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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 151 128 153
Rank change year-on-year -23 +25 -17
Contract jobs citing DNS 909 649 552
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.94% 2.31% 1.72%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.91% 19.85% 14.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 580 405 335
10th Percentile £283 £219 £253
25th Percentile £413 £381 £351
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £488
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% +4.62% -2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £588
90th Percentile £657 £660 £671
UK median daily rate £505 £500 £485
% change year-on-year +1.00% +3.10% -3.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 34 10
10th Percentile £26.00 £15.50 £17.88
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.28
Median hourly rate £62.00 £43.25 £23.99
Median % change year-on-year +43.35% +80.28% -40.03%
75th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £28.83
90th Percentile £98.82 £88.24 £48.88
UK median hourly rate £62.00 £43.25 £23.99
% change year-on-year +43.35% +80.28% -40.03%

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 4,348 3,269 3,910
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.28% 11.61% 12.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,557 2,091 2,253
10th Percentile £255 £216 £243
25th Percentile £400 £358 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £688 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 395 171 148
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £17.91
25th Percentile £21.33 £20.09 £26.25
Median hourly rate £38.72 £34.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.88% -40.87% +1.79%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £67.14
90th Percentile £95.60 £80.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £34.00 £48.56
% change year-on-year -4.41% -29.98% -14.04%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -22 327 £500 -4.76% 62
North of England -2 196 £500 +8.11% 51
South East -5 173 £538 +7.50% 68
North West 0 121 £500 +11.11% 31
Midlands -51 99 £450 - 26
South West -3 96 £588 +2.17% 44
West Midlands -53 83 £450 +5.88% 15
Yorkshire -10 61 £500 - 16
East of England -43 44 £475 -13.64% 17
East Midlands -1 15 £450 - 11
North East -34 14 £425 +1.19% 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 99 (10.89%) Microsoft Exchange
2 86 (9.46%) SharePoint
3 26 (2.86%) Confluence
4 15 (1.65%) nginx
5 14 (1.54%) IIS
6 13 (1.43%) Apache
7 8 (0.88%) Skype for Business
8 6 (0.66%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.55%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.44%) Exchange Server 2013
11 2 (0.22%) Apache Spark
12 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
12 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 22 (2.42%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (1.10%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.22%) Houdini
5 2 (0.22%) NUKE
5 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 15 (1.65%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle Retail
2 1 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 391 (43.01%) Azure
2 191 (21.01%) Microsoft 365
3 188 (20.68%) Entra ID
4 186 (20.46%) AWS
5 78 (8.58%) GitHub
6 76 (8.36%) GCP
7 50 (5.50%) Azure DevOps
8 48 (5.28%) IaaS
9 47 (5.17%) Azure Monitor
9 47 (5.17%) GitHub Actions
10 46 (5.06%) OneDrive
11 36 (3.96%) SaaS
12 31 (3.41%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 27 (2.97%) PaaS
14 26 (2.86%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 25 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
15 25 (2.75%) Azure Key Vault
16 23 (2.53%) Azure Sentinel
17 22 (2.42%) OpenShift
18 21 (2.31%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 441 (48.51%) DHCP
2 353 (38.83%) Firewall
3 287 (31.57%) TCP/IP
4 270 (29.70%) VPN
5 137 (15.07%) Network Security
6 118 (12.98%) VLAN
7 110 (12.10%) WAN
8 90 (9.90%) SSL
9 84 (9.24%) LAN
10 80 (8.80%) BGP
11 74 (8.14%) Wireless
12 61 (6.71%) Wi-Fi
13 57 (6.27%) HTTP
14 56 (6.16%) BIG-IP
14 56 (6.16%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 54 (5.94%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 48 (5.28%) SAN
