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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 110 79
Rank change year-on-year +17 -31 +15
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,418 794 1,112
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.69% 2.44% 2.61%
As % of the General category 4.92% 3.88% 4.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 858 406 620
10th Percentile £305 £300 £300
25th Percentile £422 £409 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.19% -2.38% -0.94%
75th Percentile £650 £635 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +3.00% - -1.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 42 82
10th Percentile £13.05 - £12.15
25th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £12.41
Median hourly rate £21.00 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +28.83% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £31.81 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £76.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.92 £15.73 £16.00
% change year-on-year +7.57% -1.69% -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 28,822 20,440 24,415
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.77% 62.91% 57.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,240 12,804 15,277
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,010 1,052 1,864
10th Percentile £14.02 £13.38 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £33.06 £26.29 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.75% -19.11% +6.42%
75th Percentile £62.00 £51.93 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £71.14 £69.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.25 £22.63 £31.97
% change year-on-year +46.93% -29.21% +22.96%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +13 1,298 £550 +4.76% 1,106
London +27 759 £550 - 394
UK excluding London +8 553 £515 +3.00% 829
Work from Home -20 312 £500 - 404
South East +14 167 £525 -7.49% 264
North of England -29 163 £550 +10.00% 211
North West -3 106 £575 +15.00% 113
Midlands -11 102 £500 +16.14% 159
East of England +13 60 £550 +4.76% 100
East Midlands +9 54 £488 +18.18% 88
Yorkshire -48 50 £506 -3.57% 77
West Midlands -27 48 £606 +34.72% 70
South West -29 34 £325 -8.59% 75
Scotland -6 21 £496 -3.22% 28
North East -35 7 £173 -79.07% 25
Northern Ireland +3 3 £196 -64.32% 14
Wales -10 3 £190 +29.52% 13

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 (2.68%) Confluence
2 19 (1.34%) CMS
3 15 (1.06%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 11 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.49%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.42%) SAS
7 4 (0.28%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.14%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.14%) CICS
9 2 (0.14%) Mule
10 1 (0.071%) Apache
10 1 (0.071%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 42 (2.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 18 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.92%) Chatbot
6 12 (0.85%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 10 (0.71%) Photoshop
8 9 (0.63%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.42%) InDesign
10 5 (0.35%) MS Visio
11 3 (0.21%) Notion
11 3 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
12 2 (0.14%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.14%) UserZoom
13 1 (0.071%) 3ds Max
13 1 (0.071%) Maya
13 1 (0.071%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.071%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 36 (2.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.97%) Shopify
3 14 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.71%) Oracle Retail
5 9 (0.63%) SAP CRM
6 8 (0.56%) Magento
7 6 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.42%) SAP Retail
8 5 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.35%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.35%) SAP SD
9 4 (0.28%) NetSuite
10 3 (0.21%) Finacle
10 3 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 3 (0.21%) SAP CAR
10 3 (0.21%) SAP ERP
11 2 (0.14%) OpenText VIM for SAP
11 2 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
11 2 (0.14%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 172 (12.13%) Azure
