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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 178 99 63
Rank change year-on-year -79 -36 +18
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 738 779 1,341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.45% 2.59% 3.09%
As % of the General category 2.67% 4.08% 5.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 437 447 637
10th Percentile £205 £306 £200
25th Percentile £396 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -7.12%
75th Percentile £566 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £465 £450
% change year-on-year -1.08% +3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 38 102
10th Percentile £16.01 - £12.15
25th Percentile £19.93 £14.00 £13.89
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.40 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.49% -39.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £50.00 £62.24 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £65.25 £76.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £15.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year +35.48% -65.56% +16.13%

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 27,678 19,070 24,743
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.37% 63.50% 56.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,702 11,999 15,483
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £770
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,877 929 2,004
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.55 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.76 £31.13
Median % change year-on-year +15.27% -10.81% +3.75%
75th Percentile £61.18 £53.75 £53.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £67.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £24.34 £30.00
% change year-on-year +29.25% -18.87% +17.19%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -93 642 £475 -3.06% 543
UK excluding London -102 376 £460 -1.08% 476
London -24 283 £500 +2.30% 167
Work from Home -50 206 £478 +0.53% 192
South East -63 161 £465 -5.87% 161
North of England -61 71 £500 -4.76% 96
South West -59 48 £488 +14.71% 39
Midlands -50 39 £488 -3.70% 78
North West -54 35 £506 -3.57% 51
West Midlands -56 33 £470 +13.94% 52
East of England -19 32 £190 -52.50% 57
Scotland -20 25 £305 -6.15% 43
Yorkshire -39 25 £498 -2.80% 35
North East -25 11 £500 - 13
East Midlands -14 6 £500 -20.00% 26
Northern Ireland -5 3 £175 -51.05% 10
Wales -15 1 £500 +90.48% 9

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 (1.22%) Confluence
1 9 (1.22%) OpenStack
2 6 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (0.81%) Appian
3 5 (0.68%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.54%) Anypoint
4 4 (0.54%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
5 3 (0.41%) ArcGIS
5 3 (0.41%) IIS
5 3 (0.41%) JBoss
5 3 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
5 3 (0.41%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.27%) Apache
6 2 (0.27%) Oracle Spatial
7 1 (0.14%) Camunda
7 1 (0.14%) CMS
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
7 1 (0.14%) Smallworld
Applications
1 22 (2.98%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (2.71%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (1.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (1.36%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.68%) AutoCAD
4 5 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.27%) MicroStation
6 1 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
6 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.14%) Revit
6 1 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
6 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.14%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (2.57%) SAP PSCD
2 14 (1.90%) Remedy ITSM
3 13 (1.76%) SAP BRIM
4 12 (1.63%) SAP Hybris
5 6 (0.81%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 5 (0.68%) SAP FI
7 4 (0.54%) BambooHR
7 4 (0.54%) NetSuite
7 4 (0.54%) Remedy AR System
7 4 (0.54%) Sage X3
7 4 (0.54%) SAP FI-CA
8 3 (0.41%) Salesforce CRM
9 2 (0.27%) SAP ERP
10 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
10 1 (0.14%) SAP CO
10 1 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
10 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
