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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 115 82
Rank change year-on-year +19 -33 +12
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,361 776 1,116
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.61% 2.43% 2.59%
As % of the General category 4.77% 3.85% 4.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 821 400 625
10th Percentile £280 £308 £295
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £515
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -0.49% -2.83%
75th Percentile £650 £631 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -1.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 40 86
10th Percentile £12.99 £14.44 £11.88
25th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £16.30 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.83% +1.88% -19.23%
75th Percentile £22.50 £34.06 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £78.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.92 £15.73 £15.95
% change year-on-year +7.57% -1.38% -19.49%

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 28,542 20,146 24,673
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.71% 63.06% 57.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,104 12,653 15,445
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £489
% change year-on-year +5.81% -3.37% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,968 1,006 1,928
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.48 £12.80
25th Percentile £18.27 £16.37 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.36 £27.22 £31.89
Median % change year-on-year +18.91% -14.65% +6.28%
75th Percentile £61.18 £52.42 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.07 £70.71 £67.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £23.00 £31.00
% change year-on-year +39.13% -25.81% +19.46%

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 8 July 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 8 July 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 8 July 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 +18 1,246 £540 +2.86% 1,362
London +19 723 £550 - 513
UK excluding London +5 537 £525 +5.00% 938
Work from Home -15 298 £500 - 594
South East +13 167 £538 -3.15% 306
North of England -34 147 £550 +7.32% 242
Midlands -13 100 £500 +8.11% 197
North West -1 97 £575 +15.00% 135
East of England +11 60 £550 -4.35% 104
East Midlands +2 52 £485 +4.86% 113
West Midlands -27 48 £539 +18.23% 82
Yorkshire -40 46 £531 +1.19% 86
South West -31 36 £325 -19.38% 68
Scotland -6 21 £496 -3.22% 23
North East -37 4 £173 -79.07% 24
Northern Ireland +7 3 £196 -64.32% 18
Wales -18 3 £190 +29.52% 11

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 37 (2.72%) Confluence
2 19 (1.40%) CMS
3 15 (1.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 12 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.51%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.37%) SAS
7 4 (0.29%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.22%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.15%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.15%) CICS
9 2 (0.15%) Mule
10 1 (0.073%) Apache
10 1 (0.073%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 36 (2.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (2.06%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.96%) Chatbot
6 10 (0.73%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 10 (0.73%) Photoshop
7 9 (0.66%) Adobe Illustrator
8 6 (0.44%) InDesign
9 5 (0.37%) MS Visio
10 3 (0.22%) Notion
10 3 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.15%) UserZoom
12 1 (0.073%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.073%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.073%) Maya
12 1 (0.073%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.073%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 31 (2.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.84%) Shopify
3 14 (1.03%) Dynamics CRM
4 11 (0.81%) Oracle Retail
5 9 (0.66%) SAP CRM
6 6 (0.44%) Magento
6 6 (0.44%) SAP Retail
7 5 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.29%) Finacle
8 4 (0.29%) NetSuite
8 4 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 4 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
8 4 (0.29%) SAP SD
9 3 (0.22%) SAP CAR
