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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 109 79
Rank change year-on-year +17 -30 +16
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,404 795 1,109
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.67% 2.45% 2.59%
As % of the General category 4.88% 3.89% 4.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 850 408 619
10th Percentile £304 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £412 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.65% -3.52% -0.94%
75th Percentile £644 £630 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -1.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 41 83
10th Percentile £13.03 - £12.15
25th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £12.26
Median hourly rate £21.00 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +28.83% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £32.75 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £77.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.21 £15.96 £16.00
% change year-on-year +7.83% -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 28,784 20,447 24,473
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.71% 63.01% 57.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,221 12,834 15,299
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £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 £472 £490
% change year-on-year +5.93% -3.67% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,006 1,047 1,882
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.36 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.31 £16.00
Median hourly rate £33.00 £26.50 £32.90
Median % change year-on-year +24.53% -19.44% +7.71%
75th Percentile £62.94 £52.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £70.06 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.63 £32.12
% change year-on-year +45.82% -29.53% +23.52%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +11 1,284 £545 +3.81% 1,660
London +26 750 £550 - 524
UK excluding London -1 548 £520 +4.00% 1,408
Work from Home -26 311 £500 - 997
South East +9 166 £525 -6.25% 382
North of England -24 160 £550 +10.00% 315
North West +1 105 £575 +15.00% 164
Midlands -9 100 £500 +11.11% 244
East of England +15 61 £550 -4.35% 181
East Midlands +4 52 £488 +8.33% 135
West Midlands -35 48 £606 +34.72% 108
Yorkshire -53 48 £506 -3.57% 113
South West -32 34 £325 -8.59% 117
Scotland -3 21 £496 -3.22% 112
North East -36 7 £173 -79.07% 42
Northern Ireland +4 3 £196 -64.32% 41
Wales -13 3 £190 +29.52% 55

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 37 (2.64%) Confluence
2 19 (1.35%) CMS
3 15 (1.07%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 12 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.50%) SharePoint
6 6 (0.43%) 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 39 (2.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (2.14%) Microsoft Office
3 21 (1.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 18 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.93%) Chatbot
6 11 (0.78%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 10 (0.71%) Photoshop
8 9 (0.64%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.43%) InDesign
10 5 (0.36%) MS Visio
11 3 (0.21%) Notion
11 3 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
12 2 (0.14%) UserZoom
13 1 (0.071%) 3ds Max
13 1 (0.071%) CPLEX
13 1 (0.071%) Maya
13 1 (0.071%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.071%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 35 (2.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.99%) Shopify
3 14 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.71%) Oracle Retail
5 9 (0.64%) SAP CRM
6 7 (0.50%) Magento
7 6 (0.43%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.43%) SAP Retail
8 5 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.36%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.28%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.28%) SAP SD
