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 31 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 140 119 116
Rank change year-on-year -21 -3 +15
Contract jobs citing DNS 652 593 776
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.06% 2.10% 2.14%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.23% 16.38% 15.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 408 372 503
10th Percentile £219 £223 £211
25th Percentile £400 £330 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £485
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -2.06% -7.62%
75th Percentile £608 £589 £593
90th Percentile £688 £709 £650
UK median daily rate £525 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +10.53% -2.56% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 6 15
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.40 £25.40
25th Percentile £25.70 £19.65 £31.25
Median hourly rate £57.50 £23.90 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +140.64% -56.55% +109.52%
75th Percentile £77.50 £28.83 £67.25
90th Percentile £85.60 £40.00 £74.80
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £23.59 £55.70
% change year-on-year +143.75% -57.65% +112.19%

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 3,391 3,621 5,074
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.71% 12.80% 13.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,196 2,126 3,143
10th Percentile £205 £220 £206
25th Percentile £356 £375 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £683 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 105 311
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £18.57
25th Percentile £20.13 £20.30 £23.36
Median hourly rate £34.50 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -38.04% +50.64%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £75.75 £72.75 £76.10
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -2.86% -38.04% +61.40%

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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 2025. 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 -4 223 £550 +4.76% 167
North of England -23 133 £470 +17.50% 193
Midlands +21 117 £400 +3.90% 153
South East -4 115 £500 +8.11% 270
West Midlands +38 113 £401 -5.65% 78
North West 0 89 £500 +5.26% 106
South West -10 61 £575 +12.20% 102
Yorkshire -33 51 £447 +43.04% 72
East of England -21 38 £363 +28.32% 145
North East -15 7 £575 +283.33% 17
East Midlands -32 4 £275 -26.67% 68
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 86 (13.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 71 (10.89%) SharePoint
3 32 (4.91%) Skype for Business
4 22 (3.37%) Confluence
5 11 (1.69%) nginx
5 11 (1.69%) SharePoint Server
6 10 (1.53%) Exchange Server 2010
7 9 (1.38%) Exchange Server 2013
8 8 (1.23%) IIS
9 7 (1.07%) Exchange Server 2003
9 7 (1.07%) Exchange Server 2007
9 7 (1.07%) Office Communications Server
10 5 (0.77%) Apache
11 4 (0.61%) OpenStack
12 3 (0.46%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.31%) Apache Spark
13 2 (0.31%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.31%) Oracle HTTP Server
13 2 (0.31%) WebLogic
13 2 (0.31%) WordPress
Applications
1 45 (6.90%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.53%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 10 (1.53%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.31%) Windchill
6 1 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.31%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.31%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.15%) Eikon
2 1 (0.15%) Eze OMS
2 1 (0.15%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 212 (32.52%) Azure
2 163 (25.00%) AWS
3 140 (21.47%) Microsoft 365
4 88 (13.50%) Entra ID
5 69 (10.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 58 (8.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 57 (8.74%) Amazon S3
8 53 (8.13%) Amazon EC2
9 50 (7.67%) GitHub
10 44 (6.75%) GCP
11 42 (6.44%) Amazon ELB
12 32 (4.91%) Amazon ECS
12 32 (4.91%) AWS CloudFormation
13 31 (4.75%) IaaS
14 30 (4.60%) SaaS
15 27 (4.14%) Serverless
16 25 (3.83%) AWS Lambda
16 25 (3.83%) GitHub Actions
17 23 (3.53%) AWS KMS
18 18 (2.76%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 275 (42.18%) DHCP
2 222 (34.05%) Firewall
3 220 (33.74%) TCP/IP
4 160 (24.54%) VPN
