SMS Contract Job Trends in England

Short Message Service (SMS)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring SMS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 584 490 521
Rank change year-on-year -94 +31 +64
Contract jobs citing SMS 32 18 9
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.070% 0.065% 0.027%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.74% 0.53% 0.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 21 7 7
10th Percentile £264 £250 £343
25th Percentile £415 £316 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £400 £595
Median % change year-on-year +37.50% -32.77% +28.65%
75th Percentile £675 £425 £619
90th Percentile £713 £460 £648
UK median daily rate £550 £400 £500
% change year-on-year +37.50% -20.00% +11.11%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
England

SMS 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 4,343 3,378 4,039
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.45% 12.17% 12.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,617 2,100 2,422
10th Percentile £263 £242 £250
25th Percentile £400 £364 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £505
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -2.57% +1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £676 £681 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 169 259
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £27.11 £42.50 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -36.21% -24.77% -
75th Percentile £65.88 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.68 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £45.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -42.22% -10.00% -9.62%

SMS
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

SMS job vacancy trend in England

SMS
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SMS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SMS

SMS
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SMS in England over the 6 months to 30 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SMS in England

SMS
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SMS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SMS

SMS
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 SMS within the England region over the 6 months to 30 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 -70 18 £588 +84.31% 48
North of England -71 5 £550 +18.92% 10
Midlands - 4 £435 - 4
North West -54 3 £550 +15.79% 6
South East -61 3 £350 -12.50% 8
East Midlands - 3 £435 - 2
Yorkshire -47 2 - - 2
West Midlands - 1 £675 - 2
SMS
UK

SMS
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 (9.38%) CMS
2 2 (6.25%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (3.13%) Jupyter
Business Applications
1 4 (12.50%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 6 (18.75%) Azure
2 4 (12.50%) Bloomreach
2 4 (12.50%) Dynamics 365
3 3 (9.38%) Copilot Studio
3 3 (9.38%) Microsoft Copilot
3 3 (9.38%) Power Automate
3 3 (9.38%) Salesforce Einstein
4 1 (3.13%) Adobe Analytics
4 1 (3.13%) Amazon EMR
4 1 (3.13%) Amazon S3
4 1 (3.13%) Amazon SQS
4 1 (3.13%) AWS
4 1 (3.13%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (3.13%) Azure Event Grid
4 1 (3.13%) Azure Logic Apps
4 1 (3.13%) Azure Service Bus
4 1 (3.13%) Boomi
4 1 (3.13%) Entra ID
4 1 (3.13%) Power Platform
4 1 (3.13%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (6.25%) 4G
1 2 (6.25%) 5G
1 2 (6.25%) Broadband
1 2 (6.25%) Radio Access Network
1 2 (6.25%) SD-WAN
1 2 (6.25%) VoLTE
1 2 (6.25%) WAN
2 1 (3.13%) DKIM
2 1 (3.13%) DMARC
2 1 (3.13%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (3.13%) Data Lake
1 1 (3.13%) Metadata
1 1 (3.13%) Metadata Repository
Development Applications
1 1 (3.13%) GitLab
General
1 14 (43.75%) Marketing
2 10 (31.25%) Social Skills
3 3 (9.38%) Finance
3 3 (9.38%) Retail
3 3 (9.38%) Telecoms
4 2 (6.25%) Billing
4 2 (6.25%) Documentation Skills
4 2 (6.25%) Legal
4 2 (6.25%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (3.13%) Analytical Skills
Job Titles
1 13 (40.63%) Architect
2 5 (15.63%) Enterprise Architect
2 5 (15.63%) Solutions Architect
3 4 (12.50%) Cloud Developer
3 4 (12.50%) Consultant
3 4 (12.50%) Developer
3 4 (12.50%) Salesforce Developer
4 3 (9.38%) CRM Specialist
4 3 (9.38%) Lead
4 3 (9.38%) Telephony Consultant
5 2 (6.25%) Designer
5 2 (6.25%) Lead Architect
5 2 (6.25%) Marketing Specialist
5 2 (6.25%) Network Architect
5 2 (6.25%) Network Designer
5 2 (6.25%) Product Manager
5 2 (6.25%) Solutions Designer
6 1 (3.13%) Data Architect
6 1 (3.13%) Storage Engineer
6 1 (3.13%) Storage Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (9.38%) REST
2 1 (3.13%) CSS
2 1 (3.13%) EDI
2 1 (3.13%) HTML
2 1 (3.13%) JSON
2 1 (3.13%) Middleware
2 1 (3.13%) PySpark
2 1 (3.13%) SOAP
2 1 (3.13%) Spring
2 1 (3.13%) Spring Boot
2 1 (3.13%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 5 (15.63%) Marketing Technology
1 5 (15.63%) Onboarding
2 4 (12.50%) Cloud Native
3 3 (9.38%) IVR
4 2 (6.25%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (6.25%) Mainframe
4 2 (6.25%) Management Information System
4 2 (6.25%) Replication
5 1 (3.13%) Data Structures
5 1 (3.13%) IoT
5 1 (3.13%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 2 (6.25%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (43.75%) CRM
2 13 (40.63%) Personalization
3 9 (28.13%) Analytics
3 9 (28.13%) Event-Driven
4 8 (25.00%) Stakeholder Management
5 7 (21.88%) Data Privacy
5 7 (21.88%) Roadmaps
6 6 (18.75%) Agile
7 5 (15.63%) AI
7 5 (15.63%) Continuous Improvement
7 5 (15.63%) Data Protection
7 5 (15.63%) Enterprise Architecture
7 5 (15.63%) User Experience
8 4 (12.50%) Customer Engagement
8 4 (12.50%) Data Integration
8 4 (12.50%) Data Management
8 4 (12.50%) Machine Learning
8 4 (12.50%) Performance Optimisation
8 4 (12.50%) Technical Architecture
8 4 (12.50%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 4 (12.50%) SQL
2 2 (6.25%) JCL
3 1 (3.13%) Java
3 1 (3.13%) JavaScript
3 1 (3.13%) Python
Qualifications
1 7 (21.88%) Security Cleared
2 4 (12.50%) SC Cleared
3 3 (9.38%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (21.88%) GDPR
2 5 (15.63%) QA
3 1 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (3.13%) NIST
3 1 (3.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1 (3.13%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 1 (3.13%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 7 (21.88%) Salesforce
1 7 (21.88%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
2 3 (9.38%) Adobe
2 3 (9.38%) Pardot
3 2 (6.25%) Braze
4 1 (3.13%) Broadcom
4 1 (3.13%) Databricks
4 1 (3.13%) EMC
4 1 (3.13%) IBM
4 1 (3.13%) MuleSoft