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 16 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 126 96 102
Rank change year-on-year -30 +6 -34
Contract jobs citing Retail 746 912 1,136
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.24% 2.42% 2.38%
As % of the General category 3.55% 4.13% 4.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 420 470 677
10th Percentile £295 £284 £303
25th Percentile £423 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 16 37
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.63 £17.23
25th Percentile £15.37 £16.00 £19.06
Median hourly rate £16.34 £16.90 £19.81
Median % change year-on-year -3.34% -14.69% -
75th Percentile £19.50 £41.25 £20.56
90th Percentile £25.15 £57.50 £22.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.34 £16.00 £19.81
% change year-on-year +2.09% -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 common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 21,031 22,074 28,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 63.21% 58.69% 59.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,118 13,034 19,047
10th Percentile £275 £281 £300
25th Percentile £400 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £647 £665
90th Percentile £738 £763 £760
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,259 912 1,082
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £16.28 £17.06 £16.41
Median hourly rate £25.00 £32.00 £29.75
Median % change year-on-year -21.88% +7.56% +19.00%
75th Percentile £44.42 £59.96 £57.50
90th Percentile £67.25 £71.48 £71.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.30 £30.00 £27.00
% change year-on-year -29.00% +11.11% +26.91%

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 16 October 2025.

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 16 October 2025.

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 16 October 2025. 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 -28 681 £525 - 1,747
London -31 343 £545 -0.91% 681
UK excluding London -11 342 £500 - 1,346
Work from Home -48 206 £545 +3.81% 721
North of England -8 104 £500 - 323
South East -6 86 £538 +7.50% 573
Midlands -14 59 £425 -15.00% 185
Yorkshire -23 52 £600 +14.29% 119
North West -2 50 £500 +9.59% 181
East Midlands +7 41 £425 -15.00% 90
East of England -25 36 £550 +7.32% 126
South West +29 34 £180 -57.14% 99
Scotland +4 18 £500 - 54
West Midlands -27 18 £456 +1.39% 92
Wales +7 4 £625 +364.82% 24
North East -10 3 £135 -77.50% 27
Northern Ireland -5 1 - - 9

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 26 (3.49%) Confluence
2 16 (2.14%) CMS
3 8 (1.07%) Apache Airflow
3 8 (1.07%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.80%) Camunda
5 4 (0.54%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 4 (0.54%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.40%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.27%) WordPress
8 1 (0.13%) Apache
8 1 (0.13%) Appian
8 1 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.13%) WebLogic
Applications
1 32 (4.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (3.35%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (1.34%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.54%) Sketch
6 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.27%) Trello
6 2 (0.27%) UserZoom
7 1 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.13%) InDesign
7 1 (0.13%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 33 (4.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (1.61%) Shopify
3 9 (1.21%) Oracle Retail
4 6 (0.80%) Dynamics AX
4 6 (0.80%) SAP Retail
5 5 (0.67%) Payment Gateway
5 5 (0.67%) SAP GTS
6 4 (0.54%) Avolution ABACUS
7 3 (0.40%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.40%) SAP POS DM
7 3 (0.40%) Sprinklr
8 2 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
8 2 (0.27%) Magento
8 2 (0.27%) NetSuite
9 1 (0.13%) CA PPM
9 1 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
9 1 (0.13%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.13%) SAP IS-U
9 1 (0.13%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 94 (12.60%) Azure
2 61 (8.18%) AWS
