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

6 months to
15 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 114 131
Rank change year-on-year -22 +17 -5
Contract jobs citing DNS 744 610 694
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.02% 2.45% 1.83%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.05% 18.07% 13.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 468 418 456
10th Percentile £238 £250 £196
25th Percentile £400 £388 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% +16.67% -14.29%
75th Percentile £613 £607 £569
90th Percentile £688 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £506 £525 £465
% change year-on-year -3.57% +12.91% -11.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 9 25
10th Percentile £13.04 £17.26 £21.30
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -53.52% +101.69% -8.57%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £48.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.48 £64.50
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £54.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -31.19% +36.25% -8.57%

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 3,710 3,376 5,305
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.06% 13.56% 14.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,381 2,072 3,199
10th Percentile £206 £210 £205
25th Percentile £375 £370 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £488 £498 £475
% change year-on-year -2.01% +4.74% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 114 371
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.25 £21.46 £18.93
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% +7.69% +71.05%
75th Percentile £65.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £40.02 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +14.34% +7.69% +71.05%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -39 234 £519 -1.23% 65
North of England -10 209 £450 -5.26% 73
South East +11 153 £525 -3.67% 83
North West +23 137 £559 +25.56% 41
Midlands +17 106 £378 -31.05% 34
West Midlands +16 100 £378 -17.49% 21
Yorkshire -37 73 £447 -14.95% 23
South West -45 57 £650 +18.72% 25
East of England -32 39 £475 - 29
North East -20 7 £411 +21.70% 11
East Midlands -36 5 £375 -34.78% 13
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 94 (12.63%) Microsoft Exchange
2 50 (6.72%) SharePoint
3 25 (3.36%) Skype for Business
4 14 (1.88%) Confluence
5 11 (1.48%) nginx
6 7 (0.94%) IIS
7 5 (0.67%) Apache
8 3 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
9 2 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.27%) WordPress
10 1 (0.13%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.13%) Traefik
10 1 (0.13%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 30 (4.03%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (2.15%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.13%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 260 (34.95%) Azure
2 137 (18.41%) AWS
3 129 (17.34%) Entra ID
4 126 (16.94%) Microsoft 365
5 73 (9.81%) GCP
6 55 (7.39%) GitHub
7 43 (5.78%) IaaS
8 35 (4.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 34 (4.57%) AWS CloudFormation
10 29 (3.90%) Serverless
11 28 (3.76%) Amazon S3
11 28 (3.76%) PaaS
12 27 (3.63%) AWS Lambda
12 27 (3.63%) Route 53
12 27 (3.63%) SaaS
13 26 (3.49%) Amazon EC2
14 24 (3.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 23 (3.09%) Amazon EKS
15 23 (3.09%) OpenShift
16 22 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 331 (44.49%) DHCP
2 226 (30.38%) Firewall
3 205 (27.55%) TCP/IP
4 173 (23.25%) VPN
5 97 (13.04%) WAN
6 89 (11.96%) LAN
7 76 (10.22%) Network Security
7 76 (10.22%) SSL
8 70 (9.41%) BIG-IP
9 68 (9.14%) HTTP
10 67 (9.01%) BGP
11 65 (8.74%) VLAN
12 51 (6.85%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 50 (6.72%) Wi-Fi
14 41 (5.51%) DMZ
14 41 (5.51%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 40 (5.38%) Wireshark
16 38 (5.11%) OSPF
17 35 (4.70%) Kerberos
