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 14 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 60 69
Rank change year-on-year -73 +9 +14
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 782 1,103 1,276
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.12% 3.49% 3.00%
As % of the General category 3.52% 5.67% 5.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 510 525 778
10th Percentile £170 £278 £210
25th Percentile £310 £399 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +5.26% -1.04%
75th Percentile £574 £600 £623
90th Percentile £675 £687 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -10.00% +11.11% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 29 36
10th Percentile £17.01 £20.50 £14.56
25th Percentile £20.50 £22.50 £24.44
Median hourly rate £23.75 £32.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.92% -45.83% +11.63%
75th Percentile £24.50 £60.00 £80.00
90th Percentile £42.65 £75.00 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.66 £38.03 £67.50
% change year-on-year -37.78% -43.66% +12.50%

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 22,246 19,452 25,094
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.17% 61.54% 59.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,985 11,584 16,474
10th Percentile £284 £281 £270
25th Percentile £401 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £730 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £481 £500
% change year-on-year -1.14% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,361 647 1,176
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.48 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.48 £19.59 £16.23
Median hourly rate £23.00 £27.35 £30.24
Median % change year-on-year -15.90% -9.55% +20.95%
75th Percentile £46.00 £53.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.64 £70.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.38 £26.06 £29.33
% change year-on-year -17.96% -11.13% +30.59%

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 14 January 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 14 January 2026.

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 14 January 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 -79 690 £463 -8.87% 629
UK excluding London -57 449 £450 -10.00% 585
London -39 274 £450 -16.28% 105
Work from Home -55 182 £475 -7.77% 228
South East -43 150 £475 -5.00% 223
Midlands -31 76 £400 -20.00% 82
South West -37 74 £525 -2.33% 70
North of England -50 70 £313 -35.90% 91
West Midlands -37 54 £525 +3.70% 54
East of England -26 39 £475 +5.56% 87
North West -29 33 £250 -50.98% 44
Scotland +7 27 £281 -34.78% 27
East Midlands -11 22 £158 -10.00% 27
North East -5 18 £175 -51.72% 15
Yorkshire -46 18 £481 -3.75% 34
Northern Ireland +5 12 £150 - 7
Wales -2 9 £160 -56.16% 19
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 (2.05%) Confluence
2 14 (1.79%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (1.02%) Appian
5 7 (0.90%) OpenStack
6 6 (0.77%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.26%) Apache
7 2 (0.26%) CMS
8 1 (0.13%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.13%) IIS
8 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 49 (6.27%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (2.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (1.92%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (1.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 9 (1.15%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.51%) Autodesk Inventor
7 3 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.26%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.26%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.13%) FrameMaker
9 1 (0.13%) MadCap Flare
9 1 (0.13%) Trello
Business Applications
1 14 (1.79%) SAP BRIM
1 14 (1.79%) SAP Hybris
1 14 (1.79%) SAP PSCD
2 4 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 4 (0.51%) SAP ERP
3 3 (0.38%) Primavera
4 2 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.26%) SAP CO
4 2 (0.26%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
4 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 60 (7.67%) Azure
2 54 (6.91%) Microsoft 365
3 44 (5.63%) AWS
4 28 (3.58%) GCP
5 14 (1.79%) SaaS