3 52 (6.97%) Power Platform
4 39 (5.23%) GCP
5 28 (3.75%) Dynamics 365
6 24 (3.22%) Microsoft 365
7 21 (2.82%) Azure DevOps
8 17 (2.28%) Entra ID
8 17 (2.28%) SaaS
9 16 (2.14%) Figma
10 12 (1.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 11 (1.47%) Snowflake
12 10 (1.34%) OCI
13 9 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
13 9 (1.21%) GitHub
13 9 (1.21%) Serverless
14 8 (1.07%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
15 7 (0.94%) dbt
15 7 (0.94%) Power Automate
15 7 (0.94%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.61%) Wireless
2 11 (1.47%) RFID
3 10 (1.34%) NFC
4 9 (1.21%) Firewall
5 8 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.54%) DNS
6 4 (0.54%) LAN
6 4 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.40%) Broadband
7 3 (0.40%) HTTP
8 2 (0.27%) ATM
8 2 (0.27%) DHCP
8 2 (0.27%) Network Security
8 2 (0.27%) VPN
8 2 (0.27%) WAN
9 1 (0.13%) Cisco Nexus
9 1 (0.13%) HTTPS
9 1 (0.13%) NAS
9 1 (0.13%) SD-WAN
9 1 (0.13%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (6.17%) Power BI
2 21 (2.82%) Data Warehouse
3 17 (2.28%) BigQuery
4 15 (2.01%) Metadata
5 14 (1.88%) Data Lake
6 12 (1.61%) Tableau
7 8 (1.07%) Power Query
7 8 (1.07%) SQL Server
8 6 (0.80%) Big Data
9 5 (0.67%) Data Vault
10 4 (0.54%) PostgreSQL
10 4 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
10 4 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 3 (0.40%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.40%) SAP BW
11 3 (0.40%) Star Schema
12 2 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
12 2 (0.27%) NoSQL
12 2 (0.27%) Oracle Reports
12 2 (0.27%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 54 (7.24%) JIRA
2 17 (2.28%) Git
3 13 (1.74%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.54%) Artifactory
4 4 (0.54%) GitLab
4 4 (0.54%) Storybook
5 3 (0.40%) Android Studio
5 3 (0.40%) Bitbucket
5 3 (0.40%) Gradle
5 3 (0.40%) Postman
5 3 (0.40%) Selenium
5 3 (0.40%) Xcode
6 2 (0.27%) JUnit
6 2 (0.27%) Maven
6 2 (0.27%) MLflow
6 2 (0.27%) SoapUI
6 2 (0.27%) Zephyr
7 1 (0.13%) Dreamweaver
7 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio
General
1 263 (35.25%) Social Skills
2 172 (23.06%) Finance
3 79 (10.59%) Banking
4 76 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
5 52 (6.97%) Retail Banking
6 49 (6.57%) Marketing
7 48 (6.43%) Investment Banking
8 46 (6.17%) Corporate Banking
9 43 (5.76%) Organisational Skills
10 38 (5.09%) Manufacturing
11 36 (4.83%) Public Sector
12 29 (3.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 28 (3.75%) Legal
14 17 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
15 15 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
16 13 (1.74%) Presentation Skills
17 12 (1.61%) Financial Institution
17 12 (1.61%) French Language
18 11 (1.47%) Telecoms
19 9 (1.21%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 147 (19.71%) Analyst
2 90 (12.06%) Architect
3 69 (9.25%) Project Manager
4 58 (7.77%) Business Analyst
5 55 (7.37%) Senior
6 50 (6.70%) Solutions Architect
7 46 (6.17%) Lead
8 37 (4.96%) Developer
9 33 (4.42%) Consultant
10 27 (3.62%) Senior Manager
11 23 (3.08%) Data Analyst
12 21 (2.82%) Product Manager
13 19 (2.55%) Programme Manager
14 16 (2.14%) Administrator
14 16 (2.14%) Data Engineer
15 15 (2.01%) Designer
15 15 (2.01%) IT Manager
15 15 (2.01%) IT Support
15 15 (2.01%) Service Analyst
15 15 (2.01%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.08%) React
2 19 (2.55%) REST
3 18 (2.41%) HTML
4 13 (1.74%) CSS
4 13 (1.74%) Node.js
5 12 (1.61%) PySpark
6 10 (1.34%) React Native
7 8 (1.07%) FastAPI
7 8 (1.07%) Kafka
7 8 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
8 7 (0.94%) EDI
8 7 (0.94%) Redux
8 7 (0.94%) RESTful
8 7 (0.94%) VML
8 7 (0.94%) Web Services
9 6 (0.80%) Middleware
9 6 (0.80%) PyTorch
10 5 (0.67%) .NET
10 5 (0.67%) CSS3
10 5 (0.67%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 42 (5.63%) Product Ownership
2 30 (4.02%) EPoS
3 26 (3.49%) Legacy Systems
4 21 (2.82%) Mobile App
4 21 (2.82%) Onboarding
5 16 (2.14%) FMCG
5 16 (2.14%) IoT
6 14 (1.88%) iPhone
6 14 (1.88%) Smartphone
7 13 (1.74%) Greenfield Project
