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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 113 146
Rank change year-on-year -15 +33 -7
Contract jobs citing DNS 839 593 594
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.00% 2.46% 1.61%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.83% 18.99% 12.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 522 411 410
10th Percentile £300 £263 £224
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £488
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +12.82% -7.14%
75th Percentile £586 £606 £605
90th Percentile £638 £653 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £548 £475
% change year-on-year -8.68% +15.26% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 13 24
10th Percentile £20.37 - £18.95
25th Percentile £25.79 £29.00 £23.66
Median hourly rate £33.86 £57.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.11% +76.92% -37.66%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.35 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.33 £81.95 £50.96
UK median hourly rate £35.22 £57.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -38.75% +76.92% -37.66%

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 4,028 3,123 4,797
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.60% 12.97% 13.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,492 1,954 2,872
10th Percentile £263 £220 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £498 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.46% -0.46% -3.85%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £601
90th Percentile £675 £675 £693
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £495
% change year-on-year +4.17% -3.03% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 263 122 386
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.25 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.33 £16.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.50 £39.66 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.05% -0.85% +135.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £82.03 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £28.96 £41.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -30.22% +3.75% +119.30%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -33 273 £500 -1.96% 100
North of England +12 234 £447 -5.89% 59
South East +2 170 £525 -4.55% 108
North West +39 153 £458 +7.65% 39
Midlands +16 108 £438 -13.37% 34
West Midlands +10 95 £444 +1.43% 23
Yorkshire -20 75 £447 -18.73% 15
South West -30 57 £490 -20.33% 41
East of England -46 41 £450 -18.18% 30
East Midlands -25 12 £394 -30.62% 11
North East -34 6 £306 -12.50% 7
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 82 (9.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 46 (5.48%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.91%) nginx
4 14 (1.67%) Confluence
5 12 (1.43%) 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 11 (1.31%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 294 (35.04%) Azure
2 161 (19.19%) AWS
3 134 (15.97%) Entra ID
4 110 (13.11%) Microsoft 365
5 94 (11.20%) GCP
6 67 (7.99%) GitHub
7 53 (6.32%) IaaS
8 39 (4.65%) PaaS
9 36 (4.29%) SaaS
10 31 (3.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 30 (3.58%) AWS CloudFormation
11 30 (3.58%) Serverless
12 29 (3.46%) Amazon EC2
12 29 (3.46%) Amazon S3
12 29 (3.46%) GitHub Actions
13 27 (3.22%) Amazon EKS
13 27 (3.22%) AWS Lambda
14 26 (3.10%) Route 53
15 23 (2.74%) OneDrive
15 23 (2.74%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 372 (44.34%) DHCP
2 259 (30.87%) Firewall
3 207 (24.67%) VPN
4 195 (23.24%) TCP/IP
5 113 (13.47%) WAN
6 100 (11.92%) LAN
7 95 (11.32%) Network Security
8 89 (10.61%) SSL
9 85 (10.13%) BGP
9 85 (10.13%) BIG-IP
9 85 (10.13%) VLAN
10 69 (8.22%) HTTP
11 49 (5.84%) Wireless
12 48 (5.72%) OSPF
13 46 (5.48%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 44 (5.24%) Wi-Fi
15 42 (5.01%) SAN
16 38 (4.53%) Kerberos
17 37 (4.41%) DMZ
18 34 (4.05%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (4.29%) SQL Server
