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

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 189 98 63
Rank change year-on-year -91 -35 +19
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 705 771 1,368
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.40% 2.60% 3.14%
As % of the General category 2.60% 4.10% 5.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 421 442 653
10th Percentile £213 £310 £200
25th Percentile £400 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £481 £450
Median % change year-on-year +0.16% +6.78% -7.69%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £600
90th Percentile £688 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £480 £450
% change year-on-year -2.71% +6.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 38 102
10th Percentile £16.66 - £12.15
25th Percentile £21.00 £14.00 £13.89
Median hourly rate £42.25 £27.98 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.03% -37.83% -14.29%
75th Percentile £54.75 £62.81 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £68.18 £76.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £16.90 £45.00
% change year-on-year +24.24% -62.44% -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 27,130 18,804 24,846
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.04% 63.47% 57.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,392 11,853 15,564
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.29% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £767
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £488
% change year-on-year +5.82% -3.08% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,817 890 2,005
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.22 £16.93 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.97 £30.83
Median % change year-on-year +14.41% -9.26% +0.93%
75th Percentile £60.46 £53.95 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.02 £75.00 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £24.42 £29.50
% change year-on-year +28.83% -17.22% +10.28%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -99 619 £481 -2.73% 703
UK excluding London -104 352 £467 -2.71% 534
London -29 281 £500 +2.04% 252
Work from Home -36 198 £481 +1.32% 257
South East -67 145 £463 -6.38% 183
North of England -53 72 £492 -6.73% 104
South West -61 44 £511 +7.58% 44
Midlands -52 40 £500 -1.23% 76
West Midlands -57 33 £475 +15.15% 49
North West -51 32 £463 -12.32% 55
East of England -24 31 £198 -47.33% 69
Yorkshire -38 26 £487 -7.31% 38
Scotland -18 20 £305 -6.15% 46
North East -21 14 £500 -11.50% 13
East Midlands -19 7 £500 -20.00% 27
Northern Ireland -3 3 £175 -51.05% 11
Wales -16 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%) Confluence
1 9 (1.28%) OpenStack
2 6 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (0.85%) Appian
3 4 (0.57%) Anypoint
3 4 (0.57%) Apache Spark
3 4 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.57%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.43%) ArcGIS
4 3 (0.43%) IIS
4 3 (0.43%) JBoss
4 3 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 3 (0.43%) Tomcat
4 3 (0.43%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.28%) Apache
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Spatial
6 1 (0.14%) Camunda
6 1 (0.14%) CMS
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
6 1 (0.14%) Smallworld
Applications
1 21 (2.98%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.13%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.71%) AutoCAD
6 4 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.28%) MicroStation
8 1 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
8 1 (0.14%) Revit
8 1 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
8 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.14%) Trello
Business Applications
1 14 (1.99%) SAP PSCD
2 13 (1.84%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.84%) SAP BRIM
3 12 (1.70%) SAP Hybris
4 6 (0.85%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.57%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.43%) NetSuite
6 3 (0.43%) Remedy AR System
6 3 (0.43%) Sage X3
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%) 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 61 (8.65%) Azure
2 57 (8.09%) AWS
3 38 (5.39%) GCP
4 21 (2.98%) Power Platform
5 17 (2.41%) Microsoft 365
6 15 (2.13%) SaaS
7 13 (1.84%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 9 (1.28%) dbt
9 8 (1.13%) Snowflake
10 6 (0.85%) Datadog
10 6 (0.85%) Serverless
11 5 (0.71%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (0.71%) Azure DevOps
11 5 (0.71%) Entra ID
11 5 (0.71%) GitHub
11 5 (0.71%) Prefect
12 4 (0.57%) Amazon S3
12 4 (0.57%) Boomi
12 4 (0.57%) Dagster
12 4 (0.57%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 49 (6.95%) MPLS
1 49 (6.95%) WAN
2 48 (6.81%) 5G
3 39 (5.53%) LAN
4 35 (4.96%) Firewall
5 28 (3.97%) 4G
6 27 (3.83%) Radio Access Network
7 24 (3.40%) BGP
7 24 (3.40%) Network Security
7 24 (3.40%) SD-WAN
8 22 (3.12%) VoIP
9 21 (2.98%) Internet
10 19 (2.70%) 3GPP
10 19 (2.70%) LTE
11 17 (2.41%) OSPF
11 17 (2.41%) VPN
12 16 (2.27%) VLAN
13 14 (1.99%) Structured Cabling
14 13 (1.84%) DNS
14 13 (1.84%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (2.84%) Power BI
2 14 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (1.70%) BigQuery
3 12 (1.70%) Looker
3 12 (1.70%) Tableau
4 10 (1.42%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (0.99%) Big Data
5 7 (0.99%) 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 22 (3.12%) JIRA
2 11 (1.56%) 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
1 198 (28.09%) Social Skills
2 119 (16.88%) Finance
3 101 (14.33%) Analytical Skills
4 65 (9.22%) Public Sector
5 43 (6.10%) Billing
6 31 (4.40%) Marketing
7 27 (3.83%) Retail
8 21 (2.98%) Electronics
