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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 110 137
Rank change year-on-year -24 +27 -4
Contract jobs citing DNS 787 590 635
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.93% 2.41% 1.73%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.49% 18.35% 13.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 491 417 430
10th Percentile £281 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £370
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £547 £485
Median % change year-on-year -12.25% +12.90% -7.71%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £600
90th Percentile £640 £663 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £539 £475
% change year-on-year -11.87% +13.47% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 9 23
10th Percentile £15.08 £26.10 £18.80
25th Percentile £22.23 £45.75 £23.53
Median hourly rate £52.11 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.41% +101.69% -18.56%
75th Percentile £74.20 £81.35 -
90th Percentile £76.05 £82.48 £51.27
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -34.92% +101.69% -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 3,841 3,216 4,859
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.44% 13.13% 13.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,401 1,995 2,933
10th Percentile £250 £220 £208
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year - +1.01% -5.71%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £495 £489 £495
% change year-on-year +1.28% -1.26% -4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 221 120 392
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.33 £15.44 £16.72
Median hourly rate £41.94 £29.66 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.40% -25.85% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.05 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £41.24 £32.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +26.89% -18.75% +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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -38 256 £500 -2.44% 67
North of England +5 216 £425 -10.53% 64
South East -3 157 £525 -4.55% 85
North West +35 146 £425 -2.86% 34
Midlands +19 115 £400 -27.27% 32
West Midlands +28 101 £390 -2.50% 21
Yorkshire -36 65 £445 -19.18% 22
South West -44 51 £508 -13.62% 33
East of England -38 41 £450 -18.18% 27
East Midlands -33 13 £394 -30.62% 11
North East -22 6 £306 -11.23% 10
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 85 (10.80%) Microsoft Exchange
2 38 (4.83%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.65%) nginx
4 12 (1.52%) Confluence
5 11 (1.40%) IIS
6 9 (1.14%) Apache
7 4 (0.51%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.38%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.25%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.25%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Portal
9 2 (0.25%) WordPress
10 1 (0.13%) Traefik
Applications
1 19 (2.41%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.40%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Cloudability
1 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 270 (34.31%) Azure
2 139 (17.66%) AWS
3 131 (16.65%) Entra ID
4 105 (13.34%) Microsoft 365
5 85 (10.80%) GCP
6 59 (7.50%) GitHub
7 44 (5.59%) IaaS
8 36 (4.57%) SaaS
9 35 (4.45%) PaaS
10 33 (4.19%) AWS CloudFormation
10 33 (4.19%) Serverless
11 29 (3.68%) AWS Lambda
11 29 (3.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 28 (3.56%) Amazon EC2
13 27 (3.43%) Amazon S3
13 27 (3.43%) GitHub Actions
14 26 (3.30%) Amazon EKS
14 26 (3.30%) Route 53
15 21 (2.67%) OpenShift
16 18 (2.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 337 (42.82%) DHCP
2 236 (29.99%) Firewall
3 194 (24.65%) VPN
4 188 (23.89%) TCP/IP
5 99 (12.58%) WAN
6 94 (11.94%) LAN
7 84 (10.67%) Network Security
8 81 (10.29%) SSL
9 80 (10.17%) BIG-IP
10 78 (9.91%) BGP
11 72 (9.15%) HTTP
12 69 (8.77%) VLAN
13 44 (5.59%) OSPF
14 42 (5.34%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 42 (5.34%) Wi-Fi
15 40 (5.08%) Wireless
15 40 (5.08%) Wireshark
