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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 116 130
Rank change year-on-year -20 +14 -3
Contract jobs citing DNS 748 592 681
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.06% 2.33% 1.82%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.40% 17.56% 12.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 479 395 444
10th Percentile £219 £243 £200
25th Percentile £401 £378 £310
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £501 £463
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% +8.22% -11.90%
75th Percentile £612 £610 £570
90th Percentile £691 £695 £650
UK median daily rate £513 £513 £465
% change year-on-year +0.15% +10.22% -11.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 6 23
10th Percentile £13.35 £15.40 £23.45
25th Percentile £16.25 £19.77 £25.00
Median hourly rate £26.33 £39.05 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.58% -2.39% -4.48%
75th Percentile £74.26 £76.57 £44.38
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.56 £66.00
UK median hourly rate £26.33 £23.59 £40.00
% change year-on-year +11.59% -41.03% -4.48%

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 3,666 3,371 5,258
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.09% 13.29% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,365 2,029 3,163
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £366 £367 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £677 £700
UK median daily rate £481 £500 £480
% change year-on-year -3.75% +4.17% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 166 103 365
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.27
25th Percentile £19.25 £21.11 £19.99
Median hourly rate £34.50 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -12.50% +108.88%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £74.60
UK median hourly rate £34.50 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -1.43% -12.50% +107.25%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 5 March 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 -23 247 £525 - 75
North of England -14 200 £460 -3.16% 79
South East -1 144 £525 -1.22% 94
North West +9 131 £575 +21.05% 43
Midlands +13 107 £375 -16.67% 31
West Midlands +16 103 £375 -7.41% 19
Yorkshire -36 71 £447 -3.41% 28
South West -40 58 £575 +5.02% 32
East of England -27 38 £475 +5.56% 31
North East -19 6 £411 +21.70% 10
East Midlands -35 4 £325 -41.96% 12
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 96 (12.83%) Microsoft Exchange
2 56 (7.49%) SharePoint
3 27 (3.61%) Skype for Business
4 16 (2.14%) Confluence
5 12 (1.60%) nginx
6 6 (0.80%) Apache
7 4 (0.53%) IIS
7 4 (0.53%) SharePoint Server
8 3 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.40%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.27%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.27%) WordPress
10 1 (0.13%) Traefik
Applications
1 33 (4.41%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.01%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.13%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 258 (34.49%) Azure
2 156 (20.86%) AWS
3 132 (17.65%) Microsoft 365
4 123 (16.44%) Entra ID
5 66 (8.82%) GCP
6 53 (7.09%) GitHub
7 47 (6.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 40 (5.35%) Amazon S3
8 40 (5.35%) IaaS
9 38 (5.08%) Amazon EC2
10 36 (4.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 34 (4.55%) AWS CloudFormation
12 30 (4.01%) Serverless
13 29 (3.88%) SaaS
14 28 (3.74%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (3.74%) Route 53
15 25 (3.34%) PaaS
16 22 (2.94%) Amazon EKS
16 22 (2.94%) OpenShift
17 21 (2.81%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 331 (44.25%) DHCP
2 235 (31.42%) Firewall
3 219 (29.28%) TCP/IP
4 183 (24.47%) VPN
5 90 (12.03%) WAN
6 89 (11.90%) SSL
7 82 (10.96%) LAN
7 82 (10.96%) Network Security
8 69 (9.22%) VLAN
9 67 (8.96%) BGP
9 67 (8.96%) HTTP
10 64 (8.56%) BIG-IP
11 49 (6.55%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 48 (6.42%) Wi-Fi
13 43 (5.75%) Wireshark
14 42 (5.61%) OSPF
15 39 (5.21%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 37 (4.95%) DMZ
17 36 (4.81%) Kerberos
18 32 (4.28%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (3.07%) SQL Server