17 43 (4.73%) OSPF
18 42 (4.62%) DMZ
19 39 (4.29%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (5.17%) SQL Server
2 17 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (1.54%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.32%) MySQL
5 10 (1.10%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.99%) Power BI
7 8 (0.88%) MongoDB
7 8 (0.88%) NoSQL
8 7 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
8 7 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (0.66%) Big Data
9 6 (0.66%) Redis
10 4 (0.44%) Db2
10 4 (0.44%) Relational Database
11 3 (0.33%) Metadata
12 2 (0.22%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (0.22%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.22%) DynamoDB
12 2 (0.22%) Flink
12 2 (0.22%) KDB
Development Applications
1 71 (7.81%) JIRA
2 58 (6.38%) Jenkins
3 50 (5.50%) Git
4 38 (4.18%) GitLab
5 12 (1.32%) Fiddler
6 9 (0.99%) Sonatype Nexus
7 8 (0.88%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.55%) Artifactory
8 5 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.55%) Selenium
9 4 (0.44%) Chocolatey
10 3 (0.33%) MSI
11 2 (0.22%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.22%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.22%) Vagrant
12 1 (0.11%) git-flow
12 1 (0.11%) Newman
12 1 (0.11%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.11%) TestCafe
General
1 245 (26.95%) Social Skills
2 105 (11.55%) Analytical Skills
3 90 (9.90%) Finance
4 68 (7.48%) Public Sector
5 53 (5.83%) Banking
6 38 (4.18%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (3.19%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.53%) Investment Banking
9 15 (1.65%) Legal
10 12 (1.32%) Aerospace
10 12 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (1.32%) Police
11 11 (1.21%) Local Government
11 11 (1.21%) Military
12 9 (0.99%) Front Office
12 9 (0.99%) Manufacturing
13 8 (0.88%) Publishing
14 7 (0.77%) Law
14 7 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 173 (19.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 148 (16.28%) Network Engineer
3 119 (13.09%) Senior
4 100 (11.00%) Support Engineer
5 79 (8.69%) Cloud Engineer
6 67 (7.37%) Architect
7 52 (5.72%) IT Support
8 47 (5.17%) Azure Engineer
9 45 (4.95%) IT Engineer
9 45 (4.95%) Platform Engineer
10 43 (4.73%) DevOps Engineer
10 43 (4.73%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 41 (4.51%) Security Engineer
12 35 (3.85%) Analyst
12 35 (3.85%) IT Support Engineer
13 34 (3.74%) Senior Network Engineer
14 31 (3.41%) Administrator
15 29 (3.19%) Network Security Engineer
16 28 (3.08%) Cisco Engineer
17 26 (2.86%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 213 (23.43%) Terraform
2 32 (3.52%) 802.1X
3 29 (3.19%) ARM Templates
3 29 (3.19%) SAML
4 27 (2.97%) OAuth
4 27 (2.97%) REST
5 25 (2.75%) LDAP
6 23 (2.53%) OpenID
7 17 (1.87%) Kafka
8 13 (1.43%) YAML
9 12 (1.32%) Elastic Stack
10 11 (1.21%) .NET
10 11 (1.21%) JSON
11 10 (1.10%) CSS
12 8 (0.88%) FastAPI
13 7 (0.77%) Jinja
13 7 (0.77%) pytest
13 7 (0.77%) Software Packaging
14 6 (0.66%) Flask
14 6 (0.66%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 123 (13.53%) Data Centre
2 97 (10.67%) PKI
3 77 (8.47%) Onboarding
4 74 (8.14%) Hybrid Cloud
5 54 (5.94%) Management Information System
6 33 (3.63%) Cloud Native
7 29 (3.19%) Replication
8 28 (3.08%) Public Cloud
9 27 (2.97%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 22 (2.42%) Linux Command Line
11 20 (2.20%) Clustering
12 18 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
13 16 (1.76%) Driving Licence
13 16 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
14 14 (1.54%) Cyber Threat
15 12 (1.32%) ARM Cortex
15 12 (1.32%) Security Posture
16 11 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
16 11 (1.21%) Enterprise Cloud
17 10 (1.10%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 455 (50.06%) Windows
2 255 (28.05%) Windows Server
3 207 (22.77%) Linux
4 59 (6.49%) Windows 10
5 42 (4.62%) Windows Server 2019
6 37 (4.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 32 (3.52%) macOS
8 28 (3.08%) Unix
9 23 (2.53%) Ubuntu
9 23 (2.53%) Windows Server 2012
10 22 (2.42%) Apple iOS
11 19 (2.09%) Android
11 19 (2.09%) CentOS
