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 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 511 442 395
Rank change year-on-year -69 -47 +54
Contract jobs citing 5G 118 67 135
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.25% 0.24% 0.41%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.72% 2.01% 3.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 61 46 55
10th Percentile £376 £363 £310
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £436 £520
Median % change year-on-year +3.15% -16.11% +15.56%
75th Percentile £538 £500 £564
90th Percentile - £591 £588
UK median daily rate £450 £450 £520
% change year-on-year - -13.46% +15.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 4
10th Percentile - - £27.25
25th Percentile - - £30.63
Median hourly rate - - £45.00
75th Percentile - - £61.09
90th Percentile - - £67.56
UK median hourly rate - - £45.00
% change year-on-year - - -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 4,345 3,335 3,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.37% 11.99% 12.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,603 2,076 2,345
10th Percentile £250 £235 £244
25th Percentile £400 £368 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £508
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -3.05% +1.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £614
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 168 231
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £24.75 £21.69
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.23 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -21.16% -28.12% +1.52%
75th Percentile £67.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.66 £42.50 £51.00
% change year-on-year -37.27% -16.67% -9.72%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 -28 68 £507 +6.74% 41
South East -47 25 £433 +5.49% 55
West Midlands -41 8 £375 -40.00% 6
Midlands -42 8 £375 -40.00% 10
East of England -34 7 £400 +3.23% 11
South West -56 5 £450 +5.88% 4
North of England -74 1 £363 -16.91% 5
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 14 (11.86%) OpenStack
2 2 (1.69%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.85%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Cloud Services
1 11 (9.32%) AWS
2 4 (3.39%) Azure
3 2 (1.69%) GCP
4 1 (0.85%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (0.85%) OpenShift
4 1 (0.85%) Power Platform
4 1 (0.85%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 74 (62.71%) 4G
2 61 (51.69%) Radio Access Network
3 28 (23.73%) LTE
4 27 (22.88%) 3GPP
5 25 (21.19%) Wireshark
6 24 (20.34%) Diameter Protocol
7 23 (19.49%) 3G
8 19 (16.10%) 2G
9 15 (12.71%) SS7
10 14 (11.86%) VoLTE
10 14 (11.86%) Wi-Fi
11 13 (11.02%) SIGTRAN
12 12 (10.17%) Wireless
13 10 (8.47%) SD-WAN
14 9 (7.63%) HTTP
15 8 (6.78%) WAN
16 7 (5.93%) DNS
16 7 (5.93%) Internet
16 7 (5.93%) LAN
16 7 (5.93%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (4.24%) MongoDB
1 5 (4.24%) MySQL
1 5 (4.24%) NoSQL
1 5 (4.24%) PostgreSQL
1 5 (4.24%) Redis
2 2 (1.69%) GIS
2 2 (1.69%) QGIS
3 1 (0.85%) BigQuery
3 1 (0.85%) Cloud Spanner
3 1 (0.85%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 8 (6.78%) Git
2 7 (5.93%) GitLab
3 5 (4.24%) JIRA
4 4 (3.39%) Jenkins
4 4 (3.39%) Selenium
General
1 82 (69.49%) Telecoms
2 34 (28.81%) Social Skills
3 21 (17.80%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (9.32%) Finance
5 6 (5.08%) Documentation Skills
5 6 (5.08%) Manufacturing
6 5 (4.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (4.24%) Public Sector
7 3 (2.54%) Billing
8 1 (0.85%) Electronics
8 1 (0.85%) Legal
8 1 (0.85%) Marketing
8 1 (0.85%) Retail
Job Titles
1 16 (13.56%) Designer
2 12 (10.17%) Mobile Designer
2 12 (10.17%) RAN Engineer
3 11 (9.32%) Architect
3 11 (9.32%) Network Design Specialist
