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 4 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 105 85
Rank change year-on-year +1 -20 +9
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,140 731 1,076
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.33% 2.54% 2.51%
As % of the General category 4.32% 4.01% 4.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 666 376 594
10th Percentile £244 £317 £276
25th Percentile £407 £413 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £520 £505
Median % change year-on-year -2.12% +2.97% -6.48%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 26 88
10th Percentile £13.30 £14.58 £11.56
25th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £23.83 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.86% +48.91% -19.23%
75th Percentile £22.50 £54.88 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £87.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.92 £15.90 £15.90
% change year-on-year +6.42% - -19.74%

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 26,375 18,250 24,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.90% 63.30% 57.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,948 11,525 15,454
10th Percentile £313 £281 £274
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £764
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,760 826 1,977
10th Percentile £13.71 £13.41 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.73 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.54 £27.97 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.19% -7.26% -6.91%
75th Percentile £60.00 £54.75 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £24.34 £28.50
% change year-on-year +23.25% -14.60% +1.53%

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 4 June 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 4 June 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 4 June 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 -1 1,043 £525 - 1,481
London +8 584 £538 -2.27% 594
UK excluding London -3 471 £500 - 1,014
Work from Home -26 267 £500 - 562
South East -2 138 £488 -2.50% 307
North of England -40 133 £511 +2.25% 297
Midlands -22 92 £495 +10.00% 174
North West +5 82 £538 +7.50% 176
East Midlands -2 54 £495 +6.74% 90
East of England -6 51 £509 -3.05% 103
Yorkshire -58 48 £506 +6.58% 99
West Midlands -43 38 £529 +20.88% 84
South West -20 32 £326 -34.75% 82
Scotland -2 21 £500 -6.10% 41
North East -28 3 £173 -76.98% 24
Northern Ireland +6 2 £190 -44.48% 21
Wales -17 2 £190 +29.52% 19

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 38 (3.33%) Confluence
2 13 (1.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 13 (1.14%) SharePoint
3 12 (1.05%) CMS
4 11 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.35%) SAS
6 2 (0.18%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.18%) CICS
6 2 (0.18%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.088%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 29 (2.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.67%) Microsoft Project
4 17 (1.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.14%) Chatbot
6 11 (0.96%) MS Visio
7 10 (0.88%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.70%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.53%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.44%) InDesign
11 3 (0.26%) Notion
11 3 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
12 2 (0.18%) UserZoom
13 1 (0.088%) 3ds Max
13 1 (0.088%) Adobe After Effects
13 1 (0.088%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.088%) Maya
13 1 (0.088%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.088%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.088%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (1.93%) SAP S/4HANA
1 22 (1.93%) Shopify
2 13 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.79%) SAP Retail
4 7 (0.61%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 7 (0.61%) SAP CRM
5 6 (0.53%) Finacle
5 6 (0.53%) Oracle Retail
6 5 (0.44%) NetSuite
6 5 (0.44%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.44%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.35%) Magento
8 3 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
8 3 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
9 2 (0.18%) Sage X3
9 2 (0.18%) SAP CAR
