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 12 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 154 78 64
Rank change year-on-year -76 -14 +17
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 762 902 1,407
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.78% 3.06% 3.15%
As % of the General category 3.12% 4.89% 5.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 477 481 799
10th Percentile £170 £300 £200
25th Percentile £331 £379 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £510 £450
Median % change year-on-year -9.31% +13.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £575 £623 £588
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £503 £450
% change year-on-year -10.45% +11.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 29 54
10th Percentile £17.68 £14.00 £12.15
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.00 £13.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year -13.36% -25.17% -30.00%
75th Percentile £24.63 £60.00 £67.17
90th Percentile £51.00 £65.40 £87.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £23.59 £25.00
% change year-on-year +1.00% -5.64% -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 24,434 18,456 26,098
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 57.22% 62.71% 58.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,267 11,659 16,703
10th Percentile £300 £290 £263
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,499 645 1,815
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.35
Median hourly rate £24.09 £30.00 £25.71
Median % change year-on-year -19.70% +16.69% -20.89%
75th Percentile £56.13 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.79 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.83 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -16.98% +10.00% -7.63%

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 12 March 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 12 March 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 12 March 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 -82 665 £475 -7.32% 495
UK excluding London -77 431 £450 -10.45% 419
London -24 267 £475 -12.04% 144
Work from Home -51 184 £475 -7.32% 154
South East -57 153 £469 -6.20% 152
Midlands -41 76 £500 -2.44% 55
North of England -58 71 £388 -20.51% 81
South West -43 56 £525 -3.23% 41
West Midlands -54 52 £550 +7.32% 34
East of England -19 37 £513 +5.67% 58
North West -50 30 £303 -40.69% 39
Scotland +16 27 £330 -19.27% 27
East Midlands -18 24 £158 -60.63% 21
North East -2 23 £175 -51.72% 11
Yorkshire -58 17 £481 -6.10% 36
Northern Ireland -1 9 £150 -72.73% 3
Wales -3 9 £160 -56.16% 15

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%) Appian
1 10 (1.31%) SharePoint
2 9 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.05%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.05%) Confluence
4 5 (0.66%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.52%) Apache
5 4 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.52%) IIS
6 3 (0.39%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.39%) JBoss
6 3 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.39%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.39%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.13%) CMS
8 1 (0.13%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.13%) Smallworld
Applications
1 52 (6.82%) Microsoft Office
2 24 (3.15%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (1.84%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (1.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.92%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.52%) Autodesk Inventor
7 2 (0.26%) MicroStation
7 2 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.26%) Trello
8 1 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.13%) FrameMaker
8 1 (0.13%) MadCap Flare
Business Applications
1 16 (2.10%) SAP BRIM
1 16 (2.10%) SAP Hybris
1 16 (2.10%) SAP PSCD
2 10 (1.31%) Remedy ITSM
3 6 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.39%) BambooHR
4 3 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.39%) Primavera
4 3 (0.39%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.26%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.13%) Remedy AR System
