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 5 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 66 67
Rank change year-on-year -74 +1 +14
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 796 1,050 1,378
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.03% 3.37% 3.10%
As % of the General category 3.44% 5.44% 5.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 514 498 813
10th Percentile £167 £278 £201
25th Percentile £313 £373 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £567 £600 £618
90th Percentile £675 £680 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -10.00% +11.11% +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 29 41
10th Percentile £17.01 £20.50 £13.28
25th Percentile £20.50 £22.50 £24.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £32.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.69% -45.83% +79.10%
75th Percentile £24.75 £57.50 £74.00
90th Percentile £48.60 £64.79 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.75 £38.03 £62.50
% change year-on-year -37.55% -39.15% +49.70%

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 23,143 19,316 26,116
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 59.12% 62.03% 58.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,519 11,556 16,932
10th Percentile £290 £281 £265
25th Percentile £401 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £731 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £481 £500
% change year-on-year -1.14% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,414 622 1,614
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.12 £15.03
Median hourly rate £22.83 £29.00 £25.61
Median % change year-on-year -21.28% +13.26% -0.04%
75th Percentile £49.50 £54.69 £55.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.65 £67.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.51 £27.06 £24.65
% change year-on-year -20.52% +9.79% +6.48%

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 5 February 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 5 February 2026.

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 5 February 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 -76 707 £475 -6.86% 601
UK excluding London -69 451 £450 -10.00% 511
London -25 288 £475 -11.01% 156
Work from Home -50 184 £475 -7.77% 218
South East -49 156 £475 -5.00% 191
North of England -42 81 £365 -18.89% 94
Midlands -51 69 £413 -17.50% 75
South West -41 67 £525 -5.41% 45
West Midlands -47 47 £538 +6.17% 53
North West -23 39 £301 -36.58% 60
East of England -31 37 £513 +13.89% 87
Scotland +26 26 £309 -37.94% 27
North East -1 23 £175 -51.72% 10
East Midlands -10 22 £158 -10.00% 22
Yorkshire -54 18 £481 -3.75% 25
Northern Ireland +7 12 £150 - 2
Wales +4 9 £160 -56.16% 11
Channel Islands -2 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 14 (1.76%) Confluence
2 13 (1.63%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.38%) Appian
4 10 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (0.75%) Apache Spark
6 5 (0.63%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.38%) IIS
8 2 (0.25%) Apache
8 2 (0.25%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.25%) CMS
8 2 (0.25%) JBoss
8 2 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.25%) Oracle Spatial
8 2 (0.25%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.25%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.13%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 53 (6.66%) Microsoft Office
2 24 (3.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
4 12 (1.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.88%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.50%) Autodesk Inventor
7 3 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.25%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.25%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.13%) FrameMaker
9 1 (0.13%) MadCap Flare
9 1 (0.13%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.13%) Trello
Business Applications
1 17 (2.14%) SAP BRIM
1 17 (2.14%) SAP Hybris
1 17 (2.14%) SAP PSCD
2 10 (1.26%) Remedy ITSM
3 6 (0.75%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.38%) Primavera
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 (0.13%) Remedy AR System
6 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 63 (7.91%) Azure
2 53 (6.66%) Microsoft 365
3 48 (6.03%) AWS
