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 16 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 172 103 67
Rank change year-on-year -69 -36 +15
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 812 829 1,311
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.54% 2.55% 3.08%
As % of the General category 2.82% 4.06% 5.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 466 478 625
10th Percentile £213 £303 £200
25th Percentile £390 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -1.96%
75th Percentile £563 £588 £613
90th Percentile £681 £700 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £463 £470
% change year-on-year -2.70% -1.60% +4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 46 109
10th Percentile £16.01 - £12.15
25th Percentile £17.73 £14.00 £14.00
Median hourly rate £24.50 £20.66 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +18.59% -57.45% -5.71%
75th Percentile £50.00 £54.44 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £65.25 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £15.50 £48.56
% change year-on-year +35.48% -68.08% +94.24%

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 28,822 20,440 24,415
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.77% 62.91% 57.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,240 12,804 15,277
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,010 1,052 1,864
10th Percentile £14.02 £13.38 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £33.06 £26.29 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.75% -19.11% +6.42%
75th Percentile £62.00 £51.93 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £71.14 £69.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.25 £22.63 £31.97
% change year-on-year +46.93% -29.21% +22.96%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 -79 694 £475 -2.81% 543
UK excluding London -86 421 £450 -2.70% 493
London -30 297 £513 +5.83% 164
Work from Home -46 228 £475 - 199
South East -51 191 £463 -7.50% 179
North of England -62 67 £500 - 91
South West -56 48 £450 -14.29% 47
Scotland -5 41 £300 -7.69% 52
Midlands -63 40 £473 +23.93% 64
East of England -15 34 £160 -60.00% 41
West Midlands -62 34 £450 +28.57% 43
North West -53 32 £550 +4.76% 58
Yorkshire -34 30 £469 +20.97% 26
East Midlands -8 6 £500 -20.00% 21
North East -34 5 £500 - 9
Northern Ireland -4 3 £175 -51.05% 9
Wales -11 1 £500 +132.56% 21

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 14 (1.72%) Confluence
2 13 (1.60%) OpenStack
3 8 (0.99%) ArcGIS
4 7 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (0.86%) SharePoint
5 5 (0.62%) Appian
6 4 (0.49%) Anypoint
6 4 (0.49%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.37%) IIS
7 3 (0.37%) JBoss
7 3 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.37%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.25%) Apache
8 2 (0.25%) CMS
8 2 (0.25%) Oracle Spatial
9 1 (0.12%) Camunda
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 1 (0.12%) Smallworld
Applications
1 25 (3.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 24 (2.96%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (2.34%) MS Visio
4 11 (1.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.62%) AutoCAD
5 5 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.25%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.12%) Revit
7 1 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.12%) Trello
Business Applications
1 21 (2.59%) SAP PSCD
2 14 (1.72%) Remedy ITSM
3 12 (1.48%) SAP BRIM
4 11 (1.35%) SAP Hybris
5 7 (0.86%) SAP FI
6 6 (0.74%) SAP FI-CA
7 5 (0.62%) NetSuite
7 5 (0.62%) Sage X3
7 5 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.49%) BambooHR
8 4 (0.49%) Remedy AR System
8 4 (0.49%) SAP S/4HANA
9 3 (0.37%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 1 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
11 1 (0.12%) SAP IBP
11 1 (0.12%) SAP IS-U
11 1 (0.12%) SAP SD
11 1 (0.12%) SAP SRM
11 1 (0.12%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 88 (10.84%) Azure
2 83 (10.22%) AWS
3 57 (7.02%) GCP
4 19 (2.34%) Power Platform
5 17 (2.09%) SaaS
6 16 (1.97%) Microsoft 365
