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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 123 94
Rank change year-on-year +34 -29 +8
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,629 759 897
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.00% 2.30% 2.36%
As % of the General category 5.33% 3.63% 4.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 947 412 470
10th Percentile £317 £300 £285
25th Percentile £450 £430 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - -
75th Percentile £673 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 65 23
10th Percentile £12.76 - £12.75
25th Percentile £13.45 £15.25 £16.00
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 £41.75 £25.15 £51.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £13.81 £16.34 £16.15
% change year-on-year -15.46% +1.15% -18.48%

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 30,564 20,888 22,244
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.20% 63.29% 58.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,765 12,979 13,159
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
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 £742 £738 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £485
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,690 1,240 989
10th Percentile £13.48 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.11 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £28.00 £25.08 £33.93
Median % change year-on-year +11.67% -26.10% +23.38%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.39 £33.00
% change year-on-year +30.90% -35.18% +22.75%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 5 October 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 +33 1,489 £550 +4.76% 4,342
London +43 822 £575 +4.55% 2,042
UK excluding London +12 687 £525 +5.00% 2,538
Work from Home +12 360 £550 +0.92% 1,726
North of England 0 199 £550 +10.00% 716
Midlands +38 160 £538 +23.28% 486
South East -14 160 £581 +5.68% 634
North West +16 127 £550 +10.00% 366
East Midlands +20 88 £500 +14.68% 217
East of England +12 81 £550 -6.38% 248
West Midlands +4 71 £575 +31.43% 268
Yorkshire -33 54 £488 -7.14% 285
South West -17 52 £475 +91.92% 198
Scotland -8 25 £180 -64.00% 147
North East -23 18 £525 +288.89% 75
Wales -10 7 £180 -71.20% 95
Northern Ireland +7 4 £191 - 60

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 52 (3.19%) Confluence
2 24 (1.47%) CMS
3 20 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (1.23%) SharePoint
4 8 (0.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 5 (0.31%) SAS
6 4 (0.25%) Apache
6 4 (0.25%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.25%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.12%) CICS
8 2 (0.12%) Mule
8 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
8 2 (0.12%) WordPress
9 1 (0.061%) HCL Notes
9 1 (0.061%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.061%) Mendix
9 1 (0.061%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.061%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 79 (4.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (3.38%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (1.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (0.86%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 13 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.68%) MS Visio
7 10 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
8 8 (0.49%) Photoshop
9 7 (0.43%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.37%) CPLEX
11 5 (0.31%) InDesign
12 4 (0.25%) Notion
13 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
14 1 (0.061%) 3ds Max
14 1 (0.061%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.061%) Siemens NX
14 1 (0.061%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.061%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 59 (3.62%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.72%) Shopify
3 15 (0.92%) SAP Retail
4 13 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
5 11 (0.68%) SAP CRM
6 9 (0.55%) Magento
6 9 (0.55%) Oracle Retail
7 6 (0.37%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.37%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.31%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.31%) Workday HCM
9 4 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.25%) SAP CAR
9 4 (0.25%) SAP SD
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