5 96 (14.72%) Network Security
6 95 (14.57%) SSL
7 74 (11.35%) HTTP
8 69 (10.58%) WAN
9 58 (8.90%) LAN
10 57 (8.74%) VLAN
11 50 (7.67%) SMTP
12 43 (6.60%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 40 (6.13%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 39 (5.98%) Wireless
15 38 (5.83%) FTP
16 34 (5.21%) BGP
16 34 (5.21%) DMZ
16 34 (5.21%) Wi-Fi
17 31 (4.75%) Wireshark
18 29 (4.45%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (4.91%) Amazon RDS
2 26 (3.99%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (3.22%) SQL Server
4 16 (2.45%) Amazon Aurora
5 10 (1.53%) MongoDB
6 6 (0.92%) DynamoDB
6 6 (0.92%) MySQL
7 5 (0.77%) BigQuery
7 5 (0.77%) Data Hub
7 5 (0.77%) NoSQL
7 5 (0.77%) Redis
8 4 (0.61%) Big Data
8 4 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (0.61%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.46%) DocumentDB
10 2 (0.31%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (0.31%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.31%) Hadoop
10 2 (0.31%) Parquet
10 2 (0.31%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 86 (13.19%) Jenkins
2 68 (10.43%) Git
3 49 (7.52%) GitLab
4 41 (6.29%) JIRA
5 20 (3.07%) Fiddler
6 17 (2.61%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.23%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.77%) Subversion
9 4 (0.61%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.61%) TeamCity
10 3 (0.46%) Visual Studio Code
11 2 (0.31%) Browser DevTools
11 2 (0.31%) MLflow
11 2 (0.31%) Poetry
11 2 (0.31%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.31%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.31%) Vite
11 2 (0.31%) webpack
12 1 (0.15%) GCC
12 1 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 205 (31.44%) Social Skills
2 109 (16.72%) Analytical Skills
3 75 (11.50%) Public Sector
4 51 (7.82%) Banking
5 46 (7.06%) Finance
6 38 (5.83%) Investment Banking
7 36 (5.52%) Documentation Skills
8 18 (2.76%) Presentation Skills
9 17 (2.61%) Telecoms
10 16 (2.45%) Legal
11 10 (1.53%) Law
11 10 (1.53%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.38%) Military
13 7 (1.07%) Aerospace
13 7 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.77%) Marketing
15 4 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.46%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.46%) Front Office
16 3 (0.46%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 84 (12.88%) Network Engineer
2 74 (11.35%) Support Engineer
3 70 (10.74%) Architect
4 67 (10.28%) Senior
5 66 (10.12%) Analyst
6 64 (9.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 49 (7.52%) Platform Engineer
8 47 (7.21%) DevOps Engineer
9 41 (6.29%) IT Support
10 34 (5.21%) AWS Engineer
10 34 (5.21%) Security Engineer
11 26 (3.99%) 2nd Line Support
11 26 (3.99%) Cloud Platform Engineer
12 24 (3.68%) AWS DevOps
12 24 (3.68%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 23 (3.53%) Lead
13 23 (3.53%) Operations Engineer
13 23 (3.53%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 23 (3.53%) SOC Analyst
14 21 (3.22%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.60%) LDAP
2 22 (3.37%) SAML
3 20 (3.07%) OAuth
4 18 (2.76%) OpenID
5 17 (2.61%) OAuth2
6 13 (1.99%) Elastic Stack
7 12 (1.84%) 802.1X
7 12 (1.84%) Kafka
8 10 (1.53%) Middleware
9 9 (1.38%) REST
10 7 (1.07%) AngularJS
10 7 (1.07%) React
11 6 (0.92%) cloud-init
11 6 (0.92%) Keycloak
11 6 (0.92%) OpenTelemetry
11 6 (0.92%) YAML
12 5 (0.77%) Flask
12 5 (0.77%) JSON
13 4 (0.61%) ASP.NET Web API
13 4 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 52 (7.98%) Replication
2 51 (7.82%) Management Information System
3 50 (7.67%) PKI
4 47 (7.21%) Data Centre
5 29 (4.45%) Analytical Mindset
5 29 (4.45%) Onboarding
6 22 (3.37%) Enterprise Software
7 20 (3.07%) Cyberattack
8 19 (2.91%) Security Operations Centre
9 17 (2.61%) Cloud Native
9 17 (2.61%) Cyber Threat
10 15 (2.30%) Hybrid Cloud
11 13 (1.99%) CSOC
12 11 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
12 11 (1.69%) Video Conferencing
13 10 (1.53%) Clustering
13 10 (1.53%) Private Cloud
13 10 (1.53%) Public Cloud
14 8 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
14 8 (1.23%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 328 (50.31%) Windows
2 147 (22.55%) Windows Server
3 146 (22.39%) Linux
4 62 (9.51%) Windows 10
