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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 99 85
Rank change year-on-year -26 -14 +10
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,001 771 1,078
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.10% 2.63% 2.50%
As % of the General category 3.88% 4.16% 4.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 596 415 600
10th Percentile £206 £308 £299
25th Percentile £381 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £505
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +3.96% -3.81%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.30% - -1.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 20 88
10th Percentile £13.36 £15.12 £11.56
25th Percentile £16.17 £16.30 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £32.00 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.38% +100.00% -19.23%
75th Percentile £37.72 £58.31 £21.37
90th Percentile £45.50 £87.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.50 £16.30 £15.29
% change year-on-year +7.36% +6.61% -22.82%

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 25,766 18,539 25,093
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.11% 63.24% 58.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,810 11,839 15,826
10th Percentile £306 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £766
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +0.21% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,650 792 1,938
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.50 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £60.56 £56.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.01
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £28.25
% change year-on-year +10.00% -11.50% -2.59%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -15 918 £500 -4.76% 1,205
London -13 499 £525 -4.55% 397
UK excluding London -9 428 £494 -1.30% 939
Work from Home -46 246 £500 -3.15% 437
North of England -22 125 £500 +11.11% 236
South East -10 118 £420 -16.00% 300
Midlands -39 84 £495 -1.00% 171
North West -10 73 £505 +1.00% 138
East of England -9 51 £520 -5.45% 128
Yorkshire -47 48 £513 +38.51% 82
East Midlands -4 46 £495 -1.00% 92
West Midlands -46 38 £500 - 79
South West -23 27 £320 -9.86% 74
Scotland +3 20 £474 -10.45% 40
North East -18 4 £200 -73.33% 20
Northern Ireland +1 2 £190 -44.48% 9
Wales -17 1 £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 (3.80%) Confluence
2 17 (1.70%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 9 (0.90%) CMS
5 7 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.50%) SAS
7 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.20%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.20%) Magnolia
9 1 (0.100%) CICS
9 1 (0.100%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.100%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 34 (3.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 20 (2.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 19 (1.90%) Microsoft Project
4 16 (1.60%) Microsoft Office
5 13 (1.30%) Chatbot
6 11 (1.10%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.80%) Photoshop
8 6 (0.60%) Adobe Illustrator
9 3 (0.30%) InDesign
10 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
10 2 (0.20%) Trello
10 2 (0.20%) UserZoom
11 1 (0.100%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.100%) Adobe After Effects
11 1 (0.100%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.100%) Maya
11 1 (0.100%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.100%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 23 (2.30%) Shopify
2 18 (1.80%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
4 8 (0.80%) Oracle Retail
5 7 (0.70%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 7 (0.70%) SAP Retail
6 6 (0.60%) Finacle
7 5 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.40%) SAP CRM
8 4 (0.40%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.40%) Temenos T24
9 3 (0.30%) Magento
9 3 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
9 3 (0.30%) SAP Payroll
10 2 (0.20%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
10 2 (0.20%) NetSuite
10 2 (0.20%) Sage X3
10 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
