SMS Contracts in the Thames Valley

Short Message Service (SMS)
South East > Thames Valley

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the Thames Valley 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 19 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 98 135 143
Rank change year-on-year +37 +8 +22
Contract jobs citing SMS 4 3 3
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 0.27% 0.12% 0.11%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.65% 0.54% 0.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 1 1 2
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £200 £400
Median % change year-on-year +100.00% -50.00% -11.11%
South East median daily rate £400 £381 £400
% change year-on-year +4.92% -4.69% -11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
Median hourly rate - - £20.00
South East median hourly rate - - £20.00

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
Thames Valley

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 the Thames Valley.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 243 554 450
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 16.21% 21.28% 16.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 263 278
10th Percentile £232 £205 £300
25th Percentile £363 £335 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +2.46% +2.74%
75th Percentile £538 £600 £575
90th Percentile £600 £638 £650
South East median daily rate £475 £488 £485
% change year-on-year -2.56% +0.52% +7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 47 15
10th Percentile - £17.15 £18.90
25th Percentile - £23.10 £22.25
Median hourly rate £14.20 £65.00 £66.00
Median % change year-on-year -78.15% -1.52% +288.24%
75th Percentile £22.09 £85.65 £80.25
90th Percentile £31.44 £87.49 £81.22
South East median hourly rate £50.00 £57.35 £57.50
% change year-on-year -12.82% -0.26% +167.44%

SMS
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

Job postings citing SMS as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley.

Job vacancy trend for SMS in the Thames Valley

SMS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SMS in the Thames Valley.

Daily rate trend for SMS in the Thames Valley

SMS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SMS in the Thames Valley.

Hourly rate trend for SMS in the Thames Valley

SMS
Contract Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SMS within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 19 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
Berkshire +31 4 £400 +100.00% 3
SMS
South East

SMS
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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:

Applications
1 1 (25.00%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 1 (25.00%) Azure
1 1 (25.00%) Azure AKS
1 1 (25.00%) Azure App Service
1 1 (25.00%) Azure DevOps
1 1 (25.00%) Azure Key Vault
1 1 (25.00%) Twilio
1 1 (25.00%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 2 (50.00%) 5G
1 2 (50.00%) Diameter Protocol
1 2 (50.00%) SIGTRAN
1 2 (50.00%) SS7
1 2 (50.00%) VoLTE
1 2 (50.00%) VoWiFi
1 2 (50.00%) Wireshark
Development Applications
1 2 (50.00%) JIRA
General
1 2 (50.00%) Analytical Skills
1 2 (50.00%) Social Skills
1 2 (50.00%) Telecoms
2 1 (25.00%) Finance
2 1 (25.00%) Legal
2 1 (25.00%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 2 (50.00%) Analyst
1 2 (50.00%) Network Analyst
1 2 (50.00%) Senior
1 2 (50.00%) Senior Analyst
1 2 (50.00%) Senior Network Analyst
1 2 (50.00%) Senior Test Analyst
1 2 (50.00%) Test Analyst
2 1 (25.00%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
2 1 (25.00%) Azure Developer
2 1 (25.00%) Communications Specialist
2 1 (25.00%) Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (25.00%) Express.js
1 1 (25.00%) FastAPI
1 1 (25.00%) FHIR
1 1 (25.00%) GraphQL
1 1 (25.00%) LangChain
1 1 (25.00%) REST
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (50.00%) Defect Management
1 2 (50.00%) Problem-Solving
1 2 (50.00%) Software Testing
1 2 (50.00%) Validation
2 1 (25.00%) Artificial Intelligence
2 1 (25.00%) B2C
2 1 (25.00%) CI/CD
2 1 (25.00%) Containerisation
2 1 (25.00%) Conversational UI
2 1 (25.00%) Copywriting
2 1 (25.00%) Customer Experience
2 1 (25.00%) Data Collection
2 1 (25.00%) DevOps
2 1 (25.00%) Infrastructure as Code
2 1 (25.00%) LLM
2 1 (25.00%) MLOps
2 1 (25.00%) Observability
2 1 (25.00%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
2 1 (25.00%) Stakeholder Management
2 1 (25.00%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1 (25.00%) Bicep
1 1 (25.00%) Python
1 1 (25.00%) TypeScript
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (25.00%) HL7
1 1 (25.00%) SLA
System Software
1 1 (25.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (25.00%) Kubernetes
1 1 (25.00%) Terraform