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 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 127 60 72
Rank change year-on-year -67 +12 +14
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 815 1,258 1,364
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.28% 3.46% 2.96%
As % of the General category 3.63% 5.82% 4.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 525 577 881
10th Percentile £170 £271 £263
25th Percentile £325 £394 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% - +4.17%
75th Percentile £575 £606 £625
90th Percentile £675 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -10.00% +11.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 69 46 33
10th Percentile £14.75 £21.88 £14.22
25th Percentile £17.50 £25.19 £24.25
Median hourly rate £22.08 £49.28 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -55.20% -6.13% +5.00%
75th Percentile £28.00 £73.44 £80.00
90th Percentile £65.25 £75.63 £88.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.08 £50.00 £63.75
% change year-on-year -55.85% -21.57% +15.91%

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 common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 22,466 21,602 27,431
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 62.75% 59.48% 59.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,050 12,736 18,252
10th Percentile £273 £291 £281
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,459 818 1,111
10th Percentile £13.83 £15.02 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.89 £18.00 £17.00
Median hourly rate £24.09 £28.75 £32.32
Median % change year-on-year -16.21% -11.05% +29.28%
75th Percentile £45.46 £53.75 £59.02
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.25 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.14 £27.06 £30.00
% change year-on-year -18.19% -9.79% +35.87%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Telecoms in the UK

Telecoms
Top 18 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 November 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 -71 713 £469 -6.20% 611
UK excluding London -56 470 £450 -10.00% 545
London -37 272 £450 -13.88% 174
Work from Home -58 198 £500 - 221
South East -32 177 £507 -0.20% 219
South West -28 84 £550 +2.80% 66
Midlands -39 71 £380 -19.15% 86
North of England -45 62 £275 -32.10% 87
West Midlands -35 54 £395 -15.96% 68
North West -20 34 £225 -44.44% 49
East of England -35 31 £475 +8.57% 52
Scotland +6 30 £288 -20.69% 44
Yorkshire -31 18 £376 -24.75% 27
East Midlands -6 17 £158 -56.55% 17
Northern Ireland +2 12 £150 -18.92% 5
Wales +2 9 £160 -56.16% 8
North East -7 9 £175 -50.00% 11
Channel Islands -7 1 - -

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 16 (1.96%) Confluence
1 16 (1.96%) SharePoint
2 13 (1.60%) Apache Spark
3 12 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (1.23%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.86%) Appian
6 4 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.37%) CMS
8 2 (0.25%) Apache
8 2 (0.25%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.12%) Drupal
9 1 (0.12%) Gunicorn
9 1 (0.12%) Headless CMS
9 1 (0.12%) IIS
9 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
Applications
1 48 (5.89%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (3.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.96%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (1.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 9 (1.10%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.49%) Autodesk Inventor
7 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.25%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.12%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.12%) Sketch
9 1 (0.12%) Trello
Business Applications
1 13 (1.60%) SAP BRIM
1 13 (1.60%) SAP Hybris
1 13 (1.60%) SAP PSCD
2 5 (0.61%) Endur
2 5 (0.61%) Primavera
3 4 (0.49%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
4 3 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.25%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.25%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.25%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 75 (9.20%) Azure
2 66 (8.10%) AWS
3 56 (6.87%) Microsoft 365
4 46 (5.64%) GCP