9 2 (0.18%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.18%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.18%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 121 (10.61%) Azure
2 92 (8.07%) AWS
3 67 (5.88%) GCP
4 52 (4.56%) Power Platform
5 39 (3.42%) Snowflake
6 25 (2.19%) GitHub
7 23 (2.02%) Dynamics 365
8 20 (1.75%) Azure DevOps
9 17 (1.49%) Entra ID
9 17 (1.49%) Figma
9 17 (1.49%) GitHub Actions
9 17 (1.49%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
10 16 (1.40%) Microsoft 365
11 15 (1.32%) SaaS
12 13 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
13 12 (1.05%) BigCommerce
13 12 (1.05%) dbt
14 11 (0.96%) Cloud Run
14 11 (0.96%) Google Workspace
15 10 (0.88%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.14%) ATM
1 13 (1.14%) WAN
2 12 (1.05%) Firewall
3 10 (0.88%) Network Security
3 10 (0.88%) VPN
4 9 (0.79%) Wireless
5 8 (0.70%) RFID
6 7 (0.61%) LAN
7 6 (0.53%) Cisco Firepower
7 6 (0.53%) Cisco Nexus
7 6 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.44%) Cisco ASA
8 5 (0.44%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.44%) VSAN
9 4 (0.35%) BGP
9 4 (0.35%) MPLS
9 4 (0.35%) OSPF
10 3 (0.26%) Broadband
10 3 (0.26%) IPsec
11 2 (0.18%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (4.30%) Power BI
2 28 (2.46%) BigQuery
3 20 (1.75%) Data Warehouse
4 17 (1.49%) MySQL
4 17 (1.49%) SQL Server
5 14 (1.23%) Tableau
6 11 (0.96%) Metadata
7 10 (0.88%) Data Lake
8 7 (0.61%) NoSQL
9 6 (0.53%) Data Vault
9 6 (0.53%) MongoDB
9 6 (0.53%) Relational Database
9 6 (0.53%) Snowflake Schema
10 5 (0.44%) PostgreSQL
11 4 (0.35%) Delta Lake
11 4 (0.35%) Looker
11 4 (0.35%) Semantic Layer
12 3 (0.26%) OLAP
12 3 (0.26%) Oracle OLAP
12 3 (0.26%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 78 (6.84%) JIRA
2 22 (1.93%) Git
3 16 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 11 (0.96%) GitLab
5 4 (0.35%) JMeter
5 4 (0.35%) Maven
5 4 (0.35%) Subversion
6 3 (0.26%) ERwin
6 3 (0.26%) Hudson
6 3 (0.26%) Selenium
6 3 (0.26%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.18%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.18%) Eclipse
7 2 (0.18%) Gatling
7 2 (0.18%) git-flow
7 2 (0.18%) MLflow
7 2 (0.18%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.088%) HP UFT
8 1 (0.088%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.088%) Toad
General
1 327 (28.68%) Social Skills
2 274 (24.04%) Finance
3 111 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
4 102 (8.95%) Banking
5 68 (5.96%) Marketing
6 54 (4.74%) Retail Banking
7 53 (4.65%) Manufacturing
8 52 (4.56%) Organisational Skills
9 44 (3.86%) Investment Banking
10 40 (3.51%) Corporate Banking
11 28 (2.46%) Public Sector
12 27 (2.37%) Telecoms
13 25 (2.19%) Documentation Skills
14 21 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
15 20 (1.75%) Legal
16 19 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
17 17 (1.49%) French Language
18 15 (1.32%) Advertising
19 13 (1.14%) Back Office
19 13 (1.14%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 172 (15.09%) Architect
2 163 (14.30%) Analyst
3 142 (12.46%) Senior
4 119 (10.44%) Project Manager
5 95 (8.33%) Business Analyst
6 86 (7.54%) Lead
7 74 (6.49%) Solutions Architect
8 60 (5.26%) Senior Manager
9 45 (3.95%) Technical Manager
10 40 (3.51%) Designer
10 40 (3.51%) Developer
11 34 (2.98%) Enterprise Architect
11 34 (2.98%) Product Manager
11 34 (2.98%) Senior Project Manager
12 32 (2.81%) Consultant
13 28 (2.46%) Data Architect
14 27 (2.37%) Data Engineer
15 24 (2.11%) 2nd Line Support
15 24 (2.11%) Service Manager
16 23 (2.02%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (2.89%) REST
2 32 (2.81%) Middleware
3 26 (2.28%) React
3 26 (2.28%) VML
4 24 (2.11%) Spring
5 18 (1.58%) Node.js
5 18 (1.58%) Spring Boot
6 17 (1.49%) Kafka
7 14 (1.23%) AngularJS
7 14 (1.23%) CSS
8 12 (1.05%) HTML
8 12 (1.05%) RESTful
9 9 (0.79%) .NET
10 8 (0.70%) OpenTelemetry
10 8 (0.70%) PySpark
11 7 (0.61%) LangChain
11 7 (0.61%) MACH
11 7 (0.61%) OAuth
11 7 (0.61%) OAuth2
11 7 (0.61%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 72 (6.32%) Product Ownership
2 42 (3.68%) EPoS
3 41 (3.60%) Driving Licence
4 36 (3.16%) FMCG
5 33 (2.89%) Cloud Native
6 31 (2.72%) Onboarding
7 20 (1.75%) Data Centre
7 20 (1.75%) Data Structures
7 20 (1.75%) Mainframe
8 17 (1.49%) Mobile App
8 17 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
9 16 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.32%) Management Information System
11 13 (1.14%) AI Agents
