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 28 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 125 117
Rank change year-on-year -12 -8 +6
Contract jobs citing DNS 671 569 763
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.05% 2.15% 2.03%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.68% 16.61% 14.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 432 355 501
10th Percentile £219 £223 £200
25th Percentile £400 £335 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% - -9.52%
75th Percentile £613 £604 £588
90th Percentile £688 £714 £650
UK median daily rate £518 £500 £488
% change year-on-year +3.60% +2.56% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 5 22
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.78 £24.33
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.50 £31.44
Median hourly rate £39.50 £23.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.44% -41.03% +3.90%
75th Percentile £74.26 £25.30 £55.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £40.12 £66.75
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £23.59 £40.00
% change year-on-year +67.44% -41.03% +3.90%

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 3,410 3,425 5,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.39% 12.95% 14.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,212 1,964 3,233
10th Percentile £204 £220 £205
25th Percentile £356 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £490
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% +2.04% -6.67%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £680 £686 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £495
% change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% -3.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 154 106 366
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.11 £16.13
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.46 £22.13
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £51.65
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -32.24% +140.24%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £70.63 £75.89
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £51.65
% change year-on-year -14.29% -32.24% +149.47%

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 28 January 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 28 January 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 28 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
London +7 230 £541 +3.10% 74
North of England -27 146 £460 +8.24% 75
South East -6 119 £515 +11.35% 103
Midlands +14 114 £380 -10.59% 45
West Midlands +33 110 £380 -6.17% 23
North West -1 99 £518 +9.23% 26
South West -29 65 £575 +5.02% 48
Yorkshire -33 51 £447 +49.00% 43
East of England -13 36 £475 +72.73% 45
North East -22 8 £411 +82.56% 10
East Midlands -45 4 £275 -38.89% 21
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 91 (13.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 65 (9.69%) SharePoint
3 33 (4.92%) Skype for Business
4 22 (3.28%) Confluence
5 14 (2.09%) nginx
6 8 (1.19%) SharePoint Server
7 7 (1.04%) Exchange Server 2010
7 7 (1.04%) IIS
8 6 (0.89%) Exchange Server 2013
9 5 (0.75%) Apache
10 4 (0.60%) Exchange Server 2003
10 4 (0.60%) Exchange Server 2007
10 4 (0.60%) Office Communications Server
11 3 (0.45%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.30%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.30%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.30%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.30%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.30%) WordPress
Applications
1 44 (6.56%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.24%) MS Visio
3 8 (1.19%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 2 (0.30%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.30%) Windchill
5 1 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.30%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.30%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 237 (35.32%) Azure
2 165 (24.59%) AWS
3 130 (19.37%) Microsoft 365
4 110 (16.39%) Entra ID
5 66 (9.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 55 (8.20%) Amazon S3
7 52 (7.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 49 (7.30%) Amazon EC2
9 44 (6.56%) GCP
10 43 (6.41%) GitHub
11 37 (5.51%) Amazon ELB
12 31 (4.62%) AWS CloudFormation
13 29 (4.32%) Amazon ECS
13 29 (4.32%) IaaS
13 29 (4.32%) Serverless
