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 12 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 123 94
Rank change year-on-year +39 -29 +5
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,626 771 934
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.98% 2.34% 2.42%
As % of the General category 5.36% 3.67% 4.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 933 406 506
10th Percentile £325 £289 £280
25th Percentile £456 £413 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year +8.59% -3.52% -
75th Percentile £675 £637 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £701
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 65 39
10th Percentile £12.76 - £12.15
25th Percentile £13.50 £15.25 £14.63
Median hourly rate £15.37 £16.34 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year -5.91% +0.21% -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £19.50 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £25.15 £31.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £13.81 £16.34 £16.00
% change year-on-year -15.46% +2.09% -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 30,354 21,013 22,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.64% 63.65% 57.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,834 13,015 13,481
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,461 1,201 1,144
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.59
25th Percentile £16.38 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -32.93% +36.36%
75th Percentile £53.87 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.50 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.39 £37.50
% change year-on-year +40.25% -42.96% +44.23%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 +25 1,495 £550 +7.32% 2,567
London +44 834 £570 +3.64% 1,227
UK excluding London +6 680 £525 +5.00% 1,547
Work from Home +8 361 £525 +5.00% 1,115
North of England -17 198 £550 +10.00% 411
South East +7 170 £575 +4.55% 408
Midlands +29 153 £550 +27.76% 314
North West +16 121 £550 +10.00% 226
East Midlands +18 87 £500 +14.68% 161
East of England +18 80 £550 +4.76% 171
West Midlands -5 65 £575 +35.29% 153
Yorkshire -43 59 £500 - 139
South West -28 48 £350 +11.03% 145
Scotland -14 25 £385 -24.93% 83
North East -33 18 £525 +18.64% 51
Wales -16 4 - - 39
Northern Ireland +5 3 £203 - 15

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 51 (3.14%) Confluence
2 22 (1.35%) CMS
3 14 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
4 13 (0.80%) SharePoint
5 8 (0.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 5 (0.31%) SAS
7 4 (0.25%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
8 3 (0.18%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.12%) Apache
9 2 (0.12%) CICS
9 2 (0.12%) Mule
9 2 (0.12%) WordPress
10 1 (0.062%) Mendix
10 1 (0.062%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.062%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 67 (4.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (2.95%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (0.98%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 13 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.62%) Photoshop
8 9 (0.55%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.49%) MS Visio
10 7 (0.43%) InDesign
11 6 (0.37%) CPLEX
12 5 (0.31%) Chatbot
13 4 (0.25%) Notion
14 1 (0.062%) 3ds Max
14 1 (0.062%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.062%) Siemens NX
14 1 (0.062%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.062%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 54 (3.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.72%) Shopify
3 15 (0.92%) SAP Retail
4 11 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
5 10 (0.62%) Oracle Retail
5 10 (0.62%) SAP CRM
6 8 (0.49%) Magento
7 6 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.31%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.31%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.31%) Workday HCM
9 4 (0.25%) SAP SD
10 3 (0.18%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.18%) SAP ERP
10 3 (0.18%) SAP IBP
10 3 (0.18%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 208 (12.79%) Azure
2 146 (8.98%) AWS
3 79 (4.86%) Power Platform
4 74 (4.55%) GCP
5 56 (3.44%) Snowflake
6 45 (2.77%) GitHub
7 36 (2.21%) Azure DevOps
8 33 (2.03%) Entra ID
9 28 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