2 19 (2.26%) Elasticsearch
3 14 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (1.07%) Power BI
6 8 (0.95%) MySQL
7 6 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
7 6 (0.72%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.60%) DynamoDB
8 5 (0.60%) MongoDB
9 4 (0.48%) Amazon Aurora
9 4 (0.48%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.48%) Redis
10 2 (0.24%) Big Data
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.12%) Relational Database
11 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.12%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 60 (7.15%) Jenkins
2 57 (6.79%) JIRA
3 29 (3.46%) GitLab
4 28 (3.34%) Git
5 24 (2.86%) Fiddler
6 9 (1.07%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.83%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.83%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.72%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.48%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.36%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.24%) Introscope
12 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.12%) Spinnaker
General
1 174 (20.74%) Social Skills
2 79 (9.42%) Analytical Skills
3 72 (8.58%) Banking
4 67 (7.99%) Finance
5 50 (5.96%) Public Sector
6 38 (4.53%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (4.29%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.26%) Legal
9 16 (1.91%) Military
10 15 (1.79%) Telecoms
11 9 (1.07%) Law
12 6 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (0.72%) Local Government
12 6 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (0.60%) Police
14 4 (0.48%) Advertising
14 4 (0.48%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.48%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.36%) Pharmaceutical
15 3 (0.36%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 159 (18.95%) Network Engineer
2 114 (13.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 110 (13.11%) Architect
4 66 (7.87%) Analyst
5 59 (7.03%) Security Engineer
5 59 (7.03%) Senior
6 55 (6.56%) Support Engineer
7 47 (5.60%) Web Engineer
8 41 (4.89%) Cloud Engineer
8 41 (4.89%) Network Security Engineer
9 36 (4.29%) Cisco Engineer
10 35 (4.17%) IT Support
11 34 (4.05%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 33 (3.93%) Administrator
12 33 (3.93%) Data Engineer
12 33 (3.93%) Data Network Engineer
13 32 (3.81%) Cisco Security Engineer
14 31 (3.69%) Azure Engineer
15 30 (3.58%) IT Engineer
16 28 (3.34%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (7.75%) LDAP
2 42 (5.01%) SAML
3 40 (4.77%) 802.1X
4 36 (4.29%) OAuth
5 24 (2.86%) OpenID
6 20 (2.38%) OpenTelemetry
7 11 (1.31%) JSON
8 10 (1.19%) ARM Templates
9 9 (1.07%) Kafka
9 9 (1.07%) REST
10 8 (0.95%) OAuth2
11 6 (0.72%) Elastic Stack
12 5 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
12 5 (0.60%) XMPP
13 4 (0.48%) CSS
13 4 (0.48%) JPA
13 4 (0.48%) RESTful
13 4 (0.48%) Spring
13 4 (0.48%) Web Services
13 4 (0.48%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 94 (11.20%) Data Centre
2 62 (7.39%) PKI
3 55 (6.56%) Cloud Native
4 48 (5.72%) Onboarding
5 41 (4.89%) Replication
6 40 (4.77%) Clustering
7 39 (4.65%) Management Information System
8 36 (4.29%) Public Cloud
9 29 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
10 28 (3.34%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 18 (2.15%) Cyber Threat
12 17 (2.03%) Security Operations Centre
13 16 (1.91%) Enterprise Cloud
13 16 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
14 15 (1.79%) Cyberattack
15 12 (1.43%) Virtual Team
16 11 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
16 11 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
16 11 (1.31%) Enterprise Storage
16 11 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 349 (41.60%) Windows
2 203 (24.20%) Windows Server
3 113 (13.47%) Linux
4 42 (5.01%) Windows 10
5 34 (4.05%) Windows Server 2019
6 27 (3.22%) Unix
7 22 (2.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (2.26%) Mac OS
