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 12 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 125 150
Rank change year-on-year -19 +25 -15
Contract jobs citing DNS 901 632 555
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.95% 2.26% 1.72%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.93% 19.51% 14.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 574 396 337
10th Percentile £296 £219 £254
25th Percentile £413 £380 £354
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £505 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.24% +1.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £591 £588
90th Percentile £659 £653 £675
UK median daily rate £504 £500 £488
% change year-on-year +0.75% +2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 32 10
10th Percentile £26.00 £15.50 £17.88
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.28
Median hourly rate £62.00 £45.00 £23.99
Median % change year-on-year +37.78% +87.58% -40.03%
75th Percentile £82.25 £76.59 £28.83
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.17 £48.88
UK median hourly rate £62.00 £45.00 £23.99
% change year-on-year +37.78% +87.58% -40.03%

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 4,304 3,239 3,924
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.30% 11.61% 12.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,539 2,071 2,257
10th Percentile £261 £214 £239
25th Percentile £400 £356 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £688 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 391 168 152
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.30
25th Percentile £21.33 £20.61 £25.94
Median hourly rate £38.53 £34.00 £57.38
Median % change year-on-year +13.31% -40.74% +1.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £67.14
90th Percentile £95.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £31.25 £35.00 £48.56
% change year-on-year -10.71% -27.92% -14.04%

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 12 October 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 12 October 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 12 October 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 -34 320 £500 -4.76% 348
North of England +12 197 £500 +8.11% 99
South East 0 174 £538 +7.50% 131
North West +9 121 £500 +11.11% 60
Midlands -45 99 £450 - 67
South West -1 96 £588 +2.17% 85
West Midlands -53 83 £450 +2.86% 33
Yorkshire 0 61 £500 - 27
East of England -42 42 £525 -4.55% 41
East Midlands -3 15 £375 -16.67% 33
North East -35 15 £425 +1.19% 14
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 99 (10.99%) Microsoft Exchange
2 83 (9.21%) SharePoint
3 26 (2.89%) Confluence
4 15 (1.66%) nginx
5 13 (1.44%) Apache
6 12 (1.33%) IIS
7 8 (0.89%) Skype for Business
8 6 (0.67%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.55%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.44%) Exchange Server 2013
11 2 (0.22%) Apache Spark
12 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
12 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 23 (2.55%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (1.00%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.22%) Houdini
5 2 (0.22%) NUKE
5 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 15 (1.66%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle Retail
2 1 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 388 (43.06%) Azure
2 186 (20.64%) AWS
2 186 (20.64%) Microsoft 365
3 182 (20.20%) Entra ID
4 76 (8.44%) GitHub
5 75 (8.32%) GCP
6 49 (5.44%) IaaS
7 47 (5.22%) Azure DevOps
7 47 (5.22%) Azure Monitor
8 46 (5.11%) OneDrive
9 45 (4.99%) GitHub Actions
10 36 (4.00%) SaaS
11 32 (3.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 27 (3.00%) PaaS
13 25 (2.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 24 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
14 24 (2.66%) Azure Key Vault
15 23 (2.55%) Azure Sentinel
16 22 (2.44%) OpenShift
17 21 (2.33%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 440 (48.83%) DHCP
2 350 (38.85%) Firewall
3 286 (31.74%) TCP/IP
4 269 (29.86%) VPN
5 137 (15.21%) Network Security
6 118 (13.10%) VLAN
7 109 (12.10%) WAN
8 87 (9.66%) SSL
9 84 (9.32%) LAN
10 80 (8.88%) BGP
11 73 (8.10%) Wireless
12 61 (6.77%) Wi-Fi
