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 28 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 125 58 72
Rank change year-on-year -67 +14 +14
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 818 1,271 1,355
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.27% 3.47% 2.97%
As % of the General category 3.62% 5.81% 4.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 530 584 869
10th Percentile £170 £265 £263
25th Percentile £321 £393 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% - +4.17%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £625
90th Percentile £675 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -10.00% +11.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 46 33
10th Percentile £14.75 £21.88 £14.22
25th Percentile £17.47 £24.63 £24.25
Median hourly rate £22.08 £49.28 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -55.20% -6.13% +5.00%
75th Percentile £29.44 £73.44 £80.00
90th Percentile £65.25 £75.63 £88.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.04 £50.00 £63.75
% change year-on-year -55.93% -21.57% +15.91%

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 common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 22,571 21,864 27,174
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 62.52% 59.73% 59.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,144 12,907 18,051
10th Percentile £273 £292 £280
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
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 1,449 820 1,115
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.84 £18.00 £17.00
Median hourly rate £24.09 £28.00 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.96% -12.50% +28.00%
75th Percentile £45.46 £53.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £69.99 £70.25 £71.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.14 £27.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year -18.00% -10.00% +36.36%

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 28 November 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 28 November 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 28 November 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 -63 711 £464 -7.25% 571
UK excluding London -59 469 £450 -10.00% 534
London -37 275 £450 -14.29% 153
Work from Home -55 201 £500 - 190
South East -38 176 £500 -1.48% 214
South West -28 82 £550 +3.77% 72
Midlands -28 74 £380 -18.50% 79
North of England -40 62 £275 -32.10% 91
West Midlands -41 57 £438 -6.91% 63
North West -20 34 £225 -44.10% 55
Scotland +5 31 £281 -22.41% 42
East of England -40 31 £475 +8.57% 48
Yorkshire -39 18 £376 -24.75% 24
East Midlands -5 17 £158 -10.00% 15
Northern Ireland +2 11 £150 -18.92% 5
Wales +1 10 £160 -56.16% 6
North East -7 9 £175 -50.00% 12
Channel Islands -7 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 (1.96%) Confluence
1 16 (1.96%) SharePoint
2 13 (1.59%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.34%) Apache Spark
4 10 (1.22%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.86%) Appian
6 4 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.37%) CMS
8 2 (0.24%) Apache
8 2 (0.24%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.12%) Drupal
9 1 (0.12%) Gunicorn
9 1 (0.12%) Headless CMS
9 1 (0.12%) IIS
9 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
Applications
1 49 (5.99%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (3.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.96%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (1.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 9 (1.10%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.49%) Autodesk Inventor
7 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.24%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.12%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.12%) Sketch
9 1 (0.12%) Trello
Business Applications
1 13 (1.59%) SAP BRIM
1 13 (1.59%) SAP Hybris
1 13 (1.59%) SAP PSCD
2 5 (0.61%) Endur
2 5 (0.61%) Primavera
3 4 (0.49%) SAP ERP
4 2 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.24%) Oracle EBS R12
4 2 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.24%) SAP CO
4 2 (0.24%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.24%) SAP FI/CO
