DNS Contract Job Trends in England

Domain Name System (DNS)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring DNS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 22 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 119 150
Rank change year-on-year -10 +31 -14
Contract jobs citing DNS 924 651 575
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.06% 2.38% 1.63%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 21.71% 18.91% 12.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 573 432 385
10th Percentile £281 £285 £256
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £536 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.72% +7.20% -2.44%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £588
90th Percentile £638 £653 £671
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £484
% change year-on-year -4.76% +8.36% -5.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 31 21
10th Percentile £20.73 £29.00 £20.00
25th Percentile £26.50 £34.38 £23.80
Median hourly rate £35.22 £57.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.75% +91.67% -25.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.55 £40.00
90th Percentile £82.45 £89.63 £51.91
UK median hourly rate £35.22 £57.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -38.75% +91.67% -25.00%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
England

DNS falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,256 3,442 4,553
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.49% 12.61% 12.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,611 2,138 2,748
10th Percentile £258 £235 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £489 £500
% change year-on-year +2.25% -2.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 306 159 345
10th Percentile £16.03 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.08 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.69 £44.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.34% -2.22% -1.10%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £87.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £46.25 £40.00
% change year-on-year -43.78% +15.63% -16.67%

DNS
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing DNS relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

DNS job vacancy trend in England

DNS
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing DNS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing DNS

DNS
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DNS in England over the 6 months to 22 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DNS in England

DNS
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing DNS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing DNS

DNS
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DNS in England over the 6 months to 22 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DNS in England

DNS
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DNS within the England region over the 6 months to 22 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
London -41 311 £475 -6.86% 112
North of England +14 238 £450 -10.00% 44
South East +8 202 £538 -2.27% 91
North West +32 153 £450 -1.64% 22
Midlands -10 113 £450 -5.26% 32
West Midlands -15 94 £450 -5.26% 23
Yorkshire -14 78 £468 -15.00% 18
South West -8 77 £500 -14.89% 46
East of England -56 30 £450 -18.18% 34
East Midlands -6 17 £413 -25.00% 9
North East -38 7 £319 -7.61% 7
DNS
UK

