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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 193 99 64
Rank change year-on-year -94 -35 +18
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 702 747 1,329
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.43% 2.58% 3.10%
As % of the General category 2.65% 4.08% 5.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 422 430 646
10th Percentile £213 £306 £200
25th Percentile £396 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £481 £460
Median % change year-on-year +0.08% +4.57% -5.74%
75th Percentile £575 £587 £600
90th Percentile £681 £700 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £468 £450
% change year-on-year -1.07% +3.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 33 101
10th Percentile £17.63 - £12.15
25th Percentile £21.00 £14.00 £13.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.40 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.05% -39.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £50.00 £62.24 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £65.25 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £18.31 £45.00
% change year-on-year +30.16% -59.32% -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 26,471 18,328 24,630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.90% 63.34% 57.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,017 11,568 15,462
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.36% -2.73% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,759 831 1,979
10th Percentile £13.72 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.73 £16.94 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.75 £27.94 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +10.06% -7.36% -7.20%
75th Percentile £60.35 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.27 £24.42 £28.50
% change year-on-year +23.96% -14.32% +1.21%

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 June 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 June 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 5 June 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 -89 616 £475 -3.85% 688
UK excluding London -105 351 £463 -1.07% 522
London -24 280 £500 +2.04% 247
Work from Home -38 188 £500 +5.26% 243
South East -73 139 £450 -7.69% 172
North of England -60 71 £481 -8.77% 100
South West -57 45 £512 +7.74% 50
Midlands -42 40 £500 -3.61% 78
East of England -18 33 £198 -47.33% 61
North West -45 33 £463 -12.32% 54
West Midlands -50 32 £463 +12.12% 49
Yorkshire -37 24 £481 -8.33% 35
Scotland -14 19 £305 -6.15% 51
North East -16 14 £500 -11.50% 11
East Midlands -20 8 £500 -20.00% 29
Northern Ireland +1 4 £163 -54.55% 10
Wales -21 1 £500 +90.48% 13

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 9 (1.28%) OpenStack
2 8 (1.14%) Confluence
3 6 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (0.85%) Appian
4 4 (0.57%) Anypoint
4 4 (0.57%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.43%) ArcGIS
5 3 (0.43%) IIS
5 3 (0.43%) JBoss
5 3 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
5 3 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 3 (0.43%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.43%) Tomcat
5 3 (0.43%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.28%) Apache
6 2 (0.28%) Oracle Spatial
7 1 (0.14%) Camunda
7 1 (0.14%) CMS
7 1 (0.14%) Smallworld
Applications
1 21 (2.99%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.14%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.57%) AutoCAD
5 4 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.28%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.14%) Revit
7 1 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.14%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (1.71%) SAP PSCD
2 11 (1.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (1.57%) SAP BRIM
3 10 (1.42%) SAP Hybris
4 6 (0.85%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.57%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.43%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.43%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.28%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.14%) Remedy AR System
8 1 (0.14%) SAP CO
8 1 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
8 1 (0.14%) SAP IBP
