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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 125 96
Rank change year-on-year +38 -29 +5
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,625 774 917
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.97% 2.35% 2.40%
As % of the General category 5.33% 3.69% 4.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 935 410 494
10th Percentile £325 £295 £275
25th Percentile £456 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.77% -0.95% -
75th Percentile £675 £638 £625
90th Percentile £738 £738 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 65 36
10th Percentile £12.76 - £12.15
25th Percentile £13.50 £15.25 £14.81
Median hourly rate £15.24 £16.34 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year -6.70% +0.21% -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £19.50 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £25.15 £34.44
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 30,471 20,950 22,148
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.75% 63.60% 57.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,899 12,987 13,281
10th Percentile £313 £275 £283
25th Percentile £420 £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 2,504 1,199 1,107
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.70
25th Percentile £16.38 £16.17 £17.08
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -30.14% +30.91%
75th Percentile £55.00 £48.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.50 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.50 £21.39 £35.36
% change year-on-year +42.59% -39.51% +34.70%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +29 1,495 £550 +4.76% 3,876
London +38 835 £575 +4.55% 1,957
UK excluding London +6 677 £525 +5.00% 2,086
Work from Home +14 365 £538 +7.50% 1,472
North of England -19 196 £550 +10.00% 598
South East +1 173 £575 +4.55% 563
Midlands +28 152 £550 +29.41% 400
North West +14 121 £550 +10.00% 343
East Midlands +22 86 £500 +14.68% 184
East of England +8 79 £550 +4.76% 205
West Midlands -7 65 £575 +35.29% 216
Yorkshire -49 57 £500 - 210
South West -30 47 £350 +11.03% 183
Scotland -14 24 £385 -24.93% 97
North East -29 18 £525 +18.64% 51
Wales -13 4 - - 51
Northern Ireland +5 3 £203 - 33

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 (3.08%) Confluence
2 22 (1.35%) CMS
3 14 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
3 14 (0.86%) SharePoint
4 8 (0.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 5 (0.31%) SAS
6 4 (0.25%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.18%) Anypoint
7 3 (0.18%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.12%) Apache
8 2 (0.12%) CICS
8 2 (0.12%) Mule
8 2 (0.12%) WordPress
9 1 (0.062%) Mendix
9 1 (0.062%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.062%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 68 (4.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 50 (3.08%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (0.98%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 12 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
5 12 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.62%) MS Visio
6 10 (0.62%) Photoshop
7 9 (0.55%) Adobe Illustrator
8 7 (0.43%) InDesign
9 6 (0.37%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.25%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.25%) Notion
11 1 (0.062%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.062%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.062%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.062%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.062%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 54 (3.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.66%) Shopify
3 15 (0.92%) SAP Retail
4 12 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
5 11 (0.68%) Oracle Retail
6 10 (0.62%) SAP CRM
7 8 (0.49%) Magento
8 6 (0.37%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
9 5 (0.31%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.31%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.25%) SAP SD
11 3 (0.18%) Dynamics NAV
11 3 (0.18%) OpenText VIM for SAP
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
11 3 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
11 3 (0.18%) SAP ERP
11 3 (0.18%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 210 (12.92%) Azure
2 147 (9.05%) AWS
3 79 (4.86%) Power Platform
4 74 (4.55%) GCP
5 56 (3.45%) Snowflake
6 47 (2.89%) GitHub
7 36 (2.22%) Azure DevOps
8 34 (2.09%) Entra ID
9 28 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
10 27 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
11 26 (1.60%) SaaS
12 25 (1.54%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
13 20 (1.23%) Figma
14 19 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
14 19 (1.17%) dbt
15 17 (1.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 16 (0.98%) OCI
17 14 (0.86%) Microsoft 365
18 13 (0.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
19 11 (0.68%) Algolia
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.35%) WAN
2 21 (1.29%) 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 8 (0.49%) BGP
8 8 (0.49%) IPsec
8 8 (0.49%) OSPF
8 8 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
9 7 (0.43%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 7 (0.43%) Internet
9 7 (0.43%) SD-WAN
9 7 (0.43%) VLAN
10 5 (0.31%) Cisco Firepower
10 5 (0.31%) VSAN
11 4 (0.25%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (0.25%) RFID
Database & Business Intelligence
1 79 (4.86%) Power BI
2 53 (3.26%) Data Warehouse
3 33 (2.03%) BigQuery
4 30 (1.85%) Data Lake
5 23 (1.42%) Metadata
6 21 (1.29%) SQL Server
7 20 (1.23%) Tableau
8 19 (1.17%) MongoDB
9 18 (1.11%) NoSQL
10 13 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
10 13 (0.80%) Power Query
10 13 (0.80%) Relational Database
11 12 (0.74%) PostgreSQL
12 11 (0.68%) MySQL
12 11 (0.68%) Redis
12 11 (0.68%) Star Schema
13 10 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 9 (0.55%) SAP BW
