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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 167 88 61
Rank change year-on-year -79 -27 +22
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 746 830 1,400
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.60% 2.81% 3.21%
As % of the General category 2.92% 4.45% 5.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 460 457 749
10th Percentile £196 £306 £200
25th Percentile £369 £381 £333
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -8.16%
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 66 35 80
10th Percentile £19.01 - £12.15
25th Percentile £20.50 £14.00 £12.75
Median hourly rate £23.83 £23.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% -48.89% -14.29%
75th Percentile £42.38 £58.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £76.63 £63.45 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.66 £23.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +2.88% -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 25,523 18,645 25,420
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.74% 63.17% 58.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,795 11,922 16,091
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £405 £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 £758
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,617 795 1,928
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.13 £15.40
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.00 £28.42
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% -1.48% -18.80%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.50
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.50 £25.15 £27.00
% change year-on-year +1.39% -6.85% -13.66%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -82 650 £475 -5.00% 461
UK excluding London -88 392 £463 -5.13% 404
London -15 278 £500 -5.66% 110
Work from Home -35 186 £475 -3.80% 165
South East -65 161 £466 -5.67% 116
North of England -76 64 £481 -5.64% 86
Midlands -36 58 £550 +7.32% 57
South West -59 50 £511 -2.67% 56
West Midlands -42 43 £550 +7.32% 36
East of England -34 33 £200 -51.52% 71
North West -54 33 £463 -11.69% 40
Yorkshire -55 16 £481 -12.50% 35
East Midlands -27 15 £500 -20.00% 20
North East -16 14 £500 +37.93% 15
Scotland -3 13 £233 -28.46% 29
Wales -2 10 £160 -56.16% 7
Northern Ireland +4 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 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
1 11 (1.47%) OpenStack
2 9 (1.21%) Confluence
3 6 (0.80%) 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 (4.16%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.40%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.27%) MicroStation
7 2 (0.27%) Trello
8 1 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
8 1 (0.13%) FrameMaker
8 1 (0.13%) MadCap Flare
8 1 (0.13%) Revit
8 1 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
8 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (1.74%) SAP BRIM
1 13 (1.74%) SAP PSCD
2 12 (1.61%) SAP Hybris
3 9 (1.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.80%) 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 67 (8.98%) Azure
2 61 (8.18%) AWS
3 38 (5.09%) GCP
4 34 (4.56%) Microsoft 365
5 20 (2.68%) Power Platform
6 15 (2.01%) SaaS
7 13 (1.74%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 9 (1.21%) GitHub
9 8 (1.07%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (1.07%) dbt
10 7 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (0.67%) Datadog
11 5 (0.67%) Serverless
12 4 (0.54%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (0.54%) Dagster
12 4 (0.54%) Entra ID
12 4 (0.54%) IaaS
12 4 (0.54%) Prefect
12 4 (0.54%) Slack
12 4 (0.54%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 42 (5.63%) 5G
1 42 (5.63%) Firewall
2 38 (5.09%) WAN
3 36 (4.83%) MPLS
4 27 (3.62%) Network Security
4 27 (3.62%) SD-WAN
5 25 (3.35%) 4G
5 25 (3.35%) LAN
6 23 (3.08%) DNS
7 22 (2.95%) BGP
7 22 (2.95%) Internet
8 20 (2.68%) VPN
9 18 (2.41%) 3GPP
9 18 (2.41%) Radio Access Network
10 17 (2.28%) Broadband
10 17 (2.28%) LTE
11 14 (1.88%) OSPF
11 14 (1.88%) VLAN
12 13 (1.74%) HTTP
13 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 (1.07%) Big Data
4 8 (1.07%) MySQL
5 7 (0.94%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (0.94%) Relational Database
6 6 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (0.80%) SQL Server
7 5 (0.67%) Oracle Database
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 24 (3.22%) JIRA
2 8 (1.07%) Git
2 8 (1.07%) Jenkins
3 7 (0.94%) GitLab
4 4 (0.54%) JUnit
5 3 (0.40%) Storybook
6 2 (0.27%) Appium
6 2 (0.27%) CircleCI
6 2 (0.27%) JMeter
6 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.13%) Maven
7 1 (0.13%) Mockito
7 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 227 (30.43%) Social Skills
2 176 (23.59%) Finance
3 145 (19.44%) Public Sector
4 102 (13.67%) Marketing
5 93 (12.47%) Analytical Skills
6 91 (12.20%) Electronics
