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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 179 97 62
Rank change year-on-year -82 -35 +20
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 755 799 1,344
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.47% 2.58% 3.10%
As % of the General category 2.69% 4.09% 5.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 441 458 635
10th Percentile £208 £303 £200
25th Percentile £388 £399 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £460
Median % change year-on-year - +3.26% -5.64%
75th Percentile £565 £575 £607
90th Percentile £688 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £455 £450
% change year-on-year +0.88% +1.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 38 107
10th Percentile £16.01 - £12.15
25th Percentile £18.28 £14.00 £14.00
Median hourly rate £27.25 £27.40 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -0.55% -43.57% -7.50%
75th Percentile £50.00 £62.24 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £65.25 £75.00
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 28,045 19,559 24,774
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.50% 63.16% 57.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,821 12,304 15,501
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £490
% change year-on-year +5.82% -3.57% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,932 963 1,967
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.47 £12.79
25th Percentile £18.25 £16.46 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.35 £31.71
Median % change year-on-year +17.00% -13.75% +3.97%
75th Percentile £60.00 £53.00 £53.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.25 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.78 £23.00 £30.37
% change year-on-year +38.16% -24.27% +20.88%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -88 657 £475 -3.06% 734
UK excluding London -97 389 £459 +0.88% 591
London -36 283 £500 +2.04% 259
Work from Home -47 211 £475 - 262
South East -57 173 £466 -6.33% 181
North of England -55 67 £500 -1.96% 119
South West -58 48 £463 +8.82% 46
Midlands -51 39 £478 +25.41% 91
North West -49 35 £506 -3.57% 74
East of England -10 34 £190 -52.50% 67
West Midlands -63 33 £470 +34.29% 61
Scotland -12 28 £305 -6.15% 74
Yorkshire -34 23 £600 +33.26% 34
North East -22 9 £500 - 14
East Midlands -15 6 £500 -20.00% 30
Northern Ireland -4 3 £175 -51.05% 7
Wales -17 1 £500 +132.56% 23

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 (1.32%) OpenStack
2 9 (1.19%) Confluence
3 6 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (0.79%) Appian
4 5 (0.66%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.53%) Anypoint
5 4 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.53%) ArcGIS
5 4 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.40%) IIS
6 3 (0.40%) JBoss
6 3 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.40%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.26%) Apache
7 2 (0.26%) CMS
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.13%) Camunda
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 1 (0.13%) Smallworld
Applications
1 23 (3.05%) Microsoft Excel
1 23 (3.05%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.72%) MS Visio
3 9 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.66%) AutoCAD
4 5 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.26%) MicroStation
6 1 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
6 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.13%) Revit
6 1 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
6 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.13%) Trello
Business Applications
1 21 (2.78%) SAP PSCD
2 14 (1.85%) Remedy ITSM
3 13 (1.72%) SAP BRIM
4 12 (1.59%) SAP Hybris
5 6 (0.79%) SAP FI
6 5 (0.66%) NetSuite
6 5 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 5 (0.66%) Sage X3
6 5 (0.66%) SAP FI-CA
7 4 (0.53%) BambooHR
7 4 (0.53%) Remedy AR System
8 3 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.40%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.13%) SAP CO
9 1 (0.13%) SAP FI/CO
9 1 (0.13%) SAP IBP
9 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
9 1 (0.13%) SAP SD
