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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 109 85
Rank change year-on-year +12 -24 +8
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,285 733 1,074
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.53% 2.43% 2.47%
As % of the General category 4.64% 3.83% 4.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 765 377 595
10th Percentile £263 £308 £283
25th Percentile £413 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% - -3.30%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 33 86
10th Percentile £12.98 £14.17 £11.88
25th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £16.30 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.83% +1.88% -19.23%
75th Percentile £22.50 £51.25 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £85.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.71 £15.50 £16.00
% change year-on-year +7.81% -3.13% -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 27,698 19,134 24,851
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.43% 63.53% 57.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,710 12,053 15,562
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,885 916 2,005
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.41 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.47 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.50 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.36% -12.70% +5.00%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.03 £72.50 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £23.10 £30.00
% change year-on-year +36.19% -23.00% +17.19%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +15 1,180 £525 - 989
London +14 681 £550 - 336
UK excluding London +8 512 £500 - 769
Work from Home -28 275 £500 - 315
South East +7 155 £525 -3.45% 246
North of England -40 138 £550 +10.00% 174
Midlands -14 99 £500 +8.11% 163
North West +1 92 £575 +15.00% 94
East of England +10 58 £550 - 106
East Midlands +3 55 £495 +7.03% 95
West Midlands -30 44 £514 +8.30% 68
Yorkshire -57 43 £500 -4.76% 66
South West -36 35 £325 -27.89% 74
Scotland -4 21 £496 -6.85% 28
Northern Ireland +3 3 £196 -64.32% 6
Wales -13 3 £190 +29.52% 8
North East -35 3 £173 -76.98% 20

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 (3.19%) Confluence
2 18 (1.40%) CMS
3 15 (1.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 13 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.54%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.39%) SAS
7 3 (0.23%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.16%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.16%) CICS
9 1 (0.078%) Apache
9 1 (0.078%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 33 (2.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (1.95%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.48%) Microsoft Project
4 18 (1.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.01%) Chatbot
6 10 (0.78%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.78%) Photoshop
7 9 (0.70%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 9 (0.70%) Adobe Illustrator
8 6 (0.47%) InDesign
9 3 (0.23%) Notion
9 3 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
10 2 (0.16%) UserZoom
11 1 (0.078%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.078%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.078%) Maya
11 1 (0.078%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.078%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 29 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (1.79%) Shopify
3 13 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.78%) Oracle Retail
5 9 (0.70%) SAP Retail
6 7 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 7 (0.54%) SAP CRM
7 5 (0.39%) Finacle
7 5 (0.39%) Magento
7 5 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.39%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.31%) NetSuite
8 4 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
9 3 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
9 3 (0.23%) SAP CAR
9 3 (0.23%) SAP SD
10 2 (0.16%) Cognos Controller
10 2 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
10 2 (0.16%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.16%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 151 (11.75%) Azure
2 125 (9.73%) AWS
3 76 (5.91%) GCP
