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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 126 142
Rank change year-on-year -18 +16 -11
Contract jobs citing DNS 913 646 557
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.96% 2.32% 1.71%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.96% 19.70% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 572 409 349
10th Percentile £281 £220 £256
25th Percentile £413 £380 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £650 £653 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 32 10
10th Percentile £26.13 £16.47 £19.85
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.28
Median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £23.99
Median % change year-on-year +41.07% +87.58% -49.49%
75th Percentile £76.50 £76.59 £28.83
90th Percentile £98.06 £89.17 £48.88
UK median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £23.99
% change year-on-year +41.07% +87.58% -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 4,356 3,280 3,933
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.35% 11.79% 12.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,574 2,056 2,278
10th Percentile £250 £225 £243
25th Percentile £400 £363 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £505
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.97% +1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £688 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.71% -4.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 384 170 195
10th Percentile £16.02 £15.50 £15.65
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.25 £23.99
Median hourly rate £43.50 £39.66 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +9.68% -30.85% +1.52%
75th Percentile £69.63 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £42.50 £51.00
% change year-on-year -22.35% -16.67% -9.72%

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 -41 323 £495 -5.10% 414
North of England +14 200 £500 +11.48% 111
South East -3 173 £538 +7.50% 169
North West +10 123 £500 +11.48% 78
Midlands -40 108 £450 - 80
South West +6 99 £575 +4.55% 72
West Midlands -41 90 £425 -5.56% 49
Yorkshire -2 63 £500 - 24
East of England -44 43 £475 -13.64% 52
East Midlands -6 17 £450 - 30
North East -42 14 £419 +23.16% 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
1 103 (11.28%) Microsoft Exchange
2 84 (9.20%) SharePoint
3 24 (2.63%) Confluence
4 14 (1.53%) Apache
4 14 (1.53%) nginx
5 10 (1.10%) IIS
6 8 (0.88%) Skype for Business
7 6 (0.66%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.55%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.33%) Exchange Server 2013
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Spark
10 1 (0.11%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.11%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.11%) Traefik
10 1 (0.11%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.11%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.11%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 24 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.22%) Houdini
5 2 (0.22%) NUKE
6 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 14 (1.53%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 380 (41.62%) Azure
2 185 (20.26%) Microsoft 365
3 180 (19.72%) AWS
4 176 (19.28%) Entra ID
5 77 (8.43%) GCP
6 69 (7.56%) GitHub
7 53 (5.81%) IaaS
8 48 (5.26%) OneDrive
9 41 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
10 40 (4.38%) GitHub Actions
11 39 (4.27%) SaaS
12 37 (4.05%) Azure Monitor
13 31 (3.40%) PaaS
14 26 (2.85%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 24 (2.63%) AWS CloudFormation
15 24 (2.63%) OpenShift
15 24 (2.63%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 20 (2.19%) Azure Key Vault
16 20 (2.19%) Azure Sentinel
17 19 (2.08%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 454 (49.73%) DHCP
2 342 (37.46%) Firewall
3 286 (31.33%) TCP/IP
4 269 (29.46%) VPN
5 128 (14.02%) Network Security
6 117 (12.81%) VLAN
7 107 (11.72%) WAN
8 92 (10.08%) SSL
9 84 (9.20%) LAN
10 79 (8.65%) BGP
11 73 (8.00%) Wireless
12 61 (6.68%) BIG-IP
12 61 (6.68%) HTTP
13 58 (6.35%) Wi-Fi
