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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 121 116
Rank change year-on-year -23 -5 +7
Contract jobs citing DNS 626 571 756
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.97% 2.12% 2.09%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.82% 16.56% 14.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 402 362 495
10th Percentile £219 £223 £205
25th Percentile £400 £330 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £482 £475
Median % change year-on-year +8.86% +1.53% -9.52%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £588
90th Percentile £688 £724 £650
UK median daily rate £518 £500 £480
% change year-on-year +3.50% +4.17% -8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 5 16
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.78 £24.63
25th Percentile £20.56 £18.50 £29.94
Median hourly rate £46.86 £23.59 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.64% -57.11% +64.18%
75th Percentile £74.26 £25.30 £67.13
90th Percentile £78.50 £40.12 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £46.86 £23.59 £55.00
% change year-on-year +98.64% -57.11% +64.18%

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 3,326 3,449 5,078
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.45% 12.80% 14.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,155 2,011 3,140
10th Percentile £204 £220 £208
25th Percentile £356 £375 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -2.91%
75th Percentile £588 £606 £600
90th Percentile £680 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 150 103 318
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £18.93
25th Percentile £18.90 £20.52 £24.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -38.04% +132.95%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.00 £65.98
90th Percentile £74.26 £71.00 £75.38
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £33.75 £56.49
% change year-on-year -11.11% -40.25% +135.38%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -5 207 £550 +4.76% 68
North of England -33 130 £470 +10.59% 60
Midlands +20 118 £400 -5.88% 37
West Midlands +31 114 £400 -5.88% 20
South East -1 113 £500 +8.11% 103
North West +2 90 £475 - 27
South West -24 63 £575 +5.12% 33
Yorkshire -40 46 £454 +51.17% 28
East of England -24 33 £419 +52.27% 43
North East -22 7 £575 +155.56% 7
East Midlands -39 4 £275 -41.18% 16
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 84 (13.42%) Microsoft Exchange
2 67 (10.70%) SharePoint
3 33 (5.27%) Skype for Business
4 19 (3.04%) Confluence
5 10 (1.60%) nginx
5 10 (1.60%) SharePoint Server
6 9 (1.44%) Exchange Server 2010
7 8 (1.28%) Exchange Server 2013
7 8 (1.28%) IIS
8 6 (0.96%) Exchange Server 2003
8 6 (0.96%) Exchange Server 2007
8 6 (0.96%) Office Communications Server
9 5 (0.80%) Apache
10 3 (0.48%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.48%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.32%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.32%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.32%) WordPress
Applications
1 42 (6.71%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (2.08%) MS Visio
3 9 (1.44%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.32%) Windchill
5 1 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.32%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 213 (34.03%) Azure
2 161 (25.72%) AWS
3 130 (20.77%) Microsoft 365
4 87 (13.90%) Entra ID
5 62 (9.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 52 (8.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 50 (7.99%) Amazon S3
8 46 (7.35%) Amazon EC2
9 44 (7.03%) GitHub
10 41 (6.55%) GCP
11 39 (6.23%) Amazon ELB
12 31 (4.95%) Amazon ECS
13 30 (4.79%) AWS CloudFormation
14 26 (4.15%) IaaS
14 26 (4.15%) SaaS
15 25 (3.99%) Serverless
16 23 (3.67%) AWS Lambda
17 21 (3.35%) GitHub Actions
17 21 (3.35%) Route 53
18 17 (2.72%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 274 (43.77%) DHCP
2 198 (31.63%) TCP/IP
3 197 (31.47%) Firewall
4 163 (26.04%) VPN
5 87 (13.90%) SSL
6 83 (13.26%) Network Security
7 76 (12.14%) WAN
8 65 (10.38%) HTTP
9 63 (10.06%) LAN
10 57 (9.11%) VLAN
11 42 (6.71%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 40 (6.39%) SMTP
