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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 117 83
Rank change year-on-year +34 -34 +10
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,558 759 1,007
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.93% 2.31% 2.57%
As % of the General category 5.33% 3.65% 4.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 931 401 553
10th Percentile £308 £281 £300
25th Percentile £438 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% - -6.98%
75th Percentile £656 £630 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 44 68
10th Percentile £12.98 £14.73 £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 £54.80 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.24 £15.96 £16.00
% change year-on-year -4.51% -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 29,244 20,793 22,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.98% 63.19% 57.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,402 12,994 14,143
10th Percentile £313 £278 £290
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 2,147 1,115 1,399
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £16.19 £16.96
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £60.00 £50.75 £57.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.81 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +48.17% -41.92% +46.62%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +28 1,421 £550 +7.32% 2,047
London +48 820 £550 - 902
UK excluding London +16 623 £520 +4.00% 1,321
Work from Home +2 341 £525 +5.00% 776
North of England -12 183 £550 +10.00% 363
South East +14 178 £525 -8.70% 378
Midlands +7 124 £513 +19.05% 264
North West -1 116 £550 +10.00% 208
East Midlands +19 69 £500 +21.21% 114
East of England +19 65 £544 +3.57% 101
West Midlands -21 55 £613 +36.11% 150
Yorkshire -39 55 £500 - 115
South West -43 37 £325 -8.59% 130
Scotland +4 27 £447 -12.78% 73
North East -33 12 £155 -64.89% 43
Wales -11 5 £190 +29.52% 26
Northern Ireland +8 4 £196 -64.32% 18

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 (2.82%) Confluence
2 18 (1.16%) 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 52 (3.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.03%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.83%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 13 (0.83%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.51%) Photoshop
7 7 (0.45%) Adobe Illustrator
8 6 (0.39%) MS Visio
9 5 (0.32%) InDesign
10 4 (0.26%) Notion
10 4 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.19%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.064%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.064%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 43 (2.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.80%) Shopify
3 11 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.64%) SAP CRM
4 10 (0.64%) SAP Retail
5 9 (0.58%) Oracle Retail
6 8 (0.51%) Magento
7 6 (0.39%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.39%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.32%) SAP SD
9 4 (0.26%) NetSuite
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 CAR
10 3 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.19%) SAP IBP
10 3 (0.19%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 187 (12.00%) Azure
2 141 (9.05%) AWS
3 73 (4.69%) GCP
4 70 (4.49%) Power Platform
5 52 (3.34%) Snowflake
6 42 (2.70%) GitHub
7 32 (2.05%) Azure DevOps
8 30 (1.93%) Entra ID
9 26 (1.67%) GitHub Actions
10 24 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
11 22 (1.41%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 19 (1.22%) Figma
13 17 (1.09%) SaaS
14 16 (1.03%) Azure Data Factory
15 15 (0.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 12 (0.77%) dbt
16 12 (0.77%) Microsoft 365
17 11 (0.71%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 11 (0.71%) Serverless
18 10 (0.64%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 19 (1.22%) WAN
2 16 (1.03%) ATM
2 16 (1.03%) Firewall
3 15 (0.96%) Wireless
4 14 (0.90%) VPN
5 13 (0.83%) LAN
5 13 (0.83%) Network Security
6 9 (0.58%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.51%) BGP
7 8 (0.51%) IPsec
7 8 (0.51%) OSPF
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 (0.39%) Cisco Firepower
9 6 (0.39%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.39%) VSAN
10 5 (0.32%) Cisco ASA
10 5 (0.32%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.43%) Power BI
2 32 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
3 31 (1.99%) BigQuery
4 21 (1.35%) Data Lake
5 18 (1.16%) NoSQL
6 17 (1.09%) Metadata
6 17 (1.09%) Tableau
7 16 (1.03%) MongoDB
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 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 75 (4.81%) JIRA
2 30 (1.93%) Git
3 19 (1.22%) 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%) Maven
8 3 (0.19%) Hudson
9 2 (0.13%) git-flow
9 2 (0.13%) MLflow
9 2 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.13%) Postman
9 2 (0.13%) Selenium
9 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.13%) webpack
10 1 (0.064%) Toad
10 1 (0.064%) Visual Studio
General
1 433 (27.79%) Social Skills
2 364 (23.36%) Finance
3 156 (10.01%) Analytical Skills
4 125 (8.02%) Banking
5 100 (6.42%) Marketing
6 93 (5.97%) Manufacturing
7 65 (4.17%) Retail Banking
8 60 (3.85%) Organisational Skills
9 49 (3.15%) Investment Banking
10 45 (2.89%) Corporate Banking
