DSL Contracts

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring DSL skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited DSL over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 512 585 689
Rank change year-on-year +73 +104 +122
Contract jobs citing DSL 7 15 24
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.024% 0.034% 0.040%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.19% 0.27% 0.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 3 9 21
10th Percentile £456 £425 -
25th Percentile £458 £500 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £582 £575
Median % change year-on-year -18.38% +1.22% -1.71%
75th Percentile £488 - £680
90th Percentile - £582 £846
UK excluding London median daily rate - £582 £659
% change year-on-year - -11.67% +246.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 2
10th Percentile - £19.65 £19.93
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.38 £22.06
Median hourly rate £19.00 £24.50 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -22.45% -6.67% +19.32%
75th Percentile £19.50 £46.13 £30.56
90th Percentile - £58.95 £32.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £24.50 £26.25
% change year-on-year -22.45% -6.67% +19.32%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

DSL 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 3,739 5,643 7,361
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.79% 12.94% 12.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,297 3,382 4,789
10th Percentile £213 £205 £235
25th Percentile £363 £350 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £495 £519
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -4.53% +3.70%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.63% - +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 423 478
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.57 £9.80
25th Percentile £17.30 £17.35 £10.63
Median hourly rate £32.50 £38.50 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.58% +102.63% -31.84%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.59 £45.88 £18.50
% change year-on-year -46.41% +148.00% -13.95%

DSL
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for DSL in the UK

DSL
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for DSL in the UK

DSL
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for DSL in the UK

DSL
Top 7 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DSL within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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 +56 7 £475 -18.38% 13
London +39 5 £475 +90.00% 3
Work from Home +44 2 £475 -18.38% 6
UK excluding London +43 2 - - 12
South East +38 1 - - 5
Midlands - 1 - - 3
West Midlands - 1 - - 3

DSL
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 1 (14.29%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 2 (28.57%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 3 (42.86%) GCP
2 2 (28.57%) BigCommerce
2 2 (28.57%) Cloud Run
2 2 (28.57%) Datadog
2 2 (28.57%) GitHub
2 2 (28.57%) GitHub Actions
2 2 (28.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
3 1 (14.29%) AWS
3 1 (14.29%) Azure
3 1 (14.29%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 4 (57.14%) PPP
1 4 (57.14%) TCP/IP
1 4 (57.14%) VoIP
2 3 (42.86%) 802.11
2 3 (42.86%) Broadband
2 3 (42.86%) DHCP
2 3 (42.86%) DOCSIS
2 3 (42.86%) GPON
2 3 (42.86%) IPv4
2 3 (42.86%) IPv6
2 3 (42.86%) Wi-Fi
3 2 (28.57%) DNS
3 2 (28.57%) Network Security
4 1 (14.29%) ADSL
4 1 (14.29%) Ethernet
4 1 (14.29%) Internet
4 1 (14.29%) LAN
4 1 (14.29%) RIP
4 1 (14.29%) VPN
4 1 (14.29%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (14.29%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 2 (28.57%) CircleCI
1 2 (28.57%) Jenkins
1 2 (28.57%) JMeter
1 2 (28.57%) Terragrunt
2 1 (14.29%) Gerrit
2 1 (14.29%) Git
2 1 (14.29%) JIRA
General
1 2 (28.57%) Retail
2 1 (14.29%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 2 (28.57%) Architect
1 2 (28.57%) GCP Architect
1 2 (28.57%) Infrastructure Architect
2 1 (14.29%) Consultant
2 1 (14.29%) Elasticsearch Consultant
2 1 (14.29%) Elasticsearch Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) Integration Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) Network Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) Security Consultant
2 1 (14.29%) Security Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) Security Specialist
2 1 (14.29%) SIEM Consultant
2 1 (14.29%) SIEM Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) SIEM Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (42.86%) 802.1X
1 3 (42.86%) Yocto
2 2 (28.57%) Elastic Stack
2 2 (28.57%) GraphQL
2 2 (28.57%) VML
3 1 (14.29%) POSIX
Miscellaneous
1 3 (42.86%) Algorithms
1 3 (42.86%) Digital TV
1 3 (42.86%) STB
2 2 (28.57%) Cloud Native
2 2 (28.57%) IoT
3 1 (14.29%) Embedded Systems
3 1 (14.29%) YARA
Operating Systems
1 3 (42.86%) Embedded Linux
1 3 (42.86%) Linux
2 2 (28.57%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (42.86%) CI/CD
2 2 (28.57%) B2B
2 2 (28.57%) Configuration Management
2 2 (28.57%) Containerisation
2 2 (28.57%) Cost Optimisation
2 2 (28.57%) Cost Reduction
2 2 (28.57%) Customer Acquisition
2 2 (28.57%) DevOps
2 2 (28.57%) Infrastructure as Code
2 2 (28.57%) Observability
2 2 (28.57%) Performance Testing
2 2 (28.57%) Site Reliability Engineering
2 2 (28.57%) Test Automation
3 1 (14.29%) Change Management
3 1 (14.29%) Communications Security
3 1 (14.29%) Migration
3 1 (14.29%) Process Management
3 1 (14.29%) Release Management
3 1 (14.29%) Service Delivery
3 1 (14.29%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 3 (42.86%) C
2 2 (28.57%) Python
3 1 (14.29%) Bash
3 1 (14.29%) C++
3 1 (14.29%) Go
3 1 (14.29%) Java
3 1 (14.29%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1 (14.29%) BC Cleared
1 1 (14.29%) BPSS Clearance
1 1 (14.29%) CCDP
1 1 (14.29%) CCIP
1 1 (14.29%) CCNA
1 1 (14.29%) CCNP
1 1 (14.29%) Cisco Certification
1 1 (14.29%) SC Cleared
1 1 (14.29%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (57.14%) QA
Systems Management
1 3 (42.86%) Ansible
1 3 (42.86%) Terraform
2 2 (28.57%) Kubernetes
2 2 (28.57%) Progress Chef
2 2 (28.57%) Puppet
2 2 (28.57%) Salt
3 1 (14.29%) Kibana
3 1 (14.29%) logstash
3 1 (14.29%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2 (28.57%) Adobe
1 2 (28.57%) New Relic
1 2 (28.57%) Salesforce
1 2 (28.57%) SAP
1 2 (28.57%) Sitecore
1 2 (28.57%) Splunk
2 1 (14.29%) ADVA
2 1 (14.29%) Alcatel-Lucent
2 1 (14.29%) Cisco
2 1 (14.29%) IBM
2 1 (14.29%) Juniper
2 1 (14.29%) Microsoft