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 28 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 168 89 62
Rank change year-on-year -79 -27 +20
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 744 830 1,382
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.58% 2.83% 3.19%
As % of the General category 2.90% 4.48% 5.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 458 457 728
10th Percentile £196 £306 £200
25th Percentile £372 £381 £332
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -9.55%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £588
90th Percentile £675 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £488 £450
% change year-on-year -5.13% +8.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 36 87
10th Percentile £19.18 - £12.15
25th Percentile £20.50 £14.00 £12.75
Median hourly rate £23.79 £23.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.42% -48.89% -14.29%
75th Percentile £42.38 £58.13 £72.50
90th Percentile £69.78 £63.38 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.54 £23.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +2.34% -48.89% -14.29%

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 25,635 18,544 25,217
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.57% 63.17% 58.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,828 11,863 15,921
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £496
% change year-on-year - -4.23% -0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,648 796 1,927
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.67 £18.13 £15.48
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.17 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.96% -2.88% -17.14%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.75
90th Percentile £79.30 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.64 £25.43 £27.51
% change year-on-year +0.81% -7.55% -9.93%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -82 649 £475 -5.00% 522
UK excluding London -90 393 £463 -5.13% 437
London -13 276 £500 -5.66% 159
Work from Home -39 186 £475 -3.80% 189
South East -65 160 £465 -5.87% 135
North of England -81 65 £481 -5.64% 89
Midlands -46 58 £550 +7.32% 57
South West -52 51 £511 -2.67% 53
West Midlands -46 43 £550 +7.32% 37
North West -47 34 £463 -11.69% 45
East of England -26 33 £200 -51.52% 70
Yorkshire -57 16 £481 -12.50% 31
East Midlands -30 15 £500 -20.00% 19
North East -17 14 £500 +37.93% 17
Scotland -12 13 £233 -28.46% 31
Wales -5 10 £160 -56.16% 19
Northern Ireland +6 7 £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 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
1 11 (1.48%) OpenStack
2 9 (1.21%) Confluence
3 6 (0.81%) Appian
4 5 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (0.67%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.67%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.54%) Anypoint
6 3 (0.40%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.40%) IIS
6 3 (0.40%) JBoss
6 3 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.40%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.27%) Apache
7 2 (0.27%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.13%) Camunda
8 1 (0.13%) CMS
8 1 (0.13%) Smallworld
Applications
1 31 (4.17%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.40%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.27%) MicroStation
6 2 (0.27%) Trello
7 1 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.13%) FrameMaker
7 1 (0.13%) MadCap Flare
7 1 (0.13%) Revit
7 1 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (1.75%) SAP BRIM
1 13 (1.75%) SAP PSCD
2 12 (1.61%) SAP Hybris
3 9 (1.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.81%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.54%) BambooHR
5 4 (0.54%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.40%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.40%) SAP FI/CO
7 2 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
8 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.13%) Primavera
8 1 (0.13%) Remedy AR System
8 1 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
8 1 (0.13%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.13%) SAP IBP
8 1 (0.13%) SAP SD
8 1 (0.13%) SAP SRM
