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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 100 84
Rank change year-on-year -19 -16 +8
Contract jobs citing Retail 1,011 768 1,080
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.13% 2.63% 2.51%
As % of the General category 3.95% 4.15% 4.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 596 406 602
10th Percentile £206 £306 £300
25th Percentile £386 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £505
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +3.96% -4.72%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £731 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 21 87
10th Percentile £13.18 £15.25 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.95 £16.30 £12.15
Median hourly rate £21.00 £31.50 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.33% +96.88% -19.23%
75th Percentile £31.90 £55.25 £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 25,574 18,493 24,958
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.84% 63.34% 58.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,623 11,784 15,748
10th Percentile £306 £293 £275
25th Percentile £408 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +1.16% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,650 788 1,935
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.00 £12.76
25th Percentile £17.64 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.82% -11.29%
75th Percentile £61.13 £56.00 £52.89
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.96 £24.62 £28.50
% change year-on-year +13.55% -13.61% -5.00%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -12 923 £500 -4.76% 1,151
London -18 502 £525 -4.55% 381
UK excluding London -1 432 £492 -1.60% 886
Work from Home -47 249 £500 -3.85% 432
North of England -33 127 £510 +13.33% 245
South East -14 118 £425 -15.00% 267
Midlands -23 85 £495 -1.00% 157
North West -3 76 £518 +3.50% 145
East of England -5 50 £480 -8.67% 117
East Midlands -5 48 £495 -1.00% 84
Yorkshire -48 47 £513 +38.51% 84
West Midlands -55 37 £500 +5.26% 73
South West -19 28 £333 -33.50% 69
Scotland +4 21 £474 -10.45% 44
North East -17 4 £200 -73.33% 20
Northern Ireland +5 2 £190 -44.48% 7
Wales -13 1 £190 +29.52% 18

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 36 (3.56%) Confluence
2 17 (1.68%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.09%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 9 (0.89%) CMS
5 7 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.49%) SAS
7 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.20%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.20%) Magnolia
9 1 (0.099%) CICS
9 1 (0.099%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.099%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 34 (3.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 21 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 19 (1.88%) Microsoft Project
4 18 (1.78%) Microsoft Office
5 13 (1.29%) Chatbot
6 11 (1.09%) MS Visio
7 8 (0.79%) Photoshop
8 6 (0.59%) Adobe Illustrator
9 3 (0.30%) InDesign
10 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.20%) UserZoom
11 1 (0.099%) 3ds Max
11 1 (0.099%) Adobe After Effects
11 1 (0.099%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.099%) Maya
11 1 (0.099%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.099%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.099%) Trello
Business Applications
1 21 (2.08%) Shopify
2 18 (1.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (1.09%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 7 (0.69%) Oracle Retail
4 7 (0.69%) SAP Retail
5 6 (0.59%) Finacle
6 5 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.49%) SAP CRM
7 4 (0.40%) Magento
7 4 (0.40%) SAP MDG
7 4 (0.40%) Temenos T24
8 3 (0.30%) NetSuite
9 2 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
9 2 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.20%) Sage X3
9 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.20%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.20%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 92 (9.10%) Azure
2 74 (7.32%) AWS
3 58 (5.74%) GCP
4 50 (4.95%) Power Platform
5 30 (2.97%) Snowflake
6 24 (2.37%) Dynamics 365
