Retail Contracts

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 26 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 115 84 93
Rank change year-on-year -31 +9 -32
Contract jobs citing Retail 734 1,078 1,406
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.42% 2.48% 2.53%
As % of the General category 3.81% 4.35% 4.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 379 597 863
10th Percentile £308 £297 £356
25th Percentile £413 £400 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -3.30% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 85 41
10th Percentile £14.17 £11.85 £15.25
25th Percentile £15.25 £12.15 £19.06
Median hourly rate £16.30 £16.00 £19.81
Median % change year-on-year +1.88% -19.23% +20.06%
75th Percentile £51.25 £21.37 £22.00
90th Percentile £85.50 £21.46 £22.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.50 £15.95 £19.81
% change year-on-year -2.82% -19.49% +20.06%

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 common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 19,265 24,810 32,470
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 63.58% 57.09% 58.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,100 15,540 22,426
10th Percentile £281 £275 £313
25th Percentile £400 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -4.29% -2.00% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 929 1,984 1,012
10th Percentile £13.44 £12.79 £13.41
25th Percentile £16.32 £15.62 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.40 £31.89 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.07% +6.28% +24.87%
75th Percentile £53.75 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £31.25 £25.60
% change year-on-year -26.40% +22.07% +28.00%

Retail
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Retail as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Retail in the UK

Retail
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Retail.

Daily rate trend for Retail in the UK

Retail
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Retail over the 6 months to 26 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Retail in the UK

Retail
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Retail.

Hourly rate trend for Retail in the UK

Retail
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Retail over the 6 months to 26 June 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Retail in the UK

Retail
Top 17 Contract 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 26 June 2025. 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 -28 648 £525 - 4,403
London -12 374 £550 +2.33% 1,946
UK excluding London -34 272 £500 - 2,697
Work from Home -30 240 £500 - 2,148
North of England -13 97 £500 +5.26% 843
South East -12 60 £538 +13.16% 649
Midlands +12 50 £463 -25.40% 469
Yorkshire -13 49 £525 +5.00% 306
North West +1 45 £500 +14.29% 472
East Midlands +21 33 £463 -11.90% 186
South West +51 27 £450 - 263
East of England -39 18 £575 +35.29% 283
West Midlands -12 17 £475 -26.92% 271
Scotland +15 15 £533 +6.50% 150
Wales +8 5 £147 - 81
North East -1 3 £750 +20.00% 74
Northern Ireland - 1 £550 - 31

