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 10 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 183 103 67
Rank change year-on-year -80 -36 +13
Contract jobs citing Telecoms 788 823 1,322
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.50% 2.54% 3.06%
As % of the General category 2.73% 4.04% 5.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 457 472 623
10th Percentile £213 £303 £200
25th Percentile £375 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.06%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £613
90th Percentile £671 £700 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £463 £459
% change year-on-year -2.70% +0.76% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 45 106
10th Percentile £16.01 - £12.15
25th Percentile £17.73 £14.00 £14.00
Median hourly rate £24.50 £23.00 £46.78
Median % change year-on-year +6.52% -50.83% -10.90%
75th Percentile £50.00 £57.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £178.75 £65.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £15.50 £46.78
% change year-on-year +35.48% -66.87% +87.12%

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 28,861 20,389 24,702
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.84% 63.01% 57.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,315 12,811 15,435
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £471 £488
% change year-on-year +6.15% -3.38% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,989 1,028 1,922
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.36 £12.88
25th Percentile £18.38 £16.30 £15.67
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.75 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +21.50% -16.33% +4.75%
75th Percentile £61.18 £52.75 £53.94
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.84 £31.25
% change year-on-year +42.29% -26.91% +20.42%

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 10 July 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 10 July 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 10 July 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 -76 678 £475 -3.06% 647
UK excluding London -96 412 £450 -2.70% 526
London -36 288 £500 +2.04% 221
Work from Home -41 221 £475 - 243
South East -50 188 £465 -7.00% 191
North of England -65 63 £508 +1.50% 106
South West -57 49 £450 -14.29% 40
Midlands -59 39 £475 +24.59% 78
Scotland -9 37 £275 -15.38% 52
East of England -22 36 £190 -50.97% 48
North West -41 34 £550 +4.76% 60
West Midlands -73 33 £460 +31.43% 50
Yorkshire -38 23 £600 +54.84% 37
East Midlands -11 6 £500 -20.00% 28
North East -32 6 £500 - 11
Northern Ireland -1 3 £175 -51.05% 7
Wales -17 1 £500 +132.56% 18

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 12 (1.52%) OpenStack
2 10 (1.27%) Confluence
3 7 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (0.89%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.76%) Appian
4 6 (0.76%) ArcGIS
5 4 (0.51%) Anypoint
5 4 (0.51%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.38%) IIS
6 3 (0.38%) JBoss
6 3 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.38%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.25%) Apache
7 2 (0.25%) CMS
7 2 (0.25%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.13%) Camunda
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 1 (0.13%) Smallworld
Applications
1 26 (3.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (3.17%) Microsoft Office
3 17 (2.16%) MS Visio
4 11 (1.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.63%) AutoCAD
5 5 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.25%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.13%) Revit
7 1 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.13%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (2.79%) SAP PSCD
2 14 (1.78%) Remedy ITSM
3 13 (1.65%) SAP BRIM
4 12 (1.52%) SAP Hybris
5 7 (0.89%) SAP FI
6 6 (0.76%) SAP FI-CA
7 5 (0.63%) NetSuite
7 5 (0.63%) Sage X3
7 5 (0.63%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.51%) BambooHR
8 4 (0.51%) Remedy AR System
9 3 (0.38%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
11 1 (0.13%) SAP CO
11 1 (0.13%) SAP FI/CO
11 1 (0.13%) SAP IBP
11 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
11 1 (0.13%) SAP SRM