11 13 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
12 11 (0.96%) Smartphone
13 10 (0.88%) Virtual Team
14 9 (0.79%) CCTV
14 9 (0.79%) Mobile Payment
15 8 (0.70%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 48 (4.21%) Windows
2 22 (1.93%) Linux
3 11 (0.96%) Android
4 7 (0.61%) Unix
4 7 (0.61%) zOS
5 5 (0.44%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.35%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.26%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.26%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.088%) Debian
8 1 (0.088%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.088%) SUSE
8 1 (0.088%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.088%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.088%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 253 (22.19%) Agile
2 237 (20.79%) Stakeholder Management
3 188 (16.49%) Problem-Solving
4 166 (14.56%) E-Commerce
5 142 (12.46%) Migration
6 130 (11.40%) Roadmaps
7 121 (10.61%) Project Management
8 114 (10.00%) Customer Experience
9 113 (9.91%) Analytics
10 94 (8.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 90 (7.89%) ERP
12 88 (7.72%) Project Delivery
13 84 (7.37%) Change Management
14 83 (7.28%) Continuous Improvement
15 82 (7.19%) Decision-Making
16 80 (7.02%) AI
16 80 (7.02%) Scrum
17 76 (6.67%) User Acceptance Testing
18 74 (6.49%) CI/CD
19 71 (6.23%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 87 (7.63%) SQL
2 61 (5.35%) Python
3 35 (3.07%) Java
4 25 (2.19%) JavaScript
5 15 (1.32%) TypeScript
6 10 (0.88%) Shell Script
7 9 (0.79%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.70%) C#
9 6 (0.53%) Kotlin
9 6 (0.53%) SOQL
10 5 (0.44%) Apex Code
10 5 (0.44%) Bash
10 5 (0.44%) SOSL
11 4 (0.35%) Bicep
11 4 (0.35%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.35%) Scala
12 3 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.26%) R
12 3 (0.26%) VBA
13 2 (0.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 51 (4.47%) Degree
2 41 (3.60%) Security Cleared
3 28 (2.46%) SC Cleared
4 19 (1.67%) PMP
5 11 (0.96%) PMI Certification
6 10 (0.88%) DBS Check
7 9 (0.79%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (0.70%) CISSP
9 7 (0.61%) APMP
9 7 (0.61%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.53%) CCNP
10 6 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (0.53%) CSPO
11 5 (0.44%) CCSE
11 5 (0.44%) CCSM
11 5 (0.44%) CISM
11 5 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
11 5 (0.44%) MBA
12 4 (0.35%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (5.00%) Data Quality
1 57 (5.00%) QA
2 36 (3.16%) GDPR
3 33 (2.89%) PMO
4 17 (1.49%) Accessibility
5 12 (1.05%) PCI DSS
5 12 (1.05%) SLA
6 8 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.44%) NIST
8 2 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.18%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.18%) GRC
8 2 (0.18%) IFRS
8 2 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.18%) WCAG
9 1 (0.088%) COBIT
9 1 (0.088%) GAAP
9 1 (0.088%) GxP
9 1 (0.088%) ISO 8583
9 1 (0.088%) PSD2
System Software
1 24 (2.11%) Active Directory
2 23 (2.02%) Docker
3 6 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.18%) RACF
6 2 (0.18%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 25 (2.19%) Terraform
2 19 (1.67%) Kubernetes
3 11 (0.96%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 7 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.53%) Argo
5 6 (0.53%) Grafana
5 6 (0.53%) Istio
6 5 (0.44%) SCCM
6 5 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.26%) Ansible
8 2 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.18%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.18%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.18%) MOM
8 2 (0.18%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.088%) Nagios
9 1 (0.088%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.088%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 95 (8.33%) Microsoft
2 78 (6.84%) SAP
3 66 (5.79%) Oracle
4 53 (4.65%) Google
5 52 (4.56%) Salesforce
6 42 (3.68%) Databricks
7 30 (2.63%) Adobe
8 20 (1.75%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.32%) Cisco
9 15 (1.32%) IFS
10 14 (1.23%) Sitecore
11 11 (0.96%) IBM
11 11 (0.96%) Splunk
12 10 (0.88%) VMware
13 9 (0.79%) Fortinet
13 9 (0.79%) MuleSoft
13 9 (0.79%) Palo Alto
13 9 (0.79%) Zscaler
14 7 (0.61%) CheckPoint
14 7 (0.61%) Dynatrace