9 3 (0.22%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.15%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 2 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
10 2 (0.15%) SAP IBP
10 2 (0.15%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 165 (12.12%) Azure
2 134 (9.85%) AWS
3 81 (5.95%) GCP
4 66 (4.85%) Power Platform
5 51 (3.75%) Snowflake
6 28 (2.06%) GitHub
7 24 (1.76%) Azure DevOps
7 24 (1.76%) Dynamics 365
8 21 (1.54%) Entra ID
9 20 (1.47%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
10 19 (1.40%) Figma
10 19 (1.40%) GitHub Actions
11 17 (1.25%) SaaS
12 14 (1.03%) dbt
13 13 (0.96%) Azure Data Factory
14 12 (0.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 11 (0.81%) Google Workspace
15 11 (0.81%) Microsoft 365
16 10 (0.73%) OCI
16 10 (0.73%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.03%) WAN
2 13 (0.96%) ATM
2 13 (0.96%) Firewall
2 13 (0.96%) Wireless
3 12 (0.88%) Network Security
4 11 (0.81%) VPN
5 9 (0.66%) RFID
6 8 (0.59%) LAN
6 8 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.44%) Cisco Firepower
7 6 (0.44%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.37%) BGP
8 5 (0.37%) Cisco ASA
8 5 (0.37%) Cisco Nexus
8 5 (0.37%) IPsec
8 5 (0.37%) OSPF
8 5 (0.37%) VSAN
9 4 (0.29%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 4 (0.29%) Internet
9 4 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (4.70%) Power BI
2 30 (2.20%) BigQuery
2 30 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
3 21 (1.54%) MySQL
3 21 (1.54%) Tableau
4 19 (1.40%) Metadata
5 18 (1.32%) Data Lake
6 16 (1.18%) NoSQL
6 16 (1.18%) SQL Server
7 12 (0.88%) Relational Database
8 8 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (0.59%) MongoDB
8 8 (0.59%) PostgreSQL
8 8 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 7 (0.51%) Power Query
9 7 (0.51%) SAP HANA
10 6 (0.44%) Data Vault
10 6 (0.44%) Looker
10 6 (0.44%) Semantic Layer
11 5 (0.37%) Couchbase
Development Applications
1 72 (5.29%) JIRA
2 27 (1.98%) Git
3 18 (1.32%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.44%) Subversion
5 5 (0.37%) GitLab
6 4 (0.29%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.29%) Maven
7 3 (0.22%) Cypress.io
7 3 (0.22%) ERwin
7 3 (0.22%) Hudson
7 3 (0.22%) JMeter
7 3 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (0.22%) Selenium
8 2 (0.15%) git-flow
8 2 (0.15%) MLflow
8 2 (0.15%) Postman
8 2 (0.15%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.15%) WebDriver
8 2 (0.15%) webpack
9 1 (0.073%) Gatling
General
1 388 (28.51%) Social Skills
2 312 (22.92%) Finance
3 122 (8.96%) Analytical Skills
4 119 (8.74%) Banking
5 83 (6.10%) Marketing
6 79 (5.80%) Manufacturing
7 61 (4.48%) Retail Banking
8 57 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
9 47 (3.45%) Investment Banking
10 45 (3.31%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (1.98%) Public Sector
11 27 (1.98%) Telecoms
12 24 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
12 24 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
13 23 (1.69%) French Language
14 22 (1.62%) Legal
15 20 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
16 18 (1.32%) Spanish Language
17 17 (1.25%) Advertising
18 14 (1.03%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 230 (16.90%) Architect
2 193 (14.18%) Analyst
3 164 (12.05%) Senior
4 122 (8.96%) Project Manager
5 117 (8.60%) Solutions Architect
6 112 (8.23%) Business Analyst
7 99 (7.27%) Lead
8 62 (4.56%) Developer
9 61 (4.48%) Senior Manager
10 46 (3.38%) Designer
11 40 (2.94%) Consultant
11 40 (2.94%) Product Manager
12 39 (2.87%) Enterprise Architect
12 39 (2.87%) Technical Manager
13 36 (2.65%) Senior Project Manager
14 33 (2.42%) Data Architect
15 30 (2.20%) Data Analyst
15 30 (2.20%) Data Engineer
16 29 (2.13%) 2nd Line Support
16 29 (2.13%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (4.48%) REST
2 37 (2.72%) Middleware
3 31 (2.28%) React
4 27 (1.98%) Spring
5 26 (1.91%) Kafka
6 22 (1.62%) VML
7 20 (1.47%) Node.js
8 19 (1.40%) Spring Boot
9 18 (1.32%) RESTful
10 17 (1.25%) HTML
11 16 (1.18%) CSS
11 16 (1.18%) SOAP
12 15 (1.10%) MACH
13 14 (1.03%) Django
13 14 (1.03%) OAuth
14 13 (0.96%) J2EE
15 11 (0.81%) .NET
15 11 (0.81%) JSON
16 9 (0.66%) AngularJS
16 9 (0.66%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 85 (6.25%) Product Ownership
2 53 (3.89%) FMCG
3 49 (3.60%) EPoS
4 44 (3.23%) Onboarding
5 41 (3.01%) Driving Licence
6 39 (2.87%) Cloud Native
7 26 (1.91%) Data Centre
7 26 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