5 14 (1.79%) SAP Commerce Cloud
6 13 (1.66%) GitHub
6 13 (1.66%) Power Platform
7 10 (1.28%) Dynamics 365
8 8 (1.02%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (1.02%) Entra ID
8 8 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (0.90%) Tricentis Tosca
10 5 (0.64%) Miro
11 4 (0.51%) IaaS
11 4 (0.51%) Power Automate
12 3 (0.38%) Asana
12 3 (0.38%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 3 (0.38%) Slack
12 3 (0.38%) Smartsheet
Communications & Networking
1 51 (6.52%) Firewall
2 49 (6.27%) WAN
3 44 (5.63%) Wireless
4 38 (4.86%) LAN
5 28 (3.58%) VPN
6 26 (3.32%) MPLS
7 24 (3.07%) 5G
7 24 (3.07%) Network Security
8 23 (2.94%) SD-WAN
9 22 (2.81%) 4G
9 22 (2.81%) Radio Access Network
10 21 (2.69%) DNS
11 20 (2.56%) Broadband
12 19 (2.43%) VoIP
13 18 (2.30%) LTE
14 17 (2.17%) BGP
15 15 (1.92%) SDH
15 15 (1.92%) Wireshark
16 14 (1.79%) 3GPP
17 12 (1.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (1.41%) Power BI
2 8 (1.02%) MySQL
2 8 (1.02%) Tableau
3 5 (0.64%) Big Data
3 5 (0.64%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (0.51%) Electronic Patient Records
4 4 (0.51%) GIS
4 4 (0.51%) Oracle Database
4 4 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.51%) SAP BW
4 4 (0.51%) SQL Server
5 2 (0.26%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.26%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.26%) Power Query
6 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.13%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Exadata
6 1 (0.13%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.13%) Redis
6 1 (0.13%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 27 (3.45%) JIRA
2 22 (2.81%) GitLab
3 11 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.15%) Postman
5 8 (1.02%) Robot Framework
5 8 (1.02%) Selenium
6 7 (0.90%) Cucumber
6 7 (0.90%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.77%) Git
8 4 (0.51%) Cypress.io
8 4 (0.51%) JUnit
9 3 (0.38%) Rational DOORS
9 3 (0.38%) Storybook
10 2 (0.26%) Appium
10 2 (0.26%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.26%) Maven
11 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.13%) Gradle
11 1 (0.13%) JMeter
11 1 (0.13%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 281 (35.93%) Finance
2 259 (33.12%) Public Sector
3 240 (30.69%) Social Skills
4 208 (26.60%) Marketing
5 198 (25.32%) Electronics
5 198 (25.32%) Manufacturing
6 82 (10.49%) Analytical Skills
7 32 (4.09%) Documentation Skills
8 24 (3.07%) Billing
9 22 (2.81%) Organisational Skills
10 16 (2.05%) Banking
11 13 (1.66%) Legal
12 11 (1.41%) Retail
13 8 (1.02%) Military
14 5 (0.64%) Law
15 4 (0.51%) General Ledger
15 4 (0.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 4 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.38%) Digital Health
16 3 (0.38%) Health Technology
Job Titles
1 83 (10.61%) Architect
2 79 (10.10%) Analyst
3 48 (6.14%) Project Manager
4 46 (5.88%) Business Analyst
5 45 (5.75%) IT Support
6 42 (5.37%) Senior
7 39 (4.99%) Consultant
7 39 (4.99%) Desktop Support
8 37 (4.73%) Lead
9 32 (4.09%) Network Engineer
10 28 (3.58%) 2nd Line Support
11 27 (3.45%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
11 27 (3.45%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
12 24 (3.07%) Solutions Architect
13 22 (2.81%) Developer
14 21 (2.69%) Network Specialist
14 21 (2.69%) Support Engineer
15 20 (2.56%) Migration Engineer
16 19 (2.43%) Field Engineer
16 19 (2.43%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (2.81%) REST
2 17 (2.17%) SOAP
3 11 (1.41%) XML
4 9 (1.15%) JSON
4 9 (1.15%) RESTful
4 9 (1.15%) SailPoint
5 8 (1.02%) 802.1X
6 7 (0.90%) Jinja
6 7 (0.90%) NETCONF
6 7 (0.90%) React
6 7 (0.90%) Web Services
7 6 (0.77%) RFC 2544
7 6 (0.77%) YANG
8 5 (0.64%) Node.js
8 5 (0.64%) Spring
9 4 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
9 4 (0.51%) HTML
9 4 (0.51%) Spring Boot
10 3 (0.38%) Playwright
10 3 (0.38%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 61 (7.80%) Data Centre
2 34 (4.35%) Driving Licence
3 27 (3.45%) Product Ownership
4 26 (3.32%) Data Protection Act
5 21 (2.69%) CMDB
6 20 (2.56%) Cloud Native
7 18 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
7 18 (2.30%) Onboarding
8 17 (2.17%) NHS
