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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 132 114 128
Rank change year-on-year -18 +14 -7
Contract jobs citing DNS 742 623 693
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.04% 2.42% 1.81%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.23% 18.08% 12.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 472 415 456
10th Percentile £220 £243 £200
25th Percentile £400 £384 £312
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £525 £463
Median % change year-on-year -1.67% +13.51% -11.90%
75th Percentile £601 £609 £570
90th Percentile £686 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £465
% change year-on-year -2.38% +12.90% -11.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 9 23
10th Percentile £13.35 £17.26 £23.45
25th Percentile £16.25 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £26.33 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -67.37% +101.69% -4.48%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £44.38
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.48 £66.00
UK median hourly rate £26.33 £38.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -30.72% -5.00% -4.48%

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 3,667 3,446 5,367
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.07% 13.41% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,362 2,078 3,231
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £366 £370 £350
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 £480 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -4.00% +5.26% -8.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 111 373
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.27
25th Percentile £20.13 £21.46 £19.99
Median hourly rate £36.75 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -12.50% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.78 £75.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £36.75 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +5.00% -12.50% +110.53%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -24 241 £519 -1.23% 73
North of England -15 202 £450 -5.26% 73
South East +8 147 £525 -2.78% 96
North West +12 133 £569 +19.74% 42
Midlands +12 109 £375 -16.67% 31
West Midlands +20 105 £375 -7.41% 19
Yorkshire -37 71 £447 -14.95% 24
South West -43 55 £625 +14.26% 30
East of England -27 38 £475 - 33
North East -20 6 £411 +21.70% 9
East Midlands -35 4 £325 -41.96% 12
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 93 (12.53%) Microsoft Exchange
2 52 (7.01%) SharePoint
3 26 (3.50%) Skype for Business
4 15 (2.02%) Confluence
5 12 (1.62%) nginx
6 7 (0.94%) Apache
7 4 (0.54%) IIS
8 3 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.40%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.40%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.27%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.27%) WordPress
10 1 (0.13%) Traefik
Applications
1 31 (4.18%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.02%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
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
1 259 (34.91%) Azure
2 146 (19.68%) AWS
3 131 (17.65%) Microsoft 365
4 122 (16.44%) Entra ID
5 67 (9.03%) GCP
6 53 (7.14%) GitHub
7 40 (5.39%) IaaS
8 37 (4.99%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 35 (4.72%) AWS CloudFormation
10 30 (4.04%) Amazon S3
10 30 (4.04%) Serverless
11 29 (3.91%) SaaS
12 28 (3.77%) Amazon EC2
12 28 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
12 28 (3.77%) Route 53
13 26 (3.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 25 (3.37%) PaaS
15 22 (2.96%) Amazon EKS
15 22 (2.96%) OpenShift
16 21 (2.83%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 333 (44.88%) DHCP
2 229 (30.86%) Firewall
3 212 (28.57%) TCP/IP
4 177 (23.85%) VPN
5 92 (12.40%) WAN
6 84 (11.32%) LAN
7 81 (10.92%) SSL
8 77 (10.38%) Network Security
9 71 (9.57%) VLAN
10 70 (9.43%) BGP
11 67 (9.03%) HTTP
12 66 (8.89%) BIG-IP
13 50 (6.74%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 50 (6.74%) Wi-Fi
14 45 (6.06%) Wireshark
15 43 (5.80%) OSPF
16 40 (5.39%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 39 (5.26%) DMZ
18 36 (4.85%) Kerberos
