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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 188 101 64
Rank change year-on-year -87 -37 +18
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 699 743 1,328
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.43% 2.58% 3.10%
As % of the General category 2.65% 4.07% 5.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 420 425 646
10th Percentile £213 £306 £200
25th Percentile £399 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £488 £455
Median % change year-on-year -1.36% +7.26% -6.77%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £682 £700 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £480 £450
% change year-on-year -3.65% +6.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 33 101
10th Percentile £17.64 - £12.15
25th Percentile £21.00 £14.00 £13.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.40 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.05% -50.18% +4.76%
75th Percentile £50.00 £62.24 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £65.25 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £18.31 £45.00
% change year-on-year +30.16% -59.32% -14.29%

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 26,375 18,250 24,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.90% 63.30% 57.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,948 11,525 15,454
10th Percentile £313 £281 £274
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £764
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,760 826 1,977
10th Percentile £13.71 £13.41 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.73 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.54 £27.97 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.19% -7.26% -6.91%
75th Percentile £60.00 £54.75 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £24.34 £28.50
% change year-on-year +23.25% -14.60% +1.53%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -96 612 £475 -4.04% 701
UK excluding London -104 353 £463 -3.65% 518
London -22 275 £500 +2.30% 263
Work from Home -40 187 £500 +5.26% 251
South East -72 139 £450 -8.91% 175
North of England -56 71 £481 -8.77% 102
South West -59 46 £512 -2.52% 49
Midlands -50 40 £500 -20.00% 73
East of England -23 33 £198 -47.33% 60
North West -37 33 £463 -12.32% 54
West Midlands -53 31 £463 -20.43% 41
Yorkshire -46 24 £481 -8.33% 37
Scotland -16 20 £305 -6.15% 48
North East -16 14 £500 -11.50% 11
East Midlands -20 9 £500 -20.00% 32
Northern Ireland +2 4 £163 -54.55% 11
Wales -18 1 £500 +90.48% 13

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 (1.29%) OpenStack
2 8 (1.14%) Confluence
3 6 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (0.86%) Appian
4 4 (0.57%) Anypoint
4 4 (0.57%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.43%) ArcGIS
5 3 (0.43%) IIS
5 3 (0.43%) JBoss
5 3 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
5 3 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 3 (0.43%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.43%) Tomcat
5 3 (0.43%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.29%) Apache
6 2 (0.29%) Oracle Spatial
7 1 (0.14%) Camunda
7 1 (0.14%) CMS
7 1 (0.14%) Smallworld
Applications
1 21 (3.00%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (1.14%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.57%) AutoCAD
4 4 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.29%) MicroStation
6 1 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
6 1 (0.14%) Revit
6 1 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
6 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.14%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (1.72%) SAP PSCD
2 11 (1.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (1.57%) SAP BRIM
3 10 (1.43%) SAP Hybris
4 6 (0.86%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (0.57%) BambooHR
6 3 (0.43%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.43%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.29%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.14%) Remedy AR System
8 1 (0.14%) SAP CO
8 1 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
8 1 (0.14%) SAP IBP
8 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
8 1 (0.14%) SAP SD
