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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 120 98
Rank change year-on-year +32 -22 +5
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,648 757 883
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.00% 2.29% 2.35%
As % of the General category 5.33% 3.63% 4.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 958 414 459
10th Percentile £313 £300 £283
25th Percentile £450 £431 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - -
75th Percentile £663 £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 136 65 20
10th Percentile £12.76 - £12.35
25th Percentile £13.45 £15.25 £15.75
Median hourly rate £15.02 £16.34 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year -8.05% +0.21% -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £19.50 £21.37
90th Percentile £41.25 £25.15 £55.50
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 30,940 20,880 22,031
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.35% 63.24% 58.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,992 12,992 13,020
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 £743 £738 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £486
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.31% -2.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,724 1,232 972
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.51 £14.76
25th Percentile £16.11 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £27.85 £25.08 £33.52
Median % change year-on-year +11.07% -25.19% +21.89%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.74 £21.39 £32.50
% change year-on-year +29.69% -34.18% +25.00%

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 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 7 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 7 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 1,506 £550 +4.76% 4,078
London +41 827 £575 +4.55% 1,986
UK excluding London +15 697 £525 +5.00% 2,263
Work from Home +14 363 £550 +0.92% 1,549
North of England -3 198 £550 +10.00% 636
Midlands +38 164 £525 +20.41% 446
South East -11 163 £581 +8.14% 599
North West +22 127 £550 +10.00% 342
East Midlands +17 88 £500 +14.68% 194
East of England +13 84 £538 -8.51% 218
West Midlands +7 75 £575 +31.43% 252
South West -21 53 £453 +82.83% 177
Yorkshire -35 53 £475 -9.52% 246
Scotland -16 25 £180 -64.00% 125
North East -24 18 £525 +288.89% 58
Wales -8 7 £180 -71.20% 63
Northern Ireland +9 4 £191 - 43

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 53 (3.22%) Confluence
2 25 (1.52%) CMS
3 21 (1.27%) SharePoint
4 20 (1.21%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.49%) 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
8 3 (0.18%) Sitecore CMS
9 2 (0.12%) CICS
9 2 (0.12%) Mule
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 80 (4.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (3.46%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (0.85%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 13 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.67%) MS Visio
7 10 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
8 8 (0.49%) Photoshop
9 7 (0.42%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.36%) CPLEX
11 5 (0.30%) InDesign
12 4 (0.24%) Notion
13 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
14 1 (0.061%) 3ds Max
14 1 (0.061%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.061%) Siemens NX
14 1 (0.061%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.061%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 61 (3.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (1.76%) Shopify
3 15 (0.91%) SAP Retail
4 13 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
5 11 (0.67%) SAP CRM
6 9 (0.55%) Magento
6 9 (0.55%) Oracle Retail
7 6 (0.36%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.36%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.30%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.30%) Workday HCM
9 4 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.24%) SAP CAR
9 4 (0.24%) SAP SD
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 218 (13.23%) Azure
2 153 (9.28%) AWS
3 80 (4.85%) Power Platform
4 74 (4.49%) GCP
5 55 (3.34%) Snowflake
6 52 (3.16%) GitHub
7 39 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
8 34 (2.06%) Entra ID
9 31 (1.88%) GitHub Actions
10 28 (1.70%) SaaS
11 26 (1.58%) dbt
12 25 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
13 24 (1.46%) Azure Data Factory
13 24 (1.46%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
14 20 (1.21%) Figma
15 18 (1.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 16 (0.97%) Microsoft 365
17 15 (0.91%) OCI
18 12 (0.73%) Salesforce Service Cloud
19 11 (0.67%) Algolia
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.33%) 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 (0.42%) BGP
8 7 (0.42%) Internet
8 7 (0.42%) IPsec
8 7 (0.42%) OSPF
8 7 (0.42%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.36%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 6 (0.36%) VLAN
10 5 (0.30%) DNS
11 4 (0.24%) Cisco Firepower
11 4 (0.24%) SMS
11 4 (0.24%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (4.73%) Power BI
2 60 (3.64%) Data Warehouse
3 34 (2.06%) Data Lake
4 27 (1.64%) BigQuery