13 39 (6.23%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 38 (6.07%) Wireless
14 38 (6.07%) Wireshark
15 35 (5.59%) BGP
16 34 (5.43%) BIG-IP
16 34 (5.43%) DMZ
16 34 (5.43%) Wi-Fi
17 31 (4.95%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (4.63%) Amazon RDS
2 24 (3.83%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (3.35%) SQL Server
4 15 (2.40%) Amazon Aurora
5 9 (1.44%) MongoDB
6 7 (1.12%) DynamoDB
6 7 (1.12%) MySQL
7 6 (0.96%) Redis
8 5 (0.80%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
9 4 (0.64%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.64%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.64%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.48%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.16%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.16%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.16%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.16%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.16%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.16%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 75 (11.98%) Jenkins
2 59 (9.42%) Git
3 46 (7.35%) GitLab
4 33 (5.27%) JIRA
5 24 (3.83%) Fiddler
6 14 (2.24%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.28%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.80%) Subversion
9 4 (0.64%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.64%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.16%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.16%) Browser DevTools
10 1 (0.16%) GCC
10 1 (0.16%) MSI
10 1 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.16%) Travis CI
10 1 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
10 1 (0.16%) Vite
10 1 (0.16%) webpack
General
1 192 (30.67%) Social Skills
2 96 (15.34%) Analytical Skills
3 68 (10.86%) Public Sector
4 53 (8.47%) Banking
5 41 (6.55%) Investment Banking
6 36 (5.75%) Finance
7 35 (5.59%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (2.56%) Legal
8 16 (2.56%) Telecoms
9 15 (2.40%) Presentation Skills
10 8 (1.28%) Military
11 7 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (1.12%) Law
12 6 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.64%) Marketing
14 3 (0.48%) Aerospace
14 3 (0.48%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.48%) Local Government
15 2 (0.32%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 89 (14.22%) Network Engineer
2 76 (12.14%) Architect
3 67 (10.70%) Support Engineer
4 62 (9.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 61 (9.74%) Senior
6 58 (9.27%) Analyst
7 44 (7.03%) Platform Engineer
8 40 (6.39%) DevOps Engineer
8 40 (6.39%) IT Support
9 31 (4.95%) Security Engineer
10 30 (4.79%) AWS Engineer
11 26 (4.15%) 2nd Line Support
12 24 (3.83%) Web Engineer
13 23 (3.67%) Cloud Platform Engineer
14 22 (3.51%) Operations Engineer
14 22 (3.51%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 21 (3.35%) AWS DevOps
15 21 (3.35%) AWS DevOps Engineer
15 21 (3.35%) Lead
16 18 (2.88%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (6.07%) LDAP
2 31 (4.95%) SAML
3 26 (4.15%) OAuth
4 21 (3.35%) OpenID
5 20 (3.19%) OAuth2
6 12 (1.92%) 802.1X
6 12 (1.92%) Kafka
7 10 (1.60%) REST
8 8 (1.28%) Elastic Stack
9 7 (1.12%) Middleware
9 7 (1.12%) OpenTelemetry
10 5 (0.80%) AngularJS
10 5 (0.80%) cloud-init
10 5 (0.80%) Keycloak
10 5 (0.80%) React
10 5 (0.80%) RESTful
10 5 (0.80%) YAML
11 4 (0.64%) ASP.NET Web API
11 4 (0.64%) Microsoft Graph
11 4 (0.64%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 52 (8.31%) Replication
2 50 (7.99%) PKI
3 45 (7.19%) Data Centre
4 43 (6.87%) Management Information System
5 27 (4.31%) Onboarding
6 23 (3.67%) Analytical Mindset
7 22 (3.51%) Enterprise Software
8 18 (2.88%) Cloud Native
9 13 (2.08%) Hybrid Cloud
9 13 (2.08%) Public Cloud
9 13 (2.08%) Security Operations Centre
10 12 (1.92%) Cyberattack
11 11 (1.76%) Clustering
11 11 (1.76%) Cyber Threat
11 11 (1.76%) Private Cloud
11 11 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
12 10 (1.60%) Video Conferencing
13 7 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
13 7 (1.12%) NHS
13 7 (1.12%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 314 (50.16%) Windows
2 153 (24.44%) Windows Server
3 126 (20.13%) Linux
4 60 (9.58%) Windows 10
