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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 126 151
Rank change year-on-year -7 +25 -15
Contract jobs citing DNS 940 641 534
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.05% 2.32% 1.61%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 21.71% 19.03% 12.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 579 413 364
10th Percentile £300 £261 £256
25th Percentile £408 £388 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £648 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 31 15
10th Percentile £26.00 - £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.45
Median hourly rate £61.11 £57.50 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year +6.27% +137.60% -27.76%
75th Percentile £74.07 £82.18 £49.38
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £63.51
UK median hourly rate £61.11 £57.50 £24.20
% change year-on-year +6.27% +137.60% -39.50%

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 4,330 3,368 4,138
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.44% 12.21% 12.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,615 2,090 2,527
10th Percentile £263 £250 £244
25th Percentile £400 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £504
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -2.38% +0.80%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £614
90th Percentile £680 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 168 273
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.18
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £28.00 £43.00 £54.88
Median % change year-on-year -34.88% -21.64% -0.23%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £84.30 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £50.00
% change year-on-year -43.48% -7.50% -9.09%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 -43 320 £500 -0.99% 251
North of England +29 234 £479 -4.20% 63
South East +12 185 £538 -2.27% 125
North West +31 150 £474 +1.94% 37
Midlands -19 119 £450 -5.26% 50
West Midlands -22 97 £450 -5.26% 35
South West +6 96 £550 +0.46% 57
Yorkshire -5 70 £500 -9.09% 18
East of England -51 34 £450 -18.18% 44
East Midlands -6 20 £431 -21.59% 15
North East -39 14 £413 +21.32% 9
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 97 (10.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 83 (8.83%) SharePoint
3 17 (1.81%) Confluence
4 16 (1.70%) Apache
5 13 (1.38%) IIS
6 12 (1.28%) nginx
7 6 (0.64%) Skype for Business
7 6 (0.64%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 24 (2.55%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.06%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.96%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.21%) Houdini
5 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.21%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 10 (1.06%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 380 (40.43%) Azure
2 195 (20.74%) AWS
3 173 (18.40%) Microsoft 365
4 162 (17.23%) Entra ID
5 102 (10.85%) GCP
6 65 (6.91%) GitHub
7 52 (5.53%) IaaS
8 50 (5.32%) OneDrive
9 38 (4.04%) Azure DevOps
9 38 (4.04%) SaaS
10 36 (3.83%) PaaS
11 35 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
12 32 (3.40%) GitHub Actions
13 28 (2.98%) AWS CloudFormation
13 28 (2.98%) OpenShift
14 24 (2.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 24 (2.55%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 22 (2.34%) Serverless
16 21 (2.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 19 (2.02%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 447 (47.55%) DHCP
2 344 (36.60%) Firewall
3 282 (30.00%) TCP/IP
4 275 (29.26%) VPN
5 126 (13.40%) Network Security
6 122 (12.98%) VLAN
7 120 (12.77%) WAN
8 102 (10.85%) LAN
9 95 (10.11%) BGP
10 88 (9.36%) SSL
11 71 (7.55%) Wireless
12 69 (7.34%) BIG-IP
13 67 (7.13%) HTTP
13 67 (7.13%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (6.06%) SAN
15 53 (5.64%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 52 (5.53%) OSPF
17 48 (5.11%) DMZ
18 46 (4.89%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 35 (3.72%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (5.53%) SQL Server
