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 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 537 458 383
Rank change year-on-year -79 -75 +27
Contract jobs citing 5G 107 61 141
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.23% 0.22% 0.43%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.48% 1.85% 3.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 51 37 59
10th Percentile £353 £400 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £465 £520
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% -10.58% +15.56%
75th Percentile £499 £540 £580
90th Percentile £538 £613 £590
UK median daily rate £450 £450 £520
% change year-on-year - -13.46% +15.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 4
10th Percentile - £26.23 £27.25
25th Percentile - £37.06 £30.63
Median hourly rate - £56.25 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year - +25.00% -31.80%
75th Percentile - £75.56 £61.09
90th Percentile - £86.48 £67.56
UK median hourly rate - £56.25 £45.00
% change year-on-year - +25.00% -31.80%

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 4,317 3,289 3,915
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.28% 11.74% 12.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,545 2,079 2,260
10th Percentile £253 £225 £242
25th Percentile £400 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £594 £600 £608
90th Percentile £688 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 388 173 169
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £15.09
25th Percentile £21.33 £20.83 £24.18
Median hourly rate £43.50 £35.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +24.29% -38.97% +1.52%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £93.27 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £41.72 £50.00
% change year-on-year -20.90% -16.56% -11.49%

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 3 October 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
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 3 October 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 -38 57 £455 -4.26% 97
South East -54 23 £425 -10.05% 75
East of England -14 13 £353 -38.57% 26
West Midlands -37 6 £375 -40.00% 22
Midlands -46 6 £375 -40.00% 27
South West -45 3 £450 +5.88% 20
North of England -77 1 £363 -18.03% 15
North East - 1 £363 - 1
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 12 (11.21%) OpenStack
2 2 (1.87%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.93%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Cloud Services
1 10 (9.35%) AWS
2 3 (2.80%) Azure
3 2 (1.87%) GCP
4 1 (0.93%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (0.93%) OpenShift
4 1 (0.93%) Power Platform
4 1 (0.93%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 69 (64.49%) 4G
2 53 (49.53%) Radio Access Network
3 25 (23.36%) LTE
3 25 (23.36%) Wireshark
4 24 (22.43%) 3GPP
5 20 (18.69%) 3G
5 20 (18.69%) Diameter Protocol
6 18 (16.82%) 2G
7 17 (15.89%) Wi-Fi
8 14 (13.08%) VoLTE
9 13 (12.15%) SS7
10 12 (11.21%) Wireless
11 11 (10.28%) SIGTRAN
12 10 (9.35%) Broadband
13 8 (7.48%) DNS
13 8 (7.48%) SD-WAN
14 7 (6.54%) HTTP
14 7 (6.54%) IPv4
14 7 (6.54%) IPv6
14 7 (6.54%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (5.61%) MongoDB
1 6 (5.61%) MySQL
1 6 (5.61%) NoSQL
1 6 (5.61%) PostgreSQL
1 6 (5.61%) Redis
2 2 (1.87%) GIS
2 2 (1.87%) QGIS
3 1 (0.93%) BigQuery
3 1 (0.93%) Cloud Spanner
3 1 (0.93%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 13 (12.15%) Git
2 12 (11.21%) GitLab
3 8 (7.48%) JIRA
4 5 (4.67%) Jenkins
4 5 (4.67%) Selenium
5 3 (2.80%) Robot Framework
General
1 79 (73.83%) Telecoms
2 29 (27.10%) Social Skills
3 20 (18.69%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (9.35%) Finance
5 6 (5.61%) Documentation Skills
5 6 (5.61%) Manufacturing
6 5 (4.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (4.67%) Public Sector