13 57 (6.33%) BIG-IP
13 57 (6.33%) HTTP
14 56 (6.22%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 54 (5.99%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 48 (5.33%) SAN
17 44 (4.88%) OSPF
18 42 (4.66%) DMZ
19 38 (4.22%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (4.99%) SQL Server
2 16 (1.78%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (1.55%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.33%) MySQL
5 10 (1.11%) Data Lake
6 9 (1.00%) Power BI
7 8 (0.89%) MongoDB
7 8 (0.89%) NoSQL
8 7 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
9 6 (0.67%) Big Data
9 6 (0.67%) Redis
10 4 (0.44%) Db2
11 3 (0.33%) Metadata
12 2 (0.22%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (0.22%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.22%) DynamoDB
12 2 (0.22%) Flink
12 2 (0.22%) KDB
12 2 (0.22%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 71 (7.88%) JIRA
2 57 (6.33%) Jenkins
3 50 (5.55%) Git
4 38 (4.22%) GitLab
5 12 (1.33%) Fiddler
6 9 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
7 8 (0.89%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.55%) Artifactory
8 5 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.55%) Selenium
9 4 (0.44%) Chocolatey
10 3 (0.33%) MSI
11 2 (0.22%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.22%) Vagrant
12 1 (0.11%) git-flow
12 1 (0.11%) Newman
12 1 (0.11%) REST Assured
12 1 (0.11%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.11%) TestCafe
General
1 241 (26.75%) Social Skills
2 105 (11.65%) Analytical Skills
3 89 (9.88%) Finance
4 68 (7.55%) Public Sector
5 52 (5.77%) Banking
6 38 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (3.22%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.55%) Investment Banking
9 15 (1.66%) Legal
10 12 (1.33%) Aerospace
10 12 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (1.33%) Police
11 11 (1.22%) Local Government
11 11 (1.22%) Military
12 9 (1.00%) Front Office
13 8 (0.89%) Manufacturing
14 7 (0.78%) Law
14 7 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
14 7 (0.78%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 174 (19.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 146 (16.20%) Network Engineer
3 117 (12.99%) Senior
4 98 (10.88%) Support Engineer
5 79 (8.77%) Cloud Engineer
6 66 (7.33%) Architect
7 49 (5.44%) IT Support
8 45 (4.99%) Azure Engineer
9 44 (4.88%) IT Engineer
10 43 (4.77%) DevOps Engineer
10 43 (4.77%) Platform Engineer
10 43 (4.77%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 41 (4.55%) Security Engineer
12 36 (4.00%) Analyst
13 34 (3.77%) Senior Network Engineer
14 33 (3.66%) IT Support Engineer
15 30 (3.33%) Administrator
16 29 (3.22%) Network Security Engineer
17 28 (3.11%) Cisco Engineer
18 26 (2.89%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 210 (23.31%) Terraform
2 33 (3.66%) 802.1X
3 29 (3.22%) ARM Templates
4 27 (3.00%) SAML
5 26 (2.89%) REST
6 25 (2.77%) LDAP
6 25 (2.77%) OAuth
7 20 (2.22%) OpenID
8 17 (1.89%) Kafka
9 13 (1.44%) YAML
10 12 (1.33%) Elastic Stack
11 11 (1.22%) JSON
12 10 (1.11%) .NET
12 10 (1.11%) CSS
13 7 (0.78%) FastAPI
13 7 (0.78%) Jinja
13 7 (0.78%) Software Packaging
14 6 (0.67%) Flask
14 6 (0.67%) OpenTelemetry
14 6 (0.67%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 125 (13.87%) Data Centre
2 95 (10.54%) PKI
3 78 (8.66%) Onboarding
4 74 (8.21%) Hybrid Cloud
5 54 (5.99%) Management Information System
6 34 (3.77%) Cloud Native
7 28 (3.11%) Replication
8 27 (3.00%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 27 (3.00%) Public Cloud
9 22 (2.44%) Linux Command Line
10 21 (2.33%) Clustering
11 17 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
12 16 (1.78%) Driving Licence
12 16 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
13 14 (1.55%) Cyber Threat
14 12 (1.33%) ARM Cortex
14 12 (1.33%) Security Posture
15 11 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
15 11 (1.22%) Enterprise Cloud
16 10 (1.11%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 453 (50.28%) Windows
2 254 (28.19%) Windows Server
3 207 (22.97%) Linux
4 58 (6.44%) Windows 10
5 42 (4.66%) Windows Server 2019
6 37 (4.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 32 (3.55%) macOS
8 28 (3.11%) Unix
9 23 (2.55%) Ubuntu
9 23 (2.55%) Windows Server 2012
