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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 163 81 58
Rank change year-on-year -82 -23 +25
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 766 861 1,434
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.67% 2.95% 3.26%
As % of the General category 3.00% 4.68% 5.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 479 484 791
10th Percentile £175 £303 £200
25th Percentile £356 £378 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -7.51%
75th Percentile £575 £608 £588
90th Percentile £675 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -6.80% +11.11% +1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 34 65
10th Percentile £19.27 £14.00 £12.15
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.20 £12.28
Median hourly rate £23.83 £25.26 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.67% -11.38% -45.71%
75th Percentile £33.13 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £59.50 £63.53 £75.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.79 £23.00 £14.59
% change year-on-year +3.42% +57.70% -72.22%

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 25,557 18,394 25,602
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.72% 62.96% 58.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,901 11,786 16,235
10th Percentile £304 £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 £623 £645 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,587 745 1,892
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.70 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £26.50 £28.75 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% +6.48% -22.86%
75th Percentile £59.00 £57.50 £50.06
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £27.00 £25.50
% change year-on-year -7.41% +5.88% -17.05%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -82 668 £475 -5.00% 512
UK excluding London -79 419 £466 -6.80% 422
London -28 276 £488 -4.88% 139
Work from Home -61 176 £475 -5.00% 175
South East -55 170 £469 -6.20% 141
North of England -82 64 £463 -9.31% 94
Midlands -40 61 £525 +2.44% 63
South West -48 52 £525 - 50
West Midlands -48 43 £550 +7.32% 43
East of England -27 37 £475 +18.75% 56
North West -51 27 £463 -11.48% 46
Scotland +6 19 £214 -36.67% 27
North East -11 18 £338 -6.90% 11
East Midlands -24 18 £329 -47.40% 20
Yorkshire -47 18 £481 -10.47% 42
Wales -6 10 £160 -56.16% 10
Northern Ireland +1 9 £150 -72.73% 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 10 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.17%) Confluence
2 9 (1.17%) OpenStack
3 7 (0.91%) Apache Spark
3 7 (0.91%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.78%) Appian
5 5 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (0.52%) Apache
7 3 (0.39%) ArcGIS
7 3 (0.39%) IIS
7 3 (0.39%) JBoss
7 3 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 3 (0.39%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.39%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.26%) CMS
8 2 (0.26%) Oracle Spatial
9 1 (0.13%) Camunda
9 1 (0.13%) Headless CMS
9 1 (0.13%) Smallworld
Applications
1 40 (5.22%) Microsoft Office
2 24 (3.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (1.31%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.65%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.26%) MicroStation
6 2 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.26%) Trello
7 1 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.13%) FrameMaker
7 1 (0.13%) MadCap Flare
Business Applications
1 17 (2.22%) SAP PSCD
2 16 (2.09%) SAP BRIM
2 16 (2.09%) SAP Hybris
3 10 (1.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.78%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.52%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.39%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.26%) Primavera
7 2 (0.26%) SAP CO
7 2 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
7 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
8 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
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 SRM
8 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 76 (9.92%) Azure
2 66 (8.62%) AWS
3 43 (5.61%) GCP
