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 22 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 133 57 73
Rank change year-on-year -76 +16 +14
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 810 1,190 1,255
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 3.52% 2.88%
As % of the General category 3.61% 5.76% 4.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 525 568 795
10th Percentile £163 £278 £264
25th Percentile £313 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +1.01% +2.06%
75th Percentile £575 £614 £623
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £463
% change year-on-year -10.00% +8.11% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 41 32
10th Percentile £14.75 £21.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.22 £24.50 £23.19
Median hourly rate £22.08 £50.00 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year -55.85% -6.98% +7.50%
75th Percentile £24.50 £73.75 £77.75
90th Percentile £41.25 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £51.25 £60.00
% change year-on-year -54.15% -14.58% +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 common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 22,438 20,642 26,003
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 61.05% 61.12% 59.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,027 12,330 17,202
10th Percentile £275 £288 £275
25th Percentile £400 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,448 708 1,066
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.48 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.50 £18.50 £16.85
Median hourly rate £23.54 £27.30 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.78% -17.27% +32.00%
75th Percentile £45.46 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £69.75 £71.25 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £25.99 £30.48
% change year-on-year -15.35% -14.72% +41.74%

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 22 December 2025.

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 22 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Telecoms in the UK

Telecoms
Top 18 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 22 December 2025. 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 -72 712 £461 -8.21% 803
UK excluding London -56 468 £450 -10.00% 631
London -35 276 £450 -14.29% 237
Work from Home -64 183 £500 -2.44% 329
South East -43 167 £500 -1.48% 207
Midlands -37 81 £380 -24.94% 94
South West -30 79 £550 +3.77% 85
North of England -40 62 £288 -33.53% 138
West Midlands -32 59 £450 -12.20% 64
East of England -34 37 £475 +8.57% 79
North West -25 34 £250 -44.44% 72
Scotland +14 28 £275 -36.23% 28
East Midlands -6 22 £158 -10.00% 27
Yorkshire -44 16 £376 -24.75% 54
Northern Ireland +1 12 £150 - 5
North East -6 11 £175 -50.00% 17
Wales +2 10 £160 -56.16% 15
Channel Islands -2 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 16 (1.98%) Confluence
2 15 (1.85%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (1.11%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.86%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.86%) Appian
6 4 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.25%) Apache
7 2 (0.25%) CMS
7 2 (0.25%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.12%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.12%) IIS
8 1 (0.12%) Jupyter
Applications
1 49 (6.05%) Microsoft Office
2 24 (2.96%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.98%) Microsoft Project
4 12 (1.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 9 (1.11%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.49%) Autodesk Inventor
7 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.25%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.25%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.12%) FrameMaker
9 1 (0.12%) MadCap Flare
9 1 (0.12%) Sketch
9 1 (0.12%) Trello
Business Applications
1 14 (1.73%) SAP BRIM
1 14 (1.73%) SAP Hybris
1 14 (1.73%) SAP PSCD
2 5 (0.62%) Endur
3 4 (0.49%) Primavera
3 4 (0.49%) SAP ERP
4 2 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.25%) SAP CO
4 2 (0.25%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.25%) SAP FI/CO
4 2 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 66 (8.15%) Azure
2 60 (7.41%) AWS