11 30 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.86%) Legal
13 27 (1.73%) Advertising
13 27 (1.73%) Public Sector
14 25 (1.60%) Telecoms
15 23 (1.48%) French Language
16 22 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
17 21 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
18 18 (1.16%) Spanish Language
19 14 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 254 (16.30%) Architect
2 227 (14.57%) Analyst
3 185 (11.87%) Senior
4 139 (8.92%) Solutions Architect
5 131 (8.41%) Business Analyst
6 122 (7.83%) Project Manager
7 113 (7.25%) Lead
8 83 (5.33%) Developer
9 53 (3.40%) Senior Manager
10 47 (3.02%) Consultant
11 46 (2.95%) Designer
12 45 (2.89%) Product Manager
13 44 (2.82%) Data Analyst
14 40 (2.57%) Service Manager
15 36 (2.31%) Enterprise Architect
15 36 (2.31%) Senior Developer
15 36 (2.31%) Supply Chain Architect
16 35 (2.25%) Data Architect
17 34 (2.18%) Programme Manager
18 33 (2.12%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (4.56%) REST
2 41 (2.63%) React
3 33 (2.12%) Middleware
3 33 (2.12%) Spring
4 31 (1.99%) Kafka
5 28 (1.80%) Node.js
6 25 (1.60%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.35%) VML
8 20 (1.28%) Django
8 20 (1.28%) RESTful
9 17 (1.09%) SOAP
10 16 (1.03%) HTML
10 16 (1.03%) MACH
11 15 (0.96%) CSS
12 14 (0.90%) OAuth
13 13 (0.83%) Jakarta EE
13 13 (0.83%) Next.js
14 11 (0.71%) .NET
15 9 (0.58%) OAuth2
16 8 (0.51%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 84 (5.39%) Product Ownership
2 65 (4.17%) FMCG
3 59 (3.79%) EPoS
4 57 (3.66%) Onboarding
5 46 (2.95%) Cloud Native
6 45 (2.89%) Driving Licence
7 32 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
8 29 (1.86%) Data Centre
8 29 (1.86%) Mobile App
9 23 (1.48%) Marketing Technology
10 22 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
11 21 (1.35%) Data Structures
11 21 (1.35%) Mainframe
11 21 (1.35%) Operational Technology
12 20 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
13 19 (1.22%) Smartphone
14 17 (1.09%) AI Agents
15 16 (1.03%) IoT
16 14 (0.90%) Distributed Systems
16 14 (0.90%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.59%) Windows
2 23 (1.48%) Linux
3 12 (0.77%) Unix
4 11 (0.71%) Android
5 8 (0.51%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.45%) zOS
7 6 (0.39%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.32%) Mac OS
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
1 376 (24.13%) Stakeholder Management
2 366 (23.49%) Agile
3 238 (15.28%) E-Commerce
4 216 (13.86%) Problem-Solving
5 180 (11.55%) Migration
6 178 (11.42%) Roadmaps
7 166 (10.65%) Analytics
8 163 (10.46%) AI
9 151 (9.69%) Customer Experience
10 144 (9.24%) Logistics
11 132 (8.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 127 (8.15%) Continuous Improvement
12 127 (8.15%) Decision-Making
13 123 (7.89%) CI/CD
14 112 (7.19%) CRM
15 111 (7.12%) Project Management
16 110 (7.06%) ERP
17 106 (6.80%) Customer Service
18 105 (6.74%) DevOps
18 105 (6.74%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 137 (8.79%) SQL
2 105 (6.74%) Python
3 58 (3.72%) Java
4 32 (2.05%) TypeScript
5 30 (1.93%) JavaScript
6 12 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (0.71%) C#
8 8 (0.51%) ABAP
8 8 (0.51%) Apex Code
8 8 (0.51%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.51%) R
8 8 (0.51%) SOQL
9 6 (0.39%) Bash
9 6 (0.39%) Bicep
9 6 (0.39%) Kotlin
9 6 (0.39%) PL/SQL
9 6 (0.39%) Scala
9 6 (0.39%) SOSL
10 5 (0.32%) Groovy
11 4 (0.26%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 62 (3.98%) Degree
2 41 (2.63%) 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 (0.39%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (0.39%) CISM
7 6 (0.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.39%) 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%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (4.88%) QA
2 70 (4.49%) Data Quality
3 41 (2.63%) GDPR
4 26 (1.67%) PMO
5 24 (1.54%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.03%) PCI DSS
7 14 (0.90%) SLA
8 8 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.45%) NIST
10 4 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 4 (0.26%) WCAG
11 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.19%) GAAP
11 3 (0.19%) GRC
11 3 (0.19%) IFRS
11 3 (0.19%) PSD2
12 2 (0.13%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.064%) COBIT
13 1 (0.064%) GxP
System Software
1 37 (2.37%) Docker
2 34 (2.18%) 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 49 (3.15%) Terraform
2 38 (2.44%) Kubernetes
3 13 (0.83%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 11 (0.71%) Ansible
5 7 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
6 6 (0.39%) FortiGate
6 6 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
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%) MOM
10 2 (0.13%) PingFederate
10 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.064%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.064%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.064%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 128 (8.22%) Microsoft
2 112 (7.19%) SAP
3 73 (4.69%) Oracle
4 70 (4.49%) Databricks
5 68 (4.36%) Salesforce
6 53 (3.40%) Google
7 34 (2.18%) Adobe
8 24 (1.54%) Zscaler
9 19 (1.22%) MuleSoft
10 15 (0.96%) Cisco
10 15 (0.96%) ServiceNow
10 15 (0.96%) Workday
11 14 (0.90%) IBM
11 14 (0.90%) IFS
11 14 (0.90%) Splunk
12 13 (0.83%) Fortinet
12 13 (0.83%) Palo Alto
12 13 (0.83%) VMware
13 11 (0.71%) Braze
13 11 (0.71%) Informatica