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 20 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 109 95 85
Rank change year-on-year -14 -10 +6
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,061 761 1,076
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 2.61% 2.53%
As % of the General category 4.12% 4.13% 4.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 626 395 595
10th Percentile £210 £308 £283
25th Percentile £405 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £505
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +3.96% -5.52%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 22 87
10th Percentile £13.38 £15.25 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.95 £16.30 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £30.25 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.58% +89.06% -20.99%
75th Percentile £31.90 £64.44 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £87.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.50 £16.30 £15.90
% change year-on-year +7.36% +2.52% -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 25,779 18,437 24,689
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.54% 63.21% 58.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,722 11,709 15,577
10th Percentile £310 £285 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.45% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,651 797 1,928
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.96 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.33 £16.95 £15.42
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £59.50 £56.00 £52.57
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £66.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.96 £24.62 £28.00
% change year-on-year +13.55% -12.06% -3.45%

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 20 May 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 20 May 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 20 May 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 -6 967 £520 -0.95% 1,238
London -7 531 £540 -2.26% 443
UK excluding London +15 447 £495 -1.00% 910
Work from Home -48 257 £500 -2.44% 458
North of England -31 128 £510 +13.33% 263
South East -15 125 £463 -7.50% 264
Midlands -23 89 £495 -1.00% 150
North West -8 77 £510 +4.62% 149
East Midlands +1 52 £495 -1.00% 73
East of England -4 50 £509 -3.05% 105
Yorkshire -51 48 £513 +33.12% 103
West Midlands -40 37 £500 - 76
South West -23 30 £326 -34.75% 90
Scotland -2 22 £474 -11.08% 43
North East -23 3 £201 -73.17% 16
Northern Ireland -2 2 £190 -44.48% 8
Wales -13 1 £190 +29.52% 22

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 (3.58%) Confluence
2 15 (1.41%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.04%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 8 (0.75%) CMS
5 7 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.47%) SAS
7 2 (0.19%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.19%) Magnolia
7 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.094%) CICS
8 1 (0.094%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.094%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 33 (3.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 20 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (1.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 19 (1.79%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (1.23%) Chatbot
5 11 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 8 (0.75%) Photoshop
7 6 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
8 3 (0.28%) InDesign
9 2 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.19%) UserZoom
10 1 (0.094%) 3ds Max
10 1 (0.094%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.094%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.094%) Maya
10 1 (0.094%) Notion
10 1 (0.094%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.094%) SOLIDWORKS
10 1 (0.094%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.094%) Trello
Business Applications
1 20 (1.89%) Shopify
2 19 (1.79%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
4 8 (0.75%) SAP Retail
5 7 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 7 (0.66%) Oracle Retail
6 6 (0.57%) Finacle
6 6 (0.57%) SAP CRM
7 5 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.47%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.38%) Magento
8 4 (0.38%) NetSuite
9 3 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
10 2 (0.19%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