14 56 (6.13%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 55 (6.02%) SAN
16 51 (5.59%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 42 (4.60%) OSPF
18 41 (4.49%) DMZ
19 39 (4.27%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (5.15%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.64%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (1.53%) Amazon RDS
4 13 (1.42%) MySQL
5 9 (0.99%) MongoDB
6 8 (0.88%) Data Lake
6 8 (0.88%) NoSQL
6 8 (0.88%) Power BI
7 7 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (0.66%) Redis
9 5 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
9 5 (0.55%) Big Data
10 4 (0.44%) Db2
11 3 (0.33%) Metadata
12 2 (0.22%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (0.22%) Flink
12 2 (0.22%) KDB
13 1 (0.11%) BigQuery
13 1 (0.11%) DynamoDB
13 1 (0.11%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 74 (8.11%) JIRA
2 53 (5.81%) Jenkins
3 45 (4.93%) Git
4 36 (3.94%) GitLab
5 13 (1.42%) Fiddler
6 8 (0.88%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (0.77%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.55%) Chocolatey
8 5 (0.55%) Selenium
9 4 (0.44%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (0.33%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.33%) MSI
11 2 (0.22%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.22%) Vagrant
12 1 (0.11%) Locust
12 1 (0.11%) Newman
12 1 (0.11%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.11%) TestCafe
General
1 246 (26.94%) Social Skills
2 109 (11.94%) Analytical Skills
3 77 (8.43%) Finance
4 64 (7.01%) Public Sector
5 55 (6.02%) Banking
6 41 (4.49%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (3.61%) Telecoms
8 25 (2.74%) Investment Banking
9 16 (1.75%) Legal
10 12 (1.31%) Aerospace
10 12 (1.31%) Police
11 11 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (1.20%) Local Government
12 10 (1.10%) Military
13 9 (0.99%) Front Office
14 8 (0.88%) Law
14 8 (0.88%) Manufacturing
15 7 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
15 7 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 169 (18.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 152 (16.65%) Network Engineer
3 109 (11.94%) Senior
4 97 (10.62%) Support Engineer
5 79 (8.65%) Cloud Engineer
6 69 (7.56%) Architect
7 49 (5.37%) IT Support
8 45 (4.93%) IT Engineer
8 45 (4.93%) Security Engineer
9 44 (4.82%) Azure Engineer
10 41 (4.49%) Platform Engineer
11 40 (4.38%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 39 (4.27%) Analyst
13 38 (4.16%) DevOps Engineer
14 34 (3.72%) Administrator
15 33 (3.61%) Network Security Engineer
15 33 (3.61%) Senior Network Engineer
16 32 (3.50%) IT Support Engineer
17 31 (3.40%) Cisco Engineer
18 29 (3.18%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 198 (21.69%) Terraform
2 32 (3.50%) 802.1X
3 29 (3.18%) SAML
4 27 (2.96%) LDAP
5 25 (2.74%) ARM Templates
5 25 (2.74%) REST
6 21 (2.30%) OAuth
7 16 (1.75%) OpenID
8 14 (1.53%) Kafka
9 13 (1.42%) JSON
10 12 (1.31%) YAML
11 11 (1.20%) Elastic Stack
12 10 (1.10%) CSS
13 7 (0.77%) .NET
13 7 (0.77%) Software Packaging
14 6 (0.66%) Flask
14 6 (0.66%) HTML
14 6 (0.66%) Jinja
14 6 (0.66%) Middleware
14 6 (0.66%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 120 (13.14%) Data Centre
2 94 (10.30%) PKI
3 72 (7.89%) Onboarding
4 68 (7.45%) Hybrid Cloud
5 53 (5.81%) Management Information System
6 33 (3.61%) Cloud Native
7 29 (3.18%) Replication
8 28 (3.07%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.85%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 24 (2.63%) Clustering
11 20 (2.19%) Linux Command Line
11 20 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
12 15 (1.64%) Cyber Threat
13 14 (1.53%) Driving Licence
14 13 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.42%) Security Posture
15 11 (1.20%) Video Conferencing
16 10 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
16 10 (1.10%) Enterprise Cloud
17 9 (0.99%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 457 (50.05%) Windows
2 257 (28.15%) Windows Server
3 203 (22.23%) Linux
4 63 (6.90%) Windows 10
5 41 (4.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 40 (4.38%) Windows Server 2019
7 34 (3.72%) Mac OS
8 30 (3.29%) Unix
9 25 (2.74%) Ubuntu
