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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 120 91
Rank change year-on-year +32 -29 +11
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,593 763 947
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.96% 2.33% 2.44%
As % of the General category 5.38% 3.67% 4.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 923 404 522
10th Percentile £319 £286 £300
25th Percentile £456 £413 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £513 £503
Median % change year-on-year +7.32% +1.99% -5.19%
75th Percentile £663 £636 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £712
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 56 53
10th Percentile £12.76 £14.88 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.51 £15.25 £12.50
Median hourly rate £16.42 £16.34 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +0.52% +0.21% -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £24.57 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £28.95 £23.69
UK excluding London median hourly rate £14.04 £16.30 £16.00
% change year-on-year -13.88% +1.88% -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 29,589 20,788 22,240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.04% 63.55% 57.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,455 12,930 13,776
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £416 £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 £741 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,293 1,169 1,250
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.50 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.00 £16.25 £16.67
Median hourly rate £31.16 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.88% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.90 £69.65 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.96 £22.14 £35.00
% change year-on-year +44.37% -36.74% +34.62%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +26 1,461 £550 +4.76% 2,941
London +38 832 £573 +4.09% 1,492
UK excluding London +8 650 £525 +5.00% 1,708
Work from Home -1 347 £525 +5.00% 1,081
North of England -23 189 £550 +10.00% 515
South East +12 174 £525 -4.55% 418
Midlands +23 138 £500 +16.14% 340
North West +9 118 £550 +10.00% 278
East Midlands +15 78 £500 +14.68% 186
East of England +15 71 £575 +9.52% 167
West Midlands -16 59 £550 +29.41% 154
Yorkshire -46 54 £500 - 196
South West -19 45 £375 +19.05% 145
Scotland +3 27 £402 -23.43% 97
North East -28 17 £525 +18.64% 45
Wales -16 4 - - 42
Northern Ireland +5 3 £203 -63.18% 20

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 (3.20%) Confluence
2 19 (1.19%) CMS
3 12 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (0.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 10 (0.63%) SharePoint
5 6 (0.38%) SAS
6 4 (0.25%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.19%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.13%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.13%) CICS
8 2 (0.13%) Mule
9 1 (0.063%) Apache
9 1 (0.063%) Mendix
9 1 (0.063%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.063%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 57 (3.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (2.57%) Microsoft Office
3 21 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.00%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 15 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
6 10 (0.63%) Photoshop
7 9 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
7 9 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
8 8 (0.50%) MS Visio
9 7 (0.44%) InDesign
10 6 (0.38%) Chatbot
10 6 (0.38%) CPLEX
11 4 (0.25%) Notion
12 1 (0.063%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.063%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.063%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.063%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.063%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 50 (3.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.76%) Shopify
3 14 (0.88%) SAP Retail
4 11 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
5 10 (0.63%) Oracle Retail
5 10 (0.63%) SAP CRM
6 8 (0.50%) Magento
7 6 (0.38%) 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 IBP
10 3 (0.19%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
11 2 (0.13%) SAP Forecasting and Replenishment
Cloud Services
