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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 120 97
Rank change year-on-year +33 -23 +7
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,648 764 904
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.00% 2.32% 2.37%
As % of the General category 5.37% 3.65% 4.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 953 405 485
10th Percentile £321 £300 £275
25th Percentile £456 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - -
75th Percentile £669 £638 £625
90th Percentile £738 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £531 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +6.25% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 129 66 31
10th Percentile £12.76 £15.25 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.45 £15.31 £15.07
Median hourly rate £15.04 £16.34 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year -7.93% +0.21% -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £19.50 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £25.15 £38.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £13.81 £16.34 £16.00
% change year-on-year -15.46% +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 general skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 30,682 20,903 22,166
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.89% 63.41% 58.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,960 12,968 13,178
10th Percentile £313 £275 £282
25th Percentile £420 £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 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,582 1,209 1,060
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.21
Median hourly rate £29.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.30% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £54.48 £47.12 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.96 £21.30 £35.00
% change year-on-year +40.66% -39.14% +29.63%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 +39 1,513 £550 +4.76% 4,035
London +47 841 £568 +3.18% 1,981
UK excluding London +12 687 £531 +6.25% 2,279
Work from Home +11 369 £550 +4.76% 1,562
North of England -9 199 £550 +10.00% 641
South East -1 167 £575 +4.55% 571
Midlands +36 161 £550 +29.41% 443
North West +10 124 £550 +10.00% 360
East Midlands +18 92 £500 +17.86% 201
East of England +6 78 £550 -6.38% 207
West Midlands +4 68 £575 +35.29% 242
Yorkshire -35 57 £500 -4.76% 228
South West -19 51 £428 +35.71% 194
Scotland -15 25 £261 -48.99% 128
North East -31 18 £525 +288.89% 58
Wales -11 4 - - 74
Northern Ireland +6 3 £203 - 62

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 53 (3.22%) Confluence
2 22 (1.33%) CMS
3 19 (1.15%) SharePoint
4 17 (1.03%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.55%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.30%) SAS
7 4 (0.24%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.24%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
8 3 (0.18%) Apache
9 2 (0.12%) CICS
9 2 (0.12%) Mule
9 2 (0.12%) WordPress
10 1 (0.061%) Mendix
10 1 (0.061%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.061%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 76 (4.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (3.16%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (0.91%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 12 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.61%) MS Visio
8 9 (0.55%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.49%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.36%) CPLEX
10 6 (0.36%) InDesign
11 4 (0.24%) Chatbot
11 4 (0.24%) Notion
12 1 (0.061%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.061%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.061%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.061%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.061%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 56 (3.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.58%) Shopify
3 15 (0.91%) SAP Retail
4 14 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
5 10 (0.61%) Oracle Retail
5 10 (0.61%) SAP CRM
6 8 (0.49%) Magento
7 6 (0.36%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.30%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.30%) Workday HCM
9 4 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.24%) SAP SD
10 3 (0.18%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.18%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 217 (13.17%) Azure
2 150 (9.10%) AWS
3 81 (4.92%) Power Platform
