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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 112 133
Rank change year-on-year -22 +21 -6
Contract jobs citing DNS 784 580 646
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.95% 2.38% 1.75%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.49% 18.20% 13.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 491 409 433
10th Percentile £281 £250 £218
25th Percentile £400 £390 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £547 £488
Median % change year-on-year -11.33% +12.21% -7.14%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £600
90th Percentile £643 £675 £678
UK median daily rate £485 £535 £485
% change year-on-year -9.35% +10.42% -7.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 9 25
10th Percentile £15.96 £26.10 £19.10
25th Percentile £23.20 £45.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.50 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.21% +101.69% -18.56%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 -
90th Percentile £75.90 £82.48 £61.26
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -33.06% +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 3,827 3,186 4,910
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.50% 13.07% 13.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,402 1,972 2,964
10th Percentile £250 £220 £206
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 £488 £495
% change year-on-year +1.54% -1.52% -4.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 213 125 395
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.26 £16.93
Median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.05% -18.75% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.01 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £36.65 £40.00
% change year-on-year +14.45% -8.39% +111.30%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -37 257 £500 -2.98% 71
North of England +2 217 £425 -10.53% 52
South East -2 159 £525 -4.55% 82
North West +35 146 £425 - 24
Midlands +16 114 £380 -32.14% 35
West Midlands +26 100 £378 -29.44% 25
Yorkshire -31 67 £447 -18.77% 23
South West -47 48 £550 -5.38% 33
East of England -37 41 £450 -10.00% 28
East Midlands -32 13 £394 -30.62% 10
North East -27 6 £306 -9.93% 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 88 (11.22%) Microsoft Exchange
2 40 (5.10%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.66%) nginx
4 11 (1.40%) Confluence
4 11 (1.40%) IIS
5 8 (1.02%) Apache
6 4 (0.51%) Skype for Business
7 3 (0.38%) Exchange Server 2010
7 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.26%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.26%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.26%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.26%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.26%) WebSphere Portal
8 2 (0.26%) WordPress
9 1 (0.13%) Traefik
Applications
1 20 (2.55%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.53%) 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
1 266 (33.93%) Azure
2 134 (17.09%) AWS
3 131 (16.71%) Entra ID
4 111 (14.16%) Microsoft 365
5 84 (10.71%) GCP
6 57 (7.27%) GitHub
7 43 (5.48%) IaaS
8 39 (4.97%) SaaS
9 34 (4.34%) PaaS
10 33 (4.21%) Serverless
11 32 (4.08%) AWS CloudFormation
12 29 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
12 29 (3.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 28 (3.57%) Amazon EC2
14 27 (3.44%) Amazon S3
14 27 (3.44%) Route 53
15 24 (3.06%) Amazon EKS
16 23 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
17 21 (2.68%) OpenShift
18 20 (2.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 333 (42.47%) DHCP
2 239 (30.48%) Firewall
3 191 (24.36%) VPN
4 185 (23.60%) TCP/IP
5 99 (12.63%) WAN
6 93 (11.86%) LAN
7 84 (10.71%) Network Security
8 80 (10.20%) SSL
9 79 (10.08%) BIG-IP
10 78 (9.95%) BGP
11 71 (9.06%) HTTP
12 67 (8.55%) VLAN
13 45 (5.74%) OSPF
14 43 (5.48%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 43 (5.48%) Wi-Fi
15 40 (5.10%) Wireshark
16 39 (4.97%) Wireless
17 37 (4.72%) DMZ