5 30 (3.68%) SaaS
6 19 (2.33%) Power Platform
7 13 (1.60%) GitHub
7 13 (1.60%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 10 (1.23%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (1.10%) Dynamics 365
10 8 (0.98%) Entra ID
10 8 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (0.86%) Miro
11 7 (0.86%) Tricentis Tosca
12 5 (0.61%) Cloud Computing
12 5 (0.61%) IaaS
12 5 (0.61%) OpenShift
13 4 (0.49%) dbt
13 4 (0.49%) PaaS
13 4 (0.49%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 56 (6.87%) Firewall
2 52 (6.38%) WAN
3 50 (6.13%) LAN
4 48 (5.89%) Wireless
5 29 (3.56%) VPN
6 26 (3.19%) 5G
6 26 (3.19%) SD-WAN
7 25 (3.07%) 4G
8 24 (2.94%) Radio Access Network
9 23 (2.82%) Broadband
9 23 (2.82%) DNS
10 22 (2.70%) MPLS
11 21 (2.58%) Network Security
12 20 (2.45%) Wi-Fi
13 19 (2.33%) VoIP
13 19 (2.33%) Wireshark
14 16 (1.96%) LTE
15 15 (1.84%) BGP
16 13 (1.60%) 3GPP
16 13 (1.60%) SDH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.21%) Power BI
2 14 (1.72%) Tableau
3 10 (1.23%) Big Data
4 9 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (0.98%) GIS
5 8 (0.98%) MySQL
6 7 (0.86%) Oracle Database
7 6 (0.74%) MongoDB
8 5 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
8 5 (0.61%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.49%) BigQuery
9 4 (0.49%) Electronic Patient Records
9 4 (0.49%) SAP BW
10 2 (0.25%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.25%) Hadoop
10 2 (0.25%) Metadata
10 2 (0.25%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.25%) Oracle Database 12c
10 2 (0.25%) Power Query
10 2 (0.25%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 27 (3.31%) JIRA
2 22 (2.70%) GitLab
3 11 (1.35%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.10%) Postman
5 8 (0.98%) Robot Framework
5 8 (0.98%) Selenium
6 7 (0.86%) Cucumber
6 7 (0.86%) Git
6 7 (0.86%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.49%) Clang
7 4 (0.49%) Cypress.io
7 4 (0.49%) GCC
7 4 (0.49%) JUnit
8 3 (0.37%) Maven
8 3 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
8 3 (0.37%) Storybook
9 2 (0.25%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.25%) Gradle
9 2 (0.25%) Mercurial
9 2 (0.25%) Subversion
General
1 317 (38.90%) Finance
2 271 (33.25%) Public Sector
3 266 (32.64%) Social Skills
4 218 (26.75%) Marketing
5 212 (26.01%) Manufacturing
6 206 (25.28%) Electronics
7 100 (12.27%) Analytical Skills
8 29 (3.56%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (3.07%) Legal
10 19 (2.33%) Billing
11 15 (1.84%) Organisational Skills
12 13 (1.60%) Law
13 11 (1.35%) Automotive
13 11 (1.35%) Banking
13 11 (1.35%) Retail
14 8 (0.98%) Back Office
14 8 (0.98%) French Language
15 7 (0.86%) Military
15 7 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
16 6 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 93 (11.41%) Architect
2 76 (9.33%) Analyst
3 54 (6.63%) Consultant
4 50 (6.13%) Project Manager
5 46 (5.64%) IT Support
6 42 (5.15%) Desktop Support
7 41 (5.03%) Senior
8 40 (4.91%) Business Analyst
9 36 (4.42%) Network Engineer
10 35 (4.29%) Lead
11 30 (3.68%) Developer
12 29 (3.56%) Solutions Architect
13 28 (3.44%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
13 28 (3.44%) 2nd Line Support
13 28 (3.44%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
14 26 (3.19%) Support Engineer
15 23 (2.82%) Network Architect
15 23 (2.82%) Network Specialist
15 23 (2.82%) Test Engineer
16 21 (2.58%) Telecoms Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (2.94%) REST
2 16 (1.96%) SOAP
3 14 (1.72%) React
4 12 (1.47%) JSON
5 11 (1.35%) XML
6 9 (1.10%) Node.js
6 9 (1.10%) RESTful
6 9 (1.10%) RFC 2544
6 9 (1.10%) SailPoint
7 8 (0.98%) Jinja
8 7 (0.86%) 802.1X
8 7 (0.86%) CSS
8 7 (0.86%) HTML
8 7 (0.86%) Kafka
8 7 (0.86%) NETCONF
8 7 (0.86%) Web Services
9 6 (0.74%) PySpark
9 6 (0.74%) YANG
10 5 (0.61%) .NET
10 5 (0.61%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 71 (8.71%) Data Centre
2 31 (3.80%) Driving Licence
3 30 (3.68%) Cloud Native
4 28 (3.44%) Product Ownership
5 26 (3.19%) Legacy Systems
6 19 (2.33%) Fibre Optics
6 19 (2.33%) Onboarding
7 18 (2.21%) CMDB
7 18 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
8 15 (1.84%) NHS
9 14 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
9 14 (1.72%) Mobile App