10 23 (2.52%) Windows Server 2012
11 20 (2.19%) Apple iOS
11 20 (2.19%) CentOS
12 18 (1.97%) Android
13 14 (1.53%) VMS
14 12 (1.31%) Windows 7
14 12 (1.31%) Windows Server 2016
15 7 (0.77%) Rocky
15 7 (0.77%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.44%) AIX
16 4 (0.44%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 235 (25.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 205 (22.45%) Problem-Solving
3 187 (20.48%) ITIL
4 180 (19.72%) Infrastructure as Code
5 155 (16.98%) Load Balancing
6 144 (15.77%) DevOps
7 141 (15.44%) CI/CD
7 141 (15.44%) Migration
8 117 (12.81%) ITSM
9 106 (11.61%) High Availability
10 103 (11.28%) Continuous Improvement
11 96 (10.51%) Cybersecurity
12 94 (10.30%) Agile
12 94 (10.30%) Technical Leadership
13 82 (8.98%) Root Cause Analysis
14 81 (8.87%) Observability
15 79 (8.65%) Disaster Recovery
16 77 (8.43%) Project Delivery
17 76 (8.32%) Change Management
18 72 (7.89%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 237 (25.96%) PowerShell
2 182 (19.93%) Python
3 118 (12.92%) Bash
4 59 (6.46%) SQL
5 45 (4.93%) Bicep
6 18 (1.97%) Shell Script
7 15 (1.64%) ActionScript
8 14 (1.53%) JavaScript
9 12 (1.31%) Go
10 10 (1.10%) Java
10 10 (1.10%) VBScript
11 9 (0.99%) Perl
12 7 (0.77%) Groovy
12 7 (0.77%) VBA
13 6 (0.66%) VB
14 4 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
14 4 (0.44%) Ruby
15 3 (0.33%) C
15 3 (0.33%) C#
15 3 (0.33%) C++
Qualifications
1 348 (38.12%) Security Cleared
2 193 (21.14%) SC Cleared
3 156 (17.09%) DV Cleared
4 78 (8.54%) Cisco Certification
5 73 (8.00%) Degree
6 67 (7.34%) CCNP
7 55 (6.02%) Azure Certification
8 48 (5.26%) Microsoft Certification
9 40 (4.38%) CCNA
10 26 (2.85%) Network+ Certification
11 23 (2.52%) AWS Certification
12 21 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
13 19 (2.08%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 16 (1.75%) CCIE
14 16 (1.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 15 (1.64%) VCAP
16 12 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.20%) A+ Certification
17 11 (1.20%) Server+ Certification
18 10 (1.10%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (4.16%) SLA
2 22 (2.41%) NIST
3 16 (1.75%) NCSC
3 16 (1.75%) QA
4 14 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (0.55%) GDPR
6 5 (0.55%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 3 (0.33%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.33%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.22%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.22%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 418 (45.78%) Active Directory
2 262 (28.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 112 (12.27%) Hyper-V
4 87 (9.53%) VMware ESXi
5 76 (8.32%) vSphere
6 65 (7.12%) VMware NSX
7 60 (6.57%) Docker
8 45 (4.93%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (4.16%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (2.08%) Firmware
11 17 (1.86%) NFS
12 16 (1.75%) vCloud
13 11 (1.20%) BitLocker
14 9 (0.99%) Postfix
14 9 (0.99%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.66%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.66%) VMware Workstation
16 5 (0.55%) Dovecot
16 5 (0.55%) Squid
16 5 (0.55%) UAG
Systems Management
1 134 (14.68%) Ansible
2 110 (12.05%) Microsoft Intune
3 108 (11.83%) Kubernetes
4 79 (8.65%) SCCM
5 64 (7.01%) vCenter Server
6 57 (6.24%) Grafana
7 49 (5.37%) Prometheus
8 48 (5.26%) Single Sign-On
9 38 (4.16%) SCOM
10 31 (3.40%) WSUS
11 20 (2.19%) FortiGate
12 17 (1.86%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (1.75%) Puppet
13 16 (1.75%) VxRail
14 15 (1.64%) Packer
15 13 (1.42%) NetBackup
16 12 (1.31%) Istio
17 11 (1.20%) Progress Chef
18 10 (1.10%) systemd
18 10 (1.10%) vMotion
Vendors
1 375 (41.07%) Microsoft
2 319 (34.94%) VMware
3 171 (18.73%) Cisco
4 124 (13.58%) F5
5 87 (9.53%) ServiceNow
6 50 (5.48%) Google
6 50 (5.48%) Palo Alto
7 47 (5.15%) Infoblox
8 46 (5.04%) Citrix
8 46 (5.04%) SolarWinds
9 40 (4.38%) Juniper
10 32 (3.50%) NetApp
10 32 (3.50%) Red Hat
10 32 (3.50%) Splunk
11 31 (3.40%) CheckPoint
12 30 (3.29%) Dynatrace
13 27 (2.96%) Fortinet
14 25 (2.74%) Zscaler
15 23 (2.52%) Veeam
16 22 (2.41%) Blue Coat