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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 121 80
Rank change year-on-year +29 -41 +15
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,486 769 1,064
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.80% 2.35% 2.62%
As % of the General category 5.10% 3.74% 4.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 906 398 588
10th Percentile £302 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £411 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +7.45% -2.39% -4.43%
75th Percentile £650 £634 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.80% - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 44 73
10th Percentile £12.98 £14.73 £12.15
25th Percentile £15.06 £15.25 £12.50
Median hourly rate £21.00 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +28.83% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £27.05 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £74.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.50 £15.96 £16.00
% change year-on-year +3.38% -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 29,132 20,579 23,280
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.99% 62.90% 57.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,376 12,871 14,681
10th Percentile £313 £281 £285
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 £631 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.67% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,054 1,080 1,579
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.34 £13.52
25th Percentile £18.33 £16.22 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.00 £25.32 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.33% -28.68% +18.14%
75th Percentile £61.18 £51.31 £57.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.27 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £22.50 £35.03
% change year-on-year +48.89% -35.77% +34.86%

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 25 July 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 25 July 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 25 July 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 +24 1,358 £550 +4.76% 1,308
London +38 788 £550 - 528
UK excluding London +10 588 £509 +1.80% 937
Work from Home -14 327 £500 - 468
South East +13 174 £525 -8.70% 299
North of England -22 171 £550 +10.00% 235
North West -2 111 £575 +15.00% 125
Midlands +2 110 £500 +17.65% 186
East of England +18 64 £544 +3.57% 97
East Midlands +9 58 £500 +21.21% 81
West Midlands -20 52 £613 +40.00% 104
Yorkshire -45 51 £500 -4.76% 86
South West -28 38 £325 -8.59% 90
Scotland -6 23 £470 -8.39% 37
North East -37 9 £155 -81.17% 27
Northern Ireland +7 5 £196 -64.32% 8
Wales -17 3 £190 +29.52% 22

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 (2.56%) Confluence
2 19 (1.28%) CMS
3 15 (1.01%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 11 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (0.40%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.34%) SAS
7 4 (0.27%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.20%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.13%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.13%) CICS
9 2 (0.13%) Mule
10 1 (0.067%) Apache
10 1 (0.067%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 46 (3.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (2.09%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 19 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.87%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 13 (0.87%) Chatbot
6 10 (0.67%) Photoshop
7 9 (0.61%) Adobe Illustrator
8 6 (0.40%) InDesign
9 4 (0.27%) MS Visio
10 3 (0.20%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.20%) Notion
10 3 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.067%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.067%) Maya
11 1 (0.067%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.067%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.067%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 42 (2.83%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.88%) Shopify
3 12 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.67%) Oracle Retail
4 10 (0.67%) SAP CRM
5 8 (0.54%) Magento
6 6 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.40%) SAP MDG
6 6 (0.40%) SAP Retail
7 5 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
7 5 (0.34%) SAP SD
8 4 (0.27%) NetSuite
