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 18 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 80 63
Rank change year-on-year -79 -17 +20
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 761 875 1,407
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.76% 2.98% 3.16%
As % of the General category 3.09% 4.76% 5.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 476 482 801
10th Percentile £170 £305 £200
25th Percentile £346 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £510 £450
Median % change year-on-year -8.04% +13.33% -8.16%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £588
90th Percentile £675 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £510 £448
% change year-on-year -11.76% +13.84% +2.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 31 54
10th Percentile £17.71 £14.00 £12.15
25th Percentile £20.50 £19.75 £12.52
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year -13.36% -25.17% -30.00%
75th Percentile £24.81 £60.00 £67.17
90th Percentile £50.50 £63.00 £87.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £23.59 £25.00
% change year-on-year +1.00% -5.64% -52.38%

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 24,639 18,367 25,993
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.94% 62.65% 58.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,366 11,681 16,636
10th Percentile £300 £300 £263
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,513 669 1,810
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.22 £12.84
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.12 £15.38
Median hourly rate £24.55 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.17% +15.38% -23.53%
75th Percentile £56.96 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.20 £75.45 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £27.85 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.41% +11.40% -14.53%

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 18 March 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 18 March 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 18 March 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 -79 665 £475 -7.71% 492
UK excluding London -73 431 £450 -11.76% 421
London -25 267 £475 -10.38% 134
Work from Home -63 177 £475 -6.86% 158
South East -59 157 £469 -6.85% 142
Midlands -32 74 £500 -2.44% 57
North of England -59 70 £388 -22.50% 91
South West -41 56 £525 -2.78% 38
West Midlands -42 50 £550 +7.32% 38
East of England -11 37 £475 -2.56% 60
North West -51 29 £301 -40.93% 42
Scotland +20 27 £330 -18.52% 31
East Midlands -23 24 £158 -74.80% 19
North East 0 23 £175 -51.72% 10
Yorkshire -53 17 £481 -8.33% 44
Wales -3 9 £160 -56.16% 15
Northern Ireland 0 8 £150 -72.73% 3

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 10 (1.31%) SharePoint
2 9 (1.18%) Appian
2 9 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.05%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.05%) Confluence
4 7 (0.92%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.53%) Apache
5 4 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.53%) IIS
6 3 (0.39%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.39%) JBoss
6 3 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.39%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.39%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.13%) CMS
8 1 (0.13%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.13%) Smallworld
Applications
1 51 (6.70%) Microsoft Office
2 24 (3.15%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.71%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (1.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.92%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.39%) Autodesk Inventor
7 2 (0.26%) MicroStation
7 2 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.26%) Trello
8 1 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.13%) FrameMaker
8 1 (0.13%) MadCap Flare
Business Applications
1 17 (2.23%) SAP PSCD
2 16 (2.10%) SAP BRIM
2 16 (2.10%) SAP Hybris
3 10 (1.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.39%) BambooHR
5 3 (0.39%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.26%) Primavera
6 2 (0.26%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.13%) Remedy AR System