7 20 (1.98%) GitHub
8 18 (1.78%) Microsoft 365
8 18 (1.78%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
9 15 (1.48%) Azure DevOps
10 14 (1.38%) BigCommerce
11 13 (1.29%) Entra ID
11 13 (1.29%) Figma
11 13 (1.29%) SaaS
12 12 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
13 11 (1.09%) Cloud Run
14 10 (0.99%) Azure Data Factory
14 10 (0.99%) Google Workspace
14 10 (0.99%) Miro
15 8 (0.79%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.58%) RFID
1 16 (1.58%) VPN
2 15 (1.48%) Firewall
2 15 (1.48%) Wireless
3 14 (1.38%) WAN
4 8 (0.79%) ATM
4 8 (0.79%) NFC
5 7 (0.69%) Cisco Nexus
5 7 (0.69%) LAN
5 7 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
6 6 (0.59%) BGP
6 6 (0.59%) OSPF
7 5 (0.49%) Network Security
8 4 (0.40%) Cisco Firepower
8 4 (0.40%) EIGRP
8 4 (0.40%) VoIP
9 3 (0.30%) Cisco ASA
9 3 (0.30%) MPLS
9 3 (0.30%) SD-WAN
9 3 (0.30%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (4.55%) Power BI
2 27 (2.67%) BigQuery
3 16 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
4 13 (1.29%) MySQL
5 12 (1.19%) SQL Server
5 12 (1.19%) Tableau
6 9 (0.89%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.89%) Metadata
7 6 (0.59%) Relational Database
8 5 (0.49%) Data Vault
8 5 (0.49%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.49%) PostgreSQL
9 4 (0.40%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.40%) Semantic Layer
10 3 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.30%) Looker
10 3 (0.30%) OLAP
10 3 (0.30%) Oracle OLAP
10 3 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
10 3 (0.30%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 74 (7.32%) JIRA
2 19 (1.88%) Git
3 12 (1.19%) Jenkins
4 11 (1.09%) GitLab
5 4 (0.40%) Maven
6 3 (0.30%) ERwin
6 3 (0.30%) Subversion
7 2 (0.20%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.20%) Gatling
7 2 (0.20%) Hudson
7 2 (0.20%) JMeter
7 2 (0.20%) MLflow
7 2 (0.20%) Selenium
7 2 (0.20%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.20%) WebDriver
8 1 (0.099%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.099%) IBM UrbanCode
8 1 (0.099%) Mockito
8 1 (0.099%) webpack
8 1 (0.099%) Zephyr
General
1 303 (29.97%) Social Skills
2 255 (25.22%) Finance
3 104 (10.29%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (9.40%) Banking
5 57 (5.64%) Marketing
6 47 (4.65%) Organisational Skills
7 46 (4.55%) Retail Banking
8 41 (4.06%) Manufacturing
9 40 (3.96%) Investment Banking
10 38 (3.76%) Corporate Banking
11 27 (2.67%) Presentation Skills
12 26 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
13 25 (2.47%) Public Sector
14 23 (2.27%) Telecoms
15 22 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
16 19 (1.88%) Legal
17 15 (1.48%) Back Office
18 13 (1.29%) Advertising
19 10 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
19 10 (0.99%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 156 (15.43%) Analyst
2 141 (13.95%) Architect
3 125 (12.36%) Senior
4 111 (10.98%) Project Manager
5 93 (9.20%) Business Analyst
6 79 (7.81%) Lead
7 54 (5.34%) Senior Manager
8 48 (4.75%) Solutions Architect
9 37 (3.66%) Technical Manager
10 33 (3.26%) Consultant
10 33 (3.26%) Developer
11 32 (3.17%) Designer
12 29 (2.87%) Enterprise Architect
12 29 (2.87%) Senior Project Manager
13 27 (2.67%) Data Architect
14 23 (2.27%) Product Manager
15 22 (2.18%) Programme Manager
16 20 (1.98%) Service Manager
17 18 (1.78%) Data Engineer
18 17 (1.68%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.07%) VML
2 30 (2.97%) Middleware
3 26 (2.57%) REST
4 23 (2.27%) React
5 19 (1.88%) Spring
6 16 (1.58%) Node.js
7 13 (1.29%) Spring Boot
8 12 (1.19%) AngularJS
9 10 (0.99%) CSS
9 10 (0.99%) PySpark
10 9 (0.89%) Kafka
11 7 (0.69%) HTML
11 7 (0.69%) LangChain
11 7 (0.69%) SOAP
12 6 (0.59%) GraphQL
12 6 (0.59%) jQuery
12 6 (0.59%) OpenTelemetry
13 5 (0.49%) JSON
13 5 (0.49%) SAML
13 5 (0.49%) Sass
Miscellaneous
1 69 (6.82%) Product Ownership
2 37 (3.66%) Driving Licence
3 36 (3.56%) EPoS
4 31 (3.07%) Cloud Native
5 25 (2.47%) Onboarding
6 24 (2.37%) Data Centre
7 21 (2.08%) FMCG
7 21 (2.08%) Mainframe
7 21 (2.08%) Management Information System
8 19 (1.88%) Data Structures
8 19 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
9 17 (1.68%) Mobile App