8 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 66 (8.87%) Azure
2 60 (8.06%) AWS
3 37 (4.97%) GCP
4 34 (4.57%) Microsoft 365
5 20 (2.69%) Power Platform
6 15 (2.02%) SaaS
7 13 (1.75%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 8 (1.08%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (1.08%) dbt
8 8 (1.08%) GitHub
9 6 (0.81%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (0.67%) Datadog
10 5 (0.67%) 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 42 (5.65%) 5G
1 42 (5.65%) Firewall
2 38 (5.11%) WAN
3 36 (4.84%) MPLS
4 27 (3.63%) Network Security
5 26 (3.49%) SD-WAN
6 25 (3.36%) 4G
6 25 (3.36%) LAN
7 23 (3.09%) DNS
8 22 (2.96%) BGP
8 22 (2.96%) Internet
9 20 (2.69%) VPN
10 18 (2.42%) 3GPP
10 18 (2.42%) LTE
10 18 (2.42%) Radio Access Network
11 17 (2.28%) Broadband
12 14 (1.88%) OSPF
12 14 (1.88%) VLAN
13 13 (1.75%) HTTP
14 12 (1.61%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (2.55%) Power BI
2 12 (1.61%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (1.61%) Looker
2 12 (1.61%) Tableau
3 9 (1.21%) BigQuery
4 8 (1.08%) Big Data
5 7 (0.94%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (0.94%) MySQL
5 7 (0.94%) Relational Database
6 6 (0.81%) SQL Server
7 5 (0.67%) Oracle Database
7 5 (0.67%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.40%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.40%) GIS
8 3 (0.40%) Semantic Layer
8 3 (0.40%) Star Schema
9 2 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.27%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.27%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.27%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 23 (3.09%) JIRA
2 8 (1.08%) Git
3 7 (0.94%) GitLab
3 7 (0.94%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.40%) JUnit
5 2 (0.27%) Appium
5 2 (0.27%) CircleCI
5 2 (0.27%) JMeter
5 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
5 2 (0.27%) Storybook
6 1 (0.13%) Maven
6 1 (0.13%) Mockito
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 225 (30.24%) Social Skills
2 174 (23.39%) Finance
3 143 (19.22%) Public Sector
4 100 (13.44%) Marketing
5 94 (12.63%) Analytical Skills
6 89 (11.96%) Electronics
7 84 (11.29%) Manufacturing
8 40 (5.38%) Billing
9 22 (2.96%) Retail
10 19 (2.55%) Legal
11 18 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
11 18 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
12 14 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.94%) Banking
14 7 (0.94%) Military
15 5 (0.67%) Publishing
16 3 (0.40%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.40%) Police
17 2 (0.27%) Brand Awareness
Job Titles
1 86 (11.56%) Architect
2 71 (9.54%) Analyst
3 53 (7.12%) Lead
3 53 (7.12%) Senior
4 43 (5.78%) Project Manager
5 40 (5.38%) Consultant
6 35 (4.70%) Business Analyst
7 34 (4.57%) Network Engineer
8 31 (4.17%) Telecoms Manager
9 29 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
10 25 (3.36%) Developer
11 21 (2.82%) Data Engineer
11 21 (2.82%) Designer
12 19 (2.55%) Programme Manager
12 19 (2.55%) ServiceNow Architect
13 18 (2.42%) IT Support
14 15 (2.02%) IT Analyst
14 15 (2.02%) IT Manager
15 14 (1.88%) SAP Consultant
16 13 (1.75%) Design Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.17%) REST
2 17 (2.28%) SOAP
3 12 (1.61%) Kafka
4 11 (1.48%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (1.08%) Middleware
6 7 (0.94%) .NET
6 7 (0.94%) OpenAPI
6 7 (0.94%) Swagger
7 6 (0.81%) RabbitMQ
7 6 (0.81%) RESTful
7 6 (0.81%) XML
8 5 (0.67%) JSON
8 5 (0.67%) Spring
9 4 (0.54%) RAML
9 4 (0.54%) Spring Boot
10 3 (0.40%) 802.1X
10 3 (0.40%) GraphQL
10 3 (0.40%) ONVIF
10 3 (0.40%) React
10 3 (0.40%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 30 (4.03%) Data Protection Act
1 30 (4.03%) Onboarding
2 28 (3.76%) Data Centre
3 26 (3.49%) Product Ownership
4 24 (3.23%) Driving Licence
5 21 (2.82%) Cloud Native
6 16 (2.15%) CMDB
7 14 (1.88%) Virtual Team
8 13 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
8 13 (1.75%) Mobile App
9 11 (1.48%) NHS
10 10 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
10 10 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
10 10 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
11 9 (1.21%) IoT
12 8 (1.08%) EPoS
