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 18 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 132 95 106
Rank change year-on-year -37 +11 -34
Contract jobs citing Retail 767 879 1,080
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.17% 2.44% 2.31%
As % of the General category 3.44% 4.13% 3.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 443 462 629
10th Percentile £217 £263 £285
25th Percentile £406 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -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 61 12 32
10th Percentile £14.50 £16.44 £15.64
25th Percentile £15.25 £18.13 £19.06
Median hourly rate £16.34 £33.00 £19.81
Median % change year-on-year -50.50% +66.58% -
75th Percentile £19.50 £50.31 £20.75
90th Percentile £25.15 £59.50 £29.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.34 £18.13 £19.81
% change year-on-year -9.90% -8.48% -

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 common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 22,292 21,276 27,859
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 62.98% 59.01% 59.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,958 12,530 18,588
10th Percentile £273 £289 £285
25th Percentile £400 £410 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £483 £500
% change year-on-year -1.66% -3.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,447 796 1,122
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.62 £17.25 £17.00
Median hourly rate £24.09 £29.50 £31.58
Median % change year-on-year -18.34% -6.59% +26.32%
75th Percentile £44.94 £55.00 £58.44
90th Percentile £68.20 £70.13 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.44 £27.97
% change year-on-year -19.83% -1.89% +27.14%

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 18 November 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 18 November 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 18 November 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 -40 707 £518 -1.29% 1,605
London -24 365 £525 -4.55% 638
UK excluding London -7 347 £500 - 1,046
Work from Home -49 195 £550 +4.76% 691
South East -1 102 £525 -4.55% 329
North of England -32 85 £500 +5.26% 199
Midlands -33 61 £425 -15.00% 228
East Midlands 0 43 £425 -15.00% 115
North West -16 43 £500 +11.11% 115
East of England -18 40 £579 +10.24% 114
Yorkshire -36 38 £588 +17.50% 64
South West +13 33 £180 -55.50% 98
Scotland +2 20 £500 - 72
West Midlands -44 17 £425 -20.93% 110
Wales +5 5 £625 +331.03% 28
North East -6 5 £200 -66.67% 20
Northern Ireland -9 1 - - 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 32 (4.17%) Confluence
2 19 (2.48%) CMS
3 12 (1.56%) SharePoint
4 8 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (0.78%) Camunda
6 5 (0.65%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.65%) Jupyter
6 5 (0.65%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (0.52%) WordPress
8 3 (0.39%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.13%) Apache
9 1 (0.13%) Appian
9 1 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.13%) WebLogic
Applications
1 31 (4.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (1.30%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.39%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.39%) Sketch
5 3 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.26%) UserZoom
7 1 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.13%) InDesign
7 1 (0.13%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.13%) Trello
Business Applications
1 31 (4.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 14 (1.83%) Shopify
3 9 (1.17%) Oracle Retail
4 8 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
4 8 (1.04%) SAP Retail
5 6 (0.78%) Dynamics AX
5 6 (0.78%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.65%) SAP Payroll
7 4 (0.52%) ResourceLink
7 4 (0.52%) SAP GTS
7 4 (0.52%) Sprinklr
8 3 (0.39%) Avolution ABACUS
8 3 (0.39%) Magento
8 3 (0.39%) NetSuite
8 3 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.39%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.39%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.26%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 2 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 2 (0.26%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 100 (13.04%) Azure
