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 31 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 85 62
Rank change year-on-year -76 -23 +22
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 762 848 1,437
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.71% 2.92% 3.25%
As % of the General category 3.04% 4.65% 5.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 478 474 807
10th Percentile £174 £301 £200
25th Percentile £350 £380 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £501 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.24% +11.39% -6.25%
75th Percentile £575 £618 £588
90th Percentile £675 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -10.00% +11.11% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 33 60
10th Percentile £18.16 £14.00 £12.15
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.20 £12.28
Median hourly rate £23.83 £26.34 £26.75
Median % change year-on-year -9.53% -1.55% -49.05%
75th Percentile £25.00 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £57.25 £63.60 £81.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £23.00 £23.50
% change year-on-year +3.59% -2.13% -55.24%

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 25,049 18,249 25,765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.25% 62.77% 58.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,606 11,703 16,405
10th Percentile £300 £300 £268
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £644 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,562 716 1,848
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.12 £19.00 £15.38
Median hourly rate £25.38 £29.07 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.69% +11.81% -25.71%
75th Percentile £59.00 £58.46 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.13 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £27.57 £25.00
% change year-on-year -12.95% +10.28% -18.71%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 -81 664 £475 -6.86% 512
UK excluding London -77 431 £450 -10.00% 422
London -23 268 £488 -8.02% 139
Work from Home -62 173 £475 -5.00% 175
South East -56 164 £469 -6.20% 141
Midlands -37 68 £513 - 63
North of England -71 67 £431 -13.75% 94
South West -40 57 £525 -3.67% 50
West Midlands -41 46 £550 +7.32% 43
East of England -27 38 £475 +11.76% 56
Scotland +14 27 £281 -16.67% 27
North West -54 26 £406 -20.34% 46
East Midlands -24 22 £285 -54.40% 20
North East -3 21 £338 -6.90% 11
Yorkshire -45 19 £481 -8.33% 42
Wales -5 10 £160 -56.16% 10
Northern Ireland 0 7 £150 -72.73% 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 10 (1.31%) Confluence
1 10 (1.31%) SharePoint
2 9 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (0.92%) Apache Spark
3 7 (0.92%) OpenStack
4 6 (0.79%) Appian
5 4 (0.52%) Apache
5 4 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.52%) IIS
6 3 (0.39%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.39%) JBoss
6 3 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.39%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.39%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.13%) Camunda
8 1 (0.13%) CMS
8 1 (0.13%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.13%) Smallworld
Applications
1 44 (5.77%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (3.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (1.57%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.92%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.26%) MicroStation
6 2 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.26%) Trello
7 1 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.13%) FrameMaker
7 1 (0.13%) MadCap Flare
Business Applications
1 17 (2.23%) SAP PSCD
2 16 (2.10%) SAP BRIM
2 16 (2.10%) SAP Hybris
3 10 (1.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.39%) BambooHR
5 3 (0.39%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.26%) Primavera
6 2 (0.26%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.13%) Remedy AR System
7 1 (0.13%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.13%) SAP SRM
7 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 75 (9.84%) Azure
2 60 (7.87%) AWS
3 44 (5.77%) GCP
