SMS Contract Job Trends

Short Message Service (SMS)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SMS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 607 527 567
Rank change year-on-year -80 +40 +96
Contract jobs citing SMS 36 12 23
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.070% 0.038% 0.053%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.73% 0.31% 0.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 26 4 16
10th Percentile £204 £304 £344
25th Percentile £278 £366 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £435 £400 £488
Median % change year-on-year +8.75% -17.95% -11.36%
75th Percentile £584 £419 £616
90th Percentile £675 £453 £669
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £438 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% -12.50% +25.00%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,914 3,841 5,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.54% 12.28% 12.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,989 2,342 3,208
10th Percentile £240 £230 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.19%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +2.77% -4.08% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 305 182 428
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.86
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.50 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.44 £44.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.58% -1.11% +114.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £79.50 £73.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £35.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -25.09% -26.32% +115.91%

SMS
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SMS relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

SMS job vacancy trend in the UK

SMS
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SMS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SMS

SMS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SMS over the 6 months to 3 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SMS in the UK

SMS
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SMS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SMS

SMS
Top 11 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SMS within the UK over the 6 months to 3 July 2026. 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 -99 32 £435 +8.75% 46
London -56 19 £331 -1.85% 24
UK excluding London -95 13 £455 +4.00% 28
Work from Home -42 9 £388 -3.13% 16
North of England -66 6 £525 +10.53% 14
Yorkshire - 4 - -
South East -60 3 £475 +18.75% 10
East Midlands - 3 £435 - 2
Midlands - 3 £435 - 3
North West -41 2 £525 +10.53% 14
Scotland -7 1 - -

SMS
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 3 (8.33%) CMS
2 2 (5.56%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (2.78%) Jupyter
Business Applications
1 4 (11.11%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 8 (22.22%) Azure
1 8 (22.22%) Dynamics 365
2 3 (8.33%) Azure Service Bus
2 3 (8.33%) Copilot Studio
2 3 (8.33%) Microsoft Copilot
2 3 (8.33%) Power Automate
2 3 (8.33%) Power Platform
2 3 (8.33%) Salesforce Einstein
2 3 (8.33%) Serverless
3 2 (5.56%) Azure Functions
3 2 (5.56%) WhatsApp
4 1 (2.78%) Amazon EMR
4 1 (2.78%) Amazon S3
4 1 (2.78%) Amazon SQS
4 1 (2.78%) AWS
4 1 (2.78%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (2.78%) Azure Logic Apps
4 1 (2.78%) Bloomreach
4 1 (2.78%) Boomi
4 1 (2.78%) Twilio
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.78%) 3GPP
1 1 (2.78%) 4G
1 1 (2.78%) 5G
1 1 (2.78%) Broadband
1 1 (2.78%) DKIM
1 1 (2.78%) DMARC
1 1 (2.78%) MVNO
1 1 (2.78%) Network Security
1 1 (2.78%) Radio Access Network
1 1 (2.78%) SD-WAN
1 1 (2.78%) SMPP
1 1 (2.78%) VoLTE
1 1 (2.78%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.78%) Data Lake
1 1 (2.78%) Metadata
1 1 (2.78%) Metadata Repository
Development Applications
1 1 (2.78%) GitLab
General
1 16 (44.44%) Marketing
2 8 (22.22%) Social Skills
3 4 (11.11%) Documentation Skills
3 4 (11.11%) Organisational Skills
3 4 (11.11%) Telecoms
4 3 (8.33%) Finance
4 3 (8.33%) Retail
5 2 (5.56%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (5.56%) Billing
5 2 (5.56%) Financial Institution
6 1 (2.78%) Legal
6 1 (2.78%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 10 (27.78%) Architect
2 8 (22.22%) Consultant
3 7 (19.44%) Developer
4 5 (13.89%) Lead
5 4 (11.11%) Cloud Developer
5 4 (11.11%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
5 4 (11.11%) Lead Architect
5 4 (11.11%) Salesforce Developer
5 4 (11.11%) Solutions Architect
6 3 (8.33%) CRM Specialist
6 3 (8.33%) Telephony Consultant
7 2 (5.56%) Email Developer
7 2 (5.56%) Functional Consultant
7 2 (5.56%) Marketing Specialist
7 2 (5.56%) Technical Consultant
8 1 (2.78%) Data Architect
8 1 (2.78%) Network Designer
8 1 (2.78%) Release Manager
8 1 (2.78%) Senior Consultant
8 1 (2.78%) Solutions Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (8.33%) CSS
1 3 (8.33%) HTML
1 3 (8.33%) REST
2 2 (5.56%) Django
2 2 (5.56%) JSON
2 2 (5.56%) Kafka
3 1 (2.78%) EDI
3 1 (2.78%) HTML5 Canvas
3 1 (2.78%) iOS SDK
3 1 (2.78%) Middleware
3 1 (2.78%) Playwright
3 1 (2.78%) PySpark
3 1 (2.78%) Spring
3 1 (2.78%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 4 (11.11%) IVR
1 4 (11.11%) Management Information System
2 2 (5.56%) Data Protection Act
2 2 (5.56%) IoT
2 2 (5.56%) Onboarding
3 1 (2.78%) Cloud Native
3 1 (2.78%) Data Centre
3 1 (2.78%) Data Structures
3 1 (2.78%) Hedge funds
3 1 (2.78%) Java Card
3 1 (2.78%) Life Science
3 1 (2.78%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.78%) Android
1 1 (2.78%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (38.89%) Personalization
2 12 (33.33%) CRM
3 11 (30.56%) Analytics
3 11 (30.56%) Event-Driven
4 7 (19.44%) Agile
4 7 (19.44%) Continuous Improvement
5 6 (16.67%) AI
6 5 (13.89%) A/B Testing
6 5 (13.89%) Customer Engagement
6 5 (13.89%) Data Protection
6 5 (13.89%) Generative AI
6 5 (13.89%) Roadmaps
6 5 (13.89%) User Experience
6 5 (13.89%) Workshop Facilitation
7 4 (11.11%) Campaign Analytics
7 4 (11.11%) Collaborative Working
7 4 (11.11%) Customer Experience
7 4 (11.11%) Data Integration
7 4 (11.11%) Data Privacy
7 4 (11.11%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 4 (11.11%) Python
2 3 (8.33%) Java
3 2 (5.56%) C#
3 2 (5.56%) SQL
4 1 (2.78%) C
4 1 (2.78%) C++
4 1 (2.78%) JavaScript
4 1 (2.78%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 7 (19.44%) Security Cleared
2 4 (11.11%) DV Cleared
2 4 (11.11%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (27.78%) GDPR
2 7 (19.44%) QA
3 1 (2.78%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (2.78%) NIST
3 1 (2.78%) SOC 2
Systems Management
1 1 (2.78%) Single Sign-On
1 1 (2.78%) Terraform
Vendors
1 6 (16.67%) Salesforce
1 6 (16.67%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
2 3 (8.33%) Braze
2 3 (8.33%) Pardot
3 2 (5.56%) Adobe
4 1 (2.78%) Databricks
4 1 (2.78%) MuleSoft
4 1 (2.78%) Thales