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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 110 128
Rank change year-on-year -24 +18 -3
Contract jobs citing DNS 751 587 676
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.99% 2.42% 1.79%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.06% 18.26% 12.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 469 412 450
10th Percentile £263 £250 £200
25th Percentile £400 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £465
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +12.91% -11.43%
75th Percentile £606 £604 £575
90th Percentile £688 £660 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 10 24
10th Percentile £13.35 £17.88 £20.98
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.69 £25.00
Median hourly rate £45.71 £67.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.37% +68.97% -13.24%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.27 £42.19
90th Percentile £76.05 £82.29 £65.25
UK median hourly rate £45.71 £41.25 £40.00
% change year-on-year +10.82% +3.13% -18.56%

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 3,743 3,215 5,244
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.94% 13.27% 13.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,395 2,012 3,169
10th Percentile £213 £213 £205
25th Percentile £382 £366 £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 £492 £490 £475
% change year-on-year +0.41% +3.16% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 120 376
10th Percentile £15.62 £14.91 £13.68
25th Percentile £19.09 £21.31 £17.72
Median hourly rate £40.02 £35.75 £39.25
Median % change year-on-year +11.94% -8.92% +106.58%
75th Percentile £66.94 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.05 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +12.86% +7.69% +68.39%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -40 244 £500 -0.05% 81
North of England 0 211 £447 -5.95% 68
South East +3 155 £525 -4.55% 80
North West +26 137 £475 +11.76% 37
Midlands +13 106 £400 -27.93% 45
West Midlands +22 96 £400 -19.40% 29
Yorkshire -29 76 £443 -19.55% 22
South West -44 48 £693 +26.37% 33
East of England -34 39 £475 -5.00% 24
East Midlands -34 9 £375 -33.92% 16
North East -18 4 £200 -51.52% 11
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 (11.72%) Microsoft Exchange
2 41 (5.46%) SharePoint
3 19 (2.53%) Skype for Business
4 13 (1.73%) Confluence
5 12 (1.60%) nginx
6 7 (0.93%) IIS
7 5 (0.67%) Apache
8 3 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
9 2 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.27%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.27%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.27%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.27%) WebSphere Portal
9 2 (0.27%) WordPress
10 1 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.13%) Traefik
Applications
1 25 (3.33%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.86%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.13%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 267 (35.55%) Azure
2 147 (19.57%) AWS
3 130 (17.31%) Entra ID
4 119 (15.85%) Microsoft 365
5 79 (10.52%) GCP
6 60 (7.99%) GitHub
7 44 (5.86%) IaaS
8 36 (4.79%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 35 (4.66%) AWS CloudFormation
10 34 (4.53%) Serverless
11 32 (4.26%) Amazon S3
12 30 (3.99%) Amazon EC2
12 30 (3.99%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (3.99%) Route 53
13 29 (3.86%) PaaS
14 28 (3.73%) OpenShift
15 27 (3.60%) SaaS
16 25 (3.33%) Amazon EKS
17 23 (3.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 22 (2.93%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 320 (42.61%) DHCP
2 239 (31.82%) Firewall
3 201 (26.76%) TCP/IP
4 180 (23.97%) VPN
5 103 (13.72%) WAN
6 93 (12.38%) LAN
7 79 (10.52%) Network Security
8 75 (9.99%) SSL
9 73 (9.72%) BGP
10 71 (9.45%) BIG-IP
10 71 (9.45%) VLAN
11 69 (9.19%) HTTP
12 53 (7.06%) Wi-Fi
13 49 (6.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 44 (5.86%) OSPF