10 3 (0.18%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.18%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 216 (13.26%) Azure
2 153 (9.39%) AWS
3 79 (4.85%) Power Platform
4 74 (4.54%) GCP
5 54 (3.31%) Snowflake
6 50 (3.07%) GitHub
7 38 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
8 34 (2.09%) Entra ID
9 31 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
10 28 (1.72%) SaaS
11 26 (1.60%) dbt
11 26 (1.60%) Dynamics 365
12 24 (1.47%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
13 23 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
14 20 (1.23%) Figma
15 18 (1.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 15 (0.92%) Microsoft 365
16 15 (0.92%) OCI
17 11 (0.68%) Algolia
17 11 (0.68%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.35%) WAN
2 20 (1.23%) Firewall
3 16 (0.98%) ATM
3 16 (0.98%) VPN
4 14 (0.86%) Network Security
5 13 (0.80%) LAN
5 13 (0.80%) Wireless
6 12 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
8 7 (0.43%) BGP
8 7 (0.43%) Internet
8 7 (0.43%) IPsec
8 7 (0.43%) OSPF
8 7 (0.43%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.37%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 6 (0.37%) VLAN
10 5 (0.31%) DNS
11 4 (0.25%) Cisco Firepower
11 4 (0.25%) SMS
11 4 (0.25%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (4.79%) Power BI
2 59 (3.62%) Data Warehouse
3 33 (2.03%) Data Lake
4 27 (1.66%) BigQuery
5 22 (1.35%) Metadata
5 22 (1.35%) SQL Server
5 22 (1.35%) Tableau
6 19 (1.17%) MongoDB
7 18 (1.10%) NoSQL
8 15 (0.92%) Amazon Redshift
8 15 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
8 15 (0.92%) SAP BW
9 14 (0.86%) Relational Database
9 14 (0.86%) SAP HANA
10 13 (0.80%) MySQL
11 12 (0.74%) Power Query
12 11 (0.68%) Redis
12 11 (0.68%) Star Schema
13 10 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 9 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 76 (4.67%) JIRA
2 24 (1.47%) Git
3 23 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.49%) Subversion
5 7 (0.43%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.31%) Cypress.io
6 5 (0.31%) JMeter
7 4 (0.25%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.25%) GitLab
7 4 (0.25%) Hudson
8 3 (0.18%) Postman
9 2 (0.12%) git-flow
9 2 (0.12%) LSMW
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%) Maven
General
1 462 (28.36%) Social Skills
2 365 (22.41%) Finance
3 158 (9.70%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (8.41%) Marketing
5 116 (7.12%) Banking
5 116 (7.12%) Manufacturing
6 72 (4.42%) Organisational Skills
7 59 (3.62%) Retail Banking
8 39 (2.39%) Corporate Banking
9 38 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
9 38 (2.33%) Investment Banking
10 33 (2.03%) Public Sector
11 30 (1.84%) Advertising
12 28 (1.72%) Legal
12 28 (1.72%) Telecoms
13 20 (1.23%) French Language
14 19 (1.17%) Back Office
15 17 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
16 16 (0.98%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 257 (15.78%) Architect
2 233 (14.30%) Analyst
3 173 (10.62%) Senior
4 147 (9.02%) Solutions Architect
5 133 (8.16%) Business Analyst
6 115 (7.06%) Lead
6 115 (7.06%) Project Manager
7 85 (5.22%) Developer
8 59 (3.62%) Consultant
9 54 (3.31%) Product Manager
10 49 (3.01%) Data Analyst
10 49 (3.01%) Designer
11 42 (2.58%) Senior Manager
11 42 (2.58%) Supply Chain Architect
12 35 (2.15%) Service Manager
13 34 (2.09%) Senior Developer
13 34 (2.09%) Service Transition Manager
13 34 (2.09%) Transition Manager
14 32 (1.96%) Data Engineer
15 27 (1.66%) EPoS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (4.36%) REST
2 49 (3.01%) Terraform
3 43 (2.64%) Kafka
4 42 (2.58%) React
5 30 (1.84%) Node.js
5 30 (1.84%) Spring
6 26 (1.60%) Spring Boot
7 25 (1.53%) Middleware
8 23 (1.41%) RESTful
8 23 (1.41%) SOAP
9 22 (1.35%) Django
10 20 (1.23%) MACH
11 18 (1.10%) Next.js
11 18 (1.10%) SAP Fiori
12 16 (0.98%) VML
13 15 (0.92%) HTML
14 13 (0.80%) .NET
14 13 (0.80%) SAPUI5
15 11 (0.68%) CSS
15 11 (0.68%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 82 (5.03%) Product Ownership
2 77 (4.73%) EPoS
3 73 (4.48%) FMCG
4 58 (3.56%) Onboarding
5 55 (3.38%) Driving Licence
6 53 (3.25%) Cloud Native
7 35 (2.15%) Management Information System
8 33 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
9 31 (1.90%) Mobile App
10 30 (1.84%) Marketing Technology
11 28 (1.72%) Greenfield Project
12 26 (1.60%) Smartphone
13 25 (1.53%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.41%) Data Structures
15 21 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