7 1 (0.13%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.13%) SAP SRM
7 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 73 (9.59%) Azure
2 56 (7.36%) AWS
3 49 (6.44%) Microsoft 365
4 39 (5.12%) GCP
5 17 (2.23%) Power Platform
5 17 (2.23%) SAP Commerce Cloud
6 13 (1.71%) SaaS
7 10 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (1.05%) Dynamics 365
8 8 (1.05%) GitHub
9 6 (0.79%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (0.66%) Datadog
10 5 (0.66%) dbt
11 4 (0.53%) Entra ID
11 4 (0.53%) Miro
11 4 (0.53%) Slack
12 3 (0.39%) Asana
12 3 (0.39%) Dagster
12 3 (0.39%) Prefect
12 3 (0.39%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 49 (6.44%) WAN
2 40 (5.26%) Firewall
3 37 (4.86%) LAN
4 36 (4.73%) 5G
5 35 (4.60%) MPLS
5 35 (4.60%) Wireless
6 27 (3.55%) Network Security
6 27 (3.55%) SD-WAN
7 26 (3.42%) Radio Access Network
8 25 (3.29%) 4G
9 21 (2.76%) VPN
10 20 (2.63%) BGP
11 19 (2.50%) Internet
11 19 (2.50%) LTE
12 18 (2.37%) Broadband
12 18 (2.37%) DNS
13 17 (2.23%) SDH
13 17 (2.23%) VoIP
14 14 (1.84%) 2G
14 14 (1.84%) 3GPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (2.10%) Power BI
2 12 (1.58%) MySQL
3 10 (1.31%) Tableau
4 9 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (1.05%) Looker
5 8 (1.05%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.92%) Big Data
6 7 (0.92%) GIS
6 7 (0.92%) Relational Database
7 6 (0.79%) SQL Server
8 5 (0.66%) BigQuery
8 5 (0.66%) PostgreSQL
9 4 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.39%) Metadata
10 3 (0.39%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.39%) RDBMS
11 2 (0.26%) Apache Cassandra
11 2 (0.26%) Flink
11 2 (0.26%) InfluxDB
11 2 (0.26%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 23 (3.02%) JIRA
2 9 (1.18%) GitLab
3 7 (0.92%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.79%) Git
5 5 (0.66%) Robot Framework
6 4 (0.53%) JUnit
6 4 (0.53%) Selenium
7 3 (0.39%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.39%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.39%) Storybook
8 2 (0.26%) Appium
8 2 (0.26%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.26%) JMeter
8 2 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.13%) Maven
9 1 (0.13%) Mockito
9 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 240 (31.54%) Finance
2 223 (29.30%) Social Skills
3 201 (26.41%) Public Sector
4 156 (20.50%) Marketing
5 149 (19.58%) Electronics
6 143 (18.79%) Manufacturing
7 86 (11.30%) Analytical Skills
8 40 (5.26%) Billing
9 21 (2.76%) Organisational Skills
10 19 (2.50%) Legal
11 18 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
12 12 (1.58%) Retail
13 10 (1.31%) Military
14 9 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
15 8 (1.05%) Banking
16 6 (0.79%) Law
17 5 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
18 4 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 3 (0.39%) Financial Institution
20 2 (0.26%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 85 (11.17%) Architect
2 71 (9.33%) Analyst
3 46 (6.04%) Consultant
3 46 (6.04%) Lead
4 42 (5.52%) Business Analyst
5 41 (5.39%) Senior
6 40 (5.26%) IT Support
7 37 (4.86%) Project Manager
8 35 (4.60%) Network Engineer
9 34 (4.47%) Desktop Support
10 29 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
11 24 (3.15%) 2nd Line Support
12 23 (3.02%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
12 23 (3.02%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
13 22 (2.89%) Developer
14 20 (2.63%) Coordinator
14 20 (2.63%) Migration Engineer
14 20 (2.63%) Telecoms Manager
15 19 (2.50%) IT Engineer
16 18 (2.37%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (3.42%) REST
2 19 (2.50%) SOAP
3 8 (1.05%) .NET
3 8 (1.05%) Elastic Stack
3 8 (1.05%) Kafka
4 6 (0.79%) Middleware
4 6 (0.79%) RESTful
5 5 (0.66%) RabbitMQ
5 5 (0.66%) Web Services
5 5 (0.66%) XML
6 4 (0.53%) HTML
6 4 (0.53%) JSON
6 4 (0.53%) React
6 4 (0.53%) Spring
6 4 (0.53%) Spring Boot
7 3 (0.39%) 802.1X
7 3 (0.39%) Jinja
7 3 (0.39%) PySpark
7 3 (0.39%) RFC 2544
7 3 (0.39%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 54 (7.10%) Data Centre
2 31 (4.07%) Driving Licence
3 29 (3.81%) Data Protection Act
4 25 (3.29%) Product Ownership
5 21 (2.76%) Onboarding
6 19 (2.50%) CMDB
7 17 (2.23%) IoT
8 16 (2.10%) Cloud Native