7 86 (11.53%) Manufacturing
8 40 (5.36%) Billing
9 20 (2.68%) Retail
10 19 (2.55%) Legal
11 18 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
11 18 (2.41%) Organisational Skills
12 14 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (1.07%) 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 (11.53%) Architect
2 72 (9.65%) Analyst
3 53 (7.10%) Lead
4 52 (6.97%) Senior
5 44 (5.90%) Project Manager
6 40 (5.36%) Consultant
7 36 (4.83%) Business Analyst
8 34 (4.56%) Network Engineer
9 31 (4.16%) Telecoms Manager
10 29 (3.89%) Solutions Architect
11 26 (3.49%) Developer
12 21 (2.82%) Data Engineer
12 21 (2.82%) Designer
13 19 (2.55%) Programme Manager
13 19 (2.55%) ServiceNow Architect
14 18 (2.41%) IT Support
15 15 (2.01%) IT Analyst
15 15 (2.01%) IT Manager
16 14 (1.88%) SAP Consultant
17 13 (1.74%) Design Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.16%) REST
2 17 (2.28%) SOAP
3 12 (1.61%) Kafka
4 11 (1.47%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (1.07%) Middleware
6 7 (0.94%) .NET
6 7 (0.94%) OpenAPI
6 7 (0.94%) RESTful
6 7 (0.94%) Swagger
7 6 (0.80%) RabbitMQ
7 6 (0.80%) Spring
7 6 (0.80%) XML
8 5 (0.67%) JSON
8 5 (0.67%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.54%) HTML
9 4 (0.54%) RAML
9 4 (0.54%) React
10 3 (0.40%) GraphQL
10 3 (0.40%) RFC 2544
10 3 (0.40%) Vitest
Miscellaneous
1 30 (4.02%) Data Protection Act
1 30 (4.02%) Onboarding
2 28 (3.75%) Data Centre
3 26 (3.49%) Product Ownership
4 24 (3.22%) Driving Licence
5 21 (2.82%) Cloud Native
6 16 (2.14%) CMDB
7 14 (1.88%) Virtual Team
8 13 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
8 13 (1.74%) Mobile App
9 11 (1.47%) 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 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
12 8 (1.07%) Management Information System
12 8 (1.07%) TM Forum
12 8 (1.07%) Web Conferencing
13 6 (0.80%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 41 (5.50%) Windows
2 24 (3.22%) Windows 10
3 21 (2.82%) Linux
4 14 (1.88%) Android
5 8 (1.07%) 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
1 121 (16.22%) Stakeholder Management
2 109 (14.61%) Agile
3 104 (13.94%) Business Intelligence
4 96 (12.87%) Problem-Solving
5 91 (12.20%) Programme Management
6 84 (11.26%) Digital Marketing
7 83 (11.13%) Continuous Improvement
8 77 (10.32%) Migration
9 71 (9.52%) ITIL
10 62 (8.31%) Project Management
11 59 (7.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 53 (7.10%) Customer Service
12 53 (7.10%) Decision-Making
13 49 (6.57%) Workflow
14 47 (6.30%) Analytics
14 47 (6.30%) CI/CD
14 47 (6.30%) Logistics
14 47 (6.30%) Project Delivery
15 46 (6.17%) Roadmaps
16 43 (5.76%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 54 (7.24%) Python
2 40 (5.36%) SQL
3 22 (2.95%) JavaScript
4 20 (2.68%) Java
5 11 (1.47%) Bash
6 8 (1.07%) PowerShell
7 7 (0.94%) C#
7 7 (0.94%) C++
8 6 (0.80%) Go
8 6 (0.80%) R
8 6 (0.80%) TypeScript
9 4 (0.54%) DataWeave
10 3 (0.40%) C
10 3 (0.40%) LookML
10 3 (0.40%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.27%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.27%) PHP
11 2 (0.27%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.13%) Cypher
12 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 150 (20.11%) Security Cleared
2 120 (16.09%) SC Cleared
3 71 (9.52%) Degree
4 25 (3.35%) DV Cleared
5 21 (2.82%) Cisco Certification
5 21 (2.82%) PMP
6 18 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
8 15 (2.01%) Microsoft Certification
9 13 (1.74%) A+ Certification
9 13 (1.74%) PMI Certification
10 12 (1.61%) CCNP
11 11 (1.47%) ITIL Certification
12 10 (1.34%) Network+ Certification
13 9 (1.21%) CCNA
14 8 (1.07%) Azure Certification
14 8 (1.07%) CCIE
15 7 (0.94%) ACCA
15 7 (0.94%) AWS Certification
15 7 (0.94%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.49%) SLA
2 21 (2.82%) GDPR
3 20 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 20 (2.68%) PMO
3 20 (2.68%) QA
4 13 (1.74%) Data Quality
5 11 (1.47%) NCSC
6 9 (1.21%) GRC
6 9 (1.21%) NIST
7 7 (0.94%) RMADS
8 5 (0.67%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.13%) EU AI Act
10 1 (0.13%) IFRS
10 1 (0.13%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.13%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 25 (3.35%) 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 (4.96%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.01%) Ansible
3 14 (1.88%) Grafana
4 11 (1.47%) Prometheus
4 11 (1.47%) Terraform
5 6 (0.80%) 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
1 105 (14.08%) SAP
2 89 (11.93%) Microsoft
3 73 (9.79%) Cisco
4 55 (7.37%) ServiceNow
5 35 (4.69%) Nokia
6 25 (3.35%) Salesforce
7 20 (2.68%) Ericsson
7 20 (2.68%) Fortinet
7 20 (2.68%) Juniper
8 19 (2.55%) BT
8 19 (2.55%) Oracle
9 15 (2.01%) Google
10 14 (1.88%) CheckPoint
10 14 (1.88%) Huawei
11 13 (1.74%) VMware
12 12 (1.61%) F5
13 11 (1.47%) Meraki
13 11 (1.47%) Palo Alto
13 11 (1.47%) Remedy
14 9 (1.21%) MuleSoft