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 30 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 134 60 72
Rank change year-on-year -74 +12 +12
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 795 1,170 1,260
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.15% 3.51% 2.91%
As % of the General category 3.54% 5.74% 4.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 518 569 786
10th Percentile £163 £278 £258
25th Percentile £312 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £490
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +2.04% +2.08%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £623
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -10.00% +11.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 35 33
10th Percentile £14.81 £19.50 £14.22
25th Percentile £19.33 £22.50 £24.25
Median hourly rate £22.79 £35.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.89% -36.36% +10.00%
75th Percentile £24.50 £61.75 £80.00
90th Percentile £41.25 £75.00 £88.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £48.56 £60.00
% change year-on-year -51.61% -19.07% +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 22,475 20,390 25,601
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.75% 61.24% 59.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,080 12,182 16,891
10th Percentile £280 £288 £275
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,414 695 1,101
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.48 £14.16
25th Percentile £16.50 £18.67 £16.54
Median hourly rate £23.50 £27.39 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.19% -17.02% +32.00%
75th Percentile £45.94 £54.38 £59.03
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.14 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.94 £26.12 £30.48
% change year-on-year -16.02% -14.29% +37.52%

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 30 December 2025.

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 30 December 2025.

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 30 December 2025. 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 -75 699 £450 -11.33% 1,061
UK excluding London -61 461 £450 -10.00% 936
London -33 272 £450 -14.69% 215
Work from Home -64 183 £481 -6.10% 495
South East -41 157 £475 -6.40% 286
Midlands -35 79 £385 -23.95% 150
South West -32 78 £525 -1.87% 101
North of England -53 66 £306 -33.78% 200
West Midlands -30 57 £515 +0.49% 88
East of England -27 39 £513 +17.14% 147
North West -29 33 £275 -40.54% 103
Scotland +12 28 £275 -36.23% 50
East Midlands -7 22 £158 -10.00% 59
Yorkshire -43 18 £388 -22.50% 83
North East -4 14 £175 -51.72% 19
Northern Ireland -1 12 £150 - 5
Wales +2 10 £160 -56.16% 19
Channel Islands -2 1 - -

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 16 (2.01%) Confluence
2 14 (1.76%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (1.13%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.88%) Appian
6 6 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.25%) Apache
7 2 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.25%) CMS
8 1 (0.13%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.13%) IIS
8 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 49 (6.16%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (2.77%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (1.89%) Microsoft Project
4 14 (1.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 9 (1.13%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.50%) Autodesk Inventor
7 3 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.25%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.25%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.13%) FrameMaker
9 1 (0.13%) MadCap Flare
9 1 (0.13%) Trello
Business Applications
1 14 (1.76%) SAP BRIM
1 14 (1.76%) SAP Hybris
1 14 (1.76%) SAP PSCD
2 4 (0.50%) SAP ERP
3 3 (0.38%) Primavera
4 2 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.25%) Endur
4 2 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.25%) SAP CO
4 2 (0.25%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.25%) SAP FI/CO
4 2 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 64 (8.05%) Azure
2 53 (6.67%) AWS
2 53 (6.67%) Microsoft 365
3 36 (4.53%) GCP
4 20 (2.52%) SaaS
5 14 (1.76%) Power Platform
