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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 101 85
Rank change year-on-year -3 -16 +8
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,150 736 1,081
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.34% 2.54% 2.52%
As % of the General category 4.34% 4.02% 4.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 674 378 596
10th Percentile £244 £319 £278
25th Percentile £406 £413 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £521 £505
Median % change year-on-year -1.92% +3.22% -6.05%
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 84 26 88
10th Percentile £13.33 £14.58 £11.56
25th Percentile £15.63 £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 £17.21 £15.90 £15.90
% change year-on-year +8.24% - -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 26,471 18,328 24,630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.90% 63.34% 57.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,017 11,568 15,462
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.36% -2.73% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,759 831 1,979
10th Percentile £13.72 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.73 £16.94 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.75 £27.94 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +10.06% -7.36% -7.20%
75th Percentile £60.35 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.27 £24.42 £28.50
% change year-on-year +23.96% -14.32% +1.21%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 0 1,052 £525 - 1,440
London +7 590 £539 -2.05% 557
UK excluding London -7 474 £500 - 1,004
Work from Home -27 268 £500 - 534
South East -9 137 £500 - 302
North of England -39 134 £513 +2.50% 290
Midlands -10 95 £495 +10.00% 174
North West 0 83 £550 +10.00% 169
East Midlands -3 55 £495 +6.74% 91
East of England -2 51 £509 -3.05% 102
Yorkshire -48 48 £506 +6.58% 98
West Midlands -37 40 £500 +14.29% 83
South West -17 32 £326 -34.75% 84
Scotland +1 21 £500 -6.10% 45
North East -28 3 £173 -76.98% 25
Northern Ireland +5 2 £190 -44.48% 19
Wales -20 2 £190 +29.52% 17

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 (3.30%) Confluence
2 13 (1.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 13 (1.13%) CMS
3 12 (1.04%) SharePoint
4 11 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.43%) SAS
6 2 (0.17%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.17%) CICS
6 2 (0.17%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.087%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 29 (2.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (2.17%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.65%) Microsoft Project
4 17 (1.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.13%) Chatbot
6 11 (0.96%) MS Visio
7 10 (0.87%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.70%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.52%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.43%) InDesign
11 3 (0.26%) Notion
11 3 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
12 2 (0.17%) UserZoom
13 1 (0.087%) 3ds Max
13 1 (0.087%) Adobe After Effects
13 1 (0.087%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.087%) Maya
13 1 (0.087%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.087%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.087%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (1.91%) SAP S/4HANA
1 22 (1.91%) Shopify
2 14 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.78%) SAP Retail
4 7 (0.61%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 7 (0.61%) SAP CRM
5 6 (0.52%) Finacle
5 6 (0.52%) Oracle Retail
6 5 (0.43%) NetSuite
6 5 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.43%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.35%) Magento
8 3 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
8 3 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 2 (0.17%) Sage X3
9 2 (0.17%) SAP CAR
9 2 (0.17%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.17%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.17%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 125 (10.87%) Azure
2 95 (8.26%) AWS
3 68 (5.91%) GCP
4 54 (4.70%) Power Platform