15 40 (5.33%) Wireshark
16 37 (4.93%) DMZ
17 36 (4.79%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 36 (4.79%) Kerberos
18 33 (4.39%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (3.20%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.26%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.60%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (0.93%) DynamoDB
6 6 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (0.80%) MongoDB
6 6 (0.80%) MySQL
6 6 (0.80%) Redis
7 5 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.67%) Data Hub
8 4 (0.53%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.53%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.53%) Power BI
8 4 (0.53%) 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 62 (8.26%) Jenkins
2 36 (4.79%) JIRA
3 30 (3.99%) Fiddler
3 30 (3.99%) GitLab
4 29 (3.86%) Git
5 8 (1.07%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.93%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.93%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.80%) Chocolatey
8 5 (0.67%) Terragrunt
9 4 (0.53%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.27%) Introscope
10 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.13%) Subversion
11 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 185 (24.63%) Social Skills
2 86 (11.45%) Analytical Skills
3 69 (9.19%) Banking
4 62 (8.26%) Finance
5 47 (6.26%) Public Sector
6 46 (6.13%) Documentation Skills
7 44 (5.86%) Investment Banking
8 22 (2.93%) Legal
9 15 (2.00%) Military
10 14 (1.86%) Telecoms
11 10 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.93%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.67%) Law
14 5 (0.67%) Local Government
15 4 (0.53%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.40%) Aerospace
16 3 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
17 2 (0.27%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 133 (17.71%) Network Engineer
2 118 (15.71%) Architect
3 68 (9.05%) Analyst
4 66 (8.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 65 (8.66%) Senior
6 52 (6.92%) Support Engineer
7 50 (6.66%) Security Engineer
7 50 (6.66%) Web Engineer
8 36 (4.79%) IT Support
9 30 (3.99%) Network Security Engineer
10 29 (3.86%) IT Engineer
11 28 (3.73%) Lead
11 28 (3.73%) Platform Engineer
12 27 (3.60%) Cisco Engineer
12 27 (3.60%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 26 (3.46%) Azure Engineer
14 23 (3.06%) Data Engineer
14 23 (3.06%) Data Network Engineer
15 22 (2.93%) Cisco Security Engineer
15 22 (2.93%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (8.66%) LDAP
2 45 (5.99%) SAML
3 38 (5.06%) OAuth
4 29 (3.86%) OpenID
5 28 (3.73%) 802.1X
6 23 (3.06%) OpenTelemetry
7 20 (2.66%) OAuth2
8 10 (1.33%) Kafka
9 8 (1.07%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (1.07%) REST
10 7 (0.93%) ARM Templates
10 7 (0.93%) XMPP
11 6 (0.80%) JSON
11 6 (0.80%) Microsoft Graph
12 5 (0.67%) Middleware
12 5 (0.67%) RESTful
13 4 (0.53%) Hibernate
13 4 (0.53%) JPA
13 4 (0.53%) Spring
13 4 (0.53%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 63 (8.39%) Data Centre
2 60 (7.99%) PKI
3 48 (6.39%) Replication
4 47 (6.26%) Cloud Native
5 34 (4.53%) Management Information System
6 32 (4.26%) Clustering
7 29 (3.86%) Onboarding
7 29 (3.86%) Public Cloud
8 25 (3.33%) Hybrid Cloud
9 21 (2.80%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 18 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
11 16 (2.13%) Cyber Threat
12 15 (2.00%) Cyberattack
12 15 (2.00%) Security Operations Centre
13 14 (1.86%) Self-Motivation
14 13 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
15 12 (1.60%) NHS
15 12 (1.60%) Product Ownership
16 11 (1.46%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 324 (43.14%) Windows
2 180 (23.97%) Windows Server
3 100 (13.32%) Linux
4 45 (5.99%) Windows 10
5 25 (3.33%) Windows Server 2019
6 19 (2.53%) Android
7 16 (2.13%) Unix
8 14 (1.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.86%) Windows Server 2012
9 12 (1.60%) Apple iOS
10 11 (1.46%) Windows 7
