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

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 126 117
Rank change year-on-year -7 -9 +6
Contract jobs citing DNS 650 571 748
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.01% 2.13% 2.04%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.25% 16.60% 14.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 420 358 494
10th Percentile £219 £223 £203
25th Percentile £400 £326 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% - -9.52%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £588
90th Percentile £688 £713 £650
UK median daily rate £514 £500 £485
% change year-on-year +2.75% +3.09% -7.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 5 18
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.78 £23.95
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.50 £31.25
Median hourly rate £39.50 £23.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.44% -41.03% +3.90%
75th Percentile £74.26 £25.30 £59.10
90th Percentile £78.00 £40.12 £72.40
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £23.59 £40.00
% change year-on-year +67.44% -41.03% +3.90%

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 3,377 3,439 5,163
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.43% 12.82% 14.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,191 1,987 3,175
10th Percentile £204 £220 £206
25th Percentile £350 £368 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £493
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% +1.52% -5.29%
75th Percentile £588 £604 £600
90th Percentile £684 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 106 344
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.11 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.46 £23.21
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% -36.36% +150.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £74.26 £70.63 £75.47
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -8.57% -36.36% +158.82%

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 22 January 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 22 January 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 22 January 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 -4 226 £550 +4.76% 55
North of England -30 138 £465 +9.41% 63
South East -13 114 £503 +8.65% 95
Midlands +12 111 £380 -10.59% 39
West Midlands +28 107 £385 -4.94% 21
North West -2 95 £488 +2.90% 25
South West -24 63 £575 +5.12% 40
Yorkshire -38 48 £449 +49.50% 31
East of England -23 36 £475 +72.73% 39
North East -21 7 £575 +155.56% 10
East Midlands -36 4 £275 -38.89% 18
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 89 (13.69%) Microsoft Exchange
2 66 (10.15%) SharePoint
3 34 (5.23%) Skype for Business
4 19 (2.92%) Confluence
5 10 (1.54%) nginx
6 9 (1.38%) SharePoint Server
7 8 (1.23%) Exchange Server 2010
7 8 (1.23%) IIS
8 7 (1.08%) Exchange Server 2013
9 5 (0.77%) Apache
9 5 (0.77%) Exchange Server 2003
9 5 (0.77%) Exchange Server 2007
9 5 (0.77%) Office Communications Server
10 3 (0.46%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.46%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.31%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.31%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.31%) WordPress
Applications
1 43 (6.62%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (2.15%) MS Visio
3 9 (1.38%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 2 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.31%) Windchill
5 1 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.31%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.31%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 229 (35.23%) Azure
2 164 (25.23%) AWS
3 131 (20.15%) Microsoft 365
4 98 (15.08%) Entra ID
5 64 (9.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 54 (8.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 52 (8.00%) Amazon S3
8 46 (7.08%) Amazon EC2
9 44 (6.77%) GitHub
10 43 (6.62%) GCP
11 39 (6.00%) Amazon ELB
12 32 (4.92%) AWS CloudFormation
13 31 (4.77%) Amazon ECS
14 27 (4.15%) IaaS
15 24 (3.69%) Route 53
15 24 (3.69%) Serverless
16 22 (3.38%) AWS Lambda
16 22 (3.38%) SaaS
17 21 (3.23%) GitHub Actions
18 17 (2.62%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 289 (44.46%) DHCP
2 207 (31.85%) TCP/IP
3 205 (31.54%) Firewall
4 170 (26.15%) VPN
5 88 (13.54%) Network Security