8 1 (0.14%) SAP SRM
8 1 (0.14%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 55 (7.87%) AWS
1 55 (7.87%) Azure
2 32 (4.58%) GCP
3 19 (2.72%) Power Platform
4 16 (2.29%) Microsoft 365
5 14 (2.00%) SaaS
6 11 (1.57%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 9 (1.29%) dbt
8 6 (0.86%) Datadog
8 6 (0.86%) Serverless
9 5 (0.72%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (0.72%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (0.72%) Prefect
9 5 (0.72%) Snowflake
10 4 (0.57%) Amazon S3
10 4 (0.57%) Boomi
10 4 (0.57%) Dagster
10 4 (0.57%) Figma
11 3 (0.43%) Entra ID
11 3 (0.43%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 47 (6.72%) MPLS
2 45 (6.44%) 5G
3 44 (6.29%) WAN
4 38 (5.44%) Firewall
5 35 (5.01%) LAN
6 26 (3.72%) 4G
6 26 (3.72%) Radio Access Network
7 25 (3.58%) Network Security
8 23 (3.29%) BGP
9 22 (3.15%) VoIP
10 21 (3.00%) Internet
10 21 (3.00%) SD-WAN
11 18 (2.58%) 3GPP
11 18 (2.58%) LTE
12 17 (2.43%) OSPF
13 16 (2.29%) VPN
14 14 (2.00%) DNS
14 14 (2.00%) VLAN
15 13 (1.86%) Broadband
15 13 (1.86%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (2.72%) Power BI
2 12 (1.72%) Looker
2 12 (1.72%) Tableau
3 11 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
4 9 (1.29%) BigQuery
5 7 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (1.00%) Big Data
5 7 (1.00%) Relational Database
6 6 (0.86%) SQL Server
7 5 (0.72%) MySQL
8 4 (0.57%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.43%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.43%) GIS
9 3 (0.43%) InfluxDB
9 3 (0.43%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.43%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.43%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.29%) Metadata
10 2 (0.29%) Power Query
10 2 (0.29%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 20 (2.86%) JIRA
2 10 (1.43%) Git
3 3 (0.43%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.29%) GitLab
4 2 (0.29%) Robot Framework
5 1 (0.14%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.14%) JMeter
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
5 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 190 (27.18%) Social Skills
2 122 (17.45%) Finance
3 94 (13.45%) Analytical Skills
4 79 (11.30%) Public Sector
5 44 (6.29%) Marketing
6 38 (5.44%) Billing
7 33 (4.72%) Electronics
8 30 (4.29%) Manufacturing
9 27 (3.86%) Retail
10 18 (2.58%) Organisational Skills
11 17 (2.43%) Legal
12 15 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
13 13 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
14 7 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
15 6 (0.86%) Banking
15 6 (0.86%) Military
16 5 (0.72%) Publishing
17 4 (0.57%) Aerospace
18 3 (0.43%) Financial Institution
18 3 (0.43%) Police
Job Titles
1 96 (13.73%) Architect
2 56 (8.01%) Analyst
3 51 (7.30%) Senior
4 50 (7.15%) Lead
5 41 (5.87%) Consultant
6 40 (5.72%) Solutions Architect
7 37 (5.29%) Network Engineer
7 37 (5.29%) Telecoms Manager
8 32 (4.58%) Project Manager
9 27 (3.86%) Designer
10 26 (3.72%) ServiceNow Architect
11 25 (3.58%) Developer
12 22 (3.15%) Business Analyst
13 21 (3.00%) Sales Manager
14 19 (2.72%) Data Engineer
14 19 (2.72%) Delivery Manager
15 18 (2.58%) Programme Manager
16 17 (2.43%) Enterprise Architect
16 17 (2.43%) Telecoms Architect
17 15 (2.15%) Telecoms Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (5.29%) REST
2 23 (3.29%) SOAP
3 11 (1.57%) Middleware
4 10 (1.43%) Kafka
5 9 (1.29%) .NET
6 8 (1.14%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (1.14%) ONVIF
6 8 (1.14%) XML
7 6 (0.86%) JSON
7 6 (0.86%) OpenAPI
7 6 (0.86%) Swagger
8 5 (0.72%) RESTful
9 4 (0.57%) .NET Framework
9 4 (0.57%) RAML
10 3 (0.43%) GraphQL
10 3 (0.43%) OpenTelemetry
10 3 (0.43%) RabbitMQ
10 3 (0.43%) RFC 2544
10 3 (0.43%) Web Services
11 2 (0.29%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 31 (4.43%) Data Centre
2 30 (4.29%) Onboarding
3 25 (3.58%) Data Protection Act
4 24 (3.43%) Cloud Native
4 24 (3.43%) CMDB
5 18 (2.58%) Driving Licence
5 18 (2.58%) Product Ownership
6 16 (2.29%) Virtual Team
7 13 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
8 12 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
9 8 (1.14%) EPoS
9 8 (1.14%) Management Information System