12 8 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
12 8 (1.08%) Management Information System
12 8 (1.08%) TM Forum
12 8 (1.08%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 41 (5.51%) Windows
2 24 (3.23%) Windows 10
3 21 (2.82%) Linux
4 14 (1.88%) Android
5 8 (1.08%) Mac OS
6 7 (0.94%) Unix
7 5 (0.67%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.67%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.40%) Debian
9 3 (0.40%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.40%) VMS
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.13%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (15.86%) Stakeholder Management
2 106 (14.25%) Agile
3 102 (13.71%) Business Intelligence
4 96 (12.90%) Problem-Solving
5 89 (11.96%) Programme Management
6 83 (11.16%) Continuous Improvement
7 82 (11.02%) Digital Marketing
8 77 (10.35%) Migration
9 71 (9.54%) ITIL
10 63 (8.47%) Project Management
11 59 (7.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 53 (7.12%) Decision-Making
13 52 (6.99%) Customer Service
14 48 (6.45%) Workflow
15 47 (6.32%) Analytics
15 47 (6.32%) Logistics
15 47 (6.32%) Project Delivery
16 46 (6.18%) CI/CD
16 46 (6.18%) Roadmaps
17 43 (5.78%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 54 (7.26%) Python
2 39 (5.24%) SQL
3 21 (2.82%) JavaScript
4 19 (2.55%) Java
5 11 (1.48%) Bash
6 8 (1.08%) PowerShell
7 7 (0.94%) C#
7 7 (0.94%) C++
8 6 (0.81%) Go
8 6 (0.81%) R
9 5 (0.67%) TypeScript
10 4 (0.54%) DataWeave
11 3 (0.40%) C
11 3 (0.40%) LookML
11 3 (0.40%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.27%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.27%) PHP
12 2 (0.27%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.13%) Cypher
13 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 149 (20.03%) Security Cleared
2 119 (15.99%) SC Cleared
3 70 (9.41%) Degree
4 25 (3.36%) DV Cleared
5 22 (2.96%) Cisco Certification
6 20 (2.69%) PMP
7 18 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
9 15 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
10 13 (1.75%) A+ Certification
10 13 (1.75%) CCNP
11 12 (1.61%) PMI Certification
12 11 (1.48%) ITIL Certification
13 10 (1.34%) Network+ Certification
14 9 (1.21%) CCNA
15 8 (1.08%) Azure Certification
15 8 (1.08%) CCIE
16 7 (0.94%) ACCA
16 7 (0.94%) AWS Certification
16 7 (0.94%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.49%) SLA
2 21 (2.82%) GDPR
2 21 (2.82%) QA
3 20 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 19 (2.55%) PMO
5 13 (1.75%) Data Quality
6 11 (1.48%) NCSC
7 9 (1.21%) GRC
7 9 (1.21%) NIST
8 7 (0.94%) RMADS
9 5 (0.67%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.13%) EU AI Act
11 1 (0.13%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.13%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.13%) SOC 1
11 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 25 (3.36%) Active Directory
2 14 (1.88%) Docker
3 10 (1.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.54%) vSphere
5 3 (0.40%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.40%) QEMU
6 2 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.27%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 37 (4.97%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.02%) Ansible
3 14 (1.88%) Grafana
4 11 (1.48%) Prometheus
4 11 (1.48%) Terraform
5 6 (0.81%) SCCM
6 4 (0.54%) Argo
6 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.54%) vRealize
7 3 (0.40%) Cisco Prime
7 3 (0.40%) Iperf
7 3 (0.40%) Podman
8 2 (0.27%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.27%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.27%) Kibana
8 2 (0.27%) Nmap
8 2 (0.27%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.13%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.13%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 103 (13.84%) SAP
2 88 (11.83%) Microsoft
3 72 (9.68%) Cisco
4 55 (7.39%) ServiceNow
5 34 (4.57%) Nokia
6 25 (3.36%) Salesforce
7 21 (2.82%) Fortinet
8 20 (2.69%) Ericsson
8 20 (2.69%) Juniper
9 19 (2.55%) BT
9 19 (2.55%) Oracle
10 15 (2.02%) Google
11 14 (1.88%) CheckPoint
12 13 (1.75%) F5
12 13 (1.75%) Huawei
12 13 (1.75%) VMware
13 11 (1.48%) Meraki
13 11 (1.48%) Palo Alto
13 11 (1.48%) Remedy
14 9 (1.21%) MuleSoft