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

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 173 87 61
Rank change year-on-year -86 -26 +23
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 734 850 1,419
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.59% 2.89% 3.25%
As % of the General category 2.89% 4.57% 5.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 460 475 765
10th Percentile £181 £305 £200
25th Percentile £363 £387 £343
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -7.69%
75th Percentile £575 £603 £588
90th Percentile £675 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £461 £495 £450
% change year-on-year -6.82% +10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 34 72
10th Percentile £20.41 £14.00 £12.15
25th Percentile £20.50 £15.05 £12.28
Median hourly rate £23.83 £23.59 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -47.58% -14.29%
75th Percentile £41.25 £59.38 £66.38
90th Percentile £59.05 £63.53 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.75 £23.00 £24.50
% change year-on-year +3.26% -6.12% -53.33%

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 25,441 18,583 25,476
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.08% 63.16% 58.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,768 11,897 16,124
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,603 774 1,917
10th Percentile £13.66 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.15 £15.39
Median hourly rate £27.71 £28.68 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.37% +2.41% -20.00%
75th Percentile £59.00 £56.00 £51.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £26.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -5.09% +1.92% -14.81%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -93 636 £475 -5.00% 506
UK excluding London -93 391 £461 -6.82% 399
London -18 269 £500 -5.66% 152
Work from Home -50 175 £475 -2.56% 138
South East -64 160 £463 -7.50% 123
North of England -83 63 £463 -9.31% 83
Midlands -46 60 £525 +2.19% 51
South West -58 46 £525 - 51
West Midlands -48 43 £550 +7.32% 35
East of England -28 31 £475 +18.75% 78
North West -61 30 £463 -11.69% 45
East Midlands -23 17 £500 -20.00% 16
Scotland -4 16 £215 -33.85% 25
North East -11 16 £338 -6.90% 10
Yorkshire -51 16 £481 -12.50% 33
Wales -2 10 £160 -56.16% 9
Northern Ireland +4 8 £150 -72.73%

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 (1.50%) Microsoft Exchange
2 10 (1.36%) OpenStack
3 9 (1.23%) Confluence
4 7 (0.95%) SharePoint
5 6 (0.82%) Apache Spark
5 6 (0.82%) Appian
6 5 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.41%) Apache
7 3 (0.41%) ArcGIS
7 3 (0.41%) IIS
7 3 (0.41%) JBoss
7 3 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.41%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.27%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.27%) CMS
8 2 (0.27%) Oracle Spatial
9 1 (0.14%) Camunda
9 1 (0.14%) Headless CMS
9 1 (0.14%) Smallworld
Applications
1 36 (4.90%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (2.72%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.68%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.27%) MicroStation
6 2 (0.27%) Trello
7 1 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.14%) FrameMaker
7 1 (0.14%) MadCap Flare
7 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (1.77%) SAP PSCD
2 12 (1.63%) SAP BRIM
2 12 (1.63%) SAP Hybris
3 9 (1.23%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.54%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.41%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.27%) SAP CO
7 2 (0.27%) SAP FI/CO
7 2 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
8 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.14%) Primavera
8 1 (0.14%) Remedy AR System
8 1 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
8 1 (0.14%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.14%) SAP IBP
8 1 (0.14%) SAP SRM
8 1 (0.14%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 69 (9.40%) Azure
