Telecoms Contract Job Trends

Telecommunications
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Telecoms in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Telecoms over the 6 months leading up to 21 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 169 82 60
Rank change year-on-year -87 -22 +21
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 736 852 1,409
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.59% 2.89% 3.24%
As % of the General category 2.89% 4.58% 5.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 458 477 762
10th Percentile £189 £305 £200
25th Percentile £368 £389 £337
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -8.40%
75th Percentile £575 £605 £588
90th Percentile £675 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £498 £450
% change year-on-year -7.04% +10.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 34 74
10th Percentile £19.63 £14.00 £12.15
25th Percentile £20.50 £15.05 £12.40
Median hourly rate £23.83 £23.59 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -47.58% -14.29%
75th Percentile £41.25 £59.38 £68.44
90th Percentile £58.60 £63.53 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.66 £23.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +2.88% -8.00% -52.38%

All General Skills
UK

Telecoms falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring general skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 25,477 18,596 25,290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.15% 58.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,762 11,903 15,985
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £751
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,614 775 1,917
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £15.40
Median hourly rate £28.00 £28.60 £28.42
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% +0.63% -18.80%
75th Percentile £59.00 £56.00 £51.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.38 £26.50 £26.87
% change year-on-year -4.23% -1.36% -15.08%

Telecoms
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Telecoms job vacancy trend in the UK

Telecoms
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Telecoms
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Telecoms over the 6 months to 21 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Telecoms in the UK

Telecoms
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Telecoms
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Telecoms over the 6 months to 21 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Telecoms in the UK

Telecoms
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Telecoms within the UK over the 6 months to 21 April 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 -85 636 £475 -5.47% 551
UK excluding London -94 389 £463 -7.04% 439
London -27 271 £500 -5.66% 161
Work from Home -46 181 £475 -5.00% 146
South East -64 160 £463 -7.50% 124
North of England -72 62 £481 -5.64% 92
Midlands -45 59 £538 +4.62% 58
South West -59 46 £525 - 56
West Midlands -48 43 £550 +7.32% 35
East of England -30 31 £475 +15.15% 86
North West -65 30 £463 -11.69% 45
Scotland -6 16 £215 -33.85% 29
East Midlands -27 16 £500 -20.00% 23
Yorkshire -59 16 £481 -12.50% 39
North East -11 15 £500 +37.93% 12
Wales -2 10 £160 -56.16% 10
Northern Ireland +4 8 £150 -72.73% 3