6 86 (13.23%) SSL
7 84 (12.92%) WAN
8 68 (10.46%) LAN
9 65 (10.00%) HTTP
10 61 (9.38%) VLAN
11 43 (6.62%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 40 (6.15%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 39 (6.00%) Wireshark
14 38 (5.85%) BGP
14 38 (5.85%) Wireless
15 37 (5.69%) BIG-IP
16 36 (5.54%) Wi-Fi
17 35 (5.38%) DMZ
18 33 (5.08%) Skype
19 32 (4.92%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (4.46%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (3.23%) SQL Server
4 15 (2.31%) Amazon Aurora
5 9 (1.38%) MongoDB
6 7 (1.08%) DynamoDB
6 7 (1.08%) MySQL
7 6 (0.92%) Redis
8 5 (0.77%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
9 4 (0.62%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.62%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.62%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.46%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.15%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.15%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.15%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.15%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.15%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.15%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 75 (11.54%) Jenkins
2 59 (9.08%) Git
3 46 (7.08%) GitLab
4 33 (5.08%) JIRA
5 25 (3.85%) Fiddler
6 14 (2.15%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.23%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.77%) Subversion
9 4 (0.62%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.62%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.15%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.15%) GCC
10 1 (0.15%) MSI
10 1 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.15%) Travis CI
10 1 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
10 1 (0.15%) Vite
10 1 (0.15%) webpack
General
1 191 (29.38%) Social Skills
2 97 (14.92%) Analytical Skills
3 69 (10.62%) Public Sector
4 52 (8.00%) Banking
5 40 (6.15%) Investment Banking
6 38 (5.85%) Finance
7 35 (5.38%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (2.46%) Telecoms
9 15 (2.31%) Legal
9 15 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
10 8 (1.23%) Military
11 7 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (0.92%) Law
12 6 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (0.62%) Marketing
15 3 (0.46%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.46%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.46%) Local Government
16 2 (0.31%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 94 (14.46%) Network Engineer
2 81 (12.46%) Architect
3 64 (9.85%) Support Engineer
4 63 (9.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 62 (9.54%) Senior
6 61 (9.38%) Analyst
7 44 (6.77%) Platform Engineer
8 40 (6.15%) DevOps Engineer
8 40 (6.15%) IT Support
9 33 (5.08%) Security Engineer
10 30 (4.62%) AWS Engineer
11 26 (4.00%) 2nd Line Support
11 26 (4.00%) Web Engineer
12 23 (3.54%) Cloud Platform Engineer
13 22 (3.38%) Lead
13 22 (3.38%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 21 (3.23%) AWS DevOps
14 21 (3.23%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 21 (3.23%) Operations Engineer
15 18 (2.77%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (7.08%) LDAP
2 40 (6.15%) SAML
3 35 (5.38%) OAuth
4 21 (3.23%) OpenID
5 20 (3.08%) OAuth2
6 12 (1.85%) 802.1X
6 12 (1.85%) Kafka
7 10 (1.54%) REST
8 8 (1.23%) Elastic Stack
9 7 (1.08%) Middleware
9 7 (1.08%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (0.92%) AWS CDK
11 5 (0.77%) AngularJS
11 5 (0.77%) cloud-init
11 5 (0.77%) Keycloak
11 5 (0.77%) React
11 5 (0.77%) RESTful
11 5 (0.77%) YAML
12 4 (0.62%) ASP.NET Web API
12 4 (0.62%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 61 (9.38%) Replication
2 50 (7.69%) PKI
3 47 (7.23%) Data Centre
4 40 (6.15%) Management Information System
5 27 (4.15%) Onboarding
6 22 (3.38%) Enterprise Software
7 21 (3.23%) Analytical Mindset
7 21 (3.23%) Cloud Native
8 13 (2.00%) Hybrid Cloud
8 13 (2.00%) Public Cloud
8 13 (2.00%) Security Operations Centre
9 12 (1.85%) Cyberattack
10 11 (1.69%) Clustering
10 11 (1.69%) Private Cloud
10 11 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
11 10 (1.54%) Cyber Threat
11 10 (1.54%) Video Conferencing
12 9 (1.38%) NHS
12 9 (1.38%) SCADA
13 7 (1.08%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 329 (50.62%) Windows
