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 12 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 171 101 70
Rank change year-on-year -70 -31 +10
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 855 837 1,153
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.60% 2.54% 2.96%
As % of the General category 2.91% 4.00% 5.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 485 490 552
10th Percentile £225 £300 £219
25th Percentile £400 £394 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -1.96%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £609
90th Percentile £684 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £480 £475
% change year-on-year -6.25% +1.05% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 48 103
10th Percentile £15.85 - £12.15
25th Percentile £17.50 £14.00 £16.46
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.13 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.08% -61.52% -11.54%
75th Percentile £50.00 £52.81 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £65.25 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £15.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +35.48% -73.04% -

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 29,379 20,909 22,363
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.05% 63.43% 57.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,437 13,057 14,049
10th Percentile £313 £279 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.89% -1.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,229 1,133 1,375
10th Percentile £13.98 £13.25 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.30 £17.04
Median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +27.24% -34.02% +31.45%
75th Percentile £57.50 £50.00 £58.49
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +46.79% -41.92% +51.72%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 -72 718 £475 -3.06% 1,229
UK excluding London -85 426 £450 -6.25% 742
London -31 325 £513 +7.89% 609
Work from Home -36 255 £475 -1.25% 511
South East -53 191 £460 -8.00% 231
North of England -61 58 £475 -7.32% 164
Scotland +11 52 £300 -7.69% 74
South West -76 46 £450 -16.28% 69
East of England -5 44 £190 -49.33% 66
Midlands -65 37 £478 +25.82% 105
West Midlands -60 34 £475 +25.00% 64
Yorkshire -22 32 £475 +72.73% 46
North West -56 25 £514 -3.02% 88
Northern Ireland +2 3 £175 -51.05% 13
East Midlands -7 3 £500 +33.33% 41
Wales -13 2 £500 +132.56% 28
North East -42 1 - - 34

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 17 (1.99%) Confluence
2 16 (1.87%) OpenStack
3 10 (1.17%) ArcGIS
3 10 (1.17%) SharePoint
4 8 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
5 7 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (0.47%) Anypoint
7 3 (0.35%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.23%) CMS
9 1 (0.12%) Apache
9 1 (0.12%) Camunda
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 1 (0.12%) Smallworld
Applications
1 28 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (3.04%) Microsoft Office
3 21 (2.46%) MS Visio
4 10 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 9 (1.05%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.58%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.35%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.12%) InDesign
9 1 (0.12%) MicroStation
9 1 (0.12%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.12%) Revit
9 1 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.12%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (2.22%) SAP PSCD
2 10 (1.17%) SAP BRIM
3 8 (0.94%) SAP FI
3 8 (0.94%) SAP Hybris
4 7 (0.82%) SAP FI-CA
5 6 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
6 5 (0.58%) NetSuite
6 5 (0.58%) Sage X3
6 5 (0.58%) Salesforce CRM
6 5 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
7 4 (0.47%) BambooHR
8 3 (0.35%) Remedy AR System
8 3 (0.35%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
9 1 (0.12%) SAP FS
9 1 (0.12%) SAP IBP
9 1 (0.12%) SAP IS-U
9 1 (0.12%) SAP SRM
9 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 94 (10.99%) Azure
2 89 (10.41%) AWS
3 65 (7.60%) GCP