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%) Cognos Controller
11 2 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 2 (0.14%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 170 (12.11%) Azure
2 135 (9.62%) AWS
3 78 (5.56%) GCP
4 68 (4.84%) Power Platform
5 53 (3.77%) Snowflake
6 34 (2.42%) GitHub
7 25 (1.78%) Azure DevOps
7 25 (1.78%) Dynamics 365
8 24 (1.71%) Entra ID
9 22 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
9 22 (1.57%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
10 20 (1.42%) Figma
11 17 (1.21%) SaaS
12 14 (1.00%) dbt
13 13 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
14 12 (0.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
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 (1.14%) Firewall
2 15 (1.07%) Wireless
3 14 (1.00%) VPN
3 14 (1.00%) WAN
4 13 (0.93%) ATM
4 13 (0.93%) Network Security
5 9 (0.64%) RFID
6 8 (0.57%) BGP
6 8 (0.57%) IPsec
6 8 (0.57%) LAN
6 8 (0.57%) OSPF
6 8 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (0.50%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 7 (0.50%) VLAN
8 6 (0.43%) Cisco Firepower
8 6 (0.43%) SD-WAN
9 5 (0.36%) Cisco ASA
9 5 (0.36%) Cisco Nexus
9 5 (0.36%) VSAN
10 4 (0.28%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (4.70%) Power BI
2 31 (2.21%) BigQuery
3 29 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
4 20 (1.42%) Metadata
5 19 (1.35%) Data Lake
5 19 (1.35%) MySQL
6 17 (1.21%) Tableau
7 16 (1.14%) NoSQL
8 14 (1.00%) SQL Server
9 12 (0.85%) Relational Database
10 9 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
11 8 (0.57%) MongoDB
11 8 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
11 8 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 7 (0.50%) Power Query
12 7 (0.50%) SAP HANA
13 6 (0.43%) Couchbase
13 6 (0.43%) Data Vault
13 6 (0.43%) Looker
13 6 (0.43%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 70 (4.99%) JIRA
2 31 (2.21%) Git
3 19 (1.35%) Jenkins
4 7 (0.50%) Subversion
5 5 (0.36%) GitLab
6 4 (0.28%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.28%) Maven
7 3 (0.21%) Claude Code
7 3 (0.21%) Cypress.io
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%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.14%) WebDriver
8 2 (0.14%) webpack
General
1 391 (27.85%) Social Skills
2 324 (23.08%) Finance
3 131 (9.33%) Analytical Skills
4 120 (8.55%) Banking
5 92 (6.55%) Marketing
6 78 (5.56%) Manufacturing
7 63 (4.49%) Retail Banking
8 60 (4.27%) Organisational Skills
9 48 (3.42%) Investment Banking
10 46 (3.28%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (1.92%) Public Sector
12 26 (1.85%) Telecoms
13 25 (1.78%) Influencing Skills
14 24 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
15 23 (1.64%) French Language
15 23 (1.64%) Legal
16 21 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
17 18 (1.28%) Advertising
17 18 (1.28%) Spanish Language
18 15 (1.07%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 229 (16.31%) Architect
2 202 (14.39%) Analyst
3 170 (12.11%) Senior
4 128 (9.12%) Project Manager
5 119 (8.48%) Solutions Architect
6 116 (8.26%) Business Analyst
7 102 (7.26%) Lead
8 66 (4.70%) Developer
9 61 (4.34%) Senior Manager
10 48 (3.42%) Designer
11 45 (3.21%) Product Manager
12 39 (2.78%) Consultant
13 38 (2.71%) Technical Manager
14 37 (2.64%) Enterprise Architect
15 34 (2.42%) Data Analyst
15 34 (2.42%) Senior Project Manager
16 33 (2.35%) Data Architect
17 31 (2.21%) Programme Manager
18 30 (2.14%) Service Manager
18 30 (2.14%) Supply Chain Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (4.49%) REST
2 35 (2.49%) Middleware
3 34 (2.42%) React
4 28 (1.99%) Spring
5 27 (1.92%) Kafka
6 22 (1.57%) Node.js
7 21 (1.50%) VML
8 20 (1.42%) Spring Boot
9 18 (1.28%) RESTful
10 17 (1.21%) HTML
11 16 (1.14%) CSS
11 16 (1.14%) Django
11 16 (1.14%) SOAP
12 14 (1.00%) MACH
12 14 (1.00%) OAuth
13 13 (0.93%) J2EE
14 11 (0.78%) .NET
14 11 (0.78%) JSON
15 9 (0.64%) AngularJS
15 9 (0.64%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 84 (5.98%) Product Ownership
