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 15 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 174 90 63
Rank change year-on-year -84 -27 +23
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 721 807 1,339
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.51% 2.78% 3.14%
As % of the General category 2.81% 4.39% 5.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 447 452 674
10th Percentile £213 £313 £200
25th Percentile £400 £395 £326
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £489 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.53% +8.61% -8.16%
75th Percentile £575 £596 £597
90th Percentile £681 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £488 £450
% change year-on-year -4.21% +8.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 37 96
10th Percentile £17.46 - £12.15
25th Percentile £20.81 £14.00 £13.25
Median hourly rate £23.83 £23.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% -58.18% +4.76%
75th Percentile £50.00 £57.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £68.25 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £23.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +3.59% -60.00% +9.52%

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 25,625 18,400 24,779
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.73% 63.31% 58.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,671 11,698 15,628
10th Percentile £309 £287 £275
25th Percentile £410 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.88% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.11% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,634 787 1,929
10th Percentile £13.95 £14.00 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.26 £17.34 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.82% -11.29%
75th Percentile £60.72 £56.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £65.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.16 £24.59 £28.50
% change year-on-year +14.52% -13.74% -5.00%

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 15 May 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 -95 630 £478 -4.45% 546
UK excluding London -101 371 £467 -4.21% 440
London -25 274 £500 +0.50% 179
Work from Home -37 191 £500 +4.17% 175
South East -65 150 £453 -7.69% 155
North of England -54 71 £481 -8.33% 81
Midlands -43 56 £550 +7.32% 48
West Midlands -42 44 £550 +7.32% 28
South West -56 44 £511 -2.67% 49
North West -43 34 £463 -12.32% 45
East of England -30 31 £200 -50.00% 61
Yorkshire -45 23 £481 -12.50% 30
Scotland -11 14 £275 -18.52% 40
North East -12 14 £500 -0.25% 7
East Midlands -24 12 £500 -20.00% 19
Northern Ireland -2 6 £150 -72.73% 2
Wales -9 3 £160 -56.16% 19

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 11 (1.53%) OpenStack
2 9 (1.25%) Confluence
3 6 (0.83%) Appian
4 5 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (0.69%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 4 (0.55%) Anypoint
5 4 (0.55%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.42%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.42%) IIS
6 3 (0.42%) JBoss
6 3 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.42%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.42%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.28%) Apache
7 2 (0.28%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.14%) Camunda
8 1 (0.14%) CMS
8 1 (0.14%) Smallworld
Applications
1 24 (3.33%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.69%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.42%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.28%) MicroStation
6 2 (0.28%) Trello
7 1 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.14%) FrameMaker
7 1 (0.14%) MadCap Flare
7 1 (0.14%) Revit
7 1 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 13 (1.80%) SAP PSCD
2 12 (1.66%) SAP BRIM
3 11 (1.53%) SAP Hybris
4 9 (1.25%) Remedy ITSM
5 6 (0.83%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 4 (0.55%) BambooHR
7 2 (0.28%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.14%) Remedy AR System
8 1 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
8 1 (0.14%) SAP CO
8 1 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
8 1 (0.14%) SAP FI-CA