6 1 (0.13%) SAP FI-CA
6 1 (0.13%) SAP SRM
6 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 73 (9.58%) Azure
2 54 (7.09%) AWS
3 49 (6.43%) Microsoft 365
4 39 (5.12%) GCP
5 18 (2.36%) Power Platform
6 16 (2.10%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 13 (1.71%) SaaS
8 10 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
8 10 (1.31%) Dynamics 365
9 9 (1.18%) GitHub
10 7 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (0.66%) Datadog
11 5 (0.66%) dbt
12 4 (0.52%) Entra ID
12 4 (0.52%) Miro
12 4 (0.52%) Slack
12 4 (0.52%) Tricentis Tosca
13 3 (0.39%) Dagster
13 3 (0.39%) Prefect
13 3 (0.39%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 47 (6.17%) WAN
2 42 (5.51%) Firewall
3 37 (4.86%) LAN
4 35 (4.59%) MPLS
4 35 (4.59%) Wireless
5 32 (4.20%) 5G
6 26 (3.41%) SD-WAN
7 25 (3.28%) Network Security
8 24 (3.15%) 4G
8 24 (3.15%) Radio Access Network
9 21 (2.76%) VPN
10 19 (2.49%) BGP
11 18 (2.36%) Broadband
11 18 (2.36%) Internet
11 18 (2.36%) LTE
12 17 (2.23%) DNS
12 17 (2.23%) SDH
12 17 (2.23%) VoIP
13 13 (1.71%) 2G
13 13 (1.71%) 3GPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.23%) Power BI
2 11 (1.44%) MySQL
3 10 (1.31%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (1.31%) Tableau
4 9 (1.18%) Looker
5 8 (1.05%) Big Data
5 8 (1.05%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.92%) GIS
6 7 (0.92%) Relational Database
7 6 (0.79%) BigQuery
7 6 (0.79%) SQL Server
8 4 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
8 4 (0.52%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.39%) Metadata
9 3 (0.39%) RDBMS
10 2 (0.26%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.26%) Electronic Patient Records
10 2 (0.26%) NoSQL
11 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 23 (3.02%) JIRA
2 11 (1.44%) GitLab
3 8 (1.05%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.79%) Git
5 5 (0.66%) Robot Framework
5 5 (0.66%) Selenium
6 4 (0.52%) Cucumber
6 4 (0.52%) JUnit
6 4 (0.52%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.39%) Storybook
8 2 (0.26%) Appium
8 2 (0.26%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.26%) JMeter
8 2 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.13%) Browser DevTools
9 1 (0.13%) Maven
9 1 (0.13%) Mockito
9 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 240 (31.50%) Finance
2 223 (29.27%) Social Skills
3 201 (26.38%) Public Sector
4 160 (21.00%) Marketing
5 149 (19.55%) Electronics
6 144 (18.90%) Manufacturing
7 88 (11.55%) Analytical Skills
8 37 (4.86%) Billing
9 21 (2.76%) Organisational Skills
10 20 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
11 19 (2.49%) Legal
12 13 (1.71%) Retail
13 10 (1.31%) Military
14 9 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
15 8 (1.05%) Banking
16 6 (0.79%) Law
17 5 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
18 4 (0.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 2 (0.26%) Aviation
19 2 (0.26%) Health Technology
Job Titles
1 85 (11.15%) Architect
2 76 (9.97%) Analyst
3 46 (6.04%) Business Analyst
4 45 (5.91%) Lead
5 44 (5.77%) Consultant
6 41 (5.38%) Senior
7 40 (5.25%) IT Support
8 37 (4.86%) Network Engineer
9 36 (4.72%) Project Manager
10 34 (4.46%) Desktop Support
11 29 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
12 24 (3.15%) 2nd Line Support
13 23 (3.02%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
13 23 (3.02%) Developer
13 23 (3.02%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
14 20 (2.62%) Coordinator
14 20 (2.62%) Migration Engineer
15 19 (2.49%) IT Engineer
15 19 (2.49%) Telecoms Manager
16 18 (2.36%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (3.54%) REST
2 22 (2.89%) SOAP
3 8 (1.05%) .NET
3 8 (1.05%) Elastic Stack
4 7 (0.92%) Kafka
5 6 (0.79%) Middleware
5 6 (0.79%) RESTful
5 6 (0.79%) Web Services
5 6 (0.79%) XML
6 5 (0.66%) JSON
6 5 (0.66%) React
7 4 (0.52%) HTML
7 4 (0.52%) Jinja
7 4 (0.52%) NETCONF
7 4 (0.52%) Node.js
7 4 (0.52%) RabbitMQ
7 4 (0.52%) RFC 2544
7 4 (0.52%) Spring
7 4 (0.52%) Spring Boot
8 3 (0.39%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 55 (7.22%) Data Centre
2 31 (4.07%) Data Protection Act