15 21 (1.29%) Operational Technology
16 18 (1.10%) AI Agents
17 17 (1.04%) Credit Risk
17 17 (1.04%) Mainframe
17 17 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 51 (3.13%) Windows
2 17 (1.04%) Linux
3 12 (0.74%) Android
4 8 (0.49%) Unix
5 7 (0.43%) Apple iOS
5 7 (0.43%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.37%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.25%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.25%) zOS
8 2 (0.12%) Debian
9 1 (0.061%) OS/2
9 1 (0.061%) SUSE
9 1 (0.061%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.061%) VMS
9 1 (0.061%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 427 (26.21%) Stakeholder Management
2 368 (22.59%) Agile
3 259 (15.90%) E-Commerce
4 189 (11.60%) Analytics
5 187 (11.48%) Logistics
5 187 (11.48%) Migration
6 173 (10.62%) AI
7 168 (10.31%) Problem-Solving
8 165 (10.13%) Roadmaps
9 148 (9.09%) Decision-Making
10 138 (8.47%) CRM
11 137 (8.41%) Customer Experience
12 135 (8.29%) Continuous Improvement
13 127 (7.80%) CI/CD
14 124 (7.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 118 (7.24%) Customer Service
16 111 (6.81%) Business Intelligence
16 111 (6.81%) DevOps
17 110 (6.75%) Data Modelling
18 109 (6.69%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 156 (9.58%) SQL
2 115 (7.06%) Python
3 52 (3.19%) Java
4 35 (2.15%) TypeScript
5 27 (1.66%) JavaScript
6 14 (0.86%) ABAP
7 12 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 11 (0.68%) C#
9 10 (0.61%) R
10 9 (0.55%) Apex Code
10 9 (0.55%) Bash
11 7 (0.43%) PowerShell
11 7 (0.43%) SOQL
12 6 (0.37%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.31%) Groovy
13 5 (0.31%) SOSL
14 4 (0.25%) Bicep
14 4 (0.25%) Shell Script
14 4 (0.25%) T-SQL
15 3 (0.18%) Scala
Qualifications
1 62 (3.81%) Degree
2 34 (2.09%) Security Cleared
3 22 (1.35%) PMP
4 14 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
5 12 (0.74%) SC Cleared
6 11 (0.68%) PMI Certification
7 10 (0.61%) DBS Check
8 8 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (0.49%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (0.37%) CISSP
10 5 (0.31%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (0.31%) CISM
10 5 (0.31%) City & Guilds
10 5 (0.31%) Six Sigma Green Belt
11 4 (0.25%) SAP Certification
12 3 (0.18%) APMG
12 3 (0.18%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.18%) CCNP
12 3 (0.18%) CCSE
12 3 (0.18%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (5.22%) Data Quality
2 74 (4.54%) QA
3 30 (1.84%) GDPR
4 25 (1.53%) Accessibility
4 25 (1.53%) PMO
5 13 (0.80%) PCI DSS
6 10 (0.61%) SLA
7 6 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.31%) NIST
8 5 (0.31%) WCAG
9 4 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 4 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.18%) PSD2
11 2 (0.12%) GAAP
11 2 (0.12%) GRC
11 2 (0.12%) IFRS
12 1 (0.061%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.061%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.061%) IASME
12 1 (0.061%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 35 (2.15%) Docker
2 25 (1.53%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.37%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.31%) Firmware
5 5 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.061%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 41 (2.52%) Kubernetes
2 12 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
3 10 (0.61%) Ansible
4 7 (0.43%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 5 (0.31%) FortiGate
5 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.25%) Bosun
7 3 (0.18%) SCCM
8 2 (0.12%) AirWatch
8 2 (0.12%) CloudHub
8 2 (0.12%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.12%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.12%) logstash
8 2 (0.12%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.061%) Argo
9 1 (0.061%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.061%) Grafana
9 1 (0.061%) Nagios
9 1 (0.061%) vMotion
9 1 (0.061%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 163 (10.01%) Microsoft
2 141 (8.66%) SAP
3 87 (5.34%) Salesforce
4 77 (4.73%) Databricks
5 68 (4.17%) Oracle
6 52 (3.19%) Google
7 35 (2.15%) Adobe
8 30 (1.84%) MuleSoft
9 24 (1.47%) Zscaler
10 21 (1.29%) IBM
11 20 (1.23%) Cisco
12 18 (1.10%) Workday
13 13 (0.80%) New Relic
14 12 (0.74%) Apple
14 12 (0.74%) ServiceNow
14 12 (0.74%) Splunk
15 11 (0.68%) Braze
15 11 (0.68%) Fortinet
16 10 (0.61%) Palo Alto
16 10 (0.61%) VMware