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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 167 102 70
Rank change year-on-year -65 -32 +4
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 916 827 1,187
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.68% 2.51% 3.10%
As % of the General category 3.02% 3.94% 5.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 516 486 546
10th Percentile £213 £263 £223
25th Percentile £380 £373 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £457 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -8.65% -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £664 £675 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £500
% change year-on-year - -10.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 48 90
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.00 £12.75
25th Percentile £16.25 £14.75 £35.00
Median hourly rate £21.00 £21.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year - -63.48% +4.55%
75th Percentile £50.00 £51.44 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £68.93 £77.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.47 £16.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +27.91% -75.38% +23.81%

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 30,281 20,994 22,109
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.57% 63.64% 57.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,811 12,998 13,405
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,436 1,187 1,144
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.66
25th Percentile £16.46 £16.17 £17.44
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -32.93% +36.36%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £70.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.40 £38.12
% change year-on-year +40.19% -43.86% +46.76%

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 10 September 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 10 September 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 10 September 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 -75 755 £482 +1.50% 850
UK excluding London -65 457 £450 - 562
London -38 352 £507 +6.74% 332
Work from Home -18 269 £475 -3.16% 299
South East -46 199 £470 -6.00% 205
Scotland -4 64 £300 +9.09% 33
North of England -59 57 £463 +14.20% 99
East of England -5 49 £195 -48.00% 74
South West -72 49 £469 -10.67% 67
Yorkshire -26 32 £475 +95.88% 38
Midlands -75 32 £460 +21.05% 83
West Midlands -61 31 £460 +21.05% 47
North West -61 24 £463 -2.63% 53
Wales -7 8 £200 -6.98% 10
Northern Ireland +1 5 £290 +152.17% 5
Channel Islands -2 2 £606 -
East Midlands -19 1 - - 36
North East -46 1 - - 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 19 (2.07%) Confluence
2 17 (1.86%) OpenStack
3 14 (1.53%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.09%) ArcGIS
5 8 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.44%) Anypoint
7 3 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.22%) CMS
9 1 (0.11%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.11%) Camunda
9 1 (0.11%) IIS
9 1 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 1 (0.11%) Smallworld
Applications
1 37 (4.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (3.17%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (2.62%) MS Visio
4 12 (1.31%) Microsoft Project
5 10 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.55%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.33%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.22%) MicroStation
8 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.11%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.11%) InDesign
9 1 (0.11%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.11%) Revit
9 1 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 21 (2.29%) SAP PSCD
2 12 (1.31%) SAP BRIM
3 10 (1.09%) SAP Hybris
4 8 (0.87%) SAP FI
5 7 (0.76%) SAP FI-CA
6 6 (0.66%) Remedy ITSM
7 5 (0.55%) NetSuite
7 5 (0.55%) Sage X3
7 5 (0.55%) Salesforce CRM
7 5 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
8 3 (0.33%) Remedy AR System
8 3 (0.33%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
9 1 (0.11%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.11%) Primavera
9 1 (0.11%) SAP CO
9 1 (0.11%) SAP FI/CO
9 1 (0.11%) SAP FS
9 1 (0.11%) SAP IS-U