2 135 (9.52%) AWS
3 77 (5.43%) GCP
4 67 (4.72%) Power Platform
5 51 (3.60%) Snowflake
6 35 (2.47%) GitHub
7 26 (1.83%) Entra ID
8 25 (1.76%) Azure DevOps
8 25 (1.76%) Dynamics 365
9 24 (1.69%) GitHub Actions
10 22 (1.55%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 21 (1.48%) Figma
12 17 (1.20%) SaaS
13 13 (0.92%) Azure Data Factory
14 12 (0.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 12 (0.85%) dbt
15 11 (0.78%) Google Workspace
15 11 (0.78%) Microsoft 365
15 11 (0.78%) Salesforce Service Cloud
16 10 (0.71%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.13%) Firewall
2 15 (1.06%) Wireless
3 14 (0.99%) VPN
3 14 (0.99%) WAN
4 13 (0.92%) ATM
4 13 (0.92%) Network Security
5 9 (0.63%) RFID
6 8 (0.56%) BGP
6 8 (0.56%) IPsec
6 8 (0.56%) LAN
6 8 (0.56%) OSPF
6 8 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (0.49%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 7 (0.49%) VLAN
8 6 (0.42%) Cisco Firepower
8 6 (0.42%) SD-WAN
9 5 (0.35%) Cisco ASA
9 5 (0.35%) Cisco Nexus
9 5 (0.35%) VSAN
10 4 (0.28%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (4.58%) Power BI
2 31 (2.19%) BigQuery
3 27 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
4 19 (1.34%) Data Lake
4 19 (1.34%) Metadata
5 18 (1.27%) MySQL
5 18 (1.27%) Tableau
6 16 (1.13%) NoSQL
7 13 (0.92%) SQL Server
8 12 (0.85%) Relational Database
9 9 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
10 8 (0.56%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.56%) PostgreSQL
10 8 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 7 (0.49%) Power Query
11 7 (0.49%) SAP HANA
12 6 (0.42%) Couchbase
12 6 (0.42%) Looker
12 6 (0.42%) Semantic Layer
13 4 (0.28%) Redis
Development Applications
1 71 (5.01%) JIRA
2 33 (2.33%) Git
3 20 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.56%) Subversion
5 5 (0.35%) Claude Code
5 5 (0.35%) GitLab
6 4 (0.28%) Cypress.io
6 4 (0.28%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.28%) Maven
7 3 (0.21%) Hudson
7 3 (0.21%) JMeter
7 3 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (0.21%) Selenium
8 2 (0.14%) ERwin
8 2 (0.14%) git-flow
8 2 (0.14%) MLflow
8 2 (0.14%) Postman
8 2 (0.14%) WebDriver
8 2 (0.14%) webpack
9 1 (0.071%) MSI
General
1 396 (27.93%) Social Skills
2 326 (22.99%) Finance
3 133 (9.38%) Analytical Skills
4 119 (8.39%) Banking
5 93 (6.56%) Marketing
6 79 (5.57%) Manufacturing
7 63 (4.44%) Retail Banking
8 61 (4.30%) Organisational Skills
9 48 (3.39%) Investment Banking
10 46 (3.24%) Corporate Banking
11 26 (1.83%) Influencing Skills
11 26 (1.83%) Public Sector
12 25 (1.76%) Telecoms
13 24 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
14 23 (1.62%) French Language
14 23 (1.62%) Legal
15 22 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
16 18 (1.27%) Advertising
16 18 (1.27%) Spanish Language
17 15 (1.06%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 230 (16.22%) Architect
2 204 (14.39%) Analyst
3 174 (12.27%) Senior
4 128 (9.03%) Project Manager
5 119 (8.39%) Solutions Architect
6 117 (8.25%) Business Analyst
7 102 (7.19%) Lead
8 70 (4.94%) Developer
9 61 (4.30%) Senior Manager
10 49 (3.46%) Designer
11 45 (3.17%) Product Manager
12 39 (2.75%) Consultant
13 38 (2.68%) Technical Manager
14 37 (2.61%) Enterprise Architect
15 35 (2.47%) Data Analyst
16 34 (2.40%) Data Architect
16 34 (2.40%) Senior Project Manager
17 32 (2.26%) Programme Manager
18 31 (2.19%) Service Manager
19 30 (2.12%) Supply Chain Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (4.65%) REST
2 37 (2.61%) React
3 35 (2.47%) Middleware
4 28 (1.97%) Spring
5 27 (1.90%) Kafka
6 24 (1.69%) Node.js
7 22 (1.55%) VML
8 20 (1.41%) Spring Boot
9 18 (1.27%) Django
9 18 (1.27%) HTML
9 18 (1.27%) RESTful
10 17 (1.20%) CSS
11 16 (1.13%) SOAP
12 14 (0.99%) MACH
12 14 (0.99%) OAuth
13 13 (0.92%) J2EE
14 11 (0.78%) .NET
15 10 (0.71%) JSON
16 9 (0.63%) SAP Fiori
16 9 (0.63%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 85 (5.99%) Product Ownership
2 59 (4.16%) FMCG
3 49 (3.46%) EPoS
4 45 (3.17%) Onboarding
5 41 (2.89%) Cloud Native
6 39 (2.75%) Driving Licence
7 28 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
7 28 (1.97%) Mobile App
8 26 (1.83%) Data Centre
9 22 (1.55%) Data Structures
9 22 (1.55%) Marketing Technology