12 14 (1.54%) VMS
13 12 (1.32%) Windows 7
13 12 (1.32%) Windows Server 2016
14 7 (0.77%) Rocky
14 7 (0.77%) Windows Server 2008
15 4 (0.44%) OpenVMS
16 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 238 (26.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 208 (22.88%) Infrastructure as Code
3 200 (22.00%) Problem-Solving
4 185 (20.35%) ITIL
5 160 (17.60%) CI/CD
6 159 (17.49%) DevOps
7 156 (17.16%) Load Balancing
8 143 (15.73%) Migration
9 115 (12.65%) ITSM
10 107 (11.77%) Continuous Improvement
11 106 (11.66%) Cybersecurity
12 100 (11.00%) Technical Leadership
13 97 (10.67%) Agile
14 94 (10.34%) High Availability
15 86 (9.46%) Observability
16 84 (9.24%) Disaster Recovery
16 84 (9.24%) Platform Engineering
17 83 (9.13%) Validation
18 82 (9.02%) Project Delivery
19 81 (8.91%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 250 (27.50%) PowerShell
2 186 (20.46%) Python
3 122 (13.42%) Bash
4 70 (7.70%) SQL
5 54 (5.94%) Bicep
6 19 (2.09%) Shell Script
7 18 (1.98%) ActionScript
8 16 (1.76%) Java
9 13 (1.43%) Go
10 11 (1.21%) JavaScript
11 10 (1.10%) VBScript
12 8 (0.88%) Perl
13 6 (0.66%) C#
13 6 (0.66%) Groovy
13 6 (0.66%) VB
14 5 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
15 4 (0.44%) C++
15 4 (0.44%) Kotlin
15 4 (0.44%) VBA
16 3 (0.33%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 344 (37.84%) Security Cleared
2 189 (20.79%) SC Cleared
3 154 (16.94%) DV Cleared
4 72 (7.92%) Cisco Certification
4 72 (7.92%) Degree
5 64 (7.04%) CCNP
6 54 (5.94%) Azure Certification
7 47 (5.17%) Microsoft Certification
8 35 (3.85%) CCNA
9 25 (2.75%) Network+ Certification
10 22 (2.42%) AWS Certification
10 22 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
11 17 (1.87%) CCIE
11 17 (1.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 15 (1.65%) VCAP
13 14 (1.54%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 12 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
15 11 (1.21%) A+ Certification
16 10 (1.10%) CISSP
17 9 (0.99%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (3.74%) SLA
2 19 (2.09%) QA
3 18 (1.98%) NIST
4 14 (1.54%) NCSC
5 11 (1.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.55%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.33%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.33%) GDPR
9 3 (0.33%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.33%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.33%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.22%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.11%) GLBA
System Software
1 425 (46.75%) Active Directory
2 258 (28.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 109 (11.99%) Hyper-V
4 85 (9.35%) VMware ESXi
5 81 (8.91%) vSphere
6 67 (7.37%) Docker
7 64 (7.04%) VMware NSX
8 43 (4.73%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (4.18%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (1.87%) Firmware
11 16 (1.76%) vCloud
12 13 (1.43%) NFS
13 12 (1.32%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (1.10%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.77%) Postfix
15 7 (0.77%) VMware Workstation
16 5 (0.55%) Dovecot
16 5 (0.55%) Microsoft App-V
16 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 4 (0.44%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 140 (15.40%) Ansible
2 118 (12.98%) Microsoft Intune
3 110 (12.10%) Kubernetes
4 85 (9.35%) SCCM
5 62 (6.82%) Grafana
5 62 (6.82%) vCenter Server
6 51 (5.61%) Prometheus
6 51 (5.61%) Single Sign-On
7 38 (4.18%) SCOM
8 26 (2.86%) WSUS
9 17 (1.87%) Packer
10 16 (1.76%) FortiGate
10 16 (1.76%) Jamf Pro
10 16 (1.76%) Puppet
10 16 (1.76%) VxRail
11 14 (1.54%) NetBackup
12 13 (1.43%) Istio
13 12 (1.32%) Progress Chef
14 10 (1.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 10 (1.10%) systemd
Vendors
1 392 (43.12%) Microsoft
2 315 (34.65%) VMware
3 158 (17.38%) Cisco
4 118 (12.98%) F5
5 82 (9.02%) ServiceNow
6 53 (5.83%) Google
7 51 (5.61%) Palo Alto
8 44 (4.84%) SolarWinds
9 39 (4.29%) Citrix
10 38 (4.18%) Juniper
11 37 (4.07%) Infoblox
12 33 (3.63%) Splunk
13 32 (3.52%) CheckPoint
14 31 (3.41%) Dynatrace
14 31 (3.41%) NetApp
15 30 (3.30%) Fortinet
15 30 (3.30%) Red Hat
16 27 (2.97%) Veeam
17 24 (2.64%) Zscaler
18 23 (2.53%) Oracle