9 1 (0.11%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 89 (9.72%) AWS
1 89 (9.72%) Azure
2 63 (6.88%) GCP
3 21 (2.29%) Microsoft 365
4 17 (1.86%) GitHub
5 16 (1.75%) Entra ID
6 14 (1.53%) Power Platform
6 14 (1.53%) SaaS
7 12 (1.31%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 10 (1.09%) Cloud Computing
8 10 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (0.98%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (0.87%) dbt
11 7 (0.76%) OneDrive
11 7 (0.76%) Snowflake
12 6 (0.66%) Cloud Functions
13 5 (0.55%) Figma
13 5 (0.55%) Fivetran
13 5 (0.55%) OpenShift
13 5 (0.55%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 120 (13.10%) WAN
2 93 (10.15%) LAN
3 92 (10.04%) 5G
4 87 (9.50%) MPLS
5 63 (6.88%) Radio Access Network
6 62 (6.77%) 4G
7 57 (6.22%) Firewall
8 37 (4.04%) SD-WAN
9 35 (3.82%) DNS
10 33 (3.60%) Wi-Fi
11 31 (3.38%) BGP
12 30 (3.28%) 3GPP
13 29 (3.17%) Network Security
13 29 (3.17%) SDH
14 28 (3.06%) VoIP
15 27 (2.95%) LTE
16 26 (2.84%) TCP/IP
17 25 (2.73%) Wireshark
18 24 (2.62%) VPN
19 23 (2.51%) 3G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.64%) Data Warehouse
2 13 (1.42%) BigQuery
2 13 (1.42%) NoSQL
2 13 (1.42%) Power BI
3 10 (1.09%) GIS
3 10 (1.09%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (0.98%) Tableau
5 8 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
6 7 (0.76%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.76%) MySQL
7 6 (0.66%) Redis
8 5 (0.55%) Looker
8 5 (0.55%) Metadata
9 4 (0.44%) Apache Cassandra
9 4 (0.44%) SQL Server
10 3 (0.33%) Big Data
10 3 (0.33%) BusinessObjects
10 3 (0.33%) SAP BW
10 3 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
10 3 (0.33%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 36 (3.93%) JIRA
2 28 (3.06%) Git
3 15 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 10 (1.09%) GitLab
5 7 (0.76%) Selenium
6 3 (0.33%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.22%) JMeter
7 2 (0.22%) Locust
7 2 (0.22%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.22%) TestCafe
8 1 (0.11%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.11%) Newman
8 1 (0.11%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.11%) TestRail
8 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 266 (29.04%) Social Skills
2 138 (15.07%) Finance
3 119 (12.99%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (6.77%) Public Sector
5 37 (4.04%) Billing
6 36 (3.93%) Documentation Skills
7 30 (3.28%) Retail
8 28 (3.06%) Organisational Skills
9 19 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
9 19 (2.07%) Marketing
10 17 (1.86%) Legal
11 16 (1.75%) Manufacturing
11 16 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (1.64%) Aerospace
13 13 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 10 (1.09%) Publishing
15 8 (0.87%) Police
16 7 (0.76%) Banking
17 4 (0.44%) Electronics
17 4 (0.44%) Games
Job Titles
1 133 (14.52%) Architect
2 80 (8.73%) Senior
3 70 (7.64%) Analyst
4 69 (7.53%) Lead
5 68 (7.42%) Consultant
6 66 (7.21%) Network Engineer
7 62 (6.77%) Project Manager
8 55 (6.00%) Field Engineer
9 52 (5.68%) Telecoms Engineer
10 39 (4.26%) Designer
11 37 (4.04%) Solutions Architect
12 35 (3.82%) Developer
13 34 (3.71%) Telecoms Manager
14 30 (3.28%) ServiceNow Architect
15 28 (3.06%) Enterprise Architect
16 26 (2.84%) Business Analyst
17 24 (2.62%) Data Engineer
18 23 (2.51%) Telecoms Architect
19 22 (2.40%) SAP Consultant
20 21 (2.29%) Field Telecoms Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (6.11%) REST
2 34 (3.71%) SOAP
3 21 (2.29%) Terraform
4 18 (1.97%) Kafka
5 16 (1.75%) NETCONF
5 16 (1.75%) YANG
6 15 (1.64%) RESTful
7 13 (1.42%) HTML
7 13 (1.42%) ONVIF
8 12 (1.31%) CSS
8 12 (1.31%) Elastic Stack
8 12 (1.31%) XML
9 10 (1.09%) AngularJS
9 10 (1.09%) React
10 9 (0.98%) FastAPI
11 8 (0.87%) JSON
11 8 (0.87%) Middleware
11 8 (0.87%) OpenAPI
11 8 (0.87%) Swagger
12 7 (0.76%) 802.1X
Miscellaneous
1 51 (5.57%) Data Centre
2 49 (5.35%) CMDB
3 47 (5.13%) Driving Licence
4 42 (4.59%) Onboarding
5 36 (3.93%) Cloud Native
6 22 (2.40%) Analytical Mindset
7 19 (2.07%) Management Information System
8 18 (1.97%) Product Ownership
9 17 (1.86%) Virtual Team
10 16 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
10 16 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
10 16 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (1.53%) Video\Live Streaming
