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 2 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 118 99
Rank change year-on-year +31 -19 -2
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,647 763 900
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.00% 2.30% 2.36%
As % of the General category 5.34% 3.63% 4.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 959 413 473
10th Percentile £320 £300 £277
25th Percentile £453 £425 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - -
75th Percentile £675 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 65 25
10th Percentile £12.76 - £12.24
25th Percentile £13.45 £15.25 £16.00
Median hourly rate £15.04 £16.34 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year -7.93% +0.21% -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £19.50 £21.37
90th Percentile £42.75 £25.15 £48.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £13.81 £16.34 £16.00
% change year-on-year -15.46% +2.09% -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 30,821 21,014 22,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.14% 63.45% 58.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,970 13,043 13,184
10th Percentile £313 £275 £280
25th Percentile £420 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,665 1,229 1,014
10th Percentile £13.49 £13.51 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £28.26 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.35% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £53.75 £47.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £21.39 £33.93
% change year-on-year +33.24% -36.96% +28.04%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 +39 1,507 £550 +4.76% 4,417
London +50 838 £575 +4.55% 2,212
UK excluding London +14 688 £525 +5.00% 2,412
Work from Home +15 364 £550 +2.80% 1,735
North of England -10 201 £550 +10.00% 669
Midlands +31 162 £538 +26.47% 465
South East -13 161 £581 +5.68% 647
North West +11 126 £550 +10.00% 354
East Midlands +21 89 £500 +17.86% 216
East of England +8 78 £550 -6.38% 236
West Midlands +11 72 £575 +35.29% 248
Yorkshire -30 57 £500 - 275
South West -14 52 £475 +50.79% 206
Scotland -21 25 £180 -64.00% 137
North East -28 18 £525 +288.89% 50
Wales -10 6 £180 -71.20% 62
Northern Ireland +10 4 £191 - 36

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 52 (3.16%) Confluence
2 24 (1.46%) CMS
3 21 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (1.21%) SharePoint
5 9 (0.55%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.30%) SAS
7 4 (0.24%) Apache
7 4 (0.24%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.24%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.12%) CICS
9 2 (0.12%) Mule
9 2 (0.12%) Sitecore CMS
9 2 (0.12%) WordPress
10 1 (0.061%) HCL Notes
10 1 (0.061%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.061%) Mendix
10 1 (0.061%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.061%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 78 (4.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (3.28%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (0.85%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 12 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.67%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.49%) Photoshop
8 7 (0.43%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.36%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.30%) InDesign
11 4 (0.24%) Notion
12 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
13 1 (0.061%) 3ds Max
13 1 (0.061%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.061%) Siemens NX
13 1 (0.061%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.061%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 61 (3.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.64%) Shopify
3 16 (0.97%) SAP Retail
4 13 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
5 11 (0.67%) SAP CRM
6 9 (0.55%) Oracle Retail
7 8 (0.49%) Magento
8 6 (0.36%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.36%) SAP MM
9 5 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
9 5 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.30%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.30%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
10 4 (0.24%) SAP CAR
10 4 (0.24%) SAP SD
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 218 (13.24%) Azure
2 154 (9.35%) AWS
