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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 114 142
Rank change year-on-year -15 +28 -9
Contract jobs citing DNS 838 595 609
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.99% 2.48% 1.66%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.79% 18.97% 12.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 525 413 424
10th Percentile £289 £300 £225
25th Percentile £400 £406 £379
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £488
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +12.82% -7.14%
75th Percentile £581 £613 £607
90th Percentile £638 £661 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £484
% change year-on-year -9.09% +13.64% -7.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 12 23
10th Percentile £19.49 - £18.80
25th Percentile £25.58 £29.00 £23.53
Median hourly rate £35.22 £69.09 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.02% +72.72% -23.27%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.35 -
90th Percentile £74.41 £82.03 £51.27
UK median hourly rate £36.36 £69.09 £40.00
% change year-on-year -47.37% +72.72% -23.27%

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 4,030 3,137 4,843
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.59% 13.06% 13.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,496 1,965 2,917
10th Percentile £263 £220 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -3.85%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £602
90th Percentile £675 £675 £694
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 119 388
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.33 £15.87 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.50 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% -6.25% +128.57%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £70.20
UK median hourly rate £28.88 £39.66 £40.00
% change year-on-year -27.18% -0.85% +116.22%

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 30 May 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 30 May 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 30 May 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 -30 268 £500 -4.76% 71
North of England +8 238 £447 -5.89% 53
South East -7 167 £525 -4.55% 100
North West +38 158 £450 +5.88% 35
Midlands +14 113 £425 -21.66% 32
West Midlands +8 100 £438 - 19
Yorkshire -32 74 £447 -18.73% 15
South West -33 58 £500 -18.70% 38
East of England -45 41 £450 -18.18% 28
East Midlands -24 12 £394 -30.62% 13
North East -30 6 £306 -12.50% 6
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 81 (9.67%) Microsoft Exchange
2 45 (5.37%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.91%) nginx
4 15 (1.79%) Confluence
5 13 (1.55%) IIS
6 11 (1.31%) Apache
7 6 (0.72%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.48%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.24%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.24%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.24%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.24%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
10 1 (0.12%) Traefik
Applications
1 17 (2.03%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.67%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 291 (34.73%) Azure
2 159 (18.97%) AWS
3 138 (16.47%) Entra ID
4 109 (13.01%) Microsoft 365
5 92 (10.98%) GCP
6 65 (7.76%) GitHub
7 51 (6.09%) IaaS
8 38 (4.53%) PaaS
9 37 (4.42%) SaaS
10 32 (3.82%) Serverless
11 31 (3.70%) AWS CloudFormation
11 31 (3.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 29 (3.46%) Amazon EC2
12 29 (3.46%) Amazon S3
12 29 (3.46%) AWS Lambda
13 28 (3.34%) GitHub Actions
14 27 (3.22%) Amazon EKS
15 26 (3.10%) Route 53
16 22 (2.63%) OneDrive
17 20 (2.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 368 (43.91%) DHCP
2 259 (30.91%) Firewall
3 207 (24.70%) VPN
4 195 (23.27%) TCP/IP
5 115 (13.72%) WAN
6 104 (12.41%) LAN
7 95 (11.34%) Network Security
8 94 (11.22%) SSL
9 88 (10.50%) BIG-IP
10 84 (10.02%) BGP
10 84 (10.02%) VLAN
11 74 (8.83%) HTTP
12 52 (6.21%) Wireless
13 48 (5.73%) OSPF
14 46 (5.49%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 45 (5.37%) Wi-Fi
16 43 (5.13%) SAN
17 39 (4.65%) Wireshark
18 38 (4.53%) DMZ