14 9 (0.55%) SAP HANA
15 8 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 77 (4.74%) JIRA
2 24 (1.48%) 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%) Postman
9 2 (0.12%) git-flow
9 2 (0.12%) MLflow
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.12%) Selenium
9 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.12%) webpack
10 1 (0.062%) Moq
10 1 (0.062%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 467 (28.74%) Social Skills
2 384 (23.63%) Finance
3 169 (10.40%) Analytical Skills
4 130 (8.00%) Marketing
5 125 (7.69%) Banking
6 110 (6.77%) Manufacturing
7 72 (4.43%) Organisational Skills
8 64 (3.94%) Retail Banking
9 43 (2.65%) Corporate Banking
10 42 (2.58%) Investment Banking
11 36 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
12 35 (2.15%) Public Sector
13 29 (1.78%) Telecoms
14 28 (1.72%) Advertising
14 28 (1.72%) Legal
15 23 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
16 22 (1.35%) French Language
17 18 (1.11%) Back Office
17 18 (1.11%) Spanish Language
18 16 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 275 (16.92%) Architect
2 238 (14.65%) Analyst
3 179 (11.02%) Senior
4 155 (9.54%) Solutions Architect
5 139 (8.55%) Business Analyst
6 120 (7.38%) Project Manager
7 117 (7.20%) Lead
8 84 (5.17%) Developer
9 56 (3.45%) Consultant
10 52 (3.20%) Product Manager
11 49 (3.02%) Designer
12 47 (2.89%) Data Analyst
13 46 (2.83%) Senior Manager
14 42 (2.58%) Supply Chain Architect
15 35 (2.15%) Service Manager
16 34 (2.09%) Data Architect
16 34 (2.09%) Enterprise Architect
16 34 (2.09%) Senior Developer
16 34 (2.09%) Service Transition Manager
16 34 (2.09%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (4.12%) REST
2 53 (3.26%) Terraform
3 43 (2.65%) React
4 37 (2.28%) Kafka
5 30 (1.85%) Node.js
6 27 (1.66%) Spring
7 25 (1.54%) Middleware
8 24 (1.48%) Spring Boot
9 21 (1.29%) MACH
10 20 (1.23%) Django
10 20 (1.23%) RESTful
10 20 (1.23%) SOAP
10 20 (1.23%) VML
11 16 (0.98%) HTML
11 16 (0.98%) Next.js
12 12 (0.74%) OAuth
12 12 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
13 11 (0.68%) CSS
14 10 (0.62%) .NET
14 10 (0.62%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 85 (5.23%) Product Ownership
2 70 (4.31%) FMCG
3 57 (3.51%) Onboarding
4 56 (3.45%) EPoS
5 51 (3.14%) Cloud Native
6 36 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
7 32 (1.97%) Driving Licence
8 30 (1.85%) 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%) Greenfield Project
13 24 (1.48%) Data Structures
14 22 (1.35%) Mainframe
14 22 (1.35%) Operational Technology
15 21 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
16 20 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
17 19 (1.17%) Smartphone
18 17 (1.05%) AI Agents
18 17 (1.05%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 51 (3.14%) Windows
2 18 (1.11%) Linux
3 11 (0.68%) Android
4 8 (0.49%) Unix
5 7 (0.43%) Apple iOS
6 6 (0.37%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (0.37%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.18%) zOS
9 2 (0.12%) Debian
9 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
10 1 (0.062%) OS/2
10 1 (0.062%) SUSE
10 1 (0.062%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.062%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 422 (25.97%) Stakeholder Management
2 374 (23.02%) Agile
3 248 (15.26%) E-Commerce
4 193 (11.88%) Migration
5 186 (11.45%) Analytics
6 185 (11.38%) Problem-Solving
7 183 (11.26%) Logistics
8 174 (10.71%) AI
9 173 (10.65%) Roadmaps
10 142 (8.74%) Customer Experience
11 141 (8.68%) Decision-Making
12 136 (8.37%) Continuous Improvement
12 136 (8.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 128 (7.88%) CRM
14 122 (7.51%) CI/CD
15 116 (7.14%) Project Management
16 115 (7.08%) Business Intelligence
17 112 (6.89%) Customer Service
18 107 (6.58%) DevOps
19 102 (6.28%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 146 (8.98%) SQL
2 110 (6.77%) Python
3 50 (3.08%) Java
4 35 (2.15%) TypeScript
5 25 (1.54%) JavaScript
6 13 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (0.68%) ABAP
8 10 (0.62%) C#
8 10 (0.62%) R
9 9 (0.55%) Apex Code
9 9 (0.55%) Bash
10 7 (0.43%) PowerShell
10 7 (0.43%) SOQL
11 6 (0.37%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.31%) Groovy
12 5 (0.31%) Scala
12 5 (0.31%) SOSL
13 4 (0.25%) Bicep
13 4 (0.25%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.25%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 59 (3.63%) Degree
2 46 (2.83%) Security Cleared
3 23 (1.42%) PMP
4 22 (1.35%) 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
9 5 (0.31%) CISM
9 5 (0.31%) City & Guilds
9 5 (0.31%) Computer Science Degree
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%) APMG
11 3 (0.18%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (4.80%) Data Quality
2 73 (4.49%) QA
3 35 (2.15%) GDPR
4 26 (1.60%) PMO
5 23 (1.42%) 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%) Basel III
13 1 (0.062%) GxP
System Software
1 34 (2.09%) Docker
2 28 (1.72%) 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 39 (2.40%) Kubernetes
2 11 (0.68%) Ansible
2 11 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
3 7 (0.43%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 6 (0.37%) FortiGate
5 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.25%) Bosun
6 4 (0.25%) SCCM
7 2 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.12%) AirWatch
7 2 (0.12%) CA Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.12%) CloudHub
7 2 (0.12%) Jamf Pro
7 2 (0.12%) logstash
7 2 (0.12%) PingFederate
7 2 (0.12%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.062%) CSIRT
8 1 (0.062%) Grafana
8 1 (0.062%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.062%) vMotion
Vendors
1 154 (9.48%) Microsoft
2 133 (8.18%) SAP
3 92 (5.66%) Salesforce
4 82 (5.05%) Databricks
5 73 (4.49%) Oracle
6 47 (2.89%) Google
7 38 (2.34%) Adobe
8 30 (1.85%) 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%) New Relic
13 12 (0.74%) Palo Alto
14 11 (0.68%) Braze
14 11 (0.68%) Splunk
14 11 (0.68%) VMware