5 39 (3.39%) Snowflake
6 27 (2.35%) GitHub
7 23 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
8 20 (1.74%) Azure DevOps
9 19 (1.65%) GitHub Actions
10 18 (1.57%) Entra ID
11 17 (1.48%) Figma
11 17 (1.48%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 15 (1.30%) Microsoft 365
12 15 (1.30%) SaaS
13 13 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
14 12 (1.04%) BigCommerce
14 12 (1.04%) dbt
15 11 (0.96%) Cloud Run
15 11 (0.96%) Google Workspace
16 10 (0.87%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.13%) ATM
2 12 (1.04%) Firewall
2 12 (1.04%) WAN
3 10 (0.87%) Network Security
3 10 (0.87%) VPN
4 9 (0.78%) Wireless
5 8 (0.70%) RFID
6 6 (0.52%) Cisco Firepower
6 6 (0.52%) Cisco Nexus
6 6 (0.52%) LAN
6 6 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
7 5 (0.43%) Cisco ASA
7 5 (0.43%) SD-WAN
7 5 (0.43%) VSAN
8 4 (0.35%) BGP
8 4 (0.35%) OSPF
9 3 (0.26%) Broadband
9 3 (0.26%) IPsec
9 3 (0.26%) MPLS
10 2 (0.17%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (4.43%) Power BI
2 28 (2.43%) BigQuery
3 20 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
4 17 (1.48%) MySQL
4 17 (1.48%) SQL Server
5 14 (1.22%) Tableau
6 13 (1.13%) Metadata
7 10 (0.87%) Data Lake
8 9 (0.78%) NoSQL
9 6 (0.52%) Data Vault
9 6 (0.52%) MongoDB
9 6 (0.52%) Relational Database
9 6 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
10 5 (0.43%) PostgreSQL
11 4 (0.35%) Big Data
11 4 (0.35%) Delta Lake
11 4 (0.35%) Looker
11 4 (0.35%) Semantic Layer
12 3 (0.26%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (0.26%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 78 (6.78%) JIRA
2 22 (1.91%) Git
3 16 (1.39%) 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 (0.17%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.17%) Eclipse
7 2 (0.17%) Gatling
7 2 (0.17%) git-flow
7 2 (0.17%) MLflow
7 2 (0.17%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.087%) HP UFT
8 1 (0.087%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.087%) Toad
General
1 327 (28.43%) Social Skills
2 275 (23.91%) Finance
3 111 (9.65%) Analytical Skills
4 103 (8.96%) Banking
5 68 (5.91%) Marketing
6 56 (4.87%) Manufacturing
7 53 (4.61%) Retail Banking
8 52 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
9 43 (3.74%) Investment Banking
10 39 (3.39%) Corporate Banking
11 28 (2.43%) Public Sector
12 27 (2.35%) Telecoms
13 26 (2.26%) Documentation Skills
14 22 (1.91%) Presentation Skills
15 20 (1.74%) Legal
16 19 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
17 17 (1.48%) French Language
18 15 (1.30%) Advertising
19 13 (1.13%) Back Office
19 13 (1.13%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 175 (15.22%) Architect
2 163 (14.17%) Analyst
3 142 (12.35%) Senior
4 119 (10.35%) Project Manager
5 95 (8.26%) Business Analyst
6 87 (7.57%) Lead
7 76 (6.61%) Solutions Architect
8 59 (5.13%) Senior Manager
9 45 (3.91%) Technical Manager
10 44 (3.83%) Developer
11 40 (3.48%) Designer
12 35 (3.04%) Enterprise Architect
13 34 (2.96%) Product Manager
13 34 (2.96%) Senior Project Manager
14 32 (2.78%) Consultant
15 29 (2.52%) Data Architect
16 27 (2.35%) Data Engineer
17 24 (2.09%) 2nd Line Support
17 24 (2.09%) Service Manager
18 23 (2.00%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (2.87%) REST
2 32 (2.78%) Middleware
3 27 (2.35%) VML
4 26 (2.26%) React
5 24 (2.09%) Spring
6 19 (1.65%) Kafka
7 18 (1.57%) Node.js
7 18 (1.57%) Spring Boot
8 14 (1.22%) AngularJS
8 14 (1.22%) CSS
9 12 (1.04%) HTML
9 12 (1.04%) RESTful
10 9 (0.78%) .NET
11 8 (0.70%) OpenTelemetry
11 8 (0.70%) PySpark
12 7 (0.61%) LangChain
12 7 (0.61%) MACH
12 7 (0.61%) OAuth
12 7 (0.61%) OAuth2
12 7 (0.61%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 73 (6.35%) Product Ownership
2 42 (3.65%) EPoS
3 41 (3.57%) Driving Licence
4 38 (3.30%) FMCG
5 34 (2.96%) Cloud Native
6 31 (2.70%) Onboarding
7 20 (1.74%) Data Structures
7 20 (1.74%) Mainframe
8 19 (1.65%) Data Centre
9 17 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
9 17 (1.48%) Mobile App
9 17 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
10 15 (1.30%) Management Information System
11 13 (1.13%) AI Agents
12 12 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
13 11 (0.96%) Smartphone
14 10 (0.87%) Virtual Team
