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 2 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 503 364 379
Rank change year-on-year -139 +15 +161
Contract jobs citing 5G 82 119 163
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.20% 0.49% 0.44%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.12% 3.74% 3.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 49 71 56
10th Percentile £405 £300 £356
25th Percentile £450 £400 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £480 £475
Median % change year-on-year +9.38% +1.05% +18.75%
75th Percentile £538 £613 £538
90th Percentile £605 £660 £575
UK median daily rate £513 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +13.89% -5.26% +18.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £24.25
Median hourly rate - - £24.50
75th Percentile - - £24.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate - - £25.25
% change year-on-year - - -62.59%

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 3,873 3,179 4,997
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.59% 13.03% 13.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,438 1,960 3,015
10th Percentile £238 £220 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £490
Median % change year-on-year - +2.04% -6.67%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £495 £488 £495
% change year-on-year +1.54% -1.52% -4.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 212 122 400
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.31 £15.65 £17.52
Median hourly rate £42.10 £30.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.89% -23.13% +114.36%
75th Percentile £66.38 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.01 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £36.57 £40.00
% change year-on-year +14.68% -8.57% +110.53%

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 2 May 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 2 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
London -63 43 £525 -8.70% 15
South West -38 14 £450 +5.88% 1
South East -73 14 £445 +10.22% 10
West Midlands -53 10 £413 -34.00% 4
Midlands -62 10 £413 -36.54% 6
East of England -52 1 £525 -2.33% 6
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 9 (10.98%) OpenStack
2 1 (1.22%) Apache
2 1 (1.22%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.22%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.22%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Cloud Services
1 5 (6.10%) AWS
2 4 (4.88%) Azure
3 3 (3.66%) Power Platform
4 2 (2.44%) GCP
5 1 (1.22%) Amazon EMR
5 1 (1.22%) Amazon Kinesis
5 1 (1.22%) Amazon S3
5 1 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
5 1 (1.22%) AWS CodePipeline
5 1 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
5 1 (1.22%) AWS Step Functions
5 1 (1.22%) Azure DevOps
5 1 (1.22%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 47 (57.32%) 4G
2 35 (42.68%) Radio Access Network
3 23 (28.05%) LTE
4 13 (15.85%) 3GPP
5 12 (14.63%) 3G
5 12 (14.63%) Wi-Fi
6 11 (13.41%) Wireless
7 10 (12.20%) Diameter Protocol
7 10 (12.20%) Wireshark
8 9 (10.98%) 2G
8 9 (10.98%) BGP
8 9 (10.98%) SD-WAN
9 8 (9.76%) Internet
9 8 (9.76%) LAN
10 7 (8.54%) 5G NR
10 7 (8.54%) MPLS
10 7 (8.54%) OSPF
10 7 (8.54%) VoLTE
10 7 (8.54%) WAN
10 7 (8.54%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.66%) Power BI
1 3 (3.66%) Tableau
2 1 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
2 1 (1.22%) Amazon Redshift
2 1 (1.22%) Apache Hudi
2 1 (1.22%) Apache Iceberg
2 1 (1.22%) Data Lake
2 1 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (1.22%) Metadata
2 1 (1.22%) Redshift Spectrum
Development Applications
1 3 (3.66%) Git
2 2 (2.44%) JIRA
General
1 37 (45.12%) Telecoms
2 24 (29.27%) Social Skills