7 13 (1.60%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 10 (1.23%) Snowflake
9 9 (1.11%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (1.11%) dbt
9 9 (1.11%) GitHub
10 8 (0.99%) Entra ID
10 8 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
11 6 (0.74%) Datadog
11 6 (0.74%) OpenShift
11 6 (0.74%) Serverless
12 5 (0.62%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (0.62%) Cloud Functions
12 5 (0.62%) Fivetran
12 5 (0.62%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 87 (10.71%) WAN
2 74 (9.11%) LAN
3 70 (8.62%) MPLS
4 66 (8.13%) 5G
5 48 (5.91%) Firewall
6 46 (5.67%) 4G
7 43 (5.30%) Radio Access Network
8 33 (4.06%) SD-WAN
9 31 (3.82%) BGP
10 24 (2.96%) VPN
11 23 (2.83%) DNS
11 23 (2.83%) Network Security
12 22 (2.71%) 3G
13 21 (2.59%) OSPF
13 21 (2.59%) VoIP
14 20 (2.46%) SDH
15 19 (2.34%) LTE
16 17 (2.09%) 3GPP
16 17 (2.09%) Structured Cabling
16 17 (2.09%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.22%) Power BI
2 16 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
3 14 (1.72%) BigQuery
4 12 (1.48%) Amazon Redshift
4 12 (1.48%) Looker
5 10 (1.23%) Tableau
6 8 (0.99%) GIS
7 7 (0.86%) Big Data
7 7 (0.86%) Relational Database
8 5 (0.62%) MySQL
9 4 (0.49%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.37%) Apache Cassandra
10 3 (0.37%) BusinessObjects
10 3 (0.37%) InfluxDB
10 3 (0.37%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.37%) PostgreSQL
10 3 (0.37%) SAP BW
10 3 (0.37%) SAP Data Services
10 3 (0.37%) SQL Server
10 3 (0.37%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 29 (3.57%) JIRA
2 11 (1.35%) Git
3 5 (0.62%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.25%) GitLab
5 2 (0.25%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.12%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.12%) Rational DOORS
6 1 (0.12%) Selenium
6 1 (0.12%) TestRail
General
1 236 (29.06%) Social Skills
2 128 (15.76%) Finance
3 107 (13.18%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (7.88%) Public Sector
5 43 (5.30%) Billing
6 31 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (3.08%) Retail
8 22 (2.71%) Organisational Skills
9 21 (2.59%) Marketing
10 20 (2.46%) Legal
11 18 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
12 11 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
13 9 (1.11%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (0.99%) Manufacturing
15 7 (0.86%) Electronics
15 7 (0.86%) Police
15 7 (0.86%) Publishing
16 4 (0.49%) Military
17 3 (0.37%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 124 (15.27%) Architect
2 68 (8.37%) Senior
3 67 (8.25%) Lead
4 66 (8.13%) Consultant
5 64 (7.88%) Analyst
6 46 (5.67%) Solutions Architect
7 44 (5.42%) Network Engineer
7 44 (5.42%) Project Manager
8 40 (4.93%) Telecoms Manager
9 30 (3.69%) Designer
9 30 (3.69%) Telecoms Engineer
10 29 (3.57%) Developer
10 29 (3.57%) ServiceNow Architect
11 27 (3.33%) Field Engineer
12 24 (2.96%) Data Engineer
13 23 (2.83%) Business Analyst
14 22 (2.71%) Enterprise Architect
14 22 (2.71%) SAP Consultant
15 21 (2.59%) Delivery Manager
16 20 (2.46%) Telecoms Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (5.91%) REST
2 34 (4.19%) SOAP
3 13 (1.60%) Kafka
3 13 (1.60%) Middleware
3 13 (1.60%) ONVIF
4 10 (1.23%) NETCONF
4 10 (1.23%) XML
4 10 (1.23%) YANG
5 9 (1.11%) .NET
5 9 (1.11%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (0.99%) OpenAPI
6 8 (0.99%) Swagger
7 7 (0.86%) JSON
7 7 (0.86%) RESTful
8 5 (0.62%) 802.1X
8 5 (0.62%) AngularJS
8 5 (0.62%) React
9 4 (0.49%) .NET Framework
9 4 (0.49%) RAML
9 4 (0.49%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 49 (6.03%) CMDB
2 48 (5.91%) Data Centre
3 35 (4.31%) Onboarding
4 31 (3.82%) Cloud Native
5 26 (3.20%) Driving Licence
6 20 (2.46%) Data Protection Act
7 19 (2.34%) Analytical Mindset
7 19 (2.34%) Virtual Team
8 18 (2.22%) Product Ownership
9 15 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
9 15 (1.85%) Management Information System
10 13 (1.60%) Video\Live Streaming
11 11 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
11 11 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
12 9 (1.11%) Private Cloud
12 9 (1.11%) TM Forum
13 8 (0.99%) EPoS