4 2 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 74 (9.05%) Azure
2 64 (7.82%) AWS
3 58 (7.09%) Microsoft 365
4 44 (5.38%) GCP
5 29 (3.55%) SaaS
6 20 (2.44%) Power Platform
7 13 (1.59%) GitHub
7 13 (1.59%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 9 (1.10%) Azure DevOps
8 9 (1.10%) Dynamics 365
8 9 (1.10%) Entra ID
9 8 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (0.86%) Miro
10 7 (0.86%) Tricentis Tosca
11 6 (0.73%) IaaS
12 5 (0.61%) Cloud Computing
12 5 (0.61%) OpenShift
13 4 (0.49%) dbt
13 4 (0.49%) PaaS
13 4 (0.49%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 59 (7.21%) Firewall
2 52 (6.36%) WAN
3 49 (5.99%) LAN
3 49 (5.99%) Wireless
4 30 (3.67%) VPN
5 26 (3.18%) 5G
5 26 (3.18%) DNS
5 26 (3.18%) SD-WAN
6 25 (3.06%) 4G
7 24 (2.93%) Radio Access Network
8 23 (2.81%) Broadband
9 22 (2.69%) MPLS
10 20 (2.44%) Network Security
10 20 (2.44%) Wi-Fi
11 19 (2.32%) VoIP
12 18 (2.20%) Wireshark
13 17 (2.08%) BGP
14 16 (1.96%) LTE
15 13 (1.59%) 3GPP
15 13 (1.59%) SDH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.20%) Power BI
2 14 (1.71%) Tableau
3 9 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (0.98%) Big Data
4 8 (0.98%) GIS
4 8 (0.98%) MySQL
4 8 (0.98%) Oracle Database
5 6 (0.73%) MongoDB
6 5 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (0.61%) Relational Database
7 4 (0.49%) BigQuery
7 4 (0.49%) Electronic Patient Records
7 4 (0.49%) SAP BW
8 2 (0.24%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.24%) Hadoop
8 2 (0.24%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.24%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.24%) Power Query
8 2 (0.24%) QGIS
8 2 (0.24%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 28 (3.42%) JIRA
2 23 (2.81%) GitLab
3 11 (1.34%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.10%) Postman
5 8 (0.98%) Robot Framework
5 8 (0.98%) Selenium
6 7 (0.86%) Cucumber
6 7 (0.86%) Git
6 7 (0.86%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.49%) Clang
7 4 (0.49%) Cypress.io
7 4 (0.49%) GCC
7 4 (0.49%) JUnit
8 3 (0.37%) Maven
8 3 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
8 3 (0.37%) Storybook
9 2 (0.24%) Appium
9 2 (0.24%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.24%) Gradle
9 2 (0.24%) Subversion
General
1 315 (38.51%) Finance
2 273 (33.37%) Public Sector
3 266 (32.52%) Social Skills
4 219 (26.77%) Marketing
5 211 (25.79%) Manufacturing
6 207 (25.31%) Electronics
7 97 (11.86%) Analytical Skills
8 29 (3.55%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (3.06%) Legal
10 19 (2.32%) Billing
11 13 (1.59%) Law
11 13 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
12 11 (1.34%) Automotive
12 11 (1.34%) Retail
13 10 (1.22%) Banking
14 7 (0.86%) Back Office
14 7 (0.86%) French Language
14 7 (0.86%) Military
14 7 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 93 (11.37%) Architect
2 75 (9.17%) Analyst
3 54 (6.60%) Consultant
4 52 (6.36%) Project Manager
5 47 (5.75%) IT Support
6 43 (5.26%) Desktop Support
7 42 (5.13%) Business Analyst
8 40 (4.89%) Senior
9 35 (4.28%) Lead
9 35 (4.28%) Network Engineer
10 28 (3.42%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
10 28 (3.42%) 2nd Line Support
10 28 (3.42%) Developer
10 28 (3.42%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
11 26 (3.18%) Solutions Architect
12 25 (3.06%) Network Architect
12 25 (3.06%) Support Engineer
13 23 (2.81%) Network Specialist
14 22 (2.69%) Test Engineer
15 20 (2.44%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (2.93%) REST
2 16 (1.96%) SOAP
3 14 (1.71%) React
4 12 (1.47%) JSON
5 11 (1.34%) XML
6 9 (1.10%) Node.js
6 9 (1.10%) RESTful
6 9 (1.10%) RFC 2544
6 9 (1.10%) SailPoint
7 8 (0.98%) 802.1X
7 8 (0.98%) Jinja
8 7 (0.86%) CSS
8 7 (0.86%) HTML
8 7 (0.86%) NETCONF
8 7 (0.86%) Web Services
9 6 (0.73%) PySpark
9 6 (0.73%) YANG
10 5 (0.61%) Kafka
10 5 (0.61%) Spring
10 5 (0.61%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 72 (8.80%) Data Centre
2 33 (4.03%) Driving Licence
3 29 (3.55%) Cloud Native
4 27 (3.30%) Product Ownership
5 26 (3.18%) Legacy Systems
6 19 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
6 19 (2.32%) Fibre Optics
7 18 (2.20%) CMDB
7 18 (2.20%) Onboarding