3 13 (15.85%) Analytical Skills
4 4 (4.88%) Electronics
5 3 (3.66%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (2.44%) Finance
6 2 (2.44%) Public Sector
7 1 (1.22%) Aviation
7 1 (1.22%) Billing
7 1 (1.22%) Marketing
7 1 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 12 (14.63%) Network Design Specialist
1 12 (14.63%) Network Specialist
2 11 (13.41%) Network Engineer
3 10 (12.20%) Architect
4 8 (9.76%) Wireless Engineer
5 6 (7.32%) Design Engineer
5 6 (7.32%) Designer
5 6 (7.32%) RAN Engineer
5 6 (7.32%) Telecoms Manager
5 6 (7.32%) Wireless Network Engineer
6 5 (6.10%) Project Manager
6 5 (6.10%) Telecoms Project Manager
7 4 (4.88%) Mobile Designer
7 4 (4.88%) Network Design Engineer
7 4 (4.88%) WAN Engineer
8 3 (3.66%) Analyst
8 3 (3.66%) Network Architect
8 3 (3.66%) Senior
8 3 (3.66%) Solutions Architect
9 2 (2.44%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (6.10%) 802.1X
2 1 (1.22%) Elastic Stack
2 1 (1.22%) JSON
2 1 (1.22%) Kafka
2 1 (1.22%) NETCONF
2 1 (1.22%) REST
2 1 (1.22%) RESTful
2 1 (1.22%) SOAP
2 1 (1.22%) XML
2 1 (1.22%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 15 (18.29%) Cloud Native
2 6 (7.32%) IoT
2 6 (7.32%) Legacy Systems
3 4 (4.88%) Data Centre
4 3 (3.66%) Product Ownership
4 3 (3.66%) Virtual Team
5 2 (2.44%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (2.44%) Hybrid Cloud
5 2 (2.44%) Industry 4.0
5 2 (2.44%) NB-IoT
5 2 (2.44%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (2.44%) Smart City
6 1 (1.22%) Algorithms
6 1 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.22%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.22%) Mobile App
6 1 (1.22%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 6 (7.32%) Linux
2 5 (6.10%) Unix
3 2 (2.44%) Windows
4 1 (1.22%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (28.05%) Network Design
2 14 (17.07%) Capacity Planning
3 11 (13.41%) Agile
3 11 (13.41%) Problem-Solving
4 9 (10.98%) High Availability
4 9 (10.98%) Risk Management
4 9 (10.98%) Stakeholder Management
5 8 (9.76%) CI/CD
6 7 (8.54%) Analytics
6 7 (8.54%) DevOps
6 7 (8.54%) Roadmaps
7 6 (7.32%) Budget Management
7 6 (7.32%) Load Balancing
7 6 (7.32%) Network Architecture
7 6 (7.32%) PRINCE2
7 6 (7.32%) Technical Leadership
8 5 (6.10%) Change Control
8 5 (6.10%) Disaster Recovery
8 5 (6.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 5 (6.10%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 11 (13.41%) Python
2 5 (6.10%) SQL
3 3 (3.66%) C
4 1 (1.22%) Apex Code
4 1 (1.22%) Bash
4 1 (1.22%) C++
4 1 (1.22%) Embedded C
4 1 (1.22%) Embedded C++
4 1 (1.22%) R
Qualifications
1 9 (10.98%) CCNP
1 9 (10.98%) Cisco Certification
1 9 (10.98%) Security Cleared
2 8 (9.76%) CCIE
2 8 (9.76%) SC Cleared
3 6 (7.32%) Degree
3 6 (7.32%) PMP
4 3 (3.66%) CCIE Wireless
4 3 (3.66%) CWDP
4 3 (3.66%) CWNA
4 3 (3.66%) CWNE
4 3 (3.66%) CWSP
5 2 (2.44%) AWS Certification
5 2 (2.44%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.22%) CCNA
6 1 (1.22%) JNCIP
6 1 (1.22%) JNCIS
6 1 (1.22%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (6.10%) SLA
2 4 (4.88%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.66%) QA
4 1 (1.22%) Data Quality
System Software
1 2 (2.44%) Docker
Systems Management
1 13 (15.85%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.44%) Ansible
2 2 (2.44%) FortiGate
2 2 (2.44%) NSN NetAct
3 1 (1.22%) Terraform
Vendors
1 27 (32.93%) Nokia
2 23 (28.05%) Ericsson
3 22 (26.83%) Huawei
4 17 (20.73%) Cisco
5 9 (10.98%) Aruba
6 8 (9.76%) Ekahau
7 6 (7.32%) BT
8 5 (6.10%) F5
9 4 (4.88%) Juniper
10 3 (3.66%) Fortinet
10 3 (3.66%) Palo Alto
10 3 (3.66%) SGI
11 2 (2.44%) Actix
11 2 (2.44%) Samsung
12 1 (1.22%) CheckPoint
12 1 (1.22%) Empirix
12 1 (1.22%) HP
12 1 (1.22%) Mapinfo
12 1 (1.22%) NetScout
12 1 (1.22%) Oracle