DNS
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 86 (9.31%) Microsoft Exchange
2 68 (7.36%) SharePoint
3 20 (2.16%) Confluence
4 18 (1.95%) nginx
5 13 (1.41%) Apache
6 12 (1.30%) IIS
7 6 (0.65%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.22%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 19 (2.06%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.97%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.54%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.22%) Houdini
5 2 (0.22%) NUKE
6 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 9 (0.97%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 346 (37.45%) Azure
2 178 (19.26%) AWS
3 157 (16.99%) Entra ID
4 146 (15.80%) Microsoft 365
5 101 (10.93%) GCP
6 63 (6.82%) GitHub
7 54 (5.84%) IaaS
8 43 (4.65%) OneDrive
9 41 (4.44%) SaaS
10 40 (4.33%) PaaS
11 30 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
11 30 (3.25%) Azure Monitor
12 28 (3.03%) OpenShift
13 27 (2.92%) AWS CloudFormation
13 27 (2.92%) Serverless
14 26 (2.81%) Amazon EC2
15 25 (2.71%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 25 (2.71%) Route 53
15 25 (2.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 22 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 421 (45.56%) DHCP
2 334 (36.15%) Firewall
3 269 (29.11%) TCP/IP
4 258 (27.92%) VPN
5 125 (13.53%) WAN
6 119 (12.88%) Network Security
7 108 (11.69%) LAN
8 107 (11.58%) VLAN
9 100 (10.82%) BGP
10 93 (10.06%) SSL
11 80 (8.66%) BIG-IP
12 65 (7.03%) HTTP
13 64 (6.93%) Wireless
14 59 (6.39%) Wi-Fi
15 58 (6.28%) OSPF
16 53 (5.74%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 53 (5.74%) SAN
17 42 (4.55%) DMZ
18 37 (4.00%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 35 (3.79%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (4.98%) SQL Server
2 17 (1.84%) Elasticsearch
3 11 (1.19%) Power BI
4 10 (1.08%) Azure SQL Database
5 8 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (0.65%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (0.54%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.54%) MySQL
8 4 (0.43%) Db2
9 3 (0.32%) Big Data
10 2 (0.22%) NoSQL
11 1 (0.11%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.11%) Cloud Spanner
11 1 (0.11%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.11%) KDB
11 1 (0.11%) MongoDB
11 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 72 (7.79%) JIRA
2 53 (5.74%) Jenkins
3 34 (3.68%) Git
4 20 (2.16%) GitLab
5 19 (2.06%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.19%) Bitbucket
7 10 (1.08%) Browser DevTools
8 8 (0.87%) Chocolatey
9 7 (0.76%) SonarQube
10 5 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 2 (0.22%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.22%) Introscope
12 2 (0.22%) Spinnaker
13 1 (0.11%) MSI
13 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio
General
1 213 (23.05%) Social Skills
2 97 (10.50%) Analytical Skills
3 84 (9.09%) Finance
4 70 (7.58%) Banking
5 68 (7.36%) Public Sector
6 49 (5.30%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (3.68%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.92%) Telecoms
9 21 (2.27%) Military
10 15 (1.62%) Legal
11 11 (1.19%) Local Government
11 11 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
12 10 (1.08%) Police
13 9 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 6 (0.65%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (0.65%) Publishing
15 5 (0.54%) Law
16 4 (0.43%) Financial Institution
16 4 (0.43%) Manufacturing
17 3 (0.32%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 177 (19.16%) Network Engineer
2 148 (16.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 103 (11.15%) Architect
4 92 (9.96%) Senior
5 83 (8.98%) Support Engineer
6 68 (7.36%) Cloud Engineer
7 60 (6.49%) Security Engineer
8 48 (5.19%) Analyst
9 45 (4.87%) IT Engineer
9 45 (4.87%) IT Support
10 42 (4.55%) Network Security Engineer
11 41 (4.44%) Azure Engineer
11 41 (4.44%) Web Engineer
12 38 (4.11%) Cisco Engineer
13 36 (3.90%) Administrator
13 36 (3.90%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 36 (3.90%) DevOps Engineer
14 32 (3.46%) Data Engineer
14 32 (3.46%) Data Network Engineer
15 31 (3.35%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (5.52%) 802.1X
2 44 (4.76%) LDAP
3 26 (2.81%) SAML
4 21 (2.27%) ARM Templates
4 21 (2.27%) OpenID
5 17 (1.84%) OpenTelemetry
6 16 (1.73%) OAuth
7 13 (1.41%) JSON
8 9 (0.97%) REST
8 9 (0.97%) YAML
9 6 (0.65%) Middleware
10 5 (0.54%) CSS
10 5 (0.54%) Microsoft Graph
11 4 (0.43%) .NET
11 4 (0.43%) eBPF
11 4 (0.43%) Kafka
11 4 (0.43%) Web Services
12 3 (0.32%) LAMP
12 3 (0.32%) Redfish
12 3 (0.32%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 124 (13.42%) Data Centre
2 94 (10.17%) PKI
3 58 (6.28%) Onboarding
4 56 (6.06%) Cloud Native
5 55 (5.95%) Hybrid Cloud
6 46 (4.98%) Management Information System
7 43 (4.65%) Clustering
8 42 (4.55%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 32 (3.46%) Public Cloud
10 31 (3.35%) Replication
