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 7 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 124 80
Rank change year-on-year +36 -44 +14
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,564 749 1,010
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.93% 2.28% 2.59%
As % of the General category 5.32% 3.60% 4.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 925 391 555
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £450 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year +7.32% +2.50% -6.98%
75th Percentile £663 £633 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 43 68
10th Percentile £12.85 £14.65 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.81 £15.25 £12.50
Median hourly rate £18.75 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +15.03% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £25.15 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £53.25 £22.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.23 £15.96 £16.00
% change year-on-year -4.57% -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 29,399 20,810 22,373
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.04% 63.33% 57.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,462 13,011 14,078
10th Percentile £313 £279 £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 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,192 1,115 1,395
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.42 £16.30 £17.00
Median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £59.50 £50.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.32 £38.12
% change year-on-year +45.61% -41.45% +46.90%

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7 August 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 +34 1,431 £550 +4.76% 1,927
London +48 828 £550 - 831
UK excluding London +19 621 £525 +5.00% 1,263
Work from Home +5 341 £525 +5.00% 680
North of England -24 182 £550 +10.00% 341
South East +15 177 £525 -6.25% 357
Midlands +12 127 £527 +22.40% 251
North West +5 116 £550 +10.00% 186
East Midlands +19 70 £500 +21.21% 112
East of England +13 65 £550 +4.76% 111
West Midlands -24 57 £606 +34.72% 139
Yorkshire -35 55 £500 -4.76% 119
South West -31 37 £350 -1.48% 130
Scotland +4 26 £470 -10.57% 67
North East -37 11 £155 -64.89% 39
Wales -7 4 - - 27
Northern Ireland +7 3 £203 -63.18% 13

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 44 (2.81%) Confluence
2 18 (1.15%) CMS
3 13 (0.83%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 12 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.58%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.32%) SAS
7 4 (0.26%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.19%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.13%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.13%) CICS
9 2 (0.13%) Mule
10 1 (0.064%) Apache
10 1 (0.064%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 55 (3.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 36 (2.30%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.02%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.83%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 11 (0.70%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.58%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.51%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.38%) InDesign
9 6 (0.38%) MS Visio
9 6 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
10 4 (0.26%) Notion
11 3 (0.19%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.064%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.064%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 42 (2.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.79%) Shopify
3 11 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.58%) Oracle Retail
4 9 (0.58%) SAP CRM
4 9 (0.58%) SAP Retail
5 8 (0.51%) Magento
6 6 (0.38%) Salesforce CRM
7 5 (0.32%) NetSuite
7 5 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
7 5 (0.32%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.26%) SAP SD
9 3 (0.19%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 3 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.19%) SAP ERP
9 3 (0.19%) SAP IBP
10 2 (0.13%) SAP CAR
10 2 (0.13%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 186 (11.89%) Azure
2 142 (9.08%) AWS
3 73 (4.67%) GCP
4 70 (4.48%) Power Platform
5 52 (3.32%) Snowflake
6 42 (2.69%) GitHub