10 14 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
11 11 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (0.99%) AI Agents
12 10 (0.99%) IoT
12 10 (0.99%) Virtual Team
13 8 (0.79%) Clustering
14 7 (0.69%) Enterprise Cloud
14 7 (0.69%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 41 (4.06%) Windows
2 20 (1.98%) Linux
3 7 (0.69%) Android
3 7 (0.69%) Mac OS
3 7 (0.69%) zOS
4 6 (0.59%) Unix
5 5 (0.49%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.40%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.20%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.099%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (21.86%) Agile
2 217 (21.46%) Stakeholder Management
3 183 (18.10%) Problem-Solving
4 145 (14.34%) E-Commerce
5 125 (12.36%) Migration
6 115 (11.37%) Roadmaps
7 114 (11.28%) Project Management
8 101 (9.99%) Analytics
9 94 (9.30%) Customer Experience
10 89 (8.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 83 (8.21%) ERP
12 78 (7.72%) Continuous Improvement
13 77 (7.62%) AI
14 75 (7.42%) Decision-Making
14 75 (7.42%) Project Delivery
15 71 (7.02%) Change Management
15 71 (7.02%) Scrum
16 68 (6.73%) User Acceptance Testing
17 66 (6.53%) Workshop Facilitation
18 63 (6.23%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 72 (7.12%) SQL
2 58 (5.74%) Python
3 30 (2.97%) Java
4 23 (2.27%) JavaScript
5 12 (1.19%) TypeScript
6 11 (1.09%) PowerShell
7 10 (0.99%) Shell Script
8 7 (0.69%) Bash
9 5 (0.49%) Apex Code
9 5 (0.49%) Kotlin
9 5 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
9 5 (0.49%) SOQL
9 5 (0.49%) SOSL
10 4 (0.40%) PL/SQL
10 4 (0.40%) Scala
10 4 (0.40%) VBA
11 2 (0.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 2 (0.20%) Korn
11 2 (0.20%) R
11 2 (0.20%) REXX
Qualifications
1 47 (4.65%) Degree
2 38 (3.76%) Security Cleared
3 25 (2.47%) SC Cleared
4 18 (1.78%) PMP
5 13 (1.29%) PMI Certification
6 9 (0.89%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (0.89%) CSPO
7 7 (0.69%) APMP
7 7 (0.69%) CCNP
7 7 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
7 7 (0.69%) DBS Check
7 7 (0.69%) Master's Degree
8 6 (0.59%) CISSP
8 6 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.49%) MBA
10 4 (0.40%) CCIE
10 4 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.30%) CCSE
11 3 (0.30%) CRISC
11 3 (0.30%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (5.14%) QA
2 49 (4.85%) Data Quality
3 36 (3.56%) GDPR
4 31 (3.07%) PMO
5 17 (1.68%) SLA
6 14 (1.38%) Accessibility
7 10 (0.99%) PCI DSS
8 9 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.49%) NIST
10 4 (0.40%) IFRS
11 3 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.20%) GRC
12 2 (0.20%) WCAG
13 1 (0.099%) COBIT
13 1 (0.099%) GAAP
13 1 (0.099%) IFRS 9
13 1 (0.099%) NCSC
13 1 (0.099%) Solvency II
System Software
1 21 (2.08%) Active Directory
2 17 (1.68%) Docker
3 5 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.49%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (0.49%) VMware NSX
4 4 (0.40%) RACF
5 3 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.099%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 21 (2.08%) Terraform
2 13 (1.29%) Kubernetes
3 9 (0.89%) Microsoft Intune
4 8 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (0.69%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 6 (0.59%) Argo
6 6 (0.59%) Grafana
6 6 (0.59%) Istio
7 5 (0.49%) SCCM
8 3 (0.30%) Ansible
9 2 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.20%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.20%) FortiGate
9 2 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.20%) MOM
9 2 (0.20%) PingFederate
10 1 (0.099%) Control-M
10 1 (0.099%) Nagios
10 1 (0.099%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.099%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 81 (8.01%) Microsoft
2 73 (7.22%) SAP
3 62 (6.13%) Oracle
4 54 (5.34%) Salesforce
5 47 (4.65%) Google
6 41 (4.06%) Databricks
7 25 (2.47%) Adobe
8 17 (1.68%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.58%) Sitecore
10 15 (1.48%) Cisco
10 15 (1.48%) IFS
11 11 (1.09%) IBM
11 11 (1.09%) VMware
12 10 (0.99%) Palo Alto
13 9 (0.89%) Splunk
14 8 (0.79%) CheckPoint
14 8 (0.79%) Temenos
14 8 (0.79%) Workday
14 8 (0.79%) Zscaler
15 7 (0.69%) Fortinet