Retail
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 18 (2.45%) Confluence
2 10 (1.36%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.82%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.68%) CMS
5 4 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 2 (0.27%) Camunda
7 1 (0.14%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.14%) Apache
7 1 (0.14%) Appian
7 1 (0.14%) Drupal
7 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.14%) Mule
7 1 (0.14%) SAS
7 1 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 34 (4.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (4.36%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.95%) Chatbot
5 6 (0.82%) Trello
6 5 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.54%) MS Visio
7 4 (0.54%) Sketch
7 4 (0.54%) SketchUp
8 3 (0.41%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 3 (0.41%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.27%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
9 2 (0.27%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.27%) UserZoom
10 1 (0.14%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.14%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 33 (4.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (3.13%) Shopify
3 5 (0.68%) SAP Retail
4 4 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.54%) Magento
4 4 (0.54%) SAP CAR
5 3 (0.41%) Avolution ABACUS
5 3 (0.41%) Oracle Retail
5 3 (0.41%) SAP EWM
5 3 (0.41%) SAP POS DM
6 2 (0.27%) Dynamics AX
6 2 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
6 2 (0.27%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
6 2 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.27%) SAP CX
6 2 (0.27%) SAP GTS
6 2 (0.27%) SAP Hybris
6 2 (0.27%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 97 (13.22%) Azure
2 58 (7.90%) AWS
3 41 (5.59%) Power Platform
4 38 (5.18%) Dynamics 365
5 34 (4.63%) GCP
6 28 (3.81%) Microsoft 365
7 26 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
8 22 (3.00%) Entra ID
9 17 (2.32%) SaaS
10 16 (2.18%) BigCommerce
11 14 (1.91%) Figma
11 14 (1.91%) GitHub
12 10 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (1.23%) Azure Data Factory
13 9 (1.23%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 9 (1.23%) PowerApps
13 9 (1.23%) Serverless
14 8 (1.09%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 8 (1.09%) Snowflake
15 7 (0.95%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.95%) WAN
1 7 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
2 6 (0.82%) Firewall
2 6 (0.82%) LAN
2 6 (0.82%) Network Security
3 4 (0.54%) HTTP
3 4 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
4 3 (0.41%) BGP
4 3 (0.41%) Internet
4 3 (0.41%) OSPF
4 3 (0.41%) VPN
4 3 (0.41%) Wireless
5 2 (0.27%) ATM
5 2 (0.27%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (0.27%) Cisco Nexus
5 2 (0.27%) DHCP
5 2 (0.27%) DNS
5 2 (0.27%) DSL
5 2 (0.27%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.27%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (4.90%) Power BI
2 24 (3.27%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (1.36%) Data Lake
3 10 (1.36%) Tableau
4 9 (1.23%) PostgreSQL
5 8 (1.09%) BigQuery
6 7 (0.95%) Big Data
6 7 (0.95%) Data Vault
7 5 (0.68%) SQL Server
8 4 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.54%) Looker
8 4 (0.54%) Metadata
8 4 (0.54%) Power Query
8 4 (0.54%) Relational Database
8 4 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
9 3 (0.41%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.41%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.41%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.41%) Redis
9 3 (0.41%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 34 (4.63%) JIRA
2 14 (1.91%) Git
3 13 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.82%) GitLab
5 4 (0.54%) Terragrunt
6 3 (0.41%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.41%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.41%) CircleCI
6 3 (0.41%) Cypress.io
6 3 (0.41%) Gradle
6 3 (0.41%) Oracle APEX
7 2 (0.27%) Android Studio
7 2 (0.27%) Grunt
7 2 (0.27%) JMeter
7 2 (0.27%) webpack
7 2 (0.27%) Xcode
8 1 (0.14%) ESLint
8 1 (0.14%) Spock
8 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
8 1 (0.14%) Zephyr
General
1 260 (35.42%) Social Skills
2 186 (25.34%) Finance
3 115 (15.67%) Analytical Skills
4 82 (11.17%) Banking
5 58 (7.90%) Investment Banking
6 55 (7.49%) Retail Banking
7 52 (7.08%) Corporate Banking
8 46 (6.27%) Marketing
9 36 (4.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 33 (4.50%) Manufacturing
11 18 (2.45%) Organisational Skills
12 17 (2.32%) Presentation Skills
13 13 (1.77%) Financial Institution
14 12 (1.63%) Back Office
14 12 (1.63%) Legal
15 11 (1.50%) Public Sector
16 10 (1.36%) Automotive
16 10 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
16 10 (1.36%) Law
17 9 (1.23%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 135 (18.39%) Analyst
2 82 (11.17%) Architect
3 72 (9.81%) Business Analyst
4 65 (8.86%) Project Manager
5 63 (8.58%) Senior
6 55 (7.49%) Consultant