16 38 (4.83%) DMZ
16 38 (4.83%) Kerberos
17 32 (4.07%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (3.56%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.29%) Elasticsearch
3 10 (1.27%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (1.02%) Power BI
5 5 (0.64%) Amazon Aurora
5 5 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
5 5 (0.64%) DynamoDB
5 5 (0.64%) MongoDB
5 5 (0.64%) MySQL
6 4 (0.51%) DocumentDB
6 4 (0.51%) NoSQL
6 4 (0.51%) Redis
7 3 (0.38%) Data Hub
8 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.13%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 48 (6.10%) Jenkins
2 44 (5.59%) JIRA
3 28 (3.56%) Fiddler
3 28 (3.56%) Git
4 24 (3.05%) GitLab
5 9 (1.14%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.89%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.89%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.76%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.51%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.51%) Terragrunt
9 3 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.25%) Introscope
11 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 160 (20.33%) Social Skills
2 75 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
3 72 (9.15%) Banking
4 63 (8.01%) Finance
5 52 (6.61%) Public Sector
6 39 (4.96%) Documentation Skills
6 39 (4.96%) Investment Banking
7 20 (2.54%) Legal
8 17 (2.16%) Telecoms
9 16 (2.03%) Military
10 10 (1.27%) Law
11 9 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.76%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.64%) Police
14 4 (0.51%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.51%) Local Government
15 3 (0.38%) Advertising
15 3 (0.38%) Manufacturing
16 1 (0.13%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 149 (18.93%) Network Engineer
2 103 (13.09%) Architect
3 95 (12.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 72 (9.15%) Analyst
5 62 (7.88%) Senior
6 61 (7.75%) Security Engineer
7 51 (6.48%) Web Engineer
8 42 (5.34%) Network Security Engineer
9 41 (5.21%) Support Engineer
10 34 (4.32%) Cisco Engineer
10 34 (4.32%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 33 (4.19%) Data Engineer
11 33 (4.19%) Data Network Engineer
12 32 (4.07%) Cisco Security Engineer
13 30 (3.81%) IT Support
14 29 (3.68%) IT Engineer
15 26 (3.30%) Administrator
15 26 (3.30%) Azure Engineer
16 25 (3.18%) DevOps Engineer
16 25 (3.18%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (8.77%) LDAP
2 45 (5.72%) SAML
3 36 (4.57%) OAuth
4 35 (4.45%) 802.1X
5 25 (3.18%) OpenID
6 21 (2.67%) OpenTelemetry
7 10 (1.27%) JSON
7 10 (1.27%) OAuth2
8 9 (1.14%) Kafka
8 9 (1.14%) REST
9 8 (1.02%) ARM Templates
9 8 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
10 5 (0.64%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (0.64%) Web Services
10 5 (0.64%) XMPP
11 4 (0.51%) Hibernate
11 4 (0.51%) JPA
11 4 (0.51%) Middleware
11 4 (0.51%) RESTful
11 4 (0.51%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 67 (8.51%) Data Centre
2 61 (7.75%) PKI
3 49 (6.23%) Cloud Native
4 39 (4.96%) Replication
5 38 (4.83%) Clustering
6 37 (4.70%) Onboarding
7 36 (4.57%) Management Information System
8 34 (4.32%) Public Cloud
9 24 (3.05%) Hybrid Cloud
10 23 (2.92%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 18 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
12 16 (2.03%) Cyber Threat
12 16 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
12 16 (2.03%) Security Operations Centre
13 15 (1.91%) Cyberattack
14 14 (1.78%) Enterprise Cloud
14 14 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
15 12 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
15 12 (1.52%) Virtual Team
16 11 (1.40%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 330 (41.93%) Windows
2 195 (24.78%) Windows Server
3 99 (12.58%) Linux
4 42 (5.34%) Windows 10
5 30 (3.81%) Windows Server 2019
6 22 (2.80%) Unix
7 17 (2.16%) Windows Server 2012
8 16 (2.03%) Windows Server 2016
9 15 (1.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 12 (1.52%) Android
11 10 (1.27%) Mac OS
12 8 (1.02%) Apple iOS
12 8 (1.02%) Windows Server 2003
13 6 (0.76%) CentOS
