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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 124 84
Rank change year-on-year +37 -40 +8
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,574 747 984
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.95% 2.27% 2.53%
As % of the General category 5.36% 3.57% 4.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 919 393 541
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% -7.19%
75th Percentile £670 £635 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -3.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 45 61
10th Percentile £12.83 £14.50 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.55 £15.25 £12.50
Median hourly rate £17.50 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +7.36% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £25.15 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £45.95 £24.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.00 £15.96 £16.00
% change year-on-year -6.02% -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 29,373 20,896 22,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.45% 57.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,418 13,029 14,038
10th Percentile £313 £278 £290
25th Percentile £415 £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 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,225 1,136 1,378
10th Percentile £13.92 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.30 £17.08
Median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +31.45%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.00 £58.37
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.08 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +51.72%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 +35 1,443 £550 +4.76% 2,979
London +45 831 £555 +0.91% 1,567
UK excluding London +12 631 £525 +5.00% 1,673
Work from Home +5 339 £525 +5.00% 1,112
North of England -16 184 £550 +10.00% 498
South East +16 177 £525 -5.41% 428
Midlands +20 134 £550 +27.76% 313
North West +4 118 £550 +10.00% 288
East Midlands +16 74 £500 +17.86% 151
East of England +14 66 £550 +4.76% 131
West Midlands -2 59 £606 +38.57% 162
Yorkshire -38 53 £500 -4.76% 178
South West -33 39 £350 -1.48% 163
Scotland +4 25 £447 -14.86% 109
North East -35 13 £155 -64.89% 38
Wales -10 4 - - 42
Northern Ireland +8 3 £203 -63.18% 25

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 (2.80%) Confluence
2 18 (1.14%) CMS
3 13 (0.83%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 12 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.57%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.38%) SAS
7 4 (0.25%) 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%) Mendix
10 1 (0.064%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.064%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 56 (3.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 37 (2.35%) Microsoft Office
3 25 (1.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.02%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 15 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
6 10 (0.64%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.57%) 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 (0.25%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.25%) Notion
11 1 (0.064%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.064%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 43 (2.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.78%) Shopify
3 11 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.64%) SAP Retail
5 9 (0.57%) SAP CRM
6 8 (0.51%) Magento
6 8 (0.51%) Oracle Retail
7 6 (0.38%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.32%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.32%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.25%) SAP SD
10 3 (0.19%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 3 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.19%) SAP IBP
10 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
11 2 (0.13%) SAP CAR
Cloud Services
1 187 (11.88%) Azure
2 144 (9.15%) AWS
3 73 (4.64%) Power Platform
4 69 (4.38%) GCP
5 54 (3.43%) Snowflake
6 43 (2.73%) GitHub
7 33 (2.10%) Entra ID
8 32 (2.03%) Azure DevOps
9 27 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
10 24 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
11 22 (1.40%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 20 (1.27%) Figma
13 19 (1.21%) SaaS
14 15 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
14 15 (0.95%) Microsoft 365
15 13 (0.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 12 (0.76%) dbt
17 11 (0.70%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 11 (0.70%) Serverless
18 10 (0.64%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.27%) WAN
2 19 (1.21%) Firewall
3 16 (1.02%) ATM
3 16 (1.02%) VPN
3 16 (1.02%) Wireless
4 14 (0.89%) Network Security
5 12 (0.76%) 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 (0.44%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 7 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
8 7 (0.44%) VLAN
9 6 (0.38%) Cisco Firepower
9 6 (0.38%) VSAN
10 5 (0.32%) Cisco Nexus
10 5 (0.32%) Internet
10 5 (0.32%) RFID
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (4.57%) Power BI
2 36 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
3 30 (1.91%) BigQuery
4 24 (1.52%) Data Lake
5 19 (1.21%) NoSQL
6 17 (1.08%) Metadata
6 17 (1.08%) MongoDB
7 15 (0.95%) MySQL
7 15 (0.95%) Tableau
8 14 (0.89%) SQL Server
9 12 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
9 12 (0.76%) Power Query
9 12 (0.76%) Relational Database
10 11 (0.70%) PostgreSQL
11 10 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 8 (0.51%) Couchbase
12 8 (0.51%) Redis
13 7 (0.44%) SAP HANA
14 6 (0.38%) Semantic Layer
14 6 (0.38%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 74 (4.70%) JIRA
2 27 (1.72%) Git
3 19 (1.21%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.51%) Subversion
5 7 (0.44%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.32%) GitLab