3 80 (4.86%) Power Platform
4 76 (4.61%) GCP
5 55 (3.34%) Snowflake
6 50 (3.04%) GitHub
7 39 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
8 34 (2.06%) Entra ID
9 31 (1.88%) GitHub Actions
10 28 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
10 28 (1.70%) SaaS
11 27 (1.64%) dbt
12 24 (1.46%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
13 23 (1.40%) Azure Data Factory
14 20 (1.21%) Figma
15 18 (1.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 16 (0.97%) Microsoft 365
17 15 (0.91%) OCI
18 11 (0.67%) Algolia
18 11 (0.67%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.34%) WAN
2 20 (1.21%) Firewall
3 16 (0.97%) ATM
3 16 (0.97%) VPN
4 14 (0.85%) Network Security
5 13 (0.79%) LAN
5 13 (0.79%) Wireless
6 12 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
8 7 (0.43%) BGP
8 7 (0.43%) Internet
8 7 (0.43%) IPsec
8 7 (0.43%) OSPF
8 7 (0.43%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.36%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 6 (0.36%) VLAN
10 5 (0.30%) DNS
11 4 (0.24%) Broadband
11 4 (0.24%) Cisco Firepower
11 4 (0.24%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 79 (4.80%) Power BI
2 59 (3.58%) Data Warehouse
3 33 (2.00%) Data Lake
4 28 (1.70%) BigQuery
5 23 (1.40%) Metadata
6 22 (1.34%) SQL Server
6 22 (1.34%) Tableau
7 19 (1.15%) MongoDB
8 18 (1.09%) NoSQL
9 15 (0.91%) Amazon Redshift
9 15 (0.91%) PostgreSQL
9 15 (0.91%) SAP BW
10 14 (0.85%) Relational Database
10 14 (0.85%) SAP HANA
11 13 (0.79%) MySQL
12 12 (0.73%) Power Query
13 11 (0.67%) Redis
13 11 (0.67%) Star Schema
14 10 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 9 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 77 (4.68%) JIRA
2 24 (1.46%) Git
3 23 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.49%) Subversion
5 7 (0.43%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.30%) Cypress.io
6 5 (0.30%) JMeter
7 4 (0.24%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.24%) GitLab
7 4 (0.24%) Hudson
8 3 (0.18%) Postman
9 2 (0.12%) git-flow
9 2 (0.12%) LSMW
9 2 (0.12%) MLflow
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.12%) Selenium
9 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.12%) webpack
10 1 (0.061%) Cucumber
General
1 467 (28.35%) Social Skills
2 372 (22.59%) Finance
3 158 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
4 136 (8.26%) Marketing
5 119 (7.23%) Banking
6 116 (7.04%) Manufacturing
7 70 (4.25%) Organisational Skills
8 61 (3.70%) Retail Banking
9 41 (2.49%) Corporate Banking
10 40 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
10 40 (2.43%) Investment Banking
11 34 (2.06%) Public Sector
12 29 (1.76%) Advertising
13 28 (1.70%) Legal
13 28 (1.70%) Telecoms
14 21 (1.28%) French Language
15 19 (1.15%) Back Office
16 17 (1.03%) Pharmaceutical
16 17 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
16 17 (1.03%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 267 (16.21%) Architect
2 237 (14.39%) Analyst
3 177 (10.75%) Senior
4 149 (9.05%) Solutions Architect
5 136 (8.26%) Business Analyst
6 120 (7.29%) Project Manager
7 116 (7.04%) Lead
8 85 (5.16%) Developer
9 60 (3.64%) Consultant
10 55 (3.34%) Product Manager
11 50 (3.04%) Data Analyst
11 50 (3.04%) Designer
12 43 (2.61%) Senior Manager
13 42 (2.55%) Supply Chain Architect
14 35 (2.13%) Service Manager
15 34 (2.06%) Senior Developer
15 34 (2.06%) Service Transition Manager
15 34 (2.06%) Transition Manager
16 33 (2.00%) Data Engineer
17 31 (1.88%) Enterprise Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (4.31%) REST
2 49 (2.98%) Terraform
3 43 (2.61%) Kafka
3 43 (2.61%) React
4 30 (1.82%) Node.js
4 30 (1.82%) Spring
5 26 (1.58%) Spring Boot
6 25 (1.52%) Middleware
7 23 (1.40%) RESTful
7 23 (1.40%) SOAP
8 22 (1.34%) Django
9 21 (1.28%) MACH
10 18 (1.09%) Next.js
10 18 (1.09%) SAP Fiori
11 17 (1.03%) VML
12 15 (0.91%) HTML
13 13 (0.79%) .NET
13 13 (0.79%) SAPUI5
14 11 (0.67%) CSS
14 11 (0.67%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 84 (5.10%) Product Ownership
2 73 (4.43%) FMCG
3 71 (4.31%) EPoS
4 57 (3.46%) Onboarding
5 54 (3.28%) Cloud Native
6 49 (2.98%) Driving Licence
7 34 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
7 34 (2.06%) Management Information System
8 31 (1.88%) Mobile App
9 30 (1.82%) Marketing Technology
10 29 (1.76%) Greenfield Project
11 25 (1.52%) Data Centre
11 25 (1.52%) Smartphone
12 23 (1.40%) Data Structures