10 21 (2.33%) Apple iOS
11 19 (2.11%) Android
11 19 (2.11%) CentOS
12 14 (1.55%) VMS
13 12 (1.33%) Windows 7
13 12 (1.33%) Windows Server 2016
14 7 (0.78%) Rocky
14 7 (0.78%) Windows Server 2008
15 4 (0.44%) OpenVMS
16 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 239 (26.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 205 (22.75%) Infrastructure as Code
3 201 (22.31%) Problem-Solving
4 183 (20.31%) ITIL
5 158 (17.54%) CI/CD
6 155 (17.20%) DevOps
6 155 (17.20%) Load Balancing
7 140 (15.54%) Migration
8 114 (12.65%) ITSM
9 107 (11.88%) Continuous Improvement
10 106 (11.76%) Cybersecurity
11 99 (10.99%) Technical Leadership
12 96 (10.65%) Agile
13 94 (10.43%) High Availability
14 87 (9.66%) Observability
15 84 (9.32%) Disaster Recovery
16 82 (9.10%) Platform Engineering
16 82 (9.10%) Project Delivery
17 81 (8.99%) Root Cause Analysis
18 79 (8.77%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 247 (27.41%) PowerShell
2 184 (20.42%) Python
3 121 (13.43%) Bash
4 67 (7.44%) SQL
5 52 (5.77%) Bicep
6 19 (2.11%) Shell Script
7 18 (2.00%) ActionScript
8 16 (1.78%) Java
9 12 (1.33%) Go
10 11 (1.22%) JavaScript
11 10 (1.11%) VBScript
12 8 (0.89%) Perl
13 6 (0.67%) C#
13 6 (0.67%) Groovy
13 6 (0.67%) VB
14 5 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
15 4 (0.44%) C++
15 4 (0.44%) Kotlin
15 4 (0.44%) VBA
16 3 (0.33%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 345 (38.29%) Security Cleared
2 190 (21.09%) SC Cleared
3 153 (16.98%) DV Cleared
4 73 (8.10%) Cisco Certification
5 72 (7.99%) Degree
6 64 (7.10%) CCNP
7 53 (5.88%) Azure Certification
8 47 (5.22%) Microsoft Certification
9 35 (3.88%) CCNA
10 25 (2.77%) Network+ Certification
11 23 (2.55%) AWS Certification
12 22 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
13 17 (1.89%) CCIE
13 17 (1.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 15 (1.66%) VCAP
15 14 (1.55%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 12 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.22%) A+ Certification
18 10 (1.11%) CISSP
19 9 (1.00%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (3.77%) SLA
2 19 (2.11%) QA
3 18 (2.00%) NIST
4 14 (1.55%) NCSC
5 11 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.55%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.33%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.33%) GDPR
9 3 (0.33%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.33%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.33%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.22%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.11%) GLBA
System Software
1 419 (46.50%) Active Directory
2 258 (28.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 108 (11.99%) Hyper-V
4 84 (9.32%) VMware ESXi
5 81 (8.99%) vSphere
6 66 (7.33%) Docker
7 64 (7.10%) VMware NSX
8 41 (4.55%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (4.22%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (1.89%) Firmware
11 16 (1.78%) vCloud
12 13 (1.44%) NFS
13 12 (1.33%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (1.11%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.78%) Postfix
16 6 (0.67%) VMware Workstation
17 5 (0.55%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.55%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 4 (0.44%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 140 (15.54%) Ansible
2 116 (12.87%) Microsoft Intune
3 110 (12.21%) Kubernetes
4 85 (9.43%) SCCM
5 62 (6.88%) Grafana
6 61 (6.77%) vCenter Server
7 51 (5.66%) Prometheus
8 48 (5.33%) Single Sign-On
9 38 (4.22%) SCOM
10 27 (3.00%) WSUS
11 17 (1.89%) FortiGate
12 16 (1.78%) Jamf Pro
12 16 (1.78%) Puppet
12 16 (1.78%) VxRail
13 15 (1.66%) Packer
14 14 (1.55%) NetBackup
15 13 (1.44%) Istio
16 12 (1.33%) Progress Chef
17 10 (1.11%) Nessus
17 10 (1.11%) systemd
Vendors
1 386 (42.84%) Microsoft
2 314 (34.85%) VMware
3 160 (17.76%) Cisco
4 119 (13.21%) F5
5 83 (9.21%) ServiceNow
6 52 (5.77%) Palo Alto
7 50 (5.55%) Google
8 45 (4.99%) SolarWinds
9 40 (4.44%) Citrix
10 39 (4.33%) Juniper
11 38 (4.22%) Infoblox
12 34 (3.77%) Splunk
13 32 (3.55%) CheckPoint
14 31 (3.44%) Dynatrace
14 31 (3.44%) NetApp
15 30 (3.33%) Fortinet
15 30 (3.33%) Red Hat
16 26 (2.89%) Veeam
17 24 (2.66%) Zscaler
18 22 (2.44%) Oracle