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 23 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
23 Feb 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 117 129
Rank change year-on-year -16 +12 -9
Contract jobs citing DNS 725 588 713
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.09% 2.29% 1.88%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.60% 17.26% 13.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 460 381 464
10th Percentile £219 £243 £200
25th Percentile £400 £375 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £463
Median % change year-on-year +3.60% +8.11% -11.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £575
90th Percentile £690 £700 £650
UK median daily rate £505 £510 £466
% change year-on-year -0.98% +9.44% -11.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 6 25
10th Percentile £13.04 £15.40 £23.65
25th Percentile £15.50 £19.77 £31.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £39.05 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.59% -2.39% -
75th Percentile £74.26 £76.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.56 £64.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £23.59 £40.00
% change year-on-year +6.61% -41.03% -

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 3,520 3,407 5,289
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.15% 13.28% 13.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,269 2,023 3,168
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £356 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 101 368
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.27
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.75 £20.00
Median hourly rate £28.38 £35.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.91% -26.32% +138.93%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £28.38 £32.50 £46.95
% change year-on-year -12.68% -30.77% +136.14%

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 23 February 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 23 February 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 23 February 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 -6 237 £525 - 87
North of England -17 183 £463 -2.37% 74
South East +5 141 £525 - 88
North West +3 117 £603 +26.84% 41
Midlands +15 109 £375 -16.67% 35
West Midlands +19 105 £378 -6.79% 27
Yorkshire -31 69 £447 -0.67% 27
South West -29 63 £575 +5.02% 38
East of England -27 39 £463 +2.78% 36
North East -25 6 £411 +26.38% 10
East Midlands -33 4 £325 -41.96% 8
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 95 (13.10%) Microsoft Exchange
2 57 (7.86%) SharePoint
3 29 (4.00%) Skype for Business
4 17 (2.34%) Confluence
5 13 (1.79%) nginx
6 5 (0.69%) Apache
7 4 (0.55%) IIS
7 4 (0.55%) SharePoint Server
8 3 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.41%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.28%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.28%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.28%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.28%) WordPress
10 1 (0.14%) Traefik
Applications
1 38 (5.24%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.07%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.41%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.14%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.28%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.14%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.14%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 249 (34.34%) Azure
2 150 (20.69%) AWS
3 130 (17.93%) Microsoft 365
4 120 (16.55%) Entra ID
5 53 (7.31%) GCP
6 50 (6.90%) GitHub
7 48 (6.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 41 (5.66%) Amazon S3
9 36 (4.97%) Amazon EC2
10 35 (4.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 33 (4.55%) IaaS
12 31 (4.28%) AWS CloudFormation
13 30 (4.14%) Serverless
14 28 (3.86%) AWS Lambda
15 27 (3.72%) Route 53
15 27 (3.72%) SaaS
16 23 (3.17%) Amazon ECS
17 21 (2.90%) Amazon EKS
17 21 (2.90%) OpenShift
18 20 (2.76%) Amazon ELB
Communications & Networking
1 328 (45.24%) DHCP
2 221 (30.48%) Firewall
3 219 (30.21%) TCP/IP
4 177 (24.41%) VPN
5 91 (12.55%) WAN
6 87 (12.00%) SSL
7 84 (11.59%) Network Security
8 83 (11.45%) LAN
9 66 (9.10%) VLAN
10 60 (8.28%) BGP
10 60 (8.28%) HTTP
11 59 (8.14%) BIG-IP
12 50 (6.90%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 46 (6.34%) Wi-Fi
