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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 173 102 66
Rank change year-on-year -71 -36 +17
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 796 829 1,319
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.51% 2.55% 3.09%
As % of the General category 2.77% 4.05% 5.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 454 478 626
10th Percentile £213 £303 £200
25th Percentile £382 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -1.96%
75th Percentile £563 £587 £613
90th Percentile £684 £700 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £463 £473
% change year-on-year -2.70% -2.12% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 46 110
10th Percentile £16.01 - £12.15
25th Percentile £17.73 £14.00 £14.29
Median hourly rate £24.50 £21.88 £51.78
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% -57.75% +0.54%
75th Percentile £50.00 £56.94 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £65.25 £75.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £15.50 £48.56
% change year-on-year +35.48% -68.08% +94.24%

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 28,784 20,447 24,473
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.71% 63.01% 57.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,221 12,834 15,299
10th Percentile £313 £281 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £472 £490
% change year-on-year +5.93% -3.67% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,006 1,047 1,882
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.36 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.31 £16.00
Median hourly rate £33.00 £26.50 £32.90
Median % change year-on-year +24.53% -19.44% +7.71%
75th Percentile £62.94 £52.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £70.06 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.63 £32.12
% change year-on-year +45.82% -29.53% +23.52%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 -84 679 £475 -3.06% 745
UK excluding London -94 410 £450 -2.70% 698
London -32 294 £507 +4.00% 213
Work from Home -49 224 £475 - 427
South East -54 186 £465 -7.00% 216
North of England -60 60 £533 +6.50% 128
South West -60 48 £450 -14.29% 63
Scotland -1 41 £300 -7.69% 88
Midlands -58 40 £473 +23.93% 103
East of England -12 35 £175 -54.84% 67
West Midlands -70 34 £450 +28.57% 59
North West -45 32 £550 +4.76% 74
Yorkshire -44 23 £600 +54.84% 43
East Midlands -9 6 £500 -20.00% 44
North East -35 5 £500 - 13
Northern Ireland -3 3 £175 -51.05% 16
Wales -15 1 £500 +132.56% 32

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 13 (1.63%) OpenStack
2 10 (1.26%) Confluence
3 7 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (0.88%) ArcGIS
3 7 (0.88%) SharePoint
4 5 (0.63%) Appian
5 4 (0.50%) Anypoint
5 4 (0.50%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.38%) IIS
6 3 (0.38%) JBoss
6 3 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.38%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.25%) Apache
7 2 (0.25%) CMS
7 2 (0.25%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.13%) Camunda
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 1 (0.13%) Smallworld
Applications
1 25 (3.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 24 (3.02%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (2.39%) MS Visio
4 11 (1.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.63%) AutoCAD
5 5 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.25%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.13%) Revit
7 1 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.13%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (2.76%) SAP PSCD
2 14 (1.76%) Remedy ITSM
3 13 (1.63%) SAP BRIM
4 12 (1.51%) SAP Hybris
5 7 (0.88%) SAP FI
6 6 (0.75%) SAP FI-CA
7 5 (0.63%) NetSuite
7 5 (0.63%) Sage X3
7 5 (0.63%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.50%) BambooHR
8 4 (0.50%) Remedy AR System
9 3 (0.38%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 2 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
11 1 (0.13%) SAP FI/CO
11 1 (0.13%) SAP IBP
11 1 (0.13%) SAP IS-U
11 1 (0.13%) SAP SD
11 1 (0.13%) SAP SRM
11 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 80 (10.05%) Azure
2 75 (9.42%) AWS
3 49 (6.16%) GCP
4 19 (2.39%) Power Platform