4 42 (5.48%) Microsoft 365
5 22 (2.87%) Power Platform
6 17 (2.22%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 12 (1.57%) SaaS
8 9 (1.17%) Azure DevOps
8 9 (1.17%) GitHub
9 7 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
10 6 (0.78%) dbt
11 5 (0.65%) Datadog
11 5 (0.65%) Serverless
12 4 (0.52%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (0.52%) Dagster
12 4 (0.52%) Entra ID
12 4 (0.52%) Figma
12 4 (0.52%) Prefect
12 4 (0.52%) Slack
12 4 (0.52%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 43 (5.61%) 5G
1 43 (5.61%) Firewall
1 43 (5.61%) WAN
2 37 (4.83%) MPLS
3 31 (4.05%) LAN
4 29 (3.79%) 4G
5 28 (3.66%) SD-WAN
6 26 (3.39%) Network Security
7 24 (3.13%) Radio Access Network
8 22 (2.87%) DNS
9 21 (2.74%) BGP
9 21 (2.74%) VPN
10 20 (2.61%) Internet
10 20 (2.61%) LTE
10 20 (2.61%) Wireless
11 16 (2.09%) VoIP
12 15 (1.96%) 3GPP
12 15 (1.96%) Broadband
13 14 (1.83%) 2G
13 14 (1.83%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.74%) Power BI
2 12 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (1.57%) Looker
3 11 (1.44%) Tableau
4 10 (1.31%) MySQL
5 9 (1.17%) BigQuery
6 8 (1.04%) Big Data
6 8 (1.04%) Relational Database
7 7 (0.91%) Amazon Redshift
7 7 (0.91%) GIS
8 6 (0.78%) Oracle Database
8 6 (0.78%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (0.78%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.39%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.39%) Metadata
9 3 (0.39%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.39%) RDBMS
9 3 (0.39%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.39%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.26%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 23 (3.00%) JIRA
2 8 (1.04%) Jenkins
3 7 (0.91%) GitLab
4 5 (0.65%) Git
5 4 (0.52%) JUnit
6 3 (0.39%) Storybook
7 2 (0.26%) Appium
7 2 (0.26%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.26%) JMeter
7 2 (0.26%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.13%) Maven
8 1 (0.13%) Mockito
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 224 (29.24%) Social Skills
2 211 (27.55%) Finance
3 174 (22.72%) Public Sector
4 127 (16.58%) Marketing
5 120 (15.67%) Electronics
6 114 (14.88%) Manufacturing
7 92 (12.01%) Analytical Skills
8 39 (5.09%) Billing
9 20 (2.61%) Organisational Skills
10 18 (2.35%) Legal
11 17 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
11 17 (2.22%) Retail
12 13 (1.70%) Influencing Skills
13 10 (1.31%) Military
14 8 (1.04%) Banking
14 8 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (0.65%) Law
16 3 (0.39%) Financial Institution
17 2 (0.26%) Aerospace
17 2 (0.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 83 (10.84%) Architect
2 74 (9.66%) Analyst
3 48 (6.27%) Lead
4 46 (6.01%) Consultant
4 46 (6.01%) Senior
5 42 (5.48%) Project Manager
6 39 (5.09%) Business Analyst
7 34 (4.44%) Network Engineer
8 31 (4.05%) Developer
9 29 (3.79%) Solutions Architect
10 28 (3.66%) IT Support
10 28 (3.66%) Telecoms Manager
11 23 (3.00%) Desktop Support
12 21 (2.74%) Data Engineer
13 19 (2.48%) Programme Manager
14 18 (2.35%) Coordinator
14 18 (2.35%) Designer
14 18 (2.35%) SAP Consultant
14 18 (2.35%) ServiceNow Architect
15 15 (1.96%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (3.39%) REST
2 16 (2.09%) SOAP
3 11 (1.44%) Elastic Stack
4 10 (1.31%) Kafka
5 8 (1.04%) .NET
5 8 (1.04%) RESTful
6 6 (0.78%) Middleware
6 6 (0.78%) RabbitMQ
6 6 (0.78%) Spring
7 5 (0.65%) React
7 5 (0.65%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.52%) HTML
9 3 (0.39%) 802.1X
9 3 (0.39%) CSS
9 3 (0.39%) GraphQL
9 3 (0.39%) Node.js
9 3 (0.39%) PySpark
9 3 (0.39%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.39%) Swagger
9 3 (0.39%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 39 (5.09%) Data Centre
2 29 (3.79%) Data Protection Act
3 26 (3.39%) Driving Licence
3 26 (3.39%) Onboarding
4 25 (3.26%) Product Ownership
5 22 (2.87%) Cloud Native
6 18 (2.35%) CMDB
7 16 (2.09%) IoT
8 13 (1.70%) Mobile App
8 13 (1.70%) NHS
9 11 (1.44%) Analytical Mindset
9 11 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
9 11 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
10 10 (1.31%) Virtual Team
11 9 (1.17%) Algorithms