10 13 (1.60%) IoT
11 11 (1.35%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (1.10%) Algorithms
13 9 (1.10%) Cyber Threat
14 8 (0.98%) SCADA
15 7 (0.86%) Cyber Defence
16 6 (0.74%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 55 (6.75%) Windows
2 38 (4.66%) Android
3 31 (3.80%) Mac OS
4 23 (2.82%) Linux
5 14 (1.72%) Windows 10
6 10 (1.23%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.98%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.61%) Unix
9 1 (0.12%) CentOS
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (27.85%) Business Intelligence
2 211 (25.89%) Programme Management
3 205 (25.15%) Digital Marketing
4 143 (17.55%) Problem-Solving
5 133 (16.32%) Agile
6 118 (14.48%) Stakeholder Management
7 86 (10.55%) Migration
8 82 (10.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 74 (9.08%) Continuous Improvement
10 73 (8.96%) ITIL
11 60 (7.36%) DevOps
12 54 (6.63%) AI
12 54 (6.63%) CI/CD
12 54 (6.63%) Service Delivery
13 53 (6.50%) Customer Service
14 52 (6.38%) Workflow
15 51 (6.26%) Project Management
16 50 (6.13%) Change Management
17 49 (6.01%) Network Design
18 47 (5.77%) Logistics
Programming Languages
1 77 (9.45%) Python
2 45 (5.52%) SQL
3 36 (4.42%) JavaScript
4 20 (2.45%) PowerShell
5 18 (2.21%) Java
6 14 (1.72%) Bash
7 13 (1.60%) TypeScript
8 10 (1.23%) C
8 10 (1.23%) C#
8 10 (1.23%) C++
9 6 (0.74%) Go
9 6 (0.74%) PHP
10 4 (0.49%) ABAP
11 3 (0.37%) BeanShell
11 3 (0.37%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.37%) R
12 2 (0.25%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.25%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.12%) Bicep
13 1 (0.12%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 229 (28.10%) Security Cleared
2 182 (22.33%) SC Cleared
3 77 (9.45%) Degree
4 45 (5.52%) DV Cleared
5 28 (3.44%) Cisco Certification
6 17 (2.09%) Master's Degree
7 16 (1.96%) CCNP
7 16 (1.96%) CISSP
8 14 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
8 14 (1.72%) CCNA
9 11 (1.35%) CCIE
9 11 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
9 11 (1.35%) PMP
10 9 (1.10%) CISM
10 9 (1.10%) PMI Certification
11 8 (0.98%) Azure Certification
11 8 (0.98%) CESG Certified Professional
11 8 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
12 6 (0.74%) AWS Certification
12 6 (0.74%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.29%) QA
1 35 (4.29%) SLA
2 19 (2.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (2.09%) GDPR
4 14 (1.72%) PMO
5 13 (1.60%) Data Quality
6 10 (1.23%) NIST
6 10 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 9 (1.10%) Accessibility
7 9 (1.10%) GRC
8 8 (0.98%) NCSC
8 8 (0.98%) RMADS
9 6 (0.74%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.37%) GAAP
10 3 (0.37%) IFRS
10 3 (0.37%) WCAG
11 2 (0.25%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.25%) ISO 26262
11 2 (0.25%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.25%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 28 (3.44%) Active Directory
1 28 (3.44%) Docker
2 7 (0.86%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (0.49%) vSphere
5 2 (0.25%) Firmware
5 2 (0.25%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.12%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 33 (4.05%) Ansible
2 29 (3.56%) Kubernetes
3 24 (2.94%) Terraform
4 6 (0.74%) Grafana
5 5 (0.61%) Puppet
5 5 (0.61%) SCCM
6 4 (0.49%) Argo
6 4 (0.49%) HP ALM
6 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.49%) NSN NetAct
6 4 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.37%) Data Guard
7 3 (0.37%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 3 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
7 3 (0.37%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.37%) vRealize
8 2 (0.25%) Cisco CUCM
8 2 (0.25%) Cisco Prime
8 2 (0.25%) Nmap
8 2 (0.25%) OpenView
Vendors
1 242 (29.69%) SAP
2 133 (16.32%) Cisco
3 96 (11.78%) Microsoft
4 37 (4.54%) ServiceNow
5 32 (3.93%) Salesforce
6 31 (3.80%) Juniper
7 28 (3.44%) HP
8 27 (3.31%) Nokia
9 25 (3.07%) Dell
10 24 (2.94%) Apple
11 23 (2.82%) Oracle
12 20 (2.45%) F5
12 20 (2.45%) Fortinet
13 19 (2.33%) Ericsson
14 16 (1.96%) Google
15 15 (1.84%) Remedy
16 14 (1.72%) CheckPoint
17 12 (1.47%) VMware
18 11 (1.35%) Databricks
19 10 (1.23%) Actix