15 9 (0.78%) CCTV
15 9 (0.78%) Mobile Payment
16 8 (0.70%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 49 (4.26%) Windows
2 22 (1.91%) Linux
3 11 (0.96%) Android
4 7 (0.61%) Unix
4 7 (0.61%) zOS
5 5 (0.43%) Mac OS
5 5 (0.43%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.35%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.26%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.087%) Debian
8 1 (0.087%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.087%) SUSE
8 1 (0.087%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.087%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.087%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 257 (22.35%) Agile
2 239 (20.78%) Stakeholder Management
3 188 (16.35%) Problem-Solving
4 169 (14.70%) E-Commerce
5 142 (12.35%) Migration
6 131 (11.39%) Roadmaps
7 120 (10.43%) Project Management
8 116 (10.09%) Analytics
8 116 (10.09%) Customer Experience
9 95 (8.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 90 (7.83%) ERP
11 88 (7.65%) Project Delivery
12 84 (7.30%) Change Management
13 83 (7.22%) Continuous Improvement
14 82 (7.13%) AI
14 82 (7.13%) Decision-Making
15 81 (7.04%) Scrum
16 78 (6.78%) User Acceptance Testing
17 75 (6.52%) CI/CD
18 73 (6.35%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 89 (7.74%) SQL
2 62 (5.39%) Python
3 37 (3.22%) Java
4 24 (2.09%) JavaScript
5 15 (1.30%) TypeScript
6 10 (0.87%) Shell Script
7 9 (0.78%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.70%) C#
9 6 (0.52%) Kotlin
9 6 (0.52%) SOQL
10 5 (0.43%) Apex Code
10 5 (0.43%) Bash
10 5 (0.43%) SOSL
11 4 (0.35%) Bicep
11 4 (0.35%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.35%) Scala
12 3 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 3 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.26%) R
12 3 (0.26%) VBA
Qualifications
1 51 (4.43%) Degree
2 41 (3.57%) Security Cleared
3 28 (2.43%) SC Cleared
4 19 (1.65%) PMP
5 11 (0.96%) PMI Certification
6 10 (0.87%) DBS Check
7 9 (0.78%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (0.70%) CISSP
9 7 (0.61%) APMP
9 7 (0.61%) Master's Degree
10 6 (0.52%) CCNP
10 6 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (0.52%) CSPO
11 5 (0.43%) CCSE
11 5 (0.43%) CCSM
11 5 (0.43%) CISM
11 5 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
11 5 (0.43%) MBA
12 4 (0.35%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (4.96%) QA
2 56 (4.87%) Data Quality
3 37 (3.22%) GDPR
4 33 (2.87%) PMO
5 18 (1.57%) Accessibility
6 13 (1.13%) PCI DSS
7 12 (1.04%) SLA
8 8 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.43%) NIST
10 3 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.17%) GRC
11 2 (0.17%) PSD2
11 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.17%) WCAG
12 1 (0.087%) COBIT
12 1 (0.087%) GAAP
12 1 (0.087%) GxP
12 1 (0.087%) IFRS
12 1 (0.087%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 25 (2.17%) Active Directory
2 23 (2.00%) Docker
3 6 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.17%) RACF
5 2 (0.17%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 27 (2.35%) Terraform
2 21 (1.83%) Kubernetes
3 11 (0.96%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 7 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.52%) Argo
5 6 (0.52%) Grafana
5 6 (0.52%) Istio
6 5 (0.43%) SCCM
6 5 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.26%) Ansible
8 2 (0.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.17%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.17%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.17%) MOM
8 2 (0.17%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.087%) Nagios
9 1 (0.087%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.087%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 98 (8.52%) Microsoft
2 78 (6.78%) SAP
3 66 (5.74%) Oracle
4 54 (4.70%) Google
5 53 (4.61%) Salesforce
6 43 (3.74%) Databricks
7 30 (2.61%) Adobe
8 21 (1.83%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.30%) Cisco
9 15 (1.30%) IFS
10 14 (1.22%) Sitecore
11 11 (0.96%) IBM
11 11 (0.96%) Splunk
12 10 (0.87%) VMware
12 10 (0.87%) Zscaler
13 9 (0.78%) Fortinet
13 9 (0.78%) MuleSoft
13 9 (0.78%) Palo Alto
14 7 (0.61%) CheckPoint
14 7 (0.61%) Dynatrace