10 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 91 (9.09%) Azure
2 72 (7.19%) AWS
3 57 (5.69%) GCP
4 50 (5.00%) Power Platform
5 29 (2.90%) Snowflake
6 25 (2.50%) Dynamics 365
7 20 (2.00%) GitHub
8 18 (1.80%) Microsoft 365
9 17 (1.70%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
10 16 (1.60%) SaaS
11 15 (1.50%) Azure DevOps
12 14 (1.40%) BigCommerce
13 13 (1.30%) Entra ID
13 13 (1.30%) Figma
13 13 (1.30%) Google Workspace
14 12 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
15 11 (1.10%) Cloud Run
15 11 (1.10%) Miro
16 10 (1.00%) Azure Data Factory
17 8 (0.80%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.60%) RFID
1 16 (1.60%) VPN
2 14 (1.40%) Firewall
2 14 (1.40%) WAN
2 14 (1.40%) Wireless
3 8 (0.80%) NFC
4 7 (0.70%) Cisco Nexus
4 7 (0.70%) LAN
4 7 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
5 6 (0.60%) BGP
5 6 (0.60%) OSPF
6 4 (0.40%) ATM
6 4 (0.40%) Cisco Firepower
6 4 (0.40%) EIGRP
6 4 (0.40%) Network Security
6 4 (0.40%) VoIP
7 3 (0.30%) Cisco ASA
7 3 (0.30%) SD-WAN
7 3 (0.30%) VSAN
7 3 (0.30%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (4.60%) Power BI
2 26 (2.60%) BigQuery
3 16 (1.60%) Data Warehouse
4 12 (1.20%) MySQL
4 12 (1.20%) SQL Server
4 12 (1.20%) Tableau
5 9 (0.90%) Metadata
6 8 (0.80%) Data Lake
7 6 (0.60%) NoSQL
7 6 (0.60%) PostgreSQL
7 6 (0.60%) Relational Database
8 5 (0.50%) Data Vault
9 4 (0.40%) Delta Lake
10 3 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.30%) Big Data
10 3 (0.30%) Looker
10 3 (0.30%) OLAP
10 3 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
10 3 (0.30%) Semantic Layer
10 3 (0.30%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 74 (7.39%) JIRA
2 17 (1.70%) Git
3 11 (1.10%) GitLab
3 11 (1.10%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.40%) Maven
5 3 (0.30%) ERwin
6 2 (0.20%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.20%) Hudson
6 2 (0.20%) MLflow
6 2 (0.20%) Selenium
6 2 (0.20%) Subversion
6 2 (0.20%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.20%) WebDriver
7 1 (0.100%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.100%) Gatling
7 1 (0.100%) IBM UrbanCode
7 1 (0.100%) JMeter
7 1 (0.100%) Mockito
7 1 (0.100%) Oracle APEX
7 1 (0.100%) Zephyr
General
1 301 (30.07%) Social Skills
2 247 (24.68%) Finance
3 109 (10.89%) Analytical Skills
4 87 (8.69%) Banking
5 57 (5.69%) Marketing
6 45 (4.50%) Manufacturing
6 45 (4.50%) Organisational Skills
7 39 (3.90%) Retail Banking
8 33 (3.30%) Investment Banking
9 31 (3.10%) Corporate Banking
10 29 (2.90%) Public Sector
11 28 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
11 28 (2.80%) Presentation Skills
12 24 (2.40%) Influencing Skills
13 23 (2.30%) Telecoms
14 18 (1.80%) Legal
15 15 (1.50%) Back Office
16 11 (1.10%) Advertising
17 10 (1.00%) Pharmaceutical
17 10 (1.00%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 163 (16.28%) Analyst
2 139 (13.89%) Architect
3 125 (12.49%) Senior
4 112 (11.19%) Project Manager
5 98 (9.79%) Business Analyst
6 77 (7.69%) Lead
7 53 (5.29%) Senior Manager
8 48 (4.80%) Solutions Architect
9 38 (3.80%) Consultant
10 37 (3.70%) Technical Manager
11 32 (3.20%) Designer
11 32 (3.20%) Developer
12 28 (2.80%) Senior Project Manager
13 27 (2.70%) Enterprise Architect
14 25 (2.50%) Data Architect
15 23 (2.30%) Programme Manager
16 21 (2.10%) Product Manager
17 18 (1.80%) Data Engineer
18 17 (1.70%) Data Analyst
18 17 (1.70%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.10%) Middleware
2 30 (3.00%) VML
3 27 (2.70%) REST
4 19 (1.90%) React
4 19 (1.90%) Spring
5 14 (1.40%) Node.js
6 13 (1.30%) Spring Boot
7 12 (1.20%) AngularJS
8 10 (1.00%) CSS
8 10 (1.00%) PySpark
9 9 (0.90%) Kafka
10 7 (0.70%) HTML
10 7 (0.70%) LangChain
10 7 (0.70%) SOAP
11 6 (0.60%) jQuery
11 6 (0.60%) JSON
11 6 (0.60%) OpenTelemetry
12 5 (0.50%) OAuth
12 5 (0.50%) OpenID
12 5 (0.50%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 64 (6.39%) Product Ownership
2 34 (3.40%) Driving Licence
3 32 (3.20%) Cloud Native
4 30 (3.00%) EPoS
5 26 (2.60%) Onboarding
6 23 (2.30%) Data Centre
6 23 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
7 22 (2.20%) Management Information System
8 20 (2.00%) FMCG
8 20 (2.00%) Mainframe
