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 16 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 112 99 84
Rank change year-on-year -13 -15 +10
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,046 759 1,081
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.18% 2.61% 2.54%
As % of the General category 4.05% 4.12% 4.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 622 397 601
10th Percentile £210 £304 £291
25th Percentile £401 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £505
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% +3.47% -5.16%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 20 87
10th Percentile £13.30 £15.12 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.86 £16.30 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £30.25 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.58% +89.06% -20.12%
75th Percentile £36.69 £70.00 £21.37
90th Percentile £43.75 £87.50 £21.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.50 £16.30 £15.90
% change year-on-year +7.36% +2.52% -19.74%

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 25,828 18,431 24,707
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.78% 63.27% 58.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,786 11,716 15,592
10th Percentile £310 £286 £275
25th Percentile £410 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.88% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.11% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,651 789 1,917
10th Percentile £13.95 £13.98 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.33 £17.25 £15.46
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -10.72%
75th Percentile £60.68 £55.93 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.09 £24.50 £28.25
% change year-on-year +14.65% -13.27% -2.59%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 May 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 -8 953 £510 -2.86% 1,234
London -15 520 £538 -2.27% 426
UK excluding London +5 443 £495 -1.00% 921
Work from Home -37 257 £500 -1.23% 510
North of England -34 128 £505 +12.22% 258
South East -18 123 £463 -2.63% 273
Midlands -27 88 £495 -1.00% 166
North West 0 77 £510 +4.62% 149
East Midlands +2 52 £495 -1.00% 82
East of England -8 50 £509 -3.05% 109
Yorkshire -48 48 £513 +38.51% 98
West Midlands -53 36 £500 +11.11% 83
South West -23 30 £326 -34.75% 79
Scotland +3 21 £474 -11.08% 43
North East -21 3 £201 -73.17% 15
Northern Ireland +2 2 £190 -44.48% 7
Wales -13 1 £190 +29.52% 21

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 (3.54%) Confluence
2 15 (1.43%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.05%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 8 (0.76%) CMS
5 7 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.48%) SAS
7 2 (0.19%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.19%) Magnolia
7 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.19%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.096%) CICS
8 1 (0.096%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 33 (3.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 21 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 20 (1.91%) Microsoft Office
4 19 (1.82%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (1.24%) Chatbot
6 11 (1.05%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.76%) Photoshop
8 6 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
9 3 (0.29%) InDesign
10 2 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.19%) UserZoom
11 1 (0.096%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.096%) Adobe After Effects
11 1 (0.096%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.096%) Maya
11 1 (0.096%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.096%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.096%) Trello
Business Applications
1 21 (2.01%) Shopify
2 19 (1.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
4 8 (0.76%) SAP Retail
5 7 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 7 (0.67%) Oracle Retail
6 6 (0.57%) Finacle
6 6 (0.57%) SAP CRM
7 5 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.48%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.38%) NetSuite
8 4 (0.38%) Temenos T24
9 3 (0.29%) Magento
9 3 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
10 2 (0.19%) BambooHR
