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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 98 84
Rank change year-on-year -27 -14 +7
Contract jobs citing Retail 988 776 1,071
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.08% 2.65% 2.47%
As % of the General category 3.83% 4.20% 4.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 591 416 597
10th Percentile £206 £308 £300
25th Percentile £384 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £484 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.30% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 20 88
10th Percentile £12.98 £15.12 £11.56
25th Percentile £16.17 £16.30 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £32.00 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.38% +100.00% -19.23%
75th Percentile £43.75 £58.31 £21.37
90th Percentile £46.25 £87.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.50 £16.30 £15.29
% change year-on-year +7.36% +6.61% -22.82%

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 25,769 18,495 25,239
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.37% 63.14% 58.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,872 11,806 15,915
10th Percentile £305 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £641 £650
90th Percentile £738 £764 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,642 789 1,949
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.50 £15.46
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -12.56%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.91
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £24.88 £28.00
% change year-on-year +6.72% -11.14% -6.67%

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 3 May 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 3 May 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 3 May 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 -13 904 £500 -4.76% 1,195
London -21 486 £531 -3.41% 431
UK excluding London -7 428 £484 -3.30% 868
Work from Home -53 242 £500 -2.44% 416
North of England -25 128 £500 +11.11% 229
South East -22 115 £375 -25.00% 262
Midlands -33 85 £495 -1.00% 159
North West -3 75 £500 - 142
East of England -13 50 £515 -6.45% 124
Yorkshire -40 48 £513 +38.51% 71
East Midlands -7 46 £495 -1.00% 84
West Midlands -46 39 £500 +11.11% 75
South West -15 26 £320 -9.86% 73
Scotland -2 21 £450 -14.89% 33
North East -17 5 £206 -72.50% 20
Northern Ireland +2 2 £190 -44.48% 7
Wales -14 1 £190 +29.52% 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 38 (3.85%) Confluence
2 18 (1.82%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 9 (0.91%) CMS
5 7 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.51%) SAS
7 4 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.20%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.20%) Magnolia
9 1 (0.10%) CICS
9 1 (0.10%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.10%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 33 (3.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 19 (1.92%) Microsoft Project
3 14 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
4 13 (1.32%) Chatbot
5 11 (1.11%) MS Visio
6 8 (0.81%) Photoshop
7 6 (0.61%) Adobe Illustrator
8 3 (0.30%) InDesign
9 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.20%) Trello
9 2 (0.20%) UserZoom
10 1 (0.10%) 3ds Max
10 1 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.10%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.10%) Maya
10 1 (0.10%) PlantUML
10 1 (0.10%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 23 (2.33%) Shopify
2 18 (1.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
4 8 (0.81%) Oracle Retail
5 7 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 7 (0.71%) SAP Retail
6 6 (0.61%) Finacle
7 5 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.40%) SAP CRM
8 4 (0.40%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.40%) Temenos T24
9 3 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
9 3 (0.30%) SAP Payroll
10 2 (0.20%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
10 2 (0.20%) Magento
10 2 (0.20%) Sage X3
10 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
10 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.20%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 90 (9.11%) Azure
2 70 (7.09%) AWS