4 67 (5.21%) Power Platform
5 49 (3.81%) Snowflake
6 25 (1.95%) GitHub
7 23 (1.79%) Dynamics 365
8 21 (1.63%) Azure DevOps
9 20 (1.56%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.40%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 17 (1.32%) Figma
12 16 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
13 15 (1.17%) SaaS
14 14 (1.09%) dbt
15 12 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
16 11 (0.86%) Google Workspace
16 11 (0.86%) Microsoft 365
17 10 (0.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 10 (0.78%) BigCommerce
17 10 (0.78%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.01%) ATM
1 13 (1.01%) Firewall
1 13 (1.01%) WAN
2 12 (0.93%) Network Security
3 11 (0.86%) VPN
3 11 (0.86%) Wireless
4 9 (0.70%) RFID
5 7 (0.54%) LAN
5 7 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (0.47%) Cisco Firepower
6 6 (0.47%) SD-WAN
7 5 (0.39%) BGP
7 5 (0.39%) Cisco ASA
7 5 (0.39%) Cisco Nexus
7 5 (0.39%) IPsec
7 5 (0.39%) OSPF
7 5 (0.39%) VSAN
8 4 (0.31%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 4 (0.31%) Internet
8 4 (0.31%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (5.06%) Power BI
2 27 (2.10%) Data Warehouse
3 25 (1.95%) BigQuery
4 21 (1.63%) MySQL
4 21 (1.63%) Tableau
5 17 (1.32%) Metadata
6 16 (1.25%) Data Lake
7 15 (1.17%) SQL Server
8 12 (0.93%) NoSQL
9 11 (0.86%) Relational Database
10 8 (0.62%) PostgreSQL
11 7 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
11 7 (0.54%) Data Vault
11 7 (0.54%) MongoDB
11 7 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 6 (0.47%) Snowflake Schema
13 5 (0.39%) Power Query
13 5 (0.39%) SAP HANA
14 4 (0.31%) Looker
14 4 (0.31%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 82 (6.38%) JIRA
2 24 (1.87%) Git
3 13 (1.01%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.39%) GitLab
4 5 (0.39%) Subversion
5 4 (0.31%) Maven
6 3 (0.23%) Cypress.io
6 3 (0.23%) Eclipse
6 3 (0.23%) ERwin
6 3 (0.23%) Hudson
6 3 (0.23%) JMeter
6 3 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
6 3 (0.23%) Selenium
6 3 (0.23%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.16%) git-flow
7 2 (0.16%) MLflow
7 2 (0.16%) Postman
7 2 (0.16%) WebDriver
7 2 (0.16%) webpack
8 1 (0.078%) Cucumber
General
1 372 (28.95%) Social Skills
2 302 (23.50%) Finance
3 121 (9.42%) Analytical Skills
4 119 (9.26%) Banking
5 76 (5.91%) Marketing
6 73 (5.68%) Manufacturing
7 61 (4.75%) Organisational Skills
8 60 (4.67%) Retail Banking
9 47 (3.66%) Investment Banking
10 44 (3.42%) Corporate Banking
11 28 (2.18%) Telecoms
12 27 (2.10%) Public Sector
13 26 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
14 23 (1.79%) French Language
15 22 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
16 21 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
16 21 (1.63%) Legal
17 18 (1.40%) Spanish Language
18 17 (1.32%) Advertising
19 14 (1.09%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 207 (16.11%) Architect
2 189 (14.71%) Analyst
3 159 (12.37%) Senior
4 117 (9.11%) Project Manager
5 110 (8.56%) Business Analyst
6 98 (7.63%) Lead
6 98 (7.63%) Solutions Architect
7 64 (4.98%) Senior Manager
8 50 (3.89%) Developer
9 44 (3.42%) Designer
10 40 (3.11%) Technical Manager
11 39 (3.04%) Consultant
12 38 (2.96%) Enterprise Architect
13 37 (2.88%) Senior Project Manager
14 36 (2.80%) Product Manager
15 29 (2.26%) 2nd Line Support
16 28 (2.18%) Data Architect
16 28 (2.18%) Data Engineer
17 27 (2.10%) Data Analyst
17 27 (2.10%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (4.12%) REST
2 35 (2.72%) Middleware
3 29 (2.26%) React
4 25 (1.95%) VML
5 24 (1.87%) Spring
6 21 (1.63%) Kafka
7 18 (1.40%) Spring Boot
8 16 (1.25%) CSS
8 16 (1.25%) HTML
8 16 (1.25%) Node.js
9 15 (1.17%) RESTful
10 13 (1.01%) MACH
10 13 (1.01%) OAuth
11 11 (0.86%) .NET
11 11 (0.86%) Django
11 11 (0.86%) J2EE
11 11 (0.86%) SOAP
12 9 (0.70%) AngularJS
13 8 (0.62%) OAuth2
13 8 (0.62%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 79 (6.15%) Product Ownership
2 50 (3.89%) FMCG
3 47 (3.66%) EPoS
4 41 (3.19%) Driving Licence
5 38 (2.96%) Cloud Native
6 37 (2.88%) Onboarding
7 25 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
8 21 (1.63%) Data Centre
8 21 (1.63%) Data Structures
8 21 (1.63%) Mobile App
9 18 (1.40%) Mainframe
9 18 (1.40%) Marketing Technology
9 18 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
