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 31 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 506 504 564
Rank change year-on-year -2 +60 +186
Contract jobs citing SMS 25 13 15
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.086% 0.042% 0.037%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.74% 0.34% 0.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 10 8
10th Percentile £254 £301 £357
25th Percentile £283 £317 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £379 £425 £478
Median % change year-on-year -10.88% -10.99% -11.57%
75th Percentile £438 £594 £715
90th Percentile £471 £613 £888
UK median daily rate £370 £488 £475
% change year-on-year -24.10% +2.63% -11.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
Median hourly rate - - £20.00
UK median hourly rate - - £20.00

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 3,364 3,802 5,650
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 11.55% 12.19% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,163 2,204 3,541
10th Percentile £213 £236 £213
25th Percentile £358 £380 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -
75th Percentile £588 £606 £600
90th Percentile £683 £686 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 132 319
10th Percentile £15.50 £20.00 £17.29
25th Percentile £20.00 £30.00 £23.00
Median hourly rate £34.00 £57.50 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -40.87% +1.79% +36.12%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £34.50 £48.56 £55.00
% change year-on-year -28.95% -11.71% +36.52%

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 31 October 2025.

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 31 October 2025. 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 +30 18 £290 -12.12% 23
North of England -31 4 £463 -22.59% 5
Yorkshire -26 3 £450 -
South East 0 1 £400 - 20
East of England - 1 - -
North West - 1 £475 - 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 (16.00%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (12.00%) CMS
3 2 (8.00%) Confluence
4 1 (4.00%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 2 (8.00%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (4.00%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 4 (16.00%) AWS
2 3 (12.00%) Azure
2 3 (12.00%) SaaS
2 3 (12.00%) WhatsApp
3 2 (8.00%) Amazon S3
3 2 (8.00%) GCP
3 2 (8.00%) Twilio
4 1 (4.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (4.00%) Amazon EC2
4 1 (4.00%) Amazon EMR
4 1 (4.00%) Amazon SQS
4 1 (4.00%) AWS CloudFormation
4 1 (4.00%) AWS CloudTrail
4 1 (4.00%) AWS CodePipeline
4 1 (4.00%) AWS Fargate
4 1 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (4.00%) Dialogflow
4 1 (4.00%) Serverless
4 1 (4.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (12.00%) Firewall
1 3 (12.00%) NGFW
2 2 (8.00%) Internet
2 2 (8.00%) LAN
3 1 (4.00%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (8.00%) DB2
1 2 (8.00%) Relational Database
1 2 (8.00%) Tableau
2 1 (4.00%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (4.00%) DynamoDB
2 1 (4.00%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 3 (12.00%) JIRA
2 2 (8.00%) Git
3 1 (4.00%) Jenkins
General
1 11 (44.00%) Marketing
2 6 (24.00%) Social Skills
3 4 (16.00%) Banking
3 4 (16.00%) Documentation Skills
4 3 (12.00%) Finance
5 2 (8.00%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (8.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (8.00%) Investment Banking
6 1 (4.00%) Pharmaceutical
6 1 (4.00%) Retail
6 1 (4.00%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 5 (20.00%) Marketing Specialist
2 4 (16.00%) CRM Specialist
3 3 (12.00%) Developer
4 2 (8.00%) C++ Developer
4 2 (8.00%) Marketing Manager
4 2 (8.00%) Project Manager
4 2 (8.00%) Senior
4 2 (8.00%) Unix Developer
5 1 (4.00%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
5 1 (4.00%) Automation Specialist
5 1 (4.00%) AWS Engineer
5 1 (4.00%) Azure Developer
5 1 (4.00%) Content Designer
5 1 (4.00%) Delivery Manager
5 1 (4.00%) Designer
5 1 (4.00%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
5 1 (4.00%) Lead
5 1 (4.00%) Linux Developer
5 1 (4.00%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
5 1 (4.00%) Voice Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (12.00%) JSON
1 3 (12.00%) Node.js
2 2 (8.00%) HTML
2 2 (8.00%) React
2 2 (8.00%) Spring
2 2 (8.00%) Spring Boot
2 2 (8.00%) XML
3 1 (4.00%) AWS CDK
3 1 (4.00%) Express.js
3 1 (4.00%) FastAPI
3 1 (4.00%) FHIR
3 1 (4.00%) GraphQL
3 1 (4.00%) Kafka
3 1 (4.00%) LangChain
3 1 (4.00%) REST
3 1 (4.00%) ServiceStack
3 1 (4.00%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 2 (8.00%) Analytical Mindset
1 2 (8.00%) Online Banking
2 1 (4.00%) AI Agents
2 1 (4.00%) Cloud Native
2 1 (4.00%) IVR
2 1 (4.00%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 2 (8.00%) Linux
1 2 (8.00%) Unix
2 1 (4.00%) AIX
2 1 (4.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (36.00%) Analytics
2 8 (32.00%) CRM
3 6 (24.00%) Agile
3 6 (24.00%) Personalization
4 5 (20.00%) Migration
5 4 (16.00%) CI/CD
5 4 (16.00%) High Availability
5 4 (16.00%) User Experience
6 3 (12.00%) Content Management
6 3 (12.00%) Customer Journey Map
6 3 (12.00%) Journey Map
6 3 (12.00%) Observability
6 3 (12.00%) Performance Metrics
6 3 (12.00%) Product Marketing
6 3 (12.00%) Regulatory Compliance
6 3 (12.00%) Stakeholder Management
7 2 (8.00%) AI
7 2 (8.00%) DevOps
7 2 (8.00%) Email Marketing
7 2 (8.00%) Wealth Management
Programming Languages
1 6 (24.00%) SQL
2 4 (16.00%) Python
3 3 (12.00%) Java
4 2 (8.00%) C
4 2 (8.00%) C++
4 2 (8.00%) Shell Script
5 1 (4.00%) Bicep
5 1 (4.00%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 6 (24.00%) Security Cleared
2 4 (16.00%) SC Cleared
3 2 (8.00%) DV Cleared
4 1 (4.00%) AWS Certification
4 1 (4.00%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
4 1 (4.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (20.00%) QA
2 4 (16.00%) GDPR
3 1 (4.00%) Accessibility
3 1 (4.00%) HL7
3 1 (4.00%) SLA
System Software
1 4 (16.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (16.00%) Kubernetes
2 2 (8.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (20.00%) Salesforce
2 4 (16.00%) Adobe
2 4 (16.00%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
3 3 (12.00%) CheckPoint
3 3 (12.00%) IBM
4 2 (8.00%) Cisco
4 2 (8.00%) Dynatrace
4 2 (8.00%) Splunk
5 1 (4.00%) Google
5 1 (4.00%) HubSpot
5 1 (4.00%) Red Hat
5 1 (4.00%) StreamSets
5 1 (4.00%) Zoho