19 31 (4.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (2.96%) SQL Server
2 15 (2.02%) Elasticsearch
3 14 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
4 13 (1.75%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (0.94%) Amazon Aurora
5 7 (0.94%) DynamoDB
5 7 (0.94%) MongoDB
6 6 (0.81%) Redis
7 5 (0.67%) Data Hub
7 5 (0.67%) MySQL
8 4 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.54%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.54%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.40%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.27%) Power BI
11 1 (0.13%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.13%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.13%) GIS
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 59 (7.95%) Jenkins
2 35 (4.72%) JIRA
3 33 (4.45%) GitLab
4 32 (4.31%) Git
5 31 (4.18%) Fiddler
6 8 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.94%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.94%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.67%) Browser DevTools
8 5 (0.67%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.27%) Subversion
11 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.13%) GCC
11 1 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
11 1 (0.13%) Vagrant
11 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 199 (26.82%) Social Skills
2 98 (13.21%) Analytical Skills
3 68 (9.16%) Banking
4 58 (7.82%) Finance
5 50 (6.74%) Public Sector
6 47 (6.33%) Investment Banking
7 44 (5.93%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (2.83%) Legal
9 15 (2.02%) Military
10 13 (1.75%) Telecoms
11 9 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
12 7 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
13 6 (0.81%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.67%) Law
15 4 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.40%) Aerospace
16 3 (0.40%) Local Government
17 2 (0.27%) Manufacturing
17 2 (0.27%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 126 (16.98%) Network Engineer
2 115 (15.50%) Architect
3 67 (9.03%) Analyst
4 60 (8.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 58 (7.82%) Senior
5 58 (7.82%) Support Engineer
6 53 (7.14%) Security Engineer
7 44 (5.93%) IT Support
8 42 (5.66%) Web Engineer
9 32 (4.31%) Network Security Engineer
9 32 (4.31%) Platform Engineer
10 28 (3.77%) IT Engineer
11 27 (3.64%) Lead
12 26 (3.50%) Cisco Engineer
12 26 (3.50%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 23 (3.10%) Azure Engineer
14 22 (2.96%) DevOps Engineer
14 22 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
15 21 (2.83%) Infrastructure Architect
15 21 (2.83%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (8.49%) LDAP
2 45 (6.06%) SAML
3 38 (5.12%) OAuth
4 30 (4.04%) OpenID
5 27 (3.64%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.70%) OAuth2
7 17 (2.29%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.35%) Kafka
9 9 (1.21%) REST
10 8 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
11 7 (0.94%) XMPP
12 6 (0.81%) JSON
12 6 (0.81%) Microsoft Graph
12 6 (0.81%) Middleware
13 5 (0.67%) ARM Templates
13 5 (0.67%) AWS CDK
13 5 (0.67%) RESTful
14 4 (0.54%) Hibernate
14 4 (0.54%) JPA
14 4 (0.54%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.76%) PKI
2 62 (8.36%) Data Centre
3 50 (6.74%) Replication
4 39 (5.26%) Cloud Native
5 38 (5.12%) Management Information System
6 30 (4.04%) Onboarding
7 26 (3.50%) Clustering
7 26 (3.50%) Public Cloud
8 20 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
9 19 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
10 16 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
11 15 (2.02%) Cyber Threat
11 15 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
12 14 (1.89%) Cyberattack
12 14 (1.89%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 14 (1.89%) Security Operations Centre
13 12 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
13 12 (1.62%) NHS
14 11 (1.48%) Private Cloud
14 11 (1.48%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 336 (45.28%) Windows
2 175 (23.58%) Windows Server
3 112 (15.09%) Linux
4 51 (6.87%) Windows 10
5 26 (3.50%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.70%) Unix
7 18 (2.43%) Android
8 15 (2.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (2.02%) Windows Server 2012