Telecoms
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 11 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
2 10 (1.36%) OpenStack
3 9 (1.22%) Confluence
4 7 (0.95%) SharePoint
5 6 (0.82%) Appian
6 5 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.68%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.41%) ArcGIS
7 3 (0.41%) IIS
7 3 (0.41%) JBoss
7 3 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.41%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.27%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.27%) Apache
8 2 (0.27%) CMS
8 2 (0.27%) Oracle Spatial
9 1 (0.14%) Camunda
9 1 (0.14%) Headless CMS
9 1 (0.14%) Smallworld
Applications
1 32 (4.35%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (2.72%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (1.22%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.68%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.27%) MicroStation
6 2 (0.27%) Trello
7 1 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.14%) FrameMaker
7 1 (0.14%) MadCap Flare
7 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (1.77%) SAP PSCD
2 12 (1.63%) SAP BRIM
2 12 (1.63%) SAP Hybris
3 9 (1.22%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.54%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.41%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.27%) SAP CO
7 2 (0.27%) SAP FI/CO
7 2 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
8 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.14%) Primavera
8 1 (0.14%) Remedy AR System
8 1 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
8 1 (0.14%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.14%) SAP IBP
8 1 (0.14%) SAP SRM
8 1 (0.14%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 68 (9.24%) Azure
2 61 (8.29%) AWS
3 40 (5.43%) GCP
4 35 (4.76%) Microsoft 365
5 21 (2.85%) Power Platform
6 13 (1.77%) SaaS
6 13 (1.77%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 9 (1.22%) GitHub
8 8 (1.09%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (0.95%) dbt
9 7 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (0.68%) Datadog
10 5 (0.68%) Serverless
11 4 (0.54%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (0.54%) Dagster
11 4 (0.54%) Entra ID
11 4 (0.54%) Figma
11 4 (0.54%) IaaS
11 4 (0.54%) Slack
11 4 (0.54%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 41 (5.57%) 5G
1 41 (5.57%) Firewall
1 41 (5.57%) WAN
2 36 (4.89%) MPLS
3 28 (3.80%) LAN
4 27 (3.67%) Network Security
4 27 (3.67%) SD-WAN
5 24 (3.26%) 4G
6 22 (2.99%) DNS
7 21 (2.85%) BGP
7 21 (2.85%) Internet
8 20 (2.72%) VPN
9 19 (2.58%) Radio Access Network
10 18 (2.45%) 3GPP
11 17 (2.31%) LTE
12 16 (2.17%) Broadband
13 14 (1.90%) OSPF
13 14 (1.90%) VLAN
14 13 (1.77%) VoIP
15 12 (1.63%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (2.72%) Power BI
2 12 (1.63%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (1.63%) Looker
3 11 (1.49%) Tableau
4 9 (1.22%) BigQuery
5 8 (1.09%) Big Data
5 8 (1.09%) MySQL
6 7 (0.95%) Amazon Redshift
6 7 (0.95%) Relational Database
7 6 (0.82%) PostgreSQL
7 6 (0.82%) SQL Server
8 5 (0.68%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.41%) GIS
9 3 (0.41%) Metadata
9 3 (0.41%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.41%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (0.27%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.27%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 23 (3.13%) JIRA
2 8 (1.09%) Jenkins
3 7 (0.95%) GitLab
4 6 (0.82%) Git
5 4 (0.54%) JUnit
6 3 (0.41%) Storybook
7 2 (0.27%) Appium
7 2 (0.27%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.27%) JMeter
7 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.14%) Maven
8 1 (0.14%) Mockito
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 218 (29.62%) Social Skills
2 179 (24.32%) Finance
3 148 (20.11%) Public Sector
4 109 (14.81%) Marketing
5 98 (13.32%) Electronics
6 92 (12.50%) Manufacturing
7 90 (12.23%) Analytical Skills
8 37 (5.03%) Billing
9 20 (2.72%) Retail
10 19 (2.58%) Organisational Skills
11 18 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
11 18 (2.45%) Legal
12 14 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (1.09%) Military
13 8 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.95%) Banking
15 3 (0.41%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.41%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.41%) Publishing
16 2 (0.27%) Law
Job Titles
1 86 (11.68%) Architect
2 71 (9.65%) Analyst
3 53 (7.20%) Lead
4 49 (6.66%) Senior
5 41 (5.57%) Consultant
6 39 (5.30%) Project Manager
7 36 (4.89%) Business Analyst
8 33 (4.48%) Network Engineer
9 29 (3.94%) Solutions Architect
9 29 (3.94%) Telecoms Manager
10 26 (3.53%) Developer
11 21 (2.85%) Data Engineer
12 20 (2.72%) IT Support
13 19 (2.58%) Programme Manager
13 19 (2.58%) ServiceNow Architect
14 17 (2.31%) Designer
15 15 (2.04%) Desktop Support
15 15 (2.04%) IT Manager
16 14 (1.90%) Coordinator
16 14 (1.90%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.08%) REST
2 18 (2.45%) SOAP
3 12 (1.63%) Kafka
4 11 (1.49%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (1.09%) RESTful