2 15 (2.01%) Amazon RDS
2 15 (2.01%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (1.74%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (0.94%) Amazon Aurora
4 7 (0.94%) DynamoDB
4 7 (0.94%) MongoDB
5 6 (0.80%) Redis
6 5 (0.67%) Data Hub
6 5 (0.67%) MySQL
7 4 (0.53%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (0.53%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.53%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.53%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.40%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.27%) Power BI
10 1 (0.13%) Electronic Patient Records
10 1 (0.13%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.13%) GIS
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 69 (9.22%) Jenkins
2 42 (5.61%) Git
3 41 (5.48%) GitLab
4 35 (4.68%) JIRA
5 30 (4.01%) Fiddler
6 8 (1.07%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.94%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.94%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.67%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.53%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.53%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.27%) Subversion
10 2 (0.27%) Vagrant
11 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.13%) GCC
11 1 (0.13%) MSI
11 1 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.13%) TeamCity
General
1 201 (26.87%) Social Skills
2 98 (13.10%) Analytical Skills
3 67 (8.96%) Banking
4 56 (7.49%) Finance
5 54 (7.22%) Public Sector
6 45 (6.02%) Investment Banking
7 44 (5.88%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (2.81%) Legal
9 18 (2.41%) Military
10 13 (1.74%) Telecoms
11 9 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
12 7 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.67%) Financial Institution
13 5 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.67%) Law
14 3 (0.40%) Aerospace
14 3 (0.40%) Local Government
15 2 (0.27%) Advertising
15 2 (0.27%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 125 (16.71%) Network Engineer
2 113 (15.11%) Architect
3 67 (8.96%) Analyst
3 67 (8.96%) Senior
4 61 (8.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 59 (7.89%) Support Engineer
6 51 (6.82%) Security Engineer
7 44 (5.88%) IT Support
8 40 (5.35%) Web Engineer
9 32 (4.28%) Platform Engineer
10 30 (4.01%) DevOps Engineer
10 30 (4.01%) Network Security Engineer
11 27 (3.61%) IT Engineer
11 27 (3.61%) Lead
12 24 (3.21%) Cisco Engineer
12 24 (3.21%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 23 (3.07%) Azure Engineer
14 22 (2.94%) Solutions Architect
15 21 (2.81%) 2nd Line Support
16 20 (2.67%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (8.42%) LDAP
2 45 (6.02%) SAML
3 38 (5.08%) OAuth
4 30 (4.01%) OpenID
5 25 (3.34%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.67%) OAuth2
7 15 (2.01%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.34%) Kafka
9 9 (1.20%) REST
10 8 (1.07%) Elastic Stack
11 7 (0.94%) XMPP
12 6 (0.80%) JSON
12 6 (0.80%) Microsoft Graph
12 6 (0.80%) Middleware
13 5 (0.67%) ARM Templates
13 5 (0.67%) AWS CDK
13 5 (0.67%) RESTful
14 4 (0.53%) AngularJS
14 4 (0.53%) JPA
14 4 (0.53%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 67 (8.96%) PKI
2 62 (8.29%) Data Centre
3 51 (6.82%) Replication
4 38 (5.08%) Cloud Native
5 37 (4.95%) Management Information System
6 30 (4.01%) Onboarding
7 25 (3.34%) Clustering
8 24 (3.21%) Public Cloud
9 20 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
10 19 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
11 16 (2.14%) Analytical Mindset
12 15 (2.01%) Cyber Threat
12 15 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
13 14 (1.87%) Cyberattack
13 14 (1.87%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 14 (1.87%) Security Operations Centre
14 12 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
14 12 (1.60%) NHS
15 11 (1.47%) Private Cloud
15 11 (1.47%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 339 (45.32%) Windows
2 175 (23.40%) Windows Server
3 115 (15.37%) Linux
4 54 (7.22%) Windows 10
5 27 (3.61%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.67%) Unix
7 18 (2.41%) Android
8 15 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (2.01%) Windows Server 2012