10 17 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
11 16 (1.25%) Management Information System
12 15 (1.17%) AI Agents
13 12 (0.93%) Operational Technology
14 11 (0.86%) Smartphone
14 11 (0.86%) Taxonomies
14 11 (0.86%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 54 (4.20%) Windows
2 26 (2.02%) Linux
3 12 (0.93%) Android
4 10 (0.78%) Unix
5 7 (0.54%) Mac OS
5 7 (0.54%) zOS
6 6 (0.47%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.39%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.39%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.31%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.078%) Debian
9 1 (0.078%) SUSE
9 1 (0.078%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.078%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 307 (23.89%) Agile
2 298 (23.19%) Stakeholder Management
3 189 (14.71%) Problem-Solving
4 186 (14.47%) E-Commerce
5 163 (12.68%) Migration
6 154 (11.98%) Roadmaps
7 138 (10.74%) Analytics
8 123 (9.57%) Customer Experience
9 116 (9.03%) Project Management
10 114 (8.87%) AI
11 110 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 94 (7.32%) ERP
12 94 (7.32%) Project Delivery
13 93 (7.24%) Business Intelligence
13 93 (7.24%) Decision-Making
14 91 (7.08%) CI/CD
15 89 (6.93%) Continuous Improvement
16 88 (6.85%) User Acceptance Testing
17 87 (6.77%) Logistics
18 86 (6.69%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 111 (8.64%) SQL
2 82 (6.38%) Python
3 51 (3.97%) Java
4 26 (2.02%) JavaScript
5 19 (1.48%) TypeScript
6 10 (0.78%) C#
6 10 (0.78%) Shell Script
7 9 (0.70%) PowerShell
8 7 (0.54%) PL/SQL
8 7 (0.54%) SOQL
9 6 (0.47%) Apex Code
9 6 (0.47%) Bash
9 6 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (0.47%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.39%) ABAP
10 5 (0.39%) Bicep
10 5 (0.39%) SOSL
11 4 (0.31%) Groovy
11 4 (0.31%) R
11 4 (0.31%) Scala
Qualifications
1 58 (4.51%) Degree
2 39 (3.04%) Security Cleared
3 25 (1.95%) SC Cleared
4 18 (1.40%) PMP
5 10 (0.78%) DBS Check
5 10 (0.78%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.70%) CISSP
6 9 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (0.47%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.47%) CISM
8 6 (0.47%) Master's Degree
9 5 (0.39%) APMP
9 5 (0.39%) CCNP
9 5 (0.39%) CCSE
9 5 (0.39%) CCSM
9 5 (0.39%) CSPO
10 4 (0.31%) City & Guilds
10 4 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
10 4 (0.31%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (4.82%) QA
2 58 (4.51%) Data Quality
3 40 (3.11%) GDPR
4 32 (2.49%) PMO
5 19 (1.48%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.25%) PCI DSS
7 12 (0.93%) SLA
8 9 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.54%) NIST
10 3 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.23%) GAAP
10 3 (0.23%) IFRS
10 3 (0.23%) PSD2
11 2 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.16%) GRC
11 2 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.16%) WCAG
12 1 (0.078%) COBIT
12 1 (0.078%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 1 (0.078%) NCSC
System Software
1 24 (1.87%) Active Directory
2 23 (1.79%) Docker
3 7 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.23%) Firmware
7 2 (0.16%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 33 (2.57%) Terraform
2 25 (1.95%) Kubernetes
3 14 (1.09%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 9 (0.70%) Ansible
5 6 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.39%) Grafana
6 5 (0.39%) SCCM
7 4 (0.31%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.16%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.16%) MOM
8 2 (0.16%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.078%) AirWatch
9 1 (0.078%) Argo
9 1 (0.078%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.078%) Istio
9 1 (0.078%) Nagios
9 1 (0.078%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.078%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 103 (8.02%) Microsoft
2 88 (6.85%) SAP
3 78 (6.07%) Oracle
4 59 (4.59%) Salesforce
5 53 (4.12%) Google
6 49 (3.81%) Databricks
7 35 (2.72%) Adobe
8 22 (1.71%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.25%) Cisco
10 14 (1.09%) IBM
10 14 (1.09%) IFS
11 13 (1.01%) Splunk
11 13 (1.01%) Zscaler
12 12 (0.93%) MuleSoft
12 12 (0.93%) Sitecore
13 11 (0.86%) Fortinet
13 11 (0.86%) Palo Alto
13 11 (0.86%) VMware
14 8 (0.62%) Braze
14 8 (0.62%) Dynatrace