7 3 (2.80%) Billing
8 1 (0.93%) Legal
8 1 (0.93%) Marketing
8 1 (0.93%) Retail
Job Titles
1 12 (11.21%) Designer
1 12 (11.21%) RAN Engineer
2 10 (9.35%) Consultant
3 9 (8.41%) Mobile Designer
3 9 (8.41%) Network Engineer
4 8 (7.48%) Architect
5 6 (5.61%) Developer
5 6 (5.61%) Python Developer
6 5 (4.67%) Enterprise Architect
6 5 (4.67%) Network Design Specialist
6 5 (4.67%) Network Specialist
6 5 (4.67%) Technologist
7 4 (3.74%) Broadband Engineer
7 4 (3.74%) Design Engineer
7 4 (3.74%) Enterprise Security Architect
7 4 (3.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 4 (3.74%) Security Architect
7 4 (3.74%) Test Engineer
7 4 (3.74%) Wireless Engineer
7 4 (3.74%) Wireless Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (9.35%) NETCONF
1 10 (9.35%) YANG
2 9 (8.41%) Elastic Stack
3 6 (5.61%) CSS
3 6 (5.61%) FastAPI
3 6 (5.61%) Flask
3 6 (5.61%) HTML
3 6 (5.61%) Jinja
3 6 (5.61%) Pandas
3 6 (5.61%) REST
4 5 (4.67%) Kafka
4 5 (4.67%) Playwright
4 5 (4.67%) pytest
4 5 (4.67%) RabbitMQ
4 5 (4.67%) RESTful
5 3 (2.80%) 802.1X
Miscellaneous
1 8 (7.48%) Cloud Native
2 6 (5.61%) Self-Motivation
2 6 (5.61%) Wiki
3 2 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (1.87%) Enterprise Cloud
3 2 (1.87%) IoT
4 1 (0.93%) Driving Licence
4 1 (0.93%) FPGA
4 1 (0.93%) Onboarding
4 1 (0.93%) Smart Home
4 1 (0.93%) TM Forum
4 1 (0.93%) Verilog
4 1 (0.93%) VHDL
4 1 (0.93%) Video Conferencing
4 1 (0.93%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 21 (19.63%) Linux
2 6 (5.61%) Unix
2 6 (5.61%) VMS
3 1 (0.93%) Android
3 1 (0.93%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.93%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (23.36%) Stakeholder Management
2 24 (22.43%) CI/CD
3 21 (19.63%) Test Automation
4 20 (18.69%) Validation
5 19 (17.76%) Network Design
6 18 (16.82%) Agile
7 15 (14.02%) Problem-Solving
8 14 (13.08%) Service Delivery
8 14 (13.08%) Technical Leadership
9 13 (12.15%) Capacity Planning
9 13 (12.15%) Customer Experience
9 13 (12.15%) Root Cause Analysis
9 13 (12.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 12 (11.21%) DevOps
11 11 (10.28%) High Availability
11 11 (10.28%) Network Architecture
11 11 (10.28%) Risk Management
11 11 (10.28%) Roadmaps
11 11 (10.28%) Scrum
11 11 (10.28%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 23 (21.50%) Python
2 10 (9.35%) Bash
3 7 (6.54%) SQL
4 5 (4.67%) Shell Script
5 1 (0.93%) C
Qualifications
1 20 (18.69%) Degree
2 13 (12.15%) Security Cleared
3 10 (9.35%) SC Cleared
4 7 (6.54%) BPSS Clearance
4 7 (6.54%) Cisco Certification
4 7 (6.54%) PMP
5 5 (4.67%) CCIE
5 5 (4.67%) CCNP
5 5 (4.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (4.67%) Master's Degree
5 5 (4.67%) PhD
6 4 (3.74%) PMI Certification
7 3 (2.80%) CCIE Wireless
7 3 (2.80%) CWDP
7 3 (2.80%) CWNA
7 3 (2.80%) CWNE
7 3 (2.80%) CWSP
8 1 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 1 (0.93%) CISM
8 1 (0.93%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (14.02%) QA
2 6 (5.61%) SLA
3 3 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.80%) NCSC
4 2 (1.87%) GDPR
5 1 (0.93%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 13 (12.15%) Docker
2 3 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (1.87%) Firmware
3 2 (1.87%) KVM
4 1 (0.93%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 10 (9.35%) Kubernetes
2 5 (4.67%) Grafana
2 5 (4.67%) Prometheus
3 4 (3.74%) Ansible
4 2 (1.87%) NSN NetAct
Vendors
1 28 (26.17%) Nokia
2 27 (25.23%) Ericsson
3 13 (12.15%) Huawei
4 10 (9.35%) Cisco
5 7 (6.54%) Aruba
6 6 (5.61%) BT
7 5 (4.67%) Ekahau
8 4 (3.74%) Dynatrace
8 4 (3.74%) New Relic
8 4 (3.74%) Splunk
9 3 (2.80%) Meraki
9 3 (2.80%) VMware
10 2 (1.87%) Actix
10 2 (1.87%) Google
10 2 (1.87%) ServiceNow
11 1 (0.93%) Empirix
11 1 (0.93%) Fortinet
11 1 (0.93%) Microsoft
11 1 (0.93%) Oracle
11 1 (0.93%) Wind River