5 14 (1.76%) SAP Commerce Cloud
6 13 (1.64%) GitHub
7 10 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
8 8 (1.01%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (1.01%) Entra ID
8 8 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (0.88%) Tricentis Tosca
10 6 (0.75%) IaaS
11 5 (0.63%) Miro
12 4 (0.50%) Dataform
12 4 (0.50%) PaaS
12 4 (0.50%) Power Automate
13 3 (0.38%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 3 (0.38%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 57 (7.17%) Firewall
2 51 (6.42%) WAN
3 45 (5.66%) LAN
4 43 (5.41%) Wireless
5 31 (3.90%) VPN
6 28 (3.52%) SD-WAN
7 25 (3.14%) 5G
7 25 (3.14%) Radio Access Network
8 24 (3.02%) DNS
9 23 (2.89%) 4G
9 23 (2.89%) MPLS
10 21 (2.64%) Broadband
10 21 (2.64%) VoIP
11 20 (2.52%) Network Security
12 17 (2.14%) BGP
12 17 (2.14%) LTE
12 17 (2.14%) Wi-Fi
13 16 (2.01%) Wireshark
14 15 (1.89%) 3GPP
14 15 (1.89%) SDH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.51%) Power BI
2 9 (1.13%) Tableau
3 8 (1.01%) MySQL
4 7 (0.88%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (0.63%) Big Data
6 4 (0.50%) Electronic Patient Records
6 4 (0.50%) GIS
6 4 (0.50%) Oracle Database
6 4 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.50%) SAP BW
7 3 (0.38%) BigQuery
7 3 (0.38%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.38%) SQL Server
8 2 (0.25%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.25%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.25%) Power Query
9 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.13%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.13%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.13%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 27 (3.40%) JIRA
2 22 (2.77%) GitLab
3 11 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.13%) Postman
5 8 (1.01%) Robot Framework
5 8 (1.01%) Selenium
6 7 (0.88%) Cucumber
6 7 (0.88%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.75%) Git
8 4 (0.50%) Cypress.io
8 4 (0.50%) JUnit
9 3 (0.38%) Rational DOORS
9 3 (0.38%) Storybook
10 2 (0.25%) Appium
10 2 (0.25%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.25%) Clang
10 2 (0.25%) GCC
10 2 (0.25%) Maven
11 1 (0.13%) Gradle
11 1 (0.13%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 291 (36.60%) Finance
2 266 (33.46%) Public Sector
3 247 (31.07%) Social Skills
4 214 (26.92%) Marketing
5 204 (25.66%) Manufacturing
6 202 (25.41%) Electronics
7 82 (10.31%) Analytical Skills
8 31 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (2.77%) Billing
9 22 (2.77%) Organisational Skills
10 17 (2.14%) Legal
11 12 (1.51%) Banking
12 10 (1.26%) Retail
13 8 (1.01%) Military
14 7 (0.88%) Law
15 6 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
16 5 (0.63%) Automotive
16 5 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
17 4 (0.50%) Aerospace
17 4 (0.50%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 95 (11.95%) Architect
2 78 (9.81%) Analyst
3 47 (5.91%) Project Manager
4 45 (5.66%) Business Analyst
4 45 (5.66%) IT Support
5 43 (5.41%) Desktop Support
6 42 (5.28%) Senior
7 41 (5.16%) Consultant
8 38 (4.78%) Lead
9 31 (3.90%) Network Engineer
10 29 (3.65%) 2nd Line Support
11 28 (3.52%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
11 28 (3.52%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
12 26 (3.27%) Solutions Architect
13 25 (3.14%) Network Architect
14 24 (3.02%) Network Specialist
15 21 (2.64%) Support Engineer
16 20 (2.52%) Developer
16 20 (2.52%) Migration Engineer
16 20 (2.52%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (2.77%) REST
2 17 (2.14%) SOAP
3 11 (1.38%) XML
4 10 (1.26%) JSON
5 9 (1.13%) RESTful
5 9 (1.13%) SailPoint
6 8 (1.01%) 802.1X
6 8 (1.01%) React
7 7 (0.88%) Jinja
7 7 (0.88%) NETCONF
7 7 (0.88%) Web Services
8 6 (0.75%) RFC 2544
8 6 (0.75%) YANG
9 5 (0.63%) Node.js
9 5 (0.63%) Spring
10 4 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
10 4 (0.50%) HTML
10 4 (0.50%) Spring Boot
11 3 (0.38%) .NET
11 3 (0.38%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.18%) Data Centre
2 34 (4.28%) Driving Licence
3 25 (3.14%) Product Ownership
4 24 (3.02%) Data Protection Act
5 23 (2.89%) Cloud Native
6 22 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
7 20 (2.52%) CMDB
8 19 (2.39%) Onboarding
9 17 (2.14%) Fibre Optics
9 17 (2.14%) NHS