2 62 (8.45%) AWS
3 41 (5.59%) GCP
4 39 (5.31%) Microsoft 365
5 21 (2.86%) Power Platform
6 13 (1.77%) SaaS
6 13 (1.77%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 9 (1.23%) GitHub
8 8 (1.09%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (0.95%) dbt
9 7 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (0.68%) Datadog
10 5 (0.68%) 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%) Slack
11 4 (0.54%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 41 (5.59%) Firewall
1 41 (5.59%) WAN
2 40 (5.45%) 5G
3 35 (4.77%) MPLS
4 28 (3.81%) LAN
5 27 (3.68%) SD-WAN
6 26 (3.54%) Network Security
7 24 (3.27%) 4G
8 22 (3.00%) DNS
9 21 (2.86%) BGP
9 21 (2.86%) Internet
10 20 (2.72%) VPN
11 18 (2.45%) LTE
11 18 (2.45%) Radio Access Network
12 16 (2.18%) Wireless
13 15 (2.04%) 3GPP
13 15 (2.04%) Broadband
14 14 (1.91%) OSPF
14 14 (1.91%) VLAN
14 14 (1.91%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (2.72%) Power BI
2 12 (1.63%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (1.63%) Looker
3 11 (1.50%) Tableau
4 9 (1.23%) BigQuery
5 8 (1.09%) Big Data
5 8 (1.09%) MySQL
6 7 (0.95%) Amazon Redshift
6 7 (0.95%) Relational Database
7 6 (0.82%) PostgreSQL
7 6 (0.82%) SQL Server
8 5 (0.68%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.41%) GIS
9 3 (0.41%) Metadata
9 3 (0.41%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.41%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (0.27%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.27%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 23 (3.13%) JIRA
2 8 (1.09%) Jenkins
3 7 (0.95%) GitLab
4 6 (0.82%) Git
5 4 (0.54%) JUnit
6 3 (0.41%) Storybook
7 2 (0.27%) Appium
7 2 (0.27%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.27%) JMeter
7 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.14%) Maven
8 1 (0.14%) Mockito
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 216 (29.43%) Social Skills
2 184 (25.07%) Finance
3 152 (20.71%) Public Sector
4 114 (15.53%) Marketing
5 103 (14.03%) Electronics
6 97 (13.22%) Manufacturing
7 89 (12.13%) Analytical Skills
8 37 (5.04%) Billing
9 20 (2.72%) Retail
10 19 (2.59%) Organisational Skills
11 18 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
11 18 (2.45%) Legal
12 14 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (1.09%) Military
13 8 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.95%) Banking
15 3 (0.41%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.41%) Publishing
16 2 (0.27%) Aerospace
16 2 (0.27%) Law
Job Titles
1 81 (11.04%) Architect
2 69 (9.40%) Analyst
3 51 (6.95%) Lead
4 47 (6.40%) Senior
5 41 (5.59%) Consultant
6 39 (5.31%) Project Manager
7 34 (4.63%) Business Analyst
8 33 (4.50%) Network Engineer
9 29 (3.95%) Telecoms Manager
10 27 (3.68%) Developer
11 26 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
12 24 (3.27%) IT Support
13 21 (2.86%) Data Engineer
14 19 (2.59%) Desktop Support
14 19 (2.59%) Programme Manager
14 19 (2.59%) ServiceNow Architect
15 17 (2.32%) Designer
16 15 (2.04%) Coordinator
16 15 (2.04%) IT Manager
17 14 (1.91%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.09%) REST
2 18 (2.45%) SOAP
3 12 (1.63%) Kafka
4 11 (1.50%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (1.09%) RESTful
6 7 (0.95%) .NET
6 7 (0.95%) Middleware
7 6 (0.82%) RabbitMQ
7 6 (0.82%) Spring
8 5 (0.68%) OpenAPI
8 5 (0.68%) React
8 5 (0.68%) Spring Boot
8 5 (0.68%) Swagger
9 4 (0.54%) HTML
9 4 (0.54%) XML
10 3 (0.41%) 802.1X
10 3 (0.41%) CSS
10 3 (0.41%) JSON
10 3 (0.41%) RFC 2544
10 3 (0.41%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 34 (4.63%) Data Centre
2 29 (3.95%) Data Protection Act
3 28 (3.81%) Onboarding
4 25 (3.41%) Driving Licence
4 25 (3.41%) Product Ownership
5 22 (3.00%) Cloud Native
6 16 (2.18%) CMDB
7 13 (1.77%) Mobile App
8 12 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
8 12 (1.63%) NHS
8 12 (1.63%) Virtual Team
9 11 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
10 10 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
