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 27 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 498 445 396
Rank change year-on-year -53 -49 +76
Contract jobs citing 5G 120 69 139
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.26% 0.25% 0.42%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.79% 2.04% 3.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 66 47 59
10th Percentile £400 £338 £320
25th Percentile £427 £400 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £438 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% -12.50% +11.11%
75th Percentile £538 £540 £564
90th Percentile - £613 £588
UK median daily rate £465 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +3.33% -10.00% +11.11%
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 4,302 3,375 4,096
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.41% 12.23% 12.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,595 2,094 2,474
10th Percentile £263 £247 £243
25th Percentile £400 £374 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £505
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -2.48% +0.90%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £680 £688 £689
UK median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 168 265
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.72 £42.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -22.73% -2.64%
75th Percentile £65.38 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.30 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £45.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -42.22% -10.00% -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 27 August 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 27 August 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 -23 68 £525 +9.38% 71
South East -46 26 £425 +9.68% 55
West Midlands -42 9 £394 -37.00% 6
Midlands -46 9 £394 -37.00% 12
South West -50 8 £450 +5.88% 9
East of England -28 4 £425 +6.25% 13
North of England -75 1 £363 -16.67% 7
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 15 (12.50%) OpenStack
2 2 (1.67%) ArcGIS
2 2 (1.67%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Cloud Services
1 11 (9.17%) AWS
2 6 (5.00%) Azure
3 2 (1.67%) GCP
4 1 (0.83%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (0.83%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (0.83%) OpenShift
4 1 (0.83%) Power Platform
4 1 (0.83%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 79 (65.83%) 4G
2 64 (53.33%) Radio Access Network
3 29 (24.17%) LTE
4 24 (20.00%) 3G
4 24 (20.00%) Diameter Protocol
5 23 (19.17%) Wireshark
6 22 (18.33%) 3GPP
7 19 (15.83%) 2G
8 15 (12.50%) SS7
8 15 (12.50%) VoLTE
9 13 (10.83%) SIGTRAN
9 13 (10.83%) Wi-Fi
10 12 (10.00%) SD-WAN
11 10 (8.33%) Wireless
12 9 (7.50%) HTTP
12 9 (7.50%) Internet
12 9 (7.50%) LAN
12 9 (7.50%) WAN
13 8 (6.67%) DNS
13 8 (6.67%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (4.17%) MongoDB
1 5 (4.17%) MySQL
1 5 (4.17%) NoSQL
1 5 (4.17%) PostgreSQL
1 5 (4.17%) Redis
2 2 (1.67%) GIS
2 2 (1.67%) QGIS
3 1 (0.83%) BigQuery
3 1 (0.83%) Cloud Spanner
3 1 (0.83%) Power BI
3 1 (0.83%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 5 (4.17%) Git
2 4 (3.33%) GitLab
2 4 (3.33%) Jenkins
2 4 (3.33%) Selenium
3 3 (2.50%) JIRA
General
1 77 (64.17%) Telecoms
2 32 (26.67%) Social Skills
3 23 (19.17%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (7.50%) Finance
5 3 (2.50%) Billing
5 3 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (2.50%) Public Sector
6 2 (1.67%) Electronics
6 2 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (1.67%) Manufacturing
6 2 (1.67%) Marketing
7 1 (0.83%) Retail
Job Titles
1 17 (14.17%) Designer
2 16 (13.33%) Network Design Specialist
2 16 (13.33%) Network Specialist
3 12 (10.00%) Architect
3 12 (10.00%) Mobile Designer
3 12 (10.00%) Network Engineer
4 11 (9.17%) RAN Engineer
