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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 120 90
Rank change year-on-year +33 -30 +13
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,590 751 963
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.97% 2.29% 2.47%
As % of the General category 5.39% 3.61% 4.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 925 396 536
10th Percentile £317 £279 £300
25th Percentile £456 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year +7.32% +2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £660 £635 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 44 57
10th Percentile £12.76 £14.50 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.51 £15.25 £12.50
Median hourly rate £17.02 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +4.40% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £25.15 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £36.43 £22.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £14.04 £15.96 £16.00
% change year-on-year -12.05% -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 29,473 20,824 22,353
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.03% 63.53% 57.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,469 12,952 13,943
10th Percentile £313 £275 £294
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 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £746 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,258 1,149 1,317
10th Percentile £13.94 £13.33 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.20 £16.30 £16.50
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -31.10% +32.73%
75th Percentile £56.21 £50.50 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.38 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £35.36
% change year-on-year +46.79% -37.39% +41.44%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +31 1,459 £550 +7.32% 1,333
London +45 830 £568 +3.18% 387
UK excluding London +19 646 £525 +5.00% 1,154
Work from Home -1 347 £525 +5.00% 431
North of England -24 189 £550 +10.00% 325
South East +8 175 £525 -4.55% 326
Midlands +23 137 £513 +19.05% 233
North West +9 118 £550 +10.00% 174
East Midlands +15 78 £500 +14.68% 120
East of England +23 70 £575 +9.52% 109
West Midlands -12 58 £575 +35.29% 113
Yorkshire -43 54 £500 - 119
South West -38 45 £400 +17.65% 95
Scotland -5 24 £301 -42.63% 60
North East -25 17 £525 +18.64% 36
Wales -14 4 - - 36
Northern Ireland +3 3 £203 -63.18% 7

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 50 (3.14%) Confluence
2 18 (1.13%) CMS
3 11 (0.69%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 10 (0.63%) 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 (0.063%) Apache
10 1 (0.063%) Mendix
10 1 (0.063%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.063%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 54 (3.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (2.45%) Microsoft Office
3 21 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.01%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 14 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.57%) Photoshop
7 8 (0.50%) Adobe Illustrator
7 8 (0.50%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
8 7 (0.44%) Chatbot
9 6 (0.38%) InDesign
10 4 (0.25%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.25%) Notion
11 1 (0.063%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.063%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 48 (3.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.76%) Shopify
3 13 (0.82%) SAP Retail
4 11 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
5 10 (0.63%) Oracle Retail
5 10 (0.63%) SAP CRM
6 8 (0.50%) Magento
7 6 (0.38%) 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
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%) SAP MM
10 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 190 (11.95%) Azure
2 143 (8.99%) AWS
3 76 (4.78%) Power Platform
4 70 (4.40%) GCP
5 52 (3.27%) Snowflake
6 39 (2.45%) GitHub
7 33 (2.08%) Entra ID
8 30 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
9 26 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
10 24 (1.51%) GitHub Actions
11 23 (1.45%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 20 (1.26%) Figma