8 16 (1.96%) Mobile App
9 15 (1.83%) NHS
10 14 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
11 13 (1.59%) IoT
12 11 (1.34%) Virtual Team
13 10 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (1.10%) Algorithms
14 9 (1.10%) Cyber Threat
15 8 (0.98%) Renewable Energy
15 8 (0.98%) SCADA
16 7 (0.86%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 55 (6.72%) Windows
2 40 (4.89%) Android
3 32 (3.91%) Mac OS
4 24 (2.93%) Linux
5 14 (1.71%) Windows 10
6 10 (1.22%) Windows Server
7 9 (1.10%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.73%) Unix
9 1 (0.12%) CentOS
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 228 (27.87%) Business Intelligence
2 212 (25.92%) Programme Management
3 206 (25.18%) Digital Marketing
4 145 (17.73%) Problem-Solving
5 136 (16.63%) Agile
6 120 (14.67%) Stakeholder Management
7 89 (10.88%) Migration
8 82 (10.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 75 (9.17%) Continuous Improvement
10 72 (8.80%) ITIL
11 58 (7.09%) DevOps
12 55 (6.72%) CI/CD
13 53 (6.48%) AI
13 53 (6.48%) Customer Service
13 53 (6.48%) Service Delivery
14 52 (6.36%) Logistics
14 52 (6.36%) Workflow
15 51 (6.23%) Project Management
16 50 (6.11%) Change Management
17 49 (5.99%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 75 (9.17%) Python
2 43 (5.26%) SQL
3 37 (4.52%) JavaScript
4 20 (2.44%) PowerShell
5 18 (2.20%) Java
6 15 (1.83%) Bash
7 14 (1.71%) TypeScript
8 10 (1.22%) C
8 10 (1.22%) C++
9 9 (1.10%) C#
10 6 (0.73%) Go
10 6 (0.73%) PHP
11 4 (0.49%) ABAP
12 3 (0.37%) BeanShell
12 3 (0.37%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.37%) R
13 2 (0.24%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.24%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.12%) Groovy
14 1 (0.12%) Scala
Qualifications
1 229 (28.00%) Security Cleared
2 182 (22.25%) SC Cleared
3 76 (9.29%) Degree
4 45 (5.50%) DV Cleared
5 27 (3.30%) Cisco Certification
6 17 (2.08%) Master's Degree
7 16 (1.96%) CCNP
7 16 (1.96%) CISSP
8 14 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
8 14 (1.71%) CCNA
9 12 (1.47%) PMP
10 11 (1.34%) CCIE
10 11 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
11 9 (1.10%) ITIL Certification
11 9 (1.10%) PMI Certification
12 8 (0.98%) Azure Certification
12 8 (0.98%) CESG Certified Professional
12 8 (0.98%) CISM
13 6 (0.73%) AWS Certification
13 6 (0.73%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (4.40%) QA
2 34 (4.16%) SLA
3 20 (2.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 17 (2.08%) GDPR
5 15 (1.83%) PMO
6 13 (1.59%) Data Quality
7 10 (1.22%) Accessibility
7 10 (1.22%) NIST
8 9 (1.10%) GRC
9 8 (0.98%) NCSC
9 8 (0.98%) RMADS
10 7 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.73%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.37%) GAAP
12 3 (0.37%) IFRS
12 3 (0.37%) WCAG
13 2 (0.24%) Def Stans
13 2 (0.24%) IEC 61508
13 2 (0.24%) ISO 26262
13 2 (0.24%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 30 (3.67%) Active Directory
2 28 (3.42%) Docker
3 7 (0.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
5 4 (0.49%) vSphere
6 2 (0.24%) Firmware
6 2 (0.24%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.12%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 33 (4.03%) Ansible
2 29 (3.55%) Kubernetes
3 23 (2.81%) Terraform
4 6 (0.73%) Grafana
4 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (0.61%) Puppet
5 5 (0.61%) SCCM
6 4 (0.49%) Argo
6 4 (0.49%) Data Guard
6 4 (0.49%) NSN NetAct
6 4 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.37%) HP ALM
7 3 (0.37%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 3 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
7 3 (0.37%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.37%) vRealize
8 2 (0.24%) Cisco Prime
8 2 (0.24%) EMC NetWorker
8 2 (0.24%) Nmap
8 2 (0.24%) OpenView
Vendors
1 243 (29.71%) SAP
2 136 (16.63%) Cisco
3 96 (11.74%) Microsoft
4 39 (4.77%) ServiceNow
5 32 (3.91%) Juniper
5 32 (3.91%) Salesforce
6 27 (3.30%) HP
6 27 (3.30%) Nokia
7 25 (3.06%) Dell
8 24 (2.93%) Apple
9 23 (2.81%) Oracle
10 21 (2.57%) F5
10 21 (2.57%) Fortinet
11 19 (2.32%) Ericsson
12 16 (1.96%) Google
13 15 (1.83%) CheckPoint
14 14 (1.71%) Remedy
15 12 (1.47%) VMware
16 10 (1.22%) Actix
16 10 (1.22%) Meraki