11 23 (2.49%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (2.06%) Enterprise Cloud
13 17 (1.84%) Security Posture
14 14 (1.52%) Cyber Threat
15 13 (1.41%) Linux Command Line
16 12 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
16 12 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
17 10 (1.08%) Product Ownership
18 9 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
18 9 (0.97%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 401 (43.40%) Windows
2 212 (22.94%) Windows Server
3 156 (16.88%) Linux
4 46 (4.98%) Windows 10
5 36 (3.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 34 (3.68%) Windows Server 2019
7 28 (3.03%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.92%) Unix
9 19 (2.06%) Windows Server 2012
10 18 (1.95%) Ubuntu
11 14 (1.52%) CentOS
12 13 (1.41%) Apple iOS
13 12 (1.30%) Android
13 12 (1.30%) Windows Server 2016
14 7 (0.76%) VMS
15 6 (0.65%) Rocky
16 5 (0.54%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.43%) Windows 7
18 3 (0.32%) AIX
18 3 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 213 (23.05%) Problem-Solving
2 198 (21.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 175 (18.94%) Load Balancing
4 162 (17.53%) Migration
5 155 (16.77%) ITIL
6 142 (15.37%) Infrastructure as Code
7 138 (14.94%) DevOps
7 138 (14.94%) High Availability
8 132 (14.29%) CI/CD
9 98 (10.61%) ITSM
10 90 (9.74%) Observability
11 81 (8.77%) Project Delivery
12 78 (8.44%) Agile
13 76 (8.23%) Cybersecurity
14 75 (8.12%) Continuous Improvement
15 65 (7.03%) Disaster Recovery
16 64 (6.93%) Identity Access Management
17 63 (6.82%) Containerisation
18 59 (6.39%) Technical Leadership
19 58 (6.28%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 185 (20.02%) PowerShell
2 165 (17.86%) Python
3 113 (12.23%) Bash
4 46 (4.98%) SQL
5 34 (3.68%) Bicep
6 22 (2.38%) JavaScript
7 11 (1.19%) Go
8 10 (1.08%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.97%) ActionScript
9 9 (0.97%) VBA
10 8 (0.87%) Perl
11 6 (0.65%) Java
12 5 (0.54%) C
12 5 (0.54%) Groovy
12 5 (0.54%) Ruby
13 3 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.32%) Lisp
14 2 (0.22%) Jython
14 2 (0.22%) Kotlin
14 2 (0.22%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 332 (35.93%) Security Cleared
2 189 (20.45%) SC Cleared
3 130 (14.07%) DV Cleared
4 103 (11.15%) Cisco Certification
5 72 (7.79%) CCNP
6 67 (7.25%) Degree
7 49 (5.30%) CCNA
8 38 (4.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 35 (3.79%) Azure Certification
10 28 (3.03%) Network+ Certification
11 19 (2.06%) CCIE
12 15 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
12 15 (1.62%) Server+ Certification
13 14 (1.52%) CISSP
14 13 (1.41%) CompTIA Security+
15 12 (1.30%) JNCIS
15 12 (1.30%) MCSA
15 12 (1.30%) MCSE
16 11 (1.19%) AWS Certification
16 11 (1.19%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (3.57%) SLA
2 25 (2.71%) NIST
3 15 (1.62%) NCSC
4 13 (1.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (0.65%) GDPR
5 6 (0.65%) QA
6 5 (0.54%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.43%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 3 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.32%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.22%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.11%) COBIT
10 1 (0.11%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.11%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 380 (41.13%) Active Directory
2 210 (22.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 94 (10.17%) Hyper-V
4 63 (6.82%) VMware ESXi
4 63 (6.82%) VMware NSX
4 63 (6.82%) vSphere
5 42 (4.55%) Virtual Machines
6 41 (4.44%) Docker
7 39 (4.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 25 (2.71%) Firmware
9 18 (1.95%) NFS
10 13 (1.41%) vCloud
11 12 (1.30%) Squid
12 10 (1.08%) BitLocker
12 10 (1.08%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (0.97%) Postfix
14 8 (0.87%) VMware Workstation
15 6 (0.65%) Varnish
16 5 (0.54%) UAG
17 4 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 185 (20.02%) Terraform
2 127 (13.74%) Ansible
3 110 (11.90%) Kubernetes
4 89 (9.63%) Microsoft Intune
5 61 (6.60%) vCenter Server
6 57 (6.17%) Grafana
7 52 (5.63%) Single Sign-On
8 51 (5.52%) SCCM
9 48 (5.19%) FortiGate
10 41 (4.44%) Prometheus
11 25 (2.71%) SCOM
11 25 (2.71%) WSUS
12 22 (2.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 21 (2.27%) Argo
14 15 (1.62%) Puppet
15 14 (1.52%) Nessus
16 13 (1.41%) Jamf Pro
17 11 (1.19%) vMotion
18 10 (1.08%) HAProxy
19 8 (0.87%) Packer
Vendors
1 315 (34.09%) Microsoft
2 257 (27.81%) VMware
3 187 (20.24%) Cisco
4 149 (16.13%) F5
5 83 (8.98%) ServiceNow
6 67 (7.25%) Splunk
7 64 (6.93%) Google
7 64 (6.93%) Infoblox
8 60 (6.49%) SolarWinds
9 57 (6.17%) Juniper
10 54 (5.84%) Citrix
11 49 (5.30%) Red Hat
12 43 (4.65%) Palo Alto
13 35 (3.79%) Dynatrace
14 32 (3.46%) NetApp
15 29 (3.14%) Blue Coat
16 26 (2.81%) CheckPoint
17 25 (2.71%) Fortinet
17 25 (2.71%) Zscaler
18 24 (2.60%) McAfee