18 38 (4.53%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (4.42%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.15%) Elasticsearch
3 14 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (0.95%) MySQL
5 8 (0.95%) Power BI
6 6 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (0.72%) NoSQL
7 5 (0.60%) DynamoDB
7 5 (0.60%) MongoDB
8 4 (0.48%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (0.48%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.48%) Redis
9 2 (0.24%) Data Hub
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.12%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 1 (0.12%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 59 (7.04%) Jenkins
2 58 (6.92%) JIRA
3 30 (3.58%) Git
4 29 (3.46%) GitLab
5 26 (3.10%) Fiddler
6 9 (1.07%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.84%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.84%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.72%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.48%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.48%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.24%) Introscope
12 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.12%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.12%) Travis CI
General
1 174 (20.76%) Social Skills
2 78 (9.31%) Analytical Skills
3 72 (8.59%) Banking
4 65 (7.76%) Finance
5 51 (6.09%) Public Sector
6 41 (4.89%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (4.42%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.27%) Legal
9 17 (2.03%) Military
10 14 (1.67%) Telecoms
11 9 (1.07%) Law
12 8 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.60%) Local Government
14 5 (0.60%) Police
15 4 (0.48%) Advertising
15 4 (0.48%) Financial Institution
15 4 (0.48%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.36%) Publishing
17 2 (0.24%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 162 (19.33%) Network Engineer
2 111 (13.25%) Architect
3 109 (13.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 67 (8.00%) Analyst
5 60 (7.16%) Security Engineer
6 58 (6.92%) Senior
7 50 (5.97%) Support Engineer
8 49 (5.85%) Web Engineer
9 41 (4.89%) Network Security Engineer
10 39 (4.65%) Cloud Engineer
11 36 (4.30%) Cisco Engineer
12 34 (4.06%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 34 (4.06%) IT Support
13 33 (3.94%) Data Engineer
13 33 (3.94%) Data Network Engineer
14 32 (3.82%) Cisco Security Engineer
15 31 (3.70%) Administrator
16 30 (3.58%) Azure Engineer
17 29 (3.46%) IT Engineer
18 27 (3.22%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (8.11%) LDAP
2 46 (5.49%) SAML
3 40 (4.77%) 802.1X
4 37 (4.42%) OAuth
5 25 (2.98%) OpenID
6 20 (2.39%) OpenTelemetry
7 12 (1.43%) JSON
8 10 (1.19%) ARM Templates
9 9 (1.07%) Kafka
9 9 (1.07%) OAuth2
9 9 (1.07%) REST
10 7 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
11 5 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (0.60%) XMPP
11 5 (0.60%) YAML
12 4 (0.48%) Hibernate
12 4 (0.48%) JPA
12 4 (0.48%) RESTful
12 4 (0.48%) Spring
12 4 (0.48%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 89 (10.62%) Data Centre
2 62 (7.40%) PKI
3 52 (6.21%) Cloud Native
4 48 (5.73%) Onboarding
5 41 (4.89%) Replication
6 39 (4.65%) Management Information System
7 38 (4.53%) Clustering
8 36 (4.30%) Public Cloud
9 29 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
10 27 (3.22%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 18 (2.15%) Cyber Threat
12 17 (2.03%) Security Operations Centre
13 16 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
14 15 (1.79%) Cyberattack
14 15 (1.79%) Enterprise Cloud
15 12 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
15 12 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
16 11 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
16 11 (1.31%) Enterprise Storage
16 11 (1.31%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 347 (41.41%) Windows
2 201 (23.99%) Windows Server
3 112 (13.37%) Linux
4 44 (5.25%) Windows 10
5 35 (4.18%) Windows Server 2019
6 26 (3.10%) Unix
7 22 (2.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (2.27%) Windows Server 2012
9 18 (2.15%) Mac OS
10 15 (1.79%) Windows Server 2016
11 13 (1.55%) Apple iOS
12 12 (1.43%) Android
13 9 (1.07%) CentOS
13 9 (1.07%) Ubuntu
