHub
7 33 (2.06%) Entra ID
8 31 (1.94%) Azure DevOps
9 26 (1.62%) Dynamics 365
10 24 (1.50%) GitHub Actions
11 23 (1.44%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 20 (1.25%) Figma
12 20 (1.25%) SaaS
13 17 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
14 16 (1.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 16 (1.00%) Microsoft 365
15 13 (0.81%) dbt
16 12 (0.75%) OCI
17 11 (0.69%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 10 (0.62%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.37%) WAN
2 20 (1.25%) Firewall
3 17 (1.06%) VPN
4 16 (1.00%) ATM
4 16 (1.00%) Wireless
5 14 (0.87%) LAN
5 14 (0.87%) Network Security
6 10 (0.62%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.50%) BGP
7 8 (0.50%) IPsec
7 8 (0.50%) OSPF
8 7 (0.44%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 7 (0.44%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
8 7 (0.44%) VLAN
9 6 (0.37%) Cisco Firepower
9 6 (0.37%) VSAN
10 5 (0.31%) Cisco ASA
10 5 (0.31%) Cisco Nexus
10 5 (0.31%) RFID
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (4.87%) Power BI
2 40 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
3 32 (2.00%) BigQuery
4 24 (1.50%) Data Lake
5 22 (1.37%) Metadata
6 20 (1.25%) NoSQL
7 19 (1.19%) MongoDB
8 17 (1.06%) SQL Server
8 17 (1.06%) Tableau
9 13 (0.81%) MySQL
10 12 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
10 12 (0.75%) Power Query
10 12 (0.75%) Relational Database
11 11 (0.69%) PostgreSQL
12 10 (0.62%) Redis
12 10 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 8 (0.50%) Couchbase
14 7 (0.44%) SAP HANA
14 7 (0.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 7 (0.44%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 80 (4.99%) JIRA
2 27 (1.69%) Git
3 19 (1.19%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.50%) Subversion
5 7 (0.44%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.31%) Cypress.io
6 5 (0.31%) GitLab
6 5 (0.31%) JMeter
7 4 (0.25%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.25%) Hudson
8 3 (0.19%) Selenium
9 2 (0.12%) git-flow
9 2 (0.12%) Maven
9 2 (0.12%) MLflow
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.12%) Postman
9 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.12%) webpack
10 1 (0.062%) Pylint
General
1 442 (27.59%) Social Skills
2 382 (23.85%) Finance
3 169 (10.55%) Analytical Skills
4 133 (8.30%) Banking
5 105 (6.55%) Marketing
6 100 (6.24%) Manufacturing
7 69 (4.31%) Retail Banking
8 64 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
9 48 (3.00%) Investment Banking
10 46 (2.87%) Corporate Banking
11 38 (2.37%) Public Sector
12 32 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
13 30 (1.87%) Telecoms
14 29 (1.81%) Legal
15 28 (1.75%) Advertising
16 24 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
17 23 (1.44%) French Language
18 20 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
19 18 (1.12%) Spanish Language
20 16 (1.00%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 263 (16.42%) Architect
2 239 (14.92%) Analyst
3 178 (11.11%) Senior
4 145 (9.05%) Solutions Architect
5 138 (8.61%) Business Analyst
6 124 (7.74%) Project Manager
7 114 (7.12%) Lead
8 86 (5.37%) Developer
9 53 (3.31%) Consultant
10 49 (3.06%) Product Manager
11 47 (2.93%) Data Analyst
12 46 (2.87%) Designer
13 45 (2.81%) Senior Manager
14 40 (2.50%) Supply Chain Architect
15 39 (2.43%) Service Manager
16 38 (2.37%) Enterprise Architect
17 37 (2.31%) Data Architect
17 37 (2.31%) Senior Developer
18 34 (2.12%) Programme Manager
18 34 (2.12%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (4.24%) REST
2 51 (3.18%) Terraform
3 41 (2.56%) React
4 35 (2.18%) Kafka
5 29 (1.81%) Middleware
5 29 (1.81%) Node.js
5 29 (1.81%) Spring
6 23 (1.44%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.31%) VML
8 20 (1.25%) Django
8 20 (1.25%) RESTful
9 19 (1.19%) MACH
9 19 (1.19%) SOAP
10 15 (0.94%) HTML
11 14 (0.87%) Next.js
11 14 (0.87%) OAuth
12 12 (0.75%) CSS
13 11 (0.69%) Jakarta EE
13 11 (0.69%) Lightning Web Components
14 10 (0.62%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 87 (5.43%) Product Ownership
2 69 (4.31%) FMCG
3 58 (3.62%) EPoS
4 56 (3.50%) Onboarding
5 48 (3.00%) Cloud Native
6 34 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
7 31 (1.94%) Data Centre
8 30 (1.87%) Driving Licence
9 27 (1.69%) Mobile App
10 25 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
11 24 (1.50%) Data Structures
12 23 (1.44%) Marketing Technology
13 22 (1.37%) Mainframe