9 1 (0.13%) SAP SRM
9 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 69 (9.14%) Azure
2 66 (8.74%) AWS
3 44 (5.83%) GCP
4 18 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
4 18 (2.38%) Power Platform
5 16 (2.12%) SaaS
6 14 (1.85%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 10 (1.32%) Snowflake
8 9 (1.19%) dbt
9 8 (1.06%) GitHub
9 8 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (0.93%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (0.93%) Entra ID
11 6 (0.79%) Datadog
11 6 (0.79%) Serverless
12 5 (0.66%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (0.66%) Cloud Functions
12 5 (0.66%) Fivetran
12 5 (0.66%) Prefect
13 4 (0.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 70 (9.27%) WAN
2 61 (8.08%) 5G
3 60 (7.95%) MPLS
4 59 (7.81%) LAN
5 41 (5.43%) 4G
5 41 (5.43%) Firewall
6 38 (5.03%) Radio Access Network
7 31 (4.11%) SD-WAN
8 30 (3.97%) BGP
9 22 (2.91%) Network Security
10 20 (2.65%) OSPF
10 20 (2.65%) VoIP
10 20 (2.65%) VPN
11 19 (2.52%) DNS
11 19 (2.52%) LTE
12 18 (2.38%) 3G
12 18 (2.38%) 3GPP
13 17 (2.25%) VLAN
14 15 (1.99%) Internet
14 15 (1.99%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.25%) Power BI
2 16 (2.12%) Data Warehouse
3 14 (1.85%) BigQuery
4 12 (1.59%) Amazon Redshift
4 12 (1.59%) Looker
4 12 (1.59%) Tableau
5 7 (0.93%) Big Data
5 7 (0.93%) Relational Database
6 5 (0.66%) MySQL
7 4 (0.53%) GIS
7 4 (0.53%) Oracle Database
8 3 (0.40%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.40%) BusinessObjects
8 3 (0.40%) InfluxDB
8 3 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.40%) SAP BW
8 3 (0.40%) SAP Data Services
8 3 (0.40%) Semantic Layer
8 3 (0.40%) SQL Server
8 3 (0.40%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 23 (3.05%) JIRA
2 9 (1.19%) Git
3 5 (0.66%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.26%) GitLab
5 2 (0.26%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.13%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.13%) JMeter
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 215 (28.48%) Social Skills
2 127 (16.82%) Finance
3 103 (13.64%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (8.74%) Public Sector
5 47 (6.23%) Billing
6 28 (3.71%) Retail
7 25 (3.31%) Documentation Skills
8 24 (3.18%) Marketing
9 20 (2.65%) Legal
10 17 (2.25%) Organisational Skills
11 16 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
12 13 (1.72%) Electronics
13 11 (1.46%) Manufacturing
14 10 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 7 (0.93%) Publishing
17 6 (0.79%) Aerospace
18 5 (0.66%) Police
19 4 (0.53%) Military
20 3 (0.40%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 101 (13.38%) Architect
2 64 (8.48%) Lead
3 63 (8.34%) Consultant
3 63 (8.34%) Senior
4 57 (7.55%) Analyst
5 43 (5.70%) Network Engineer
6 42 (5.56%) Solutions Architect
7 40 (5.30%) Project Manager
8 39 (5.17%) Telecoms Manager
9 28 (3.71%) Developer
10 27 (3.58%) Designer
11 24 (3.18%) Data Engineer
11 24 (3.18%) ServiceNow Architect
12 22 (2.91%) SAP Consultant
13 21 (2.78%) Delivery Manager
14 18 (2.38%) Enterprise Architect
14 18 (2.38%) Field Engineer
14 18 (2.38%) Telecoms Engineer
15 17 (2.25%) Business Analyst
15 17 (2.25%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (5.56%) REST
2 29 (3.84%) SOAP
3 13 (1.72%) Middleware
3 13 (1.72%) ONVIF
4 10 (1.32%) Kafka
5 9 (1.19%) .NET
5 9 (1.19%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (1.06%) OpenAPI
6 8 (1.06%) Swagger
6 8 (1.06%) XML
7 7 (0.93%) NETCONF
7 7 (0.93%) RESTful
7 7 (0.93%) YANG
8 6 (0.79%) JSON
9 4 (0.53%) .NET Framework
9 4 (0.53%) RAML
10 3 (0.40%) GraphQL
10 3 (0.40%) RabbitMQ
10 3 (0.40%) RFC 2544
10 3 (0.40%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 45 (5.96%) Data Centre
2 43 (5.70%) CMDB
3 34 (4.50%) Onboarding
4 31 (4.11%) Cloud Native
5 23 (3.05%) Data Protection Act
6 20 (2.65%) Driving Licence
7 19 (2.52%) Virtual Team
8 17 (2.25%) Analytical Mindset
9 13 (1.72%) Video\Live Streaming
10 12 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
10 12 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
11 11 (1.46%) Management Information System
11 11 (1.46%) Product Ownership
12 9 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (1.06%) EPoS