7 33 (2.11%) Azure DevOps
8 32 (2.05%) Entra ID
9 26 (1.66%) GitHub Actions
10 25 (1.60%) Dynamics 365
11 22 (1.41%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 19 (1.21%) Figma
13 17 (1.09%) SaaS
14 16 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
15 15 (0.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 14 (0.90%) Microsoft 365
17 12 (0.77%) dbt
18 11 (0.70%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 11 (0.70%) Serverless
19 10 (0.64%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.34%) WAN
2 19 (1.21%) Firewall
3 16 (1.02%) ATM
3 16 (1.02%) VPN
3 16 (1.02%) Wireless
4 14 (0.90%) Network Security
5 13 (0.83%) LAN
6 11 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.51%) BGP
7 8 (0.51%) IPsec
7 8 (0.51%) OSPF
7 8 (0.51%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.45%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 7 (0.45%) RFID
8 7 (0.45%) Structured Cabling
8 7 (0.45%) VLAN
9 6 (0.38%) Cisco Firepower
9 6 (0.38%) VSAN
10 5 (0.32%) Cisco ASA
10 5 (0.32%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.41%) Power BI
2 32 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
3 31 (1.98%) BigQuery
4 21 (1.34%) Data Lake
5 19 (1.21%) NoSQL
6 17 (1.09%) Metadata
6 17 (1.09%) MongoDB
7 16 (1.02%) Tableau
8 15 (0.96%) MySQL
9 14 (0.90%) SQL Server
10 12 (0.77%) Power Query
10 12 (0.77%) Relational Database
11 10 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
11 10 (0.64%) PostgreSQL
11 10 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 8 (0.51%) Redis
13 7 (0.45%) Couchbase
13 7 (0.45%) Looker
13 7 (0.45%) SAP HANA
14 6 (0.38%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 75 (4.80%) JIRA
2 30 (1.92%) Git
3 19 (1.21%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.51%) Subversion
5 7 (0.45%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.32%) JMeter
7 4 (0.26%) Cypress.io
7 4 (0.26%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.26%) GitLab
7 4 (0.26%) Hudson
7 4 (0.26%) Maven
8 2 (0.13%) git-flow
8 2 (0.13%) MLflow
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (0.13%) Postman
8 2 (0.13%) Selenium
8 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.13%) webpack
9 1 (0.064%) Zephyr
General
1 434 (27.75%) Social Skills
2 372 (23.79%) Finance
3 161 (10.29%) Analytical Skills
4 127 (8.12%) Banking
5 102 (6.52%) Marketing
6 90 (5.75%) Manufacturing
7 65 (4.16%) Retail Banking
8 64 (4.09%) Organisational Skills
9 49 (3.13%) Investment Banking
10 45 (2.88%) Corporate Banking
11 32 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
12 30 (1.92%) Legal
13 29 (1.85%) Public Sector
14 28 (1.79%) Telecoms
15 27 (1.73%) Advertising
16 23 (1.47%) French Language
17 22 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
18 21 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
19 18 (1.15%) Spanish Language
20 14 (0.90%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 256 (16.37%) Architect
2 229 (14.64%) Analyst
3 183 (11.70%) Senior
4 139 (8.89%) Solutions Architect
5 132 (8.44%) Business Analyst
6 122 (7.80%) Project Manager
7 112 (7.16%) Lead
8 83 (5.31%) Developer
9 51 (3.26%) Senior Manager
10 50 (3.20%) Consultant
11 46 (2.94%) Designer
12 45 (2.88%) Data Analyst
12 45 (2.88%) Product Manager
13 40 (2.56%) Service Manager
14 38 (2.43%) Enterprise Architect
15 36 (2.30%) Senior Developer
15 36 (2.30%) Supply Chain Architect
16 35 (2.24%) Data Architect
16 35 (2.24%) Programme Manager
17 33 (2.11%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (4.60%) REST
2 40 (2.56%) React
3 33 (2.11%) Middleware
3 33 (2.11%) Spring
4 32 (2.05%) Kafka
5 28 (1.79%) Node.js
6 25 (1.60%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.34%) VML
8 20 (1.28%) Django
8 20 (1.28%) RESTful
9 17 (1.09%) SOAP
10 16 (1.02%) MACH
11 15 (0.96%) HTML
12 14 (0.90%) CSS
12 14 (0.90%) Next.js
12 14 (0.90%) OAuth
13 13 (0.83%) Jakarta EE
14 10 (0.64%) .NET
15 9 (0.58%) OAuth2
16 8 (0.51%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 87 (5.56%) Product Ownership
2 65 (4.16%) FMCG
3 58 (3.71%) EPoS
4 57 (3.64%) Onboarding
5 46 (2.94%) Cloud Native
6 32 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
7 31 (1.98%) Driving Licence
7 31 (1.98%) Mobile App
8 29 (1.85%) Data Centre
9 23 (1.47%) Marketing Technology
10 22 (1.41%) Data Structures
10 22 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
11 21 (1.34%) Mainframe
11 21 (1.34%) Operational Technology