3 58 (5.87%) GCP
4 49 (4.96%) Power Platform
5 29 (2.94%) Snowflake
6 26 (2.63%) Dynamics 365
7 20 (2.02%) GitHub
8 19 (1.92%) Microsoft 365
9 17 (1.72%) SaaS
9 17 (1.72%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
10 16 (1.62%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (1.42%) BigCommerce
11 14 (1.42%) Entra ID
12 13 (1.32%) Figma
12 13 (1.32%) Google Workspace
13 12 (1.21%) GitHub Actions
14 11 (1.11%) Cloud Run
14 11 (1.11%) Miro
15 10 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
16 8 (0.81%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.72%) VPN
2 16 (1.62%) RFID
3 14 (1.42%) Firewall
3 14 (1.42%) WAN
3 14 (1.42%) Wireless
4 8 (0.81%) NFC
4 8 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
5 7 (0.71%) LAN
6 6 (0.61%) BGP
6 6 (0.61%) Cisco Nexus
6 6 (0.61%) OSPF
7 4 (0.40%) EIGRP
7 4 (0.40%) VoIP
8 3 (0.30%) Cisco Firepower
8 3 (0.30%) MPLS
8 3 (0.30%) Network Security
8 3 (0.30%) SD-WAN
8 3 (0.30%) WLAN
9 2 (0.20%) Cisco ASA
9 2 (0.20%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (4.45%) Power BI
2 26 (2.63%) BigQuery
3 16 (1.62%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (1.32%) SQL Server
5 12 (1.21%) MySQL
5 12 (1.21%) Tableau
6 9 (0.91%) Metadata
7 8 (0.81%) Data Lake
8 6 (0.61%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (0.61%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.51%) Data Vault
10 4 (0.40%) Delta Lake
11 3 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.30%) Looker
11 3 (0.30%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.30%) OLAP
11 3 (0.30%) Oracle OLAP
11 3 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
11 3 (0.30%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 74 (7.49%) JIRA
2 16 (1.62%) Git
3 11 (1.11%) GitLab
4 10 (1.01%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.40%) Maven
6 3 (0.30%) ERwin
6 3 (0.30%) Selenium
7 2 (0.20%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.20%) Hudson
7 2 (0.20%) MLflow
7 2 (0.20%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.20%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.10%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.10%) Gatling
8 1 (0.10%) IBM UrbanCode
8 1 (0.10%) JMeter
8 1 (0.10%) Mockito
8 1 (0.10%) Oracle APEX
8 1 (0.10%) Subversion
8 1 (0.10%) Zephyr
General
1 299 (30.26%) Social Skills
2 244 (24.70%) Finance
3 106 (10.73%) Analytical Skills
4 87 (8.81%) Banking
5 54 (5.47%) Marketing
6 45 (4.55%) Manufacturing
7 44 (4.45%) Organisational Skills
8 39 (3.95%) Retail Banking
9 33 (3.34%) Investment Banking
10 31 (3.14%) Corporate Banking
11 29 (2.94%) Public Sector
12 28 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
13 27 (2.73%) Presentation Skills
14 25 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
15 23 (2.33%) Telecoms
16 17 (1.72%) Legal
17 15 (1.52%) Back Office
18 11 (1.11%) Advertising
19 10 (1.01%) Pharmaceutical
19 10 (1.01%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 163 (16.50%) Analyst
2 139 (14.07%) Architect
3 121 (12.25%) Senior
4 111 (11.23%) Project Manager
5 98 (9.92%) Business Analyst
6 76 (7.69%) Lead
7 50 (5.06%) Senior Manager
8 49 (4.96%) Solutions Architect
9 38 (3.85%) Consultant
10 35 (3.54%) Technical Manager
11 31 (3.14%) Designer
11 31 (3.14%) Developer
12 27 (2.73%) Enterprise Architect
12 27 (2.73%) Senior Project Manager
13 24 (2.43%) Data Architect
14 22 (2.23%) Programme Manager
15 19 (1.92%) Product Manager
16 18 (1.82%) Data Engineer
17 17 (1.72%) Data Analyst
17 17 (1.72%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.14%) Middleware
2 29 (2.94%) VML
3 27 (2.73%) REST
4 19 (1.92%) React
4 19 (1.92%) Spring
5 14 (1.42%) Node.js
6 13 (1.32%) Spring Boot
7 12 (1.21%) AngularJS
8 10 (1.01%) CSS
8 10 (1.01%) PySpark
9 9 (0.91%) Kafka
10 7 (0.71%) LangChain
10 7 (0.71%) SOAP
11 6 (0.61%) HTML
11 6 (0.61%) jQuery
11 6 (0.61%) JSON
11 6 (0.61%) OpenTelemetry
12 5 (0.51%) OAuth
12 5 (0.51%) OpenID
12 5 (0.51%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 65 (6.58%) Product Ownership
2 35 (3.54%) Driving Licence
3 33 (3.34%) Cloud Native
4 29 (2.94%) EPoS
5 26 (2.63%) Onboarding
6 23 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
7 22 (2.23%) Data Centre
7 22 (2.23%) Management Information System
8 20 (2.02%) FMCG
8 20 (2.02%) Mainframe