2 10 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
2 10 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
2 10 (1.06%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (1.06%) Power BI
3 9 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
3 9 (0.96%) MySQL
4 5 (0.53%) Data Lake
4 5 (0.53%) NoSQL
5 4 (0.43%) Db2
5 4 (0.43%) MongoDB
6 3 (0.32%) Big Data
6 3 (0.32%) Redis
7 2 (0.21%) KDB
8 1 (0.11%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.11%) Cloud Spanner
8 1 (0.11%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.11%) Flink
8 1 (0.11%) Metadata
8 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 64 (6.81%) JIRA
2 50 (5.32%) Jenkins
3 36 (3.83%) Git
4 30 (3.19%) GitLab
5 17 (1.81%) Fiddler
6 10 (1.06%) Browser DevTools
7 8 (0.85%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.74%) Chocolatey
8 7 (0.74%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.32%) MSI
11 2 (0.21%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.21%) Introscope
11 2 (0.21%) Selenium
11 2 (0.21%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.11%) Maven
12 1 (0.11%) SonarQube
12 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio
General
1 231 (24.57%) Social Skills
2 111 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
3 89 (9.47%) Finance
4 72 (7.66%) Public Sector
5 70 (7.45%) Banking
6 44 (4.68%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (3.51%) Investment Banking
8 29 (3.09%) Telecoms
9 17 (1.81%) Legal
10 12 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (1.17%) Local Government
11 11 (1.17%) Military
11 11 (1.17%) Police
12 9 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
13 8 (0.85%) Aerospace
13 8 (0.85%) Manufacturing
14 7 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (0.64%) Front Office
15 6 (0.64%) Law
15 6 (0.64%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 173 (18.40%) Network Engineer
2 162 (17.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 109 (11.60%) Senior
4 93 (9.89%) Support Engineer
5 85 (9.04%) Architect
6 71 (7.55%) Cloud Engineer
7 52 (5.53%) Security Engineer
8 47 (5.00%) Analyst
8 47 (5.00%) IT Support
9 45 (4.79%) IT Engineer
10 41 (4.36%) Azure Engineer
11 39 (4.15%) Cisco Engineer
11 39 (4.15%) Platform Engineer
11 39 (4.15%) Web Engineer
12 37 (3.94%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 37 (3.94%) Network Security Engineer
12 37 (3.94%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 36 (3.83%) DevOps Engineer
14 35 (3.72%) Administrator
15 34 (3.62%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 205 (21.81%) Terraform
2 38 (4.04%) 802.1X
3 34 (3.62%) SAML
4 26 (2.77%) LDAP
5 23 (2.45%) ARM Templates
6 22 (2.34%) OAuth
7 18 (1.91%) OpenID
8 15 (1.60%) REST
9 13 (1.38%) JSON
10 12 (1.28%) OpenTelemetry
10 12 (1.28%) YAML
11 9 (0.96%) Kafka
12 7 (0.74%) CSS
12 7 (0.74%) Middleware
13 6 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
13 6 (0.64%) Software Packaging
14 5 (0.53%) .NET
15 4 (0.43%) RabbitMQ
15 4 (0.43%) RESTful
15 4 (0.43%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 124 (13.19%) Data Centre
2 97 (10.32%) PKI
3 67 (7.13%) Hybrid Cloud
3 67 (7.13%) Onboarding
4 54 (5.74%) Management Information System
5 43 (4.57%) Cloud Native
6 40 (4.26%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 33 (3.51%) Clustering
8 27 (2.87%) Public Cloud
8 27 (2.87%) Replication
9 21 (2.23%) Self-Motivation
10 19 (2.02%) Enterprise Cloud
11 16 (1.70%) Linux Command Line
12 14 (1.49%) Cyber Threat
12 14 (1.49%) Driving Licence
12 14 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
13 13 (1.38%) Security Posture
14 10 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
15 9 (0.96%) Enterprise Storage
15 9 (0.96%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 439 (46.70%) Windows
2 245 (26.06%) Windows Server
3 191 (20.32%) Linux
4 62 (6.60%) Windows 10
5 38 (4.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 36 (3.83%) Windows Server 2019
7 28 (2.98%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.87%) Unix
9 24 (2.55%) Windows Server 2012
10 21 (2.23%) Ubuntu
11 16 (1.70%) Apple iOS
11 16 (1.70%) CentOS