6 5 (0.32%) JMeter
7 4 (0.25%) Cypress.io
7 4 (0.25%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.25%) Hudson
7 4 (0.25%) 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%) Pylint
General
1 437 (27.76%) Social Skills
2 374 (23.76%) Finance
3 165 (10.48%) Analytical Skills
4 126 (8.01%) Banking
5 106 (6.73%) Marketing
6 96 (6.10%) Manufacturing
7 65 (4.13%) Organisational Skills
8 64 (4.07%) Retail Banking
9 48 (3.05%) Investment Banking
10 44 (2.80%) Corporate Banking
11 32 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
12 30 (1.91%) Legal
12 30 (1.91%) Public Sector
12 30 (1.91%) Telecoms
13 28 (1.78%) Advertising
14 23 (1.46%) French Language
15 21 (1.33%) Documentation Skills
15 21 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
16 18 (1.14%) Spanish Language
17 14 (0.89%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 256 (16.26%) Architect
2 229 (14.55%) Analyst
3 184 (11.69%) Senior
4 140 (8.89%) Solutions Architect
5 131 (8.32%) Business Analyst
6 128 (8.13%) Project Manager
7 112 (7.12%) Lead
8 84 (5.34%) Developer
9 51 (3.24%) Consultant
10 49 (3.11%) Senior Manager
11 46 (2.92%) Data Analyst
11 46 (2.92%) Product Manager
12 45 (2.86%) Designer
13 41 (2.60%) Service Manager
14 37 (2.35%) Enterprise Architect
14 37 (2.35%) Senior Developer
15 36 (2.29%) Supply Chain Architect
16 35 (2.22%) Data Architect
16 35 (2.22%) Programme Manager
17 34 (2.16%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (4.26%) REST
2 40 (2.54%) React
3 33 (2.10%) Kafka
4 31 (1.97%) Middleware
5 29 (1.84%) Spring
6 28 (1.78%) Node.js
7 21 (1.33%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.33%) VML
8 20 (1.27%) Django
8 20 (1.27%) RESTful
9 18 (1.14%) MACH
10 17 (1.08%) SOAP
11 15 (0.95%) HTML
12 14 (0.89%) CSS
12 14 (0.89%) Next.js
12 14 (0.89%) OAuth
13 13 (0.83%) Jakarta EE
14 10 (0.64%) .NET
15 9 (0.57%) Lightning Web Components
15 9 (0.57%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 85 (5.40%) Product Ownership
2 67 (4.26%) FMCG
3 58 (3.68%) EPoS
4 57 (3.62%) Onboarding
5 48 (3.05%) Cloud Native
6 32 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
7 31 (1.97%) Driving Licence
8 30 (1.91%) Data Centre
9 26 (1.65%) Mobile App
10 24 (1.52%) Greenfield Project
11 23 (1.46%) Marketing Technology
12 22 (1.40%) Data Structures
13 21 (1.33%) Operational Technology
13 21 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
14 19 (1.21%) Mainframe
14 19 (1.21%) Smartphone
15 18 (1.14%) Management Information System
16 17 (1.08%) AI Agents
17 16 (1.02%) IoT
18 14 (0.89%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 58 (3.68%) Windows
2 23 (1.46%) Linux
3 12 (0.76%) Unix
4 11 (0.70%) Android
5 8 (0.51%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.44%) Mac OS
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
8 5 (0.32%) zOS
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
1 385 (24.46%) Stakeholder Management
2 369 (23.44%) Agile
3 235 (14.93%) E-Commerce
4 203 (12.90%) Problem-Solving
5 186 (11.82%) Migration
6 179 (11.37%) Roadmaps
7 167 (10.61%) AI
7 167 (10.61%) Analytics
8 155 (9.85%) Logistics
9 137 (8.70%) Customer Experience
10 136 (8.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 130 (8.26%) Decision-Making
12 128 (8.13%) Continuous Improvement
13 119 (7.56%) CI/CD
14 117 (7.43%) Project Management
15 115 (7.31%) CRM
16 108 (6.86%) ERP
17 106 (6.73%) Project Delivery
18 105 (6.67%) User Acceptance Testing
19 104 (6.61%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 138 (8.77%) SQL
2 106 (6.73%) Python
3 54 (3.43%) Java
4 32 (2.03%) TypeScript
5 30 (1.91%) JavaScript
6 12 (0.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (0.64%) C#
7 10 (0.64%) PowerShell
8 9 (0.57%) Apex Code
8 9 (0.57%) SOQL
9 8 (0.51%) ABAP
9 8 (0.51%) Bash
10 7 (0.44%) R
10 7 (0.44%) SOSL
11 6 (0.38%) Bicep
11 6 (0.38%) PL/SQL
11 6 (0.38%) Scala
12 5 (0.32%) Groovy
13 4 (0.25%) Shell Script
14 3 (0.19%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 63 (4.00%) Degree
2 43 (2.73%) Security Cleared
3 22 (1.40%) SC Cleared
4 21 (1.33%) PMP
5 13 (0.83%) DBS Check
6 11 (0.70%) PMI Certification
7 9 (0.57%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (0.51%) CISSP
9 7 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
10 6 (0.38%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (0.38%) CISM
10 6 (0.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (0.32%) CCNP
11 5 (0.32%) CCSE
11 5 (0.32%) CCSM
11 5 (0.32%) CSPO
12 4 (0.25%) Azure Certification
12 4 (0.25%) City & Guilds
12 4 (0.25%) Six Sigma Green Belt
13 3 (0.19%) APMG
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (4.83%) QA
2 72 (4.57%) Data Quality
3 42 (2.67%) GDPR
4 27 (1.72%) PMO
5 22 (1.40%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.02%) PCI DSS
6 16 (1.02%) SLA
7 8 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 7 (0.44%) NIST
9 4 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
9 4 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 4 (0.25%) GRC
9 4 (0.25%) WCAG
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 38 (2.41%) Docker
2 34 (2.16%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.83%) Virtual Desktop
4 8 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.44%) 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 51 (3.24%) Terraform
2 40 (2.54%) Kubernetes
3 11 (0.70%) Ansible
4 10 (0.64%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 9 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (0.38%) FortiGate
8 4 (0.25%) 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%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.064%) vMotion
Vendors
1 135 (8.58%) Microsoft
2 114 (7.24%) SAP
3 73 (4.64%) Databricks
3 73 (4.64%) Oracle
3 73 (4.64%) Salesforce
4 47 (2.99%) Google
5 38 (2.41%) Adobe
6 24 (1.52%) Zscaler
7 19 (1.21%) MuleSoft
8 18 (1.14%) ServiceNow
8 18 (1.14%) Workday
9 16 (1.02%) Cisco
10 14 (0.89%) IFS
11 13 (0.83%) Fortinet
11 13 (0.83%) Palo Alto
11 13 (0.83%) VMware
12 12 (0.76%) IBM
13 11 (0.70%) Braze
13 11 (0.70%) Informatica
14 10 (0.64%) Apple