14 43 (5.93%) Wireshark
15 40 (5.52%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 37 (5.10%) DMZ
16 37 (5.10%) OSPF
17 34 (4.69%) Skype
18 33 (4.55%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.90%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.34%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.79%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (1.24%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (0.97%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.97%) MongoDB
7 6 (0.83%) MySQL
7 6 (0.83%) Redis
8 5 (0.69%) Data Hub
9 4 (0.55%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.55%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.41%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.14%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.14%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.14%) Power BI
11 1 (0.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 68 (9.38%) Jenkins
2 43 (5.93%) Git
3 41 (5.66%) GitLab
4 36 (4.97%) JIRA
5 30 (4.14%) Fiddler
6 7 (0.97%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.97%) Terragrunt
7 6 (0.83%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.55%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.55%) Vagrant
9 3 (0.41%) Chocolatey
9 3 (0.41%) Subversion
10 2 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.28%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.14%) Browser DevTools
11 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
11 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (0.14%) Vite
11 1 (0.14%) webpack
General
1 203 (28.00%) Social Skills
2 100 (13.79%) Analytical Skills
3 60 (8.28%) Banking
4 52 (7.17%) Public Sector
5 45 (6.21%) Finance
5 45 (6.21%) Investment Banking
6 43 (5.93%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (2.48%) Legal
8 17 (2.34%) Military
9 14 (1.93%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.69%) Law
14 4 (0.55%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.55%) Local Government
15 3 (0.41%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.41%) Marketing
16 2 (0.28%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 116 (16.00%) Network Engineer
2 104 (14.34%) Architect
3 65 (8.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 64 (8.83%) Analyst
5 62 (8.55%) Senior
6 61 (8.41%) Support Engineer
7 46 (6.34%) IT Support
8 45 (6.21%) Security Engineer
9 36 (4.97%) Web Engineer
10 34 (4.69%) Platform Engineer
11 29 (4.00%) DevOps Engineer
12 28 (3.86%) Network Security Engineer
13 25 (3.45%) IT Engineer
13 25 (3.45%) Lead
14 24 (3.31%) 2nd Line Support
15 23 (3.17%) Cisco Engineer
15 23 (3.17%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 21 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
17 19 (2.62%) IT Support Engineer
17 19 (2.62%) Junior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (8.41%) LDAP
2 40 (5.52%) SAML
3 35 (4.83%) OAuth
4 28 (3.86%) OpenID
5 21 (2.90%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.76%) OAuth2
7 15 (2.07%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.38%) Kafka
8 10 (1.38%) REST
9 8 (1.10%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (0.83%) JSON
10 6 (0.83%) Microsoft Graph
10 6 (0.83%) Middleware
10 6 (0.83%) XMPP
11 5 (0.69%) AngularJS
11 5 (0.69%) ARM Templates
11 5 (0.69%) AWS CDK
11 5 (0.69%) React
11 5 (0.69%) RESTful
12 4 (0.55%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 64 (8.83%) PKI
2 54 (7.45%) Data Centre
3 50 (6.90%) Replication
4 37 (5.10%) Cloud Native
5 36 (4.97%) Management Information System
6 29 (4.00%) Onboarding
7 23 (3.17%) Public Cloud
8 22 (3.03%) Analytical Mindset
9 21 (2.90%) Clustering
9 21 (2.90%) Enterprise Software
10 20 (2.76%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.79%) Cyber Threat
12 13 (1.79%) Cyberattack
12 13 (1.79%) Security Operations Centre
13 12 (1.66%) NHS
14 11 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
14 11 (1.52%) Private Cloud
15 10 (1.38%) Product Ownership
16 9 (1.24%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 342 (47.17%) Windows
2 172 (23.72%) Windows Server
3 123 (16.97%) Linux
4 60 (8.28%) Windows 10
5 29 (4.00%) Windows Server 2019
6 19 (2.62%) Unix
7 18 (2.48%) Android
8 17 (2.34%) Windows Server 2016
9 16 (2.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 14 (1.93%) Windows Server 2012
11 13 (1.79%) Apple iOS
12 11 (1.52%) Windows 7