10 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
10 2 (0.19%) Sage X3
10 2 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.19%) SAP MM
10 2 (0.19%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 101 (9.52%) Azure
2 83 (7.82%) AWS
3 60 (5.66%) GCP
4 49 (4.62%) Power Platform
5 32 (3.02%) Snowflake
6 24 (2.26%) Dynamics 365
7 22 (2.07%) GitHub
8 18 (1.70%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
9 17 (1.60%) Microsoft 365
10 16 (1.51%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (1.32%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (1.23%) Figma
12 13 (1.23%) SaaS
13 12 (1.13%) BigCommerce
14 11 (1.04%) Cloud Run
14 11 (1.04%) Entra ID
15 10 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
15 10 (0.94%) Google Workspace
15 10 (0.94%) Miro
16 8 (0.75%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.41%) Firewall
1 15 (1.41%) WAN
2 14 (1.32%) VPN
3 12 (1.13%) RFID
4 11 (1.04%) Wireless
5 10 (0.94%) ATM
6 8 (0.75%) Cisco Nexus
7 7 (0.66%) LAN
7 7 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.57%) BGP
8 6 (0.57%) OSPF
9 5 (0.47%) Cisco Firepower
9 5 (0.47%) Network Security
10 4 (0.38%) Cisco ASA
10 4 (0.38%) EIGRP
10 4 (0.38%) NFC
10 4 (0.38%) SD-WAN
10 4 (0.38%) VoIP
10 4 (0.38%) VSAN
11 3 (0.28%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (4.24%) Power BI
2 28 (2.64%) BigQuery
3 18 (1.70%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (1.23%) MySQL
4 13 (1.23%) SQL Server
4 13 (1.23%) Tableau
5 10 (0.94%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.85%) Metadata
7 6 (0.57%) NoSQL
7 6 (0.57%) Relational Database
8 5 (0.47%) Data Vault
8 5 (0.47%) MongoDB
8 5 (0.47%) PostgreSQL
9 4 (0.38%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.38%) Semantic Layer
10 3 (0.28%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.28%) Big Data
10 3 (0.28%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.28%) Looker
10 3 (0.28%) Oracle OLAP
Development Applications
1 76 (7.16%) JIRA
2 21 (1.98%) Git
3 14 (1.32%) Jenkins
4 11 (1.04%) GitLab
5 4 (0.38%) JMeter
5 4 (0.38%) Maven
5 4 (0.38%) Subversion
6 3 (0.28%) ERwin
7 2 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.19%) Gatling
7 2 (0.19%) git-flow
7 2 (0.19%) Hudson
7 2 (0.19%) MLflow
7 2 (0.19%) Selenium
7 2 (0.19%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.19%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.094%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.094%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.094%) IBM UrbanCode
8 1 (0.094%) Mockito
General
1 308 (29.03%) Social Skills
2 266 (25.07%) Finance
3 106 (9.99%) Analytical Skills
4 101 (9.52%) Banking
5 62 (5.84%) Marketing
6 54 (5.09%) Retail Banking
7 47 (4.43%) Organisational Skills
8 44 (4.15%) Investment Banking
9 43 (4.05%) Manufacturing
10 40 (3.77%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (2.54%) Public Sector
12 26 (2.45%) Telecoms
13 25 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
14 23 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
15 21 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
16 19 (1.79%) Legal
17 14 (1.32%) Advertising
17 14 (1.32%) French Language
18 13 (1.23%) Back Office
19 12 (1.13%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 160 (15.08%) Analyst
2 157 (14.80%) Architect
3 132 (12.44%) Senior
4 111 (10.46%) Project Manager
5 95 (8.95%) Business Analyst
6 79 (7.45%) Lead
7 63 (5.94%) Solutions Architect
8 58 (5.47%) Senior Manager
9 41 (3.86%) Technical Manager
10 38 (3.58%) Developer
11 32 (3.02%) Consultant
11 32 (3.02%) Designer
12 31 (2.92%) Enterprise Architect
12 31 (2.92%) Senior Project Manager
13 27 (2.54%) Data Architect
14 26 (2.45%) Product Manager
15 23 (2.17%) Service Manager
16 21 (1.98%) Programme Manager
17 18 (1.70%) Data Analyst
17 18 (1.70%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (3.02%) Middleware
2 29 (2.73%) REST
2 29 (2.73%) VML
3 25 (2.36%) React
4 22 (2.07%) Spring
5 18 (1.70%) Node.js
6 16 (1.51%) Spring Boot
7 13 (1.23%) AngularJS
8 11 (1.04%) Kafka
9 10 (0.94%) CSS
9 10 (0.94%) PySpark
10 9 (0.85%) RESTful
11 8 (0.75%) OpenTelemetry
12 7 (0.66%) HTML
12 7 (0.66%) LangChain
12 7 (0.66%) MACH
12 7 (0.66%) OAuth
12 7 (0.66%) OAuth2
12 7 (0.66%) OpenID
12 7 (0.66%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 71 (6.69%) Product Ownership
2 39 (3.68%) EPoS
3 36 (3.39%) Driving Licence
4 32 (3.02%) Cloud Native
5 27 (2.54%) Onboarding
6 24 (2.26%) FMCG