4 20 (2.34%) Power Platform
5 19 (2.22%) Microsoft 365
6 16 (1.87%) GitHub
7 15 (1.75%) Entra ID
8 14 (1.64%) SaaS
9 11 (1.29%) dbt
10 10 (1.17%) Azure DevOps
10 10 (1.17%) Cloud Computing
10 10 (1.17%) SAP Commerce Cloud
10 10 (1.17%) Snowflake
11 9 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (0.70%) Cloud Functions
12 6 (0.70%) Datadog
12 6 (0.70%) Serverless
13 5 (0.58%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (0.58%) Figma
13 5 (0.58%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 99 (11.58%) WAN
2 80 (9.36%) 5G
3 79 (9.24%) LAN
4 74 (8.65%) MPLS
5 59 (6.90%) 4G
6 51 (5.96%) Radio Access Network
7 45 (5.26%) Firewall
8 32 (3.74%) DNS
9 31 (3.63%) SD-WAN
10 27 (3.16%) BGP
11 25 (2.92%) 3G
11 25 (2.92%) Wi-Fi
12 24 (2.81%) LTE
12 24 (2.81%) SDH
13 23 (2.69%) Network Security
13 23 (2.69%) TCP/IP
14 22 (2.57%) 3GPP
14 22 (2.57%) VoIP
14 22 (2.57%) VPN
15 20 (2.34%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
1 19 (2.22%) Power BI
2 14 (1.64%) BigQuery
3 12 (1.40%) Amazon Redshift
3 12 (1.40%) Looker
4 11 (1.29%) NoSQL
4 11 (1.29%) Tableau
5 10 (1.17%) GIS
6 8 (0.94%) Big Data
6 8 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
7 6 (0.70%) MySQL
8 5 (0.58%) Apache Cassandra
8 5 (0.58%) MongoDB
9 4 (0.47%) InfluxDB
9 4 (0.47%) SQL Server
10 3 (0.35%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (0.35%) Data Lake
10 3 (0.35%) Hazelcast
10 3 (0.35%) Redis
10 3 (0.35%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 30 (3.51%) JIRA
2 22 (2.57%) Git
3 12 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.70%) GitLab
5 5 (0.58%) Selenium
6 2 (0.23%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.12%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.12%) Rational DOORS
7 1 (0.12%) TestRail
7 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 242 (28.30%) Social Skills
2 134 (15.67%) Finance
3 111 (12.98%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (6.90%) Public Sector
5 37 (4.33%) Billing
6 30 (3.51%) Retail
7 29 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (2.92%) Organisational Skills
9 24 (2.81%) Legal
10 21 (2.46%) Marketing
11 19 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
12 15 (1.75%) Aerospace
13 14 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
14 12 (1.40%) Manufacturing
15 10 (1.17%) Publishing
16 9 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 8 (0.94%) Police
18 6 (0.70%) Electronics
19 4 (0.47%) Military
20 3 (0.35%) Banking
Job Titles
1 133 (15.56%) Architect
2 79 (9.24%) Senior
3 68 (7.95%) Consultant
4 66 (7.72%) Lead
5 60 (7.02%) Analyst
6 57 (6.67%) Project Manager
7 51 (5.96%) Network Engineer
8 46 (5.38%) Solutions Architect
9 42 (4.91%) Telecoms Engineer
10 38 (4.44%) Designer
11 37 (4.33%) Field Engineer
12 34 (3.98%) Telecoms Manager
13 32 (3.74%) Developer
14 29 (3.39%) ServiceNow Architect
15 27 (3.16%) Enterprise Architect
16 26 (3.04%) Data Engineer
17 21 (2.46%) Telecoms Architect
18 20 (2.34%) Platform Engineer
18 20 (2.34%) SAP Consultant
19 19 (2.22%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (5.85%) REST
2 32 (3.74%) SOAP
3 18 (2.11%) Kafka
4 13 (1.52%) ONVIF
4 13 (1.52%) RESTful
5 12 (1.40%) Elastic Stack
5 12 (1.40%) Middleware
5 12 (1.40%) NETCONF
5 12 (1.40%) XML
5 12 (1.40%) YANG
6 10 (1.17%) AngularJS
6 10 (1.17%) HTML
6 10 (1.17%) React
7 9 (1.05%) CSS
7 9 (1.05%) OpenAPI
7 9 (1.05%) Swagger
8 7 (0.82%) JSON
9 6 (0.70%) Backbone.js
9 6 (0.70%) FastAPI
9 6 (0.70%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 50 (5.85%) CMDB
2 45 (5.26%) Data Centre
3 38 (4.44%) Onboarding
4 32 (3.74%) Cloud Native
5 31 (3.63%) Driving Licence
6 19 (2.22%) Analytical Mindset
6 19 (2.22%) Virtual Team
7 18 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
7 18 (2.11%) Product Ownership
8 17 (1.99%) Hybrid Cloud
9 16 (1.87%) Management Information System
10 15 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (1.52%) Video\Live Streaming
12 11 (1.29%) Algorithms
13 10 (1.17%) Data Structures
13 10 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
13 10 (1.17%) TM Forum
14 9 (1.05%) Private Cloud
