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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 169 89 61
Rank change year-on-year -80 -28 +22
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 741 833 1,410
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.59% 2.82% 3.23%
As % of the General category 2.91% 4.47% 5.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 458 463 757
10th Percentile £196 £305 £200
25th Percentile £368 £383 £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 £492 £450
% change year-on-year -6.00% +9.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 35 79
10th Percentile £18.93 - £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 £80.05 £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 25,486 18,638 25,438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.85% 63.10% 58.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,770 11,909 16,090
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 £639 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,614 789 1,927
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.13 £15.41
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.00 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% -1.75% -18.57%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.50
90th Percentile £79.70 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.45 £25.29 £27.50
% change year-on-year +0.64% -8.04% -13.07%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -83 647 £475 -5.00% 456
UK excluding London -90 390 £463 -6.00% 386
London -23 277 £500 -5.66% 122
Work from Home -51 181 £475 -3.80% 135
South East -65 159 £465 -6.06% 116
North of England -74 65 £481 -5.64% 81
Midlands -37 58 £550 +7.06% 48
South West -50 49 £518 -1.33% 52
West Midlands -43 43 £550 +7.32% 32
North West -52 33 £463 -11.69% 41
East of England -30 32 £200 -52.94% 70
Yorkshire -47 16 £481 -12.50% 32
North East -12 15 £500 +37.93% 12
East Midlands -28 15 £500 -20.00% 15
Scotland -1 13 £233 -28.46% 28
Wales -6 10 £160 -56.16% 8
Northern Ireland +3 7 £150 -72.73% 2

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
2 10 (1.35%) OpenStack
3 9 (1.21%) Confluence
4 6 (0.81%) Appian
4 6 (0.81%) SharePoint
5 5 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.67%) Apache Spark
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%) Anypoint
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 32 (4.32%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (2.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (1.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.08%) 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 (1.75%) SAP PSCD
2 12 (1.62%) SAP BRIM
2 12 (1.62%) SAP Hybris
3 9 (1.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.81%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.54%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.40%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.27%) SAP CO
7 2 (0.27%) 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 SRM
8 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 66 (8.91%) Azure
2 59 (7.96%) AWS
3 38 (5.13%) GCP
4 35 (4.72%) Microsoft 365
5 20 (2.70%) Power Platform
6 13 (1.75%) SaaS
6 13 (1.75%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 9 (1.21%) GitHub
8 8 (1.08%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (1.08%) dbt
9 7 (0.94%) 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%) Prefect
11 4 (0.54%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 42 (5.67%) 5G
1 42 (5.67%) Firewall
2 38 (5.13%) WAN
3 36 (4.86%) MPLS
4 27 (3.64%) Network Security
4 27 (3.64%) SD-WAN
5 25 (3.37%) 4G
5 25 (3.37%) LAN
6 23 (3.10%) DNS
7 22 (2.97%) BGP
7 22 (2.97%) Internet
8 20 (2.70%) VPN
9 18 (2.43%) 3GPP
9 18 (2.43%) Radio Access Network
10 17 (2.29%) LTE
11 16 (2.16%) Broadband
12 14 (1.89%) OSPF
12 14 (1.89%) VLAN
13 12 (1.62%) Cisco IOS
13 12 (1.62%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (2.56%) Power BI
2 12 (1.62%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (1.62%) Looker
2 12 (1.62%) Tableau
3 9 (1.21%) BigQuery
4 8 (1.08%) Big Data
4 8 (1.08%) MySQL
5 7 (0.94%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (0.94%) Relational Database
6 6 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (0.81%) SQL Server
7 5 (0.67%) Oracle Database
8 3 (0.40%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.40%) GIS
8 3 (0.40%) Metadata
8 3 (0.40%) Semantic Layer
8 3 (0.40%) Star Schema
9 2 (0.27%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.27%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.27%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 24 (3.24%) JIRA
2 8 (1.08%) Jenkins
3 7 (0.94%) GitLab
4 6 (0.81%) Git
5 4 (0.54%) JUnit
6 3 (0.40%) Storybook
7 2 (0.27%) Appium
7 2 (0.27%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.27%) JMeter
7 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.13%) Maven
8 1 (0.13%) Mockito
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 226 (30.50%) Social Skills
2 178 (24.02%) Finance
3 146 (19.70%) Public Sector
4 104 (14.04%) Marketing
5 93 (12.55%) Analytical Skills
5 93 (12.55%) Electronics
6 88 (11.88%) Manufacturing
7 37 (4.99%) Billing
8 20 (2.70%) Retail
9 19 (2.56%) Legal
9 19 (2.56%) Organisational Skills
10 18 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
11 14 (1.89%) Influencing Skills
12 8 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
13 7 (0.94%) Banking
13 7 (0.94%) Military
14 3 (0.40%) Aerospace
14 3 (0.40%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.40%) Police
14 3 (0.40%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 86 (11.61%) Architect