11 1 (0.13%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 77 (9.77%) Azure
2 71 (9.01%) AWS
3 47 (5.96%) GCP
4 19 (2.41%) Power Platform
5 17 (2.16%) Microsoft 365
5 17 (2.16%) SaaS
6 14 (1.78%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 10 (1.27%) Snowflake
8 9 (1.14%) dbt
9 8 (1.02%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (1.02%) Entra ID
9 8 (1.02%) GitHub
9 8 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
10 6 (0.76%) Datadog
10 6 (0.76%) OpenShift
10 6 (0.76%) Serverless
11 5 (0.63%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (0.63%) Cloud Functions
11 5 (0.63%) Fivetran
11 5 (0.63%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 80 (10.15%) WAN
2 69 (8.76%) LAN
3 68 (8.63%) MPLS
4 64 (8.12%) 5G
5 44 (5.58%) 4G
6 42 (5.33%) Firewall
6 42 (5.33%) Radio Access Network
7 32 (4.06%) SD-WAN
8 31 (3.93%) BGP
9 22 (2.79%) Network Security
10 21 (2.66%) VoIP
11 20 (2.54%) 3G
11 20 (2.54%) OSPF
11 20 (2.54%) VPN
12 19 (2.41%) DNS
12 19 (2.41%) LTE
12 19 (2.41%) SDH
13 17 (2.16%) 3GPP
13 17 (2.16%) VLAN
14 16 (2.03%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.28%) Power BI
2 16 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
3 14 (1.78%) BigQuery
4 12 (1.52%) Amazon Redshift
4 12 (1.52%) Looker
4 12 (1.52%) Tableau
5 7 (0.89%) Big Data
5 7 (0.89%) Relational Database
6 6 (0.76%) GIS
7 5 (0.63%) MySQL
8 4 (0.51%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.38%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.38%) BusinessObjects
9 3 (0.38%) InfluxDB
9 3 (0.38%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.38%) SAP BW
9 3 (0.38%) SAP Data Services
9 3 (0.38%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.38%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.38%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 25 (3.17%) JIRA
2 10 (1.27%) Git
3 5 (0.63%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.25%) GitLab
5 2 (0.25%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.13%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.13%) JMeter
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.13%) Rational DOORS
6 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 231 (29.31%) Social Skills
2 132 (16.75%) Finance
3 109 (13.83%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (8.12%) Public Sector
5 46 (5.84%) Billing
6 30 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
7 27 (3.43%) Retail
8 22 (2.79%) Marketing
9 21 (2.66%) Organisational Skills
10 20 (2.54%) Legal
11 18 (2.28%) Influencing Skills
12 11 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
13 9 (1.14%) Electronics
14 8 (1.02%) Aerospace
14 8 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (1.02%) Manufacturing
15 7 (0.89%) Police
15 7 (0.89%) Publishing
16 4 (0.51%) Military
17 3 (0.38%) Banking
Job Titles
1 113 (14.34%) Architect
2 68 (8.63%) Consultant
3 65 (8.25%) Senior
4 64 (8.12%) Lead
5 61 (7.74%) Analyst
6 44 (5.58%) Network Engineer
7 43 (5.46%) Solutions Architect
8 41 (5.20%) Project Manager
9 40 (5.08%) Telecoms Manager
10 29 (3.68%) Designer
11 27 (3.43%) Developer
12 26 (3.30%) Telecoms Engineer
13 25 (3.17%) Data Engineer
13 25 (3.17%) ServiceNow Architect
14 23 (2.92%) Field Engineer
14 23 (2.92%) SAP Consultant
15 21 (2.66%) Delivery Manager
15 21 (2.66%) Enterprise Architect
16 19 (2.41%) Business Analyst
17 18 (2.28%) Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (5.46%) REST
2 30 (3.81%) SOAP
3 13 (1.65%) Middleware
3 13 (1.65%) ONVIF
4 12 (1.52%) Kafka
5 10 (1.27%) NETCONF
5 10 (1.27%) YANG
6 9 (1.14%) .NET
6 9 (1.14%) Elastic Stack
6 9 (1.14%) XML
7 8 (1.02%) OpenAPI
7 8 (1.02%) Swagger
8 7 (0.89%) JSON
8 7 (0.89%) RESTful
9 4 (0.51%) .NET Framework
9 4 (0.51%) OpenConfig
9 4 (0.51%) RAML
9 4 (0.51%) RESTCONF
10 3 (0.38%) GraphQL
10 3 (0.38%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 47 (5.96%) Data Centre
2 45 (5.71%) CMDB
3 34 (4.31%) Onboarding
4 32 (4.06%) Cloud Native
5 24 (3.05%) Driving Licence
6 22 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
7 19 (2.41%) Analytical Mindset
7 19 (2.41%) Virtual Team
8 14 (1.78%) Hybrid Cloud
9 13 (1.65%) Management Information System
9 13 (1.65%) Video\Live Streaming
10 12 (1.52%) Product Ownership
11 11 (1.40%) Distributed Systems