2 57 (4.06%) FMCG
3 48 (3.42%) EPoS
4 44 (3.13%) Onboarding
5 41 (2.92%) Cloud Native
6 40 (2.85%) Driving Licence
7 28 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
7 28 (1.99%) Mobile App
8 26 (1.85%) Data Centre
9 22 (1.57%) Data Structures
9 22 (1.57%) Marketing Technology
10 21 (1.50%) Greenfield Project
11 19 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
12 17 (1.21%) Mainframe
13 16 (1.14%) Operational Technology
14 15 (1.07%) AI Agents
15 14 (1.00%) Management Information System
16 11 (0.78%) Data Protection Act
16 11 (0.78%) Graphic Design
16 11 (0.78%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.70%) Windows
2 25 (1.78%) Linux
3 12 (0.85%) Unix
4 11 (0.78%) Android
5 7 (0.50%) zOS
6 6 (0.43%) Apple iOS
6 6 (0.43%) Mac OS
6 6 (0.43%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.36%) Windows 10
7 5 (0.36%) 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
1 342 (24.36%) Agile
2 336 (23.93%) Stakeholder Management
3 217 (15.46%) E-Commerce
4 195 (13.89%) Problem-Solving
5 180 (12.82%) Migration
6 170 (12.11%) Roadmaps
7 151 (10.75%) Analytics
8 142 (10.11%) AI
9 138 (9.83%) Customer Experience
10 125 (8.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 111 (7.91%) Project Management
12 107 (7.62%) CI/CD
12 107 (7.62%) Decision-Making
13 105 (7.48%) Project Delivery
14 103 (7.34%) CRM
15 102 (7.26%) Continuous Improvement
16 101 (7.19%) ERP
16 101 (7.19%) Logistics
17 95 (6.77%) User Acceptance Testing
18 94 (6.70%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 125 (8.90%) SQL
2 94 (6.70%) Python
3 56 (3.99%) Java
4 28 (1.99%) JavaScript
5 25 (1.78%) TypeScript
6 11 (0.78%) C#
7 9 (0.64%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.57%) ABAP
8 8 (0.57%) Shell Script
9 7 (0.50%) Apex Code
9 7 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 7 (0.50%) PL/SQL
9 7 (0.50%) SOQL
10 6 (0.43%) Bicep
10 6 (0.43%) Kotlin
10 6 (0.43%) R
10 6 (0.43%) Scala
11 5 (0.36%) Bash
11 5 (0.36%) Groovy
11 5 (0.36%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 61 (4.34%) Degree
2 39 (2.78%) Security Cleared
3 24 (1.71%) SC Cleared
4 18 (1.28%) PMP
5 12 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (0.71%) CISSP
6 10 (0.71%) DBS Check
7 8 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (0.57%) PMI Certification
8 7 (0.50%) CISM
9 6 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
10 5 (0.36%) CCNP
10 5 (0.36%) CCSE
10 5 (0.36%) CCSM
10 5 (0.36%) 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 69 (4.91%) QA
2 65 (4.63%) Data Quality
3 44 (3.13%) GDPR
4 30 (2.14%) PMO
5 21 (1.50%) Accessibility
6 17 (1.21%) PCI DSS
7 14 (1.00%) SLA
8 9 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.50%) NIST
10 4 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.21%) GAAP
11 3 (0.21%) IFRS
11 3 (0.21%) PSD2
12 2 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.14%) GRC
12 2 (0.14%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.14%) WCAG
13 1 (0.071%) COBIT
13 1 (0.071%) GxP
System Software
1 30 (2.14%) Docker
2 28 (1.99%) Active Directory
3 8 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.21%) Firmware
7 2 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 40 (2.85%) Terraform
2 30 (2.14%) Kubernetes
3 14 (1.00%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 11 (0.78%) Ansible
5 6 (0.43%) FortiGate
5 6 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.36%) 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%) Nagios
9 1 (0.071%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 112 (7.98%) Microsoft
2 96 (6.84%) SAP
3 75 (5.34%) Oracle
4 64 (4.56%) Salesforce
5 58 (4.13%) Databricks
6 50 (3.56%) Google
7 36 (2.56%) Adobe
8 19 (1.35%) MuleSoft
8 19 (1.35%) ServiceNow
8 19 (1.35%) Zscaler
9 17 (1.21%) Cisco
10 15 (1.07%) IBM
11 14 (1.00%) IFS
11 14 (1.00%) Splunk
12 13 (0.93%) Fortinet
12 13 (0.93%) Palo Alto
13 12 (0.85%) VMware
14 11 (0.78%) Workday
15 10 (0.71%) Informatica
16 9 (0.64%) JDA