5 28 (4.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (3.83%) VMS
7 23 (3.53%) Windows Server 2016
7 23 (3.53%) Windows Server 2019
8 22 (3.37%) Unix
9 20 (3.07%) Amazon Linux
10 19 (2.91%) Windows Server 2012
11 18 (2.76%) Android
12 16 (2.45%) Ubuntu
13 14 (2.15%) CentOS
14 13 (1.99%) Mac OS
15 12 (1.84%) Apple iOS
16 11 (1.69%) Windows Server 2003
17 8 (1.23%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.77%) Solaris
19 3 (0.46%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 149 (22.85%) Problem-Solving
2 121 (18.56%) ITIL
3 119 (18.25%) DevOps
4 117 (17.94%) CI/CD
5 104 (15.95%) Load Balancing
6 96 (14.72%) Infrastructure as Code
7 87 (13.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 72 (11.04%) Change Management
9 71 (10.89%) Cybersecurity
10 64 (9.82%) High Availability
10 64 (9.82%) Incident Response
11 63 (9.66%) Migration
12 56 (8.59%) Root Cause Analysis
13 55 (8.44%) Platform Engineering
14 52 (7.98%) Continuous Improvement
14 52 (7.98%) Disaster Recovery
14 52 (7.98%) Service Management
15 50 (7.67%) SIEM
16 45 (6.90%) Containerisation
17 44 (6.75%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 194 (29.75%) PowerShell
2 162 (24.85%) Python
3 77 (11.81%) Bash
4 47 (7.21%) SQL
5 20 (3.07%) Java
5 20 (3.07%) Perl
6 19 (2.91%) Groovy
7 13 (1.99%) Bicep
8 11 (1.69%) Shell Script
9 10 (1.53%) Go
10 8 (1.23%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (1.23%) Ruby
11 7 (1.07%) Lisp
11 7 (1.07%) VBScript
12 6 (0.92%) VB
13 5 (0.77%) C++
14 4 (0.61%) JavaScript
15 3 (0.46%) C#
15 3 (0.46%) T-SQL
15 3 (0.46%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 249 (38.19%) Security Cleared
2 176 (26.99%) SC Cleared
3 82 (12.58%) DV Cleared
4 63 (9.66%) Degree
5 61 (9.36%) Microsoft Certification
6 47 (7.21%) Cisco Certification
7 39 (5.98%) Azure Certification
7 39 (5.98%) CCNP
8 23 (3.53%) AWS Certification
9 18 (2.76%) CISSP
10 17 (2.61%) CCNA
10 17 (2.61%) Network+ Certification
11 12 (1.84%) CompTIA Security+
12 11 (1.69%) MCSE
12 11 (1.69%) Server+ Certification
13 10 (1.53%) CCIE
14 9 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
15 8 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
15 8 (1.23%) MCSA
15 8 (1.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (4.45%) GDPR
2 18 (2.76%) SLA
3 16 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (2.45%) NIST
4 10 (1.53%) NCSC
5 8 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (1.23%) PCI DSS
6 7 (1.07%) Accessibility
6 7 (1.07%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.77%) QA
8 4 (0.61%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.31%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.31%) WCAG
11 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 287 (44.02%) Active Directory
2 167 (25.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 91 (13.96%) Docker
4 46 (7.06%) Hyper-V
5 40 (6.13%) VMware NSX
6 29 (4.45%) Virtual Machines
7 24 (3.68%) vSphere
8 20 (3.07%) DFS Replication
9 19 (2.91%) Firmware
10 18 (2.76%) VMware ESXi
11 16 (2.45%) Dovecot
11 16 (2.45%) Postfix
12 13 (1.99%) Terminal Services
13 10 (1.53%) Squid
14 9 (1.38%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
16 7 (1.07%) BitLocker
16 7 (1.07%) Brightmail
16 7 (1.07%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.77%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 136 (20.86%) Terraform
2 106 (16.26%) Ansible
3 74 (11.35%) SCCM
4 73 (11.20%) Microsoft Intune
5 62 (9.51%) Kubernetes
6 41 (6.29%) Grafana
6 41 (6.29%) vCenter Server
7 39 (5.98%) Single Sign-On
8 35 (5.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 31 (4.75%) Prometheus
10 19 (2.91%) WSUS
11 16 (2.45%) Nessus
12 15 (2.30%) Argo
13 14 (2.15%) FortiGate
14 13 (1.99%) Packer
14 13 (1.99%) Proxmox
15 12 (1.84%) SCOM
16 10 (1.53%) Microsoft Clustering
17 9 (1.38%) Progress Chef
17 9 (1.38%) Puppet
Vendors
1 249 (38.19%) Microsoft
2 202 (30.98%) VMware
3 106 (16.26%) F5
4 95 (14.57%) Cisco
5 73 (11.20%) ServiceNow
6 52 (7.98%) Palo Alto
7 50 (7.67%) CheckPoint
8 47 (7.21%) Splunk
9 37 (5.67%) Citrix
10 36 (5.52%) Blue Coat
11 31 (4.75%) Red Hat
11 31 (4.75%) SolarWinds
12 25 (3.83%) McAfee
13 24 (3.68%) Juniper
13 24 (3.68%) NetApp
13 24 (3.68%) Veeam
14 18 (2.76%) Zscaler
15 17 (2.61%) Fortinet
15 17 (2.61%) Google
16 16 (2.45%) Oracle