10 2 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
10 2 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
10 2 (0.19%) Sage X3
10 2 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.19%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 100 (9.56%) Azure
2 80 (7.65%) AWS
3 60 (5.74%) GCP
4 50 (4.78%) Power Platform
5 32 (3.06%) Snowflake
6 25 (2.39%) Dynamics 365
7 22 (2.10%) GitHub
8 19 (1.82%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
9 18 (1.72%) Microsoft 365
10 15 (1.43%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (1.34%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (1.24%) BigCommerce
12 13 (1.24%) Figma
12 13 (1.24%) SaaS
13 12 (1.15%) Entra ID
14 11 (1.05%) Cloud Run
15 10 (0.96%) Azure Data Factory
15 10 (0.96%) Google Workspace
15 10 (0.96%) Miro
16 8 (0.76%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.43%) Firewall
1 15 (1.43%) WAN
2 14 (1.34%) VPN
3 12 (1.15%) RFID
4 11 (1.05%) Wireless
5 8 (0.76%) ATM
5 8 (0.76%) Cisco Nexus
5 8 (0.76%) LAN
6 7 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.57%) BGP
7 6 (0.57%) OSPF
8 5 (0.48%) Cisco Firepower
8 5 (0.48%) Network Security
9 4 (0.38%) Cisco ASA
9 4 (0.38%) EIGRP
9 4 (0.38%) NFC
9 4 (0.38%) VoIP
9 4 (0.38%) VSAN
10 3 (0.29%) MPLS
10 3 (0.29%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (4.40%) Power BI
2 28 (2.68%) BigQuery
3 17 (1.63%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (1.24%) MySQL
4 13 (1.24%) SQL Server
4 13 (1.24%) Tableau
5 10 (0.96%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.86%) Metadata
7 6 (0.57%) NoSQL
7 6 (0.57%) Relational Database
8 5 (0.48%) Data Vault
8 5 (0.48%) MongoDB
8 5 (0.48%) PostgreSQL
9 4 (0.38%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.38%) Semantic Layer
10 3 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.29%) OLAP
10 3 (0.29%) Oracle OLAP
10 3 (0.29%) Oracle Reports
10 3 (0.29%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 75 (7.17%) JIRA
2 20 (1.91%) Git
3 13 (1.24%) Jenkins
4 11 (1.05%) GitLab
5 4 (0.38%) JMeter
5 4 (0.38%) Maven
6 3 (0.29%) ERwin
6 3 (0.29%) Subversion
7 2 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.19%) Gatling
7 2 (0.19%) git-flow
7 2 (0.19%) Hudson
7 2 (0.19%) MLflow
7 2 (0.19%) Selenium
7 2 (0.19%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.19%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.096%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.096%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.096%) Mockito
8 1 (0.096%) Oracle APEX
General
1 310 (29.64%) Social Skills
2 266 (25.43%) Finance
3 105 (10.04%) Analytical Skills
4 97 (9.27%) Banking
5 62 (5.93%) Marketing
6 49 (4.68%) Retail Banking
7 47 (4.49%) Organisational Skills
8 43 (4.11%) Manufacturing
9 40 (3.82%) Investment Banking
10 38 (3.63%) Corporate Banking
11 29 (2.77%) Public Sector
12 27 (2.58%) Presentation Skills
13 26 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
14 25 (2.39%) Telecoms
15 22 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
16 19 (1.82%) Legal
17 14 (1.34%) Advertising
18 13 (1.24%) Back Office
19 12 (1.15%) French Language
20 11 (1.05%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 158 (15.11%) Analyst
2 153 (14.63%) Architect
3 131 (12.52%) Senior
4 112 (10.71%) Project Manager
5 94 (8.99%) Business Analyst
6 79 (7.55%) Lead
7 58 (5.54%) Solutions Architect
8 57 (5.45%) Senior Manager
9 40 (3.82%) Technical Manager
10 38 (3.63%) Developer
11 33 (3.15%) Consultant
11 33 (3.15%) Designer
12 31 (2.96%) Enterprise Architect
13 30 (2.87%) Senior Project Manager
14 27 (2.58%) Data Architect
15 24 (2.29%) Product Manager
16 23 (2.20%) Service Manager
17 21 (2.01%) Programme Manager
18 18 (1.72%) Data Engineer
18 18 (1.72%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (3.06%) Middleware
2 30 (2.87%) VML
3 28 (2.68%) REST
4 25 (2.39%) React
5 20 (1.91%) Spring
6 17 (1.63%) Node.js
7 14 (1.34%) Spring Boot
8 13 (1.24%) AngularJS
9 10 (0.96%) CSS
9 10 (0.96%) PySpark
10 9 (0.86%) Kafka
10 9 (0.86%) RESTful
11 8 (0.76%) OpenTelemetry
12 7 (0.67%) HTML
12 7 (0.67%) LangChain
12 7 (0.67%) MACH
12 7 (0.67%) OAuth
12 7 (0.67%) OAuth2
12 7 (0.67%) OpenID
12 7 (0.67%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 71 (6.79%) Product Ownership
2 36 (3.44%) Driving Licence
2 36 (3.44%) EPoS
3 31 (2.96%) Cloud Native
4 27 (2.58%) Onboarding