6 7 (0.95%) .NET
6 7 (0.95%) Middleware
7 6 (0.82%) RabbitMQ
7 6 (0.82%) Spring
8 5 (0.68%) OpenAPI
8 5 (0.68%) React
8 5 (0.68%) Spring Boot
8 5 (0.68%) Swagger
9 4 (0.54%) HTML
9 4 (0.54%) XML
10 3 (0.41%) 802.1X
10 3 (0.41%) CSS
10 3 (0.41%) JSON
10 3 (0.41%) RFC 2544
10 3 (0.41%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 30 (4.08%) Data Centre
2 29 (3.94%) Data Protection Act
3 28 (3.80%) Onboarding
4 26 (3.53%) Driving Licence
5 25 (3.40%) Product Ownership
6 22 (2.99%) Cloud Native
7 16 (2.17%) CMDB
8 13 (1.77%) Mobile App
8 13 (1.77%) Virtual Team
9 12 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
9 12 (1.63%) NHS
10 10 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
10 10 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
11 9 (1.22%) IoT
11 9 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
12 8 (1.09%) TM Forum
13 7 (0.95%) Web Conferencing
14 6 (0.82%) Algorithms
14 6 (0.82%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 40 (5.43%) Windows
2 23 (3.13%) Windows 10
3 21 (2.85%) Linux
4 17 (2.31%) Android
5 11 (1.49%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.95%) Unix
7 5 (0.68%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.68%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.41%) Debian
9 3 (0.41%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.41%) VMS
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (15.90%) Stakeholder Management
2 112 (15.22%) Business Intelligence
3 103 (13.99%) Agile
4 96 (13.04%) Programme Management
5 91 (12.36%) Digital Marketing
5 91 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
6 80 (10.87%) Migration
7 79 (10.73%) Continuous Improvement
8 70 (9.51%) ITIL
9 61 (8.29%) Project Management
10 60 (8.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 52 (7.07%) Decision-Making
12 49 (6.66%) Customer Service
12 49 (6.66%) Logistics
12 49 (6.66%) Workflow
13 46 (6.25%) Analytics
13 46 (6.25%) Roadmaps
14 45 (6.11%) CI/CD
14 45 (6.11%) Project Delivery
15 41 (5.57%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 53 (7.20%) Python
2 40 (5.43%) SQL
3 22 (2.99%) JavaScript
4 19 (2.58%) Java
5 11 (1.49%) Bash
6 8 (1.09%) PowerShell
7 7 (0.95%) C++
7 7 (0.95%) TypeScript
8 6 (0.82%) C#
8 6 (0.82%) Go
8 6 (0.82%) R
9 3 (0.41%) C
9 3 (0.41%) LookML
9 3 (0.41%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.27%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.27%) DataWeave
10 2 (0.27%) PHP
10 2 (0.27%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.14%) Cypher
11 1 (0.14%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 154 (20.92%) Security Cleared
2 125 (16.98%) SC Cleared
3 67 (9.10%) Degree
4 26 (3.53%) DV Cleared
5 20 (2.72%) PMP
6 17 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
7 16 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
9 13 (1.77%) PMI Certification
10 12 (1.63%) CCNP
11 11 (1.49%) ITIL Certification
12 10 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (1.09%) A+ Certification
13 8 (1.09%) Azure Certification
13 8 (1.09%) Network+ Certification
14 7 (0.95%) ACCA
14 7 (0.95%) AWS Certification
14 7 (0.95%) CCIE
14 7 (0.95%) CIMA
15 6 (0.82%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.08%) SLA
2 21 (2.85%) GDPR
2 21 (2.85%) PMO
3 20 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 19 (2.58%) QA
5 13 (1.77%) Data Quality
6 11 (1.49%) NCSC
7 9 (1.22%) GRC
7 9 (1.22%) NIST
8 7 (0.95%) RMADS
9 5 (0.68%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.41%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.14%) HIPAA
12 1 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.14%) IFRS
12 1 (0.14%) NEBOSH
12 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
12 1 (0.14%) SOC 1
12 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 23 (3.13%) Active Directory
2 14 (1.90%) Docker
3 9 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.41%) Hyper-V
4 3 (0.41%) QEMU
4 3 (0.41%) vSphere
5 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
5 1 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 37 (5.03%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.04%) Ansible
3 14 (1.90%) Grafana
4 11 (1.49%) Prometheus
4 11 (1.49%) Terraform
5 6 (0.82%) SCCM
6 4 (0.54%) Argo
6 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.41%) Cisco Prime
7 3 (0.41%) Iperf
7 3 (0.41%) Podman
7 3 (0.41%) vRealize
8 2 (0.27%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.27%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.27%) Kibana
8 2 (0.27%) Nmap
9 1 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.14%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
9 1 (0.14%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 111 (15.08%) SAP
2 89 (12.09%) Microsoft
3 78 (10.60%) Cisco
4 55 (7.47%) ServiceNow
5 35 (4.76%) Nokia
6 22 (2.99%) Salesforce
7 20 (2.72%) Ericsson
7 20 (2.72%) Fortinet
8 19 (2.58%) Juniper
8 19 (2.58%) Oracle
9 18 (2.45%) BT
10 15 (2.04%) Google
11 14 (1.90%) Huawei
12 13 (1.77%) CheckPoint
13 12 (1.63%) F5
13 12 (1.63%) VMware
14 11 (1.49%) Meraki
14 11 (1.49%) Remedy
15 10 (1.36%) Palo Alto
16 7 (0.95%) MuleSoft