11 9 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
13 6 (0.78%) Fibre Optics
13 6 (0.78%) Management Information System
13 6 (0.78%) NB-IoT
Operating Systems
1 42 (5.48%) Windows
2 25 (3.26%) Android
2 25 (3.26%) Linux
3 22 (2.87%) Windows 10
4 19 (2.48%) Mac OS
5 8 (1.04%) Unix
6 6 (0.78%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.65%) Windows Server
8 3 (0.39%) Debian
8 3 (0.39%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.39%) VMS
9 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.13%) CentOS
10 1 (0.13%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (17.62%) Business Intelligence
2 119 (15.54%) Programme Management
3 116 (15.14%) Stakeholder Management
4 113 (14.75%) Digital Marketing
5 104 (13.58%) Agile
6 97 (12.66%) Problem-Solving
7 84 (10.97%) Migration
8 77 (10.05%) Continuous Improvement
9 67 (8.75%) ITIL
10 64 (8.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 59 (7.70%) Project Management
12 52 (6.79%) Logistics
13 51 (6.66%) Customer Service
14 50 (6.53%) Analytics
15 48 (6.27%) Workflow
16 47 (6.14%) Decision-Making
17 44 (5.74%) Project Delivery
17 44 (5.74%) Roadmaps
18 43 (5.61%) CI/CD
19 41 (5.35%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 59 (7.70%) Python
2 44 (5.74%) SQL
3 22 (2.87%) JavaScript
4 19 (2.48%) Java
5 11 (1.44%) Bash
6 8 (1.04%) PowerShell
7 7 (0.91%) C++
7 7 (0.91%) R
7 7 (0.91%) TypeScript
8 6 (0.78%) Go
9 5 (0.65%) C#
10 3 (0.39%) C
10 3 (0.39%) LookML
10 3 (0.39%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.26%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.26%) PHP
11 2 (0.26%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.13%) Bicep
12 1 (0.13%) Cypher
12 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 173 (22.58%) Security Cleared
2 139 (18.15%) SC Cleared
3 66 (8.62%) Degree
4 30 (3.92%) DV Cleared
5 19 (2.48%) PMP
6 17 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (2.22%) Cisco Certification
7 15 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (1.70%) PMI Certification
9 12 (1.57%) CCNP
10 11 (1.44%) ITIL Certification
11 10 (1.31%) Microsoft Certification
12 8 (1.04%) ACCA
12 8 (1.04%) Azure Certification
13 7 (0.91%) A+ Certification
13 7 (0.91%) AWS Certification
13 7 (0.91%) CCIE
13 7 (0.91%) CIMA
13 7 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
14 6 (0.78%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.66%) SLA
2 21 (2.74%) GDPR
3 20 (2.61%) PMO
4 19 (2.48%) QA
5 16 (2.09%) Data Quality
5 16 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 11 (1.44%) NCSC
7 10 (1.31%) GRC
8 9 (1.17%) NIST
9 7 (0.91%) RMADS
10 5 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.39%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.26%) IFRS
12 2 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.13%) GAAP
13 1 (0.13%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 1 (0.13%) IFRS 9
13 1 (0.13%) NEBOSH
13 1 (0.13%) PCI DSS
13 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 22 (2.87%) Active Directory
2 15 (1.96%) Docker
3 6 (0.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.39%) QEMU
5 2 (0.26%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.13%) Firmware
6 1 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 35 (4.57%) Kubernetes
2 15 (1.96%) Ansible
3 14 (1.83%) Grafana
4 11 (1.44%) Prometheus
4 11 (1.44%) Terraform
5 6 (0.78%) SCCM
6 4 (0.52%) Argo
6 4 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.39%) Cisco Prime
7 3 (0.39%) Iperf
7 3 (0.39%) Podman
8 2 (0.26%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.26%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.26%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.26%) Kibana
8 2 (0.26%) Nmap
8 2 (0.26%) vRealize
9 1 (0.13%) Consul
9 1 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
9 1 (0.13%) Rancher
Vendors
1 137 (17.89%) SAP
2 92 (12.01%) Microsoft
3 90 (11.75%) Cisco
4 54 (7.05%) ServiceNow
5 34 (4.44%) Nokia
6 21 (2.74%) Fortinet
6 21 (2.74%) Juniper
6 21 (2.74%) Oracle
7 20 (2.61%) Ericsson
8 16 (2.09%) Google
9 15 (1.96%) Salesforce
10 14 (1.83%) BT
10 14 (1.83%) Huawei
11 13 (1.70%) CheckPoint
11 13 (1.70%) Dell
11 13 (1.70%) F5
12 12 (1.57%) Apple
12 12 (1.57%) HP
12 12 (1.57%) Remedy
13 11 (1.44%) Meraki