11 9 (1.23%) IoT
11 9 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
13 7 (0.95%) Algorithms
13 7 (0.95%) Web Conferencing
14 6 (0.82%) Management Information System
14 6 (0.82%) TM Forum
Operating Systems
1 40 (5.45%) Windows
2 23 (3.13%) Windows 10
3 21 (2.86%) Android
3 21 (2.86%) Linux
4 15 (2.04%) Mac OS
5 7 (0.95%) Unix
6 5 (0.68%) Apple iOS
6 5 (0.68%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.41%) Debian
8 3 (0.41%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.41%) VMS
9 1 (0.14%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (15.94%) Business Intelligence
2 111 (15.12%) Stakeholder Management
3 102 (13.90%) Agile
4 101 (13.76%) Programme Management
5 96 (13.08%) Digital Marketing
6 91 (12.40%) Problem-Solving
7 80 (10.90%) Migration
8 78 (10.63%) Continuous Improvement
9 68 (9.26%) ITIL
10 60 (8.17%) Project Management
10 60 (8.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 50 (6.81%) Customer Service
11 50 (6.81%) Decision-Making
12 49 (6.68%) Logistics
12 49 (6.68%) Workflow
13 46 (6.27%) Analytics
14 45 (6.13%) Project Delivery
15 44 (5.99%) CI/CD
15 44 (5.99%) Roadmaps
16 41 (5.59%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 54 (7.36%) Python
2 39 (5.31%) SQL
3 22 (3.00%) JavaScript
4 19 (2.59%) Java
5 11 (1.50%) Bash
6 8 (1.09%) PowerShell
7 7 (0.95%) C++
7 7 (0.95%) TypeScript
8 6 (0.82%) C#
8 6 (0.82%) Go
8 6 (0.82%) R
9 3 (0.41%) C
9 3 (0.41%) LookML
9 3 (0.41%) 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 (0.14%) Cypher
11 1 (0.14%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 158 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 130 (17.71%) SC Cleared
3 65 (8.86%) Degree
4 25 (3.41%) DV Cleared
5 20 (2.72%) PMP
6 17 (2.32%) Cisco Certification
7 16 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
9 13 (1.77%) PMI Certification
10 12 (1.63%) CCNP
11 11 (1.50%) ITIL Certification
12 10 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (1.09%) A+ Certification
13 8 (1.09%) Azure Certification
13 8 (1.09%) Network+ Certification
14 7 (0.95%) ACCA
14 7 (0.95%) AWS Certification
14 7 (0.95%) CCIE
14 7 (0.95%) CIMA
15 6 (0.82%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.81%) SLA
2 19 (2.59%) GDPR
2 19 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 19 (2.59%) PMO
2 19 (2.59%) QA
3 14 (1.91%) Data Quality
4 11 (1.50%) NCSC
5 9 (1.23%) GRC
5 9 (1.23%) NIST
6 7 (0.95%) RMADS
7 5 (0.68%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.41%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.14%) EU AI Act
10 1 (0.14%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.14%) SOC 1
10 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 23 (3.13%) Active Directory
2 14 (1.91%) Docker
3 9 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.41%) Hyper-V
4 3 (0.41%) QEMU
4 3 (0.41%) vSphere
5 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
5 1 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 37 (5.04%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.04%) Ansible
3 14 (1.91%) Grafana
4 11 (1.50%) Prometheus
4 11 (1.50%) Terraform
5 6 (0.82%) SCCM
6 4 (0.54%) Argo
6 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.41%) Cisco Prime
7 3 (0.41%) Iperf
7 3 (0.41%) Podman
7 3 (0.41%) vRealize
8 2 (0.27%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.27%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.27%) Kibana
8 2 (0.27%) Nmap
9 1 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
9 1 (0.14%) Fluentd
9 1 (0.14%) Rancher
9 1 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 116 (15.80%) SAP
2 89 (12.13%) Microsoft
3 82 (11.17%) Cisco
4 54 (7.36%) ServiceNow
5 35 (4.77%) Nokia
6 20 (2.72%) Ericsson
6 20 (2.72%) Fortinet
7 19 (2.59%) Juniper
7 19 (2.59%) Oracle
7 19 (2.59%) Salesforce
8 18 (2.45%) BT
9 15 (2.04%) Google
10 14 (1.91%) Huawei
11 13 (1.77%) CheckPoint
12 12 (1.63%) F5
12 12 (1.63%) VMware
13 11 (1.50%) Meraki
13 11 (1.50%) Remedy
14 10 (1.36%) Palo Alto
15 8 (1.09%) Apple