4 80 (4.85%) GCP
5 59 (3.58%) Snowflake
6 48 (2.91%) GitHub
7 36 (2.18%) Azure DevOps
7 36 (2.18%) Entra ID
8 29 (1.76%) GitHub Actions
9 28 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
9 28 (1.70%) SaaS
10 25 (1.52%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 22 (1.33%) dbt
12 20 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
12 20 (1.21%) Figma
13 17 (1.03%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 16 (0.97%) OCI
15 15 (0.91%) Microsoft 365
16 12 (0.73%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 11 (0.67%) Algolia
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.33%) Firewall
1 22 (1.33%) WAN
2 17 (1.03%) VPN
3 16 (0.97%) ATM
4 14 (0.85%) Network Security
4 14 (0.85%) Wireless
5 13 (0.79%) LAN
6 12 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.49%) BGP
7 8 (0.49%) IPsec
7 8 (0.49%) OSPF
7 8 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
8 7 (0.42%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 7 (0.42%) Internet
8 7 (0.42%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.42%) VLAN
9 5 (0.30%) DNS
10 4 (0.24%) Broadband
10 4 (0.24%) Cisco Firepower
10 4 (0.24%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 81 (4.92%) Power BI
2 56 (3.40%) Data Warehouse
3 34 (2.06%) BigQuery
4 31 (1.88%) Data Lake
5 24 (1.46%) Metadata
6 21 (1.27%) SQL Server
7 20 (1.21%) Tableau
8 19 (1.15%) MongoDB
8 19 (1.15%) NoSQL
9 14 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
9 14 (0.85%) PostgreSQL
9 14 (0.85%) Relational Database
10 13 (0.79%) Power Query
11 12 (0.73%) MySQL
11 12 (0.73%) SAP HANA
12 11 (0.67%) Redis
12 11 (0.67%) SAP BW
12 11 (0.67%) Star Schema
13 10 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 9 (0.55%) Couchbase
Development Applications
1 79 (4.79%) JIRA
2 24 (1.46%) Git
3 21 (1.27%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.49%) Subversion
5 7 (0.42%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.30%) Cypress.io
6 5 (0.30%) Hudson
6 5 (0.30%) JMeter
7 4 (0.24%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.24%) GitLab
8 3 (0.18%) Postman
9 2 (0.12%) git-flow
9 2 (0.12%) MLflow
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.12%) Selenium
9 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.12%) webpack
10 1 (0.061%) Moq
10 1 (0.061%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 471 (28.58%) Social Skills
2 379 (23.00%) Finance
3 166 (10.07%) Analytical Skills
4 134 (8.13%) Marketing
5 123 (7.46%) Banking
6 111 (6.74%) Manufacturing
7 69 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
8 64 (3.88%) Retail Banking
9 43 (2.61%) Corporate Banking
10 42 (2.55%) Investment Banking
11 37 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
12 35 (2.12%) Public Sector
13 28 (1.70%) Advertising
13 28 (1.70%) Telecoms
14 27 (1.64%) Legal
15 22 (1.33%) French Language
15 22 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
16 19 (1.15%) Back Office
17 18 (1.09%) Spanish Language
18 17 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 277 (16.81%) Architect
2 235 (14.26%) Analyst
3 178 (10.80%) Senior
4 153 (9.28%) Solutions Architect
5 140 (8.50%) Business Analyst
6 122 (7.40%) Project Manager
7 116 (7.04%) Lead
8 86 (5.22%) Developer
9 57 (3.46%) Consultant
10 54 (3.28%) Product Manager
11 49 (2.97%) Designer
12 48 (2.91%) Data Analyst
13 45 (2.73%) Senior Manager
14 42 (2.55%) Supply Chain Architect
15 35 (2.12%) Data Architect
15 35 (2.12%) Service Manager
16 34 (2.06%) Senior Developer
16 34 (2.06%) Service Transition Manager
16 34 (2.06%) Transition Manager
17 33 (2.00%) Enterprise Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (4.19%) REST
2 51 (3.09%) Terraform
3 42 (2.55%) React
4 40 (2.43%) Kafka
5 30 (1.82%) Node.js
6 28 (1.70%) Spring
7 25 (1.52%) Spring Boot
8 23 (1.40%) Middleware
9 22 (1.33%) RESTful
9 22 (1.33%) SOAP
10 21 (1.27%) Django
10 21 (1.27%) MACH
11 19 (1.15%) VML
12 16 (0.97%) HTML
12 16 (0.97%) Next.js
13 15 (0.91%) SAP Fiori
14 12 (0.73%) CSS
14 12 (0.73%) OAuth
15 11 (0.67%) SAPUI5
16 10 (0.61%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 83 (5.04%) Product Ownership
2 70 (4.25%) FMCG
3 64 (3.88%) EPoS
4 58 (3.52%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.09%) Cloud Native
6 42 (2.55%) Driving Licence
7 35 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
8 32 (1.94%) Management Information System
9 29 (1.76%) Marketing Technology
9 29 (1.76%) Mobile App
10 28 (1.70%) Greenfield Project
11 26 (1.58%) Data Centre
12 24 (1.46%) Data Structures
13 22 (1.33%) Mainframe
