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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 158 80 64
Rank change year-on-year -78 -16 +18
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 768 868 1,407
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.77% 2.97% 3.17%
As % of the General category 3.10% 4.73% 5.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 481 475 797
10th Percentile £170 £304 £200
25th Percentile £340 £387 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £510 £450
Median % change year-on-year -8.04% +13.33% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £588
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £504 £450
% change year-on-year -10.63% +11.89% +0.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 31 54
10th Percentile £17.71 £14.00 £12.15
25th Percentile £20.50 £19.75 £12.52
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year -13.36% -25.17% -30.00%
75th Percentile £24.81 £60.00 £67.17
90th Percentile £50.50 £63.00 £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 24,741 18,363 25,858
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.88% 62.76% 58.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,464 11,702 16,523
10th Percentile £300 £300 £266
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 1,521 669 1,798
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.05 £12.80
25th Percentile £17.05 £20.12 £15.29
Median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £25.75
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +16.50% -26.43%
75th Percentile £57.25 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £27.64 £24.94
% change year-on-year -16.79% +10.85% -16.88%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -75 668 £475 -7.32% 488
UK excluding London -66 435 £450 -10.63% 408
London -25 268 £475 -11.21% 133
Work from Home -63 177 £475 -5.94% 166
South East -61 156 £469 -6.85% 147
Midlands -31 75 £500 -2.44% 55
North of England -70 70 £388 -22.50% 87
South West -37 58 £525 -3.67% 38
West Midlands -46 50 £550 +7.32% 36
East of England -12 37 £475 +5.56% 55
Scotland +19 29 £309 -15.41% 30
North West -50 28 £301 -40.93% 41
East Midlands -20 25 £158 -74.80% 19
North East -3 23 £175 -51.72% 10
Yorkshire -52 18 £481 -8.33% 41
Wales -6 9 £160 -56.16% 11
Northern Ireland -2 8 £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 10 (1.30%) SharePoint
2 9 (1.17%) Appian
2 9 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.04%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.04%) Confluence
4 7 (0.91%) 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 51 (6.64%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (2.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.69%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (1.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.91%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.39%) 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%) FrameMaker
8 1 (0.13%) MadCap Flare
Business Applications
1 17 (2.21%) SAP PSCD
2 16 (2.08%) SAP BRIM
2 16 (2.08%) SAP Hybris
3 10 (1.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.78%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.39%) BambooHR
5 3 (0.39%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.26%) Primavera
6 2 (0.26%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.13%) Remedy AR System
7 1 (0.13%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.13%) SAP SRM
7 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 74 (9.64%) Azure
2 56 (7.29%) AWS
3 50 (6.51%) Microsoft 365
4 39 (5.08%) GCP
5 17 (2.21%) Power Platform
5 17 (2.21%) SAP Commerce Cloud
6 13 (1.69%) SaaS
7 10 (1.30%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (1.04%) Dynamics 365
8 8 (1.04%) GitHub
9 6 (0.78%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (0.65%) Datadog
10 5 (0.65%) dbt