12 14 (1.49%) Android
12 14 (1.49%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (1.28%) Windows 7
14 11 (1.17%) VMS
15 7 (0.74%) Rocky
15 7 (0.74%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.43%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.32%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (23.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 209 (22.23%) Problem-Solving
3 175 (18.62%) Load Balancing
4 173 (18.40%) ITIL
5 171 (18.19%) Infrastructure as Code
6 157 (16.70%) Migration
7 145 (15.43%) DevOps
8 139 (14.79%) CI/CD
9 121 (12.87%) High Availability
10 117 (12.45%) ITSM
11 100 (10.64%) Continuous Improvement
12 94 (10.00%) Cybersecurity
13 89 (9.47%) Agile
13 89 (9.47%) Observability
14 84 (8.94%) Technical Leadership
15 78 (8.30%) Disaster Recovery
15 78 (8.30%) Project Delivery
16 74 (7.87%) Root Cause Analysis
17 73 (7.77%) Platform Engineering
18 70 (7.45%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 224 (23.83%) PowerShell
2 186 (19.79%) Python
3 132 (14.04%) Bash
4 58 (6.17%) SQL
5 40 (4.26%) Bicep
6 21 (2.23%) JavaScript
7 16 (1.70%) Shell Script
8 11 (1.17%) Go
9 10 (1.06%) Perl
10 9 (0.96%) ActionScript
10 9 (0.96%) VBScript
11 7 (0.74%) Java
11 7 (0.74%) VBA
12 6 (0.64%) Groovy
12 6 (0.64%) VB
13 5 (0.53%) Ruby
14 3 (0.32%) C
14 3 (0.32%) Lisp
15 2 (0.21%) Objective-C
15 2 (0.21%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 350 (37.23%) Security Cleared
2 196 (20.85%) SC Cleared
3 147 (15.64%) DV Cleared
4 98 (10.43%) Cisco Certification
5 73 (7.77%) CCNP
5 73 (7.77%) Degree
6 51 (5.43%) CCNA
7 47 (5.00%) Azure Certification
8 42 (4.47%) Microsoft Certification
9 29 (3.09%) Network+ Certification
10 21 (2.23%) AWS Certification
11 18 (1.91%) Computer Science Degree
11 18 (1.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 17 (1.81%) CCIE
13 15 (1.60%) VCAP
14 14 (1.49%) Server+ Certification
15 13 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
15 13 (1.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 10 (1.06%) A+ Certification
16 10 (1.06%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (4.04%) SLA
2 24 (2.55%) NIST
3 16 (1.70%) NCSC
4 14 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (1.17%) QA
6 6 (0.64%) GDPR
7 5 (0.53%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.43%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.43%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.21%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.21%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.11%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 404 (42.98%) Active Directory
2 254 (27.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 111 (11.81%) Hyper-V
4 74 (7.87%) VMware ESXi
5 71 (7.55%) vSphere
6 68 (7.23%) VMware NSX
7 55 (5.85%) Docker
8 40 (4.26%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (3.83%) Virtual Desktop
10 26 (2.77%) Firmware
11 18 (1.91%) NFS
12 14 (1.49%) BitLocker
12 14 (1.49%) vCloud
13 9 (0.96%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (0.96%) Postfix
14 8 (0.85%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.85%) VMware Workstation
15 6 (0.64%) Varnish
16 5 (0.53%) Squid
16 5 (0.53%) UAG
Systems Management
1 143 (15.21%) Ansible
2 117 (12.45%) Kubernetes
3 105 (11.17%) Microsoft Intune
4 78 (8.30%) SCCM
5 61 (6.49%) vCenter Server
6 55 (5.85%) Grafana
6 55 (5.85%) Single Sign-On
7 43 (4.57%) Prometheus
8 31 (3.30%) FortiGate
8 31 (3.30%) WSUS
9 28 (2.98%) SCOM
10 16 (1.70%) VxRail
11 14 (1.49%) Puppet
12 13 (1.38%) Jamf Pro
12 13 (1.38%) Packer
13 12 (1.28%) vMotion
14 11 (1.17%) Argo
14 11 (1.17%) NetBackup
15 10 (1.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 10 (1.06%) Istio
Vendors
1 353 (37.55%) Microsoft
2 307 (32.66%) VMware
3 183 (19.47%) Cisco
4 131 (13.94%) F5
5 89 (9.47%) ServiceNow
6 61 (6.49%) Infoblox
7 59 (6.28%) Google
8 54 (5.74%) Citrix
9 52 (5.53%) SolarWinds
10 47 (5.00%) Splunk
11 44 (4.68%) Juniper
12 42 (4.47%) Palo Alto
13 38 (4.04%) Red Hat
14 34 (3.62%) NetApp
15 33 (3.51%) Dynatrace
16 29 (3.09%) CheckPoint
17 28 (2.98%) Fortinet
18 25 (2.66%) McAfee
19 24 (2.55%) Zscaler
20 23 (2.45%) Blue Coat