3 30 (3.94%) Driving Licence
4 26 (3.41%) Product Ownership
5 22 (2.89%) Onboarding
6 18 (2.36%) CMDB
7 16 (2.10%) IoT
8 14 (1.84%) NHS
9 13 (1.71%) Cloud Native
9 13 (1.71%) Mobile App
10 12 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
11 9 (1.18%) Fibre Optics
11 9 (1.18%) Virtual Team
12 8 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
12 8 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
13 7 (0.92%) Enterprise Cloud
13 7 (0.92%) SCADA
14 6 (0.79%) Algorithms
14 6 (0.79%) Management Information System
14 6 (0.79%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 39 (5.12%) Android
2 36 (4.72%) Windows
3 31 (4.07%) Mac OS
4 18 (2.36%) Linux
4 18 (2.36%) Windows 10
5 7 (0.92%) Unix
6 6 (0.79%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.66%) 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 Server 2016
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (20.60%) Business Intelligence
2 148 (19.42%) Programme Management
3 143 (18.77%) Digital Marketing
4 116 (15.22%) Stakeholder Management
5 107 (14.04%) Agile
6 105 (13.78%) Problem-Solving
7 84 (11.02%) Migration
8 83 (10.89%) Continuous Improvement
9 65 (8.53%) ITIL
10 63 (8.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 58 (7.61%) Workflow
12 56 (7.35%) Logistics
13 49 (6.43%) Customer Service
14 48 (6.30%) Project Management
15 41 (5.38%) Data Protection
16 40 (5.25%) CI/CD
16 40 (5.25%) Decision-Making
17 39 (5.12%) Roadmaps
18 38 (4.99%) Change Management
18 38 (4.99%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 50 (6.56%) Python
2 36 (4.72%) SQL
3 27 (3.54%) JavaScript
4 18 (2.36%) Java
5 10 (1.31%) PowerShell
6 9 (1.18%) Bash
7 7 (0.92%) TypeScript
8 5 (0.66%) C++
8 5 (0.66%) Go
9 4 (0.52%) C#
9 4 (0.52%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.39%) C
10 3 (0.39%) R
11 2 (0.26%) BeanShell
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
1 186 (24.41%) Security Cleared
2 156 (20.47%) SC Cleared
3 60 (7.87%) Degree
4 24 (3.15%) DV Cleared
5 19 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
7 13 (1.71%) PMP
8 11 (1.44%) CCNP
9 10 (1.31%) ACCA
9 10 (1.31%) ITIL Certification
9 10 (1.31%) PMI Certification
10 9 (1.18%) Computer Science Degree
11 8 (1.05%) Azure Certification
12 7 (0.92%) CIMA
13 6 (0.79%) AWS Certification
13 6 (0.79%) CCIE
13 6 (0.79%) CCNA
13 6 (0.79%) ISTQB
13 6 (0.79%) Microsoft Certification
14 5 (0.66%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.07%) SLA
2 27 (3.54%) GDPR
3 26 (3.41%) QA
4 20 (2.62%) PMO
5 18 (2.36%) Data Quality
6 17 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 12 (1.57%) NIST
8 10 (1.31%) GRC
9 9 (1.18%) NCSC
10 7 (0.92%) RMADS
11 5 (0.66%) Accessibility
11 5 (0.66%) JSP 440
12 4 (0.52%) IFRS
12 4 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 3 (0.39%) GAAP
14 2 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 2 (0.26%) HIPAA
14 2 (0.26%) PCI DSS
15 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials
15 1 (0.13%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 19 (2.49%) Active Directory
2 16 (2.10%) Docker
3 3 (0.39%) QEMU
4 2 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.13%) Firmware
5 1 (0.13%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 25 (3.28%) Kubernetes
2 15 (1.97%) Ansible
3 11 (1.44%) Grafana
4 9 (1.18%) Terraform
5 8 (1.05%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.79%) SCCM
7 5 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (0.52%) Argo
9 3 (0.39%) Cisco Prime
9 3 (0.39%) Iperf
9 3 (0.39%) Podman
10 2 (0.26%) Amdocs OSS
10 2 (0.26%) EMC NetWorker
10 2 (0.26%) Nmap
10 2 (0.26%) vRealize
11 1 (0.13%) Consul
11 1 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
11 1 (0.13%) HP ALM
11 1 (0.13%) Rancher
11 1 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 168 (22.05%) SAP
2 109 (14.30%) Cisco
3 90 (11.81%) Microsoft
4 47 (6.17%) ServiceNow
5 31 (4.07%) Nokia
6 26 (3.41%) Juniper
7 25 (3.28%) HP
7 25 (3.28%) Oracle
8 24 (3.15%) Dell
9 23 (3.02%) Apple
10 21 (2.76%) Fortinet
11 16 (2.10%) Ericsson
12 14 (1.84%) Google
12 14 (1.84%) Salesforce
13 12 (1.57%) CheckPoint
13 12 (1.57%) F5
13 12 (1.57%) Meraki
13 12 (1.57%) Remedy
14 11 (1.44%) Palo Alto
15 9 (1.18%) Huawei