5G Contract Job Trends in England

5G
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring 5G skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 500 346 317
Rank change year-on-year -154 -29 +228
Contract jobs citing 5G 77 126 239
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.21% 0.51% 0.63%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.05% 3.83% 4.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 44 70 69
10th Percentile £402 £294 £350
25th Percentile £438 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.71% +11.32% +18.75%
75th Percentile £538 £613 £513
90th Percentile £634 £660 £560
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - +18.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 6
10th Percentile £26.23 - £24.63
25th Percentile £37.06 - £35.25
Median hourly rate £56.25 - £65.98
75th Percentile £75.56 - £67.17
90th Percentile £86.48 - £73.78
UK median hourly rate £56.25 - £65.98
% change year-on-year - - +1.51%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
England

5G falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 3,751 3,286 5,254
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.02% 13.42% 13.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,414 2,018 3,180
10th Percentile £213 £213 £205
25th Percentile £377 £371 £336
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £490 £490 £475
% change year-on-year - +3.16% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 115 375
10th Percentile £15.56 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £18.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £36.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.37% -2.67% +97.37%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £64.14
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.01 £70.40
UK median hourly rate £32.52 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -7.09% - +84.21%

5G
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing 5G relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

5G job vacancy trend in England

5G
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing 5G.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing 5G

5G
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing 5G in England over the 6 months to 21 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for 5G in England

5G
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing 5G.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing 5G

5G
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing 5G in England over the 6 months to 21 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for 5G in England

5G
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing 5G within the England region over the 6 months to 21 March 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
London -54 44 £525 -8.70% 14
South West -27 13 £450 +1.75% 4
South East -83 11 £465 +3.33% 7
West Midlands -55 8 £413 - 2
Midlands -56 8 £413 -36.54% 8
East of England -37 1 £525 -2.33% 8
5G
UK