12 13 (1.42%) TM Forum
13 11 (1.20%) Video Conferencing
14 10 (1.09%) Data Structures
15 9 (0.98%) Algorithms
15 9 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
15 9 (0.98%) Private Cloud
15 9 (0.98%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 53 (5.79%) Windows
2 47 (5.13%) Linux
3 14 (1.53%) Windows 10
4 12 (1.31%) Windows Server
5 11 (1.20%) Unix
6 9 (0.98%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.33%) Android
7 3 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.33%) VMS
8 2 (0.22%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.22%) CentOS
8 2 (0.22%) Embedded Linux
8 2 (0.22%) OpenVMS
9 1 (0.11%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.11%) OpenWrt
9 1 (0.11%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.11%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 205 (22.38%) Stakeholder Management
2 129 (14.08%) Agile
3 118 (12.88%) Problem-Solving
4 94 (10.26%) Project Delivery
5 90 (9.83%) ITIL
6 87 (9.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 81 (8.84%) AI
8 78 (8.52%) Project Management
9 77 (8.41%) Roadmaps
10 75 (8.19%) Service Management
11 73 (7.97%) Migration
12 70 (7.64%) CI/CD
13 68 (7.42%) Validation
14 63 (6.88%) Continuous Improvement
15 60 (6.55%) Decision-Making
16 58 (6.33%) Change Management
17 53 (5.79%) Customer Service
17 53 (5.79%) ITSM
18 51 (5.57%) DevOps
18 51 (5.57%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 80 (8.73%) Python
2 42 (4.59%) SQL
3 32 (3.49%) JavaScript
4 25 (2.73%) Bash
5 15 (1.64%) Java
6 10 (1.09%) PowerShell
7 8 (0.87%) Apex Code
8 7 (0.76%) C#
8 7 (0.76%) R
9 6 (0.66%) Shell Script
10 5 (0.55%) SOQL
11 4 (0.44%) ABAP
11 4 (0.44%) C++
11 4 (0.44%) DataWeave
11 4 (0.44%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.33%) LookML
13 2 (0.22%) Bicep
13 2 (0.22%) C
13 2 (0.22%) DCL
14 1 (0.11%) Ada
Qualifications
1 166 (18.12%) Security Cleared
2 102 (11.14%) SC Cleared
3 94 (10.26%) Degree
4 71 (7.75%) Cisco Certification
5 47 (5.13%) CCNA
6 30 (3.28%) DV Cleared
7 26 (2.84%) CCNP
8 25 (2.73%) PMP
9 24 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
9 24 (2.62%) Microsoft Certification
10 22 (2.40%) A+ Certification
11 21 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (2.07%) PMI Certification
13 14 (1.53%) CCIE
14 13 (1.42%) CISSP
14 13 (1.42%) MCSA
15 12 (1.31%) Master's Degree
16 9 (0.98%) CISM
16 9 (0.98%) JNCIE
16 9 (0.98%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (3.93%) QA
2 26 (2.84%) SLA
3 23 (2.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (2.51%) PMO
4 21 (2.29%) GRC
5 18 (1.97%) NCSC
6 15 (1.64%) GDPR
7 11 (1.20%) Data Quality
8 4 (0.44%) NIST
9 3 (0.33%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.33%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.22%) EU AI Act
11 1 (0.11%) ISO 31000
11 1 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 15288
11 1 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.11%) SOC 1
System Software
1 24 (2.62%) Docker
2 23 (2.51%) Active Directory
3 21 (2.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.87%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
5 5 (0.55%) vSphere
6 3 (0.33%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.11%) Ceph
7 1 (0.11%) Firmware
7 1 (0.11%) KVM
7 1 (0.11%) NDS
7 1 (0.11%) NetIQ eDirectory
7 1 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 45 (4.91%) Kubernetes
2 23 (2.51%) Ansible
3 12 (1.31%) Grafana
3 12 (1.31%) Prometheus
4 8 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
6 4 (0.44%) Cilium
6 4 (0.44%) Cisco Prime
6 4 (0.44%) Istio
7 3 (0.33%) Check_MK
7 3 (0.33%) Kibana
7 3 (0.33%) Podman
7 3 (0.33%) SolarWinds Orion
7 3 (0.33%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.33%) vRealize
8 2 (0.22%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.22%) NSN NetAct
8 2 (0.22%) QRadar
9 1 (0.11%) Proxmox
9 1 (0.11%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 124 (13.54%) Microsoft
2 122 (13.32%) Cisco
3 88 (9.61%) ServiceNow
4 64 (6.99%) Nokia
5 47 (5.13%) Salesforce
6 35 (3.82%) VMware
7 30 (3.28%) SAP
8 26 (2.84%) Ericsson
9 23 (2.51%) Juniper
10 21 (2.29%) BT
10 21 (2.29%) Google
11 19 (2.07%) F5
11 19 (2.07%) MuleSoft
12 17 (1.86%) Fortinet
13 13 (1.42%) Palo Alto
14 12 (1.31%) BMC
15 11 (1.20%) Splunk
16 10 (1.09%) Arista
16 10 (1.09%) Huawei
16 10 (1.09%) Zscaler