5 17 (2.14%) SaaS
6 16 (2.01%) Microsoft 365
7 14 (1.76%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 10 (1.26%) Snowflake
9 9 (1.13%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (1.13%) dbt
10 8 (1.01%) Entra ID
10 8 (1.01%) GitHub
10 8 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
11 6 (0.75%) Datadog
11 6 (0.75%) OpenShift
11 6 (0.75%) Serverless
12 5 (0.63%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (0.63%) Cloud Functions
12 5 (0.63%) Fivetran
12 5 (0.63%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 84 (10.55%) WAN
2 73 (9.17%) LAN
3 70 (8.79%) MPLS
4 65 (8.17%) 5G
5 45 (5.65%) 4G
5 45 (5.65%) Firewall
6 43 (5.40%) Radio Access Network
7 33 (4.15%) SD-WAN
8 31 (3.89%) BGP
9 21 (2.64%) 3G
9 21 (2.64%) Network Security
9 21 (2.64%) OSPF
9 21 (2.64%) VoIP
9 21 (2.64%) VPN
10 20 (2.51%) DNS
10 20 (2.51%) SDH
11 18 (2.26%) LTE
12 17 (2.14%) 3GPP
12 17 (2.14%) Structured Cabling
13 16 (2.01%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.26%) Power BI
2 16 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
3 14 (1.76%) BigQuery
4 12 (1.51%) Amazon Redshift
4 12 (1.51%) Looker
5 11 (1.38%) Tableau
6 7 (0.88%) Big Data
6 7 (0.88%) GIS
6 7 (0.88%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.63%) MySQL
8 4 (0.50%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.38%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (0.38%) BusinessObjects
9 3 (0.38%) InfluxDB
9 3 (0.38%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.38%) SAP BW
9 3 (0.38%) SAP Data Services
9 3 (0.38%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.38%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.38%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 25 (3.14%) JIRA
2 10 (1.26%) Git
3 5 (0.63%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.25%) GitLab
5 2 (0.25%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.13%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.13%) JMeter
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.13%) Rational DOORS
6 1 (0.13%) Selenium
6 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 229 (28.77%) Social Skills
2 129 (16.21%) Finance
3 107 (13.44%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (7.91%) Public Sector
5 45 (5.65%) Billing
6 31 (3.89%) Documentation Skills
7 26 (3.27%) Retail
8 21 (2.64%) Marketing
8 21 (2.64%) Organisational Skills
9 20 (2.51%) Legal
10 18 (2.26%) Influencing Skills
11 11 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
12 8 (1.01%) Aerospace
12 8 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.88%) Electronics
13 7 (0.88%) Manufacturing
13 7 (0.88%) Police
13 7 (0.88%) Publishing
14 4 (0.50%) Military
15 3 (0.38%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 122 (15.33%) Architect
2 68 (8.54%) Consultant
3 66 (8.29%) Lead
3 66 (8.29%) Senior
4 59 (7.41%) Analyst
5 44 (5.53%) Solutions Architect
6 42 (5.28%) Network Engineer
7 40 (5.03%) Project Manager
7 40 (5.03%) Telecoms Manager
8 31 (3.89%) Designer
9 29 (3.64%) ServiceNow Architect
9 29 (3.64%) Telecoms Engineer
10 28 (3.52%) Developer
11 27 (3.39%) Field Engineer
12 24 (3.02%) Data Engineer
13 23 (2.89%) SAP Consultant
14 22 (2.76%) Enterprise Architect
15 21 (2.64%) Delivery Manager
16 20 (2.51%) Telecoms Architect
17 19 (2.39%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (6.03%) REST
2 34 (4.27%) SOAP
3 13 (1.63%) Kafka
3 13 (1.63%) Middleware
3 13 (1.63%) ONVIF
4 10 (1.26%) NETCONF
4 10 (1.26%) XML
4 10 (1.26%) YANG
5 9 (1.13%) .NET
5 9 (1.13%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (1.01%) OpenAPI
6 8 (1.01%) Swagger
7 7 (0.88%) JSON
7 7 (0.88%) RESTful
8 4 (0.50%) .NET Framework
8 4 (0.50%) OpenConfig
8 4 (0.50%) RAML
8 4 (0.50%) RESTCONF
8 4 (0.50%) Web Services
9 3 (0.38%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 49 (6.16%) CMDB
2 48 (6.03%) Data Centre
3 34 (4.27%) Onboarding
4 31 (3.89%) Cloud Native
5 26 (3.27%) Driving Licence
6 20 (2.51%) Data Protection Act
7 19 (2.39%) Analytical Mindset
7 19 (2.39%) Virtual Team
8 15 (1.88%) Hybrid Cloud
9 13 (1.63%) Management Information System
9 13 (1.63%) Video\Live Streaming
10 11 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
10 11 (1.38%) Product Ownership
10 11 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
11 9 (1.13%) Private Cloud