13 8 (1.06%) TM Forum
14 7 (0.93%) Private Cloud
15 6 (0.79%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 6 (0.79%) Legacy Systems
16 5 (0.66%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 32 (4.24%) Windows
2 25 (3.31%) Linux
3 16 (2.12%) Windows 10
4 12 (1.59%) Unix
5 4 (0.53%) Mac OS
5 4 (0.53%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.40%) Android
6 3 (0.40%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.40%) VMS
7 2 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
7 2 (0.26%) OpenVMS
8 1 (0.13%) Mac OS X
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.13%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (16.56%) Stakeholder Management
2 98 (12.98%) Agile
3 97 (12.85%) Problem-Solving
4 85 (11.26%) ITIL
5 70 (9.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 60 (7.95%) Project Delivery
7 58 (7.68%) Continuous Improvement
7 58 (7.68%) Decision-Making
8 57 (7.55%) Migration
9 55 (7.28%) CI/CD
10 53 (7.02%) CRM
11 52 (6.89%) Roadmaps
12 51 (6.75%) Project Management
12 51 (6.75%) Service Management
13 49 (6.49%) Validation
14 48 (6.36%) Customer Service
15 47 (6.23%) ITSM
16 46 (6.09%) Analytics
17 45 (5.96%) AI
18 39 (5.17%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 60 (7.95%) Python
2 35 (4.64%) SQL
3 19 (2.52%) JavaScript
4 16 (2.12%) Java
5 10 (1.32%) C#
6 8 (1.06%) Bash
7 6 (0.79%) C++
7 6 (0.79%) R
8 4 (0.53%) ABAP
8 4 (0.53%) Apex Code
8 4 (0.53%) DataWeave
8 4 (0.53%) PowerShell
8 4 (0.53%) TypeScript
9 3 (0.40%) LookML
9 3 (0.40%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.26%) DCL
10 2 (0.26%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.26%) SOQL
11 1 (0.13%) Cypher
11 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 128 (16.95%) Security Cleared
2 89 (11.79%) SC Cleared
3 73 (9.67%) Degree
4 54 (7.15%) Cisco Certification
5 36 (4.77%) CCNA
6 25 (3.31%) CCNP
7 24 (3.18%) Microsoft Certification
8 23 (3.05%) A+ Certification
8 23 (3.05%) DV Cleared
9 18 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
10 17 (2.25%) PMP
11 15 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
12 13 (1.72%) MCSA
12 13 (1.72%) PMI Certification
13 11 (1.46%) Network+ Certification
14 10 (1.32%) CCIE
15 9 (1.19%) Azure Certification
16 8 (1.06%) AWS Certification
17 7 (0.93%) Master's Degree
18 5 (0.66%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (3.31%) SLA
2 22 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (2.52%) NCSC
4 17 (2.25%) GDPR
5 16 (2.12%) PMO
5 16 (2.12%) QA
6 15 (1.99%) Data Quality
7 13 (1.72%) GRC
8 8 (1.06%) NIST
9 4 (0.53%) RMADS
10 2 (0.26%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.26%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.13%) EU AI Act
11 1 (0.13%) ISO 22301
11 1 (0.13%) ISO 31000
11 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.13%) SOC 1
11 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 16 (2.12%) Active Directory
1 16 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
2 14 (1.85%) Docker
3 8 (1.06%) VMware NSX
4 5 (0.66%) vSphere
5 3 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.26%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 43 (5.70%) Kubernetes
2 22 (2.91%) Terraform
3 18 (2.38%) Ansible
4 13 (1.72%) Grafana
4 13 (1.72%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.40%) Amdocs OSS
5 3 (0.40%) Cisco Prime
5 3 (0.40%) Iperf
5 3 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
5 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (0.40%) vCenter Server
5 3 (0.40%) vRealize
6 2 (0.26%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.26%) Nmap
6 2 (0.26%) NSN NetAct
7 1 (0.13%) AirWatch
7 1 (0.13%) Kibana
7 1 (0.13%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.13%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 93 (12.32%) Microsoft
2 74 (9.80%) Cisco
3 72 (9.54%) ServiceNow
4 41 (5.43%) Nokia
5 34 (4.50%) SAP
6 31 (4.11%) Salesforce
7 23 (3.05%) BT
7 23 (3.05%) VMware
8 22 (2.91%) Oracle
9 20 (2.65%) Ericsson
9 20 (2.65%) Fortinet
10 17 (2.25%) Remedy
11 16 (2.12%) Juniper
12 15 (1.99%) F5
12 15 (1.99%) Google
13 14 (1.85%) Huawei
14 13 (1.72%) BMC
14 13 (1.72%) MuleSoft
15 11 (1.46%) CheckPoint
15 11 (1.46%) Palo Alto