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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 122 82
Rank change year-on-year +31 -40 +16
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,514 763 1,037
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.85% 2.33% 2.61%
As % of the General category 5.19% 3.69% 4.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 915 402 572
10th Percentile £302 £283 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £513 £509
Median % change year-on-year +4.88% +0.74% -5.35%
75th Percentile £653 £635 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.80% - -1.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 103 44 71
10th Percentile £12.98 £14.73 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.81 £15.25 £12.50
Median hourly rate £18.85 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +15.64% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £25.15 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £54.80 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.67 £15.96 £16.00
% change year-on-year -1.82% -0.25% -19.23%

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 29,176 20,705 22,755
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.95% 63.13% 57.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,355 12,970 14,349
10th Percentile £313 £280 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,128 1,095 1,482
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.36 £13.86
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.25 £16.50
Median hourly rate £32.81 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.44% -32.93% +22.87%
75th Percentile £60.06 £51.65 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.10 £70.81 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.25 £22.50 £38.06
% change year-on-year +47.78% -40.88% +46.38%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 +25 1,384 £550 +4.76% 1,375
London +44 802 £550 - 538
UK excluding London +18 604 £509 +1.80% 984
Work from Home -4 332 £513 +2.50% 469
South East +12 175 £525 -6.25% 291
North of England -25 175 £550 +10.00% 257
Midlands +13 117 £500 +17.65% 210
North West -6 112 £550 +10.00% 132
East Midlands +18 63 £500 +21.21% 92
East of England +15 63 £544 +3.57% 95
West Midlands -26 54 £606 +34.72% 117
Yorkshire -47 52 £500 - 98
South West -37 39 £325 -8.59% 98
Scotland +6 27 £447 -12.78% 39
North East -38 11 £155 -64.89% 31
Northern Ireland +3 4 £196 -64.32% 10
Wales -16 4 £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 41 (2.71%) Confluence
2 18 (1.19%) CMS
3 13 (0.86%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 12 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.59%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.33%) SAS
7 4 (0.26%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.20%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.13%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.13%) CICS
9 2 (0.13%) Mule
10 1 (0.066%) Apache
10 1 (0.066%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 50 (3.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.06%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.86%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 12 (0.79%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.66%) Photoshop
8 9 (0.59%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.40%) InDesign
9 6 (0.40%) MS Visio
10 4 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.20%) CPLEX
11 3 (0.20%) Notion
12 1 (0.066%) 3ds Max
12 1 (0.066%) Maya
12 1 (0.066%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.066%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 41 (2.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.85%) Shopify
3 11 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.66%) SAP CRM
5 9 (0.59%) Oracle Retail
6 8 (0.53%) Magento
7 6 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.40%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.33%) SAP Retail
8 5 (0.33%) SAP SD
9 4 (0.26%) NetSuite
10 3 (0.20%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 3 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.20%) SAP CAR
10 3 (0.20%) SAP ERP
11 2 (0.13%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 2 (0.13%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 184 (12.15%) Azure
2 139 (9.18%) AWS
3 73 (4.82%) GCP
4 69 (4.56%) Power Platform
5 51 (3.37%) Snowflake
6 41 (2.71%) GitHub