17 37 (4.72%) Kerberos
18 30 (3.83%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.32%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.30%) Elasticsearch
3 11 (1.40%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (0.89%) Power BI
6 6 (0.77%) DynamoDB
7 5 (0.64%) Amazon Aurora
7 5 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.64%) MongoDB
7 5 (0.64%) MySQL
8 4 (0.51%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.51%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.51%) Redis
9 3 (0.38%) Data Hub
10 2 (0.26%) Relational Database
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 49 (6.25%) Jenkins
2 44 (5.61%) JIRA
3 28 (3.57%) Fiddler
4 24 (3.06%) Git
4 24 (3.06%) GitLab
5 9 (1.15%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.89%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.89%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.77%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.51%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.51%) Terragrunt
9 3 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.26%) Introscope
11 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 165 (21.05%) Social Skills
2 76 (9.69%) Analytical Skills
3 72 (9.18%) Banking
4 64 (8.16%) Finance
5 52 (6.63%) Public Sector
6 41 (5.23%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (5.10%) Investment Banking
8 22 (2.81%) Legal
9 18 (2.30%) Telecoms
10 17 (2.17%) Military
11 9 (1.15%) Law
11 9 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.77%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.64%) Local Government
14 4 (0.51%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.51%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.51%) Police
15 3 (0.38%) Advertising
16 2 (0.26%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 148 (18.88%) Network Engineer
2 105 (13.39%) Architect
3 89 (11.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 72 (9.18%) Analyst
5 61 (7.78%) Senior
6 58 (7.40%) Security Engineer
7 50 (6.38%) Web Engineer
8 40 (5.10%) Network Security Engineer
9 38 (4.85%) Support Engineer
10 33 (4.21%) Cisco Engineer
10 33 (4.21%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 31 (3.95%) Data Engineer
11 31 (3.95%) Data Network Engineer
12 30 (3.83%) Cisco Security Engineer
12 30 (3.83%) IT Support
13 29 (3.70%) IT Engineer
14 27 (3.44%) Administrator
14 27 (3.44%) Azure Engineer
15 26 (3.32%) Lead
16 24 (3.06%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (8.67%) LDAP
2 46 (5.87%) SAML
3 37 (4.72%) OAuth
4 35 (4.46%) 802.1X
5 26 (3.32%) OpenID
6 22 (2.81%) OpenTelemetry
7 11 (1.40%) OAuth2
8 10 (1.28%) JSON
9 9 (1.15%) Kafka
10 8 (1.02%) REST
11 7 (0.89%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (0.77%) ARM Templates
12 6 (0.77%) XMPP
13 5 (0.64%) Microsoft Graph
14 4 (0.51%) gRPC
14 4 (0.51%) JPA
14 4 (0.51%) RESTful
14 4 (0.51%) Spring
14 4 (0.51%) Spring Boot
14 4 (0.51%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.29%) Data Centre
2 64 (8.16%) PKI
3 51 (6.51%) Cloud Native
4 40 (5.10%) Replication
5 38 (4.85%) Clustering
6 36 (4.59%) Management Information System
6 36 (4.59%) Onboarding
7 32 (4.08%) Public Cloud
8 25 (3.19%) Hybrid Cloud
9 22 (2.81%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 18 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (1.91%) Cyber Threat
12 15 (1.91%) Cyberattack
12 15 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
12 15 (1.91%) Security Operations Centre
13 14 (1.79%) Enterprise Cloud
14 13 (1.66%) Analytical Mindset
15 12 (1.53%) Virtual Team
16 11 (1.40%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 329 (41.96%) Windows
2 194 (24.74%) Windows Server
3 95 (12.12%) Linux
4 42 (5.36%) Windows 10
5 30 (3.83%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.68%) Unix
7 19 (2.42%) Windows Server 2012
8 16 (2.04%) Windows Server 2016
9 14 (1.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 13 (1.66%) Android
11 10 (1.28%) Mac OS
12 9 (1.15%) Apple iOS
13 8 (1.02%) Windows Server 2003
14 6 (0.77%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.64%) CentOS