5G
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 3 (3.90%) OpenStack
2 1 (1.30%) Apache
2 1 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.30%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.30%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Business Applications
1 2 (2.60%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 10 (12.99%) AWS
2 9 (11.69%) Azure
3 4 (5.19%) GCP
3 4 (5.19%) Power Platform
4 1 (1.30%) Amazon EMR
4 1 (1.30%) Amazon Kinesis
4 1 (1.30%) Amazon S3
4 1 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
4 1 (1.30%) AWS CodePipeline
4 1 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (1.30%) AWS Step Functions
4 1 (1.30%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (1.30%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 42 (54.55%) 4G
2 32 (41.56%) Radio Access Network
3 17 (22.08%) LTE
4 14 (18.18%) 2G
5 12 (15.58%) BGP
5 12 (15.58%) Wireless
6 11 (14.29%) 3GPP
6 11 (14.29%) MPLS
7 9 (11.69%) Firewall
7 9 (11.69%) Wi-Fi
8 8 (10.39%) Network Security
8 8 (10.39%) WAN
9 7 (9.09%) 3G
9 7 (9.09%) 5G NR
9 7 (9.09%) LAN
9 7 (9.09%) OSPF
9 7 (9.09%) SD-WAN
10 6 (7.79%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 6 (7.79%) Internet
10 6 (7.79%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (5.19%) GIS
1 4 (5.19%) Power BI
1 4 (5.19%) Tableau
2 1 (1.30%) Amazon Athena
2 1 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (1.30%) Apache Hudi
2 1 (1.30%) Apache Iceberg
2 1 (1.30%) Data Lake
2 1 (1.30%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (1.30%) Metadata
2 1 (1.30%) Redshift Spectrum
Development Applications
1 6 (7.79%) Git
2 1 (1.30%) JIRA
General
1 36 (46.75%) Telecoms
2 23 (29.87%) Social Skills
3 13 (16.88%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (5.19%) Electronics
5 3 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (3.90%) Public Sector
6 2 (2.60%) Finance
7 1 (1.30%) Aviation
7 1 (1.30%) Billing
7 1 (1.30%) Marketing
7 1 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.30%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 14 (18.18%) Network Engineer
2 11 (14.29%) Network Design Specialist
2 11 (14.29%) Network Specialist
3 10 (12.99%) Architect
4 9 (11.69%) Design Engineer
5 7 (9.09%) Network Design Engineer
6 6 (7.79%) RAN Engineer
6 6 (7.79%) Senior
6 6 (7.79%) Wireless Engineer
7 4 (5.19%) Designer
7 4 (5.19%) WAN Engineer
7 4 (5.19%) Wireless Network Engineer
8 3 (3.90%) Network Architect
8 3 (3.90%) Senior Manager
8 3 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
8 3 (3.90%) Transmission Engineer
9 2 (2.60%) Analyst
9 2 (2.60%) Ericsson Engineer
9 2 (2.60%) Test Engineer
9 2 (2.60%) Wireless Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (3.90%) 802.1X
2 2 (2.60%) JSON
2 2 (2.60%) NETCONF
2 2 (2.60%) XML
2 2 (2.60%) YANG
3 1 (1.30%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (1.30%) Kafka
3 1 (1.30%) OpenConfig
3 1 (1.30%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 13 (16.88%) Cloud Native
1 13 (16.88%) IoT
2 8 (10.39%) NB-IoT
3 6 (7.79%) Legacy Systems
4 5 (6.49%) Product Ownership
5 4 (5.19%) Data Centre
6 3 (3.90%) Distributed Architecture
6 3 (3.90%) Virtual Team
7 2 (2.60%) Algorithms
7 2 (2.60%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (2.60%) Industry 4.0
7 2 (2.60%) Smart City
8 1 (1.30%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (1.30%) Mobile App
8 1 (1.30%) Private Cloud
8 1 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 2 (2.60%) Linux
1 2 (2.60%) Windows
2 1 (1.30%) Android
2 1 (1.30%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (29.87%) Network Design
2 11 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
3 10 (12.99%) Analytics
3 10 (12.99%) Capacity Planning
3 10 (12.99%) DevOps
4 9 (11.69%) Roadmaps
5 8 (10.39%) Agile
5 8 (10.39%) Business Strategy
5 8 (10.39%) ITIL
5 8 (10.39%) Load Balancing
6 7 (9.09%) ETL
6 7 (9.09%) Programme Management
7 6 (7.79%) Change Management
7 6 (7.79%) Continuous Improvement
7 6 (7.79%) Network Architecture
7 6 (7.79%) Stakeholder Management
8 5 (6.49%) Risk Management
8 5 (6.49%) Root Cause Analysis
8 5 (6.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 5 (6.49%) Vulnerability Assessment
Programming Languages
1 14 (18.18%) Python
2 13 (16.88%) SQL
3 3 (3.90%) C
4 2 (2.60%) R
5 1 (1.30%) Bash
5 1 (1.30%) C++
5 1 (1.30%) Embedded C
5 1 (1.30%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 11 (14.29%) Security Cleared
2 9 (11.69%) SC Cleared
3 8 (10.39%) CCNP
3 8 (10.39%) Cisco Certification
4 7 (9.09%) Degree
5 6 (7.79%) CCIE
6 5 (6.49%) PMP
7 4 (5.19%) PMI Certification
8 2 (2.60%) AWS Certification
8 2 (2.60%) Azure Certification
8 2 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (2.60%) CCNA
9 1 (1.30%) BC Cleared
9 1 (1.30%) CCIE Wireless
9 1 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (1.30%) CWDP
9 1 (1.30%) CWNA
9 1 (1.30%) CWSP
9 1 (1.30%) JNCIP
9 1 (1.30%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (6.49%) QA
2 4 (5.19%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.90%) GDPR
4 2 (2.60%) SLA
5 1 (1.30%) Data Quality
System Software
1 2 (2.60%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (9.09%) Kubernetes
2 5 (6.49%) FortiGate
3 2 (2.60%) Ansible
4 1 (1.30%) Amdocs OSS
4 1 (1.30%) Terraform
Vendors
1 20 (25.97%) Nokia
2 14 (18.18%) Cisco
2 14 (18.18%) Ericsson
2 14 (18.18%) Huawei
3 8 (10.39%) F5
4 7 (9.09%) Aruba
5 6 (7.79%) Ekahau
6 4 (5.19%) Fortinet
6 4 (5.19%) Juniper
6 4 (5.19%) Palo Alto
7 3 (3.90%) SGI
8 2 (2.60%) Actix
8 2 (2.60%) BMC
8 2 (2.60%) BT
8 2 (2.60%) Remedy
8 2 (2.60%) Samsung
9 1 (1.30%) Dynatrace
9 1 (1.30%) Meraki
9 1 (1.30%) New Relic
9 1 (1.30%) Splunk