14 7 (0.86%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 7 (0.86%) Operational Technology
14 7 (0.86%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 34 (4.19%) Windows
2 28 (3.45%) Linux
3 16 (1.97%) Windows 10
4 12 (1.48%) Unix
5 6 (0.74%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.62%) Windows Server
7 3 (0.37%) Android
7 3 (0.37%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.37%) VMS
8 2 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
8 2 (0.25%) OpenVMS
8 2 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.12%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.12%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (17.36%) Stakeholder Management
2 114 (14.04%) Agile
3 103 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
4 89 (10.96%) ITIL
5 79 (9.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 69 (8.50%) Project Delivery
7 65 (8.00%) Continuous Improvement
8 61 (7.51%) CI/CD
9 60 (7.39%) Roadmaps
10 58 (7.14%) AI
10 58 (7.14%) Decision-Making
10 58 (7.14%) Migration
11 57 (7.02%) Service Management
12 56 (6.90%) CRM
13 55 (6.77%) Validation
14 54 (6.65%) ITSM
15 51 (6.28%) Customer Service
15 51 (6.28%) Project Management
16 49 (6.03%) Analytics
17 45 (5.54%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 64 (7.88%) Python
2 38 (4.68%) SQL
3 26 (3.20%) JavaScript
4 16 (1.97%) Java
5 10 (1.23%) C#
6 9 (1.11%) Bash
7 7 (0.86%) R
8 6 (0.74%) C++
8 6 (0.74%) PowerShell
9 5 (0.62%) Apex Code
10 4 (0.49%) ABAP
10 4 (0.49%) DataWeave
10 4 (0.49%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.37%) LookML
11 3 (0.37%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.25%) C
12 2 (0.25%) DCL
12 2 (0.25%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.25%) SOQL
13 1 (0.12%) Ada
Qualifications
1 146 (17.98%) Security Cleared
2 101 (12.44%) SC Cleared
3 74 (9.11%) Degree
4 58 (7.14%) Cisco Certification
5 38 (4.68%) CCNA
6 26 (3.20%) CCNP
7 23 (2.83%) DV Cleared
8 22 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
9 21 (2.59%) A+ Certification
10 18 (2.22%) PMP
11 17 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
11 17 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
12 14 (1.72%) PMI Certification
13 13 (1.60%) MCSA
14 12 (1.48%) CCIE
15 10 (1.23%) Azure Certification
16 9 (1.11%) AWS Certification
16 9 (1.11%) Network+ Certification
17 6 (0.74%) JNCIE
17 6 (0.74%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (3.33%) SLA
2 24 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (2.59%) NCSC
3 21 (2.59%) QA
4 19 (2.34%) GDPR
5 17 (2.09%) GRC
6 16 (1.97%) Data Quality
7 13 (1.60%) PMO
8 10 (1.23%) NIST
9 3 (0.37%) RMADS
10 2 (0.25%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.12%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.12%) EU AI Act
11 1 (0.12%) ISO 22301
11 1 (0.12%) ISO 31000
11 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.12%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.12%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
2 16 (1.97%) Active Directory
3 15 (1.85%) Docker
4 8 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.62%) vSphere
6 4 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.12%) Ceph
8 1 (0.12%) KVM
8 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 45 (5.54%) Kubernetes
2 23 (2.83%) Terraform
3 20 (2.46%) Ansible
4 13 (1.60%) Grafana
4 13 (1.60%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
6 3 (0.37%) Amdocs OSS
6 3 (0.37%) Cisco Prime
6 3 (0.37%) Iperf
6 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (0.37%) vCenter Server
6 3 (0.37%) vRealize
7 2 (0.25%) FortiGate
7 2 (0.25%) Nmap
7 2 (0.25%) NSN NetAct
8 1 (0.12%) Check_MK
8 1 (0.12%) Kibana
8 1 (0.12%) Podman
8 1 (0.12%) Proxmox
8 1 (0.12%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 101 (12.44%) Microsoft
2 85 (10.47%) Cisco
3 80 (9.85%) ServiceNow
4 45 (5.54%) Nokia
5 37 (4.56%) Salesforce
6 32 (3.94%) SAP
7 27 (3.33%) VMware
8 24 (2.96%) BT
8 24 (2.96%) Fortinet
9 22 (2.71%) Ericsson
9 22 (2.71%) Juniper
10 20 (2.46%) F5
11 19 (2.34%) Oracle
12 17 (2.09%) Remedy
13 16 (1.97%) Google
13 16 (1.97%) Huawei
14 15 (1.85%) CheckPoint
14 15 (1.85%) MuleSoft
14 15 (1.85%) Palo Alto
15 13 (1.60%) BMC