12 10 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (1.14%) Private Cloud
14 8 (1.02%) EPoS
14 8 (1.02%) TM Forum
15 6 (0.76%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 6 (0.76%) Enterprise Software
15 6 (0.76%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 33 (4.19%) Windows
2 26 (3.30%) Linux
3 16 (2.03%) Windows 10
4 12 (1.52%) Unix
5 6 (0.76%) Mac OS
6 5 (0.63%) Windows Server
7 3 (0.38%) Android
7 3 (0.38%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.38%) VMS
8 2 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
8 2 (0.25%) OpenVMS
9 1 (0.13%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.13%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (17.13%) Stakeholder Management
2 103 (13.07%) Agile
3 102 (12.94%) Problem-Solving
4 89 (11.29%) ITIL
5 76 (9.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 67 (8.50%) Project Delivery
7 60 (7.61%) Continuous Improvement
8 58 (7.36%) Decision-Making
9 57 (7.23%) CI/CD
10 56 (7.11%) CRM
10 56 (7.11%) Migration
10 56 (7.11%) Roadmaps
11 54 (6.85%) Validation
12 53 (6.73%) Service Management
13 52 (6.60%) Customer Service
13 52 (6.60%) Project Management
14 48 (6.09%) AI
14 48 (6.09%) ITSM
15 47 (5.96%) Analytics
16 42 (5.33%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 62 (7.87%) Python
2 37 (4.70%) SQL
3 20 (2.54%) JavaScript
4 15 (1.90%) Java
5 10 (1.27%) C#
6 8 (1.02%) Bash
7 7 (0.89%) R
8 6 (0.76%) C++
9 5 (0.63%) Apex Code
9 5 (0.63%) PowerShell
10 4 (0.51%) ABAP
10 4 (0.51%) DataWeave
10 4 (0.51%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.38%) LookML
11 3 (0.38%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.25%) DCL
12 2 (0.25%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.25%) SOQL
13 1 (0.13%) Cypher
13 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 138 (17.51%) Security Cleared
2 97 (12.31%) SC Cleared
3 72 (9.14%) Degree
4 57 (7.23%) Cisco Certification
5 37 (4.70%) CCNA
6 25 (3.17%) CCNP
7 23 (2.92%) DV Cleared
7 23 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (2.79%) A+ Certification
9 17 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
9 17 (2.16%) PMP
10 16 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
11 13 (1.65%) MCSA
11 13 (1.65%) PMI Certification
12 12 (1.52%) CCIE
13 10 (1.27%) Azure Certification
13 10 (1.27%) Network+ Certification
14 9 (1.14%) AWS Certification
15 6 (0.76%) JNCIE
15 6 (0.76%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.55%) SLA
2 22 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 20 (2.54%) NCSC
4 19 (2.41%) GDPR
5 17 (2.16%) QA
6 16 (2.03%) Data Quality
6 16 (2.03%) GRC
7 15 (1.90%) PMO
8 8 (1.02%) NIST
9 3 (0.38%) RMADS
10 2 (0.25%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.13%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.13%) ISO 22301
11 1 (0.13%) ISO 31000
11 1 (0.13%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.13%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.13%) SOC 1
11 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 16 (2.03%) Active Directory
1 16 (2.03%) VMware Infrastructure
2 14 (1.78%) Docker
3 8 (1.02%) VMware NSX
4 5 (0.63%) vSphere
5 3 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.25%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 43 (5.46%) Kubernetes
2 23 (2.92%) Terraform
3 20 (2.54%) Ansible
4 13 (1.65%) Grafana
4 13 (1.65%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.63%) Jamf Pro
6 3 (0.38%) Amdocs OSS
6 3 (0.38%) Cisco Prime
6 3 (0.38%) Iperf
6 3 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (0.38%) vCenter Server
6 3 (0.38%) vRealize
7 2 (0.25%) FortiGate
7 2 (0.25%) Nmap
7 2 (0.25%) NSN NetAct
8 1 (0.13%) AirWatch
8 1 (0.13%) Kibana
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.13%) QRadar
8 1 (0.13%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 101 (12.82%) Microsoft
2 82 (10.41%) Cisco
3 75 (9.52%) ServiceNow
4 44 (5.58%) Nokia
5 36 (4.57%) Salesforce
6 32 (4.06%) SAP
7 24 (3.05%) BT
7 24 (3.05%) VMware
8 23 (2.92%) Fortinet
9 21 (2.66%) Ericsson
10 19 (2.41%) Oracle
11 18 (2.28%) Juniper
12 17 (2.16%) F5
12 17 (2.16%) Remedy
13 16 (2.03%) Google
14 15 (1.90%) Huawei
14 15 (1.90%) MuleSoft
15 13 (1.65%) BMC
16 11 (1.40%) CheckPoint
16 11 (1.40%) Palo Alto