10 27 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
11 26 (1.60%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 25 (1.54%) SaaS
13 20 (1.23%) Figma
14 19 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
15 18 (1.11%) dbt
16 17 (1.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 15 (0.92%) Microsoft 365
18 14 (0.86%) OCI
19 13 (0.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
20 11 (0.68%) Algolia
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.35%) WAN
2 20 (1.23%) Firewall
3 16 (0.98%) ATM
4 15 (0.92%) VPN
5 14 (0.86%) Network Security
5 14 (0.86%) Wireless
6 13 (0.80%) LAN
7 12 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
8 9 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
9 8 (0.49%) BGP
9 8 (0.49%) IPsec
9 8 (0.49%) OSPF
10 7 (0.43%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 7 (0.43%) Internet
10 7 (0.43%) SD-WAN
10 7 (0.43%) VLAN
11 5 (0.31%) Cisco Firepower
11 5 (0.31%) VSAN
12 4 (0.25%) Cisco Nexus
12 4 (0.25%) RFID
Database & Business Intelligence
1 79 (4.86%) Power BI
2 51 (3.14%) Data Warehouse
3 32 (1.97%) BigQuery
4 30 (1.85%) Data Lake
5 23 (1.41%) Metadata
6 20 (1.23%) SQL Server
6 20 (1.23%) Tableau
7 19 (1.17%) NoSQL
8 18 (1.11%) MongoDB
9 13 (0.80%) Power Query
10 12 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
10 12 (0.74%) Relational Database
11 11 (0.68%) MySQL
11 11 (0.68%) PostgreSQL
11 11 (0.68%) Star Schema
12 10 (0.62%) Redis
12 10 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 9 (0.55%) SAP BW
13 9 (0.55%) SAP HANA
14 8 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 79 (4.86%) JIRA
2 25 (1.54%) Git
3 21 (1.29%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.49%) Subversion
5 7 (0.43%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.31%) Cypress.io
6 5 (0.31%) Hudson
6 5 (0.31%) JMeter
7 4 (0.25%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.25%) GitLab
8 3 (0.18%) Selenium
9 2 (0.12%) git-flow
9 2 (0.12%) MLflow
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.12%) Postman
9 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.12%) webpack
10 1 (0.062%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.062%) Zephyr
General
1 464 (28.54%) Social Skills
2 386 (23.74%) Finance
3 171 (10.52%) Analytical Skills
4 132 (8.12%) Banking
5 128 (7.87%) Marketing
6 110 (6.77%) Manufacturing
7 72 (4.43%) Organisational Skills
8 67 (4.12%) Retail Banking
9 44 (2.71%) Corporate Banking
10 43 (2.64%) Investment Banking
11 36 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
12 35 (2.15%) Public Sector
13 30 (1.85%) Telecoms
14 28 (1.72%) Legal
15 27 (1.66%) Advertising
16 24 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
17 22 (1.35%) French Language
18 18 (1.11%) Back Office
18 18 (1.11%) Spanish Language
19 17 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 267 (16.42%) Architect
2 240 (14.76%) Analyst
3 183 (11.25%) Senior
4 149 (9.16%) Solutions Architect
5 139 (8.55%) Business Analyst
6 122 (7.50%) Project Manager
7 121 (7.44%) Lead
8 85 (5.23%) Developer
9 54 (3.32%) Consultant
10 53 (3.26%) Product Manager
11 48 (2.95%) Designer
12 47 (2.89%) Senior Manager
13 46 (2.83%) Data Analyst
14 41 (2.52%) Supply Chain Architect
15 36 (2.21%) Senior Developer
16 35 (2.15%) Service Manager
17 34 (2.09%) Data Architect
17 34 (2.09%) Enterprise Architect
17 34 (2.09%) Service Transition Manager
17 34 (2.09%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (4.18%) REST
2 53 (3.26%) Terraform
3 43 (2.64%) React
4 37 (2.28%) Kafka
5 30 (1.85%) Node.js
6 27 (1.66%) Spring
7 23 (1.41%) Spring Boot
8 22 (1.35%) Middleware
9 21 (1.29%) MACH
9 21 (1.29%) SOAP
10 20 (1.23%) Django
10 20 (1.23%) VML
11 19 (1.17%) RESTful
12 16 (0.98%) HTML
12 16 (0.98%) Next.js
13 12 (0.74%) OAuth
13 12 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
14 11 (0.68%) CSS
14 11 (0.68%) Lightning Web Components
14 11 (0.68%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 84 (5.17%) Product Ownership
2 70 (4.31%) FMCG
3 59 (3.63%) Onboarding
4 56 (3.44%) EPoS
5 50 (3.08%) Cloud Native
6 35 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
7 32 (1.97%) Driving Licence
8 29 (1.78%) Management Information System
9 28 (1.72%) Mobile App
10 27 (1.66%) Marketing Technology
11 26 (1.60%) Data Centre
12 25 (1.54%) Data Structures
12 25 (1.54%) Greenfield Project
13 22 (1.35%) Mainframe
13 22 (1.35%) Operational Technology
