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

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 151 95 103
Rank change year-on-year -56 +8 -23
Contract jobs citing Retail 683 828 943
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.88% 2.63% 2.20%
As % of the General category 3.13% 4.27% 3.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 404 434 534
10th Percentile £206 £263 £275
25th Percentile £402 £410 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £625
90th Percentile £732 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 8 31
10th Percentile £13.10 £17.57 £10.63
25th Percentile £16.17 £18.13 £13.47
Median hourly rate £17.50 £32.50 £19.81
Median % change year-on-year -46.15% +64.06% -
75th Percentile £19.50 £36.13 £21.39
90th Percentile £24.61 £41.75 £29.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.34 £25.32 £19.81
% change year-on-year -35.47% +27.79% -

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 21,812 19,390 25,371
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.18% 61.53% 59.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,672 11,541 16,651
10th Percentile £284 £283 £270
25th Percentile £400 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £728 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £481 £500
% change year-on-year -1.14% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,355 640 1,182
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.48 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.50 £19.52 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.19 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.40% -9.38% +20.00%
75th Percentile £46.00 £52.81 £57.46
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.61 £70.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £26.00 £28.68
% change year-on-year -17.45% -9.36% +27.47%

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 12 January 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 12 January 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 12 January 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 -48 631 £500 -4.76% 1,513
London -43 325 £550 - 225
UK excluding London -40 307 £488 -2.50% 1,448
Work from Home -75 167 £532 +1.29% 558
South East -18 90 £518 -5.77% 420
North of England -41 79 £485 +7.78% 324
Midlands -36 65 £463 -7.50% 220
East Midlands +7 46 £495 -1.00% 133
Yorkshire -28 41 £500 +25.00% 146
East of England -23 38 £529 -1.63% 202
North West -30 34 £495 +8.49% 137
West Midlands -53 18 £331 -36.90% 85
Scotland -4 17 £450 -14.29% 51
South West -17 14 £175 -57.78% 175
North East -7 5 £200 -66.67% 42
Wales 0 3 £625 +331.03% 66
Northern Ireland -5 1 - - 30

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 34 (4.98%) Confluence
2 17 (2.49%) CMS
3 16 (2.34%) SharePoint
4 8 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (0.88%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.73%) Camunda
6 5 (0.73%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.59%) WordPress
8 3 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.29%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.29%) Magnolia
10 1 (0.15%) SAS
10 1 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.15%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.15%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 25 (3.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (1.17%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.73%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.29%) Trello
7 1 (0.15%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.15%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.15%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 23 (3.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.61%) Shopify
3 10 (1.46%) SAP Retail
4 9 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
5 6 (0.88%) Oracle Retail
5 6 (0.88%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.73%) SAP Payroll
7 4 (0.59%) Dynamics AX
7 4 (0.59%) NetSuite
7 4 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 4 (0.59%) ResourceLink
7 4 (0.59%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.44%) Finacle