9 15 (1.92%) IoT
10 14 (1.79%) Mobile App
11 13 (1.66%) Fibre Optics
12 10 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
12 10 (1.28%) Virtual Team
13 9 (1.15%) Analytical Mindset
13 9 (1.15%) Cyber Threat
14 8 (1.02%) SCADA
15 7 (0.90%) Management Information System
15 7 (0.90%) Operational Technology
16 6 (0.77%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 46 (5.88%) Windows
2 39 (4.99%) Android
3 32 (4.09%) Mac OS
4 18 (2.30%) Windows 10
5 15 (1.92%) Linux
6 9 (1.15%) Windows Server
7 8 (1.02%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.38%) Debian
9 3 (0.38%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.38%) Unix
9 3 (0.38%) VMS
10 1 (0.13%) CentOS
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (25.96%) Business Intelligence
2 200 (25.58%) Programme Management
3 194 (24.81%) Digital Marketing
4 130 (16.62%) Agile
5 122 (15.60%) Problem-Solving
6 112 (14.32%) Stakeholder Management
7 96 (12.28%) Migration
8 75 (9.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 73 (9.34%) Continuous Improvement
10 68 (8.70%) ITIL
11 56 (7.16%) Workflow
12 54 (6.91%) Logistics
13 51 (6.52%) Customer Service
13 51 (6.52%) Project Management
14 48 (6.14%) CI/CD
15 46 (5.88%) Change Management
15 46 (5.88%) Roadmaps
15 46 (5.88%) Service Delivery
16 45 (5.75%) DevOps
17 40 (5.12%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 60 (7.67%) Python
2 36 (4.60%) JavaScript
3 31 (3.96%) SQL
4 15 (1.92%) Java
5 14 (1.79%) PowerShell
6 11 (1.41%) TypeScript
7 8 (1.02%) Bash
8 7 (0.90%) C
8 7 (0.90%) C++
9 5 (0.64%) C#
9 5 (0.64%) Go
10 4 (0.51%) ABAP
11 3 (0.38%) BeanShell
11 3 (0.38%) PHP
12 2 (0.26%) R
12 2 (0.26%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.13%) Bicep
13 1 (0.13%) Groovy
13 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.13%) Scala
Qualifications
1 211 (26.98%) Security Cleared
2 173 (22.12%) SC Cleared
3 58 (7.42%) Degree
4 27 (3.45%) DV Cleared
5 20 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
6 18 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 14 (1.79%) CCNP
8 11 (1.41%) PMP
9 10 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
10 9 (1.15%) ITIL Certification
11 8 (1.02%) CCIE
11 8 (1.02%) CCNA
11 8 (1.02%) PMI Certification
12 7 (0.90%) ACCA
12 7 (0.90%) Master's Degree
13 6 (0.77%) Azure Certification
13 6 (0.77%) CISSP
13 6 (0.77%) JNCIP
14 5 (0.64%) CIMA
14 5 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.96%) QA
1 31 (3.96%) SLA
2 19 (2.43%) PMO
3 18 (2.30%) GDPR
4 13 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (1.41%) Data Quality
6 10 (1.28%) GRC
7 9 (1.15%) Accessibility
8 6 (0.77%) JSP 440
8 6 (0.77%) NIST
9 5 (0.64%) NCSC
9 5 (0.64%) RMADS
9 5 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.38%) GAAP
10 3 (0.38%) IFRS
11 2 (0.26%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.26%) IEC 61508
11 2 (0.26%) ISO 26262
11 2 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 2 (0.26%) WCAG
System Software
1 29 (3.71%) Active Directory
2 19 (2.43%) Docker
3 6 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.38%) QEMU
4 3 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.26%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.13%) Firmware
6 1 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 24 (3.07%) Ansible
2 20 (2.56%) Kubernetes
3 12 (1.53%) Terraform
4 7 (0.90%) SCCM
5 5 (0.64%) Argo
5 5 (0.64%) Grafana
5 5 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (0.38%) Podman
6 3 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.38%) vRealize
7 2 (0.26%) EMC NetWorker
7 2 (0.26%) Iperf
7 2 (0.26%) Nmap
7 2 (0.26%) Puppet
8 1 (0.13%) Cisco CUCM
8 1 (0.13%) Cisco Prime
8 1 (0.13%) Data Guard
8 1 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.13%) SCOM
8 1 (0.13%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 220 (28.13%) SAP
2 124 (15.86%) Cisco
3 95 (12.15%) Microsoft
4 44 (5.63%) ServiceNow
5 33 (4.22%) Juniper
6 32 (4.09%) Nokia
7 25 (3.20%) HP
8 24 (3.07%) Apple
8 24 (3.07%) Dell
9 23 (2.94%) Salesforce
10 20 (2.56%) F5
11 18 (2.30%) Ericsson
12 16 (2.05%) CheckPoint
12 16 (2.05%) Fortinet
13 15 (1.92%) Oracle
14 14 (1.79%) Google
14 14 (1.79%) Remedy
15 11 (1.41%) Meraki
15 11 (1.41%) Palo Alto
16 9 (1.15%) Actix