2 164 (25.23%) Windows Server
3 123 (18.92%) Linux
4 63 (9.69%) Windows 10
5 27 (4.15%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (3.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (3.23%) Windows Server 2016
7 20 (3.08%) VMS
8 18 (2.77%) Unix
9 17 (2.62%) Amazon Linux
9 17 (2.62%) Android
10 16 (2.46%) Windows Server 2012
11 14 (2.15%) Ubuntu
12 13 (2.00%) CentOS
13 12 (1.85%) Apple iOS
14 10 (1.54%) Windows 7
14 10 (1.54%) Windows Server 2003
15 7 (1.08%) Mac OS
16 5 (0.77%) Solaris
17 4 (0.62%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (21.85%) Problem-Solving
2 117 (18.00%) Load Balancing
3 110 (16.92%) ITIL
4 106 (16.31%) CI/CD
4 106 (16.31%) DevOps
5 87 (13.38%) Infrastructure as Code
6 81 (12.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 78 (12.00%) High Availability
8 71 (10.92%) Change Management
9 63 (9.69%) Disaster Recovery
10 62 (9.54%) Migration
11 61 (9.38%) Cybersecurity
12 56 (8.62%) Incident Response
13 53 (8.15%) Service Management
14 51 (7.85%) Platform Engineering
14 51 (7.85%) Root Cause Analysis
15 49 (7.54%) Mentoring
16 47 (7.23%) Continuous Improvement
17 45 (6.92%) Identity Access Management
18 42 (6.46%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 201 (30.92%) PowerShell
2 141 (21.69%) Python
3 67 (10.31%) Bash
4 40 (6.15%) SQL
5 19 (2.92%) Java
6 18 (2.77%) Perl
7 14 (2.15%) Groovy
8 12 (1.85%) Bicep
8 12 (1.85%) VBScript
9 10 (1.54%) Shell Script
9 10 (1.54%) VB
10 8 (1.23%) Go
10 8 (1.23%) Ruby
11 7 (1.08%) Lisp
12 6 (0.92%) Kusto Query Language
13 5 (0.77%) C++
14 3 (0.46%) C#
14 3 (0.46%) JavaScript
14 3 (0.46%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.15%) PHP
Qualifications
1 250 (38.46%) Security Cleared
2 178 (27.38%) SC Cleared
3 81 (12.46%) DV Cleared
4 60 (9.23%) Degree
5 56 (8.62%) Microsoft Certification
6 41 (6.31%) Cisco Certification
7 38 (5.85%) CCNP
8 37 (5.69%) Azure Certification
9 25 (3.85%) AWS Certification
10 18 (2.77%) Network+ Certification
11 15 (2.31%) CCNA
12 11 (1.69%) Server+ Certification
13 10 (1.54%) CISSP
14 9 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
15 8 (1.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 8 (1.23%) CCIE
15 8 (1.23%) CompTIA Security+
15 8 (1.23%) ITIL Certification
15 8 (1.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 7 (1.08%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (5.23%) GDPR
2 20 (3.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 19 (2.92%) SLA
4 18 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 16 (2.46%) NIST
6 9 (1.38%) NCSC
6 9 (1.38%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.92%) QA
9 5 (0.77%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.46%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 2 (0.31%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 293 (45.08%) Active Directory
2 167 (25.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 84 (12.92%) Docker
4 47 (7.23%) Hyper-V
5 43 (6.62%) VMware NSX
6 26 (4.00%) Virtual Machines
7 24 (3.69%) vSphere
8 21 (3.23%) Firmware
9 18 (2.77%) VMware ESXi
10 17 (2.62%) DFS Replication
11 12 (1.85%) BitLocker
12 10 (1.54%) Postfix
13 9 (1.38%) Dovecot
13 9 (1.38%) Squid
13 9 (1.38%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
15 6 (0.92%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.92%) NFS
15 6 (0.92%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.77%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 125 (19.23%) Terraform
2 109 (16.77%) Ansible
3 79 (12.15%) Microsoft Intune
4 77 (11.85%) SCCM
5 56 (8.62%) Single Sign-On
6 55 (8.46%) Kubernetes
7 47 (7.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 37 (5.69%) vCenter Server
9 31 (4.77%) Grafana
10 23 (3.54%) Prometheus
11 19 (2.92%) WSUS
12 14 (2.15%) FortiGate
13 12 (1.85%) Argo
13 12 (1.85%) Proxmox
13 12 (1.85%) SCOM
14 11 (1.69%) Nessus
14 11 (1.69%) Packer
15 9 (1.38%) Puppet
16 8 (1.23%) Microsoft Clustering
17 6 (0.92%) Kibana
Vendors
1 257 (39.54%) Microsoft
2 204 (31.38%) VMware
3 114 (17.54%) F5
4 99 (15.23%) Cisco
5 73 (11.23%) ServiceNow
6 48 (7.38%) Palo Alto
7 47 (7.23%) CheckPoint
8 44 (6.77%) Splunk
9 41 (6.31%) Blue Coat
10 34 (5.23%) Citrix
11 32 (4.92%) SolarWinds
12 30 (4.62%) McAfee
13 26 (4.00%) NetApp
14 24 (3.69%) Veeam
15 23 (3.54%) Juniper
16 21 (3.23%) Okta
17 20 (3.08%) Red Hat
18 19 (2.92%) Dell
19 18 (2.77%) Fortinet
19 18 (2.77%) Zscaler