8 15 (2.01%) Windows Server 2016
9 13 (1.74%) Apple iOS
10 11 (1.47%) Windows 7
11 9 (1.20%) CentOS
11 9 (1.20%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.94%) VMS
13 6 (0.80%) Windows Server 2003
14 5 (0.67%) Amazon Linux
14 5 (0.67%) Ubuntu
15 4 (0.53%) CatOS
16 3 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (23.66%) Problem-Solving
2 158 (21.12%) Load Balancing
3 109 (14.57%) CI/CD
4 108 (14.44%) DevOps
5 107 (14.30%) ITIL
6 101 (13.50%) Infrastructure as Code
7 100 (13.37%) Migration
8 97 (12.97%) High Availability
9 84 (11.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 69 (9.22%) Identity Access Management
11 68 (9.09%) Disaster Recovery
12 60 (8.02%) Cybersecurity
12 60 (8.02%) Service Management
13 59 (7.89%) Incident Response
14 58 (7.75%) Change Management
15 57 (7.62%) RBAC
16 54 (7.22%) ITSM
17 51 (6.82%) Observability
18 50 (6.68%) Continuous Improvement
18 50 (6.68%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 208 (27.81%) PowerShell
2 140 (18.72%) Python
3 72 (9.63%) Bash
4 41 (5.48%) SQL
5 13 (1.74%) VBScript
6 12 (1.60%) Bicep
6 12 (1.60%) Java
7 11 (1.47%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.34%) VB
9 9 (1.20%) Ruby
10 8 (1.07%) Go
10 8 (1.07%) JavaScript
10 8 (1.07%) Perl
11 7 (0.94%) Lisp
12 5 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.40%) C#
13 3 (0.40%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.27%) C++
14 2 (0.27%) Groovy
14 2 (0.27%) VBA
Qualifications
1 272 (36.36%) Security Cleared
2 181 (24.20%) SC Cleared
3 93 (12.43%) DV Cleared
4 62 (8.29%) Cisco Certification
5 56 (7.49%) Microsoft Certification
6 53 (7.09%) Degree
7 44 (5.88%) CCNP
8 28 (3.74%) Azure Certification
9 21 (2.81%) CCNA
10 18 (2.41%) AWS Certification
11 17 (2.27%) Network+ Certification
12 16 (2.14%) CISSP
13 15 (2.01%) CompTIA Security+
14 11 (1.47%) MCSE
15 10 (1.34%) BPSS Clearance
15 10 (1.34%) CCIE
15 10 (1.34%) JNCIA
15 10 (1.34%) JNCIS
16 9 (1.20%) ITIL Certification
16 9 (1.20%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.88%) GDPR
2 22 (2.94%) SLA
3 20 (2.67%) NIST
4 19 (2.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 17 (2.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.20%) NCSC
6 9 (1.20%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.80%) QA
9 3 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.27%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.13%) COBIT
11 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.13%) RMADS
11 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 327 (43.72%) Active Directory
2 169 (22.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 68 (9.09%) Docker
4 56 (7.49%) VMware NSX
5 54 (7.22%) Hyper-V
6 41 (5.48%) vSphere
7 27 (3.61%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (3.21%) Firmware
9 18 (2.41%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (2.01%) BitLocker
10 15 (2.01%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (1.20%) Squid
12 7 (0.94%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.80%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.67%) DFS Replication
15 4 (0.53%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.53%) NFS
15 4 (0.53%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.40%) Postfix
16 3 (0.40%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 142 (18.98%) Terraform
2 121 (16.18%) Ansible
3 92 (12.30%) Microsoft Intune
4 79 (10.56%) Kubernetes
5 78 (10.43%) SCCM
6 68 (9.09%) Single Sign-On
7 62 (8.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 42 (5.61%) vCenter Server
9 40 (5.35%) FortiGate
10 35 (4.68%) Grafana
11 21 (2.81%) Argo
11 21 (2.81%) Prometheus
12 15 (2.01%) WSUS
13 14 (1.87%) SCOM
14 10 (1.34%) Puppet
15 8 (1.07%) Nagios
16 7 (0.94%) Consul
16 7 (0.94%) HAProxy
16 7 (0.94%) Nessus
17 6 (0.80%) Packer
Vendors
1 283 (37.83%) Microsoft
2 216 (28.88%) VMware
3 141 (18.85%) F5
4 120 (16.04%) Cisco
5 70 (9.36%) ServiceNow
6 68 (9.09%) Splunk
7 44 (5.88%) Citrix
8 43 (5.75%) Blue Coat
9 42 (5.61%) Palo Alto
9 42 (5.61%) SolarWinds
10 35 (4.68%) Juniper
10 35 (4.68%) McAfee
11 32 (4.28%) CheckPoint
11 32 (4.28%) Red Hat
12 26 (3.48%) NetApp
13 22 (2.94%) Google
14 21 (2.81%) Zscaler
15 19 (2.54%) Infoblox
15 19 (2.54%) Okta
15 19 (2.54%) Pure Storage