3 44 (5.77%) Microsoft 365
4 20 (2.62%) Power Platform
5 17 (2.23%) SAP Commerce Cloud
6 13 (1.71%) SaaS
7 9 (1.18%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (1.05%) GitHub
9 6 (0.79%) Dynamics 365
9 6 (0.79%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (0.66%) Datadog
10 5 (0.66%) dbt
11 4 (0.52%) Entra ID
11 4 (0.52%) Figma
11 4 (0.52%) Miro
11 4 (0.52%) Serverless
11 4 (0.52%) Slack
12 3 (0.39%) Dagster
12 3 (0.39%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 48 (6.30%) WAN
2 41 (5.38%) 5G
3 40 (5.25%) Firewall
4 38 (4.99%) MPLS
5 37 (4.86%) LAN
6 28 (3.67%) 4G
7 27 (3.54%) SD-WAN
8 25 (3.28%) Radio Access Network
8 25 (3.28%) Wireless
9 24 (3.15%) Network Security
10 21 (2.76%) BGP
11 20 (2.62%) Internet
11 20 (2.62%) VPN
12 19 (2.49%) DNS
12 19 (2.49%) LTE
13 17 (2.23%) Broadband
13 17 (2.23%) SDH
13 17 (2.23%) VoIP
14 15 (1.97%) 2G
15 14 (1.84%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (2.49%) Power BI
2 12 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (1.57%) MySQL
3 11 (1.44%) Looker
4 10 (1.31%) Tableau
5 8 (1.05%) Big Data
5 8 (1.05%) BigQuery
5 8 (1.05%) Oracle Database
5 8 (1.05%) Relational Database
6 7 (0.92%) GIS
7 6 (0.79%) SQL Server
8 5 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
8 5 (0.66%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.39%) Metadata
9 3 (0.39%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.39%) RDBMS
9 3 (0.39%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.39%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.26%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (0.26%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 24 (3.15%) JIRA
2 6 (0.79%) GitLab
2 6 (0.79%) Jenkins
3 5 (0.66%) Git
4 4 (0.52%) JUnit
5 3 (0.39%) Storybook
6 2 (0.26%) Appium
6 2 (0.26%) CircleCI
6 2 (0.26%) JMeter
6 2 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (0.26%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.13%) Maven
7 1 (0.13%) Mockito
7 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 228 (29.92%) Finance
2 224 (29.40%) Social Skills
3 185 (24.28%) Public Sector
4 138 (18.11%) Marketing
5 131 (17.19%) Electronics
6 125 (16.40%) Manufacturing
7 87 (11.42%) Analytical Skills
8 40 (5.25%) Billing
9 22 (2.89%) Organisational Skills
10 18 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
10 18 (2.36%) Legal
11 13 (1.71%) Retail
12 12 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
13 10 (1.31%) Military
14 8 (1.05%) Banking
15 5 (0.66%) Law
15 5 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.39%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 2 (0.26%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 83 (10.89%) Architect
2 75 (9.84%) Analyst
3 46 (6.04%) Lead
4 45 (5.91%) Consultant
5 43 (5.64%) Senior
6 42 (5.51%) Project Manager
7 41 (5.38%) Business Analyst
8 33 (4.33%) IT Support
9 32 (4.20%) Network Engineer
10 29 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
11 26 (3.41%) Desktop Support
11 26 (3.41%) Telecoms Manager
12 25 (3.28%) Developer
13 19 (2.49%) Data Engineer
14 18 (2.36%) Coordinator
14 18 (2.36%) ServiceNow Architect
14 18 (2.36%) Telecoms Engineer
15 17 (2.23%) IT Engineer
15 17 (2.23%) Programme Manager
15 17 (2.23%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (3.54%) REST
2 18 (2.36%) SOAP
3 9 (1.18%) Kafka
4 8 (1.05%) .NET
4 8 (1.05%) Elastic Stack
5 6 (0.79%) Middleware
5 6 (0.79%) RabbitMQ
5 6 (0.79%) RESTful
6 5 (0.66%) Spring
6 5 (0.66%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.52%) HTML
7 4 (0.52%) React
8 3 (0.39%) CSS
8 3 (0.39%) GraphQL
8 3 (0.39%) Node.js
8 3 (0.39%) OpenAPI
8 3 (0.39%) PySpark
8 3 (0.39%) RFC 2544
8 3 (0.39%) Swagger
8 3 (0.39%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 44 (5.77%) Data Centre
2 31 (4.07%) Driving Licence
3 28 (3.67%) Data Protection Act
4 27 (3.54%) Product Ownership
5 26 (3.41%) Onboarding
6 19 (2.49%) Cloud Native
7 17 (2.23%) CMDB
8 16 (2.10%) IoT
9 14 (1.84%) NHS
10 13 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
10 13 (1.71%) Mobile App
11 11 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
11 11 (1.44%) Virtual Team
12 9 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