9 18 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
10 17 (2.41%) Legal
10 17 (2.41%) Manufacturing
11 13 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
12 11 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (0.85%) Aerospace
14 6 (0.85%) Banking
14 6 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 5 (0.71%) Publishing
16 4 (0.57%) Military
16 4 (0.57%) Police
Job Titles
1 95 (13.48%) Architect
2 57 (8.09%) Analyst
3 56 (7.94%) Senior
4 53 (7.52%) Lead
5 50 (7.09%) Consultant
6 42 (5.96%) Solutions Architect
7 39 (5.53%) Telecoms Manager
8 37 (5.25%) Network Engineer
9 35 (4.96%) Project Manager
10 29 (4.11%) Designer
11 27 (3.83%) Developer
12 25 (3.55%) ServiceNow Architect
13 22 (3.12%) Data Engineer
14 21 (2.98%) Business Analyst
14 21 (2.98%) Sales Manager
15 20 (2.84%) Delivery Manager
16 17 (2.41%) Enterprise Architect
16 17 (2.41%) Programme Manager
16 17 (2.41%) Telecoms Architect
17 15 (2.13%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (5.53%) REST
2 25 (3.55%) SOAP
3 12 (1.70%) Middleware
4 10 (1.42%) Kafka
5 9 (1.28%) .NET
5 9 (1.28%) ONVIF
6 8 (1.13%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (1.13%) 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%) NETCONF
10 3 (0.43%) OpenTelemetry
10 3 (0.43%) RabbitMQ
10 3 (0.43%) RFC 2544
10 3 (0.43%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 35 (4.96%) Data Centre
2 33 (4.68%) CMDB
3 32 (4.54%) Onboarding
4 26 (3.69%) Cloud Native
5 24 (3.40%) Data Protection Act
6 18 (2.55%) Product Ownership
7 17 (2.41%) Driving Licence
8 16 (2.27%) Virtual Team
9 14 (1.99%) Analytical Mindset
10 13 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
11 9 (1.28%) Video\Live Streaming
12 8 (1.13%) EPoS
12 8 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.13%) TM Forum
13 7 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
13 7 (0.99%) Management Information System
13 7 (0.99%) NHS
14 6 (0.85%) Web Conferencing
15 5 (0.71%) AI Agents
15 5 (0.71%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 27 (3.83%) Windows
2 25 (3.55%) Linux
3 12 (1.70%) Windows 10
4 11 (1.56%) Unix
5 4 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.57%) VMS
6 3 (0.43%) Android
6 3 (0.43%) Debian
6 3 (0.43%) Mac OS
6 3 (0.43%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.43%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.28%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.14%) Mac OS X
8 1 (0.14%) OpenVMS
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
1 116 (16.45%) Stakeholder Management
2 94 (13.33%) Problem-Solving
3 92 (13.05%) Agile
4 68 (9.65%) ITIL
5 63 (8.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 61 (8.65%) Continuous Improvement
7 59 (8.37%) Decision-Making
8 51 (7.23%) Project Management
9 50 (7.09%) Project Delivery
10 48 (6.81%) CI/CD
10 48 (6.81%) Migration
11 47 (6.67%) CRM
12 46 (6.52%) Customer Service
13 44 (6.24%) Roadmaps
13 44 (6.24%) Service Management
14 43 (6.10%) Analytics
15 42 (5.96%) ITSM
15 42 (5.96%) Validation
16 39 (5.53%) Risk Management
17 38 (5.39%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 51 (7.23%) Python
2 34 (4.82%) SQL
3 17 (2.41%) Java
4 15 (2.13%) JavaScript
5 10 (1.42%) C#
6 8 (1.13%) 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
9 3 (0.43%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.28%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.28%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.28%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.14%) Cypher
11 1 (0.14%) Go
11 1 (0.14%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.14%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 112 (15.89%) Security Cleared
2 79 (11.21%) SC Cleared
3 68 (9.65%) Degree
4 39 (5.53%) Cisco Certification
5 24 (3.40%) CCNA
6 21 (2.98%) Microsoft Certification
7 20 (2.84%) DV Cleared
8 19 (2.70%) A+ Certification
8 19 (2.70%) CCNP
9 18 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
10 15 (2.13%) PMP
11 13 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
12 11 (1.56%) Network+ Certification
12 11 (1.56%) PMI Certification
13 9 (1.28%) MCSA
14 8 (1.13%) Master's Degree
15 7 (0.99%) AWS Certification
15 7 (0.99%) Azure Certification
16 6 (0.85%) ACCA
16 6 (0.85%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.12%) SLA
2 18 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (2.41%) GDPR
4 16 (2.27%) NCSC
4 16 (2.27%) PMO
5 14 (1.99%) QA
6 12 (1.70%) Data Quality
7 11 (1.56%) GRC
8 8 (1.13%) NIST
9 5 (0.71%) RMADS
10 3 (0.43%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.14%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.14%) EU AI Act
11 1 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.14%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.14%) SOC 1
11 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 15 (2.13%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.56%) 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 40 (5.67%) Kubernetes
2 17 (2.41%) Terraform
3 15 (2.13%) Ansible
4 14 (1.99%) Grafana
4 14 (1.99%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.43%) Cisco Prime
5 3 (0.43%) Iperf
5 3 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
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
7 1 (0.14%) Argo
7 1 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
7 1 (0.14%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.14%) Rancher
Vendors
1 78 (11.06%) Microsoft
2 67 (9.50%) ServiceNow
3 62 (8.79%) Cisco
4 39 (5.53%) Nokia
5 33 (4.68%) SAP
6 27 (3.83%) Salesforce
7 23 (3.26%) Oracle
8 22 (3.12%) BT
9 19 (2.70%) Ericsson
10 16 (2.27%) Remedy
11 15 (2.13%) Fortinet
11 15 (2.13%) Juniper
11 15 (2.13%) VMware
12 14 (1.99%) Huawei
13 13 (1.84%) Google
14 12 (1.70%) CheckPoint
15 11 (1.56%) F5
15 11 (1.56%) MuleSoft
16 8 (1.13%) BMC
16 8 (1.13%) Palo Alto