14 8 (0.95%) Windows Server 2003
15 7 (0.84%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.60%) VMS
17 4 (0.48%) CatOS
18 3 (0.36%) AIX
18 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (20.29%) Problem-Solving
2 166 (19.81%) Load Balancing
3 142 (16.95%) Migration
4 138 (16.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 136 (16.23%) High Availability
6 115 (13.72%) DevOps
7 110 (13.13%) CI/CD
8 107 (12.77%) Infrastructure as Code
8 107 (12.77%) ITIL
9 76 (9.07%) Observability
10 74 (8.83%) ITSM
11 73 (8.71%) Disaster Recovery
12 70 (8.35%) Identity Access Management
13 69 (8.23%) Agile
14 67 (8.00%) Cybersecurity
15 60 (7.16%) Project Delivery
16 54 (6.44%) Root Cause Analysis
17 53 (6.32%) Runbook
18 52 (6.21%) RBAC
19 50 (5.97%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 163 (19.45%) PowerShell
2 132 (15.75%) Python
3 75 (8.95%) Bash
4 46 (5.49%) SQL
5 23 (2.74%) JavaScript
6 21 (2.51%) Bicep
7 13 (1.55%) Java
8 12 (1.43%) Go
9 11 (1.31%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.07%) VBA
11 8 (0.95%) Ruby
12 7 (0.84%) Perl
13 6 (0.72%) ActionScript
13 6 (0.72%) VBScript
14 5 (0.60%) Groovy
15 4 (0.48%) C
15 4 (0.48%) VB
16 3 (0.36%) Lisp
17 2 (0.24%) Jython
17 2 (0.24%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 278 (33.17%) Security Cleared
2 176 (21.00%) SC Cleared
3 94 (11.22%) DV Cleared
4 80 (9.55%) Cisco Certification
5 55 (6.56%) Degree
6 50 (5.97%) CCNP
7 40 (4.77%) CCNA
8 25 (2.98%) Network+ Certification
9 24 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (2.74%) Azure Certification
11 17 (2.03%) CompTIA Security+
12 15 (1.79%) Server+ Certification
13 12 (1.43%) BPSS Clearance
14 10 (1.19%) AWS Certification
14 10 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
14 10 (1.19%) JNCIA
14 10 (1.19%) JNCIS
15 9 (1.07%) CCIE
16 8 (0.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 8 (0.95%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.70%) SLA
2 23 (2.74%) NIST
3 21 (2.51%) GDPR
4 15 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 15 (1.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 9 (1.07%) QA
6 6 (0.72%) NCSC
7 4 (0.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 4 (0.48%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.24%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.24%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.24%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.12%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.12%) COBIT
10 1 (0.12%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.12%) RMADS
System Software
1 341 (40.69%) Active Directory
2 187 (22.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 85 (10.14%) Hyper-V
4 57 (6.80%) VMware NSX
5 47 (5.61%) vSphere
6 40 (4.77%) Docker
7 38 (4.53%) VMware ESXi
8 34 (4.06%) Virtual Machines
9 26 (3.10%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.98%) Firmware
11 14 (1.67%) BitLocker
11 14 (1.67%) NFS
12 12 (1.43%) Squid
13 10 (1.19%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (1.19%) Postfix
14 9 (1.07%) vCloud
15 8 (0.95%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.84%) Varnish
17 4 (0.48%) Sendmail
18 3 (0.36%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 138 (16.47%) Terraform
2 105 (12.53%) Ansible
3 90 (10.74%) Kubernetes
4 75 (8.95%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (8.59%) Single Sign-On
6 48 (5.73%) Grafana
7 47 (5.61%) SCCM
8 44 (5.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (5.25%) FortiGate
9 42 (5.01%) vCenter Server
10 30 (3.58%) Prometheus
11 24 (2.86%) WSUS
12 20 (2.39%) Argo
13 17 (2.03%) SCOM
14 14 (1.67%) HAProxy
15 12 (1.43%) Puppet
16 11 (1.31%) Nessus
17 9 (1.07%) vMotion
18 8 (0.95%) Consul
18 8 (0.95%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 266 (31.74%) Microsoft
2 225 (26.85%) VMware
3 158 (18.85%) Cisco
4 152 (18.14%) F5
5 77 (9.19%) ServiceNow
6 71 (8.47%) Splunk
7 50 (5.97%) Infoblox
7 50 (5.97%) SolarWinds
8 48 (5.73%) Citrix
9 44 (5.25%) Juniper
10 41 (4.89%) Google
10 41 (4.89%) Red Hat
11 33 (3.94%) Blue Coat
12 32 (3.82%) NetApp
13 31 (3.70%) Palo Alto
14 29 (3.46%) McAfee
15 27 (3.22%) Dynatrace
16 23 (2.74%) CheckPoint
17 22 (2.63%) Extreme Networks
18 20 (2.39%) Fortinet