10 1 (0.14%) SAP SD
10 1 (0.14%) SAP SRM
10 1 (0.14%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 66 (8.94%) Azure
2 61 (8.27%) AWS
3 40 (5.42%) GCP
4 19 (2.57%) Power Platform
5 18 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
6 16 (2.17%) SaaS
7 14 (1.90%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 9 (1.22%) dbt
8 9 (1.22%) Snowflake
9 7 (0.95%) Entra ID
10 6 (0.81%) Datadog
10 6 (0.81%) GitHub
10 6 (0.81%) Serverless
11 5 (0.68%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (0.68%) Azure DevOps
11 5 (0.68%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (0.68%) Prefect
12 4 (0.54%) Cloud Functions
12 4 (0.54%) Dagster
12 4 (0.54%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 58 (7.86%) WAN
2 56 (7.59%) 5G
2 56 (7.59%) MPLS
3 48 (6.50%) LAN
4 39 (5.28%) Firewall
5 34 (4.61%) 4G
5 34 (4.61%) Radio Access Network
6 29 (3.93%) BGP
7 28 (3.79%) SD-WAN
8 23 (3.12%) Network Security
9 20 (2.71%) 3GPP
9 20 (2.71%) LTE
9 20 (2.71%) VoIP
10 19 (2.57%) OSPF
10 19 (2.57%) VPN
11 18 (2.44%) DNS
12 17 (2.30%) Internet
12 17 (2.30%) VLAN
13 15 (2.03%) Structured Cabling
14 14 (1.90%) 3G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.44%) Power BI
2 15 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
3 13 (1.76%) BigQuery
4 12 (1.63%) Looker
4 12 (1.63%) Tableau
5 11 (1.49%) Amazon Redshift
6 7 (0.95%) Big Data
6 7 (0.95%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.68%) MySQL
8 4 (0.54%) Oracle Database
8 4 (0.54%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.41%) GIS
9 3 (0.41%) InfluxDB
9 3 (0.41%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.41%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.41%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.27%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.27%) Metadata
10 2 (0.27%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 23 (3.12%) JIRA
2 9 (1.22%) Git
3 3 (0.41%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.27%) GitLab
4 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
4 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.14%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.14%) JMeter
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
5 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 209 (28.32%) Social Skills
2 126 (17.07%) Finance
3 104 (14.09%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (9.08%) Public Sector
5 46 (6.23%) Billing
6 28 (3.79%) Marketing
7 27 (3.66%) Retail
8 24 (3.25%) Documentation Skills
9 19 (2.57%) Legal
10 18 (2.44%) Electronics
11 15 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
11 15 (2.03%) Organisational Skills
12 14 (1.90%) Manufacturing
13 9 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 6 (0.81%) Aerospace
16 5 (0.68%) Banking
16 5 (0.68%) Police
16 5 (0.68%) Publishing
17 4 (0.54%) Military
Job Titles
1 95 (12.87%) Architect
2 62 (8.40%) Lead
3 61 (8.27%) Consultant
4 59 (7.99%) Senior
5 57 (7.72%) Analyst
6 41 (5.56%) Network Engineer
7 40 (5.42%) Solutions Architect
8 39 (5.28%) Telecoms Manager
9 37 (5.01%) Project Manager
10 27 (3.66%) Designer
10 27 (3.66%) Developer
11 24 (3.25%) ServiceNow Architect
12 23 (3.12%) Data Engineer
13 21 (2.85%) Delivery Manager
14 20 (2.71%) SAP Consultant
15 19 (2.57%) Business Analyst
16 18 (2.44%) Sales Manager
17 17 (2.30%) Enterprise Architect
17 17 (2.30%) Programme Manager
17 17 (2.30%) Telecoms Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (5.28%) REST
2 26 (3.52%) SOAP
3 12 (1.63%) Middleware
3 12 (1.63%) ONVIF
4 10 (1.36%) Kafka
5 9 (1.22%) .NET
5 9 (1.22%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (1.08%) XML
7 6 (0.81%) JSON
7 6 (0.81%) NETCONF
7 6 (0.81%) OpenAPI
7 6 (0.81%) Swagger
7 6 (0.81%) YANG
8 5 (0.68%) RESTful
9 4 (0.54%) .NET Framework
9 4 (0.54%) RAML
10 3 (0.41%) GraphQL
10 3 (0.41%) Model Context Protocol
10 3 (0.41%) RabbitMQ
10 3 (0.41%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 40 (5.42%) CMDB
2 39 (5.28%) Data Centre
3 34 (4.61%) Onboarding
4 29 (3.93%) Cloud Native
5 23 (3.12%) Data Protection Act
6 20 (2.71%) Driving Licence
7 17 (2.30%) Virtual Team
8 16 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
8 16 (2.17%) Product Ownership
9 13 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
