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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 528 464 529
Rank change year-on-year -64 +65 +139
Contract jobs citing SMS 35 20 26
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.099% 0.078% 0.069%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.97% 0.59% 0.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 22 12 15
10th Percentile - £268 £385
25th Percentile £204 £326 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £208 £420 £433
Median % change year-on-year -50.60% -2.89% -27.92%
75th Percentile £318 £614 £641
90th Percentile £485 £715 £670
UK median daily rate £290 £420 £441
% change year-on-year -30.95% -4.82% -26.46%

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 3,594 3,400 5,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.14% 13.23% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,317 2,035 3,151
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £363 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £485
% change year-on-year -4.00% +3.09% -6.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 166 101 363
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.33 £14.27
25th Percentile £18.90 £21.46 £19.99
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -22.22% +133.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £43.12
% change year-on-year -2.86% -18.82% +123.39%

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 27 February 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 27 February 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 29 £208 -49.39% 6
North of England -66 2 - - 6
Yorkshire - 2 - -
South East -35 1 £475 - 11
West Midlands - 1 - - 4
East of England - 1 - - 1
Midlands - 1 - - 5
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 4 (11.43%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (8.57%) CMS
Business Applications
1 1 (2.86%) Dynamics NAV
1 1 (2.86%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 12 (34.29%) Dynamics 365
2 7 (20.00%) Azure
2 7 (20.00%) WhatsApp
3 6 (17.14%) Azure Functions
3 6 (17.14%) Azure Service Bus
3 6 (17.14%) Power Platform
3 6 (17.14%) Serverless
4 3 (8.57%) SaaS
5 1 (2.86%) Entra ID
5 1 (2.86%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 3 (8.57%) 3GPP
1 3 (8.57%) MVNO
1 3 (8.57%) Network Security
1 3 (8.57%) SMPP
2 1 (2.86%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (5.71%) RDBMS
1 2 (5.71%) Relational Database
1 2 (5.71%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 1 (2.86%) JIRA
General
1 22 (62.86%) Marketing
2 11 (31.43%) Social Skills
3 10 (28.57%) Documentation Skills
4 8 (22.86%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (8.57%) Finance
5 3 (8.57%) Telecoms
6 2 (5.71%) Banking
6 2 (5.71%) Investment Banking
6 2 (5.71%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (2.86%) Billing
7 1 (2.86%) Financial Institution
7 1 (2.86%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (2.86%) Public Sector
7 1 (2.86%) Retail
7 1 (2.86%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 13 (37.14%) Consultant
2 12 (34.29%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
3 6 (17.14%) Functional Consultant
3 6 (17.14%) Technical Consultant
4 5 (14.29%) Developer
5 4 (11.43%) CRM Specialist
5 4 (11.43%) Marketing Specialist
6 3 (8.57%) Lead
7 2 (5.71%) Architect
7 2 (5.71%) Lead Architect
7 2 (5.71%) Marketing Manager
7 2 (5.71%) Senior
8 1 (2.86%) Active Directory Engineer
8 1 (2.86%) Audit Consultant
8 1 (2.86%) Azure Engineer
8 1 (2.86%) Content Designer
8 1 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
8 1 (2.86%) Senior Consultant
8 1 (2.86%) Senior Manager
8 1 (2.86%) Test Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (22.86%) REST
2 6 (17.14%) Kafka
3 4 (11.43%) CSS
3 4 (11.43%) HTML
4 2 (5.71%) JSON
5 1 (2.86%) HTML5 Canvas
5 1 (2.86%) iOS SDK
5 1 (2.86%) JWT
5 1 (2.86%) OAuth
5 1 (2.86%) OAuth2
5 1 (2.86%) OpenID
5 1 (2.86%) RESTful
5 1 (2.86%) SAML
5 1 (2.86%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 3 (8.57%) IoT
1 3 (8.57%) Java Card
2 2 (5.71%) Analytical Mindset
2 2 (5.71%) Management Information System
3 1 (2.86%) Data Centre
3 1 (2.86%) Hedge funds
3 1 (2.86%) Mainframe
3 1 (2.86%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.86%) Android
1 1 (2.86%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 18 (51.43%) Personalization
2 17 (48.57%) Analytics
3 14 (40.00%) Event-Driven
4 8 (22.86%) DevOps
4 8 (22.86%) User Acceptance Testing
5 7 (20.00%) CRM
6 6 (17.14%) Agile
6 6 (17.14%) Customer Insight
6 6 (17.14%) Event-Driven Architecture
6 6 (17.14%) Requirements Workshops
6 6 (17.14%) Technical Architecture
6 6 (17.14%) Technical Leadership
6 6 (17.14%) Workshop Facilitation
7 4 (11.43%) Knowledge Transfer
7 4 (11.43%) User Experience
8 3 (8.57%) Actionable Insight
8 3 (8.57%) Cryptography
8 3 (8.57%) Customer Engagement
8 3 (8.57%) Data Ingestion
8 3 (8.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 8 (22.86%) SQL
2 6 (17.14%) C#
3 3 (8.57%) C
3 3 (8.57%) C++
3 3 (8.57%) Java
3 3 (8.57%) Python
4 2 (5.71%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 3 (8.57%) Security Cleared
2 1 (2.86%) DV Cleared
2 1 (2.86%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (31.43%) GDPR
2 4 (11.43%) QA
3 1 (2.86%) Accessibility
3 1 (2.86%) Actionable Recommendations
Vendors
1 6 (17.14%) Adobe
2 4 (11.43%) Salesforce
2 4 (11.43%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
3 3 (8.57%) Thales
4 1 (2.86%) IBM