14 28 (4.17%) Route 53
15 27 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
16 22 (3.28%) SaaS
17 21 (3.13%) GitHub Actions
18 19 (2.83%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 306 (45.60%) DHCP
2 214 (31.89%) TCP/IP
3 208 (31.00%) Firewall
4 174 (25.93%) VPN
5 89 (13.26%) Network Security
5 89 (13.26%) SSL
6 83 (12.37%) WAN
7 68 (10.13%) LAN
8 66 (9.84%) HTTP
9 60 (8.94%) VLAN
10 45 (6.71%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 41 (6.11%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 40 (5.96%) BGP
13 39 (5.81%) Wireshark
14 38 (5.66%) BIG-IP
15 36 (5.37%) DMZ
16 35 (5.22%) Wi-Fi
16 35 (5.22%) Wireless
17 33 (4.92%) Skype
18 32 (4.77%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (4.02%) Amazon RDS
2 22 (3.28%) PostgreSQL
3 20 (2.98%) SQL Server
4 14 (2.09%) Amazon Aurora
5 10 (1.49%) Elasticsearch
6 8 (1.19%) MongoDB
7 7 (1.04%) DynamoDB
7 7 (1.04%) MySQL
8 6 (0.89%) Redis
9 5 (0.75%) Data Hub
10 4 (0.60%) DocumentDB
10 4 (0.60%) NoSQL
10 4 (0.60%) Relational Database
11 3 (0.45%) BigQuery
12 1 (0.15%) Apache Cassandra
12 1 (0.15%) CouchDB
12 1 (0.15%) Electronic Patient Records
12 1 (0.15%) Geospatial Data
12 1 (0.15%) Oracle Reports
12 1 (0.15%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 72 (10.73%) Jenkins
2 59 (8.79%) Git
3 45 (6.71%) GitLab
4 38 (5.66%) JIRA
5 26 (3.87%) Fiddler
6 12 (1.79%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.19%) Terragrunt
8 6 (0.89%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.75%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.75%) Subversion
10 4 (0.60%) CircleCI
10 4 (0.60%) TeamCity
11 2 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.15%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.15%) GCC
12 1 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.15%) Travis CI
12 1 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
12 1 (0.15%) Vite
12 1 (0.15%) webpack
General
1 195 (29.06%) Social Skills
2 100 (14.90%) Analytical Skills
3 66 (9.84%) Public Sector
4 54 (8.05%) Banking
5 43 (6.41%) Documentation Skills
6 42 (6.26%) Investment Banking
7 40 (5.96%) Finance
8 16 (2.38%) Telecoms
9 14 (2.09%) Legal
9 14 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
10 8 (1.19%) Military
11 7 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.75%) Law
14 4 (0.60%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.60%) Marketing
15 3 (0.45%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.45%) Local Government
16 2 (0.30%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 97 (14.46%) Network Engineer
2 88 (13.11%) Architect
3 69 (10.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 63 (9.39%) Analyst
5 61 (9.09%) Senior
5 61 (9.09%) Support Engineer
6 43 (6.41%) Platform Engineer
7 39 (5.81%) DevOps Engineer
8 37 (5.51%) IT Support
9 33 (4.92%) Security Engineer
10 28 (4.17%) AWS Engineer
11 27 (4.02%) Web Engineer
12 26 (3.87%) 2nd Line Support
13 23 (3.43%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 22 (3.28%) Lead
15 21 (3.13%) Cloud Platform Engineer
15 21 (3.13%) Operations Engineer
16 19 (2.83%) AWS DevOps
16 19 (2.83%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 18 (2.68%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (8.64%) LDAP
2 40 (5.96%) SAML
3 35 (5.22%) OAuth
4 26 (3.87%) OpenID
5 20 (2.98%) OAuth2
6 12 (1.79%) 802.1X
7 11 (1.64%) Kafka
8 10 (1.49%) REST
9 8 (1.19%) Elastic Stack
10 7 (1.04%) Middleware
10 7 (1.04%) OpenTelemetry
11 6 (0.89%) AWS CDK
12 5 (0.75%) AngularJS
12 5 (0.75%) React
12 5 (0.75%) RESTful
12 5 (0.75%) YAML
13 4 (0.60%) ASP.NET Web API
13 4 (0.60%) gRPC
13 4 (0.60%) JPA
13 4 (0.60%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 66 (9.84%) Replication
2 49 (7.30%) Data Centre
2 49 (7.30%) PKI
3 40 (5.96%) Management Information System
4 27 (4.02%) Onboarding
5 22 (3.28%) Enterprise Software
6 21 (3.13%) Analytical Mindset
6 21 (3.13%) Cloud Native
7 16 (2.38%) Public Cloud
8 13 (1.94%) Cyberattack
8 13 (1.94%) Hybrid Cloud
8 13 (1.94%) Private Cloud
8 13 (1.94%) Security Operations Centre
9 10 (1.49%) Clustering
9 10 (1.49%) Cyber Threat
9 10 (1.49%) NHS
9 10 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
9 10 (1.49%) Video Conferencing
10 9 (1.34%) SCADA
11 7 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 327 (48.73%) Windows
2 167 (24.89%) Windows Server
3 122 (18.18%) Linux
4 62 (9.24%) Windows 10