12 20 (1.26%) SaaS
13 16 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
13 16 (1.01%) Microsoft 365
14 15 (0.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 12 (0.75%) dbt
15 12 (0.75%) OCI
16 11 (0.69%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 10 (0.63%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.38%) WAN
2 20 (1.26%) Firewall
3 17 (1.07%) VPN
4 16 (1.01%) ATM
4 16 (1.01%) Wireless
5 14 (0.88%) LAN
5 14 (0.88%) Network Security
6 10 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.50%) BGP
7 8 (0.50%) IPsec
7 8 (0.50%) OSPF
8 7 (0.44%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 7 (0.44%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
8 7 (0.44%) VLAN
9 6 (0.38%) Cisco Firepower
9 6 (0.38%) VSAN
10 5 (0.31%) Cisco ASA
10 5 (0.31%) Cisco Nexus
10 5 (0.31%) RFID
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (4.72%) Power BI
2 39 (2.45%) Data Warehouse
3 31 (1.95%) BigQuery
4 24 (1.51%) Data Lake
5 21 (1.32%) Metadata
6 20 (1.26%) NoSQL
7 19 (1.19%) MongoDB
8 16 (1.01%) SQL Server
8 16 (1.01%) Tableau
9 13 (0.82%) MySQL
10 12 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
10 12 (0.75%) Power Query
10 12 (0.75%) Relational Database
11 11 (0.69%) PostgreSQL
12 10 (0.63%) Redis
12 10 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 8 (0.50%) Couchbase
14 7 (0.44%) SAP HANA
14 7 (0.44%) Star Schema
15 6 (0.38%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 79 (4.97%) JIRA
2 27 (1.70%) Git
3 19 (1.19%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.50%) Subversion
5 7 (0.44%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.31%) GitLab
6 5 (0.31%) JMeter
7 4 (0.25%) Cypress.io
7 4 (0.25%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.25%) Hudson
8 2 (0.13%) git-flow
8 2 (0.13%) Maven
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 (0.063%) Pylint
General
1 440 (27.67%) Social Skills
2 382 (24.03%) Finance
3 167 (10.50%) Analytical Skills
4 132 (8.30%) Banking
5 104 (6.54%) Marketing
6 100 (6.29%) Manufacturing
7 69 (4.34%) Retail Banking
8 63 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
9 48 (3.02%) Investment Banking
10 46 (2.89%) Corporate Banking
11 37 (2.33%) Public Sector
12 32 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
13 30 (1.89%) Telecoms
14 29 (1.82%) Legal
15 28 (1.76%) Advertising
16 24 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
17 23 (1.45%) French Language
18 20 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
19 18 (1.13%) Spanish Language
20 15 (0.94%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 261 (16.42%) Architect
2 236 (14.84%) Analyst
3 176 (11.07%) Senior
4 145 (9.12%) Solutions Architect
5 137 (8.62%) Business Analyst
6 124 (7.80%) Project Manager
7 113 (7.11%) Lead
8 86 (5.41%) Developer
9 53 (3.33%) Consultant
10 49 (3.08%) Product Manager
11 46 (2.89%) Data Analyst
11 46 (2.89%) Designer
12 45 (2.83%) Senior Manager
13 40 (2.52%) Supply Chain Architect
14 39 (2.45%) Service Manager
15 38 (2.39%) Enterprise Architect
16 37 (2.33%) Senior Developer
17 36 (2.26%) Data Architect
18 34 (2.14%) Programme Manager
18 34 (2.14%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (4.28%) REST
2 51 (3.21%) Terraform
3 41 (2.58%) React
4 35 (2.20%) Kafka
5 29 (1.82%) Middleware
5 29 (1.82%) Node.js
5 29 (1.82%) Spring
6 23 (1.45%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.32%) VML
8 20 (1.26%) Django
8 20 (1.26%) RESTful
9 19 (1.19%) MACH
9 19 (1.19%) SOAP
10 15 (0.94%) HTML
11 14 (0.88%) Next.js
11 14 (0.88%) OAuth
12 12 (0.75%) CSS
13 11 (0.69%) Jakarta EE
13 11 (0.69%) Lightning Web Components
14 10 (0.63%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 87 (5.47%) Product Ownership
2 69 (4.34%) FMCG
3 58 (3.65%) EPoS
4 56 (3.52%) Onboarding
5 47 (2.96%) Cloud Native
6 33 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
7 31 (1.95%) Data Centre
8 30 (1.89%) Driving Licence
9 27 (1.70%) Mobile App
10 25 (1.57%) Greenfield Project
11 23 (1.45%) Data Structures
11 23 (1.45%) Marketing Technology
12 22 (1.38%) Mainframe
13 21 (1.32%) Operational Technology
14 19 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
14 19 (1.19%) Smartphone
15 18 (1.13%) AI Agents
15 18 (1.13%) Management Information System
