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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 117 83
Rank change year-on-year +29 -34 +10
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,534 759 1,007
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.90% 2.31% 2.57%
As % of the General category 5.28% 3.65% 4.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 915 401 553
10th Percentile £306 £281 £300
25th Percentile £438 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% - -6.98%
75th Percentile £656 £630 £625
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +3.00% - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 44 68
10th Percentile £12.98 £14.73 £12.15
25th Percentile £13.81 £15.25 £12.50
Median hourly rate £18.75 £16.30 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +15.03% - -17.72%
75th Percentile £22.50 £25.15 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £54.80 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.24 £15.96 £16.00
% change year-on-year -4.51% -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 29,034 20,793 22,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.94% 63.19% 57.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,258 12,994 14,143
10th Percentile £313 £278 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,135 1,115 1,399
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £16.19 £16.96
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £60.00 £50.75 £57.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.81 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +48.17% -41.92% +46.62%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +28 1,402 £550 +7.32% 1,820
London +43 808 £550 - 772
UK excluding London +20 617 £515 +3.00% 1,223
Work from Home -1 335 £523 +4.50% 677
North of England -13 182 £550 +10.00% 321
South East +16 177 £525 -8.70% 363
Midlands +11 123 £500 +16.14% 248
North West -1 116 £550 +10.00% 172
East Midlands +20 69 £500 +21.21% 102
East of England +15 63 £544 +3.57% 94
West Midlands -21 54 £606 +34.72% 145
Yorkshire -38 54 £500 - 110
South West -41 36 £325 -8.59% 119
Scotland +2 27 £447 -12.78% 70
North East -34 12 £155 -64.89% 43
Wales -13 5 £190 +29.52% 26
Northern Ireland +8 4 £196 -64.32% 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 43 (2.80%) Confluence
2 18 (1.17%) CMS
3 13 (0.85%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 12 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (0.59%) SharePoint
6 5 (0.33%) SAS
7 4 (0.26%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.20%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.13%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.13%) CICS
9 2 (0.13%) Mule
10 1 (0.065%) Apache
10 1 (0.065%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 52 (3.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (2.28%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.85%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 13 (0.85%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.52%) Photoshop
7 7 (0.46%) Adobe Illustrator
8 6 (0.39%) MS Visio
9 5 (0.33%) InDesign
10 4 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.20%) CPLEX
11 3 (0.20%) Notion
12 1 (0.065%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.065%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 42 (2.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.83%) Shopify
3 11 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.65%) SAP CRM
5 9 (0.59%) Oracle Retail
6 8 (0.52%) Magento
7 6 (0.39%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.39%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.39%) SAP Retail
8 5 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.33%) SAP SD
9 4 (0.26%) NetSuite
10 3 (0.20%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 3 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.20%) SAP CAR
10 3 (0.20%) SAP ERP
11 2 (0.13%) Finacle
11 2 (0.13%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 184 (11.99%) Azure
2 141 (9.19%) AWS
3 72 (4.69%) GCP
4 70 (4.56%) Power Platform
5 51 (3.32%) Snowflake
6 42 (2.74%) GitHub
7 30 (1.96%) Azure DevOps
7 30 (1.96%) Entra ID
8 26 (1.69%) GitHub Actions
9 24 (1.56%) Dynamics 365
10 22 (1.43%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