1 195 (12.24%) Azure
2 144 (9.04%) AWS
3 78 (4.90%) Power Platform
4 70 (4.39%) GCP
5 55 (3.45%) Snowflake
6 39 (2.45%) GitHub
7 33 (2.07%) Entra ID
8 31 (1.95%) Azure DevOps
9 25 (1.57%) Dynamics 365
9 25 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
10 23 (1.44%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 21 (1.32%) SaaS
12 20 (1.26%) Figma
13 16 (1.00%) Azure Data Factory
13 16 (1.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 15 (0.94%) dbt
14 15 (0.94%) Microsoft 365
15 12 (0.75%) OCI
16 11 (0.69%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 9 (0.56%) Algolia
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.44%) Firewall
1 23 (1.44%) WAN
2 18 (1.13%) VPN
3 16 (1.00%) ATM
3 16 (1.00%) Wireless
4 15 (0.94%) LAN
4 15 (0.94%) Network Security
5 12 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
6 8 (0.50%) BGP
6 8 (0.50%) IPsec
6 8 (0.50%) OSPF
6 8 (0.50%) SD-WAN
7 7 (0.44%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 7 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
7 7 (0.44%) VLAN
8 6 (0.38%) Cisco Firepower
8 6 (0.38%) Internet
8 6 (0.38%) VSAN
9 5 (0.31%) Cisco ASA
9 5 (0.31%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (4.90%) Power BI
2 45 (2.82%) Data Warehouse
3 32 (2.01%) BigQuery
4 26 (1.63%) Data Lake
5 23 (1.44%) Metadata
6 20 (1.26%) Tableau
7 19 (1.19%) NoSQL
8 18 (1.13%) MongoDB
9 17 (1.07%) SQL Server
10 12 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
10 12 (0.75%) MySQL
10 12 (0.75%) Power Query
10 12 (0.75%) Relational Database
11 11 (0.69%) PostgreSQL
12 10 (0.63%) Redis
12 10 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 10 (0.63%) Star Schema
13 8 (0.50%) Couchbase
14 7 (0.44%) SAP HANA
14 7 (0.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 80 (5.02%) JIRA
2 26 (1.63%) 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 (0.13%) git-flow
9 2 (0.13%) MLflow
9 2 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.13%) Postman
9 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.13%) webpack
10 1 (0.063%) HP UFT
10 1 (0.063%) Toad
General
1 440 (27.62%) Social Skills
2 380 (23.85%) Finance
3 167 (10.48%) Analytical Skills
4 133 (8.35%) Banking
5 106 (6.65%) Marketing
6 104 (6.53%) Manufacturing
7 68 (4.27%) Retail Banking
8 64 (4.02%) Organisational Skills
9 45 (2.82%) Investment Banking
10 44 (2.76%) Corporate Banking
11 38 (2.39%) Public Sector
12 32 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
13 30 (1.88%) Telecoms
14 28 (1.76%) Legal
15 27 (1.69%) Advertising
16 24 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
17 23 (1.44%) French Language
18 19 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
19 18 (1.13%) Spanish Language
20 17 (1.07%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 258 (16.20%) Architect
2 241 (15.13%) Analyst
3 176 (11.05%) Senior
4 144 (9.04%) Solutions Architect
5 135 (8.47%) Business Analyst
6 123 (7.72%) Project Manager
7 116 (7.28%) Lead
8 85 (5.34%) Developer
9 52 (3.26%) Consultant
10 51 (3.20%) Product Manager
11 48 (3.01%) Data Analyst
12 47 (2.95%) Designer
13 45 (2.82%) Senior Manager
14 40 (2.51%) Supply Chain Architect
15 38 (2.39%) Service Manager
16 36 (2.26%) Data Architect
16 36 (2.26%) Senior Developer
17 35 (2.20%) Technical Manager
18 34 (2.13%) Enterprise Architect
18 34 (2.13%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (4.08%) REST
2 52 (3.26%) Terraform
3 41 (2.57%) React
4 34 (2.13%) Kafka
5 29 (1.82%) Node.js
6 28 (1.76%) Spring
7 25 (1.57%) Middleware
8 23 (1.44%) Spring Boot
9 21 (1.32%) VML
10 20 (1.26%) Django
10 20 (1.26%) RESTful
11 19 (1.19%) MACH
12 18 (1.13%) SOAP
13 15 (0.94%) HTML
14 14 (0.88%) Next.js
15 12 (0.75%) OAuth
16 11 (0.69%) CSS
17 10 (0.63%) .NET
17 10 (0.63%) Jakarta EE
17 10 (0.63%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 83 (5.21%) Product Ownership
2 69 (4.33%) FMCG
3 58 (3.64%) EPoS
4 55 (3.45%) Onboarding
5 46 (2.89%) Cloud Native
6 35 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
7 31 (1.95%) Data Centre
8 29 (1.82%) Driving Licence
9 27 (1.69%) Mobile App
10 24 (1.51%) Greenfield Project
10 24 (1.51%) Marketing Technology
11 23 (1.44%) Data Structures
12 22 (1.38%) Operational Technology
13 21 (1.32%) Mainframe
13 21 (1.32%) Management Information System
14 19 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
14 19 (1.19%) Smartphone
15 18 (1.13%) AI Agents