11 4 (0.52%) Entra ID
11 4 (0.52%) Miro
11 4 (0.52%) Slack
12 3 (0.39%) Dagster
12 3 (0.39%) Prefect
12 3 (0.39%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 3 (0.39%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 49 (6.38%) WAN
2 40 (5.21%) Firewall
3 37 (4.82%) 5G
3 37 (4.82%) LAN
3 37 (4.82%) MPLS
4 35 (4.56%) Wireless
5 27 (3.52%) Network Security
5 27 (3.52%) SD-WAN
6 26 (3.39%) 4G
6 26 (3.39%) Radio Access Network
7 21 (2.73%) VPN
8 20 (2.60%) BGP
9 19 (2.47%) Internet
9 19 (2.47%) LTE
10 18 (2.34%) Broadband
10 18 (2.34%) DNS
10 18 (2.34%) SDH
11 17 (2.21%) VoIP
12 14 (1.82%) 2G
12 14 (1.82%) 3GPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (2.08%) Power BI
2 12 (1.56%) MySQL
3 10 (1.30%) Tableau
4 9 (1.17%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (1.04%) Looker
5 8 (1.04%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.91%) Big Data
6 7 (0.91%) GIS
6 7 (0.91%) Relational Database
7 6 (0.78%) SQL Server
8 5 (0.65%) BigQuery
8 5 (0.65%) PostgreSQL
9 4 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.39%) Metadata
10 3 (0.39%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.39%) RDBMS
11 2 (0.26%) Apache Cassandra
11 2 (0.26%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.26%) MongoDB
11 2 (0.26%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 23 (2.99%) JIRA
2 9 (1.17%) GitLab
3 7 (0.91%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.78%) Git
5 5 (0.65%) Robot Framework
6 4 (0.52%) JUnit
6 4 (0.52%) Selenium
7 3 (0.39%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.39%) 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%) Maven
9 1 (0.13%) Mockito
9 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 239 (31.12%) Finance
2 224 (29.17%) Social Skills
3 200 (26.04%) Public Sector
4 153 (19.92%) Marketing
5 147 (19.14%) Electronics
6 141 (18.36%) Manufacturing
7 85 (11.07%) Analytical Skills
8 40 (5.21%) Billing
9 22 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
10 19 (2.47%) Legal
11 17 (2.21%) Documentation Skills
12 12 (1.56%) Retail
13 10 (1.30%) Military
14 9 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
15 8 (1.04%) Banking
16 6 (0.78%) Law
17 5 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
18 3 (0.39%) Financial Institution
18 3 (0.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 2 (0.26%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 86 (11.20%) Architect
2 71 (9.24%) Analyst
3 46 (5.99%) Consultant
4 45 (5.86%) Lead
5 43 (5.60%) Business Analyst
6 41 (5.34%) IT Support
6 41 (5.34%) Project Manager
6 41 (5.34%) Senior
7 35 (4.56%) Network Engineer
8 34 (4.43%) Desktop Support
9 29 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
10 24 (3.13%) 2nd Line Support
11 23 (2.99%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
11 23 (2.99%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
11 23 (2.99%) Telecoms Manager
12 22 (2.86%) Developer
13 20 (2.60%) Migration Engineer
14 19 (2.47%) Coordinator
14 19 (2.47%) IT Engineer
15 18 (2.34%) ServiceNow Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (3.52%) REST
2 19 (2.47%) SOAP
3 8 (1.04%) .NET
3 8 (1.04%) Elastic Stack
3 8 (1.04%) Kafka
4 6 (0.78%) Middleware
4 6 (0.78%) RESTful
5 5 (0.65%) RabbitMQ
5 5 (0.65%) Web Services
5 5 (0.65%) XML
6 4 (0.52%) HTML
6 4 (0.52%) JSON
6 4 (0.52%) React
6 4 (0.52%) Spring
6 4 (0.52%) Spring Boot
7 3 (0.39%) 802.1X
7 3 (0.39%) GraphQL
7 3 (0.39%) Jinja
7 3 (0.39%) RFC 2544
7 3 (0.39%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 53 (6.90%) Data Centre
2 31 (4.04%) Driving Licence
3 29 (3.78%) Data Protection Act
4 26 (3.39%) Product Ownership
5 21 (2.73%) Onboarding
6 19 (2.47%) CMDB
7 18 (2.34%) Cloud Native
8 17 (2.21%) IoT
9 14 (1.82%) NHS
10 13 (1.69%) Mobile App
11 12 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
12 10 (1.30%) Virtual Team