4 29 (3.64%) GCP
5 17 (2.14%) SAP Commerce Cloud
6 12 (1.51%) Power Platform
6 12 (1.51%) SaaS
7 11 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
7 11 (1.38%) GitHub
8 9 (1.13%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (1.01%) Entra ID
9 8 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (0.88%) Tricentis Tosca
11 5 (0.63%) Miro
12 4 (0.50%) Power Automate
13 3 (0.38%) Asana
13 3 (0.38%) IaaS
13 3 (0.38%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 3 (0.38%) Slack
13 3 (0.38%) Smartsheet
Communications & Networking
1 49 (6.16%) Firewall
2 43 (5.40%) WAN
3 40 (5.03%) Wireless
4 37 (4.65%) LAN
5 30 (3.77%) MPLS
6 27 (3.39%) 5G
7 23 (2.89%) 4G
7 23 (2.89%) Network Security
7 23 (2.89%) VPN
8 21 (2.64%) Radio Access Network
9 19 (2.39%) LTE
9 19 (2.39%) SD-WAN
9 19 (2.39%) VoIP
10 18 (2.26%) BGP
10 18 (2.26%) Broadband
10 18 (2.26%) DNS
11 16 (2.01%) SDH
11 16 (2.01%) Wireshark
12 14 (1.76%) Internet
12 14 (1.76%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (1.26%) Power BI
2 8 (1.01%) MySQL
3 6 (0.75%) GIS
3 6 (0.75%) Oracle Database
4 4 (0.50%) Big Data
4 4 (0.50%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (0.50%) Electronic Patient Records
4 4 (0.50%) Relational Database
4 4 (0.50%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.50%) Tableau
5 3 (0.38%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.25%) Power Query
6 2 (0.25%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.13%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.13%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.13%) Looker
7 1 (0.13%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.13%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.13%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 28 (3.52%) JIRA
2 18 (2.26%) GitLab
3 10 (1.26%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.01%) Robot Framework
4 8 (1.01%) Selenium
5 7 (0.88%) Cucumber
5 7 (0.88%) SonarQube
6 6 (0.75%) Git
7 4 (0.50%) JUnit
7 4 (0.50%) Postman
8 3 (0.38%) Rational DOORS
8 3 (0.38%) Storybook
9 2 (0.25%) Appium
9 2 (0.25%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.25%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.25%) JMeter
10 1 (0.13%) Browser DevTools
10 1 (0.13%) Maven
10 1 (0.13%) Mockito
10 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 267 (33.54%) Finance
2 251 (31.53%) Social Skills
3 242 (30.40%) Public Sector
4 193 (24.25%) Marketing
5 184 (23.12%) Electronics
6 181 (22.74%) Manufacturing
7 91 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
8 36 (4.52%) Billing
9 25 (3.14%) Documentation Skills
10 23 (2.89%) Organisational Skills
11 15 (1.88%) Banking
12 13 (1.63%) Legal
12 13 (1.63%) Retail
13 8 (1.01%) Military
14 6 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.63%) Law
16 4 (0.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 4 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
17 3 (0.38%) Aviation
17 3 (0.38%) Health Technology
Job Titles
1 80 (10.05%) Analyst
2 78 (9.80%) Architect
3 50 (6.28%) Business Analyst
4 45 (5.65%) Lead
5 43 (5.40%) IT Support
5 43 (5.40%) Project Manager
5 43 (5.40%) Senior
6 36 (4.52%) Consultant
6 36 (4.52%) Desktop Support
7 34 (4.27%) Network Engineer
8 26 (3.27%) 2nd Line Support
9 25 (3.14%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
9 25 (3.14%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
10 24 (3.02%) Developer
11 23 (2.89%) Solutions Architect
12 21 (2.64%) Support Engineer
13 20 (2.51%) Coordinator
13 20 (2.51%) Migration Engineer
13 20 (2.51%) Network Specialist
14 19 (2.39%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (3.39%) REST
2 22 (2.76%) SOAP
3 11 (1.38%) XML
4 9 (1.13%) JSON
4 9 (1.13%) SailPoint
5 8 (1.01%) RESTful
5 8 (1.01%) Web Services
6 7 (0.88%) Jinja
6 7 (0.88%) NETCONF
6 7 (0.88%) React
7 6 (0.75%) .NET
7 6 (0.75%) RFC 2544
7 6 (0.75%) YANG
8 5 (0.63%) 802.1X
8 5 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
9 4 (0.50%) HTML
9 4 (0.50%) Spring
9 4 (0.50%) Spring Boot
10 3 (0.38%) Node.js
10 3 (0.38%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 53 (6.66%) Data Centre
2 33 (4.15%) Driving Licence
3 29 (3.64%) Data Protection Act
4 27 (3.39%) Product Ownership
5 21 (2.64%) CMDB
5 21 (2.64%) Onboarding
6 18 (2.26%) NHS
7 15 (1.88%) IoT
7 15 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
8 14 (1.76%) Cloud Native