18 31 (4.17%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.82%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.15%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (1.75%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.61%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (0.94%) DynamoDB
6 6 (0.81%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (0.81%) MongoDB
6 6 (0.81%) Redis
7 5 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.67%) Data Hub
7 5 (0.67%) MySQL
8 4 (0.54%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.54%) Power BI
8 4 (0.54%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.40%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.13%) CouchDB
10 1 (0.13%) Electronic Patient Records
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 60 (8.06%) Jenkins
2 37 (4.97%) JIRA
3 33 (4.44%) GitLab
4 32 (4.30%) Fiddler
5 29 (3.90%) Git
6 8 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.94%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.81%) Browser DevTools
8 6 (0.81%) Terragrunt
9 5 (0.67%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.13%) GCC
12 1 (0.13%) Introscope
12 1 (0.13%) MSI
12 1 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.13%) Subversion
12 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 188 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 94 (12.63%) Analytical Skills
3 71 (9.54%) Banking
4 59 (7.93%) Finance
5 50 (6.72%) Public Sector
6 49 (6.59%) Investment Banking
7 46 (6.18%) Documentation Skills
8 22 (2.96%) Legal
9 16 (2.15%) Military
10 12 (1.61%) Telecoms
11 9 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
13 6 (0.81%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.67%) Law
15 4 (0.54%) Local Government
16 3 (0.40%) Aerospace
16 3 (0.40%) Manufacturing
17 2 (0.27%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 128 (17.20%) Network Engineer
2 111 (14.92%) Architect
3 65 (8.74%) Analyst
3 65 (8.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 63 (8.47%) Senior
5 58 (7.80%) Support Engineer
6 49 (6.59%) Security Engineer
7 45 (6.05%) Web Engineer
8 38 (5.11%) IT Support
9 30 (4.03%) Platform Engineer
10 29 (3.90%) Network Security Engineer
11 27 (3.63%) Cisco Engineer
11 27 (3.63%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 27 (3.63%) IT Engineer
11 27 (3.63%) Lead
12 24 (3.23%) Azure Engineer
13 22 (2.96%) DevOps Engineer
14 21 (2.82%) Data Engineer
14 21 (2.82%) Infrastructure Architect
14 21 (2.82%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (8.60%) LDAP
2 45 (6.05%) SAML
3 38 (5.11%) OAuth
4 30 (4.03%) OpenID
5 27 (3.63%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.69%) OAuth2
7 18 (2.42%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.34%) Kafka
9 8 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (1.08%) REST
10 7 (0.94%) Microsoft Graph
10 7 (0.94%) XMPP
11 6 (0.81%) ARM Templates
11 6 (0.81%) JSON
12 5 (0.67%) RESTful
13 4 (0.54%) gRPC
13 4 (0.54%) Hibernate
13 4 (0.54%) JPA
13 4 (0.54%) Middleware
13 4 (0.54%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.74%) Data Centre
1 65 (8.74%) PKI
2 48 (6.45%) Replication
3 40 (5.38%) Cloud Native
4 38 (5.11%) Management Information System
5 31 (4.17%) Onboarding
6 30 (4.03%) Clustering
7 26 (3.49%) Public Cloud
8 21 (2.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 20 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
10 19 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
11 16 (2.15%) Analytical Mindset
12 15 (2.02%) Cyber Threat
12 15 (2.02%) Cyberattack
12 15 (2.02%) Security Operations Centre
13 13 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (1.61%) NHS
14 12 (1.61%) Product Ownership
15 11 (1.48%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 336 (45.16%) Windows
2 181 (24.33%) Windows Server
3 105 (14.11%) Linux
4 47 (6.32%) Windows 10
5 25 (3.36%) Windows Server 2019
6 18 (2.42%) Android
6 18 (2.42%) Unix
7 15 (2.02%) Windows Server 2012
8 13 (1.75%) Apple iOS
9 12 (1.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (1.61%) Windows Server 2016
10 11 (1.48%) Windows 7
