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

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 521 468 536
Rank change year-on-year -53 +68 +148
Contract jobs citing SMS 35 18 23
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.10% 0.070% 0.060%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.01% 0.53% 0.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 21 10 12
10th Percentile - £301 £408
25th Percentile £204 £350 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £208 £503 £515
Median % change year-on-year -58.71% -2.43% -11.97%
75th Percentile £298 £621 £633
90th Percentile £460 £728 £673
UK median daily rate £284 £580 £480
% change year-on-year -51.08% +20.83% -17.95%

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 3,466 3,369 5,356
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.32% 13.03% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,262 1,951 3,225
10th Percentile £204 £213 £205
25th Percentile £353 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.60% +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £601 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -6.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 101 385
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.48
25th Percentile £18.78 £20.75 £21.25
Median hourly rate £29.44 £35.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.89% -26.32% +137.50%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £71.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £29.44 £32.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -9.42% -31.58% +137.50%

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 10 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 10 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 -18 29 £208 -50.60% 14
North of England -63 3 - - 3
Yorkshire - 3 - -
Midlands - 1 - - 2
West Midlands - 1 - - 1
East of England - 1 - - 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 4 (11.43%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (8.57%) CMS
3 1 (2.86%) Confluence
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
Communications & Networking
1 3 (8.57%) 3GPP
1 3 (8.57%) MVNO
1 3 (8.57%) Network Security
1 3 (8.57%) SMPP
2 2 (5.71%) Firewall
2 2 (5.71%) NGFW
3 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 2 (5.71%) JIRA
General
1 22 (62.86%) Marketing
2 10 (28.57%) Documentation Skills
2 10 (28.57%) Social Skills
3 8 (22.86%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (8.57%) Telecoms
5 2 (5.71%) Banking
5 2 (5.71%) Finance
5 2 (5.71%) Investment Banking
6 1 (2.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (2.86%) Pharmaceutical
6 1 (2.86%) Retail
6 1 (2.86%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 12 (34.29%) Consultant
1 12 (34.29%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
2 6 (17.14%) Functional Consultant
2 6 (17.14%) Technical Consultant
3 5 (14.29%) Developer
4 4 (11.43%) CRM Specialist
4 4 (11.43%) Marketing Specialist
5 2 (5.71%) Lead
5 2 (5.71%) Marketing Manager
6 1 (2.86%) Designer
6 1 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Firewall Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Lead Architect
6 1 (2.86%) Network Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Network Security Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Security Engineer
6 1 (2.86%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (22.86%) REST
2 6 (17.14%) Kafka
3 3 (8.57%) CSS
3 3 (8.57%) HTML
4 2 (5.71%) JSON
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
3 1 (2.86%) Data Centre
3 1 (2.86%) Mainframe
3 1 (2.86%) Management Information System
3 1 (2.86%) Mobile App
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (48.57%) Personalization
2 16 (45.71%) 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%) CI/CD
8 3 (8.57%) Content Management
8 3 (8.57%) Cryptography
8 3 (8.57%) Key Management
8 3 (8.57%) Validation
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 4 (11.43%) Security Cleared
2 3 (8.57%) SC Cleared
3 1 (2.86%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (28.57%) GDPR
2 4 (11.43%) QA
3 1 (2.86%) Accessibility
Vendors
1 6 (17.14%) Adobe
2 4 (11.43%) Salesforce
2 4 (11.43%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
3 3 (8.57%) Thales
4 2 (5.71%) CheckPoint
5 1 (2.86%) Cisco
5 1 (2.86%) IBM