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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 125 145
Rank change year-on-year -3 +20 -10
Contract jobs citing DNS 941 636 538
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.06% 2.31% 1.62%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 21.73% 18.92% 12.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 579 409 370
10th Percentile £299 £255 £256
25th Percentile £406 £395 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £651 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £488
% change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 32 15
10th Percentile £26.00 £29.00 £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £37.06 £23.45
Median hourly rate £63.48 £61.25 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year +3.64% +153.10% -27.76%
75th Percentile £74.26 £82.33 £49.38
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.17 £63.51
UK median hourly rate £63.48 £61.25 £24.20
% change year-on-year +3.64% +153.10% -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 4,331 3,362 4,194
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.47% 12.19% 12.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,620 2,072 2,571
10th Percentile £264 £250 £250
25th Percentile £401 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -1.60% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £681 £687 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 170 279
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.25
25th Percentile £19.42 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.72 £44.50 £54.88
Median % change year-on-year -39.96% -18.91% -0.23%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £47.50 £49.00
% change year-on-year -45.26% -3.06% -10.91%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -37 321 £500 - 253
North of England +22 231 £470 -6.00% 65
South East +7 190 £538 -2.27% 116
North West +29 147 £465 - 41
Midlands -11 118 £450 -5.26% 48
West Midlands -28 96 £450 -5.26% 32
South West +5 93 £538 -8.51% 45
Yorkshire -6 70 £488 -11.36% 16
East of England -58 33 £450 -18.18% 45
East Midlands -4 20 £431 -21.59% 16
North East -34 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 (10.31%) Microsoft Exchange
2 83 (8.82%) 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
1 382 (40.60%) Azure
2 194 (20.62%) AWS
3 171 (18.17%) Microsoft 365
4 163 (17.32%) Entra ID
5 104 (11.05%) GCP
6 66 (7.01%) GitHub
7 53 (5.63%) IaaS
8 50 (5.31%) OneDrive
9 38 (4.04%) SaaS
10 37 (3.93%) PaaS
11 36 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
12 35 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
13 30 (3.19%) GitHub Actions
14 29 (3.08%) OpenShift
15 28 (2.98%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (2.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 24 (2.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
18 22 (2.34%) Serverless
19 21 (2.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 20 (2.13%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 449 (47.72%) DHCP
2 346 (36.77%) Firewall
3 279 (29.65%) TCP/IP
4 278 (29.54%) VPN
5 125 (13.28%) Network Security
6 123 (13.07%) WAN
7 121 (12.86%) VLAN
8 103 (10.95%) LAN
9 94 (9.99%) BGP
10 91 (9.67%) SSL
11 72 (7.65%) Wireless
12 69 (7.33%) BIG-IP
13 67 (7.12%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (7.01%) HTTP
15 57 (6.06%) SAN
16 52 (5.53%) OSPF
17 51 (5.42%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 46 (4.89%) DMZ
19 44 (4.68%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
20 34 (3.61%) 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 (6.80%) JIRA
2 53 (5.63%) Jenkins
3 38 (4.04%) Git
4 30 (3.19%) GitLab
5 16 (1.70%) 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
1 230 (24.44%) Social Skills
2 111 (11.80%) Analytical Skills
3 89 (9.46%) Finance
4 73 (7.76%) Public Sector
5 68 (7.23%) Banking
6 44 (4.68%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (3.29%) Investment Banking
8 30 (3.19%) Telecoms
9 18 (1.91%) Legal
10 12 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (1.28%) Military
11 11 (1.17%) Local Government
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 (18.38%) Network Engineer
2 159 (16.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 108 (11.48%) Senior
4 94 (9.99%) Support Engineer
5 87 (9.25%) Architect
6 71 (7.55%) Cloud Engineer
7 53 (5.63%) Security Engineer
8 48 (5.10%) IT Support