13 9 (1.24%) CentOS
13 9 (1.24%) Mac OS
13 9 (1.24%) VMS
14 7 (0.97%) Amazon Linux
14 7 (0.97%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.69%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.55%) CatOS
16 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (24.41%) Problem-Solving
2 150 (20.69%) Load Balancing
3 115 (15.86%) ITIL
4 105 (14.48%) CI/CD
4 105 (14.48%) DevOps
5 93 (12.83%) Migration
6 92 (12.69%) Infrastructure as Code
7 91 (12.55%) High Availability
8 87 (12.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 70 (9.66%) Disaster Recovery
10 66 (9.10%) Service Management
11 64 (8.83%) Identity Access Management
12 61 (8.41%) Change Management
13 59 (8.14%) Cybersecurity
14 53 (7.31%) RBAC
15 52 (7.17%) Incident Response
16 50 (6.90%) Mentoring
16 50 (6.90%) Root Cause Analysis
17 48 (6.62%) Containerisation
18 47 (6.48%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 207 (28.55%) PowerShell
2 133 (18.34%) Python
3 66 (9.10%) Bash
4 39 (5.38%) SQL
5 13 (1.79%) VBScript
6 12 (1.66%) Java
7 11 (1.52%) Bicep
8 10 (1.38%) Perl
8 10 (1.38%) VB
9 9 (1.24%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.24%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.10%) Go
10 8 (1.10%) Ruby
11 7 (0.97%) Lisp
12 5 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
13 4 (0.55%) Groovy
14 3 (0.41%) C#
14 3 (0.41%) C++
14 3 (0.41%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.28%) C
Qualifications
1 262 (36.14%) Security Cleared
2 176 (24.28%) SC Cleared
3 90 (12.41%) DV Cleared
4 63 (8.69%) Microsoft Certification
5 57 (7.86%) Degree
6 53 (7.31%) Cisco Certification
7 42 (5.79%) CCNP
8 35 (4.83%) Azure Certification
9 20 (2.76%) AWS Certification
10 19 (2.62%) Network+ Certification
11 16 (2.21%) CCNA
11 16 (2.21%) CISSP
12 14 (1.93%) CompTIA Security+
13 12 (1.66%) MCSE
13 12 (1.66%) Server+ Certification
14 10 (1.38%) CCIE
14 10 (1.38%) ITIL Certification
14 10 (1.38%) JNCIA
14 10 (1.38%) JNCIS
15 9 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.28%) GDPR
2 21 (2.90%) SLA
3 18 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (2.48%) NIST
3 18 (2.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 9 (1.24%) PCI DSS
5 8 (1.10%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (1.10%) NCSC
6 6 (0.83%) QA
7 3 (0.41%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.41%) Data Quality
7 3 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 2 (0.28%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.14%) COBIT
9 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.14%) RMADS
9 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 323 (44.55%) Active Directory
2 174 (24.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 69 (9.52%) Docker
4 57 (7.86%) Hyper-V
5 55 (7.59%) VMware NSX
6 40 (5.52%) vSphere
7 28 (3.86%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (3.31%) Firmware
9 17 (2.34%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (1.93%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.93%) Virtual Desktop
11 10 (1.38%) Squid
12 7 (0.97%) DFS Replication
12 7 (0.97%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.83%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.69%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.55%) NFS
15 4 (0.55%) Postfix
15 4 (0.55%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.41%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 134 (18.48%) Terraform
2 120 (16.55%) Ansible
3 89 (12.28%) Microsoft Intune
4 77 (10.62%) SCCM
5 76 (10.48%) Kubernetes
6 64 (8.83%) Single Sign-On
7 62 (8.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (5.93%) vCenter Server
9 35 (4.83%) FortiGate
9 35 (4.83%) Grafana
10 21 (2.90%) Prometheus
11 20 (2.76%) Argo
12 16 (2.21%) WSUS
13 14 (1.93%) SCOM
14 9 (1.24%) Nessus
14 9 (1.24%) Puppet
15 7 (0.97%) Nagios
16 6 (0.83%) Consul
16 6 (0.83%) HAProxy
16 6 (0.83%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 283 (39.03%) Microsoft
2 218 (30.07%) VMware
3 136 (18.76%) F5
4 114 (15.72%) Cisco
5 68 (9.38%) ServiceNow
6 65 (8.97%) Splunk
7 44 (6.07%) Blue Coat
8 41 (5.66%) Palo Alto
9 40 (5.52%) SolarWinds
10 39 (5.38%) Citrix
11 35 (4.83%) McAfee
12 34 (4.69%) CheckPoint
13 32 (4.41%) Juniper
13 32 (4.41%) Red Hat
14 25 (3.45%) NetApp
15 20 (2.76%) Veeam
16 19 (2.62%) Okta
16 19 (2.62%) Pure Storage
17 18 (2.48%) Google
17 18 (2.48%) Zscaler
328 DNS jobs in England