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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 122 92
Rank change year-on-year +37 -30 +7
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,631 773 940
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.99% 2.34% 2.44%
As % of the General category 5.37% 3.68% 4.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 938 406 512
10th Percentile £324 £289 £285
25th Percentile £456 £413 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year +8.59% -3.52% -
75th Percentile £663 £637 £625
90th Percentile £738 £731 £702
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 65 39
10th Percentile £12.76 - £12.15
25th Percentile £13.50 £15.25 £14.63
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 £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 30,363 21,028 22,288
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.61% 63.69% 57.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,843 13,030 13,503
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 2,462 1,194 1,147
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.67
25th Percentile £16.38 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £29.98 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.20% -32.93% +36.36%
75th Percentile £53.87 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £70.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.40 £37.50
% change year-on-year +40.19% -42.93% +44.51%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 +30 1,501 £550 +7.32% 1,947
London +44 838 £568 +3.65% 815
UK excluding London +11 682 £525 +5.00% 1,318
Work from Home +4 360 £525 +5.00% 717
North of England -18 198 £550 +10.00% 329
South East +8 171 £550 - 374
Midlands +29 155 £525 +21.95% 265
North West +16 121 £550 +10.00% 185
East Midlands +23 88 £500 +14.68% 131
East of England +7 79 £550 +4.76% 142
West Midlands -2 66 £575 +35.29% 134
Yorkshire -39 59 £500 - 105
South West -33 48 £350 +11.03% 138
Scotland -5 25 £385 -24.93% 59
North East -34 18 £525 +18.64% 44
Wales -14 4 - - 33
Northern Ireland +4 3 £203 - 16

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 (3.07%) 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 (0.061%) Mendix
10 1 (0.061%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.061%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 67 (4.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (2.94%) 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 (0.61%) 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 (0.061%) 3ds Max
14 1 (0.061%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.061%) Siemens NX
14 1 (0.061%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.061%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 53 (3.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (1.78%) Shopify
3 15 (0.92%) SAP Retail
4 11 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
5 10 (0.61%) Oracle Retail
5 10 (0.61%) 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
1 207 (12.69%) Azure
2 147 (9.01%) AWS
3 78 (4.78%) Power Platform
4 74 (4.54%) GCP
5 56 (3.43%) Snowflake
6 45 (2.76%) GitHub
7 36 (2.21%) Azure DevOps
8 33 (2.02%) Entra ID
9 28 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
10 27 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
10 27 (1.66%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 25 (1.53%) SaaS
12 20 (1.23%) Figma
13 19 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
14 18 (1.10%) dbt
15 17 (1.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 15 (0.92%) Microsoft 365
17 14 (0.86%) OCI
18 13 (0.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
19 11 (0.67%) Algolia
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.41%) WAN
2 20 (1.23%) Firewall
3 16 (0.98%) ATM
3 16 (0.98%) Wireless
4 15 (0.92%) LAN
4 15 (0.92%) Network Security
4 15 (0.92%) VPN
5 12 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
6 9 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
7 8 (0.49%) BGP
7 8 (0.49%) IPsec
7 8 (0.49%) OSPF
7 8 (0.49%) SD-WAN
8 7 (0.43%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 7 (0.43%) Internet
8 7 (0.43%) VLAN
9 5 (0.31%) Cisco Firepower
9 5 (0.31%) VSAN
10 4 (0.25%) Cisco ASA
10 4 (0.25%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (4.78%) Power BI
2 50 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
3 32 (1.96%) BigQuery
4 30 (1.84%) Data Lake
5 23 (1.41%) Metadata
6 20 (1.23%) NoSQL
6 20 (1.23%) SQL Server
6 20 (1.23%) Tableau
7 18 (1.10%) MongoDB
8 13 (0.80%) Power Query
9 12 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
9 12 (0.74%) Relational Database
10 11 (0.67%) MySQL
10 11 (0.67%) PostgreSQL
10 11 (0.67%) Star Schema
11 10 (0.61%) Redis
11 10 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 9 (0.55%) SAP BW
12 9 (0.55%) SAP HANA
13 8 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 78 (4.78%) JIRA
2 27 (1.66%) 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 (0.061%) Pylint
10 1 (0.061%) REST Assured
General
1 464 (28.45%) Social Skills
2 389 (23.85%) Finance
3 171 (10.48%) Analytical Skills
4 134 (8.22%) Banking
5 127 (7.79%) Marketing
6 110 (6.74%) Manufacturing
7 72 (4.41%) Organisational Skills
8 68 (4.17%) Retail Banking
9 43 (2.64%) Corporate Banking