9 47 (4.99%) Analyst
10 46 (4.89%) IT Engineer
11 39 (4.14%) Azure Engineer
12 38 (4.04%) Cisco Engineer
12 38 (4.04%) Web Engineer
13 37 (3.93%) Network Security Engineer
14 36 (3.83%) Administrator
14 36 (3.83%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 36 (3.83%) DevOps Engineer
14 36 (3.83%) Platform Engineer
14 36 (3.83%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 34 (3.61%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (4.25%) 802.1X
2 34 (3.61%) SAML
3 26 (2.76%) LDAP
4 22 (2.34%) ARM Templates
4 22 (2.34%) OAuth
5 18 (1.91%) OpenID
6 15 (1.59%) REST
7 13 (1.38%) JSON
8 12 (1.28%) OpenTelemetry
8 12 (1.28%) YAML
9 9 (0.96%) Kafka
10 7 (0.74%) CSS
10 7 (0.74%) Middleware
11 6 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
11 6 (0.64%) Software Packaging
12 5 (0.53%) .NET
13 4 (0.43%) OAuth2
13 4 (0.43%) RabbitMQ
13 4 (0.43%) RESTful
13 4 (0.43%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 126 (13.39%) Data Centre
2 95 (10.10%) PKI
3 66 (7.01%) Hybrid Cloud
3 66 (7.01%) Onboarding
4 52 (5.53%) Management Information System
5 46 (4.89%) Cloud Native
6 40 (4.25%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 34 (3.61%) Clustering
8 27 (2.87%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.76%) Replication
10 22 (2.34%) Self-Motivation
11 19 (2.02%) Enterprise Cloud
12 16 (1.70%) Linux Command Line
13 14 (1.49%) Cyber Threat
13 14 (1.49%) Driving Licence
13 14 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.38%) Security Posture
15 10 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
16 9 (0.96%) CMDB
16 9 (0.96%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 440 (46.76%) Windows
2 245 (26.04%) Windows Server
3 191 (20.30%) Linux
4 62 (6.59%) 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
1 220 (23.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 212 (22.53%) Problem-Solving
3 174 (18.49%) ITIL
4 171 (18.17%) Load Balancing
5 170 (18.07%) Infrastructure as Code
6 155 (16.47%) Migration
7 145 (15.41%) DevOps
8 142 (15.09%) CI/CD
9 126 (13.39%) High Availability
10 118 (12.54%) ITSM
11 99 (10.52%) Continuous Improvement
12 92 (9.78%) Cybersecurity
13 89 (9.46%) Observability
14 87 (9.25%) Agile
15 83 (8.82%) Technical Leadership
16 79 (8.40%) Project Delivery
17 78 (8.29%) Disaster Recovery
18 75 (7.97%) Root Cause Analysis
19 70 (7.44%) Platform Engineering
20 68 (7.23%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 222 (23.59%) PowerShell
2 189 (20.09%) Python
3 134 (14.24%) Bash
4 59 (6.27%) SQL
5 38 (4.04%) 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
1 349 (37.09%) Security Cleared
2 197 (20.94%) SC Cleared
3 145 (15.41%) DV Cleared
4 98 (10.41%) Cisco Certification
5 72 (7.65%) CCNP
5 72 (7.65%) Degree
6 51 (5.42%) CCNA
7 47 (4.99%) Azure Certification
8 43 (4.57%) Microsoft Certification
9 29 (3.08%) 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 (1.59%) VCAP
14 14 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
14 14 (1.49%) Server+ Certification
15 13 (1.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 11 (1.17%) ITIL Certification
17 10 (1.06%) A+ 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
1 405 (43.04%) Active Directory
2 254 (26.99%) VMware Infrastructure
3 114 (12.11%) Hyper-V
4 75 (7.97%) VMware ESXi
5 71 (7.55%) vSphere
6 68 (7.23%) VMware NSX
7 55 (5.84%) Docker
8 40 (4.25%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (3.83%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.66%) 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
1 205 (21.79%) Terraform
2 143 (15.20%) Ansible
3 117 (12.43%) Kubernetes
4 105 (11.16%) Microsoft Intune
5 78 (8.29%) SCCM
6 61 (6.48%) vCenter Server
7 55 (5.84%) Grafana
7 55 (5.84%) Single Sign-On
8 43 (4.57%) Prometheus
9 32 (3.40%) FortiGate
10 30 (3.19%) WSUS
11 29 (3.08%) SCOM
12 16 (1.70%) VxRail
13 14 (1.49%) Puppet
14 13 (1.38%) Jamf Pro
15 12 (1.28%) Argo
15 12 (1.28%) vMotion
16 11 (1.17%) NetBackup
16 11 (1.17%) Packer
17 10 (1.06%) Istio
Vendors
1 354 (37.62%) Microsoft
2 308 (32.73%) VMware
3 183 (19.45%) Cisco
4 131 (13.92%) F5
5 89 (9.46%) ServiceNow
6 61 (6.48%) Google
6 61 (6.48%) Infoblox
7 55 (5.84%) Citrix
8 53 (5.63%) SolarWinds
9 48 (5.10%) Splunk
10 47 (4.99%) Juniper
11 42 (4.46%) Palo Alto
12 38 (4.04%) Red Hat
13 33 (3.51%) Dynatrace
14 32 (3.40%) NetApp
15 31 (3.29%) CheckPoint
16 28 (2.98%) Fortinet
17 24 (2.55%) Blue Coat
17 24 (2.55%) McAfee
17 24 (2.55%) Zscaler