7 30 (1.98%) Azure DevOps
7 30 (1.98%) Entra ID
8 25 (1.65%) GitHub Actions
9 24 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
10 22 (1.45%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 20 (1.32%) Figma
12 17 (1.12%) SaaS
13 16 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
14 15 (0.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 12 (0.79%) dbt
16 11 (0.73%) Microsoft 365
16 11 (0.73%) Salesforce Service Cloud
16 11 (0.73%) Serverless
17 10 (0.66%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.12%) WAN
2 16 (1.06%) ATM
2 16 (1.06%) Firewall
3 15 (0.99%) Wireless
4 14 (0.92%) VPN
5 13 (0.86%) Network Security
6 11 (0.73%) LAN
7 9 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
8 8 (0.53%) BGP
8 8 (0.53%) IPsec
8 8 (0.53%) OSPF
9 7 (0.46%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 7 (0.46%) RFID
9 7 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
9 7 (0.46%) VLAN
10 6 (0.40%) Cisco Firepower
10 6 (0.40%) SD-WAN
11 5 (0.33%) Cisco ASA
11 5 (0.33%) Cisco Nexus
11 5 (0.33%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (4.49%) Power BI
2 31 (2.05%) BigQuery
2 31 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
3 21 (1.39%) Data Lake
4 18 (1.19%) NoSQL
5 17 (1.12%) Metadata
5 17 (1.12%) Tableau
6 15 (0.99%) MongoDB
6 15 (0.99%) MySQL
7 14 (0.92%) SQL Server
8 12 (0.79%) Power Query
8 12 (0.79%) Relational Database
9 10 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
9 10 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 9 (0.59%) PostgreSQL
11 8 (0.53%) Redis
12 7 (0.46%) Looker
12 7 (0.46%) SAP HANA
13 6 (0.40%) Couchbase
13 6 (0.40%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 72 (4.76%) JIRA
2 30 (1.98%) Git
3 19 (1.25%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.53%) Subversion
5 6 (0.40%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.33%) JMeter
7 4 (0.26%) Cypress.io
7 4 (0.26%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.26%) GitLab
7 4 (0.26%) Maven
8 3 (0.20%) Hudson
9 2 (0.13%) git-flow
9 2 (0.13%) MLflow
9 2 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.13%) Postman
9 2 (0.13%) Selenium
9 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.13%) webpack
10 1 (0.066%) Toad
10 1 (0.066%) Visual Studio
General
1 423 (27.94%) Social Skills
2 354 (23.38%) Finance
3 149 (9.84%) Analytical Skills
4 122 (8.06%) Banking
5 96 (6.34%) Marketing
6 93 (6.14%) Manufacturing
7 64 (4.23%) Retail Banking
8 60 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
9 48 (3.17%) Investment Banking
10 44 (2.91%) Corporate Banking
11 30 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
12 27 (1.78%) Legal
12 27 (1.78%) Public Sector
13 24 (1.59%) Telecoms
14 23 (1.52%) French Language
15 22 (1.45%) Advertising
15 22 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
16 21 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
17 18 (1.19%) Spanish Language
18 14 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 243 (16.05%) Architect
2 220 (14.53%) Analyst
3 186 (12.29%) Senior
4 130 (8.59%) Solutions Architect
5 129 (8.52%) Business Analyst
6 123 (8.12%) Project Manager
7 108 (7.13%) Lead
8 79 (5.22%) Developer
9 56 (3.70%) Senior Manager
10 50 (3.30%) Designer
11 46 (3.04%) Product Manager
12 43 (2.84%) Consultant
13 42 (2.77%) Data Analyst
14 38 (2.51%) Service Manager
15 36 (2.38%) Enterprise Architect
16 35 (2.31%) Senior Developer
16 35 (2.31%) Technical Manager
17 34 (2.25%) Data Architect
17 34 (2.25%) Programme Manager
18 33 (2.18%) Supply Chain Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (4.69%) REST
2 39 (2.58%) React
3 33 (2.18%) Middleware
4 32 (2.11%) Spring
5 29 (1.92%) Kafka
6 27 (1.78%) Node.js
7 24 (1.59%) Spring Boot
8 21 (1.39%) VML
9 20 (1.32%) Django
9 20 (1.32%) RESTful
10 17 (1.12%) HTML
10 17 (1.12%) SOAP
11 16 (1.06%) CSS
12 15 (0.99%) MACH
13 14 (0.92%) OAuth
14 13 (0.86%) Jakarta EE
15 11 (0.73%) .NET
15 11 (0.73%) Next.js
16 9 (0.59%) OAuth2
17 8 (0.53%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 83 (5.48%) Product Ownership
2 64 (4.23%) FMCG
3 55 (3.63%) EPoS
4 50 (3.30%) Onboarding
5 45 (2.97%) Cloud Native
5 45 (2.97%) Driving Licence
6 30 (1.98%) Legacy Systems
6 30 (1.98%) Mobile App
7 29 (1.92%) Data Centre
8 22 (1.45%) Marketing Technology
9 21 (1.39%) Data Structures
9 21 (1.39%) Mainframe
9 21 (1.39%) Operational Technology
10 20 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