15 5 (0.64%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.51%) CatOS
16 4 (0.51%) VMS
17 2 (0.26%) Oracle Linux
17 2 (0.26%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (20.92%) Load Balancing
2 161 (20.54%) Problem-Solving
3 129 (16.45%) Migration
4 127 (16.20%) High Availability
5 114 (14.54%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 107 (13.65%) DevOps
7 104 (13.27%) ITIL
8 100 (12.76%) CI/CD
9 94 (11.99%) Infrastructure as Code
10 71 (9.06%) Disaster Recovery
11 70 (8.93%) Observability
12 68 (8.67%) Identity Access Management
13 66 (8.42%) Cybersecurity
14 62 (7.91%) Agile
15 60 (7.65%) ITSM
16 51 (6.51%) RBAC
17 50 (6.38%) Containerisation
18 48 (6.12%) Change Management
19 46 (5.87%) Data Loss Prevention
19 46 (5.87%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 164 (20.92%) PowerShell
2 115 (14.67%) Python
3 64 (8.16%) Bash
4 38 (4.85%) SQL
5 20 (2.55%) JavaScript
6 13 (1.66%) Bicep
7 12 (1.53%) Java
8 11 (1.40%) Go
9 10 (1.28%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.02%) Ruby
11 7 (0.89%) VBA
11 7 (0.89%) VBScript
12 4 (0.51%) VB
13 3 (0.38%) C
13 3 (0.38%) Groovy
14 2 (0.26%) Jython
14 2 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.26%) Lisp
14 2 (0.26%) Perl
15 1 (0.13%) C#
Qualifications
1 260 (33.16%) Security Cleared
2 174 (22.19%) SC Cleared
3 79 (10.08%) DV Cleared
4 69 (8.80%) Cisco Certification
5 42 (5.36%) Degree
6 39 (4.97%) CCNP
7 29 (3.70%) CCNA
8 26 (3.32%) Microsoft Certification
9 23 (2.93%) Azure Certification
10 19 (2.42%) CompTIA Security+
11 17 (2.17%) Network+ Certification
12 13 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
13 12 (1.53%) AWS Certification
14 10 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
14 10 (1.28%) JNCIA
14 10 (1.28%) JNCIS
15 9 (1.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 8 (1.02%) JNCIP
17 7 (0.89%) OCP
17 7 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.57%) SLA
2 24 (3.06%) GDPR
3 20 (2.55%) NIST
4 19 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (1.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 7 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.77%) NCSC
7 6 (0.77%) QA
8 4 (0.51%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.26%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.26%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.13%) COBIT
11 1 (0.13%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.13%) RMADS
System Software
1 322 (41.07%) Active Directory
2 170 (21.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 75 (9.57%) Hyper-V
4 49 (6.25%) VMware NSX
5 40 (5.10%) Docker
5 40 (5.10%) vSphere
6 29 (3.70%) Virtual Machines
7 26 (3.32%) Firmware
7 26 (3.32%) VMware ESXi
8 15 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
9 14 (1.79%) BitLocker
10 10 (1.28%) Squid
11 9 (1.15%) NFS
12 8 (1.02%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.64%) Postfix
13 5 (0.64%) Sendmail
13 5 (0.64%) Terminal Services
13 5 (0.64%) Varnish
14 4 (0.51%) XenApp
15 3 (0.38%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 131 (16.71%) Terraform
2 97 (12.37%) Ansible
3 91 (11.61%) Kubernetes
4 80 (10.20%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (9.18%) Single Sign-On
6 56 (7.14%) SCCM
7 45 (5.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (5.48%) FortiGate
9 42 (5.36%) Grafana
10 39 (4.97%) vCenter Server
11 26 (3.32%) Prometheus
12 24 (3.06%) WSUS
13 21 (2.68%) Argo
14 14 (1.79%) SCOM
15 10 (1.28%) Nessus
15 10 (1.28%) Puppet
16 9 (1.15%) HAProxy
16 9 (1.15%) vMotion
17 8 (1.02%) Consul
18 6 (0.77%) Nagios
Vendors
1 251 (32.02%) Microsoft
2 211 (26.91%) VMware
3 141 (17.98%) F5
4 136 (17.35%) Cisco
5 69 (8.80%) Splunk
6 62 (7.91%) ServiceNow
7 52 (6.63%) Citrix
8 46 (5.87%) Infoblox
9 44 (5.61%) SolarWinds
10 39 (4.97%) Google
10 39 (4.97%) Juniper
11 36 (4.59%) Blue Coat
12 35 (4.46%) Red Hat
13 31 (3.95%) McAfee
14 30 (3.83%) NetApp
15 29 (3.70%) Palo Alto
16 22 (2.81%) Dynatrace
16 22 (2.81%) Extreme Networks
17 20 (2.55%) CheckPoint
18 18 (2.30%) Fortinet