9 13 (1.63%) Mobile App
10 12 (1.51%) Fibre Optics
11 10 (1.26%) Management Information System
11 10 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
11 10 (1.26%) Virtual Team
12 9 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
12 9 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
12 9 (1.13%) SCADA
13 8 (1.01%) Operational Technology
14 7 (0.88%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 39 (4.90%) Android
2 38 (4.77%) Windows
3 32 (4.02%) Mac OS
4 19 (2.39%) Windows 10
5 18 (2.26%) Linux
6 8 (1.01%) Apple iOS
7 7 (0.88%) Unix
7 7 (0.88%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.38%) Debian
9 3 (0.38%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.38%) VMS
10 1 (0.13%) CentOS
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (23.24%) Business Intelligence
2 184 (23.12%) Programme Management
3 180 (22.61%) Digital Marketing
4 127 (15.95%) Problem-Solving
5 121 (15.20%) Agile
6 116 (14.57%) Stakeholder Management
7 90 (11.31%) Migration
8 80 (10.05%) Continuous Improvement
9 73 (9.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 72 (9.05%) ITIL
11 57 (7.16%) Workflow
12 56 (7.04%) Logistics
13 55 (6.91%) Customer Service
14 51 (6.41%) Project Management
15 44 (5.53%) CI/CD
15 44 (5.53%) DevOps
16 43 (5.40%) Roadmaps
16 43 (5.40%) Service Delivery
17 42 (5.28%) Change Management
18 40 (5.03%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 54 (6.78%) Python
2 34 (4.27%) JavaScript
3 29 (3.64%) SQL
4 17 (2.14%) Java
5 14 (1.76%) PowerShell
6 11 (1.38%) Bash
6 11 (1.38%) TypeScript
7 8 (1.01%) C++
8 7 (0.88%) C
9 6 (0.75%) C#
10 5 (0.63%) Go
11 4 (0.50%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.38%) BeanShell
12 3 (0.38%) PHP
12 3 (0.38%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.38%) R
13 1 (0.13%) Bicep
13 1 (0.13%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 196 (24.62%) Security Cleared
2 161 (20.23%) SC Cleared
3 61 (7.66%) Degree
4 26 (3.27%) DV Cleared
5 21 (2.64%) BPSS Clearance
6 20 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
7 15 (1.88%) CCNP
8 12 (1.51%) PMP
9 11 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
10 10 (1.26%) ACCA
11 9 (1.13%) CCIE
11 9 (1.13%) PMI Certification
12 8 (1.01%) ITIL Certification
13 7 (0.88%) CCNA
13 7 (0.88%) CIMA
13 7 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.75%) Master's Degree
15 5 (0.63%) Azure Certification
15 5 (0.63%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.63%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (4.15%) QA
1 33 (4.15%) SLA
2 20 (2.51%) PMO
3 19 (2.39%) GDPR
4 14 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 12 (1.51%) Data Quality
6 10 (1.26%) GRC
7 9 (1.13%) Accessibility
8 8 (1.01%) NCSC
9 7 (0.88%) NIST
9 7 (0.88%) RMADS
10 6 (0.75%) JSP 440
11 5 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.50%) IFRS
13 3 (0.38%) GAAP
14 2 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 2 (0.25%) HIPAA
14 2 (0.25%) IEC 61508
14 2 (0.25%) ISO 26262
14 2 (0.25%) WCAG
System Software
1 27 (3.39%) Active Directory
2 16 (2.01%) Docker
3 6 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.38%) QEMU
4 3 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.25%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.13%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 23 (2.89%) Ansible
2 19 (2.39%) Kubernetes
3 7 (0.88%) SCCM
3 7 (0.88%) Terraform
4 5 (0.63%) Argo
4 5 (0.63%) Grafana
4 5 (0.63%) Iperf
4 5 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
5 4 (0.50%) Nmap
6 3 (0.38%) Cisco Prime
6 3 (0.38%) Podman
6 3 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.25%) EMC NetWorker
7 2 (0.25%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.25%) vRealize
8 1 (0.13%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.13%) Consul
8 1 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (0.13%) Rancher
8 1 (0.13%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 207 (26.01%) SAP
2 118 (14.82%) Cisco
3 97 (12.19%) Microsoft
4 44 (5.53%) ServiceNow
5 33 (4.15%) Nokia
6 28 (3.52%) Juniper
7 25 (3.14%) HP
8 24 (3.02%) Apple
8 24 (3.02%) Dell
9 23 (2.89%) Oracle
10 19 (2.39%) Ericsson
10 19 (2.39%) Fortinet
10 19 (2.39%) Remedy
10 19 (2.39%) Salesforce
11 15 (1.88%) F5
12 14 (1.76%) CheckPoint
12 14 (1.76%) Palo Alto
13 11 (1.38%) Meraki
14 9 (1.13%) Google
15 8 (1.01%) Actix