11 19 (1.24%) Figma
12 17 (1.11%) SaaS
13 16 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
14 15 (0.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 12 (0.78%) dbt
15 12 (0.78%) Microsoft 365
16 11 (0.72%) Salesforce Service Cloud
16 11 (0.72%) Serverless
17 9 (0.59%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.11%) WAN
2 16 (1.04%) ATM
2 16 (1.04%) Firewall
3 15 (0.98%) Wireless
4 14 (0.91%) VPN
5 13 (0.85%) Network Security
6 11 (0.72%) LAN
7 9 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
8 8 (0.52%) BGP
8 8 (0.52%) IPsec
8 8 (0.52%) OSPF
9 7 (0.46%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 7 (0.46%) RFID
9 7 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
9 7 (0.46%) VLAN
10 6 (0.39%) Cisco Firepower
10 6 (0.39%) SD-WAN
11 5 (0.33%) Cisco ASA
11 5 (0.33%) Cisco Nexus
11 5 (0.33%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.50%) Power BI
2 32 (2.09%) Data Warehouse
3 30 (1.96%) BigQuery
4 21 (1.37%) Data Lake
5 18 (1.17%) NoSQL
6 17 (1.11%) Metadata
6 17 (1.11%) Tableau
7 15 (0.98%) MongoDB
7 15 (0.98%) MySQL
8 14 (0.91%) SQL Server
9 12 (0.78%) Power Query
9 12 (0.78%) Relational Database
10 10 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
10 10 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 9 (0.59%) PostgreSQL
12 8 (0.52%) Redis
13 7 (0.46%) Looker
13 7 (0.46%) SAP HANA
14 6 (0.39%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 6 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 74 (4.82%) JIRA
2 30 (1.96%) Git
3 19 (1.24%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.52%) Subversion
5 7 (0.46%) Claude Code
6 5 (0.33%) JMeter
7 4 (0.26%) Cypress.io
7 4 (0.26%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.26%) GitLab
7 4 (0.26%) Maven
8 3 (0.20%) Hudson
9 2 (0.13%) git-flow
9 2 (0.13%) MLflow
9 2 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
9 2 (0.13%) Postman
9 2 (0.13%) Selenium
9 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.13%) webpack
10 1 (0.065%) Toad
10 1 (0.065%) Visual Studio
General
1 426 (27.77%) Social Skills
2 358 (23.34%) Finance
3 152 (9.91%) Analytical Skills
4 124 (8.08%) Banking
5 96 (6.26%) Marketing
6 92 (6.00%) Manufacturing
7 64 (4.17%) Retail Banking
8 60 (3.91%) Organisational Skills
9 48 (3.13%) Investment Banking
10 44 (2.87%) Corporate Banking
11 29 (1.89%) Influencing Skills
12 27 (1.76%) Legal
12 27 (1.76%) Public Sector
13 25 (1.63%) Advertising
14 24 (1.56%) Telecoms
15 23 (1.50%) French Language
16 22 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
17 21 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
18 18 (1.17%) Spanish Language
19 14 (0.91%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 249 (16.23%) Architect
2 223 (14.54%) Analyst
3 183 (11.93%) Senior
4 135 (8.80%) Solutions Architect
5 130 (8.47%) Business Analyst
6 121 (7.89%) Project Manager
7 112 (7.30%) Lead
8 81 (5.28%) Developer
9 52 (3.39%) Senior Manager
10 46 (3.00%) Consultant
10 46 (3.00%) Designer
11 44 (2.87%) Product Manager
12 43 (2.80%) Data Analyst
13 39 (2.54%) Service Manager
14 36 (2.35%) Enterprise Architect
14 36 (2.35%) Senior Developer
15 35 (2.28%) Data Architect
16 34 (2.22%) Supply Chain Architect
17 33 (2.15%) Programme Manager
18 32 (2.09%) Technical Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (4.56%) REST
2 41 (2.67%) React
3 33 (2.15%) Middleware
4 32 (2.09%) Spring
5 30 (1.96%) Kafka
6 28 (1.83%) Node.js
7 24 (1.56%) Spring Boot
8 21 (1.37%) VML
9 20 (1.30%) Django
9 20 (1.30%) RESTful
10 16 (1.04%) HTML
10 16 (1.04%) SOAP
11 15 (0.98%) CSS
11 15 (0.98%) MACH
12 14 (0.91%) OAuth
13 13 (0.85%) Jakarta EE
13 13 (0.85%) Next.js
14 11 (0.72%) .NET
15 9 (0.59%) OAuth2
16 8 (0.52%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 83 (5.41%) Product Ownership
2 64 (4.17%) FMCG
3 58 (3.78%) EPoS
4 56 (3.65%) Onboarding
5 45 (2.93%) Cloud Native
5 45 (2.93%) Driving Licence
6 32 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
7 29 (1.89%) Data Centre
7 29 (1.89%) Mobile App
8 22 (1.43%) Marketing Technology
9 21 (1.37%) Data Structures
9 21 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
9 21 (1.37%) Mainframe
9 21 (1.37%) Operational Technology
10 20 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