5 30 (4.47%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (2.98%) Windows Server 2016
7 18 (2.68%) Android
8 17 (2.53%) VMS
8 17 (2.53%) Windows Server 2012
9 16 (2.38%) Unix
10 15 (2.24%) Amazon Linux
11 13 (1.94%) Ubuntu
12 12 (1.79%) Apple iOS
12 12 (1.79%) CentOS
13 11 (1.64%) Windows 7
14 9 (1.34%) Windows Server 2003
15 6 (0.89%) Mac OS
16 5 (0.75%) Solaris
17 4 (0.60%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 150 (22.35%) Problem-Solving
2 120 (17.88%) Load Balancing
3 111 (16.54%) DevOps
3 111 (16.54%) ITIL
4 106 (15.80%) CI/CD
5 89 (13.26%) Infrastructure as Code
6 88 (13.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 77 (11.48%) High Availability
8 73 (10.88%) Migration
9 70 (10.43%) Change Management
10 63 (9.39%) Disaster Recovery
11 60 (8.94%) Cybersecurity
12 56 (8.35%) Incident Response
13 55 (8.20%) Root Cause Analysis
14 53 (7.90%) Service Management
15 50 (7.45%) Platform Engineering
16 49 (7.30%) Mentoring
17 46 (6.86%) Continuous Improvement
17 46 (6.86%) Identity Access Management
18 43 (6.41%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 209 (31.15%) PowerShell
2 140 (20.86%) Python
3 66 (9.84%) Bash
4 39 (5.81%) SQL
5 17 (2.53%) Java
5 17 (2.53%) Perl
6 12 (1.79%) Bicep
6 12 (1.79%) Groovy
6 12 (1.79%) VBScript
7 10 (1.49%) VB
8 9 (1.34%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.19%) Ruby
10 7 (1.04%) Go
10 7 (1.04%) Lisp
11 6 (0.89%) Kusto Query Language
12 5 (0.75%) C++
13 3 (0.45%) C#
13 3 (0.45%) JavaScript
13 3 (0.45%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.15%) PHP
Qualifications
1 262 (39.05%) Security Cleared
2 189 (28.17%) SC Cleared
3 82 (12.22%) DV Cleared
4 61 (9.09%) Degree
5 56 (8.35%) Microsoft Certification
6 41 (6.11%) Cisco Certification
7 38 (5.66%) CCNP
8 37 (5.51%) Azure Certification
9 24 (3.58%) AWS Certification
10 17 (2.53%) Network+ Certification
11 15 (2.24%) CCNA
12 11 (1.64%) CISSP
12 11 (1.64%) Server+ Certification
13 10 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
14 9 (1.34%) CompTIA Security+
14 9 (1.34%) ITIL Certification
15 8 (1.19%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 8 (1.19%) CCIE
15 8 (1.19%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 7 (1.04%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (4.92%) GDPR
2 20 (2.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
2 20 (2.98%) SLA
3 18 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (2.38%) NIST
5 9 (1.34%) NCSC
5 9 (1.34%) PCI DSS
6 8 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.89%) QA
8 5 (0.75%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.45%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.30%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.15%) RMADS
11 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 307 (45.75%) Active Directory
2 169 (25.19%) VMware Infrastructure
3 83 (12.37%) Docker
4 46 (6.86%) Hyper-V
5 43 (6.41%) VMware NSX
6 27 (4.02%) vSphere
7 26 (3.87%) Virtual Machines
8 22 (3.28%) Firmware
9 18 (2.68%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (2.24%) DFS Replication
11 13 (1.94%) Squid
12 12 (1.79%) BitLocker
13 9 (1.34%) Postfix
13 9 (1.34%) Virtual Desktop
14 8 (1.19%) Dovecot
14 8 (1.19%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.89%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.89%) NFS
16 5 (0.75%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 5 (0.75%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 131 (19.52%) Terraform
2 112 (16.69%) Ansible
3 80 (11.92%) Microsoft Intune
4 77 (11.48%) SCCM
5 63 (9.39%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (8.94%) Kubernetes
7 59 (8.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 37 (5.51%) vCenter Server
9 33 (4.92%) Grafana
10 25 (3.73%) Prometheus
11 18 (2.68%) FortiGate
11 18 (2.68%) WSUS
12 13 (1.94%) SCOM
13 12 (1.79%) Argo
14 11 (1.64%) Proxmox
15 10 (1.49%) Packer
16 9 (1.34%) Nessus
16 9 (1.34%) Puppet
17 7 (1.04%) Microsoft Clustering
18 6 (0.89%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 272 (40.54%) Microsoft
2 205 (30.55%) VMware
3 117 (17.44%) F5
4 100 (14.90%) Cisco
5 73 (10.88%) ServiceNow
6 48 (7.15%) CheckPoint
6 48 (7.15%) Palo Alto
7 43 (6.41%) Splunk
8 42 (6.26%) Blue Coat
9 33 (4.92%) Citrix
10 31 (4.62%) McAfee
10 31 (4.62%) SolarWinds
11 26 (3.87%) NetApp
12 25 (3.73%) Red Hat
13 24 (3.58%) Juniper
13 24 (3.58%) Veeam
14 20 (2.98%) Okta
15 19 (2.83%) Dell
16 18 (2.68%) Fortinet
16 18 (2.68%) Zscaler