2 57 (7.43%) AWS
3 55 (7.17%) Power Platform
4 37 (4.82%) GCP
5 32 (4.17%) Dynamics 365
6 27 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
7 19 (2.48%) SaaS
8 14 (1.83%) Figma
9 12 (1.56%) Microsoft 365
10 11 (1.43%) Power Automate
10 11 (1.43%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 10 (1.30%) GitHub
11 10 (1.30%) OCI
11 10 (1.30%) Snowflake
12 9 (1.17%) Entra ID
12 9 (1.17%) Serverless
12 9 (1.17%) Vertex AI
13 8 (1.04%) SuccessFactors
14 7 (0.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 7 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.96%) RFID
1 15 (1.96%) Wireless
2 14 (1.83%) NFC
3 10 (1.30%) Firewall
4 6 (0.78%) VPN
5 5 (0.65%) LAN
5 5 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
6 3 (0.39%) Broadband
6 3 (0.39%) DNS
6 3 (0.39%) WAN
7 2 (0.26%) HTTP
7 2 (0.26%) Network Security
7 2 (0.26%) SAN
7 2 (0.26%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.13%) Cisco Nexus
8 1 (0.13%) Intranet
8 1 (0.13%) Multicast
8 1 (0.13%) NAS
8 1 (0.13%) SD-WAN
8 1 (0.13%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (6.00%) Power BI
2 18 (2.35%) Data Warehouse
3 16 (2.09%) Metadata
4 13 (1.69%) BigQuery
5 12 (1.56%) SQL Server
6 11 (1.43%) Data Lake
6 11 (1.43%) Tableau
7 6 (0.78%) Power Query
8 5 (0.65%) Big Data
8 5 (0.65%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 4 (0.52%) MongoDB
9 4 (0.52%) Redis
10 3 (0.39%) Data Vault
10 3 (0.39%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.39%) SAP BW
10 3 (0.39%) Snowflake Schema
10 3 (0.39%) Star Schema
11 2 (0.26%) Amazon Redshift
11 2 (0.26%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.26%) Looker
Development Applications
1 57 (7.43%) JIRA
2 17 (2.22%) Git
3 13 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.52%) Artifactory
4 4 (0.52%) Selenium
4 4 (0.52%) Storybook
4 4 (0.52%) Xcode
5 3 (0.39%) Android Studio
5 3 (0.39%) Bitbucket
5 3 (0.39%) GitLab
5 3 (0.39%) Gradle
5 3 (0.39%) Postman
6 2 (0.26%) ERwin
6 2 (0.26%) JUnit
6 2 (0.26%) MLflow
6 2 (0.26%) PowerDesigner
6 2 (0.26%) SoapUI
7 1 (0.13%) Dreamweaver
7 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio
General
1 274 (35.72%) Social Skills
2 176 (22.95%) Finance
3 86 (11.21%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (10.43%) Banking
5 56 (7.30%) Marketing
6 48 (6.26%) Retail Banking
7 44 (5.74%) Investment Banking
7 44 (5.74%) Manufacturing
7 44 (5.74%) Public Sector
8 43 (5.61%) Corporate Banking
9 38 (4.95%) Organisational Skills
10 28 (3.65%) Legal
11 23 (3.00%) Documentation Skills
12 18 (2.35%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 15 (1.96%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (1.56%) Financial Institution
16 11 (1.43%) French Language
16 11 (1.43%) Telecoms
17 10 (1.30%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 153 (19.95%) Analyst
2 89 (11.60%) Architect
3 76 (9.91%) Project Manager
4 65 (8.47%) Business Analyst
5 52 (6.78%) Lead
5 52 (6.78%) Senior
6 47 (6.13%) Solutions Architect
7 37 (4.82%) Consultant
8 31 (4.04%) Developer
9 22 (2.87%) Administrator
10 21 (2.74%) Programme Manager
10 21 (2.74%) Senior Manager
11 20 (2.61%) Product Manager
12 18 (2.35%) Data Analyst
13 15 (1.96%) Product Owner
14 13 (1.69%) SAP Consultant
14 13 (1.69%) Senior Analyst
15 12 (1.56%) Field Engineer
15 12 (1.56%) Help Desk Analyst
15 12 (1.56%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (2.74%) React
1 21 (2.74%) REST
2 17 (2.22%) HTML
3 14 (1.83%) Node.js
4 12 (1.56%) CSS
5 11 (1.43%) PySpark
6 10 (1.30%) .NET
6 10 (1.30%) React Native
7 9 (1.17%) Kafka
8 8 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
9 7 (0.91%) EDI
9 7 (0.91%) Redux
9 7 (0.91%) RESTful
9 7 (0.91%) scikit-learn
10 6 (0.78%) FastAPI
10 6 (0.78%) VML
10 6 (0.78%) XML
11 5 (0.65%) HTML5
11 5 (0.65%) Middleware
11 5 (0.65%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 42 (5.48%) Product Ownership
2 30 (3.91%) Legacy Systems
3 27 (3.52%) EPoS
4 22 (2.87%) Mobile App
5 20 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 20 (2.61%) Self-Motivation
6 19 (2.48%) IoT
7 18 (2.35%) FMCG
8 14 (1.83%) Greenfield Project
9 13 (1.69%) Data Structures
10 12 (1.56%) Cloud Native