10 21 (1.48%) Greenfield Project
10 21 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
11 18 (1.27%) Operational Technology
12 17 (1.20%) Mainframe
13 15 (1.06%) AI Agents
14 13 (0.92%) IoT
14 13 (0.92%) Management Information System
15 12 (0.85%) Graphic Design
16 11 (0.78%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 51 (3.60%) Windows
2 24 (1.69%) Linux
3 12 (0.85%) Unix
4 10 (0.71%) Android
5 7 (0.49%) zOS
6 6 (0.42%) Apple iOS
6 6 (0.42%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.35%) Windows 10
7 5 (0.35%) Windows Server
8 2 (0.14%) Debian
9 1 (0.071%) SUSE
9 1 (0.071%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.071%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 352 (24.82%) Agile
2 344 (24.26%) Stakeholder Management
3 222 (15.66%) E-Commerce
4 199 (14.03%) Problem-Solving
5 180 (12.69%) Migration
6 173 (12.20%) Roadmaps
7 152 (10.72%) Analytics
8 145 (10.23%) AI
9 142 (10.01%) Customer Experience
10 125 (8.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 114 (8.04%) Decision-Making
11 114 (8.04%) Project Management
12 110 (7.76%) CI/CD
13 106 (7.48%) Project Delivery
14 105 (7.40%) Continuous Improvement
14 105 (7.40%) CRM
15 103 (7.26%) Logistics
16 101 (7.12%) ERP
17 98 (6.91%) User Acceptance Testing
18 93 (6.56%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 123 (8.67%) SQL
2 95 (6.70%) Python
3 54 (3.81%) Java
4 29 (2.05%) JavaScript
5 28 (1.97%) TypeScript
6 11 (0.78%) C#
7 9 (0.63%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.56%) ABAP
9 7 (0.49%) Apex Code
9 7 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 7 (0.49%) PL/SQL
9 7 (0.49%) SOQL
10 6 (0.42%) Bicep
10 6 (0.42%) Kotlin
10 6 (0.42%) R
10 6 (0.42%) Scala
11 5 (0.35%) Bash
11 5 (0.35%) Groovy
11 5 (0.35%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.35%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 64 (4.51%) Degree
2 38 (2.68%) Security Cleared
3 23 (1.62%) SC Cleared
4 19 (1.34%) PMP
5 12 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (0.71%) CISSP
6 10 (0.71%) DBS Check
7 8 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (0.56%) PMI Certification
8 7 (0.49%) CISM
9 6 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
10 5 (0.35%) CCNP
10 5 (0.35%) CCSE
10 5 (0.35%) CCSM
10 5 (0.35%) CSPO
11 4 (0.28%) Azure Certification
11 4 (0.28%) City & Guilds
12 3 (0.21%) Master's Degree
12 3 (0.21%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (5.08%) QA
2 64 (4.51%) Data Quality
3 44 (3.10%) GDPR
4 30 (2.12%) PMO
5 23 (1.62%) Accessibility
6 17 (1.20%) PCI DSS
7 14 (0.99%) SLA
8 9 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.49%) NIST
10 4 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.21%) GAAP
11 3 (0.21%) IFRS
11 3 (0.21%) PSD2
11 3 (0.21%) WCAG
12 2 (0.14%) GRC
12 2 (0.14%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.071%) GxP
13 1 (0.071%) NCSC
System Software
1 32 (2.26%) Docker
2 30 (2.12%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.49%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.28%) Firmware
7 2 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 41 (2.89%) Terraform
2 32 (2.26%) Kubernetes
3 14 (0.99%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 11 (0.78%) Ansible
5 6 (0.42%) FortiGate
5 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.35%) Grafana
7 4 (0.28%) SCCM
8 2 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.14%) AirWatch
8 2 (0.14%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.14%) CloudHub
8 2 (0.14%) MOM
8 2 (0.14%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.071%) Argo
9 1 (0.071%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.071%) Istio
9 1 (0.071%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.071%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 113 (7.97%) Microsoft
2 97 (6.84%) SAP
3 74 (5.22%) Oracle
4 64 (4.51%) Salesforce
5 58 (4.09%) Databricks
6 49 (3.46%) Google
7 37 (2.61%) Adobe
8 21 (1.48%) Zscaler
9 19 (1.34%) MuleSoft
9 19 (1.34%) ServiceNow
10 16 (1.13%) Cisco
11 14 (0.99%) IBM
11 14 (0.99%) IFS
11 14 (0.99%) Splunk
12 13 (0.92%) Fortinet
12 13 (0.92%) Palo Alto
13 12 (0.85%) VMware
13 12 (0.85%) Workday
14 10 (0.71%) Braze
14 10 (0.71%) Informatica