9 14 (1.84%) NHS
10 13 (1.71%) Mobile App
11 12 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
12 9 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
12 9 (1.18%) Virtual Team
13 8 (1.05%) Fibre Optics
14 7 (0.92%) Algorithms
14 7 (0.92%) Analytical Mindset
14 7 (0.92%) Enterprise Cloud
14 7 (0.92%) SCADA
14 7 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
15 6 (0.79%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 39 (5.12%) Android
2 36 (4.73%) Windows
3 31 (4.07%) Mac OS
4 19 (2.50%) Linux
5 18 (2.37%) Windows 10
6 7 (0.92%) Unix
7 6 (0.79%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.66%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.39%) Debian
9 3 (0.39%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.39%) VMS
10 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.13%) CentOS
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (20.37%) Business Intelligence
2 147 (19.32%) Programme Management
3 142 (18.66%) Digital Marketing
4 109 (14.32%) Stakeholder Management
5 104 (13.67%) Agile
6 101 (13.27%) Problem-Solving
7 84 (11.04%) Migration
8 83 (10.91%) Continuous Improvement
9 66 (8.67%) ITIL
10 65 (8.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 58 (7.62%) Workflow
12 54 (7.10%) Logistics
13 52 (6.83%) Project Management
14 48 (6.31%) Customer Service
15 41 (5.39%) Decision-Making
16 40 (5.26%) CI/CD
16 40 (5.26%) Data Protection
16 40 (5.26%) Roadmaps
17 39 (5.12%) Change Management
18 38 (4.99%) AI
Programming Languages
1 51 (6.70%) Python
2 36 (4.73%) SQL
3 24 (3.15%) JavaScript
4 19 (2.50%) Java
5 10 (1.31%) PowerShell
6 9 (1.18%) Bash
7 6 (0.79%) C++
7 6 (0.79%) TypeScript
8 5 (0.66%) Go
9 4 (0.53%) C#
9 4 (0.53%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.39%) C
10 3 (0.39%) R
11 2 (0.26%) BeanShell
11 2 (0.26%) PHP
11 2 (0.26%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.13%) Bicep
12 1 (0.13%) Cypher
12 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 182 (23.92%) Security Cleared
2 153 (20.11%) SC Cleared
3 65 (8.54%) Degree
4 23 (3.02%) DV Cleared
5 19 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
7 13 (1.71%) PMP
8 11 (1.45%) CCNP
8 11 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (1.45%) ITIL Certification
9 10 (1.31%) ACCA
9 10 (1.31%) PMI Certification
10 9 (1.18%) Azure Certification
11 7 (0.92%) AWS Certification
11 7 (0.92%) CIMA
12 6 (0.79%) CCIE
12 6 (0.79%) CCNA
12 6 (0.79%) ISTQB
12 6 (0.79%) Microsoft Certification
13 5 (0.66%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (4.20%) SLA
2 25 (3.29%) GDPR
3 21 (2.76%) PMO
3 21 (2.76%) QA
4 17 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 16 (2.10%) Data Quality
6 12 (1.58%) NIST
7 10 (1.31%) GRC
8 9 (1.18%) NCSC
9 7 (0.92%) RMADS
10 5 (0.66%) JSP 440
10 5 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.53%) IFRS
12 3 (0.39%) Accessibility
12 3 (0.39%) GAAP
13 2 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 2 (0.26%) HIPAA
13 2 (0.26%) PCI DSS
14 1 (0.13%) COSO
14 1 (0.13%) FISMA
System Software
1 19 (2.50%) Active Directory
2 16 (2.10%) Docker
3 3 (0.39%) QEMU
4 2 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.13%) Firmware
5 1 (0.13%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 26 (3.42%) Kubernetes
2 15 (1.97%) Ansible
3 12 (1.58%) Grafana
4 9 (1.18%) Prometheus
4 9 (1.18%) Terraform
5 6 (0.79%) SCCM
6 5 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.53%) Argo
8 3 (0.39%) Amdocs OSS
8 3 (0.39%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.39%) Iperf
8 3 (0.39%) Podman
9 2 (0.26%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.26%) Nmap
9 2 (0.26%) vRealize
10 1 (0.13%) Consul
10 1 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.13%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.13%) Rancher
10 1 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 167 (21.94%) SAP
2 107 (14.06%) Cisco
3 87 (11.43%) Microsoft
4 49 (6.44%) ServiceNow
5 33 (4.34%) Nokia
6 25 (3.29%) HP
6 25 (3.29%) Juniper
7 24 (3.15%) Dell
7 24 (3.15%) Oracle
8 23 (3.02%) Apple
9 21 (2.76%) Fortinet
10 17 (2.23%) Ericsson
11 13 (1.71%) Salesforce
12 12 (1.58%) CheckPoint
12 12 (1.58%) F5
12 12 (1.58%) Google
12 12 (1.58%) Huawei
12 12 (1.58%) Meraki
12 12 (1.58%) Remedy
13 11 (1.45%) Palo Alto