11 10 (1.34%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.94%) Windows Server 2003
13 6 (0.81%) CentOS
14 5 (0.67%) VMS
15 4 (0.54%) CatOS
16 3 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
17 2 (0.27%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (22.98%) Problem-Solving
2 167 (22.45%) Load Balancing
3 114 (15.32%) Migration
4 106 (14.25%) ITIL
5 103 (13.84%) CI/CD
5 103 (13.84%) DevOps
6 95 (12.77%) Infrastructure as Code
7 93 (12.50%) High Availability
8 88 (11.83%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 73 (9.81%) Identity Access Management
10 66 (8.87%) Disaster Recovery
11 63 (8.47%) Cybersecurity
12 60 (8.06%) RBAC
13 57 (7.66%) ITSM
14 55 (7.39%) Observability
14 55 (7.39%) Service Management
15 52 (6.99%) Incident Response
16 51 (6.85%) Change Management
17 50 (6.72%) Continuous Improvement
18 49 (6.59%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 209 (28.09%) PowerShell
2 127 (17.07%) Python
3 60 (8.06%) Bash
4 42 (5.65%) SQL
5 13 (1.75%) Bicep
5 13 (1.75%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.75%) VBScript
6 11 (1.48%) Java
7 10 (1.34%) VB
8 9 (1.21%) Ruby
8 9 (1.21%) Shell Script
9 7 (0.94%) Go
9 7 (0.94%) Lisp
10 5 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.67%) Perl
11 2 (0.27%) C
11 2 (0.27%) C#
11 2 (0.27%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.27%) VBA
12 1 (0.13%) PHP
Qualifications
1 258 (34.68%) Security Cleared
2 167 (22.45%) SC Cleared
3 92 (12.37%) DV Cleared
4 60 (8.06%) Cisco Certification
5 49 (6.59%) Degree
6 47 (6.32%) Microsoft Certification
7 39 (5.24%) CCNP
8 27 (3.63%) Azure Certification
9 19 (2.55%) CCNA
10 16 (2.15%) AWS Certification
10 16 (2.15%) CompTIA Security+
11 15 (2.02%) Network+ Certification
12 14 (1.88%) CISSP
13 10 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
14 9 (1.21%) BPSS Clearance
14 9 (1.21%) CCIE
14 9 (1.21%) JNCIA
14 9 (1.21%) JNCIP
14 9 (1.21%) JNCIS
14 9 (1.21%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.90%) GDPR
2 21 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 21 (2.82%) NIST
2 21 (2.82%) SLA
3 16 (2.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 9 (1.21%) PCI DSS
5 8 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (1.08%) NCSC
6 6 (0.81%) QA
7 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.27%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.13%) COBIT
8 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.13%) RMADS
System Software
1 324 (43.55%) Active Directory
2 168 (22.58%) VMware Infrastructure
3 59 (7.93%) Hyper-V
4 56 (7.53%) VMware NSX
5 53 (7.12%) Docker
6 43 (5.78%) vSphere
7 27 (3.63%) Firmware
8 24 (3.23%) Virtual Machines
9 19 (2.55%) VMware ESXi
10 17 (2.28%) BitLocker
11 14 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
12 9 (1.21%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (1.08%) Squid
14 5 (0.67%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.54%) NFS
15 4 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.40%) DFS Replication
16 3 (0.40%) Postfix
16 3 (0.40%) Sendmail
16 3 (0.40%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 138 (18.55%) Terraform
2 114 (15.32%) Ansible
3 90 (12.10%) Microsoft Intune
4 80 (10.75%) Kubernetes
5 71 (9.54%) SCCM
6 69 (9.27%) Single Sign-On
7 60 (8.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 42 (5.65%) FortiGate
9 41 (5.51%) vCenter Server
10 34 (4.57%) Grafana
11 22 (2.96%) Argo
12 19 (2.55%) Prometheus
13 14 (1.88%) SCOM
14 11 (1.48%) Puppet
14 11 (1.48%) WSUS
15 8 (1.08%) HAProxy
16 7 (0.94%) Consul
16 7 (0.94%) vMotion
17 6 (0.81%) Nagios
17 6 (0.81%) Nessus
Vendors
1 275 (36.96%) Microsoft
2 215 (28.90%) VMware
3 139 (18.68%) F5
4 117 (15.73%) Cisco
5 68 (9.14%) ServiceNow
6 63 (8.47%) Splunk
7 44 (5.91%) Blue Coat
7 44 (5.91%) Citrix
8 43 (5.78%) SolarWinds
9 37 (4.97%) McAfee
10 34 (4.57%) Juniper
10 34 (4.57%) Red Hat
11 32 (4.30%) Palo Alto
12 30 (4.03%) NetApp
13 28 (3.76%) Google
14 21 (2.82%) Infoblox
15 20 (2.69%) Pure Storage
16 19 (2.55%) CheckPoint
16 19 (2.55%) Extreme Networks
16 19 (2.55%) Fortinet