8 3 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.44%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.29%) BambooHR
9 2 (0.29%) Magento
9 2 (0.29%) SAP GTS
9 2 (0.29%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 83 (12.15%) Azure
2 45 (6.59%) Power Platform
3 42 (6.15%) AWS
4 30 (4.39%) GCP
5 22 (3.22%) Dynamics 365
6 21 (3.07%) Azure DevOps
7 15 (2.20%) Microsoft 365
8 14 (2.05%) GitHub
8 14 (2.05%) SaaS
9 12 (1.76%) Snowflake
10 11 (1.61%) Figma
10 11 (1.61%) OCI
11 10 (1.46%) GitHub Actions
11 10 (1.46%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 9 (1.32%) Power Automate
12 9 (1.32%) SuccessFactors
13 8 (1.17%) Entra ID
13 8 (1.17%) Vertex AI
14 7 (1.02%) Serverless
15 6 (0.88%) BigCommerce
Communications & Networking
1 19 (2.78%) RFID
2 18 (2.64%) NFC
2 18 (2.64%) Wireless
3 12 (1.76%) Firewall
4 10 (1.46%) VPN
5 7 (1.02%) WAN
6 6 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.59%) BGP
7 4 (0.59%) Cisco Nexus
7 4 (0.59%) EIGRP
7 4 (0.59%) OSPF
7 4 (0.59%) VoIP
8 3 (0.44%) LAN
9 2 (0.29%) MPLS
9 2 (0.29%) SAN
9 2 (0.29%) WLAN
10 1 (0.15%) FTP
10 1 (0.15%) HTTPS
10 1 (0.15%) Intranet
10 1 (0.15%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (5.56%) Power BI
2 16 (2.34%) BigQuery
3 15 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
4 11 (1.61%) Metadata
4 11 (1.61%) SQL Server
5 10 (1.46%) Tableau
6 7 (1.02%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.73%) MongoDB
7 5 (0.73%) Power Query
7 5 (0.73%) Relational Database
8 4 (0.59%) Data Vault
8 4 (0.59%) Delta Lake
8 4 (0.59%) Redis
8 4 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (0.59%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 3 (0.44%) MySQL
9 3 (0.44%) Oracle Reports
9 3 (0.44%) SAP BW
9 3 (0.44%) SAP HANA
9 3 (0.44%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 68 (9.96%) JIRA
2 11 (1.61%) Jenkins
3 9 (1.32%) Git
4 7 (1.02%) GitLab
5 4 (0.59%) Selenium
5 4 (0.59%) Storybook
6 2 (0.29%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.29%) ERwin
6 2 (0.29%) JMeter
6 2 (0.29%) JUnit
6 2 (0.29%) MLflow
6 2 (0.29%) Mockito
6 2 (0.29%) Postman
6 2 (0.29%) PowerDesigner
6 2 (0.29%) SoapUI
6 2 (0.29%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.29%) Xcode
6 2 (0.29%) Zephyr
7 1 (0.15%) Maven
7 1 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 245 (35.87%) Social Skills
2 138 (20.20%) Finance
3 77 (11.27%) Analytical Skills
4 56 (8.20%) Banking
5 46 (6.73%) Marketing
6 39 (5.71%) Organisational Skills
6 39 (5.71%) Public Sector
7 34 (4.98%) Manufacturing
8 28 (4.10%) Retail Banking
9 22 (3.22%) Corporate Banking
9 22 (3.22%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (3.22%) Influencing Skills
9 22 (3.22%) Legal
10 21 (3.07%) Investment Banking
11 17 (2.49%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 10 (1.46%) Telecoms
13 6 (0.88%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.88%) Publishing
14 4 (0.59%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 132 (19.33%) Analyst
2 83 (12.15%) Project Manager
3 72 (10.54%) Architect
4 65 (9.52%) Senior
5 62 (9.08%) Business Analyst
6 56 (8.20%) Lead
7 34 (4.98%) Solutions Architect
8 28 (4.10%) Consultant
9 27 (3.95%) Senior Manager
10 19 (2.78%) Product Manager
11 18 (2.64%) Developer
11 18 (2.64%) Programme Manager
12 16 (2.34%) Technical Manager
13 14 (2.05%) SAP Consultant
14 13 (1.90%) Service Manager
14 13 (1.90%) Support Analyst
15 12 (1.76%) Data Analyst
15 12 (1.76%) Field Engineer
15 12 (1.76%) Help Desk Analyst
15 12 (1.76%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.37%) React
2 17 (2.49%) VML
3 16 (2.34%) Node.js
4 15 (2.20%) PySpark
5 14 (2.05%) REST
6 10 (1.46%) HTML
7 8 (1.17%) .NET
7 8 (1.17%) AngularJS
8 7 (1.02%) React Native
8 7 (1.02%) scikit-learn
8 7 (1.02%) Spring
8 7 (1.02%) Spring Boot
9 6 (0.88%) FastAPI
9 6 (0.88%) Kafka
9 6 (0.88%) OpenTelemetry
9 6 (0.88%) XML
10 5 (0.73%) CSS
10 5 (0.73%) LangChain
10 5 (0.73%) Matplotlib
10 5 (0.73%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 33 (4.83%) Product Ownership
2 30 (4.39%) Legacy Systems
3 24 (3.51%) Self-Motivation
4 22 (3.22%) IoT
5 20 (2.93%) EPoS