9 19 (1.90%) Data Structures
10 17 (1.70%) Mobile App
11 14 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
12 11 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
13 10 (1.00%) IoT
13 10 (1.00%) Virtual Team
14 9 (0.90%) AI Agents
15 8 (0.80%) Clustering
16 7 (0.70%) Hybrid Cloud
17 6 (0.60%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 40 (4.00%) Windows
2 20 (2.00%) Linux
3 7 (0.70%) Mac OS
3 7 (0.70%) zOS
4 6 (0.60%) Unix
5 5 (0.50%) Android
5 5 (0.50%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.20%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.100%) VMS
7 1 (0.100%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 219 (21.88%) Stakeholder Management
2 216 (21.58%) Agile
3 183 (18.28%) Problem-Solving
4 142 (14.19%) E-Commerce
5 127 (12.69%) Migration
6 117 (11.69%) Project Management
7 114 (11.39%) Roadmaps
8 100 (9.99%) Analytics
9 91 (9.09%) Customer Experience
10 88 (8.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 86 (8.59%) ERP
12 84 (8.39%) AI
13 77 (7.69%) Project Delivery
14 75 (7.49%) Continuous Improvement
15 74 (7.39%) Change Management
16 73 (7.29%) Decision-Making
16 73 (7.29%) Workshop Facilitation
17 71 (7.09%) Scrum
18 67 (6.69%) User Acceptance Testing
19 62 (6.19%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 73 (7.29%) SQL
2 60 (5.99%) Python
3 32 (3.20%) Java
4 21 (2.10%) JavaScript
5 12 (1.20%) PowerShell
6 10 (1.00%) Shell Script
7 9 (0.90%) TypeScript
8 8 (0.80%) Bash
9 6 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.50%) Apex Code
10 5 (0.50%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.50%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.50%) SOQL
10 5 (0.50%) SOSL
11 4 (0.40%) Scala
11 4 (0.40%) VBA
12 2 (0.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.20%) Korn
12 2 (0.20%) R
12 2 (0.20%) REXX
Qualifications
1 49 (4.90%) Degree
2 37 (3.70%) Security Cleared
3 24 (2.40%) SC Cleared
4 19 (1.90%) PMP
5 14 (1.40%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.90%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (0.90%) CSPO
7 7 (0.70%) APMP
7 7 (0.70%) CCNP
7 7 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
7 7 (0.70%) Master's Degree
8 6 (0.60%) CISSP
8 6 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.50%) MBA
10 4 (0.40%) CCIE
10 4 (0.40%) DBS Check
11 3 (0.30%) CCSE
11 3 (0.30%) CISM
11 3 (0.30%) CRISC
11 3 (0.30%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (5.19%) QA
2 48 (4.80%) Data Quality
3 36 (3.60%) GDPR
4 32 (3.20%) PMO
5 19 (1.90%) SLA
6 14 (1.40%) Accessibility
7 10 (1.00%) PCI DSS
8 9 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.50%) NIST
10 4 (0.40%) IFRS
11 3 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.20%) GRC
12 2 (0.20%) WCAG
13 1 (0.100%) COBIT
13 1 (0.100%) GAAP
13 1 (0.100%) IFRS 9
13 1 (0.100%) NCSC
13 1 (0.100%) Solvency II
System Software
1 21 (2.10%) Active Directory
2 18 (1.80%) Docker
3 5 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (0.50%) VMware NSX
4 4 (0.40%) RACF
5 3 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.100%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 21 (2.10%) Terraform
2 14 (1.40%) Kubernetes
3 9 (0.90%) Microsoft Intune
4 8 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (0.70%) Grafana
5 7 (0.70%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 6 (0.60%) Argo
6 6 (0.60%) Istio
7 5 (0.50%) SCCM
8 3 (0.30%) Ansible
9 2 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.20%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.20%) FortiGate
9 2 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.20%) MOM
9 2 (0.20%) PingFederate
9 2 (0.20%) ZABBIX
10 1 (0.100%) Prometheus
10 1 (0.100%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.100%) zSecure
Vendors
1 82 (8.19%) Microsoft
2 75 (7.49%) SAP
3 63 (6.29%) Oracle
4 53 (5.29%) Salesforce
5 49 (4.90%) Google
6 39 (3.90%) Databricks
7 27 (2.70%) Adobe
8 18 (1.80%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.60%) Sitecore
10 15 (1.50%) Cisco
10 15 (1.50%) IFS
11 11 (1.10%) IBM
11 11 (1.10%) VMware
12 10 (1.00%) Palo Alto
13 8 (0.80%) CheckPoint
13 8 (0.80%) Splunk
13 8 (0.80%) Temenos
13 8 (0.80%) Workday
13 8 (0.80%) Zscaler
14 6 (0.60%) GoldenSource