5 8 (6.67%) Consultant
6 6 (5.00%) Developer
6 6 (5.00%) Project Manager
7 5 (4.17%) Design Engineer
7 5 (4.17%) Enterprise Architect
7 5 (4.17%) Python Developer
7 5 (4.17%) Telecoms Manager
7 5 (4.17%) Telecoms Project Manager
7 5 (4.17%) Wireless Engineer
7 5 (4.17%) Wireless Network Engineer
8 4 (3.33%) Enterprise Security Architect
8 4 (3.33%) Security Architect
9 3 (2.50%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (6.67%) NETCONF
1 8 (6.67%) YANG
2 7 (5.83%) Elastic Stack
3 6 (5.00%) REST
4 5 (4.17%) 802.1X
4 5 (4.17%) CSS
4 5 (4.17%) FastAPI
4 5 (4.17%) Flask
4 5 (4.17%) HTML
4 5 (4.17%) Jinja
4 5 (4.17%) Pandas
4 5 (4.17%) RESTful
5 4 (3.33%) Kafka
5 4 (3.33%) Playwright
5 4 (3.33%) pytest
5 4 (3.33%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (0.83%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 15 (12.50%) Cloud Native
2 8 (6.67%) Self-Motivation
3 4 (3.33%) IoT
3 4 (3.33%) Virtual Team
4 2 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (1.67%) Enterprise Cloud
4 2 (1.67%) Industry 4.0
4 2 (1.67%) Smart City
5 1 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (0.83%) Data Centre
5 1 (0.83%) Driving Licence
5 1 (0.83%) FPGA
5 1 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (0.83%) Private Cloud
5 1 (0.83%) TM Forum
5 1 (0.83%) Verilog
5 1 (0.83%) VHDL
5 1 (0.83%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 12 (10.00%) Linux
2 6 (5.00%) Unix
3 2 (1.67%) Windows
4 1 (0.83%) Android
4 1 (0.83%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (25.00%) Network Design
2 26 (21.67%) Stakeholder Management
3 25 (20.83%) CI/CD
4 22 (18.33%) Capacity Planning
4 22 (18.33%) Problem-Solving
5 17 (14.17%) Test Automation
5 17 (14.17%) Validation
6 16 (13.33%) Technical Leadership
7 14 (11.67%) DevOps
7 14 (11.67%) High Availability
7 14 (11.67%) Network Architecture
7 14 (11.67%) Roadmaps
7 14 (11.67%) Service Delivery
8 13 (10.83%) Agile
8 13 (10.83%) Risk Management
8 13 (10.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 12 (10.00%) Root Cause Analysis
10 11 (9.17%) Customer Experience
10 11 (9.17%) Migration
11 10 (8.33%) Technology Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 14 (11.67%) Python
2 8 (6.67%) Bash
3 7 (5.83%) SQL
4 4 (3.33%) Shell Script
5 2 (1.67%) C
6 1 (0.83%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 16 (13.33%) Degree
2 12 (10.00%) Security Cleared
3 10 (8.33%) Cisco Certification
3 10 (8.33%) SC Cleared
4 9 (7.50%) PMP
5 8 (6.67%) CCIE
5 8 (6.67%) CCNP
6 4 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (3.33%) CCIE Wireless
6 4 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (3.33%) CWDP
6 4 (3.33%) CWNA
6 4 (3.33%) CWNE
6 4 (3.33%) CWSP
6 4 (3.33%) PMI Certification
7 2 (1.67%) AWS Certification
7 2 (1.67%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.67%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.67%) PhD
8 1 (0.83%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (5.83%) QA
1 7 (5.83%) SLA
2 3 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (2.50%) NCSC
3 2 (1.67%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.67%) GDPR
4 1 (0.83%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 7 (5.83%) Docker
2 3 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (1.67%) Firmware
3 2 (1.67%) KVM
4 1 (0.83%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 14 (11.67%) Kubernetes
2 4 (3.33%) Grafana
2 4 (3.33%) Prometheus
3 3 (2.50%) Ansible
4 2 (1.67%) NSN NetAct
Vendors
1 39 (32.50%) Nokia
2 37 (30.83%) Ericsson
3 26 (21.67%) Huawei
4 16 (13.33%) Cisco
5 11 (9.17%) Aruba
6 8 (6.67%) Ekahau
7 7 (5.83%) BT
8 3 (2.50%) Actix
8 3 (2.50%) Dynatrace
8 3 (2.50%) Meraki
8 3 (2.50%) New Relic
8 3 (2.50%) ServiceNow
8 3 (2.50%) Splunk
8 3 (2.50%) VMware
9 2 (1.67%) Fortinet
9 2 (1.67%) Google
9 2 (1.67%) Oracle
9 2 (1.67%) Salesforce
9 2 (1.67%) Samsung
10 1 (0.83%) Arista