8 19 (2.26%) Windows Server 2012
9 14 (1.67%) Windows Server 2016
10 13 (1.55%) Apple iOS
11 11 (1.31%) Android
12 9 (1.07%) CentOS
12 9 (1.07%) Ubuntu
12 9 (1.07%) Windows Server 2003
13 7 (0.83%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.60%) VMS
15 3 (0.36%) AIX
15 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
16 2 (0.24%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (20.38%) Problem-Solving
2 167 (19.90%) Load Balancing
3 142 (16.92%) Migration
4 141 (16.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 136 (16.21%) High Availability
6 119 (14.18%) DevOps
7 112 (13.35%) CI/CD
8 108 (12.87%) ITIL
9 107 (12.75%) Infrastructure as Code
10 79 (9.42%) ITSM
11 77 (9.18%) Observability
12 70 (8.34%) Agile
12 70 (8.34%) Disaster Recovery
13 69 (8.22%) Identity Access Management
14 65 (7.75%) Cybersecurity
15 61 (7.27%) Project Delivery
16 55 (6.56%) Root Cause Analysis
17 52 (6.20%) Runbook
18 51 (6.08%) RBAC
19 49 (5.84%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 166 (19.79%) PowerShell
2 129 (15.38%) Python
3 74 (8.82%) Bash
4 46 (5.48%) SQL
5 23 (2.74%) JavaScript
6 20 (2.38%) Bicep
7 14 (1.67%) Java
8 12 (1.43%) Go
9 11 (1.31%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.07%) VBA
11 7 (0.83%) ActionScript
11 7 (0.83%) Perl
12 6 (0.72%) Ruby
12 6 (0.72%) VBScript
13 5 (0.60%) Groovy
14 4 (0.48%) C
14 4 (0.48%) VB
15 3 (0.36%) Lisp
16 2 (0.24%) Jython
16 2 (0.24%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 283 (33.73%) Security Cleared
2 178 (21.22%) SC Cleared
3 95 (11.32%) DV Cleared
4 81 (9.65%) Cisco Certification
5 58 (6.91%) Degree
6 51 (6.08%) CCNP
7 41 (4.89%) CCNA
8 26 (3.10%) Microsoft Certification
9 25 (2.98%) Network+ Certification
10 24 (2.86%) 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%) JNCIA
14 10 (1.19%) JNCIS
15 9 (1.07%) CCIE
15 9 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
16 8 (0.95%) MCSA
16 8 (0.95%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.81%) SLA
2 23 (2.74%) NIST
3 21 (2.50%) 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 2 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.24%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.12%) COBIT
9 1 (0.12%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.12%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.12%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.12%) RMADS
System Software
1 337 (40.17%) Active Directory
2 187 (22.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 86 (10.25%) Hyper-V
4 53 (6.32%) VMware NSX
5 48 (5.72%) vSphere
6 43 (5.13%) VMware ESXi
7 41 (4.89%) Docker
8 34 (4.05%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (3.22%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (2.86%) Firmware
11 16 (1.91%) BitLocker
12 14 (1.67%) NFS
13 12 (1.43%) Microsoft App-V
13 12 (1.43%) Squid
14 10 (1.19%) Postfix
14 10 (1.19%) vCloud
15 8 (0.95%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.83%) Varnish
17 5 (0.60%) Terminal Services
18 4 (0.48%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 139 (16.57%) Terraform
2 107 (12.75%) Ansible
3 93 (11.08%) Kubernetes
4 74 (8.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 67 (7.99%) Single Sign-On
6 48 (5.72%) Grafana
6 48 (5.72%) SCCM
7 47 (5.60%) vCenter Server
8 44 (5.24%) FortiGate
9 43 (5.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 30 (3.58%) Prometheus
11 23 (2.74%) WSUS
12 20 (2.38%) Argo
13 19 (2.26%) SCOM
14 14 (1.67%) HAProxy
15 13 (1.55%) Puppet
15 13 (1.55%) vMotion
16 11 (1.31%) Nessus
17 10 (1.19%) Jamf Pro
18 9 (1.07%) Nagios
Vendors
1 266 (31.70%) Microsoft
2 223 (26.58%) VMware
3 156 (18.59%) Cisco
4 147 (17.52%) F5
5 80 (9.54%) ServiceNow
6 71 (8.46%) Splunk
7 52 (6.20%) Citrix
7 52 (6.20%) Infoblox
8 50 (5.96%) SolarWinds
9 45 (5.36%) Juniper
10 44 (5.24%) Google
11 42 (5.01%) Red Hat
12 32 (3.81%) Blue Coat
13 31 (3.69%) NetApp
14 30 (3.58%) Palo Alto
15 28 (3.34%) Dynatrace
16 26 (3.10%) McAfee
17 22 (2.62%) Extreme Networks
18 21 (2.50%) CheckPoint
18 21 (2.50%) Fortinet