9 19 (1.92%) Data Structures
10 16 (1.62%) Mobile App
11 15 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
12 11 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
13 10 (1.01%) IoT
13 10 (1.01%) Virtual Team
14 9 (0.91%) AI Agents
15 8 (0.81%) Clustering
16 7 (0.71%) Hybrid Cloud
17 6 (0.61%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 39 (3.95%) Windows
2 19 (1.92%) Linux
3 7 (0.71%) Mac OS
3 7 (0.71%) zOS
4 6 (0.61%) Unix
5 5 (0.51%) Android
5 5 (0.51%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.20%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.10%) VMS
7 1 (0.10%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 217 (21.96%) Stakeholder Management
2 215 (21.76%) Agile
3 184 (18.62%) Problem-Solving
4 138 (13.97%) E-Commerce
5 129 (13.06%) Migration
6 115 (11.64%) Project Management
7 114 (11.54%) Roadmaps
8 98 (9.92%) Analytics
9 91 (9.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 90 (9.11%) Customer Experience
11 87 (8.81%) ERP
12 80 (8.10%) AI
13 76 (7.69%) Project Delivery
14 74 (7.49%) Workshop Facilitation
15 72 (7.29%) Change Management
15 72 (7.29%) Continuous Improvement
16 70 (7.09%) Decision-Making
16 70 (7.09%) Scrum
17 65 (6.58%) User Acceptance Testing
18 61 (6.17%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 72 (7.29%) SQL
2 60 (6.07%) Python
3 32 (3.24%) Java
4 21 (2.13%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.32%) PowerShell
6 10 (1.01%) Shell Script
7 9 (0.91%) TypeScript
8 8 (0.81%) Bash
9 6 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.51%) Apex Code
10 5 (0.51%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.51%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.51%) SOQL
10 5 (0.51%) SOSL
11 4 (0.40%) Scala
11 4 (0.40%) VBA
12 3 (0.30%) C#
13 2 (0.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.20%) R
13 2 (0.20%) REXX
Qualifications
1 47 (4.76%) Degree
2 37 (3.74%) Security Cleared
3 24 (2.43%) SC Cleared
4 19 (1.92%) PMP
5 14 (1.42%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.91%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (0.91%) CSPO
7 7 (0.71%) APMP
7 7 (0.71%) Master's Degree
8 6 (0.61%) CCNP
8 6 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.61%) CISSP
8 6 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.51%) MBA
10 4 (0.40%) CCIE
10 4 (0.40%) DBS Check
11 3 (0.30%) CISM
11 3 (0.30%) CRISC
11 3 (0.30%) IIBA
11 3 (0.30%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (5.26%) QA
2 48 (4.86%) Data Quality
3 36 (3.64%) GDPR
4 32 (3.24%) PMO
5 18 (1.82%) SLA
6 14 (1.42%) Accessibility
7 10 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.91%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.51%) NIST
10 4 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.40%) IFRS
11 3 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.20%) GRC
12 2 (0.20%) WCAG
13 1 (0.10%) COBIT
13 1 (0.10%) GAAP
13 1 (0.10%) IFRS 9
13 1 (0.10%) NCSC
13 1 (0.10%) Solvency II
System Software
1 22 (2.23%) Active Directory
2 18 (1.82%) Docker
3 5 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.51%) VMware NSX
4 4 (0.40%) RACF
4 4 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.10%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 21 (2.13%) Terraform
2 14 (1.42%) Kubernetes
3 9 (0.91%) Microsoft Intune
4 8 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (0.71%) Grafana
5 7 (0.71%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 6 (0.61%) Argo
6 6 (0.61%) Istio
7 5 (0.51%) SCCM
8 3 (0.30%) Ansible
9 2 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.20%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.20%) FortiGate
9 2 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.20%) MOM
9 2 (0.20%) PingFederate
9 2 (0.20%) ZABBIX
10 1 (0.10%) Prometheus
10 1 (0.10%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.10%) zSecure
Vendors
1 81 (8.20%) Microsoft
2 74 (7.49%) SAP
3 62 (6.28%) Oracle
4 54 (5.47%) Salesforce
5 50 (5.06%) Google
6 39 (3.95%) Databricks
7 27 (2.73%) Adobe
8 19 (1.92%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.62%) Sitecore
10 14 (1.42%) Cisco
10 14 (1.42%) IFS
11 11 (1.11%) IBM
12 10 (1.01%) VMware
13 9 (0.91%) Palo Alto
14 8 (0.81%) Splunk
14 8 (0.81%) Temenos
14 8 (0.81%) Workday
14 8 (0.81%) Zscaler
15 7 (0.71%) CheckPoint
16 6 (0.61%) GoldenSource