16 16 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
17 15 (0.94%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 55 (3.45%) Windows
2 21 (1.32%) Linux
3 11 (0.69%) Android
4 9 (0.56%) Unix
5 8 (0.50%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.44%) Mac OS
7 6 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (0.38%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.31%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.31%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.19%) zOS
10 2 (0.13%) Debian
11 1 (0.063%) SUSE
11 1 (0.063%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.063%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 409 (25.67%) Stakeholder Management
2 378 (23.73%) Agile
3 234 (14.69%) E-Commerce
4 194 (12.18%) Migration
5 191 (11.99%) Problem-Solving
6 182 (11.42%) Analytics
7 173 (10.86%) Logistics
8 171 (10.73%) Roadmaps
9 169 (10.61%) AI
10 141 (8.85%) Customer Experience
10 141 (8.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 133 (8.35%) Decision-Making
12 129 (8.10%) Continuous Improvement
13 118 (7.41%) CI/CD
13 118 (7.41%) Project Management
14 114 (7.16%) Business Intelligence
15 113 (7.09%) CRM
16 109 (6.84%) User Acceptance Testing
17 103 (6.47%) DevOps
17 103 (6.47%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 144 (9.04%) SQL
2 110 (6.91%) Python
3 52 (3.26%) Java
4 34 (2.13%) TypeScript
5 28 (1.76%) JavaScript
6 12 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (0.63%) C#
7 10 (0.63%) R
8 9 (0.56%) ABAP
8 9 (0.56%) Apex Code
8 9 (0.56%) Bash
8 9 (0.56%) PowerShell
8 9 (0.56%) SOQL
9 7 (0.44%) SOSL
10 6 (0.38%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.38%) Scala
11 5 (0.31%) Bicep
11 5 (0.31%) Groovy
12 4 (0.25%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.19%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 63 (3.95%) Degree
2 46 (2.89%) Security Cleared
3 23 (1.44%) PMP
4 21 (1.32%) SC Cleared
5 13 (0.82%) DBS Check
6 12 (0.75%) PMI Certification
7 9 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
8 7 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
9 6 (0.38%) CISSP
9 6 (0.38%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (0.31%) CCNP
10 5 (0.31%) CCSE
10 5 (0.31%) CCSM
10 5 (0.31%) CISM
10 5 (0.31%) CSPO
10 5 (0.31%) Six Sigma Green Belt
11 4 (0.25%) City & Guilds
12 3 (0.19%) Master's Degree
12 3 (0.19%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (4.83%) Data Quality
2 76 (4.77%) QA
3 38 (2.39%) GDPR
4 24 (1.51%) PMO
5 23 (1.44%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.88%) PCI DSS
6 14 (0.88%) SLA
7 9 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 7 (0.44%) NIST
9 5 (0.31%) WCAG
10 4 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.19%) GRC
11 3 (0.19%) PSD2
12 2 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.13%) GAAP
12 2 (0.13%) IFRS
12 2 (0.13%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.063%) GxP
13 1 (0.063%) IASME
System Software
1 36 (2.26%) Docker
2 33 (2.07%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
4 8 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.31%) Firmware
6 5 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.19%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.063%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 40 (2.51%) Kubernetes
2 11 (0.69%) Ansible
3 10 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
4 8 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 7 (0.44%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 6 (0.38%) FortiGate
7 4 (0.25%) SCCM
8 3 (0.19%) Bosun
9 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.13%) AirWatch
9 2 (0.13%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.13%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.13%) logstash
9 2 (0.13%) MOM
9 2 (0.13%) PingFederate
9 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.063%) Nagios
10 1 (0.063%) vMotion
10 1 (0.063%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 143 (8.98%) Microsoft
2 122 (7.66%) SAP
3 80 (5.02%) Salesforce
4 77 (4.83%) Databricks
5 73 (4.58%) Oracle
6 43 (2.70%) Google
7 39 (2.45%) Adobe
8 25 (1.57%) Zscaler
9 22 (1.38%) MuleSoft
10 17 (1.07%) Cisco
10 17 (1.07%) Workday
11 16 (1.00%) ServiceNow
12 14 (0.88%) Fortinet
13 13 (0.82%) IBM
13 13 (0.82%) Palo Alto
13 13 (0.82%) VMware
14 12 (0.75%) Apple
14 12 (0.75%) IFS
15 11 (0.69%) Braze
15 11 (0.69%) New Relic