11 19 (1.24%) Smartphone
12 17 (1.11%) AI Agents
13 16 (1.04%) IoT
14 14 (0.91%) Distributed Systems
14 14 (0.91%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 56 (3.65%) Windows
2 23 (1.50%) Linux
3 12 (0.78%) Unix
4 11 (0.72%) Android
5 8 (0.52%) Apple iOS
6 7 (0.46%) zOS
7 6 (0.39%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.33%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.33%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.33%) Windows Server
9 2 (0.13%) Debian
10 1 (0.065%) SUSE
10 1 (0.065%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.065%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 369 (24.05%) Stakeholder Management
2 360 (23.47%) Agile
3 236 (15.38%) E-Commerce
4 214 (13.95%) Problem-Solving
5 178 (11.60%) Migration
5 178 (11.60%) Roadmaps
6 163 (10.63%) Analytics
7 162 (10.56%) AI
8 150 (9.78%) Customer Experience
9 140 (9.13%) Logistics
10 131 (8.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 126 (8.21%) Decision-Making
12 122 (7.95%) CI/CD
12 122 (7.95%) Continuous Improvement
13 111 (7.24%) Project Management
14 110 (7.17%) CRM
15 107 (6.98%) ERP
16 105 (6.84%) Customer Service
17 104 (6.78%) User Acceptance Testing
18 101 (6.58%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 135 (8.80%) SQL
2 103 (6.71%) Python
3 57 (3.72%) Java
4 32 (2.09%) TypeScript
5 30 (1.96%) JavaScript
6 12 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (0.72%) C#
8 8 (0.52%) ABAP
8 8 (0.52%) PowerShell
9 7 (0.46%) Apex Code
9 7 (0.46%) R
9 7 (0.46%) SOQL
10 6 (0.39%) Bash
10 6 (0.39%) Bicep
10 6 (0.39%) Kotlin
10 6 (0.39%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.39%) Scala
11 5 (0.33%) Groovy
11 5 (0.33%) SOSL
12 4 (0.26%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 61 (3.98%) Degree
2 40 (2.61%) Security Cleared
3 22 (1.43%) PMP
3 22 (1.43%) SC Cleared
4 13 (0.85%) DBS Check
5 12 (0.78%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (0.59%) CISSP
7 6 (0.39%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (0.39%) CISM
7 6 (0.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
8 5 (0.33%) CCNP
8 5 (0.33%) CCSE
8 5 (0.33%) CCSM
8 5 (0.33%) CSPO
9 4 (0.26%) Azure Certification
9 4 (0.26%) City & Guilds
9 4 (0.26%) PhD
10 3 (0.20%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (4.95%) QA
2 70 (4.56%) Data Quality
3 41 (2.67%) GDPR
4 26 (1.69%) PMO
5 23 (1.50%) Accessibility
6 16 (1.04%) PCI DSS
7 14 (0.91%) SLA
8 8 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.46%) NIST
10 4 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 4 (0.26%) WCAG
11 3 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.20%) GAAP
11 3 (0.20%) GRC
11 3 (0.20%) IFRS
11 3 (0.20%) PSD2
12 2 (0.13%) ISO 8583
12 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.065%) COBIT
13 1 (0.065%) GxP
System Software
1 36 (2.35%) Docker
2 34 (2.22%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.85%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (0.46%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.33%) Firmware
6 5 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.13%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 49 (3.19%) Terraform
2 37 (2.41%) Kubernetes
3 13 (0.85%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
4 11 (0.72%) Ansible
5 7 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
6 6 (0.39%) FortiGate
6 6 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
7 5 (0.33%) Grafana
8 4 (0.26%) SCCM
9 3 (0.20%) Bosun
10 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.13%) AirWatch
10 2 (0.13%) CA Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.13%) CloudHub
10 2 (0.13%) MOM
10 2 (0.13%) PingFederate
11 1 (0.065%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.065%) logstash
11 1 (0.065%) Nagios
11 1 (0.065%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 126 (8.21%) Microsoft
2 106 (6.91%) SAP
3 71 (4.63%) Oracle
4 69 (4.50%) Databricks
5 67 (4.37%) Salesforce
6 51 (3.32%) Google
7 34 (2.22%) Adobe
8 24 (1.56%) Zscaler
9 19 (1.24%) MuleSoft
10 15 (0.98%) Cisco
10 15 (0.98%) ServiceNow
10 15 (0.98%) Workday
11 14 (0.91%) IBM
11 14 (0.91%) IFS
11 14 (0.91%) Splunk
12 13 (0.85%) Fortinet
12 13 (0.85%) Palo Alto
13 12 (0.78%) VMware
14 11 (0.72%) Braze
14 11 (0.72%) Informatica