3 11 (9.32%) Network Specialist
4 10 (8.47%) Consultant
4 10 (8.47%) Network Engineer
5 6 (5.08%) Developer
5 6 (5.08%) Project Manager
6 5 (4.24%) Enterprise Architect
6 5 (4.24%) Python Developer
6 5 (4.24%) Technologist
6 5 (4.24%) Telecoms Manager
6 5 (4.24%) Telecoms Project Manager
7 4 (3.39%) Design Engineer
7 4 (3.39%) Enterprise Security Architect
7 4 (3.39%) Security Architect
7 4 (3.39%) Wireless Engineer
7 4 (3.39%) Wireless Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (8.47%) NETCONF
1 10 (8.47%) YANG
2 8 (6.78%) Elastic Stack
3 6 (5.08%) REST
4 5 (4.24%) CSS
4 5 (4.24%) FastAPI
4 5 (4.24%) Flask
4 5 (4.24%) HTML
4 5 (4.24%) Jinja
4 5 (4.24%) Pandas
4 5 (4.24%) RESTful
5 4 (3.39%) Kafka
5 4 (3.39%) Playwright
5 4 (3.39%) pytest
5 4 (3.39%) RabbitMQ
6 3 (2.54%) 802.1X
7 1 (0.85%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 12 (10.17%) Cloud Native
2 8 (6.78%) Self-Motivation
3 3 (2.54%) IoT
4 2 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (1.69%) Enterprise Cloud
4 2 (1.69%) Virtual Team
4 2 (1.69%) Wiki
5 1 (0.85%) Data Centre
5 1 (0.85%) Driving Licence
5 1 (0.85%) FPGA
5 1 (0.85%) Industry 4.0
5 1 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (0.85%) Onboarding
5 1 (0.85%) Private Cloud
5 1 (0.85%) Smart City
5 1 (0.85%) TM Forum
5 1 (0.85%) Verilog
5 1 (0.85%) VHDL
5 1 (0.85%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 16 (13.56%) Linux
2 6 (5.08%) Unix
3 3 (2.54%) VMS
4 1 (0.85%) Android
4 1 (0.85%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.85%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (23.73%) Stakeholder Management
2 27 (22.88%) Network Design
3 26 (22.03%) CI/CD
4 19 (16.10%) Test Automation
4 19 (16.10%) Validation
5 18 (15.25%) Problem-Solving
6 17 (14.41%) Capacity Planning
7 16 (13.56%) Agile
7 16 (13.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 15 (12.71%) Technical Leadership
9 14 (11.86%) High Availability
9 14 (11.86%) Service Delivery
10 13 (11.02%) Customer Experience
10 13 (11.02%) DevOps
10 13 (11.02%) Risk Management
10 13 (11.02%) Roadmaps
10 13 (11.02%) Root Cause Analysis
11 12 (10.17%) Network Architecture
11 12 (10.17%) Test Strategy
12 11 (9.32%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 17 (14.41%) Python
2 9 (7.63%) Bash
3 6 (5.08%) SQL
4 4 (3.39%) Shell Script
5 1 (0.85%) Apex Code
5 1 (0.85%) C
Qualifications
1 20 (16.95%) Degree
2 12 (10.17%) Security Cleared
3 10 (8.47%) SC Cleared
4 9 (7.63%) Cisco Certification
4 9 (7.63%) PMP
5 7 (5.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (5.93%) CCIE
5 7 (5.93%) CCNP
6 5 (4.24%) Master's Degree
6 5 (4.24%) PhD
7 4 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (3.39%) PMI Certification
8 3 (2.54%) CCIE Wireless
8 3 (2.54%) CWDP
8 3 (2.54%) CWNA
8 3 (2.54%) CWNE
8 3 (2.54%) CWSP
9 1 (0.85%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.85%) CISM
9 1 (0.85%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (7.63%) QA
2 7 (5.93%) SLA
3 3 (2.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.54%) NCSC
4 2 (1.69%) GDPR
5 1 (0.85%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 9 (7.63%) Docker
2 3 (2.54%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (1.69%) Firmware
3 2 (1.69%) KVM
4 1 (0.85%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 13 (11.02%) Kubernetes
2 4 (3.39%) Ansible
2 4 (3.39%) Grafana
2 4 (3.39%) Prometheus
3 2 (1.69%) NSN NetAct
Vendors
1 34 (28.81%) Nokia
2 33 (27.97%) Ericsson
3 19 (16.10%) Huawei
4 14 (11.86%) Cisco
5 9 (7.63%) Aruba
6 7 (5.93%) Ekahau
7 6 (5.08%) BT
8 4 (3.39%) Dynatrace
8 4 (3.39%) New Relic
8 4 (3.39%) Splunk
9 3 (2.54%) Meraki
9 3 (2.54%) ServiceNow
9 3 (2.54%) VMware
10 2 (1.69%) Actix
10 2 (1.69%) Google
10 2 (1.69%) Salesforce
11 1 (0.85%) Empirix
11 1 (0.85%) Fortinet
11 1 (0.85%) Red Hat
11 1 (0.85%) Wind River