9 14 (1.89%) Windows Server 2016
10 13 (1.75%) Apple iOS
11 11 (1.48%) Windows 7
12 9 (1.21%) CentOS
12 9 (1.21%) Mac OS
13 6 (0.81%) VMS
13 6 (0.81%) Windows Server 2003
14 5 (0.67%) Ubuntu
15 4 (0.54%) Amazon Linux
15 4 (0.54%) CatOS
16 3 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 175 (23.58%) Problem-Solving
2 162 (21.83%) Load Balancing
3 107 (14.42%) ITIL
4 102 (13.75%) CI/CD
5 100 (13.48%) DevOps
5 100 (13.48%) Migration
6 95 (12.80%) Infrastructure as Code
7 90 (12.13%) High Availability
8 83 (11.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 71 (9.57%) Identity Access Management
10 67 (9.03%) Disaster Recovery
11 60 (8.09%) Cybersecurity
12 57 (7.68%) Change Management
12 57 (7.68%) RBAC
12 57 (7.68%) Service Management
13 55 (7.41%) ITSM
14 53 (7.14%) Observability
15 51 (6.87%) Incident Response
16 50 (6.74%) Continuous Improvement
17 49 (6.60%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 206 (27.76%) PowerShell
2 131 (17.65%) Python
3 64 (8.63%) Bash
4 42 (5.66%) SQL
5 13 (1.75%) VBScript
6 12 (1.62%) Bicep
7 11 (1.48%) Java
7 11 (1.48%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.35%) VB
9 9 (1.21%) Ruby
10 8 (1.08%) Go
10 8 (1.08%) JavaScript
11 7 (0.94%) Lisp
12 6 (0.81%) Perl
13 5 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
14 3 (0.40%) C#
14 3 (0.40%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.27%) C
15 2 (0.27%) VBA
16 1 (0.13%) PHP
Qualifications
1 262 (35.31%) Security Cleared
2 171 (23.05%) SC Cleared
3 91 (12.26%) DV Cleared
4 61 (8.22%) Cisco Certification
5 54 (7.28%) Microsoft Certification
6 51 (6.87%) Degree
7 42 (5.66%) CCNP
8 27 (3.64%) Azure Certification
9 20 (2.70%) CCNA
10 18 (2.43%) AWS Certification
11 16 (2.16%) CISSP
11 16 (2.16%) Network+ Certification
12 15 (2.02%) CompTIA Security+
13 10 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
13 10 (1.35%) CCIE
13 10 (1.35%) MCSE
14 9 (1.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 9 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
14 9 (1.21%) JNCIA
14 9 (1.21%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.91%) GDPR
2 22 (2.96%) SLA
3 20 (2.70%) NIST
4 19 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 17 (2.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.21%) NCSC
6 9 (1.21%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.81%) QA
9 3 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.27%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
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
11 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 323 (43.53%) Active Directory
2 167 (22.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 59 (7.95%) Docker
4 55 (7.41%) VMware NSX
5 54 (7.28%) Hyper-V
6 42 (5.66%) vSphere
7 26 (3.50%) Firmware
7 26 (3.50%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (2.43%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (2.02%) BitLocker
9 15 (2.02%) Virtual Desktop
10 9 (1.21%) Squid
11 7 (0.94%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.67%) NFS
12 5 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.54%) DFS Replication
13 4 (0.54%) Postfix
13 4 (0.54%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.40%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 135 (18.19%) Terraform
2 115 (15.50%) Ansible
3 92 (12.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 80 (10.78%) Kubernetes
5 77 (10.38%) SCCM
6 68 (9.16%) Single Sign-On
7 61 (8.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 41 (5.53%) FortiGate
9 40 (5.39%) vCenter Server
10 34 (4.58%) Grafana
11 22 (2.96%) Prometheus
12 21 (2.83%) Argo
13 14 (1.89%) SCOM
13 14 (1.89%) WSUS
14 10 (1.35%) Puppet
15 8 (1.08%) HAProxy
15 8 (1.08%) Nagios
16 7 (0.94%) Consul
16 7 (0.94%) Nessus
17 6 (0.81%) Packer
Vendors
1 278 (37.47%) Microsoft
2 215 (28.98%) VMware
3 136 (18.33%) F5
4 120 (16.17%) Cisco
5 71 (9.57%) ServiceNow
6 68 (9.16%) Splunk
7 44 (5.93%) Blue Coat
7 44 (5.93%) Citrix
8 41 (5.53%) SolarWinds
9 36 (4.85%) McAfee
10 35 (4.72%) Juniper
11 33 (4.45%) Palo Alto
12 32 (4.31%) Red Hat
13 27 (3.64%) NetApp
14 23 (3.10%) CheckPoint
15 22 (2.96%) Google
16 19 (2.56%) Infoblox
16 19 (2.56%) Okta
16 19 (2.56%) Pure Storage
16 19 (2.56%) Zscaler