10 15 (1.89%) Mobile App
11 14 (1.76%) IoT
12 10 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
12 10 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
12 10 (1.26%) Virtual Team
13 9 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
14 8 (1.01%) SCADA
15 7 (0.88%) Management Information System
15 7 (0.88%) Operational Technology
15 7 (0.88%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 48 (6.04%) Windows
2 39 (4.91%) Android
3 32 (4.03%) Mac OS
4 19 (2.39%) Linux
5 17 (2.14%) Windows 10
6 9 (1.13%) Windows Server
7 8 (1.01%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.38%) Debian
9 3 (0.38%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.38%) Unix
9 3 (0.38%) VMS
10 1 (0.13%) CentOS
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 211 (26.54%) Business Intelligence
2 206 (25.91%) Programme Management
3 200 (25.16%) Digital Marketing
4 130 (16.35%) Agile
5 128 (16.10%) Problem-Solving
6 110 (13.84%) Stakeholder Management
7 96 (12.08%) Migration
8 77 (9.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 69 (8.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 68 (8.55%) ITIL
11 58 (7.30%) Workflow
12 56 (7.04%) Logistics
13 53 (6.67%) Customer Service
14 51 (6.42%) Project Management
15 50 (6.29%) Service Delivery
16 49 (6.16%) DevOps
17 47 (5.91%) CI/CD
18 46 (5.79%) Change Management
18 46 (5.79%) Network Design
19 44 (5.53%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 63 (7.92%) Python
2 36 (4.53%) JavaScript
3 33 (4.15%) SQL
4 16 (2.01%) PowerShell
5 14 (1.76%) Java
6 11 (1.38%) Bash
6 11 (1.38%) TypeScript
7 9 (1.13%) C
8 7 (0.88%) C++
9 6 (0.75%) C#
9 6 (0.75%) Go
10 4 (0.50%) ABAP
11 3 (0.38%) BeanShell
11 3 (0.38%) PHP
12 2 (0.25%) R
12 2 (0.25%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.13%) Groovy
13 1 (0.13%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.13%) Scala
13 1 (0.13%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 222 (27.92%) Security Cleared
2 182 (22.89%) SC Cleared
3 61 (7.67%) Degree
4 31 (3.90%) DV Cleared
5 22 (2.77%) Cisco Certification
6 16 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
7 15 (1.89%) CCNP
8 11 (1.38%) CISSP
8 11 (1.38%) PMP
9 10 (1.26%) CCIE
9 10 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
10 9 (1.13%) ITIL Certification
10 9 (1.13%) Master's Degree
11 8 (1.01%) CCNA
11 8 (1.01%) PMI Certification
12 7 (0.88%) Azure Certification
13 6 (0.75%) JNCIP
14 5 (0.63%) ACCA
14 5 (0.63%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.63%) JNCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (4.28%) QA
2 31 (3.90%) SLA
3 19 (2.39%) GDPR
4 16 (2.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (2.01%) PMO
5 13 (1.64%) Data Quality
6 9 (1.13%) Accessibility
7 8 (1.01%) GRC
7 8 (1.01%) NIST
8 6 (0.75%) NCSC
9 5 (0.63%) JSP 440
9 5 (0.63%) RMADS
9 5 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.38%) GAAP
10 3 (0.38%) IFRS
11 2 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.25%) Def Stans
11 2 (0.25%) ISO 26262
11 2 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 30 (3.77%) Active Directory
2 22 (2.77%) Docker
3 6 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.38%) QEMU
4 3 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.25%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.13%) Firmware
6 1 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 27 (3.40%) Ansible
2 23 (2.89%) Kubernetes
3 16 (2.01%) Terraform
4 7 (0.88%) SCCM
5 6 (0.75%) Grafana
6 5 (0.63%) Argo
6 5 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.38%) Cisco CUCM
8 3 (0.38%) Podman
8 3 (0.38%) vRealize
9 2 (0.25%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.25%) Iperf
9 2 (0.25%) Nmap
9 2 (0.25%) Prometheus
9 2 (0.25%) Puppet
10 1 (0.13%) FreeIPA
10 1 (0.13%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.13%) Istio
10 1 (0.13%) Kibana
Vendors
1 230 (28.93%) SAP
2 131 (16.48%) Cisco
3 92 (11.57%) Microsoft
4 45 (5.66%) ServiceNow
5 33 (4.15%) Juniper
6 30 (3.77%) Nokia
7 27 (3.40%) Salesforce
8 25 (3.14%) HP
9 24 (3.02%) Apple
9 24 (3.02%) Dell
10 21 (2.64%) Fortinet
11 20 (2.52%) Ericsson
11 20 (2.52%) F5
12 16 (2.01%) CheckPoint
12 16 (2.01%) Google
13 14 (1.76%) Remedy
14 12 (1.51%) Oracle
15 11 (1.38%) Meraki
15 11 (1.38%) Palo Alto
16 10 (1.26%) Actix