7 23 (2.17%) Data Centre
8 20 (1.89%) Mainframe
8 20 (1.89%) Management Information System
9 19 (1.79%) Data Structures
10 18 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.51%) Mobile App
12 14 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
13 12 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
14 11 (1.04%) AI Agents
15 10 (0.94%) Virtual Team
16 9 (0.85%) Smartphone
17 8 (0.75%) CCTV
17 8 (0.75%) Clustering
18 7 (0.66%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 48 (4.52%) Windows
2 22 (2.07%) Linux
3 8 (0.75%) Android
4 7 (0.66%) Mac OS
4 7 (0.66%) Unix
5 6 (0.57%) zOS
6 5 (0.47%) Windows Server
7 3 (0.28%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.28%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.094%) Debian
8 1 (0.094%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.094%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 238 (22.43%) Agile
2 220 (20.74%) Stakeholder Management
3 182 (17.15%) Problem-Solving
4 152 (14.33%) E-Commerce
5 127 (11.97%) Migration
6 117 (11.03%) Roadmaps
7 114 (10.74%) Project Management
8 105 (9.90%) Analytics
9 101 (9.52%) Customer Experience
10 91 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 85 (8.01%) ERP
12 79 (7.45%) AI
12 79 (7.45%) Continuous Improvement
12 79 (7.45%) Decision-Making
12 79 (7.45%) Project Delivery
13 78 (7.35%) Scrum
14 74 (6.97%) Change Management
15 72 (6.79%) User Acceptance Testing
16 69 (6.50%) CI/CD
17 66 (6.22%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 78 (7.35%) SQL
2 60 (5.66%) Python
3 34 (3.20%) Java
4 24 (2.26%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.23%) TypeScript
6 11 (1.04%) PowerShell
7 10 (0.94%) Shell Script
8 7 (0.66%) Bash
9 6 (0.57%) SOQL
10 5 (0.47%) Apex Code
10 5 (0.47%) C#
10 5 (0.47%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.47%) SOSL
11 4 (0.38%) Bicep
11 4 (0.38%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.38%) Scala
11 4 (0.38%) VBA
12 2 (0.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.19%) R
Qualifications
1 49 (4.62%) Degree
2 39 (3.68%) Security Cleared
3 26 (2.45%) SC Cleared
4 17 (1.60%) PMP
5 11 (1.04%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (0.75%) CCNP
7 8 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (0.75%) CSPO
8 7 (0.66%) APMP
8 7 (0.66%) DBS Check
8 7 (0.66%) Master's Degree
9 6 (0.57%) CISSP
9 6 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
10 5 (0.47%) MBA
11 4 (0.38%) CCIE
11 4 (0.38%) CCSE
11 4 (0.38%) CCSM
12 3 (0.28%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (5.00%) QA
2 52 (4.90%) Data Quality
3 35 (3.30%) GDPR
4 33 (3.11%) PMO
5 16 (1.51%) SLA
6 13 (1.23%) Accessibility
7 10 (0.94%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.47%) NIST
10 4 (0.38%) IFRS
11 2 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.19%) GRC
11 2 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.19%) WCAG
12 1 (0.094%) COBIT
12 1 (0.094%) GAAP
12 1 (0.094%) GxP
12 1 (0.094%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.094%) NCSC
System Software
1 22 (2.07%) Docker
2 19 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 5 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.28%) RACF
5 3 (0.28%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 24 (2.26%) Terraform
2 17 (1.60%) Kubernetes
3 8 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (0.66%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.57%) Argo
5 6 (0.57%) Grafana
5 6 (0.57%) Istio
5 6 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.47%) SCCM
7 3 (0.28%) Ansible
8 2 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.19%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.19%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.19%) MOM
8 2 (0.19%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.094%) Control-M
9 1 (0.094%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.094%) Nagios
9 1 (0.094%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.094%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 86 (8.11%) Microsoft
2 76 (7.16%) SAP
3 63 (5.94%) Oracle
4 51 (4.81%) Salesforce
5 47 (4.43%) Google
6 42 (3.96%) Databricks
7 23 (2.17%) Adobe
8 16 (1.51%) Cisco
8 16 (1.51%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.41%) IFS
10 14 (1.32%) Sitecore
11 11 (1.04%) IBM
12 10 (0.94%) Splunk
12 10 (0.94%) VMware
13 9 (0.85%) CheckPoint
13 9 (0.85%) Palo Alto
14 8 (0.75%) Fortinet
14 8 (0.75%) Temenos
14 8 (0.75%) Workday
15 7 (0.66%) MuleSoft