2 72 (9.72%) Analyst
3 53 (7.15%) Lead
4 49 (6.61%) Senior
5 42 (5.67%) Project Manager
6 40 (5.40%) Consultant
7 36 (4.86%) Business Analyst
8 34 (4.59%) Network Engineer
9 31 (4.18%) Telecoms Manager
10 28 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
11 26 (3.51%) Developer
12 21 (2.83%) Data Engineer
13 20 (2.70%) Designer
14 19 (2.56%) IT Support
14 19 (2.56%) Programme Manager
14 19 (2.56%) ServiceNow Architect
15 15 (2.02%) IT Analyst
15 15 (2.02%) IT Manager
16 14 (1.89%) SAP Consultant
17 13 (1.75%) Design Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.05%) REST
2 18 (2.43%) SOAP
3 12 (1.62%) Kafka
4 11 (1.48%) Elastic Stack
5 7 (0.94%) .NET
5 7 (0.94%) Middleware
5 7 (0.94%) RESTful
6 6 (0.81%) RabbitMQ
6 6 (0.81%) Spring
7 5 (0.67%) OpenAPI
7 5 (0.67%) Spring Boot
7 5 (0.67%) Swagger
8 4 (0.54%) HTML
8 4 (0.54%) React
8 4 (0.54%) XML
9 3 (0.40%) 802.1X
9 3 (0.40%) CSS
9 3 (0.40%) JSON
9 3 (0.40%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.40%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 31 (4.18%) Onboarding
2 30 (4.05%) Data Protection Act
3 29 (3.91%) Data Centre
4 26 (3.51%) Product Ownership
5 24 (3.24%) Driving Licence
6 21 (2.83%) Cloud Native
7 16 (2.16%) CMDB
8 14 (1.89%) Virtual Team
9 13 (1.75%) Mobile App
10 12 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
11 11 (1.48%) NHS
12 10 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
12 10 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
12 10 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (1.21%) IoT
14 8 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
14 8 (1.08%) Management Information System
14 8 (1.08%) TM Forum
15 7 (0.94%) Web Conferencing
16 6 (0.81%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 41 (5.53%) Windows
2 24 (3.24%) Windows 10
3 21 (2.83%) Linux
4 15 (2.02%) Android
5 9 (1.21%) 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 (16.33%) Stakeholder Management
2 108 (14.57%) Agile
3 106 (14.30%) Business Intelligence
4 95 (12.82%) Problem-Solving
5 92 (12.42%) Programme Management
6 86 (11.61%) Digital Marketing
7 83 (11.20%) Continuous Improvement
8 77 (10.39%) Migration
9 71 (9.58%) ITIL
10 62 (8.37%) Project Management
11 58 (7.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 53 (7.15%) Customer Service
12 53 (7.15%) Decision-Making
13 48 (6.48%) Workflow
14 47 (6.34%) Analytics
14 47 (6.34%) Logistics
15 46 (6.21%) Project Delivery
15 46 (6.21%) Roadmaps
16 45 (6.07%) CI/CD
17 43 (5.80%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 53 (7.15%) Python
2 40 (5.40%) SQL
3 21 (2.83%) JavaScript
4 19 (2.56%) Java
5 11 (1.48%) Bash
6 8 (1.08%) PowerShell
7 7 (0.94%) C++
8 6 (0.81%) C#
8 6 (0.81%) Go
8 6 (0.81%) R
8 6 (0.81%) TypeScript
9 3 (0.40%) C
9 3 (0.40%) LookML
9 3 (0.40%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.27%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.27%) DataWeave
10 2 (0.27%) PHP
10 2 (0.27%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.13%) Bicep
11 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 152 (20.51%) Security Cleared
2 122 (16.46%) SC Cleared
3 70 (9.45%) Degree
4 26 (3.51%) DV Cleared
5 21 (2.83%) PMP
6 20 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
7 18 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
9 14 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
10 13 (1.75%) PMI Certification
11 12 (1.62%) A+ Certification
11 12 (1.62%) CCNP
12 11 (1.48%) ITIL Certification
13 10 (1.35%) Network+ Certification
14 8 (1.08%) Azure Certification
14 8 (1.08%) CCIE
14 8 (1.08%) CCNA
15 7 (0.94%) ACCA
15 7 (0.94%) AWS Certification
15 7 (0.94%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.51%) SLA
2 21 (2.83%) GDPR
3 20 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 20 (2.70%) PMO
3 20 (2.70%) QA
4 13 (1.75%) Data Quality
5 11 (1.48%) NCSC
6 9 (1.21%) GRC
6 9 (1.21%) NIST
7 7 (0.94%) RMADS
8 5 (0.67%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.40%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.13%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.13%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.13%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.13%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.13%) SOC 1
11 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 25 (3.37%) Active Directory
2 14 (1.89%) Docker
3 9 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.40%) Hyper-V
4 3 (0.40%) QEMU
4 3 (0.40%) vSphere
5 1 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
5 1 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.13%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 36 (4.86%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.02%) Ansible
3 14 (1.89%) 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
7 3 (0.40%) Cisco Prime
7 3 (0.40%) Iperf
7 3 (0.40%) Podman
7 3 (0.40%) vRealize
8 2 (0.27%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.27%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.27%) Kibana
8 2 (0.27%) Nmap
9 1 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
9 1 (0.13%) Fluentd
9 1 (0.13%) Rancher
9 1 (0.13%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 106 (14.30%) SAP
2 89 (12.01%) Microsoft
3 74 (9.99%) Cisco
4 55 (7.42%) ServiceNow
5 34 (4.59%) Nokia
6 22 (2.97%) Salesforce
7 20 (2.70%) Ericsson
7 20 (2.70%) Fortinet
7 20 (2.70%) Juniper
8 19 (2.56%) Oracle
9 18 (2.43%) BT
10 15 (2.02%) Google
11 14 (1.89%) CheckPoint
11 14 (1.89%) Huawei
12 12 (1.62%) F5
12 12 (1.62%) VMware
13 11 (1.48%) Meraki
13 11 (1.48%) Palo Alto
13 11 (1.48%) Remedy
14 7 (0.94%) ADVA