3 53 (6.54%) Microsoft 365
4 38 (4.69%) GCP
5 22 (2.72%) SaaS
6 17 (2.10%) Power Platform
7 14 (1.73%) SAP Commerce Cloud
8 12 (1.48%) GitHub
9 10 (1.23%) Dynamics 365
10 8 (0.99%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (0.99%) Entra ID
10 8 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (0.86%) Tricentis Tosca
12 6 (0.74%) IaaS
12 6 (0.74%) Miro
13 5 (0.62%) OpenShift
14 4 (0.49%) Cloud Computing
14 4 (0.49%) dbt
14 4 (0.49%) PaaS
14 4 (0.49%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 58 (7.16%) Firewall
2 52 (6.42%) WAN
3 47 (5.80%) LAN
4 44 (5.43%) Wireless
5 32 (3.95%) VPN
6 29 (3.58%) SD-WAN
7 27 (3.33%) 5G
8 25 (3.09%) Broadband
8 25 (3.09%) Radio Access Network
9 24 (2.96%) DNS
10 23 (2.84%) 4G
10 23 (2.84%) VoIP
11 21 (2.59%) MPLS
11 21 (2.59%) Network Security
12 20 (2.47%) Wi-Fi
13 17 (2.10%) BGP
14 16 (1.98%) LTE
14 16 (1.98%) Wireshark
15 15 (1.85%) SDH
16 13 (1.60%) 3GPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.85%) Power BI
2 12 (1.48%) Tableau
3 9 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (0.99%) MySQL
5 6 (0.74%) Big Data
5 6 (0.74%) GIS
5 6 (0.74%) MongoDB
6 5 (0.62%) Relational Database
7 4 (0.49%) Electronic Patient Records
7 4 (0.49%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.49%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (0.49%) SAP BW
8 3 (0.37%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.25%) Hadoop
9 2 (0.25%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.25%) Power Query
10 1 (0.12%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (0.12%) Data Mining
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Exadata
10 1 (0.12%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 27 (3.33%) JIRA
2 22 (2.72%) GitLab
3 11 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.11%) Postman
5 8 (0.99%) Robot Framework
5 8 (0.99%) Selenium
6 7 (0.86%) Cucumber
6 7 (0.86%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.49%) Cypress.io
7 4 (0.49%) JUnit
8 3 (0.37%) Git
8 3 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
8 3 (0.37%) Storybook
9 2 (0.25%) Appium
9 2 (0.25%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.25%) Clang
9 2 (0.25%) GCC
9 2 (0.25%) Maven
10 1 (0.12%) Mocha
10 1 (0.12%) Mockito
General
1 300 (37.04%) Finance
2 274 (33.83%) Public Sector
3 259 (31.98%) Social Skills
4 216 (26.67%) Marketing
5 208 (25.68%) Manufacturing
6 205 (25.31%) Electronics
7 85 (10.49%) Analytical Skills
8 30 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
9 26 (3.21%) Legal
10 22 (2.72%) Organisational Skills
11 21 (2.59%) Billing
12 14 (1.73%) Law
13 11 (1.36%) Retail
14 10 (1.23%) Automotive
14 10 (1.23%) Banking
15 9 (1.11%) Military
16 7 (0.86%) Back Office
17 6 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
18 5 (0.62%) French Language
18 5 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 98 (12.10%) Architect
2 76 (9.38%) Analyst
3 49 (6.05%) Project Manager
4 46 (5.68%) IT Support
5 44 (5.43%) Business Analyst
5 44 (5.43%) Desktop Support
6 43 (5.31%) Consultant
7 37 (4.57%) Lead
7 37 (4.57%) Senior
8 32 (3.95%) Network Engineer
9 29 (3.58%) 2nd Line Support
10 28 (3.46%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
10 28 (3.46%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
11 26 (3.21%) Network Architect
11 26 (3.21%) Solutions Architect
12 25 (3.09%) Network Specialist
13 22 (2.72%) Developer
13 22 (2.72%) Support Engineer
14 21 (2.59%) Support Technician
14 21 (2.59%) Telecoms Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (2.96%) REST
2 17 (2.10%) SOAP
3 12 (1.48%) JSON
3 12 (1.48%) React
4 11 (1.36%) XML
5 9 (1.11%) RESTful
5 9 (1.11%) SailPoint
6 8 (0.99%) 802.1X
7 7 (0.86%) Jinja
7 7 (0.86%) NETCONF
7 7 (0.86%) Web Services
8 6 (0.74%) RFC 2544
8 6 (0.74%) YANG
9 5 (0.62%) HTML
9 5 (0.62%) Node.js
9 5 (0.62%) Spring
9 5 (0.62%) Swagger
10 4 (0.49%) CSS
10 4 (0.49%) Elastic Stack
10 4 (0.49%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 69 (8.52%) Data Centre
2 35 (4.32%) Driving Licence
3 27 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
4 24 (2.96%) Product Ownership
5 23 (2.84%) Cloud Native
5 23 (2.84%) Data Protection Act
6 19 (2.35%) CMDB
6 19 (2.35%) Onboarding
7 18 (2.22%) Fibre Optics
8 16 (1.98%) Mobile App
9 15 (1.85%) NHS