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 67 (9.29%) Azure
2 60 (8.32%) AWS
3 34 (4.72%) GCP
4 26 (3.61%) Microsoft 365
5 19 (2.64%) Power Platform
6 13 (1.80%) SaaS
7 12 (1.66%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 8 (1.11%) dbt
9 6 (0.83%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (0.83%) GitHub
10 5 (0.69%) Datadog
10 5 (0.69%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 5 (0.69%) Serverless
11 4 (0.55%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (0.55%) Dagster
11 4 (0.55%) Entra ID
11 4 (0.55%) Figma
11 4 (0.55%) GitHub Actions
11 4 (0.55%) Prefect
11 4 (0.55%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 44 (6.10%) 5G
2 41 (5.69%) Firewall
3 37 (5.13%) MPLS
4 34 (4.72%) WAN
5 26 (3.61%) Network Security
6 24 (3.33%) 4G
6 24 (3.33%) LAN
7 23 (3.19%) Radio Access Network
8 22 (3.05%) DNS
9 21 (2.91%) BGP
9 21 (2.91%) Internet
9 21 (2.91%) SD-WAN
10 19 (2.64%) VoIP
11 17 (2.36%) 3GPP
11 17 (2.36%) LTE
12 15 (2.08%) VPN
13 14 (1.94%) Broadband
14 13 (1.80%) HTTP
14 13 (1.80%) OSPF
15 12 (1.66%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.50%) Power BI
2 12 (1.66%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (1.66%) Looker
3 11 (1.53%) Tableau
4 9 (1.25%) BigQuery
5 8 (1.11%) Big Data
6 7 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
6 7 (0.97%) Relational Database
7 6 (0.83%) SQL Server
8 5 (0.69%) MySQL
8 5 (0.69%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.42%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.42%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.42%) GIS
9 3 (0.42%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.42%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.42%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.28%) Flink
10 2 (0.28%) InfluxDB
10 2 (0.28%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 24 (3.33%) JIRA
2 9 (1.25%) Git
3 7 (0.97%) GitLab
4 5 (0.69%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.28%) Appium
5 2 (0.28%) CircleCI
5 2 (0.28%) JMeter
5 2 (0.28%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.14%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.14%) JUnit
6 1 (0.14%) Maven
6 1 (0.14%) Mockito
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 197 (27.32%) Social Skills
2 141 (19.56%) Finance
3 100 (13.87%) Public Sector
4 91 (12.62%) Analytical Skills
5 62 (8.60%) Marketing
6 52 (7.21%) Electronics
7 48 (6.66%) Manufacturing
8 41 (5.69%) Billing
9 25 (3.47%) Retail
10 20 (2.77%) Organisational Skills
11 17 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
12 16 (2.22%) Legal
13 14 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
14 7 (0.97%) Banking
14 7 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
15 6 (0.83%) Military
16 5 (0.69%) Publishing
17 3 (0.42%) Aerospace
17 3 (0.42%) Financial Institution
17 3 (0.42%) Police
Job Titles
1 94 (13.04%) Architect
2 65 (9.02%) Analyst
3 55 (7.63%) Lead
4 52 (7.21%) Senior
5 42 (5.83%) Solutions Architect
6 38 (5.27%) Telecoms Manager
7 37 (5.13%) Network Engineer
7 37 (5.13%) Project Manager
8 36 (4.99%) Consultant
9 28 (3.88%) Business Analyst
10 26 (3.61%) Developer
11 25 (3.47%) Designer
11 25 (3.47%) ServiceNow Architect
12 21 (2.91%) Data Engineer
13 19 (2.64%) Programme Manager
14 18 (2.50%) Sales Manager
15 15 (2.08%) Enterprise Architect
16 14 (1.94%) Delivery Manager
16 14 (1.94%) Design Engineer
16 14 (1.94%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (4.85%) REST
2 20 (2.77%) SOAP
3 13 (1.80%) Kafka
4 11 (1.53%) Elastic Stack
4 11 (1.53%) Middleware
5 8 (1.11%) .NET
5 8 (1.11%) XML
6 7 (0.97%) JSON
6 7 (0.97%) OpenAPI
6 7 (0.97%) Swagger
7 6 (0.83%) RabbitMQ
8 5 (0.69%) ONVIF
8 5 (0.69%) RESTful
9 4 (0.55%) RAML
10 3 (0.42%) .NET Framework
10 3 (0.42%) 802.1X
10 3 (0.42%) GraphQL
10 3 (0.42%) RFC 2544
10 3 (0.42%) Spring
10 3 (0.42%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 29 (4.02%) Onboarding
2 28 (3.88%) Data Centre
3 26 (3.61%) Data Protection Act
4 23 (3.19%) Product Ownership
5 19 (2.64%) Driving Licence
6 17 (2.36%) Cloud Native
7 16 (2.22%) CMDB
7 16 (2.22%) Virtual Team
8 12 (1.66%) Distributed Systems
9 11 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
10 10 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