8 24 (1.76%) Mobile App
9 22 (1.62%) Data Structures
9 22 (1.62%) Marketing Technology
10 19 (1.40%) Mainframe
11 18 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
12 17 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
13 15 (1.10%) AI Agents
14 14 (1.03%) Management Information System
15 13 (0.96%) Operational Technology
16 11 (0.81%) Smartphone
16 11 (0.81%) Taxonomies
16 11 (0.81%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 53 (3.89%) Windows
2 26 (1.91%) Linux
3 12 (0.88%) Android
3 12 (0.88%) Unix
4 7 (0.51%) Mac OS
4 7 (0.51%) zOS
5 6 (0.44%) Apple iOS
5 6 (0.44%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.37%) Windows 10
6 5 (0.37%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.15%) Debian
8 1 (0.073%) SUSE
8 1 (0.073%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.073%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 328 (24.10%) Agile
2 323 (23.73%) Stakeholder Management
3 210 (15.43%) E-Commerce
4 191 (14.03%) Problem-Solving
5 179 (13.15%) Migration
6 169 (12.42%) Roadmaps
7 149 (10.95%) Analytics
8 129 (9.48%) Customer Experience
9 127 (9.33%) AI
10 118 (8.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 113 (8.30%) Project Management
12 101 (7.42%) CI/CD
12 101 (7.42%) Decision-Making
13 99 (7.27%) Logistics
14 98 (7.20%) ERP
15 97 (7.13%) CRM
16 96 (7.05%) Project Delivery
17 95 (6.98%) Continuous Improvement
18 92 (6.76%) Business Intelligence
19 91 (6.69%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 123 (9.04%) SQL
2 89 (6.54%) Python
3 56 (4.11%) Java
4 28 (2.06%) JavaScript
5 22 (1.62%) TypeScript
6 11 (0.81%) C#
7 10 (0.73%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.59%) Shell Script
9 7 (0.51%) ABAP
9 7 (0.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 7 (0.51%) PL/SQL
9 7 (0.51%) SOQL
10 6 (0.44%) Apex Code
10 6 (0.44%) Bash
10 6 (0.44%) Bicep
10 6 (0.44%) Kotlin
10 6 (0.44%) Scala
11 5 (0.37%) Groovy
11 5 (0.37%) R
11 5 (0.37%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 58 (4.26%) Degree
2 38 (2.79%) Security Cleared
3 24 (1.76%) SC Cleared
4 17 (1.25%) PMP
5 10 (0.73%) DBS Check
6 9 (0.66%) CISSP
6 9 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (0.59%) PMI Certification
8 6 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.44%) CISM
8 6 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
9 5 (0.37%) CCNP
9 5 (0.37%) CCSE
9 5 (0.37%) CCSM
9 5 (0.37%) CSPO
10 4 (0.29%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.29%) City & Guilds
11 3 (0.22%) APMG
11 3 (0.22%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (4.78%) QA
2 64 (4.70%) Data Quality
3 42 (3.09%) GDPR
4 29 (2.13%) PMO
5 20 (1.47%) Accessibility
6 17 (1.25%) PCI DSS
7 14 (1.03%) SLA
8 9 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.51%) NIST
10 4 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.22%) GAAP
11 3 (0.22%) IFRS
11 3 (0.22%) PSD2
12 2 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.15%) GRC
12 2 (0.15%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.15%) WCAG
13 1 (0.073%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 1 (0.073%) NCSC
System Software
1 26 (1.91%) Docker
2 25 (1.84%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.22%) Firmware
7 2 (0.15%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 34 (2.50%) Terraform
2 26 (1.91%) Kubernetes
3 14 (1.03%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 9 (0.66%) Ansible
5 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.44%) SCCM
5 6 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.37%) Grafana
7 4 (0.29%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.15%) AirWatch
8 2 (0.15%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.15%) CloudHub
8 2 (0.15%) MOM
8 2 (0.15%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.073%) Argo
9 1 (0.073%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.073%) Istio
9 1 (0.073%) Nagios
9 1 (0.073%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 109 (8.01%) Microsoft
2 92 (6.76%) SAP
3 78 (5.73%) Oracle
4 62 (4.56%) Salesforce
5 55 (4.04%) Databricks
5 55 (4.04%) Google
6 36 (2.65%) Adobe
7 22 (1.62%) ServiceNow
8 18 (1.32%) MuleSoft
9 16 (1.18%) Cisco
9 16 (1.18%) IBM
10 14 (1.03%) IFS
10 14 (1.03%) Splunk
11 13 (0.96%) Zscaler
12 12 (0.88%) VMware
13 11 (0.81%) Fortinet
13 11 (0.81%) Palo Alto
14 10 (0.73%) Sitecore
14 10 (0.73%) Workday
15 9 (0.66%) Apple