3GPP Contracts

3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring 3GPP skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited 3GPP over the 6 months leading up to 14 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 525 559 658
Rank change year-on-year +34 +99 +158
Contract jobs citing 3GPP 17 29 29
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.052% 0.068% 0.052%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.42% 0.54% 0.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 10 5 11
10th Percentile £406 £443 £239
25th Percentile £435 - £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.33% -5.26% +5.56%
75th Percentile £600 £513 £493
90th Percentile £613 £528 £500
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £450 £486
% change year-on-year -0.67% -7.41% +17.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 1
10th Percentile £55.10 - -
25th Percentile £59.00 - £53.50
Median hourly rate £62.00 - £57.00
75th Percentile £65.00 - £60.50
90th Percentile £66.50 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.00 - £57.00

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

3GPP 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,001 5,360 7,149
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.32% 12.53% 12.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,410 3,158 4,628
10th Percentile £235 £213 £230
25th Percentile £363 £350 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £675 £688 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £463
% change year-on-year -3.06% +5.95% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 425 366
10th Percentile £14.69 £13.64 £10.63
25th Percentile £20.89 £17.69 £11.87
Median hourly rate £45.00 £43.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.65% +56.36% -5.17%
75th Percentile £63.63 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.11 £73.55 £75.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £47.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -13.68% +5.56% +95.65%

3GPP
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing 3GPP as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for 3GPP in the UK

3GPP
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for 3GPP in the UK

3GPP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing 3GPP over the 6 months to 14 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for 3GPP in the UK

3GPP
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for 3GPP in the UK

3GPP
Top 9 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing 3GPP within the UK over the 6 months to 14 July 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
England +23 16 £447 -0.67% 28
UK excluding London +18 13 £447 -0.67% 24
Work from Home +33 8 £575 - 20
East of England - 6 £575 - 20
North West - 4 £442 - 1
North of England - 4 £442 - 1
South East +39 2 £300 -36.84% 1
London +33 2 £600 - 5
South West +24 1 £450 - 4

3GPP
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 7 (41.18%) OpenStack
Cloud Services
1 5 (29.41%) AWS
2 2 (11.76%) IaaS
2 2 (11.76%) OpenShift
2 2 (11.76%) PaaS
2 2 (11.76%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (52.94%) 4G
1 9 (52.94%) 5G
2 8 (47.06%) Radio Access Network
3 7 (41.18%) BGP
3 7 (41.18%) DNS
3 7 (41.18%) Firewall
4 6 (35.29%) Wireshark
5 5 (29.41%) DHCP
5 5 (29.41%) IPsec
5 5 (29.41%) MPLS
5 5 (29.41%) OSPF
5 5 (29.41%) VLAN
5 5 (29.41%) Wireless
6 4 (23.53%) LTE
7 2 (11.76%) Anycast
7 2 (11.76%) Ethernet VPN
7 2 (11.76%) Software-Defined Networking
7 2 (11.76%) VXLAN
General
1 6 (35.29%) Telecoms
2 1 (5.88%) Public Sector
2 1 (5.88%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 5 (29.41%) Designer
1 5 (29.41%) Network Designer
2 3 (17.65%) Embedded Engineer
2 3 (17.65%) Embedded Software Engineer
2 3 (17.65%) Radio Engineer
2 3 (17.65%) Software Engineer
3 2 (11.76%) Architect
3 2 (11.76%) Developer
3 2 (11.76%) FPGA Engineer
3 2 (11.76%) Network Architect
3 2 (11.76%) Network Design Architect
3 2 (11.76%) Senior
3 2 (11.76%) Senior Architect
3 2 (11.76%) Senior Network Architect
3 2 (11.76%) Software Developer
3 2 (11.76%) Telecoms Architect
4 1 (5.88%) DevOps Engineer
4 1 (5.88%) DSP Engineer
4 1 (5.88%) Network Design Specialist
4 1 (5.88%) Network Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (11.76%) eBPF
1 2 (11.76%) OpenAPI
1 2 (11.76%) REST
1 2 (11.76%) RESTful
1 2 (11.76%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 5 (29.41%) Operational Technology
2 2 (11.76%) Cloud Native
2 2 (11.76%) Data Centre
2 2 (11.76%) FPGA
2 2 (11.76%) IoT
2 2 (11.76%) NB-IoT
3 1 (5.88%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 4 (23.53%) Linux
2 1 (5.88%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (17.65%) Multithreading
1 3 (17.65%) Network Design
1 3 (17.65%) Software Architecture
2 2 (11.76%) API Development
2 2 (11.76%) Containerisation
2 2 (11.76%) Digital Signal Processing
2 2 (11.76%) Infrastructure as Code
2 2 (11.76%) Infrastructure Automation
2 2 (11.76%) Microservices
2 2 (11.76%) Network Virtualisation
2 2 (11.76%) Problem-Solving
2 2 (11.76%) SIEM
2 2 (11.76%) Signal Processing
2 2 (11.76%) Strategic Thinking
2 2 (11.76%) Validation
3 1 (5.88%) Defect Tracking
3 1 (5.88%) End-to-End Testing
3 1 (5.88%) Low Latency
3 1 (5.88%) Roadmaps
3 1 (5.88%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 6 (35.29%) C++
2 5 (29.41%) C
3 4 (23.53%) Python
4 2 (11.76%) Go
4 2 (11.76%) Java
5 1 (5.88%) C#
Qualifications
1 2 (11.76%) CCIE
1 2 (11.76%) Cisco Certification
1 2 (11.76%) CISSP
1 2 (11.76%) JNCIE
1 2 (11.76%) SC Cleared
1 2 (11.76%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (5.88%) QA
System Software
1 7 (41.18%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (23.53%) Kubernetes
2 2 (11.76%) Ansible
2 2 (11.76%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (29.41%) Dell
2 2 (11.76%) Arista
2 2 (11.76%) Cisco
2 2 (11.76%) Ericsson
2 2 (11.76%) Red Hat
2 2 (11.76%) Wind River
3 1 (5.88%) Actix
3 1 (5.88%) Nokia