5 23 (1.40%) SQL Server
6 22 (1.33%) Metadata
6 22 (1.33%) 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 (4.67%) JIRA
2 24 (1.46%) Git
3 23 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.49%) Subversion
5 7 (0.42%) 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%) Toad
General
1 467 (28.34%) Social Skills
2 366 (22.21%) Finance
3 159 (9.65%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (8.31%) Marketing
5 118 (7.16%) Banking
6 117 (7.10%) Manufacturing
7 75 (4.55%) Organisational Skills
8 60 (3.64%) Retail Banking
9 39 (2.37%) Corporate Banking
9 39 (2.37%) Influencing Skills
10 38 (2.31%) Investment Banking
11 33 (2.00%) Public Sector
12 30 (1.82%) Advertising
13 28 (1.70%) Legal
13 28 (1.70%) Telecoms
14 20 (1.21%) French Language
15 19 (1.15%) Back Office
16 17 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 16 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
17 16 (0.97%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 256 (15.53%) Architect
2 237 (14.38%) Analyst
3 172 (10.44%) Senior
4 147 (8.92%) Solutions Architect
5 135 (8.19%) Business Analyst
6 117 (7.10%) Lead
7 115 (6.98%) Project Manager
8 86 (5.22%) Developer
9 60 (3.64%) Consultant
10 54 (3.28%) Product Manager
11 50 (3.03%) Data Analyst
12 49 (2.97%) Designer
13 42 (2.55%) Senior Manager
13 42 (2.55%) Supply Chain Architect
14 35 (2.12%) Service Manager
15 34 (2.06%) Senior Developer
15 34 (2.06%) Service Transition Manager
15 34 (2.06%) Transition Manager
16 32 (1.94%) Data Engineer
16 32 (1.94%) EPoS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (4.37%) REST
2 49 (2.97%) Terraform
3 43 (2.61%) Kafka
4 41 (2.49%) React
5 30 (1.82%) Node.js
5 30 (1.82%) Spring
6 26 (1.58%) Spring Boot
7 25 (1.52%) Middleware
8 23 (1.40%) RESTful
8 23 (1.40%) SOAP
9 22 (1.33%) Django
10 19 (1.15%) MACH
10 19 (1.15%) Next.js
11 18 (1.09%) SAP Fiori
12 16 (0.97%) VML
13 15 (0.91%) .NET
13 15 (0.91%) HTML
14 13 (0.79%) SAPUI5
15 11 (0.67%) CSS
15 11 (0.67%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 84 (5.10%) Product Ownership
2 83 (5.04%) EPoS
3 73 (4.43%) FMCG
4 61 (3.70%) Driving Licence
5 58 (3.52%) Onboarding
6 53 (3.22%) Cloud Native
7 35 (2.12%) Management Information System
8 33 (2.00%) Legacy Systems
9 31 (1.88%) Mobile App
10 30 (1.82%) Marketing Technology
11 28 (1.70%) Greenfield Project
12 27 (1.64%) Smartphone
13 25 (1.52%) Data Centre
14 23 (1.40%) Data Structures
15 21 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
15 21 (1.27%) Operational Technology
16 18 (1.09%) AI Agents
17 17 (1.03%) Credit Risk
17 17 (1.03%) Mainframe
17 17 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 51 (3.09%) Windows
2 17 (1.03%) Linux
3 12 (0.73%) Android
4 9 (0.55%) Unix
5 7 (0.42%) Apple iOS
5 7 (0.42%) 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
1 430 (26.09%) Stakeholder Management
2 372 (22.57%) Agile
3 262 (15.90%) E-Commerce
4 191 (11.59%) Migration
5 190 (11.53%) Logistics
6 189 (11.47%) Analytics
7 173 (10.50%) AI
8 169 (10.25%) Problem-Solving
9 165 (10.01%) Roadmaps
10 147 (8.92%) Decision-Making
11 139 (8.43%) Customer Experience
12 138 (8.37%) CRM
13 135 (8.19%) Continuous Improvement
14 127 (7.71%) CI/CD
15 124 (7.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 121 (7.34%) Customer Service
17 113 (6.86%) DevOps
18 111 (6.74%) Business Intelligence
18 111 (6.74%) Data Modelling
19 110 (6.67%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 159 (9.65%) SQL
2 117 (7.10%) Python
3 52 (3.16%) Java
4 34 (2.06%) TypeScript
5 28 (1.70%) JavaScript
6 14 (0.85%) ABAP
7 12 (0.73%) C#
7 12 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 10 (0.61%) R
9 9 (0.55%) Apex Code
9 9 (0.55%) Bash
10 7 (0.42%) PL/SQL
10 7 (0.42%) PowerShell
10 7 (0.42%) SOQL
11 5 (0.30%) Groovy
11 5 (0.30%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.30%) SOSL
12 4 (0.24%) Bicep
12 4 (0.24%) T-SQL
13 3 (0.18%) Scala
Qualifications
1 63 (3.82%) Degree
2 33 (2.00%) Security Cleared
3 22 (1.33%) PMP
4 14 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
5 11 (0.67%) PMI Certification
5 11 (0.67%) SC Cleared
6 10 (0.61%) DBS Check
7 9 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
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%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.18%) CCNP
12 3 (0.18%) CCSE
12 3 (0.18%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (5.22%) Data Quality
2 76 (4.61%) QA
3 30 (1.82%) 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
8 5 (0.30%) 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
12 1 (0.061%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.061%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.061%) IASME
12 1 (0.061%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 35 (2.12%) 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 (0.42%) 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
1 165 (10.01%) Microsoft
2 143 (8.68%) SAP
3 88 (5.34%) Salesforce
4 78 (4.73%) Databricks
5 68 (4.13%) Oracle
6 52 (3.16%) Google
7 35 (2.12%) Adobe
8 31 (1.88%) MuleSoft
9 24 (1.46%) Zscaler
10 21 (1.27%) IBM
11 20 (1.21%) Cisco
12 18 (1.09%) Workday
13 13 (0.79%) New Relic
14 12 (0.73%) Apple
14 12 (0.73%) ServiceNow
14 12 (0.73%) Splunk
15 11 (0.67%) Braze
15 11 (0.67%) Fortinet
16 10 (0.61%) Palo Alto
16 10 (0.61%) VMware