10 11 (1.46%) Windows Server 2016
11 9 (1.20%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.93%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.67%) VMS
14 4 (0.53%) CatOS
14 4 (0.53%) CentOS
15 3 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.40%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (23.57%) Load Balancing
2 174 (23.17%) Problem-Solving
3 116 (15.45%) Migration
4 108 (14.38%) CI/CD
5 107 (14.25%) DevOps
6 104 (13.85%) High Availability
7 98 (13.05%) ITIL
8 97 (12.92%) Infrastructure as Code
9 88 (11.72%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 75 (9.99%) Identity Access Management
11 71 (9.45%) Disaster Recovery
12 65 (8.66%) RBAC
13 64 (8.52%) Cybersecurity
14 59 (7.86%) Observability
15 57 (7.59%) ITSM
16 55 (7.32%) Incident Response
17 53 (7.06%) Containerisation
18 51 (6.79%) Agile
18 51 (6.79%) Roadmaps
19 49 (6.52%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 204 (27.16%) PowerShell
2 134 (17.84%) Python
3 70 (9.32%) Bash
4 38 (5.06%) SQL
5 14 (1.86%) JavaScript
6 13 (1.73%) Bicep
6 13 (1.73%) VBScript
7 11 (1.46%) Java
8 9 (1.20%) Ruby
8 9 (1.20%) VB
9 8 (1.07%) Shell Script
10 7 (0.93%) Go
11 5 (0.67%) Lisp
12 4 (0.53%) Kusto Query Language
12 4 (0.53%) Perl
13 2 (0.27%) C
13 2 (0.27%) C#
13 2 (0.27%) Jython
13 2 (0.27%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.27%) VBA
Qualifications
1 245 (32.62%) Security Cleared
2 160 (21.30%) SC Cleared
3 86 (11.45%) DV Cleared
4 64 (8.52%) Cisco Certification
5 46 (6.13%) Degree
6 40 (5.33%) Microsoft Certification
7 39 (5.19%) CCNP
8 25 (3.33%) Azure Certification
9 23 (3.06%) CCNA
10 16 (2.13%) AWS Certification
10 16 (2.13%) CompTIA Security+
11 14 (1.86%) CISSP
12 12 (1.60%) Network+ Certification
13 10 (1.33%) JNCIA
13 10 (1.33%) JNCIS
14 9 (1.20%) BPSS Clearance
14 9 (1.20%) CCIE
14 9 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
14 9 (1.20%) JNCIP
15 8 (1.07%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.73%) GDPR
2 23 (3.06%) NIST
3 22 (2.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 21 (2.80%) SLA
5 15 (2.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 8 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (1.07%) PCI DSS
7 7 (0.93%) NCSC
8 6 (0.80%) QA
9 3 (0.40%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.27%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.13%) COBIT
11 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.13%) RMADS
System Software
1 314 (41.81%) Active Directory
2 162 (21.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 60 (7.99%) VMware NSX
4 57 (7.59%) Hyper-V
5 54 (7.19%) Docker
6 46 (6.13%) vSphere
7 29 (3.86%) Firmware
8 22 (2.93%) Virtual Machines
9 19 (2.53%) VMware ESXi
10 17 (2.26%) BitLocker
11 14 (1.86%) Virtual Desktop
12 9 (1.20%) Squid
13 7 (0.93%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.67%) NFS
14 5 (0.67%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.40%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.40%) Postfix
15 3 (0.40%) Sendmail
15 3 (0.40%) Varnish
16 2 (0.27%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 145 (19.31%) Terraform
2 115 (15.31%) Ansible
3 88 (11.72%) Kubernetes
4 85 (11.32%) Microsoft Intune
5 71 (9.45%) Single Sign-On
6 63 (8.39%) SCCM
7 57 (7.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 42 (5.59%) FortiGate
9 41 (5.46%) vCenter Server
10 39 (5.19%) Grafana
11 27 (3.60%) Argo
12 22 (2.93%) Prometheus
13 14 (1.86%) SCOM
14 11 (1.46%) WSUS
15 9 (1.20%) Puppet
16 8 (1.07%) HAProxy
17 7 (0.93%) Consul
17 7 (0.93%) vMotion
18 6 (0.80%) Nagios
18 6 (0.80%) Nessus
Vendors
1 262 (34.89%) Microsoft
2 208 (27.70%) VMware
3 137 (18.24%) F5
4 116 (15.45%) Cisco
5 67 (8.92%) Splunk
6 61 (8.12%) ServiceNow
7 42 (5.59%) Citrix
7 42 (5.59%) SolarWinds
8 40 (5.33%) Blue Coat
9 39 (5.19%) Red Hat
10 36 (4.79%) Juniper
11 35 (4.66%) McAfee
12 33 (4.39%) Palo Alto
13 30 (3.99%) Google
14 28 (3.73%) NetApp
15 27 (3.60%) Infoblox
16 24 (3.20%) Pure Storage
17 20 (2.66%) Extreme Networks
18 18 (2.40%) Fortinet
19 17 (2.26%) CheckPoint