14 21 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
15 19 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
15 19 (1.17%) Smartphone
16 17 (1.05%) AI Agents
16 17 (1.05%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.20%) Windows
2 18 (1.11%) Linux
3 11 (0.68%) Android
4 8 (0.49%) Apple iOS
4 8 (0.49%) Unix
5 6 (0.37%) Mac OS
5 6 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.37%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.31%) Windows 10
7 3 (0.18%) zOS
8 2 (0.12%) Debian
8 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.062%) OS/2
9 1 (0.062%) SUSE
9 1 (0.062%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.062%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 426 (26.20%) Stakeholder Management
2 377 (23.19%) Agile
3 248 (15.25%) E-Commerce
4 193 (11.87%) Migration
5 189 (11.62%) Problem-Solving
6 187 (11.50%) Analytics
7 184 (11.32%) Logistics
8 176 (10.82%) Roadmaps
9 175 (10.76%) AI
10 143 (8.79%) Customer Experience
11 141 (8.67%) Decision-Making
12 136 (8.36%) Continuous Improvement
13 135 (8.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 127 (7.81%) CRM
15 124 (7.63%) CI/CD
16 117 (7.20%) Project Management
17 115 (7.07%) Business Intelligence
18 113 (6.95%) Customer Service
19 108 (6.64%) DevOps
19 108 (6.64%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 146 (8.98%) SQL
2 111 (6.83%) Python
3 51 (3.14%) Java
4 36 (2.21%) TypeScript
5 26 (1.60%) JavaScript
6 13 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (0.68%) ABAP
8 10 (0.62%) Apex Code
8 10 (0.62%) C#
8 10 (0.62%) R
9 9 (0.55%) Bash
10 8 (0.49%) SOQL
11 7 (0.43%) PowerShell
12 6 (0.37%) PL/SQL
12 6 (0.37%) Scala
12 6 (0.37%) SOSL
13 5 (0.31%) Groovy
14 4 (0.25%) Bicep
14 4 (0.25%) Shell Script
14 4 (0.25%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 61 (3.75%) Degree
2 45 (2.77%) Security Cleared
3 23 (1.41%) PMP
4 21 (1.29%) SC Cleared
5 12 (0.74%) DBS Check
5 12 (0.74%) PMI Certification
6 10 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
7 8 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (0.37%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.37%) CISSP
8 6 (0.37%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.31%) CISM
9 5 (0.31%) City & Guilds
9 5 (0.31%) CSPO
9 5 (0.31%) Six Sigma Green Belt
10 4 (0.25%) CCNP
10 4 (0.25%) CCSE
10 4 (0.25%) CCSM
11 3 (0.18%) Master's Degree
11 3 (0.18%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (4.86%) Data Quality
2 73 (4.49%) QA
3 36 (2.21%) GDPR
4 25 (1.54%) PMO
5 23 (1.41%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.86%) PCI DSS
7 11 (0.68%) SLA
8 7 (0.43%) NIST
9 6 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 5 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.31%) WCAG
11 3 (0.18%) GRC
11 3 (0.18%) PSD2
12 2 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.12%) GAAP
12 2 (0.12%) IFRS
12 2 (0.12%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.062%) GxP
13 1 (0.062%) HL7
System Software
1 34 (2.09%) Docker
2 29 (1.78%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.31%) Firmware
5 5 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.062%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 38 (2.34%) Kubernetes
2 11 (0.68%) Ansible
3 10 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
4 7 (0.43%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.37%) FortiGate
6 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.25%) SCCM
8 3 (0.18%) Bosun
9 2 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.12%) AirWatch
9 2 (0.12%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.12%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.12%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.12%) logstash
9 2 (0.12%) PingFederate
9 2 (0.12%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.062%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.062%) Nagios
10 1 (0.062%) vMotion
10 1 (0.062%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 152 (9.35%) Microsoft
2 134 (8.24%) SAP
3 91 (5.60%) Salesforce
4 81 (4.98%) Databricks
5 72 (4.43%) Oracle
6 46 (2.83%) Google
7 38 (2.34%) Adobe
8 28 (1.72%) MuleSoft
9 25 (1.54%) Zscaler
10 19 (1.17%) Cisco
10 19 (1.17%) Workday
11 16 (0.98%) IBM
11 16 (0.98%) ServiceNow
12 13 (0.80%) Apple
12 13 (0.80%) Fortinet
13 12 (0.74%) Palo Alto
14 11 (0.68%) Braze
14 11 (0.68%) New Relic
14 11 (0.68%) Splunk
14 11 (0.68%) VMware