13 22 (1.33%) Operational Technology
14 20 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
14 20 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
15 19 (1.15%) Smartphone
16 17 (1.03%) AI Agents
16 17 (1.03%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 53 (3.22%) Windows
2 17 (1.03%) Linux
3 12 (0.73%) Android
4 8 (0.49%) Unix
5 7 (0.42%) Apple iOS
5 7 (0.42%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.36%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.24%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.18%) zOS
9 2 (0.12%) Debian
9 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
10 1 (0.061%) OS/2
10 1 (0.061%) SUSE
10 1 (0.061%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.061%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 431 (26.15%) Stakeholder Management
2 374 (22.69%) Agile
3 247 (14.99%) E-Commerce
4 198 (12.01%) Migration
5 192 (11.65%) Analytics
6 189 (11.47%) Logistics
7 182 (11.04%) Problem-Solving
8 177 (10.74%) AI
9 171 (10.38%) Roadmaps
10 149 (9.04%) Decision-Making
11 138 (8.37%) Continuous Improvement
12 137 (8.31%) Customer Experience
13 134 (8.13%) CRM
14 132 (8.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 124 (7.52%) CI/CD
16 117 (7.10%) Business Intelligence
16 117 (7.10%) Project Management
17 115 (6.98%) Customer Service
18 109 (6.61%) DevOps
19 107 (6.49%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 152 (9.22%) SQL
2 113 (6.86%) Python
3 51 (3.09%) Java
4 35 (2.12%) TypeScript
5 26 (1.58%) JavaScript
6 13 (0.79%) ABAP
6 13 (0.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (0.61%) C#
7 10 (0.61%) R
8 9 (0.55%) Apex Code
8 9 (0.55%) Bash
9 7 (0.42%) PowerShell
9 7 (0.42%) SOQL
10 6 (0.36%) PL/SQL
11 5 (0.30%) Groovy
11 5 (0.30%) Scala
11 5 (0.30%) SOSL
12 4 (0.24%) Bicep
12 4 (0.24%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.24%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 61 (3.70%) Degree
2 46 (2.79%) Security Cleared
3 23 (1.40%) PMP
4 22 (1.33%) SC Cleared
5 12 (0.73%) DBS Check
5 12 (0.73%) PMI Certification
6 11 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
7 8 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (0.36%) CISSP
9 5 (0.30%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.30%) CISM
9 5 (0.30%) City & Guilds
9 5 (0.30%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.30%) Six Sigma Green Belt
10 4 (0.24%) CSPO
11 3 (0.18%) APMG
11 3 (0.18%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.18%) CCSM
11 3 (0.18%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 3 (0.18%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (4.92%) Data Quality
2 72 (4.37%) QA
3 35 (2.12%) GDPR
4 25 (1.52%) PMO
5 24 (1.46%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.85%) PCI DSS
7 10 (0.61%) SLA
8 7 (0.42%) NIST
9 6 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 5 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.30%) WCAG
11 3 (0.18%) GRC
11 3 (0.18%) PSD2
12 2 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.12%) GAAP
12 2 (0.12%) IFRS
12 2 (0.12%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.061%) Disclosure Scotland
13 1 (0.061%) GxP
System Software
1 35 (2.12%) Docker
2 29 (1.76%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.30%) Firmware
5 5 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.061%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 40 (2.43%) Kubernetes
2 12 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
3 11 (0.67%) Ansible
4 7 (0.42%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.36%) FortiGate
5 6 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.24%) Bosun
6 4 (0.24%) SCCM
7 2 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.12%) AirWatch
7 2 (0.12%) CA Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.12%) CloudHub
7 2 (0.12%) Jamf Pro
7 2 (0.12%) logstash
7 2 (0.12%) PingFederate
7 2 (0.12%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.061%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.061%) Nagios
8 1 (0.061%) vMotion
8 1 (0.061%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 160 (9.71%) Microsoft
2 137 (8.31%) SAP
3 92 (5.58%) Salesforce
4 85 (5.16%) Databricks
5 73 (4.43%) Oracle
6 49 (2.97%) Google
7 38 (2.31%) Adobe
8 30 (1.82%) MuleSoft
9 25 (1.52%) Zscaler
10 20 (1.21%) Cisco
11 19 (1.15%) Workday
12 18 (1.09%) IBM
13 17 (1.03%) ServiceNow
14 13 (0.79%) Apple
14 13 (0.79%) New Relic
15 12 (0.73%) Fortinet
15 12 (0.73%) Splunk
16 11 (0.67%) Braze
16 11 (0.67%) Palo Alto
17 10 (0.61%) IFS