11 11 (1.43%) Analytical Mindset
12 10 (1.30%) Driving Licence
12 10 (1.30%) Management Information System
13 8 (1.04%) Algorithms
14 7 (0.91%) Data Centre
14 7 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
14 7 (0.91%) Social Media
15 6 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
15 6 (0.78%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 42 (5.48%) Windows
2 8 (1.04%) Apple iOS
3 6 (0.78%) Linux
4 4 (0.52%) Android
4 4 (0.52%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.39%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.26%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.13%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.13%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.13%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (23.34%) Agile
2 175 (22.82%) Stakeholder Management
3 110 (14.34%) Problem-Solving
4 93 (12.13%) E-Commerce
5 86 (11.21%) Analytics
6 78 (10.17%) Project Management
7 67 (8.74%) Roadmaps
8 66 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 65 (8.47%) Migration
10 60 (7.82%) Continuous Improvement
10 60 (7.82%) Customer Experience
11 58 (7.56%) CRM
11 58 (7.56%) DevOps
12 53 (6.91%) Business Intelligence
12 53 (6.91%) Data Modelling
13 51 (6.65%) AI
14 50 (6.52%) Workshop Facilitation
15 47 (6.13%) Decision-Making
15 47 (6.13%) Project Delivery
15 47 (6.13%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 70 (9.13%) Python
2 61 (7.95%) SQL
3 22 (2.87%) JavaScript
4 13 (1.69%) TypeScript
5 12 (1.56%) Java
6 10 (1.30%) Bash
6 10 (1.30%) PowerShell
7 8 (1.04%) C#
8 7 (0.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 5 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (0.39%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.39%) X++
11 2 (0.26%) ABAP
11 2 (0.26%) Go
11 2 (0.26%) JSX
11 2 (0.26%) Korn
11 2 (0.26%) PHP
11 2 (0.26%) R
11 2 (0.26%) Swift
12 1 (0.13%) VBA
Qualifications
1 37 (4.82%) Degree
2 21 (2.74%) PMP
3 17 (2.22%) PMI Certification
4 13 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (1.56%) Security Cleared
6 7 (0.91%) Master's Degree
7 6 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.65%) CISSP
8 5 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.39%) CISM
9 3 (0.39%) Six Sigma Green Belt
10 2 (0.26%) ACCA
10 2 (0.26%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (0.26%) CRISC
10 2 (0.26%) GIAC
10 2 (0.26%) MBA
10 2 (0.26%) SAP Certification
10 2 (0.26%) SC Cleared
10 2 (0.26%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.13%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (3.26%) QA
2 23 (3.00%) GDPR
3 22 (2.87%) Data Quality
4 11 (1.43%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.30%) SLA
6 7 (0.91%) GRC
7 6 (0.78%) COBIT
8 5 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.65%) PMO
9 4 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.39%) NIST
10 3 (0.39%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.26%) MiFID
11 2 (0.26%) NCSC
11 2 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.13%) FATCA
12 1 (0.13%) SEPA
12 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 14 (1.83%) Active Directory
2 13 (1.69%) Docker
3 2 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.26%) VMware NSX
4 1 (0.13%) Varnish
4 1 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (0.13%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 27 (3.52%) Terraform
2 19 (2.48%) Kubernetes
3 13 (1.69%) Ansible
4 5 (0.65%) Grafana
5 4 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
5 4 (0.52%) SCCM
5 4 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
6 3 (0.39%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.13%) AirWatch
7 1 (0.13%) Cacti
7 1 (0.13%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.13%) Nmap
7 1 (0.13%) vCenter Server
7 1 (0.13%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 92 (11.99%) Microsoft
2 70 (9.13%) SAP
3 44 (5.74%) Salesforce
4 43 (5.61%) Oracle
5 26 (3.39%) Google
6 17 (2.22%) Adobe
6 17 (2.22%) HP
7 15 (1.96%) Databricks
8 10 (1.30%) Dynatrace
9 9 (1.17%) Dell
9 9 (1.17%) ServiceNow
9 9 (1.17%) Splunk
10 7 (0.91%) Workday
11 6 (0.78%) CheckPoint
11 6 (0.78%) F5
11 6 (0.78%) Planview
11 6 (0.78%) Sitecore
12 5 (0.65%) Apple
12 5 (0.65%) Genesys
12 5 (0.65%) VMware