14 21 (1.31%) Operational Technology
15 19 (1.19%) Management Information System
15 19 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
15 19 (1.19%) Smartphone
16 18 (1.12%) AI Agents
17 16 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
18 15 (0.94%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.50%) Windows
2 21 (1.31%) Linux
3 11 (0.69%) Android
4 10 (0.62%) Unix
5 8 (0.50%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.44%) Mac OS
7 6 (0.37%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.31%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.31%) Windows Server
9 4 (0.25%) zOS
10 2 (0.12%) Debian
11 1 (0.062%) SUSE
11 1 (0.062%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.062%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 402 (25.09%) Stakeholder Management
2 380 (23.72%) Agile
3 238 (14.86%) E-Commerce
4 200 (12.48%) Problem-Solving
5 194 (12.11%) Migration
6 180 (11.24%) Analytics
7 175 (10.92%) Roadmaps
8 169 (10.55%) AI
8 169 (10.55%) Logistics
9 142 (8.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 141 (8.80%) Customer Experience
11 132 (8.24%) Decision-Making
12 129 (8.05%) Continuous Improvement
13 122 (7.62%) CI/CD
14 119 (7.43%) Project Management
15 115 (7.18%) CRM
16 111 (6.93%) Business Intelligence
17 110 (6.87%) User Acceptance Testing
18 108 (6.74%) ERP
19 107 (6.68%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 145 (9.05%) SQL
2 107 (6.68%) Python
3 54 (3.37%) Java
4 34 (2.12%) TypeScript
5 29 (1.81%) JavaScript
6 12 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (0.62%) Apex Code
7 10 (0.62%) C#
7 10 (0.62%) R
7 10 (0.62%) SOQL
8 9 (0.56%) ABAP
8 9 (0.56%) PowerShell
9 8 (0.50%) Bash
9 8 (0.50%) SOSL
10 6 (0.37%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.37%) Scala
11 5 (0.31%) Bicep
11 5 (0.31%) Groovy
12 4 (0.25%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 63 (3.93%) Degree
2 45 (2.81%) Security Cleared
3 22 (1.37%) PMP
3 22 (1.37%) SC Cleared
4 13 (0.81%) DBS Check
5 12 (0.75%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
8 6 (0.37%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.37%) CISSP
9 5 (0.31%) CCNP
9 5 (0.31%) CCSE
9 5 (0.31%) CCSM
9 5 (0.31%) CISM
9 5 (0.31%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.31%) CSPO
9 5 (0.31%) Six Sigma Green Belt
10 4 (0.25%) City & Guilds
11 3 (0.19%) Azure Certification
11 3 (0.19%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (4.99%) Data Quality
2 79 (4.93%) QA
3 40 (2.50%) GDPR
4 26 (1.62%) PMO
5 22 (1.37%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.87%) PCI DSS
6 14 (0.87%) SLA
7 8 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.37%) NIST
9 5 (0.31%) WCAG
10 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.19%) GAAP
10 3 (0.19%) GRC
10 3 (0.19%) IFRS
10 3 (0.19%) PSD2
11 2 (0.12%) ISO 8583
11 2 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.062%) GxP
12 1 (0.062%) HL7
System Software
1 36 (2.25%) Docker
2 32 (2.00%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
4 8 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.31%) Firmware
6 5 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.19%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.062%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 40 (2.50%) Kubernetes
2 11 (0.69%) Ansible
3 10 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
4 8 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 7 (0.44%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 6 (0.37%) FortiGate
7 4 (0.25%) SCCM
8 3 (0.19%) Bosun
9 2 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.12%) AirWatch
9 2 (0.12%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.12%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.12%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.12%) logstash
9 2 (0.12%) MOM
9 2 (0.12%) PingFederate
9 2 (0.12%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.062%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.062%) Nagios
10 1 (0.062%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 143 (8.93%) Microsoft
2 123 (7.68%) SAP
3 81 (5.06%) Salesforce
4 78 (4.87%) Databricks
5 76 (4.74%) Oracle
6 46 (2.87%) Google
7 38 (2.37%) Adobe
8 25 (1.56%) Zscaler
9 20 (1.25%) MuleSoft
10 18 (1.12%) Workday
11 17 (1.06%) ServiceNow
12 16 (1.00%) Cisco
13 14 (0.87%) IBM
14 13 (0.81%) Fortinet
14 13 (0.81%) IFS
14 13 (0.81%) Palo Alto
14 13 (0.81%) VMware
15 12 (0.75%) Apple
16 11 (0.69%) Informatica
16 11 (0.69%) New Relic