10 20 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
11 17 (1.12%) AI Agents
12 16 (1.06%) IoT
13 15 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
13 15 (0.99%) Management Information System
14 14 (0.92%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.70%) Windows
2 23 (1.52%) Linux
3 12 (0.79%) Unix
4 11 (0.73%) Android
5 8 (0.53%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.46%) zOS
7 6 (0.40%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.33%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.33%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.33%) Windows Server
9 2 (0.13%) Debian
10 1 (0.066%) SUSE
10 1 (0.066%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.066%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 369 (24.37%) Stakeholder Management
2 363 (23.98%) Agile
3 237 (15.65%) E-Commerce
4 208 (13.74%) Problem-Solving
5 181 (11.96%) Roadmaps
6 179 (11.82%) Migration
7 158 (10.44%) Analytics
8 157 (10.37%) AI
9 150 (9.91%) Customer Experience
10 135 (8.92%) Logistics
11 132 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 123 (8.12%) Decision-Making
13 121 (7.99%) CI/CD
14 119 (7.86%) Continuous Improvement
15 111 (7.33%) Project Management
16 108 (7.13%) CRM
17 107 (7.07%) ERP
18 103 (6.80%) User Acceptance Testing
19 101 (6.67%) Project Delivery
20 100 (6.61%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 133 (8.78%) SQL
2 102 (6.74%) Python
3 58 (3.83%) Java
4 31 (2.05%) JavaScript
5 30 (1.98%) TypeScript
6 12 (0.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (0.73%) C#
8 8 (0.53%) ABAP
8 8 (0.53%) PowerShell
9 7 (0.46%) Apex Code
9 7 (0.46%) R
9 7 (0.46%) SOQL
10 6 (0.40%) Bash
10 6 (0.40%) Bicep
10 6 (0.40%) Kotlin
10 6 (0.40%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.40%) Scala
11 5 (0.33%) Groovy
11 5 (0.33%) SOSL
12 4 (0.26%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 61 (4.03%) Degree
2 40 (2.64%) Security Cleared
3 23 (1.52%) PMP
4 22 (1.45%) SC Cleared
5 13 (0.86%) DBS Check
5 13 (0.86%) PMI Certification
6 10 (0.66%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (0.59%) CISSP
8 6 (0.40%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.40%) CISM
8 6 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
9 5 (0.33%) CCNP
9 5 (0.33%) CCSE
9 5 (0.33%) CCSM
9 5 (0.33%) CSPO
10 4 (0.26%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.26%) City & Guilds
10 4 (0.26%) PhD
11 3 (0.20%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (5.02%) QA
2 68 (4.49%) Data Quality
3 41 (2.71%) GDPR
4 27 (1.78%) PMO
5 23 (1.52%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.06%) PCI DSS
7 14 (0.92%) SLA
8 8 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.40%) NIST
10 4 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 4 (0.26%) WCAG
11 3 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.20%) GAAP
11 3 (0.20%) GRC
11 3 (0.20%) IFRS
11 3 (0.20%) PSD2
12 2 (0.13%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.066%) COBIT
13 1 (0.066%) GxP
System Software
1 35 (2.31%) Docker
2 34 (2.25%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.86%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.46%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.33%) Firmware
5 5 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.13%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 47 (3.10%) Terraform
2 36 (2.38%) Kubernetes
3 13 (0.86%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 11 (0.73%) Ansible
5 6 (0.40%) FortiGate
5 6 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.33%) Grafana
7 4 (0.26%) SCCM
8 3 (0.20%) Bosun
9 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.13%) AirWatch
9 2 (0.13%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.13%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.13%) MOM
9 2 (0.13%) PingFederate
10 1 (0.066%) CSIRT
10 1 (0.066%) Nagios
10 1 (0.066%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.066%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 125 (8.26%) Microsoft
2 104 (6.87%) SAP
3 69 (4.56%) Oracle
4 67 (4.43%) Databricks
5 66 (4.36%) Salesforce
6 50 (3.30%) Google
7 35 (2.31%) Adobe
8 24 (1.59%) Zscaler
9 19 (1.25%) MuleSoft
10 16 (1.06%) ServiceNow
10 16 (1.06%) Workday
11 15 (0.99%) Cisco
12 14 (0.92%) IFS
12 14 (0.92%) Splunk
13 13 (0.86%) Fortinet
13 13 (0.86%) IBM
13 13 (0.86%) Palo Alto
14 12 (0.79%) VMware
15 11 (0.73%) Braze
15 11 (0.73%) Informatica