9 3 (0.20%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 3 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.20%) SAP CAR
9 3 (0.20%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 2 (0.13%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 179 (12.05%) Azure
2 139 (9.35%) AWS
3 75 (5.05%) GCP
4 68 (4.58%) Power Platform
5 49 (3.30%) Snowflake
6 40 (2.69%) GitHub
7 30 (2.02%) Entra ID
8 26 (1.75%) Azure DevOps
9 25 (1.68%) GitHub Actions
10 24 (1.62%) Dynamics 365
11 22 (1.48%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 20 (1.35%) Figma
13 17 (1.14%) SaaS
14 13 (0.87%) Azure Data Factory
15 12 (0.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 12 (0.81%) dbt
16 11 (0.74%) Google Workspace
16 11 (0.74%) Microsoft 365
16 11 (0.74%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 10 (0.67%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.14%) WAN
2 16 (1.08%) ATM
2 16 (1.08%) Firewall
3 15 (1.01%) Wireless
4 14 (0.94%) VPN
5 13 (0.87%) Network Security
6 11 (0.74%) LAN
7 8 (0.54%) BGP
7 8 (0.54%) IPsec
7 8 (0.54%) OSPF
7 8 (0.54%) RFID
7 8 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
8 7 (0.47%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 7 (0.47%) VLAN
9 6 (0.40%) Cisco Firepower
9 6 (0.40%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.40%) Structured Cabling
10 5 (0.34%) Cisco ASA
10 5 (0.34%) Cisco Nexus
10 5 (0.34%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (4.44%) Power BI
2 32 (2.15%) BigQuery
3 25 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
4 20 (1.35%) Data Lake
5 18 (1.21%) Metadata
6 16 (1.08%) NoSQL
6 16 (1.08%) Tableau
7 15 (1.01%) MySQL
8 12 (0.81%) Relational Database
9 11 (0.74%) MongoDB
10 10 (0.67%) SQL Server
11 8 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
11 8 (0.54%) PostgreSQL
11 8 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 7 (0.47%) Power Query
12 7 (0.47%) Redis
12 7 (0.47%) SAP HANA
13 6 (0.40%) Couchbase
13 6 (0.40%) Looker
13 6 (0.40%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 72 (4.85%) JIRA
2 31 (2.09%) Git
3 19 (1.28%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.54%) Subversion
5 6 (0.40%) Claude Code
6 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
6 4 (0.27%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.27%) GitLab
6 4 (0.27%) Maven
7 3 (0.20%) Hudson
7 3 (0.20%) JMeter
7 3 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (0.13%) git-flow
8 2 (0.13%) MLflow
8 2 (0.13%) Postman
8 2 (0.13%) Selenium
8 2 (0.13%) webpack
9 1 (0.067%) Gatling
9 1 (0.067%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.067%) TestRail
General
1 415 (27.93%) Social Skills
2 343 (23.08%) Finance
3 140 (9.42%) Analytical Skills
4 116 (7.81%) Banking
5 94 (6.33%) Marketing
6 88 (5.92%) Manufacturing
7 61 (4.10%) Organisational Skills
8 59 (3.97%) Retail Banking
9 44 (2.96%) Investment Banking
10 41 (2.76%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (1.82%) Influencing Skills
12 26 (1.75%) Public Sector
13 24 (1.62%) Legal
13 24 (1.62%) Telecoms
14 23 (1.55%) French Language
15 22 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
16 21 (1.41%) Advertising
16 21 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
17 18 (1.21%) Spanish Language
18 16 (1.08%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 240 (16.15%) Architect
2 211 (14.20%) Analyst
3 185 (12.45%) Senior
4 131 (8.82%) Project Manager
5 127 (8.55%) Solutions Architect
6 121 (8.14%) Business Analyst
7 108 (7.27%) Lead
8 75 (5.05%) Developer
9 61 (4.10%) Senior Manager
10 50 (3.36%) Designer
11 45 (3.03%) Product Manager
12 42 (2.83%) Consultant
13 38 (2.56%) Data Analyst
14 37 (2.49%) Service Manager
14 37 (2.49%) Technical Manager
15 36 (2.42%) Enterprise Architect
16 34 (2.29%) Data Architect
16 34 (2.29%) Programme Manager
16 34 (2.29%) Senior Project Manager
17 32 (2.15%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (4.78%) REST
2 39 (2.62%) React
3 34 (2.29%) Middleware
4 32 (2.15%) Spring
5 29 (1.95%) Kafka
6 26 (1.75%) Node.js
7 24 (1.62%) Spring Boot
8 21 (1.41%) RESTful
8 21 (1.41%) VML
9 19 (1.28%) Django
10 18 (1.21%) HTML
11 17 (1.14%) CSS
11 17 (1.14%) SOAP
12 14 (0.94%) MACH
12 14 (0.94%) OAuth
13 13 (0.87%) Jakarta EE
14 11 (0.74%) .NET
15 10 (0.67%) Next.js
16 9 (0.61%) JSON
16 9 (0.61%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 81 (5.45%) Product Ownership
2 65 (4.37%) FMCG
3 58 (3.90%) EPoS
4 45 (3.03%) Cloud Native
4 45 (3.03%) Driving Licence