12 20 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
13 19 (1.21%) Smartphone
14 18 (1.15%) Management Information System
15 17 (1.09%) AI Agents
16 16 (1.02%) IoT
17 14 (0.90%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 58 (3.71%) Windows
2 23 (1.47%) Linux
3 12 (0.77%) Unix
4 11 (0.70%) Android
5 8 (0.51%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.45%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.45%) zOS
7 6 (0.38%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.32%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.32%) Windows Server
9 2 (0.13%) Debian
10 1 (0.064%) SUSE
10 1 (0.064%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.064%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 377 (24.10%) Stakeholder Management
2 365 (23.34%) Agile
3 236 (15.09%) E-Commerce
4 205 (13.11%) Problem-Solving
5 183 (11.70%) Migration
6 182 (11.64%) Roadmaps
7 167 (10.68%) Analytics
8 165 (10.55%) AI
9 147 (9.40%) Logistics
10 138 (8.82%) Customer Experience
11 136 (8.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 129 (8.25%) Continuous Improvement
13 128 (8.18%) Decision-Making
14 124 (7.93%) CI/CD
15 113 (7.23%) CRM
16 110 (7.03%) ERP
16 110 (7.03%) Project Management
17 106 (6.78%) DevOps
18 105 (6.71%) User Acceptance Testing
19 103 (6.59%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 137 (8.76%) SQL
2 108 (6.91%) Python
3 58 (3.71%) Java
4 32 (2.05%) TypeScript
5 30 (1.92%) JavaScript
6 12 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (0.64%) C#
7 10 (0.64%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.51%) ABAP
8 8 (0.51%) Apex Code
8 8 (0.51%) Bash
8 8 (0.51%) R
8 8 (0.51%) SOQL
9 6 (0.38%) Bicep
9 6 (0.38%) Kotlin
9 6 (0.38%) PL/SQL
9 6 (0.38%) Scala
9 6 (0.38%) SOSL
10 5 (0.32%) Groovy
11 4 (0.26%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 64 (4.09%) Degree
2 41 (2.62%) Security Cleared
3 22 (1.41%) PMP
3 22 (1.41%) SC Cleared
4 13 (0.83%) DBS Check
5 12 (0.77%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (0.58%) CISSP
7 6 (0.38%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (0.38%) CISM
7 6 (0.38%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.32%) CCNP
8 5 (0.32%) CCSE
8 5 (0.32%) CCSM
8 5 (0.32%) CSPO
9 4 (0.26%) Azure Certification
9 4 (0.26%) City & Guilds
9 4 (0.26%) PhD
10 3 (0.19%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (4.92%) QA
2 72 (4.60%) Data Quality
3 42 (2.69%) GDPR
4 28 (1.79%) PMO
5 24 (1.53%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.02%) PCI DSS
6 16 (1.02%) SLA
7 8 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 7 (0.45%) NIST
9 4 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 4 (0.26%) GRC
9 4 (0.26%) WCAG
10 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.19%) GAAP
10 3 (0.19%) IFRS
10 3 (0.19%) PSD2
11 2 (0.13%) ISO 8583
11 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.064%) COBIT
12 1 (0.064%) GxP
System Software
1 36 (2.30%) Docker
2 34 (2.17%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.83%) Virtual Desktop
4 8 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.32%) Firmware
6 5 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.19%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.064%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 50 (3.20%) Terraform
2 38 (2.43%) Kubernetes
3 11 (0.70%) Ansible
3 11 (0.70%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 9 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
5 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
6 6 (0.38%) FortiGate
7 5 (0.32%) Grafana
8 4 (0.26%) SCCM
9 3 (0.19%) Bosun
10 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.13%) AirWatch
10 2 (0.13%) CA Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.13%) CloudHub
10 2 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
10 2 (0.13%) logstash
10 2 (0.13%) MOM
10 2 (0.13%) PingFederate
10 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.064%) Nagios
Vendors
1 134 (8.57%) Microsoft
2 113 (7.23%) SAP
3 73 (4.67%) Oracle
4 71 (4.54%) Databricks
5 69 (4.41%) Salesforce
6 53 (3.39%) Google
7 35 (2.24%) Adobe
8 24 (1.53%) Zscaler
9 19 (1.21%) MuleSoft
10 17 (1.09%) ServiceNow
10 17 (1.09%) Workday
11 15 (0.96%) Cisco
12 14 (0.90%) IBM
12 14 (0.90%) IFS
12 14 (0.90%) Splunk
13 13 (0.83%) Fortinet
13 13 (0.83%) Palo Alto
13 13 (0.83%) VMware
14 11 (0.70%) Braze
14 11 (0.70%) Informatica