13 6 (0.76%) Ubuntu
13 6 (0.76%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.64%) VMS
15 4 (0.51%) CatOS
16 2 (0.25%) Oracle Linux
16 2 (0.25%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 162 (20.58%) Load Balancing
1 162 (20.58%) Problem-Solving
2 130 (16.52%) Migration
3 129 (16.39%) High Availability
4 120 (15.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 107 (13.60%) DevOps
6 102 (12.96%) CI/CD
7 101 (12.83%) ITIL
8 97 (12.33%) Infrastructure as Code
9 70 (8.89%) Observability
10 69 (8.77%) Disaster Recovery
10 69 (8.77%) Identity Access Management
11 66 (8.39%) Cybersecurity
12 63 (8.01%) Agile
13 61 (7.75%) ITSM
14 50 (6.35%) Containerisation
14 50 (6.35%) RBAC
15 49 (6.23%) Project Delivery
16 48 (6.10%) Change Management
17 46 (5.84%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 161 (20.46%) PowerShell
2 119 (15.12%) Python
3 68 (8.64%) Bash
4 41 (5.21%) SQL
5 21 (2.67%) JavaScript
6 14 (1.78%) Bicep
7 12 (1.52%) Java
8 11 (1.40%) Go
8 11 (1.40%) Shell Script
9 9 (1.14%) Ruby
10 7 (0.89%) VBA
10 7 (0.89%) VBScript
11 4 (0.51%) Perl
11 4 (0.51%) VB
12 3 (0.38%) C
12 3 (0.38%) Groovy
13 2 (0.25%) Jython
13 2 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.13%) C#
14 1 (0.13%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 262 (33.29%) Security Cleared
2 173 (21.98%) SC Cleared
3 82 (10.42%) DV Cleared
4 69 (8.77%) Cisco Certification
5 44 (5.59%) Degree
6 39 (4.96%) CCNP
7 31 (3.94%) CCNA
8 26 (3.30%) Microsoft Certification
9 23 (2.92%) Azure Certification
10 19 (2.41%) CompTIA Security+
11 18 (2.29%) Network+ Certification
12 14 (1.78%) AWS Certification
13 13 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
14 11 (1.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 10 (1.27%) Computer Science Degree
15 10 (1.27%) JNCIA
15 10 (1.27%) JNCIS
16 8 (1.02%) JNCIP
17 7 (0.89%) Server+ Certification
17 7 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.56%) SLA
2 23 (2.92%) GDPR
3 20 (2.54%) NIST
4 18 (2.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (1.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 6 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
6 6 (0.76%) NCSC
6 6 (0.76%) QA
7 4 (0.51%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.25%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.13%) COBIT
10 1 (0.13%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.13%) RMADS
10 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 323 (41.04%) Active Directory
2 177 (22.49%) VMware Infrastructure
3 81 (10.29%) Hyper-V
4 51 (6.48%) VMware NSX
5 42 (5.34%) Docker
6 40 (5.08%) vSphere
7 31 (3.94%) Virtual Machines
8 29 (3.68%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (3.18%) Firmware
10 18 (2.29%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (1.78%) BitLocker
12 11 (1.40%) NFS
13 10 (1.27%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (1.27%) Squid
14 6 (0.76%) Postfix
14 6 (0.76%) Sendmail
14 6 (0.76%) Varnish
15 5 (0.64%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.64%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.51%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 130 (16.52%) Terraform
2 99 (12.58%) Ansible
3 92 (11.69%) Kubernetes
4 75 (9.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 69 (8.77%) Single Sign-On
6 56 (7.12%) SCCM
7 44 (5.59%) Grafana
8 43 (5.46%) FortiGate
9 42 (5.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (4.96%) vCenter Server
11 28 (3.56%) Prometheus
12 25 (3.18%) WSUS
13 20 (2.54%) Argo
14 14 (1.78%) SCOM
15 11 (1.40%) Nessus
16 10 (1.27%) HAProxy
16 10 (1.27%) Puppet
17 9 (1.14%) vMotion
18 8 (1.02%) Consul
19 7 (0.89%) Nagios
Vendors
1 247 (31.39%) Microsoft
2 217 (27.57%) VMware
3 143 (18.17%) F5
4 137 (17.41%) Cisco
5 69 (8.77%) Splunk
6 62 (7.88%) ServiceNow
7 50 (6.35%) Citrix
8 46 (5.84%) Infoblox
9 45 (5.72%) SolarWinds
10 39 (4.96%) Google
10 39 (4.96%) Juniper
11 36 (4.57%) Blue Coat
12 34 (4.32%) Red Hat
13 31 (3.94%) McAfee
13 31 (3.94%) NetApp
14 28 (3.56%) Palo Alto
15 25 (3.18%) Dynatrace
16 22 (2.80%) Extreme Networks
17 21 (2.67%) CheckPoint
18 18 (2.29%) Tenable