4 45 (3.03%) Onboarding
5 30 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
5 30 (2.02%) Mobile App
6 27 (1.82%) Data Centre
7 22 (1.48%) Data Structures
7 22 (1.48%) Marketing Technology
8 21 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
8 21 (1.41%) Operational Technology
8 21 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (1.21%) Mainframe
10 17 (1.14%) AI Agents
11 16 (1.08%) IoT
12 13 (0.87%) Management Information System
13 12 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
13 12 (0.81%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.77%) Windows
2 24 (1.62%) Linux
3 12 (0.81%) Unix
4 10 (0.67%) Android
5 7 (0.47%) Apple iOS
5 7 (0.47%) zOS
6 6 (0.40%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.40%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.34%) Windows 10
7 5 (0.34%) Windows Server
8 2 (0.13%) Debian
9 1 (0.067%) SUSE
9 1 (0.067%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.067%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 365 (24.56%) Stakeholder Management
2 364 (24.50%) Agile
3 238 (16.02%) E-Commerce
4 200 (13.46%) Problem-Solving
5 179 (12.05%) Migration
5 179 (12.05%) Roadmaps
6 152 (10.23%) Analytics
7 150 (10.09%) AI
7 150 (10.09%) Customer Experience
8 127 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 119 (8.01%) Logistics
10 116 (7.81%) Project Management
11 115 (7.74%) CI/CD
12 114 (7.67%) Continuous Improvement
12 114 (7.67%) Decision-Making
13 107 (7.20%) CRM
14 106 (7.13%) ERP
15 104 (7.00%) Project Delivery
16 103 (6.93%) User Acceptance Testing
17 95 (6.39%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 124 (8.34%) SQL
2 97 (6.53%) Python
3 58 (3.90%) Java
4 29 (1.95%) JavaScript
4 29 (1.95%) TypeScript
5 11 (0.74%) C#
6 9 (0.61%) PowerShell
7 8 (0.54%) ABAP
8 7 (0.47%) Apex Code
8 7 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 7 (0.47%) PL/SQL
8 7 (0.47%) R
8 7 (0.47%) SOQL
9 6 (0.40%) Bash
9 6 (0.40%) Bicep
9 6 (0.40%) Kotlin
9 6 (0.40%) Scala
10 5 (0.34%) Groovy
10 5 (0.34%) Shell Script
10 5 (0.34%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 62 (4.17%) Degree
2 38 (2.56%) Security Cleared
3 24 (1.62%) PMP
4 22 (1.48%) SC Cleared
5 13 (0.87%) DBS Check
6 12 (0.81%) PMI Certification
7 11 (0.74%) BPSS Clearance
8 9 (0.61%) CISSP
9 6 (0.40%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (0.40%) CISM
9 6 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
10 5 (0.34%) CCNP
10 5 (0.34%) CCSE
10 5 (0.34%) CCSM
10 5 (0.34%) CSPO
11 4 (0.27%) Azure Certification
11 4 (0.27%) City & Guilds
11 4 (0.27%) PhD
12 3 (0.20%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (4.91%) QA
2 63 (4.24%) Data Quality
3 41 (2.76%) GDPR
4 31 (2.09%) PMO
5 22 (1.48%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.08%) PCI DSS
7 14 (0.94%) SLA
8 8 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.40%) NIST
10 4 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 4 (0.27%) WCAG
11 3 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.20%) GAAP
11 3 (0.20%) IFRS
11 3 (0.20%) PSD2
12 2 (0.13%) GRC
12 2 (0.13%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.067%) COBIT
13 1 (0.067%) GxP
System Software
1 36 (2.42%) Docker
2 34 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.34%) Firmware
5 5 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.13%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 46 (3.10%) Terraform
2 36 (2.42%) Kubernetes
3 14 (0.94%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 11 (0.74%) Ansible
5 6 (0.40%) FortiGate
5 6 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.34%) Grafana
7 4 (0.27%) SCCM
8 3 (0.20%) Bosun
9 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.13%) AirWatch
9 2 (0.13%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.13%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.13%) MOM
9 2 (0.13%) PingFederate
10 1 (0.067%) CSIRT
10 1 (0.067%) Nagios
10 1 (0.067%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.067%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 119 (8.01%) Microsoft
2 106 (7.13%) SAP
3 72 (4.85%) Oracle
4 65 (4.37%) Salesforce
5 60 (4.04%) Databricks
6 52 (3.50%) Google
7 37 (2.49%) Adobe
8 24 (1.62%) Zscaler
9 19 (1.28%) MuleSoft
10 18 (1.21%) ServiceNow
11 15 (1.01%) Cisco
12 14 (0.94%) IFS
12 14 (0.94%) Splunk
12 14 (0.94%) Workday
13 13 (0.87%) Fortinet
13 13 (0.87%) IBM
13 13 (0.87%) Palo Alto
14 12 (0.81%) VMware
15 11 (0.74%) Braze
15 11 (0.74%) Informatica