6 19 (2.78%) Onboarding
7 17 (2.49%) FMCG
8 14 (2.05%) Management Information System
9 12 (1.76%) Driving Licence
10 11 (1.61%) Data Centre
10 11 (1.61%) Data Structures
11 10 (1.46%) Mobile App
12 9 (1.32%) Analytical Mindset
12 9 (1.32%) Cloud Native
13 8 (1.17%) Algorithms
14 6 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
14 6 (0.88%) Mainframe
14 6 (0.88%) Replication
15 5 (0.73%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 36 (5.27%) Windows
2 8 (1.17%) Linux
3 6 (0.88%) Mac OS
4 5 (0.73%) Apple iOS
5 4 (0.59%) Android
6 3 (0.44%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.29%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.15%) Kali Linux
8 1 (0.15%) Mac OS X
8 1 (0.15%) VMS
8 1 (0.15%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (24.01%) Stakeholder Management
2 163 (23.87%) Agile
3 110 (16.11%) Problem-Solving
4 89 (13.03%) Project Management
5 77 (11.27%) E-Commerce
6 74 (10.83%) Analytics
7 64 (9.37%) Migration
8 60 (8.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 59 (8.64%) Continuous Improvement
10 56 (8.20%) Workshop Facilitation
11 54 (7.91%) Roadmaps
12 52 (7.61%) AI
13 49 (7.17%) Scrum
14 48 (7.03%) Business Intelligence
15 47 (6.88%) Customer Experience
16 46 (6.73%) Data Modelling
16 46 (6.73%) Decision-Making
17 44 (6.44%) ERP
17 44 (6.44%) Project Delivery
17 44 (6.44%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 64 (9.37%) SQL
2 56 (8.20%) Python
3 15 (2.20%) Java
4 13 (1.90%) JavaScript
5 10 (1.46%) PowerShell
6 9 (1.32%) Bash
7 7 (1.02%) TypeScript
8 6 (0.88%) C#
8 6 (0.88%) Kusto Query Language
9 4 (0.59%) PL/SQL
9 4 (0.59%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.29%) ABAP
10 2 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (0.29%) PHP
10 2 (0.29%) R
10 2 (0.29%) Swift
10 2 (0.29%) VBA
11 1 (0.15%) REXX
11 1 (0.15%) Scala
11 1 (0.15%) VB
Qualifications
1 32 (4.69%) Degree
2 22 (3.22%) PMP
3 19 (2.78%) PMI Certification
4 17 (2.49%) Security Cleared
5 10 (1.46%) Master's Degree
6 6 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
6 6 (0.88%) MBA
7 5 (0.73%) SC Cleared
8 4 (0.59%) APMP
8 4 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 4 (0.59%) CCIE
8 4 (0.59%) CCNP
8 4 (0.59%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (0.59%) CISSP
8 4 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (0.59%) CSPO
9 3 (0.44%) CISM
9 3 (0.44%) CRISC
9 3 (0.44%) GIAC
9 3 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (3.51%) Data Quality
2 22 (3.22%) QA
3 17 (2.49%) PMO
4 15 (2.20%) GDPR
5 13 (1.90%) SLA
6 12 (1.76%) Accessibility
7 6 (0.88%) COBIT
8 5 (0.73%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.44%) IFRS
9 3 (0.44%) NCSC
9 3 (0.44%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 2 (0.29%) NIST
11 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.15%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.15%) MiFID
11 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.15%) Solvency II
System Software
1 11 (1.61%) Docker
2 10 (1.46%) Active Directory
3 4 (0.59%) RACF
4 3 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
4 3 (0.44%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.15%) Varnish
5 1 (0.15%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 22 (3.22%) Terraform
2 11 (1.61%) Kubernetes
3 6 (0.88%) Ansible
4 5 (0.73%) Argo
4 5 (0.73%) Istio
5 4 (0.59%) Grafana
5 4 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
6 3 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.15%) AirWatch
7 1 (0.15%) Cacti
7 1 (0.15%) Control-M
7 1 (0.15%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.15%) Nmap
7 1 (0.15%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.15%) SCCM
7 1 (0.15%) ZABBIX
7 1 (0.15%) zSecure
Vendors
1 74 (10.83%) Microsoft
2 62 (9.08%) SAP
3 43 (6.30%) Oracle
4 41 (6.00%) Salesforce
5 23 (3.37%) Google
6 20 (2.93%) Databricks
7 17 (2.49%) Adobe
8 13 (1.90%) HP
9 11 (1.61%) Dell
10 10 (1.46%) CheckPoint
10 10 (1.46%) F5
11 7 (1.02%) Dynatrace
11 7 (1.02%) Sitecore
12 6 (0.88%) Cisco
13 5 (0.73%) Meraki
13 5 (0.73%) ServiceNow
13 5 (0.73%) Temenos
13 5 (0.73%) Zscaler
14 4 (0.59%) Aruba
14 4 (0.59%) Planview