8 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
8 1 (0.14%) SAP SD
8 1 (0.14%) SAP SRM
8 1 (0.14%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 55 (7.83%) AWS
1 55 (7.83%) Azure
2 32 (4.56%) GCP
3 20 (2.85%) Power Platform
4 16 (2.28%) Microsoft 365
5 14 (1.99%) SaaS
6 11 (1.57%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 9 (1.28%) dbt
8 6 (0.85%) Datadog
8 6 (0.85%) Serverless
9 5 (0.71%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (0.71%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (0.71%) Prefect
9 5 (0.71%) Snowflake
10 4 (0.57%) Amazon S3
10 4 (0.57%) Boomi
10 4 (0.57%) Dagster
10 4 (0.57%) Figma
11 3 (0.43%) AWS Step Functions
11 3 (0.43%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 48 (6.84%) MPLS
2 45 (6.41%) 5G
2 45 (6.41%) WAN
3 38 (5.41%) Firewall
4 36 (5.13%) LAN
5 26 (3.70%) 4G
5 26 (3.70%) Radio Access Network
6 25 (3.56%) Network Security
7 23 (3.28%) BGP
8 22 (3.13%) VoIP
9 21 (2.99%) Internet
9 21 (2.99%) SD-WAN
10 19 (2.71%) LTE
11 18 (2.56%) 3GPP
12 17 (2.42%) OSPF
12 17 (2.42%) VPN
13 15 (2.14%) DNS
13 15 (2.14%) VLAN
14 13 (1.85%) Broadband
14 13 (1.85%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (2.85%) Power BI
2 12 (1.71%) Looker
2 12 (1.71%) Tableau
3 11 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
4 9 (1.28%) BigQuery
5 7 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (1.00%) Big Data
5 7 (1.00%) Relational Database
6 6 (0.85%) SQL Server
7 5 (0.71%) MySQL
8 4 (0.57%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.43%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.43%) GIS
9 3 (0.43%) InfluxDB
9 3 (0.43%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.43%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.43%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.28%) Metadata
10 2 (0.28%) Power Query
10 2 (0.28%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 20 (2.85%) JIRA
2 10 (1.42%) Git
3 3 (0.43%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.28%) GitLab
4 2 (0.28%) Robot Framework
5 1 (0.14%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.14%) JMeter
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
5 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 193 (27.49%) Social Skills
2 122 (17.38%) Finance
3 97 (13.82%) Analytical Skills
4 76 (10.83%) Public Sector
5 42 (5.98%) Marketing
6 38 (5.41%) Billing
7 32 (4.56%) Electronics
8 28 (3.99%) Manufacturing
9 27 (3.85%) Retail
10 17 (2.42%) Legal
11 16 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
11 16 (2.28%) Organisational Skills
12 13 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (0.85%) Banking
14 6 (0.85%) Military
15 5 (0.71%) Publishing
16 4 (0.57%) Aerospace
17 3 (0.43%) Financial Institution
17 3 (0.43%) Police
Job Titles
1 96 (13.68%) Architect
2 57 (8.12%) Analyst
3 53 (7.55%) Senior
4 50 (7.12%) Lead
5 43 (6.13%) Consultant
6 40 (5.70%) Solutions Architect
7 38 (5.41%) Network Engineer
7 38 (5.41%) Telecoms Manager
8 33 (4.70%) Project Manager
9 27 (3.85%) Designer
10 26 (3.70%) ServiceNow Architect
11 25 (3.56%) Developer
12 22 (3.13%) Business Analyst
13 21 (2.99%) Sales Manager
14 19 (2.71%) Data Engineer
14 19 (2.71%) Delivery Manager
15 18 (2.56%) Programme Manager
16 17 (2.42%) Enterprise Architect
16 17 (2.42%) Telecoms Architect
17 15 (2.14%) Telecoms Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (5.27%) REST
2 23 (3.28%) SOAP
3 11 (1.57%) Middleware
4 10 (1.42%) Kafka
5 9 (1.28%) .NET
6 8 (1.14%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (1.14%) ONVIF
6 8 (1.14%) XML
7 6 (0.85%) JSON
7 6 (0.85%) OpenAPI
7 6 (0.85%) Swagger
8 5 (0.71%) RESTful
9 4 (0.57%) .NET Framework
9 4 (0.57%) RAML
10 3 (0.43%) GraphQL
10 3 (0.43%) OpenTelemetry
10 3 (0.43%) RabbitMQ
10 3 (0.43%) RFC 2544
10 3 (0.43%) Web Services
11 2 (0.28%) SAP Basis
Miscellaneous
1 31 (4.42%) Data Centre
2 30 (4.27%) Onboarding
3 25 (3.56%) CMDB
3 25 (3.56%) Data Protection Act
4 24 (3.42%) Cloud Native
5 18 (2.56%) Driving Licence
5 18 (2.56%) Product Ownership
6 17 (2.42%) Virtual Team
7 13 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
7 13 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (1.14%) EPoS
8 8 (1.14%) Management Information System
8 8 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
8 8 (1.14%) TM Forum
8 8 (1.14%) Video\Live Streaming