9 43 (2.64%) Investment Banking
10 36 (2.21%) Public Sector
11 34 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
12 30 (1.84%) Telecoms
13 28 (1.72%) Legal
14 27 (1.66%) Advertising
15 24 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
16 23 (1.41%) French Language
17 19 (1.16%) Back Office
18 18 (1.10%) Spanish Language
19 17 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 268 (16.43%) Architect
2 239 (14.65%) Analyst
3 182 (11.16%) Senior
4 149 (9.14%) Solutions Architect
5 139 (8.52%) Business Analyst
6 122 (7.48%) Project Manager
7 119 (7.30%) Lead
8 86 (5.27%) Developer
9 55 (3.37%) Consultant
10 52 (3.19%) Product Manager
11 48 (2.94%) Designer
12 46 (2.82%) Data Analyst
12 46 (2.82%) Senior Manager
13 41 (2.51%) Supply Chain Architect
14 36 (2.21%) Senior Developer
14 36 (2.21%) Service Manager
15 35 (2.15%) Data Architect
16 34 (2.08%) Enterprise Architect
16 34 (2.08%) Service Transition Manager
16 34 (2.08%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (4.23%) REST
2 53 (3.25%) Terraform
3 43 (2.64%) React
4 37 (2.27%) Kafka
5 31 (1.90%) Node.js
6 27 (1.66%) Spring
7 24 (1.47%) Middleware
8 23 (1.41%) Spring Boot
9 22 (1.35%) SOAP
10 21 (1.29%) MACH
11 20 (1.23%) Django
11 20 (1.23%) RESTful
11 20 (1.23%) VML
12 16 (0.98%) HTML
12 16 (0.98%) Next.js
13 12 (0.74%) Lightning Web Components
13 12 (0.74%) OAuth
13 12 (0.74%) SAP Fiori
14 11 (0.67%) CSS
14 11 (0.67%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 85 (5.21%) Product Ownership
2 70 (4.29%) FMCG
3 60 (3.68%) Onboarding
4 56 (3.43%) EPoS
5 50 (3.07%) Cloud Native
6 36 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
7 33 (2.02%) Driving Licence
8 29 (1.78%) Management Information System
9 28 (1.72%) Mobile App
10 27 (1.66%) Data Centre
10 27 (1.66%) Marketing Technology
11 25 (1.53%) Data Structures
11 25 (1.53%) Greenfield Project
12 22 (1.35%) Mainframe
12 22 (1.35%) Operational Technology
13 21 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
14 19 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
14 19 (1.16%) Smartphone
15 17 (1.04%) AI Agents
15 17 (1.04%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.19%) Windows
2 18 (1.10%) Linux
3 11 (0.67%) 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 (0.061%) OS/2
9 1 (0.061%) SUSE
9 1 (0.061%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.061%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 423 (25.94%) Stakeholder Management
2 378 (23.18%) Agile
3 249 (15.27%) E-Commerce
4 194 (11.89%) Problem-Solving
5 192 (11.77%) Migration
6 187 (11.47%) Analytics
7 185 (11.34%) Logistics
8 176 (10.79%) AI
8 176 (10.79%) Roadmaps
9 144 (8.83%) Customer Experience
10 141 (8.65%) Decision-Making
11 138 (8.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 137 (8.40%) Continuous Improvement
13 128 (7.85%) CRM
14 126 (7.73%) CI/CD
15 119 (7.30%) Project Management
16 114 (6.99%) Business Intelligence
17 113 (6.93%) Customer Service
18 110 (6.74%) DevOps
19 109 (6.68%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 145 (8.89%) SQL
2 111 (6.81%) Python
3 51 (3.13%) Java
4 36 (2.21%) TypeScript
5 27 (1.66%) JavaScript
6 13 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (0.67%) ABAP
7 11 (0.67%) Apex Code
8 10 (0.61%) C#
8 10 (0.61%) R
9 9 (0.55%) Bash
9 9 (0.55%) SOQL
10 7 (0.43%) PowerShell
10 7 (0.43%) SOSL
11 6 (0.37%) PL/SQL
11 6 (0.37%) Scala
12 5 (0.31%) Groovy
13 4 (0.25%) Bicep
13 4 (0.25%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.25%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 62 (3.80%) Degree
2 46 (2.82%) Security Cleared
3 23 (1.41%) PMP
4 21 (1.29%) SC Cleared
5 13 (0.80%) DBS Check
6 12 (0.74%) PMI Certification
7 10 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
8 8 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (0.37%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (0.37%) CISSP
9 6 (0.37%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (0.31%) CISM
10 5 (0.31%) City & Guilds
10 5 (0.31%) CSPO
10 5 (0.31%) Six Sigma Green Belt
11 4 (0.25%) CCNP
11 4 (0.25%) CCSE
11 4 (0.25%) CCSM
12 3 (0.18%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.18%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (4.84%) Data Quality
2 75 (4.60%) QA
3 36 (2.21%) GDPR
4 25 (1.53%) PMO
5 23 (1.41%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.86%) PCI DSS
7 11 (0.67%) 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 (0.061%) GxP
13 1 (0.061%) HL7
System Software
1 35 (2.15%) 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 3 (0.18%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.061%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 39 (2.39%) Kubernetes
2 11 (0.67%) Ansible
3 10 (0.61%) 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 (0.061%) CSIRT
10 1 (0.061%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.061%) Nagios
10 1 (0.061%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 152 (9.32%) Microsoft
2 133 (8.15%) SAP
3 91 (5.58%) Salesforce
4 81 (4.97%) Databricks
5 72 (4.41%) Oracle
6 46 (2.82%) Google
7 38 (2.33%) Adobe
8 27 (1.66%) MuleSoft
9 25 (1.53%) Zscaler
10 19 (1.16%) Cisco
10 19 (1.16%) 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
13 12 (0.74%) VMware
14 11 (0.67%) Braze
14 11 (0.67%) New Relic
14 11 (0.67%) Splunk