5 26 (4.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (3.99%) Windows Server 2019
7 20 (3.19%) VMS
7 20 (3.19%) Windows Server 2016
8 17 (2.72%) Amazon Linux
8 17 (2.72%) Android
8 17 (2.72%) Unix
9 16 (2.56%) Windows Server 2012
10 14 (2.24%) Ubuntu
11 12 (1.92%) Apple iOS
11 12 (1.92%) CentOS
12 11 (1.76%) Windows Server 2003
13 8 (1.28%) Windows 7
14 7 (1.12%) Mac OS
15 5 (0.80%) Solaris
16 4 (0.64%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (22.20%) Problem-Solving
2 111 (17.73%) Load Balancing
3 110 (17.57%) ITIL
4 105 (16.77%) DevOps
5 104 (16.61%) CI/CD
6 85 (13.58%) Infrastructure as Code
7 80 (12.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 70 (11.18%) Change Management
9 65 (10.38%) High Availability
10 60 (9.58%) Cybersecurity
11 58 (9.27%) Migration
12 56 (8.95%) Incident Response
13 53 (8.47%) Disaster Recovery
14 51 (8.15%) Service Management
15 50 (7.99%) Platform Engineering
15 50 (7.99%) Root Cause Analysis
16 47 (7.51%) Continuous Improvement
17 46 (7.35%) Mentoring
18 40 (6.39%) Containerisation
18 40 (6.39%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 184 (29.39%) PowerShell
2 141 (22.52%) Python
3 67 (10.70%) Bash
4 40 (6.39%) SQL
5 19 (3.04%) Java
6 18 (2.88%) Perl
7 14 (2.24%) Groovy
8 12 (1.92%) Bicep
9 9 (1.44%) Shell Script
9 9 (1.44%) VBScript
10 8 (1.28%) Go
10 8 (1.28%) Ruby
10 8 (1.28%) VB
11 7 (1.12%) Lisp
12 6 (0.96%) Kusto Query Language
13 5 (0.80%) C++
14 3 (0.48%) C#
14 3 (0.48%) JavaScript
14 3 (0.48%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.16%) PHP
Qualifications
1 243 (38.82%) Security Cleared
2 169 (27.00%) SC Cleared
3 82 (13.10%) DV Cleared
4 55 (8.79%) Microsoft Certification
5 54 (8.63%) Degree
6 40 (6.39%) Cisco Certification
7 37 (5.91%) CCNP
8 36 (5.75%) Azure Certification
9 22 (3.51%) AWS Certification
10 18 (2.88%) Network+ Certification
11 14 (2.24%) CCNA
12 11 (1.76%) Server+ Certification
13 10 (1.60%) CISSP
14 8 (1.28%) CCIE
14 8 (1.28%) ITIL Certification
14 8 (1.28%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 7 (1.12%) BPSS Clearance
15 7 (1.12%) Computer Science Degree
15 7 (1.12%) MCP
15 7 (1.12%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.31%) GDPR
2 19 (3.04%) SLA
3 18 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (2.56%) NIST
5 11 (1.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.44%) NCSC
6 9 (1.44%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.28%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.96%) QA
9 5 (0.80%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.48%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 2 (0.32%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 281 (44.89%) Active Directory
2 173 (27.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 84 (13.42%) Docker
4 47 (7.51%) Hyper-V
5 40 (6.39%) VMware NSX
6 26 (4.15%) Virtual Machines
7 23 (3.67%) vSphere
8 21 (3.35%) Firmware
9 17 (2.72%) DFS Replication
9 17 (2.72%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (2.40%) Dovecot
10 15 (2.40%) Postfix
11 11 (1.76%) Terminal Services
12 10 (1.60%) BitLocker
13 9 (1.44%) Squid
13 9 (1.44%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (1.28%) Virtual Desktop
15 6 (0.96%) Brightmail
15 6 (0.96%) ISA Server
15 6 (0.96%) NFS
Systems Management
1 120 (19.17%) Terraform
2 107 (17.09%) Ansible
3 77 (12.30%) Microsoft Intune
4 72 (11.50%) SCCM
5 55 (8.79%) Kubernetes
6 47 (7.51%) Single Sign-On
7 37 (5.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 37 (5.91%) vCenter Server
8 31 (4.95%) Grafana
9 23 (3.67%) Prometheus
10 19 (3.04%) WSUS
11 14 (2.24%) FortiGate
12 12 (1.92%) Argo
12 12 (1.92%) Proxmox
12 12 (1.92%) SCOM
13 11 (1.76%) Nessus
13 11 (1.76%) Packer
14 9 (1.44%) Microsoft Clustering
14 9 (1.44%) Puppet
15 6 (0.96%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 239 (38.18%) Microsoft
2 207 (33.07%) VMware
3 110 (17.57%) F5
4 97 (15.50%) Cisco
5 70 (11.18%) ServiceNow
6 48 (7.67%) Palo Alto
7 47 (7.51%) CheckPoint
8 42 (6.71%) Splunk
9 40 (6.39%) Blue Coat
10 35 (5.59%) Citrix
11 32 (5.11%) SolarWinds
12 29 (4.63%) McAfee
13 26 (4.15%) NetApp
13 26 (4.15%) Red Hat
14 23 (3.67%) Juniper
14 23 (3.67%) Veeam
15 19 (3.04%) Dell
16 18 (2.88%) Zscaler
17 17 (2.72%) Fortinet
18 14 (2.24%) Oracle