12 9 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (1.05%) Algorithms
14 7 (0.92%) Enterprise Cloud
14 7 (0.92%) Fibre Optics
15 6 (0.79%) NB-IoT
15 6 (0.79%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 39 (5.12%) Windows
2 29 (3.81%) Android
3 23 (3.02%) Mac OS
4 21 (2.76%) Linux
5 20 (2.62%) Windows 10
6 7 (0.92%) Unix
7 6 (0.79%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (0.66%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.39%) Debian
9 3 (0.39%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.39%) VMS
10 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.13%) CentOS
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (18.90%) Business Intelligence
2 130 (17.06%) Programme Management
3 124 (16.27%) Digital Marketing
4 116 (15.22%) Stakeholder Management
5 104 (13.65%) Agile
6 96 (12.60%) Problem-Solving
7 81 (10.63%) Migration
8 79 (10.37%) Continuous Improvement
9 68 (8.92%) ITIL
10 66 (8.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 54 (7.09%) Logistics
11 54 (7.09%) Project Management
12 51 (6.69%) Workflow
13 48 (6.30%) Customer Service
14 47 (6.17%) Decision-Making
15 46 (6.04%) Analytics
16 44 (5.77%) Roadmaps
17 43 (5.64%) Project Delivery
18 42 (5.51%) DevOps
19 40 (5.25%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 56 (7.35%) Python
2 42 (5.51%) SQL
3 21 (2.76%) JavaScript
4 19 (2.49%) Java
5 9 (1.18%) Bash
5 9 (1.18%) PowerShell
6 6 (0.79%) C++
6 6 (0.79%) R
6 6 (0.79%) TypeScript
7 5 (0.66%) Go
8 4 (0.52%) C#
8 4 (0.52%) Shell Script
9 3 (0.39%) C
9 3 (0.39%) LookML
10 2 (0.26%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.26%) PHP
10 2 (0.26%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.13%) BeanShell
11 1 (0.13%) Bicep
11 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 172 (22.57%) Security Cleared
2 141 (18.50%) SC Cleared
3 65 (8.53%) Degree
4 26 (3.41%) DV Cleared
5 19 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (2.23%) Cisco Certification
6 17 (2.23%) PMP
7 14 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (1.57%) CCNP
8 12 (1.57%) PMI Certification
9 11 (1.44%) ITIL Certification
10 10 (1.31%) ACCA
11 9 (1.18%) Azure Certification
12 8 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
13 7 (0.92%) AWS Certification
13 7 (0.92%) CCIE
13 7 (0.92%) CIMA
14 6 (0.79%) CCNA
14 6 (0.79%) Network+ Certification
15 5 (0.66%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.81%) SLA
2 23 (3.02%) GDPR
3 22 (2.89%) PMO
4 20 (2.62%) QA
5 16 (2.10%) Data Quality
6 15 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 11 (1.44%) GRC
8 10 (1.31%) NIST
9 9 (1.18%) NCSC
10 7 (0.92%) RMADS
11 5 (0.66%) JSP 440
12 4 (0.52%) IFRS
13 3 (0.39%) Accessibility
13 3 (0.39%) GAAP
13 3 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 2 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 2 (0.26%) HIPAA
14 2 (0.26%) PCI DSS
15 1 (0.13%) COSO
15 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 20 (2.62%) Active Directory
2 14 (1.84%) Docker
3 3 (0.39%) QEMU
4 2 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.13%) Firmware
5 1 (0.13%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 28 (3.67%) Kubernetes
2 14 (1.84%) Ansible
3 12 (1.57%) Grafana
4 9 (1.18%) Prometheus
4 9 (1.18%) Terraform
5 6 (0.79%) SCCM
6 5 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.52%) Argo
8 3 (0.39%) Cisco Prime
8 3 (0.39%) Iperf
8 3 (0.39%) Podman
9 2 (0.26%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.26%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.26%) Nmap
9 2 (0.26%) vRealize
10 1 (0.13%) Consul
10 1 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.13%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle RMAN
10 1 (0.13%) Rancher
Vendors
1 148 (19.42%) SAP
2 93 (12.20%) Microsoft
3 92 (12.07%) Cisco
4 55 (7.22%) ServiceNow
5 34 (4.46%) Nokia
6 23 (3.02%) Oracle
7 22 (2.89%) Juniper
8 20 (2.62%) Fortinet
9 17 (2.23%) Dell
9 17 (2.23%) Ericsson
10 16 (2.10%) HP
11 15 (1.97%) Apple
11 15 (1.97%) Google
12 13 (1.71%) Salesforce
13 12 (1.57%) BT
13 12 (1.57%) F5
13 12 (1.57%) Huawei
13 12 (1.57%) Remedy
14 11 (1.44%) CheckPoint
14 11 (1.44%) Meraki