14 9 (1.05%) Video Conferencing
15 8 (0.94%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 38 (4.44%) Windows
2 34 (3.98%) Linux
3 14 (1.64%) Windows 10
4 11 (1.29%) Unix
5 10 (1.17%) Windows Server
6 7 (0.82%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.47%) Android
8 3 (0.35%) Apple iOS
8 3 (0.35%) VMS
9 2 (0.23%) Embedded Linux
9 2 (0.23%) OpenVMS
9 2 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.12%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.12%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (19.42%) Stakeholder Management
2 125 (14.62%) Agile
3 109 (12.75%) Problem-Solving
4 85 (9.94%) Project Delivery
5 84 (9.82%) ITIL
6 83 (9.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 71 (8.30%) AI
8 69 (8.07%) CI/CD
8 69 (8.07%) Roadmaps
9 66 (7.72%) Project Management
10 65 (7.60%) Service Management
11 63 (7.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 63 (7.37%) Migration
12 58 (6.78%) Decision-Making
13 57 (6.67%) Validation
14 55 (6.43%) Change Management
14 55 (6.43%) Technical Leadership
15 53 (6.20%) CRM
16 51 (5.96%) Analytics
16 51 (5.96%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 73 (8.54%) Python
2 44 (5.15%) SQL
3 32 (3.74%) JavaScript
4 17 (1.99%) Bash
5 15 (1.75%) Java
6 9 (1.05%) C#
6 9 (1.05%) PowerShell
7 7 (0.82%) Apex Code
7 7 (0.82%) R
8 5 (0.58%) C++
9 4 (0.47%) ABAP
9 4 (0.47%) DataWeave
9 4 (0.47%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.47%) SOQL
9 4 (0.47%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.35%) LookML
11 2 (0.23%) C
11 2 (0.23%) DCL
12 1 (0.12%) Ada
12 1 (0.12%) Go
Qualifications
1 155 (18.13%) Security Cleared
2 102 (11.93%) SC Cleared
3 86 (10.06%) Degree
4 57 (6.67%) Cisco Certification
5 40 (4.68%) CCNA
6 23 (2.69%) DV Cleared
6 23 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
7 22 (2.57%) PMP
8 21 (2.46%) A+ Certification
8 21 (2.46%) CCNP
8 21 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
9 17 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
9 17 (1.99%) PMI Certification
10 13 (1.52%) MCSA
11 10 (1.17%) Azure Certification
12 9 (1.05%) AWS Certification
12 9 (1.05%) CCIE
13 8 (0.94%) CISSP
13 8 (0.94%) Master's Degree
13 8 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.39%) SLA
2 27 (3.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 25 (2.92%) QA
4 23 (2.69%) GDPR
5 20 (2.34%) GRC
5 20 (2.34%) PMO
6 18 (2.11%) NCSC
7 14 (1.64%) Data Quality
8 9 (1.05%) NIST
9 3 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.35%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.23%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.23%) EU AI Act
11 1 (0.12%) ISO 31000
11 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 15288
11 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.12%) SOC 1
System Software
1 25 (2.92%) Docker
2 22 (2.57%) Active Directory
3 20 (2.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.58%) vSphere
6 4 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.35%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.12%) Ceph
8 1 (0.12%) Firmware
8 1 (0.12%) KVM
8 1 (0.12%) NDS
8 1 (0.12%) NetIQ eDirectory
8 1 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 48 (5.61%) Kubernetes
2 22 (2.57%) Terraform
3 18 (2.11%) Ansible
4 16 (1.87%) Grafana
4 16 (1.87%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
7 3 (0.35%) Amdocs OSS
7 3 (0.35%) Check_MK
7 3 (0.35%) Kibana
7 3 (0.35%) Podman
7 3 (0.35%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.35%) vRealize
8 2 (0.23%) Cisco Prime
8 2 (0.23%) NSN NetAct
8 2 (0.23%) QRadar
8 2 (0.23%) SolarWinds Orion
9 1 (0.12%) AirWatch
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.12%) SCCM
Vendors
1 114 (13.33%) Microsoft
2 99 (11.58%) Cisco
3 87 (10.18%) ServiceNow
4 55 (6.43%) Nokia
5 43 (5.03%) Salesforce
6 34 (3.98%) VMware
7 28 (3.27%) SAP
8 24 (2.81%) Ericsson
8 24 (2.81%) Google
9 22 (2.57%) BT
10 19 (2.22%) F5
10 19 (2.22%) Juniper
11 18 (2.11%) MuleSoft
12 16 (1.87%) Fortinet
12 16 (1.87%) Huawei
13 12 (1.40%) BMC
13 12 (1.40%) Palo Alto
14 10 (1.17%) Oracle
15 9 (1.05%) CheckPoint
15 9 (1.05%) Zscaler