10 10 (1.39%) TM Forum
11 9 (1.25%) Management Information System
12 8 (1.11%) EPoS
12 8 (1.11%) Legacy Systems
13 7 (0.97%) Hybrid Cloud
13 7 (0.97%) Mobile App
13 7 (0.97%) NHS
14 6 (0.83%) IoT
14 6 (0.83%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 34 (4.72%) Windows
2 24 (3.33%) Linux
3 17 (2.36%) Windows 10
4 11 (1.53%) Unix
5 8 (1.11%) Android
6 5 (0.69%) Apple iOS
7 4 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.42%) Debian
8 3 (0.42%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.42%) VMS
8 3 (0.42%) Windows Server
9 2 (0.28%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (15.53%) Stakeholder Management
2 101 (14.01%) Agile
3 92 (12.76%) Problem-Solving
4 67 (9.29%) Continuous Improvement
5 65 (9.02%) ITIL
6 63 (8.74%) Business Intelligence
7 58 (8.04%) Project Management
8 56 (7.77%) Migration
9 54 (7.49%) Decision-Making
9 54 (7.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 50 (6.93%) Programme Management
11 47 (6.52%) Analytics
12 46 (6.38%) Customer Service
12 46 (6.38%) Project Delivery
13 44 (6.10%) Digital Marketing
13 44 (6.10%) Roadmaps
14 42 (5.83%) CI/CD
15 41 (5.69%) Data Protection
16 40 (5.55%) CRM
17 38 (5.27%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 54 (7.49%) Python
2 37 (5.13%) SQL
3 18 (2.50%) JavaScript
4 17 (2.36%) Java
5 12 (1.66%) Bash
6 9 (1.25%) C#
7 8 (1.11%) C++
8 6 (0.83%) Go
8 6 (0.83%) PowerShell
8 6 (0.83%) R
9 4 (0.55%) DataWeave
9 4 (0.55%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.42%) Apex Code
10 3 (0.42%) C
10 3 (0.42%) LookML
10 3 (0.42%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.28%) PHP
11 2 (0.28%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.14%) ABAP
12 1 (0.14%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 127 (17.61%) Security Cleared
2 97 (13.45%) SC Cleared
3 68 (9.43%) Degree
4 26 (3.61%) Cisco Certification
5 23 (3.19%) DV Cleared
6 19 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 17 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
7 17 (2.36%) PMP
8 15 (2.08%) A+ Certification
8 15 (2.08%) CCNP
9 14 (1.94%) CCNA
10 13 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
11 11 (1.53%) PMI Certification
12 9 (1.25%) Network+ Certification
13 8 (1.11%) Master's Degree
14 7 (0.97%) ACCA
14 7 (0.97%) AWS Certification
14 7 (0.97%) Azure Certification
14 7 (0.97%) CIMA
15 6 (0.83%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.05%) SLA
2 20 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 20 (2.77%) QA
3 18 (2.50%) GDPR
4 16 (2.22%) PMO
5 13 (1.80%) Data Quality
6 11 (1.53%) NCSC
7 9 (1.25%) GRC
7 9 (1.25%) NIST
8 7 (0.97%) RMADS
9 5 (0.69%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.28%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.14%) EU AI Act
11 1 (0.14%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.14%) SOC 1
11 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 16 (2.22%) Active Directory
2 12 (1.66%) Docker
3 8 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.55%) vSphere
5 3 (0.42%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.42%) QEMU
6 2 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.28%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 37 (5.13%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.22%) Ansible
3 15 (2.08%) Grafana
4 12 (1.66%) Prometheus
5 11 (1.53%) Terraform
6 4 (0.55%) Argo
6 4 (0.55%) Cisco Prime
6 4 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (0.55%) SCCM
7 3 (0.42%) Iperf
7 3 (0.42%) Podman
8 2 (0.28%) Amdocs OSS
8 2 (0.28%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.28%) Kibana
8 2 (0.28%) Nmap
8 2 (0.28%) NSN NetAct
8 2 (0.28%) vCenter Server
8 2 (0.28%) vRealize
9 1 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.14%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 84 (11.65%) Microsoft
2 64 (8.88%) SAP
3 62 (8.60%) Cisco
4 60 (8.32%) ServiceNow
5 37 (5.13%) Nokia
6 25 (3.47%) Salesforce
7 21 (2.91%) Oracle
8 19 (2.64%) BT
8 19 (2.64%) Ericsson
9 17 (2.36%) Fortinet
10 16 (2.22%) Juniper
11 15 (2.08%) Google
12 14 (1.94%) CheckPoint
12 14 (1.94%) Huawei
13 12 (1.66%) Palo Alto
14 11 (1.53%) F5
14 11 (1.53%) MuleSoft
14 11 (1.53%) Remedy
14 11 (1.53%) VMware
15 10 (1.39%) Meraki