9 7 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
9 7 (1.00%) NHS
10 6 (0.85%) Web Conferencing
11 5 (0.71%) AI Agents
11 5 (0.71%) Fibre Optics
Operating Systems
1 27 (3.85%) Windows
2 23 (3.28%) Linux
3 14 (1.99%) Windows 10
4 10 (1.42%) Unix
5 4 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.43%) Debian
6 3 (0.43%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.43%) VMS
6 3 (0.43%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.28%) Android
7 2 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.14%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 114 (16.24%) Stakeholder Management
2 90 (12.82%) Agile
3 89 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
4 67 (9.54%) ITIL
5 61 (8.69%) Continuous Improvement
6 59 (8.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 57 (8.12%) Decision-Making
8 53 (7.55%) Project Management
9 50 (7.12%) Migration
10 49 (6.98%) Project Delivery
11 48 (6.84%) Customer Service
12 45 (6.41%) Analytics
12 45 (6.41%) Business Intelligence
12 45 (6.41%) Roadmaps
13 43 (6.13%) CRM
14 41 (5.84%) CI/CD
15 39 (5.56%) Data Protection
15 39 (5.56%) Service Management
16 38 (5.41%) ITSM
17 36 (5.13%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 48 (6.84%) Python
2 35 (4.99%) SQL
3 16 (2.28%) Java
4 14 (1.99%) JavaScript
5 10 (1.42%) C#
6 8 (1.14%) C++
7 6 (0.85%) Bash
7 6 (0.85%) R
8 4 (0.57%) DataWeave
9 3 (0.43%) Apex Code
9 3 (0.43%) C
9 3 (0.43%) LookML
10 2 (0.28%) Go
10 2 (0.28%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.28%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.28%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.28%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.14%) ABAP
11 1 (0.14%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.14%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 121 (17.24%) Security Cleared
2 88 (12.54%) SC Cleared
3 67 (9.54%) Degree
4 38 (5.41%) Cisco Certification
5 23 (3.28%) CCNA
6 22 (3.13%) DV Cleared
7 20 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
8 19 (2.71%) CCNP
9 18 (2.56%) A+ Certification
9 18 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
10 15 (2.14%) PMP
11 13 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
12 11 (1.57%) PMI Certification
13 10 (1.42%) Network+ Certification
14 8 (1.14%) Master's Degree
14 8 (1.14%) MCSA
15 6 (0.85%) ACCA
15 6 (0.85%) CCIE
15 6 (0.85%) CIMA
16 5 (0.71%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (3.28%) SLA
2 18 (2.56%) GDPR
2 18 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (2.42%) PMO
4 14 (1.99%) NCSC
4 14 (1.99%) QA
5 12 (1.71%) Data Quality
6 11 (1.57%) GRC
7 9 (1.28%) NIST
8 6 (0.85%) RMADS
9 4 (0.57%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.14%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.14%) IFRS
10 1 (0.14%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.14%) NEBOSH
10 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.14%) SOC 1
10 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 13 (1.85%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.57%) Docker
3 10 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.71%) vSphere
5 3 (0.43%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.43%) QEMU
5 3 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.43%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 39 (5.56%) Kubernetes
2 14 (1.99%) Ansible
2 14 (1.99%) Grafana
2 14 (1.99%) Prometheus
3 11 (1.57%) Terraform
4 4 (0.57%) Cisco Prime
5 3 (0.43%) Iperf
5 3 (0.43%) Podman
5 3 (0.43%) vCenter Server
5 3 (0.43%) vRealize
6 2 (0.28%) Amdocs OSS
6 2 (0.28%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.28%) Nmap
6 2 (0.28%) NSN NetAct
6 2 (0.28%) SCCM
7 1 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
7 1 (0.14%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.14%) Rancher
7 1 (0.14%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 77 (10.97%) Microsoft
2 63 (8.97%) Cisco
2 63 (8.97%) ServiceNow
3 43 (6.13%) SAP
4 42 (5.98%) Nokia
5 25 (3.56%) Salesforce
6 22 (3.13%) BT
6 22 (3.13%) Oracle
7 21 (2.99%) Ericsson
8 17 (2.42%) Juniper
9 16 (2.28%) Fortinet
10 15 (2.14%) Huawei
11 14 (1.99%) Remedy
12 13 (1.85%) CheckPoint
12 13 (1.85%) Google
12 13 (1.85%) VMware
13 11 (1.57%) F5
13 11 (1.57%) MuleSoft
14 8 (1.14%) Databricks
14 8 (1.14%) Palo Alto