10 12 (1.63%) Video\Live Streaming
11 10 (1.36%) Hybrid Cloud
12 9 (1.22%) Management Information System
13 8 (1.08%) EPoS
13 8 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (1.08%) TM Forum
14 6 (0.81%) NHS
14 6 (0.81%) Web Conferencing
15 5 (0.68%) Legacy Systems
15 5 (0.68%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 29 (3.93%) Windows
2 23 (3.12%) Linux
3 14 (1.90%) Windows 10
4 11 (1.49%) Unix
5 3 (0.41%) Android
5 3 (0.41%) Mac OS
5 3 (0.41%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.27%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
6 2 (0.27%) VMS
7 1 (0.14%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.14%) OpenVMS
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (16.26%) Stakeholder Management
2 97 (13.14%) Agile
2 97 (13.14%) Problem-Solving
3 77 (10.43%) ITIL
4 69 (9.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 61 (8.27%) Decision-Making
6 60 (8.13%) Continuous Improvement
7 56 (7.59%) Project Delivery
8 53 (7.18%) CI/CD
8 53 (7.18%) Migration
9 51 (6.91%) CRM
9 51 (6.91%) Project Management
10 50 (6.78%) Service Management
11 49 (6.64%) Roadmaps
12 47 (6.37%) Customer Service
12 47 (6.37%) Validation
13 45 (6.10%) Analytics
13 45 (6.10%) ITSM
14 41 (5.56%) Risk Management
15 40 (5.42%) AI
Programming Languages
1 56 (7.59%) Python
2 34 (4.61%) SQL
3 16 (2.17%) Java
3 16 (2.17%) JavaScript
4 10 (1.36%) C#
5 8 (1.08%) Bash
6 7 (0.95%) C++
7 6 (0.81%) R
8 4 (0.54%) DataWeave
8 4 (0.54%) PowerShell
8 4 (0.54%) TypeScript
9 3 (0.41%) ABAP
9 3 (0.41%) Apex Code
9 3 (0.41%) LookML
10 2 (0.27%) C
10 2 (0.27%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.27%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.14%) Bicep
11 1 (0.14%) DCL
11 1 (0.14%) Go
Qualifications
1 121 (16.40%) Security Cleared
2 84 (11.38%) SC Cleared
3 74 (10.03%) Degree
4 45 (6.10%) Cisco Certification
5 29 (3.93%) CCNA
6 23 (3.12%) DV Cleared
6 23 (3.12%) Microsoft Certification
7 22 (2.98%) A+ Certification
8 21 (2.85%) CCNP
9 18 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
10 17 (2.30%) PMP
11 15 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
12 13 (1.76%) PMI Certification
13 12 (1.63%) MCSA
14 11 (1.49%) Network+ Certification
15 9 (1.22%) Azure Certification
16 8 (1.08%) AWS Certification
16 8 (1.08%) CCIE
16 8 (1.08%) Master's Degree
17 6 (0.81%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (3.25%) SLA
2 21 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (2.44%) NCSC
4 16 (2.17%) GDPR
4 16 (2.17%) PMO
5 15 (2.03%) QA
6 13 (1.76%) Data Quality
7 11 (1.49%) GRC
8 8 (1.08%) NIST
9 5 (0.68%) RMADS
10 3 (0.41%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.14%) IFRS
11 1 (0.14%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.14%) ISO 22301
11 1 (0.14%) ISO 31000
11 1 (0.14%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 16 (2.17%) Active Directory
2 14 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (1.63%) Docker
4 7 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.68%) vSphere
6 3 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.27%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 40 (5.42%) Kubernetes
2 19 (2.57%) Terraform
3 16 (2.17%) Ansible
4 13 (1.76%) Grafana
4 13 (1.76%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.41%) Cisco Prime
5 3 (0.41%) Iperf
5 3 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
5 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.41%) vCenter Server
5 3 (0.41%) vRealize
6 2 (0.27%) Amdocs OSS
6 2 (0.27%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.27%) Nmap
6 2 (0.27%) NSN NetAct
7 1 (0.14%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.14%) Kibana
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.14%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.14%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 84 (11.38%) Microsoft
2 72 (9.76%) ServiceNow
3 68 (9.21%) Cisco
4 39 (5.28%) Nokia
5 35 (4.74%) SAP
6 28 (3.79%) Salesforce
7 23 (3.12%) BT
7 23 (3.12%) Oracle
8 20 (2.71%) VMware
9 19 (2.57%) Ericsson
10 18 (2.44%) Fortinet
11 17 (2.30%) Remedy
12 15 (2.03%) Juniper
13 14 (1.90%) Huawei
14 13 (1.76%) F5
15 12 (1.63%) Google
16 11 (1.49%) BMC
16 11 (1.49%) CheckPoint
16 11 (1.49%) MuleSoft
17 10 (1.36%) Palo Alto