13 9 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
14 8 (1.04%) Fibre Optics
15 7 (0.91%) Algorithms
15 7 (0.91%) Analytical Mindset
15 7 (0.91%) Enterprise Cloud
15 7 (0.91%) SCADA
15 7 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
16 6 (0.78%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 39 (5.08%) Android
2 37 (4.82%) Windows
3 31 (4.04%) Mac OS
4 20 (2.60%) Linux
5 18 (2.34%) Windows 10
6 7 (0.91%) Unix
7 6 (0.78%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.65%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.39%) Debian
9 3 (0.39%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.39%) VMS
10 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.13%) CentOS
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 153 (19.92%) Business Intelligence
2 145 (18.88%) Programme Management
3 140 (18.23%) Digital Marketing
4 112 (14.58%) Stakeholder Management
5 106 (13.80%) Agile
6 100 (13.02%) Problem-Solving
7 84 (10.94%) Migration
8 82 (10.68%) Continuous Improvement
9 67 (8.72%) ITIL
10 64 (8.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 58 (7.55%) Workflow
12 55 (7.16%) Logistics
13 53 (6.90%) Project Management
14 48 (6.25%) Customer Service
15 42 (5.47%) Decision-Making
15 42 (5.47%) Roadmaps
16 40 (5.21%) CI/CD
16 40 (5.21%) Data Protection
16 40 (5.21%) DevOps
17 39 (5.08%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 53 (6.90%) Python
2 36 (4.69%) SQL
3 24 (3.13%) JavaScript
4 19 (2.47%) Java
5 10 (1.30%) PowerShell
6 9 (1.17%) Bash
7 6 (0.78%) C++
7 6 (0.78%) TypeScript
8 5 (0.65%) 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
1 183 (23.83%) Security Cleared
2 154 (20.05%) SC Cleared
3 65 (8.46%) Degree
4 23 (2.99%) DV Cleared
5 20 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (2.08%) Cisco Certification
7 14 (1.82%) PMP
8 12 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
9 11 (1.43%) CCNP
9 11 (1.43%) ITIL Certification
10 10 (1.30%) ACCA
10 10 (1.30%) PMI Certification
11 9 (1.17%) Azure Certification
12 7 (0.91%) AWS Certification
12 7 (0.91%) CIMA
13 6 (0.78%) CCIE
13 6 (0.78%) CCNA
13 6 (0.78%) ISTQB
13 6 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
14 5 (0.65%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.04%) SLA
2 25 (3.26%) GDPR
3 21 (2.73%) QA
4 20 (2.60%) PMO
5 17 (2.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 16 (2.08%) Data Quality
7 12 (1.56%) NIST
8 10 (1.30%) GRC
9 9 (1.17%) NCSC
10 7 (0.91%) RMADS
11 5 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 5 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.52%) IFRS
13 3 (0.39%) Accessibility
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%) COSO
15 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 19 (2.47%) Active Directory
2 16 (2.08%) 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 27 (3.52%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.08%) Ansible
3 12 (1.56%) Grafana
4 9 (1.17%) Prometheus
4 9 (1.17%) Terraform
5 6 (0.78%) SCCM
6 5 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.52%) Argo
8 3 (0.39%) Amdocs OSS
8 3 (0.39%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.39%) Iperf
8 3 (0.39%) Podman
9 2 (0.26%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.26%) Nmap
9 2 (0.26%) vRealize
10 1 (0.13%) Consul
10 1 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.13%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.13%) Rancher
10 1 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 165 (21.48%) SAP
2 105 (13.67%) Cisco
3 87 (11.33%) Microsoft
4 51 (6.64%) ServiceNow
5 34 (4.43%) Nokia
6 25 (3.26%) HP
6 25 (3.26%) Juniper
7 24 (3.13%) Dell
7 24 (3.13%) Oracle
8 23 (2.99%) Apple
9 21 (2.73%) Fortinet
10 17 (2.21%) Ericsson
11 13 (1.69%) Salesforce
12 12 (1.56%) CheckPoint
12 12 (1.56%) F5
12 12 (1.56%) Google
12 12 (1.56%) Huawei
12 12 (1.56%) Remedy
13 11 (1.43%) BT
13 11 (1.43%) Meraki