10 14 (1.73%) IoT
11 13 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
12 11 (1.36%) Virtual Team
13 10 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (1.11%) Cyber Threat
15 8 (0.99%) Renewable Energy
15 8 (0.99%) SCADA
16 7 (0.86%) Algorithms
16 7 (0.86%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 50 (6.17%) Windows
2 39 (4.81%) Android
3 32 (3.95%) Mac OS
4 17 (2.10%) Windows 10
5 16 (1.98%) Linux
6 10 (1.23%) Windows Server
7 8 (0.99%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.49%) Unix
9 1 (0.12%) CentOS
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.12%) VMS
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 220 (27.16%) Business Intelligence
2 210 (25.93%) Programme Management
3 204 (25.19%) Digital Marketing
4 135 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
5 133 (16.42%) Agile
6 113 (13.95%) Stakeholder Management
7 101 (12.47%) Migration
8 81 (10.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 73 (9.01%) ITIL
10 70 (8.64%) Continuous Improvement
11 61 (7.53%) Workflow
12 57 (7.04%) Logistics
13 56 (6.91%) Customer Service
14 53 (6.54%) Project Management
15 51 (6.30%) Service Delivery
16 49 (6.05%) AI
16 49 (6.05%) DevOps
17 48 (5.93%) Network Design
18 47 (5.80%) Change Management
18 47 (5.80%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 66 (8.15%) Python
2 37 (4.57%) JavaScript
3 36 (4.44%) SQL
4 16 (1.98%) PowerShell
5 15 (1.85%) Java
6 11 (1.36%) Bash
6 11 (1.36%) TypeScript
7 8 (0.99%) C
7 8 (0.99%) C#
8 6 (0.74%) C++
8 6 (0.74%) Go
9 4 (0.49%) ABAP
10 3 (0.37%) BeanShell
10 3 (0.37%) PHP
10 3 (0.37%) R
11 2 (0.25%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.12%) Groovy
12 1 (0.12%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.12%) Scala
12 1 (0.12%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 236 (29.14%) Security Cleared
2 187 (23.09%) SC Cleared
3 71 (8.77%) Degree
4 41 (5.06%) DV Cleared
5 23 (2.84%) Cisco Certification
6 16 (1.98%) CCNP
7 14 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 14 (1.73%) PMP
8 13 (1.60%) CISSP
8 13 (1.60%) Master's Degree
9 11 (1.36%) PMI Certification
10 10 (1.23%) CCIE
10 10 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
11 9 (1.11%) CCNA
11 9 (1.11%) ITIL Certification
12 7 (0.86%) Azure Certification
12 7 (0.86%) CESG Certified Professional
13 6 (0.74%) CISM
13 6 (0.74%) JNCIP
14 5 (0.62%) JNCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (4.57%) QA
2 32 (3.95%) SLA
3 18 (2.22%) GDPR
3 18 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 17 (2.10%) PMO
5 15 (1.85%) Data Quality
6 9 (1.11%) Accessibility
6 9 (1.11%) GRC
7 8 (0.99%) NCSC
7 8 (0.99%) NIST
8 7 (0.86%) RMADS
9 5 (0.62%) JSP 440
9 5 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.37%) GAAP
10 3 (0.37%) IFRS
11 2 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.25%) Def Stans
11 2 (0.25%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.25%) ISO 26262
11 2 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 31 (3.83%) Active Directory
2 24 (2.96%) Docker
3 6 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.49%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.37%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.12%) Firmware
6 1 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.12%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 26 (3.21%) Ansible
2 25 (3.09%) Kubernetes
3 17 (2.10%) Terraform
4 7 (0.86%) SCCM
5 6 (0.74%) Grafana
6 5 (0.62%) Argo
6 5 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.37%) Cisco CUCM
8 3 (0.37%) vRealize
9 2 (0.25%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.25%) Iperf
9 2 (0.25%) Nmap
9 2 (0.25%) Prometheus
9 2 (0.25%) Puppet
10 1 (0.12%) FreeIPA
10 1 (0.12%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.12%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.12%) Istio
10 1 (0.12%) Kibana
Vendors
1 237 (29.26%) SAP
2 134 (16.54%) Cisco
3 97 (11.98%) Microsoft
4 43 (5.31%) ServiceNow
5 33 (4.07%) Juniper
6 30 (3.70%) Salesforce
7 29 (3.58%) Nokia
8 25 (3.09%) Dell
8 25 (3.09%) HP
9 24 (2.96%) Apple
10 22 (2.72%) Fortinet
11 21 (2.59%) F5
12 20 (2.47%) Ericsson
13 17 (2.10%) CheckPoint
14 16 (1.98%) Google
15 14 (1.73%) Remedy
16 13 (1.60%) Oracle
17 11 (1.36%) Meraki
17 11 (1.36%) Palo Alto
18 10 (1.23%) Actix