8 12 (1.61%) Data Structures
9 11 (1.47%) Cloud Native
9 11 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
10 10 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
11 9 (1.21%) Management Information System
12 8 (1.07%) Driving Licence
13 6 (0.80%) Algorithms
13 6 (0.80%) Renewable Energy
14 4 (0.54%) Data Centre
14 4 (0.54%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 45 (6.03%) Windows
2 16 (2.14%) Mac OS
3 9 (1.21%) Apple iOS
4 6 (0.80%) Android
5 4 (0.54%) Windows 10
6 3 (0.40%) Linux
6 3 (0.40%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.13%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 172 (23.06%) Agile
2 154 (20.64%) Stakeholder Management
3 104 (13.94%) Problem-Solving
4 87 (11.66%) E-Commerce
5 84 (11.26%) Analytics
6 67 (8.98%) Project Management
7 65 (8.71%) Roadmaps
8 64 (8.58%) Migration
9 60 (8.04%) Customer Experience
10 58 (7.77%) DevOps
10 58 (7.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 55 (7.37%) Data Modelling
12 51 (6.84%) Business Intelligence
12 51 (6.84%) Continuous Improvement
13 49 (6.57%) Project Delivery
13 49 (6.57%) Wealth Management
14 48 (6.43%) ITIL
15 47 (6.30%) CRM
16 46 (6.17%) Logistics
17 44 (5.90%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 72 (9.65%) Python
1 72 (9.65%) SQL
2 18 (2.41%) JavaScript
3 14 (1.88%) Java
4 13 (1.74%) TypeScript
5 10 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 7 (0.94%) Bash
7 5 (0.67%) PowerShell
8 3 (0.40%) C#
8 3 (0.40%) Go
8 3 (0.40%) Korn
8 3 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
8 3 (0.40%) R
8 3 (0.40%) Scala
8 3 (0.40%) X++
9 2 (0.27%) ABAP
9 2 (0.27%) JSX
9 2 (0.27%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.27%) VB
9 2 (0.27%) VBA
Qualifications
1 31 (4.16%) Degree
2 13 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
2 13 (1.74%) PMP
3 12 (1.61%) Security Cleared
4 10 (1.34%) PMI Certification
5 7 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
6 6 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
6 6 (0.80%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.54%) A+ Certification
7 4 (0.54%) MCSA
8 3 (0.40%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.40%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (0.40%) CISSP
8 3 (0.40%) SC Cleared
8 3 (0.40%) Six Sigma Green Belt
9 2 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (0.27%) CIPD
9 2 (0.27%) CISM
9 2 (0.27%) SAP Certification
9 2 (0.27%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (3.35%) QA
2 22 (2.95%) GDPR
3 19 (2.55%) Data Quality
4 14 (1.88%) Accessibility
5 9 (1.21%) GRC
6 6 (0.80%) COBIT
7 5 (0.67%) PMO
8 4 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.54%) NIST
8 4 (0.54%) SLA
9 3 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.40%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.27%) MiFID
10 2 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.13%) FATCA
11 1 (0.13%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.13%) SEPA
11 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 25 (3.35%) Active Directory
2 15 (2.01%) Docker
3 1 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
3 1 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (0.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.13%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 30 (4.02%) Terraform
2 22 (2.95%) Kubernetes
3 15 (2.01%) Jamf Pro
4 13 (1.74%) Ansible
5 4 (0.54%) Grafana
5 4 (0.54%) SCCM
6 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.27%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.13%) AirWatch
8 1 (0.13%) Foglight
8 1 (0.13%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.13%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 85 (11.39%) Microsoft
2 69 (9.25%) SAP
3 44 (5.90%) Oracle
4 43 (5.76%) Salesforce
5 24 (3.22%) ServiceNow
6 20 (2.68%) Google
7 19 (2.55%) Adobe
8 18 (2.41%) Apple
8 18 (2.41%) Databricks
9 16 (2.14%) HP
10 11 (1.47%) Dynatrace
11 9 (1.21%) Dell
12 8 (1.07%) Sitecore
12 8 (1.07%) Splunk
13 7 (0.94%) Planview
14 6 (0.80%) CheckPoint
14 6 (0.80%) F5
14 6 (0.80%) Workday
15 5 (0.67%) Citrix
15 5 (0.67%) Genesys