SMS Contracts in England

Short Message Service (SMS)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring SMS skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited SMS over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 468 517 629
Rank change year-on-year +49 +112 +118
Contract jobs citing SMS 17 25 24
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.070% 0.067% 0.048%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.53% 0.50% 0.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 7 16 17
10th Percentile £345 £388 £380
25th Percentile £405 £411 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £420 £491 £575
Median % change year-on-year -14.50% -14.57% +27.78%
75th Percentile £675 £634 £600
90th Percentile £735 £669 -
UK median daily rate £500 £450 £575
% change year-on-year +11.11% -21.74% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
10th Percentile - - £22.50
25th Percentile - - £26.25
Median hourly rate - - £33.00
75th Percentile - - £40.25
90th Percentile - - £44.30
UK median hourly rate - - £33.00

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 3,178 5,012 6,158
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 13.05% 13.48% 12.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,963 3,022 4,045
10th Percentile £220 £206 £231
25th Percentile £363 £350 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -6.67% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £650
90th Percentile £675 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £488 £495 £519
% change year-on-year -1.52% -4.53% +3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 127 399 439
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.50 £9.80
25th Percentile £15.22 £17.35 £10.63
Median hourly rate £28.00 £40.00 £18.82
Median % change year-on-year -30.00% +112.54% -21.29%
75th Percentile £63.50 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.01 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £40.00 £19.00
% change year-on-year -27.50% +110.53% -32.74%

SMS
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing SMS as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for SMS in England

SMS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SMS in England.

Daily rate trend for SMS in England

SMS
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SMS in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SMS in England

SMS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SMS in England.

Hourly rate trend for SMS in England

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 1 May 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 +36 10 £420 -2.89% 29
South East +44 5 - - 11
North of England +19 2 - - 5
North East - 2 - -
SMS
UK

SMS
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (11.76%) Jupyter
2 1 (5.88%) Adobe Experience Manager
Cloud Services
1 2 (11.76%) Amazon EMR
1 2 (11.76%) Amazon S3
1 2 (11.76%) Amazon SQS
1 2 (11.76%) AWS
1 2 (11.76%) AWS Lambda
1 2 (11.76%) Azure
1 2 (11.76%) Serverless
2 1 (5.88%) SaaS
2 1 (5.88%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
2 1 (5.88%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 3 (17.65%) VoWiFi
2 2 (11.76%) 5G
2 2 (11.76%) Diameter Protocol
2 2 (11.76%) SIGTRAN
2 2 (11.76%) SS7
2 2 (11.76%) VoLTE
2 2 (11.76%) Wireshark
3 1 (5.88%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (11.76%) Data Lake
1 2 (11.76%) Metadata
1 2 (11.76%) Metadata Repository
1 2 (11.76%) Oracle Database
2 1 (5.88%) BusinessObjects
2 1 (5.88%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 3 (17.65%) JIRA
2 2 (11.76%) GitLab
General
1 7 (41.18%) Marketing
2 4 (23.53%) Social Skills
3 3 (17.65%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (17.65%) Telecoms
4 2 (11.76%) Legal
5 1 (5.88%) Documentation Skills
5 1 (5.88%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 4 (23.53%) Developer
2 3 (17.65%) Analyst
2 3 (17.65%) Communications Specialist
2 3 (17.65%) Lead
2 3 (17.65%) Test Analyst
3 2 (11.76%) Data Engineer
3 2 (11.76%) Lead Developer
3 2 (11.76%) Network Analyst
3 2 (11.76%) Senior
3 2 (11.76%) Senior Analyst
3 2 (11.76%) Senior Network Analyst
3 2 (11.76%) Senior Test Analyst
3 2 (11.76%) ServiceNow Developer
4 1 (5.88%) Business Developer
4 1 (5.88%) Business Intelligence Developer
4 1 (5.88%) Cloud Engineer
4 1 (5.88%) SAP BI Developer
4 1 (5.88%) SAP BusinessObjects Developer (SAP BO Developer)
4 1 (5.88%) SAP Developer
4 1 (5.88%) Scrum Master
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (17.65%) CSS
1 3 (17.65%) HTML
2 2 (11.76%) AngularJS
2 2 (11.76%) JSON
2 2 (11.76%) Kafka
2 2 (11.76%) PySpark
2 2 (11.76%) REST
2 2 (11.76%) SOAP
2 2 (11.76%) Spring
2 2 (11.76%) Spring Boot
2 2 (11.76%) Web Services
2 2 (11.76%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 1 (5.88%) Management Information System
1 1 (5.88%) PMI
1 1 (5.88%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (17.65%) Agile
1 3 (17.65%) B2C
1 3 (17.65%) Copywriting
2 2 (11.76%) Business Development
2 2 (11.76%) Business Intelligence
2 2 (11.76%) CI/CD
2 2 (11.76%) Customer Experience
2 2 (11.76%) Data Development
2 2 (11.76%) Data Integration
2 2 (11.76%) Data Modelling
2 2 (11.76%) Decision-Making
2 2 (11.76%) Defect Management
2 2 (11.76%) ITIL
2 2 (11.76%) ITSM
2 2 (11.76%) Problem-Solving
2 2 (11.76%) Security Operations
2 2 (11.76%) Software Testing
2 2 (11.76%) Stakeholder Management
2 2 (11.76%) Task Automation
2 2 (11.76%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 2 (11.76%) Java
1 2 (11.76%) JavaScript
1 2 (11.76%) Python
1 2 (11.76%) SQL
Qualifications
1 4 (23.53%) SC Cleared
1 4 (23.53%) Security Cleared
2 1 (5.88%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (11.76%) ISO/IEC 20000
1 2 (11.76%) QA
Systems Management
1 2 (11.76%) Terraform
Vendors
1 2 (11.76%) Databricks
1 2 (11.76%) Oracle
1 2 (11.76%) Salesforce
1 2 (11.76%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
1 2 (11.76%) SAP
1 2 (11.76%) ServiceNow
2 1 (5.88%) Adobe