7 51 (6.95%) Developer
8 42 (5.72%) Solutions Architect
9 34 (4.63%) Product Manager
10 33 (4.50%) Lead
11 26 (3.54%) IT Manager
12 25 (3.41%) Senior Manager
13 23 (3.13%) Designer
14 19 (2.59%) Support Manager
15 18 (2.45%) Data Analyst
16 17 (2.32%) Retail Business Analyst
17 16 (2.18%) Data Engineer
17 16 (2.18%) IT Support
18 13 (1.77%) 1st Line Support
18 13 (1.77%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (2.86%) HTML
2 19 (2.59%) Kafka
3 17 (2.32%) CSS
4 16 (2.18%) VML
5 15 (2.04%) Middleware
6 13 (1.77%) .NET
7 12 (1.63%) Web Services
8 10 (1.36%) Node.js
8 10 (1.36%) React
9 9 (1.23%) EDI
9 9 (1.23%) REST
10 8 (1.09%) PySpark
10 8 (1.09%) RESTful
11 7 (0.95%) Spring Boot
12 6 (0.82%) Spring
13 5 (0.68%) Pandas
13 5 (0.68%) SAP Fiori
13 5 (0.68%) SOAP
14 4 (0.54%) GraphQL
14 4 (0.54%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 32 (4.36%) Product Ownership
2 27 (3.68%) EPoS
3 19 (2.59%) iPhone
3 19 (2.59%) Smartphone
4 18 (2.45%) Data Centre
5 17 (2.32%) Mobile App
6 16 (2.18%) Onboarding
7 14 (1.91%) FMCG
8 13 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
9 12 (1.63%) Management Information System
9 12 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
10 11 (1.50%) Data Structures
11 10 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
11 10 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
12 9 (1.23%) Cloud Native
13 7 (0.95%) Analytical Mindset
14 6 (0.82%) Algorithms
15 5 (0.68%) Distributed Systems
15 5 (0.68%) Renewable Energy
16 4 (0.54%) Digital Media
Operating Systems
1 24 (3.27%) Windows
2 20 (2.72%) Mac OS
3 8 (1.09%) Apple iOS
4 7 (0.95%) Linux
5 5 (0.68%) Android
6 3 (0.41%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.27%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (23.30%) Agile
2 127 (17.30%) Stakeholder Management
3 122 (16.62%) Problem-Solving
4 76 (10.35%) E-Commerce
5 69 (9.40%) Project Management
6 67 (9.13%) DevOps
7 66 (8.99%) Roadmaps
8 65 (8.86%) Migration
9 60 (8.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 58 (7.90%) Wealth Management
11 57 (7.77%) Analytics
12 48 (6.54%) ITIL
13 47 (6.40%) Decision-Making
13 47 (6.40%) User Experience
14 44 (5.99%) ERP
15 42 (5.72%) Customer Service
16 41 (5.59%) Artificial Intelligence
16 41 (5.59%) Data Modelling
17 39 (5.31%) CI/CD
18 38 (5.18%) Product Management
Programming Languages
1 72 (9.81%) SQL
2 51 (6.95%) Python
3 28 (3.81%) JavaScript
4 20 (2.72%) Java
5 11 (1.50%) TypeScript
6 10 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 9 (1.23%) C#
8 4 (0.54%) PHP
8 4 (0.54%) PL/SQL
8 4 (0.54%) T-SQL
9 3 (0.41%) Korn
9 3 (0.41%) PowerShell
9 3 (0.41%) Scala
9 3 (0.41%) VBA
10 2 (0.27%) Go
10 2 (0.27%) JSX
10 2 (0.27%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.14%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.14%) DataWeave
11 1 (0.14%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 37 (5.04%) Degree
2 12 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
3 9 (1.23%) Security Cleared
4 8 (1.09%) PMP
5 7 (0.95%) CISSP
5 7 (0.95%) SC Cleared
6 6 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
6 6 (0.82%) PMI Certification
7 5 (0.68%) A+ Certification
7 5 (0.68%) CISM
7 5 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
7 5 (0.68%) MCSA
8 4 (0.54%) ACCA
8 4 (0.54%) Azure Certification
8 4 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.41%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.41%) Six Sigma Green Belt
9 3 (0.41%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.27%) PCI QSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (3.13%) QA
2 21 (2.86%) Data Quality
3 15 (2.04%) GDPR
3 15 (2.04%) PMO
4 11 (1.50%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.36%) GRC
6 8 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (1.09%) PCI DSS
7 6 (0.82%) IFRS
8 5 (0.68%) NIST
9 4 (0.54%) MiFID
9 4 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.54%) SLA
10 3 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.41%) GAAP
11 2 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.27%) WCAG
12 1 (0.14%) FATCA
12 1 (0.14%) ISO 9001
12 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 31 (4.22%) Active Directory
2 10 (1.36%) Docker
3 1 (0.14%) Veritas Cluster Server
3 1 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 26 (3.54%) Terraform
2 25 (3.41%) Kubernetes
3 19 (2.59%) Jamf Pro
4 6 (0.82%) Ansible
5 3 (0.41%) Puppet
6 2 (0.27%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.27%) Salt
6 2 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.14%) Foglight
7 1 (0.14%) NetBackup
7 1 (0.14%) SCCM
7 1 (0.14%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 86 (11.72%) Microsoft
2 81 (11.04%) SAP
3 45 (6.13%) Salesforce
4 36 (4.90%) ServiceNow
5 32 (4.36%) Adobe
6 29 (3.95%) Oracle
7 22 (3.00%) Apple
8 20 (2.72%) Google
9 16 (2.18%) Sitecore
10 12 (1.63%) Databricks
11 7 (0.95%) Cisco
11 7 (0.95%) Planview
12 6 (0.82%) Citrix
12 6 (0.82%) MuleSoft
12 6 (0.82%) Workday
13 5 (0.68%) Genesys
13 5 (0.68%) HP
13 5 (0.68%) IBM
14 4 (0.54%) Dell
14 4 (0.54%) NCR