5 24 (2.29%) FMCG
6 23 (2.20%) Data Centre
7 21 (2.01%) Mainframe
8 20 (1.91%) Management Information System
9 19 (1.82%) Data Structures
10 18 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.53%) Mobile App
12 14 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
13 12 (1.15%) AI Agents
13 12 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (0.96%) Virtual Team
15 8 (0.76%) CCTV
15 8 (0.76%) Clustering
16 7 (0.67%) Enterprise Cloud
16 7 (0.67%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 45 (4.30%) Windows
2 21 (2.01%) Linux
3 8 (0.76%) Android
4 7 (0.67%) Mac OS
4 7 (0.67%) Unix
4 7 (0.67%) zOS
5 5 (0.48%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.29%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.19%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.096%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (21.70%) Agile
2 223 (21.32%) Stakeholder Management
3 186 (17.78%) Problem-Solving
4 150 (14.34%) E-Commerce
5 127 (12.14%) Migration
6 117 (11.19%) Roadmaps
7 115 (10.99%) Project Management
8 104 (9.94%) Analytics
9 98 (9.37%) Customer Experience
10 90 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 85 (8.13%) ERP
12 78 (7.46%) AI
12 78 (7.46%) Continuous Improvement
12 78 (7.46%) Decision-Making
12 78 (7.46%) Project Delivery
13 76 (7.27%) Scrum
14 74 (7.07%) Change Management
15 71 (6.79%) User Acceptance Testing
16 68 (6.50%) CI/CD
17 65 (6.21%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 75 (7.17%) SQL
2 60 (5.74%) Python
3 31 (2.96%) Java
4 24 (2.29%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.24%) TypeScript
6 10 (0.96%) PowerShell
6 10 (0.96%) Shell Script
7 7 (0.67%) Bash
8 6 (0.57%) SOQL
9 5 (0.48%) Apex Code
9 5 (0.48%) C#
9 5 (0.48%) Kotlin
9 5 (0.48%) Kusto Query Language
9 5 (0.48%) SOSL
10 4 (0.38%) Bicep
10 4 (0.38%) PL/SQL
10 4 (0.38%) Scala
10 4 (0.38%) VBA
11 2 (0.19%) Korn
11 2 (0.19%) REXX
Qualifications
1 48 (4.59%) Degree
2 40 (3.82%) Security Cleared
3 26 (2.49%) SC Cleared
4 17 (1.63%) PMP
5 11 (1.05%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.86%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (0.86%) CSPO
7 8 (0.76%) CCNP
7 8 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
8 7 (0.67%) APMP
8 7 (0.67%) DBS Check
8 7 (0.67%) Master's Degree
9 6 (0.57%) CISSP
9 6 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
10 5 (0.48%) MBA
11 4 (0.38%) CCIE
11 4 (0.38%) CCSE
11 4 (0.38%) CCSM
12 3 (0.29%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (5.07%) QA
2 51 (4.88%) Data Quality
3 35 (3.35%) GDPR
4 33 (3.15%) PMO
5 16 (1.53%) SLA
6 14 (1.34%) Accessibility
7 10 (0.96%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.48%) NIST
10 4 (0.38%) IFRS
11 3 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.19%) GRC
12 2 (0.19%) WCAG
13 1 (0.096%) COBIT
13 1 (0.096%) GAAP
13 1 (0.096%) IFRS 9
13 1 (0.096%) NCSC
13 1 (0.096%) Solvency II
System Software
1 20 (1.91%) Active Directory
1 20 (1.91%) Docker
2 6 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.38%) RACF
4 4 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.29%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 23 (2.20%) Terraform
2 14 (1.34%) Kubernetes
3 9 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (0.67%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 6 (0.57%) Argo
5 6 (0.57%) Grafana
5 6 (0.57%) Istio
5 6 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (0.48%) SCCM
7 3 (0.29%) Ansible
8 2 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.19%) CA Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.19%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.19%) MOM
8 2 (0.19%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.096%) Control-M
9 1 (0.096%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.096%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.096%) ZABBIX
9 1 (0.096%) zSecure
Vendors
1 86 (8.22%) Microsoft
2 77 (7.36%) SAP
3 63 (6.02%) Oracle
4 53 (5.07%) Salesforce
5 48 (4.59%) Google
6 42 (4.02%) Databricks
7 24 (2.29%) Adobe
8 16 (1.53%) Cisco
8 16 (1.53%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.43%) IFS
9 15 (1.43%) Sitecore
10 12 (1.15%) IBM
11 11 (1.05%) VMware
12 10 (0.96%) Splunk
13 9 (0.86%) CheckPoint
13 9 (0.86%) Palo Alto
14 8 (0.76%) Fortinet
14 8 (0.76%) Temenos
14 8 (0.76%) Workday
15 7 (0.67%) MuleSoft