16 16 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
17 15 (0.94%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.52%) Windows
2 21 (1.32%) Linux
3 11 (0.69%) Android
4 10 (0.63%) Unix
5 8 (0.50%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.44%) Mac OS
7 6 (0.38%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.31%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.31%) Windows Server
9 4 (0.25%) zOS
10 2 (0.13%) Debian
11 1 (0.063%) SUSE
11 1 (0.063%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.063%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 400 (25.16%) Stakeholder Management
2 378 (23.77%) Agile
3 238 (14.97%) E-Commerce
4 200 (12.58%) Problem-Solving
5 192 (12.08%) Migration
6 177 (11.13%) Analytics
7 175 (11.01%) Roadmaps
8 169 (10.63%) AI
8 169 (10.63%) Logistics
9 142 (8.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 140 (8.81%) Customer Experience
11 132 (8.30%) Decision-Making
12 130 (8.18%) Continuous Improvement
13 121 (7.61%) CI/CD
14 119 (7.48%) Project Management
15 114 (7.17%) CRM
16 108 (6.79%) Business Intelligence
16 108 (6.79%) ERP
16 108 (6.79%) User Acceptance Testing
17 106 (6.67%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 143 (8.99%) SQL
2 106 (6.67%) Python
3 54 (3.40%) Java
4 34 (2.14%) TypeScript
5 29 (1.82%) JavaScript
6 12 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (0.63%) Apex Code
7 10 (0.63%) C#
7 10 (0.63%) SOQL
8 9 (0.57%) ABAP
8 9 (0.57%) PowerShell
8 9 (0.57%) R
9 8 (0.50%) Bash
9 8 (0.50%) SOSL
10 6 (0.38%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.38%) Scala
11 5 (0.31%) Bicep
11 5 (0.31%) Groovy
12 4 (0.25%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 63 (3.96%) Degree
2 45 (2.83%) Security Cleared
3 22 (1.38%) PMP
3 22 (1.38%) SC Cleared
4 13 (0.82%) DBS Check
5 12 (0.75%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.57%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
8 6 (0.38%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (0.38%) CISSP
9 5 (0.31%) CCNP
9 5 (0.31%) CCSE
9 5 (0.31%) CCSM
9 5 (0.31%) CISM
9 5 (0.31%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.31%) CSPO
9 5 (0.31%) Six Sigma Green Belt
10 4 (0.25%) City & Guilds
11 3 (0.19%) Azure Certification
11 3 (0.19%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (4.84%) Data Quality
1 77 (4.84%) QA
2 40 (2.52%) GDPR
3 26 (1.64%) PMO
4 22 (1.38%) Accessibility
5 14 (0.88%) PCI DSS
5 14 (0.88%) SLA
6 8 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.38%) NIST
8 5 (0.31%) WCAG
9 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.19%) GAAP
9 3 (0.19%) GRC
9 3 (0.19%) IFRS
9 3 (0.19%) PSD2
10 2 (0.13%) ISO 8583
10 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.063%) GxP
11 1 (0.063%) HL7
System Software
1 36 (2.26%) Docker
2 32 (2.01%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
4 8 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.31%) Firmware
6 5 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.19%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.063%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 40 (2.52%) Kubernetes
2 11 (0.69%) Ansible
3 10 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
4 8 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 8 (0.50%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.38%) FortiGate
6 4 (0.25%) SCCM
7 3 (0.19%) Bosun
8 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.13%) AirWatch
8 2 (0.13%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.13%) CloudHub
8 2 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.13%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) MOM
8 2 (0.13%) PingFederate
8 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.063%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.063%) Nagios
9 1 (0.063%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 141 (8.87%) Microsoft
2 122 (7.67%) SAP
3 81 (5.09%) Salesforce
4 76 (4.78%) Oracle
5 74 (4.65%) Databricks
6 46 (2.89%) Google
7 38 (2.39%) Adobe
8 25 (1.57%) Zscaler
9 20 (1.26%) MuleSoft
10 18 (1.13%) Workday
11 17 (1.07%) ServiceNow
12 16 (1.01%) Cisco
13 14 (0.88%) IBM
14 13 (0.82%) Fortinet
14 13 (0.82%) IFS
14 13 (0.82%) Palo Alto
14 13 (0.82%) VMware
15 12 (0.75%) Apple
16 11 (0.69%) Informatica
16 11 (0.69%) New Relic