11 9 (1.13%) TM Forum
12 8 (1.01%) EPoS
13 7 (0.88%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 6 (0.75%) Legacy Systems
14 6 (0.75%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 33 (4.15%) Windows
2 28 (3.52%) Linux
3 15 (1.88%) Windows 10
4 12 (1.51%) Unix
5 6 (0.75%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.63%) Windows Server
7 3 (0.38%) Android
7 3 (0.38%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.38%) VMS
8 2 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
8 2 (0.25%) OpenVMS
8 2 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.13%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.13%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (16.83%) Stakeholder Management
2 105 (13.19%) Agile
3 102 (12.81%) Problem-Solving
4 86 (10.80%) ITIL
5 74 (9.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 67 (8.42%) Project Delivery
7 61 (7.66%) Continuous Improvement
8 60 (7.54%) Roadmaps
9 58 (7.29%) Decision-Making
9 58 (7.29%) Migration
10 56 (7.04%) CI/CD
10 56 (7.04%) CRM
11 55 (6.91%) Validation
12 54 (6.78%) Service Management
13 53 (6.66%) ITSM
14 50 (6.28%) Customer Service
14 50 (6.28%) Project Management
15 49 (6.16%) AI
16 48 (6.03%) Analytics
17 44 (5.53%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 63 (7.91%) Python
2 37 (4.65%) SQL
3 24 (3.02%) JavaScript
4 15 (1.88%) Java
5 10 (1.26%) C#
6 9 (1.13%) Bash
7 7 (0.88%) R
8 6 (0.75%) C++
8 6 (0.75%) PowerShell
9 5 (0.63%) Apex Code
10 4 (0.50%) ABAP
10 4 (0.50%) DataWeave
10 4 (0.50%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.38%) LookML
11 3 (0.38%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.25%) DCL
12 2 (0.25%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.25%) SOQL
13 1 (0.13%) C
13 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 139 (17.46%) Security Cleared
2 95 (11.93%) SC Cleared
3 72 (9.05%) Degree
4 58 (7.29%) Cisco Certification
5 38 (4.77%) CCNA
6 26 (3.27%) CCNP
7 23 (2.89%) DV Cleared
8 22 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
9 21 (2.64%) A+ Certification
10 17 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
10 17 (2.14%) PMP
11 16 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
12 13 (1.63%) MCSA
12 13 (1.63%) PMI Certification
13 12 (1.51%) CCIE
14 10 (1.26%) Azure Certification
15 9 (1.13%) AWS Certification
15 9 (1.13%) Network+ Certification
16 6 (0.75%) JNCIE
16 6 (0.75%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (3.39%) SLA
2 24 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 20 (2.51%) NCSC
4 19 (2.39%) GDPR
5 17 (2.14%) GRC
6 16 (2.01%) Data Quality
6 16 (2.01%) QA
7 13 (1.63%) PMO
8 10 (1.26%) NIST
9 3 (0.38%) RMADS
10 2 (0.25%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.13%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.13%) IFRS
11 1 (0.13%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.13%) ISO 22301
11 1 (0.13%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.13%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 17 (2.14%) VMware Infrastructure
2 16 (2.01%) Active Directory
3 15 (1.88%) Docker
4 8 (1.01%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.63%) vSphere
6 4 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.13%) Ceph
8 1 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 44 (5.53%) Kubernetes
2 23 (2.89%) Terraform
3 20 (2.51%) Ansible
4 13 (1.63%) Grafana
4 13 (1.63%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.63%) Jamf Pro
6 3 (0.38%) Amdocs OSS
6 3 (0.38%) Cisco Prime
6 3 (0.38%) Iperf
6 3 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (0.38%) vCenter Server
6 3 (0.38%) vRealize
7 2 (0.25%) FortiGate
7 2 (0.25%) Nmap
7 2 (0.25%) NSN NetAct
8 1 (0.13%) AirWatch
8 1 (0.13%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.13%) Proxmox
8 1 (0.13%) QRadar
8 1 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 100 (12.56%) Microsoft
2 82 (10.30%) Cisco
3 80 (10.05%) ServiceNow
4 45 (5.65%) Nokia
5 36 (4.52%) Salesforce
6 32 (4.02%) SAP
7 26 (3.27%) VMware
8 24 (3.02%) Fortinet
9 23 (2.89%) BT
10 22 (2.76%) Ericsson
11 19 (2.39%) Juniper
11 19 (2.39%) Oracle
12 17 (2.14%) F5
12 17 (2.14%) Remedy
13 16 (2.01%) Google
13 16 (2.01%) Huawei
14 15 (1.88%) MuleSoft
15 13 (1.63%) BMC
16 12 (1.51%) CheckPoint
16 12 (1.51%) Palo Alto