13 21 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
13 21 (1.28%) Operational Technology
14 19 (1.15%) Mainframe
15 18 (1.09%) AI Agents
16 17 (1.03%) Credit Risk
16 17 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.16%) Windows
2 17 (1.03%) Linux
3 12 (0.73%) Android
4 8 (0.49%) Unix
5 7 (0.43%) Apple iOS
5 7 (0.43%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.36%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.24%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.24%) zOS
8 2 (0.12%) Debian
9 1 (0.061%) OS/2
9 1 (0.061%) SUSE
9 1 (0.061%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.061%) VMS
9 1 (0.061%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 428 (25.99%) Stakeholder Management
2 374 (22.71%) Agile
3 256 (15.54%) E-Commerce
4 193 (11.72%) Analytics
5 192 (11.66%) Migration
6 189 (11.48%) Logistics
7 174 (10.56%) AI
8 171 (10.38%) Problem-Solving
9 170 (10.32%) Roadmaps
10 151 (9.17%) Decision-Making
11 140 (8.50%) Customer Experience
12 138 (8.38%) CRM
13 137 (8.32%) Continuous Improvement
14 128 (7.77%) CI/CD
15 127 (7.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 117 (7.10%) Customer Service
17 113 (6.86%) Business Intelligence
17 113 (6.86%) Project Management
18 112 (6.80%) DevOps
19 111 (6.74%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 157 (9.53%) SQL
2 116 (7.04%) Python
3 52 (3.16%) Java
4 36 (2.19%) TypeScript
5 27 (1.64%) JavaScript
6 14 (0.85%) ABAP
7 12 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 11 (0.67%) C#
9 10 (0.61%) R
10 9 (0.55%) Apex Code
10 9 (0.55%) Bash
11 7 (0.43%) PowerShell
11 7 (0.43%) SOQL
12 6 (0.36%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.30%) Groovy
13 5 (0.30%) SOSL
14 4 (0.24%) Bicep
14 4 (0.24%) Scala
14 4 (0.24%) Shell Script
14 4 (0.24%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 63 (3.83%) Degree
2 40 (2.43%) Security Cleared
3 23 (1.40%) PMP
4 18 (1.09%) SC Cleared
5 14 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
6 12 (0.73%) PMI Certification
7 11 (0.67%) DBS Check
8 8 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (0.49%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (0.36%) CISSP
10 5 (0.30%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (0.30%) CISM
10 5 (0.30%) City & Guilds
10 5 (0.30%) Six Sigma Green Belt
11 4 (0.24%) SAP Certification
12 3 (0.18%) APMG
12 3 (0.18%) CCNP
12 3 (0.18%) CCSE
12 3 (0.18%) CSPO
12 3 (0.18%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (5.22%) Data Quality
2 75 (4.55%) QA
3 31 (1.88%) GDPR
4 25 (1.52%) Accessibility
4 25 (1.52%) PMO
5 13 (0.79%) PCI DSS
6 10 (0.61%) SLA
7 6 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
7 6 (0.36%) NIST
8 5 (0.30%) WCAG
9 4 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 4 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.18%) PSD2
11 2 (0.12%) GAAP
11 2 (0.12%) GRC
11 2 (0.12%) IFRS
11 2 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.061%) GxP
12 1 (0.061%) HL7
12 1 (0.061%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 35 (2.13%) Docker
2 25 (1.52%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.30%) Firmware
5 5 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.061%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 41 (2.49%) Kubernetes
2 12 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
3 10 (0.61%) Ansible
4 7 (0.43%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 5 (0.30%) FortiGate
5 5 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.24%) Bosun
7 3 (0.18%) SCCM
8 2 (0.12%) AirWatch
8 2 (0.12%) CloudHub
8 2 (0.12%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.12%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.12%) logstash
8 2 (0.12%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.061%) Argo
9 1 (0.061%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.061%) Grafana
9 1 (0.061%) Nagios
9 1 (0.061%) vMotion
9 1 (0.061%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 164 (9.96%) Microsoft
2 143 (8.68%) SAP
3 88 (5.34%) Salesforce
4 80 (4.86%) Databricks
5 69 (4.19%) Oracle
6 50 (3.04%) Google
7 36 (2.19%) Adobe
8 30 (1.82%) MuleSoft
9 24 (1.46%) Zscaler
10 21 (1.28%) IBM
11 20 (1.21%) Cisco
12 18 (1.09%) Workday
13 13 (0.79%) New Relic
13 13 (0.79%) Splunk
14 12 (0.73%) Apple
14 12 (0.73%) ServiceNow
15 11 (0.67%) Braze
15 11 (0.67%) Fortinet
16 10 (0.61%) Informatica
16 10 (0.61%) Palo Alto