9 8 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (1.14%) TM Forum
9 8 (1.14%) Video\Live Streaming
10 7 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
10 7 (1.00%) NHS
11 6 (0.86%) Web Conferencing
12 5 (0.72%) AI Agents
12 5 (0.72%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 27 (3.86%) Windows
2 23 (3.29%) Linux
3 14 (2.00%) Windows 10
4 10 (1.43%) Unix
5 4 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.43%) Debian
6 3 (0.43%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.43%) VMS
6 3 (0.43%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.29%) Android
7 2 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.14%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (15.88%) Stakeholder Management
2 90 (12.88%) Problem-Solving
3 89 (12.73%) Agile
4 67 (9.59%) ITIL
5 60 (8.58%) Continuous Improvement
6 58 (8.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 55 (7.87%) Decision-Making
8 51 (7.30%) Migration
8 51 (7.30%) Project Management
9 48 (6.87%) Customer Service
10 47 (6.72%) Project Delivery
11 46 (6.58%) Business Intelligence
12 45 (6.44%) Analytics
13 44 (6.29%) Roadmaps
14 43 (6.15%) CRM
15 41 (5.87%) CI/CD
16 39 (5.58%) Data Protection
17 38 (5.44%) ITSM
17 38 (5.44%) Service Management
18 36 (5.15%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 48 (6.87%) Python
2 35 (5.01%) SQL
3 16 (2.29%) Java
4 14 (2.00%) JavaScript
5 10 (1.43%) C#
6 8 (1.14%) C++
7 6 (0.86%) Bash
7 6 (0.86%) R
8 4 (0.57%) DataWeave
9 3 (0.43%) Apex Code
9 3 (0.43%) C
9 3 (0.43%) LookML
10 2 (0.29%) Go
10 2 (0.29%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.29%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.29%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.29%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.14%) ABAP
11 1 (0.14%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.14%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 123 (17.60%) Security Cleared
2 90 (12.88%) SC Cleared
3 66 (9.44%) Degree
4 36 (5.15%) Cisco Certification
5 22 (3.15%) CCNA
5 22 (3.15%) DV Cleared
6 20 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 18 (2.58%) A+ Certification
7 18 (2.58%) CCNP
7 18 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
8 13 (1.86%) PMP
9 9 (1.29%) Network+ Certification
9 9 (1.29%) PMI Certification
10 8 (1.14%) Master's Degree
10 8 (1.14%) MCSA
11 6 (0.86%) ACCA
11 6 (0.86%) CCIE
11 6 (0.86%) CIMA
12 5 (0.72%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (3.29%) SLA
2 18 (2.58%) GDPR
2 18 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (2.29%) PMO
4 14 (2.00%) NCSC
4 14 (2.00%) QA
5 12 (1.72%) Data Quality
6 11 (1.57%) GRC
7 9 (1.29%) NIST
8 6 (0.86%) RMADS
9 4 (0.57%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.14%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.14%) NEBOSH
10 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.14%) SOC 1
10 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 13 (1.86%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.57%) Docker
3 10 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.72%) vSphere
5 3 (0.43%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.43%) QEMU
5 3 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.43%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 39 (5.58%) Kubernetes
2 14 (2.00%) Ansible
2 14 (2.00%) Grafana
2 14 (2.00%) Prometheus
3 11 (1.57%) Terraform
4 4 (0.57%) Cisco Prime
5 3 (0.43%) Iperf
5 3 (0.43%) Podman
5 3 (0.43%) vCenter Server
5 3 (0.43%) vRealize
6 2 (0.29%) Amdocs OSS
6 2 (0.29%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.29%) Nmap
6 2 (0.29%) NSN NetAct
6 2 (0.29%) SCCM
7 1 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
7 1 (0.14%) Kibana
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.14%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 75 (10.73%) Microsoft
2 62 (8.87%) ServiceNow
3 61 (8.73%) Cisco
4 45 (6.44%) SAP
5 42 (6.01%) Nokia
6 25 (3.58%) Salesforce
7 22 (3.15%) Oracle
8 21 (3.00%) BT
8 21 (3.00%) Ericsson
9 16 (2.29%) Juniper
10 15 (2.15%) Fortinet
10 15 (2.15%) Huawei
11 14 (2.00%) Remedy
12 13 (1.86%) CheckPoint
12 13 (1.86%) Google
12 13 (1.86%) VMware
13 11 (1.57%) MuleSoft
14 10 (1.43%) F5
15 8 (1.14%) Databricks
15 8 (1.14%) Palo Alto