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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 109 132
Rank change year-on-year -27 +23 -10
Contract jobs citing DNS 735 602 685
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.99% 2.46% 1.81%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.85% 18.07% 12.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 463 413 448
10th Percentile £242 £250 £193
25th Percentile £400 £400 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% +16.67% -14.29%
75th Percentile £613 £608 £569
90th Percentile £688 £674 £650
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £465
% change year-on-year -3.81% +12.91% -11.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 9 25
10th Percentile £12.74 £17.26 £21.30
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £38.50 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -52.28% +101.69% -8.57%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £48.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.48 £64.50
UK median hourly rate £38.50 £54.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -29.36% +36.25% -8.57%

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 3,703 3,332 5,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.03% 13.60% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,379 2,051 3,201
10th Percentile £213 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £375 £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 £488 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.50% +5.26% -9.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 114 376
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £14.08
25th Percentile £18.94 £21.46 £18.93
Median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% - +84.89%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.14% +7.69% +71.05%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -35 232 £513 -2.38% 78
North of England -5 208 £450 -5.26% 69
South East +8 149 £525 -2.78% 86
North West +18 136 £555 +24.72% 38
Midlands +15 103 £378 -31.05% 40
West Midlands +21 97 £378 -17.49% 24
Yorkshire -33 73 £445 -19.18% 22
South West -40 55 £684 +24.89% 34
East of England -25 39 £475 -5.00% 28
North East -20 6 £575 +70.37% 11
East Midlands -44 5 £375 -34.78% 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 93 (12.65%) Microsoft Exchange
2 47 (6.39%) SharePoint
3 24 (3.27%) Skype for Business
4 14 (1.90%) Confluence
5 11 (1.50%) nginx
6 7 (0.95%) IIS
7 5 (0.68%) Apache
8 3 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2010
9 2 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.27%) WordPress
10 1 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.14%) Traefik
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 27 (3.67%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (2.18%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.14%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 255 (34.69%) Azure
2 135 (18.37%) AWS
3 127 (17.28%) Entra ID
4 122 (16.60%) Microsoft 365
5 72 (9.80%) GCP
6 58 (7.89%) GitHub
7 43 (5.85%) IaaS
8 35 (4.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 34 (4.63%) AWS CloudFormation
10 29 (3.95%) Serverless
11 28 (3.81%) Amazon S3
11 28 (3.81%) PaaS
11 28 (3.81%) Route 53
12 27 (3.67%) AWS Lambda
13 26 (3.54%) Amazon EC2
13 26 (3.54%) SaaS
14 25 (3.40%) OpenShift
15 24 (3.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 23 (3.13%) Amazon EKS
17 22 (2.99%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 322 (43.81%) DHCP
2 225 (30.61%) Firewall
3 198 (26.94%) TCP/IP
4 173 (23.54%) VPN
5 97 (13.20%) WAN
6 89 (12.11%) LAN
7 76 (10.34%) Network Security
8 74 (10.07%) SSL
9 69 (9.39%) BIG-IP
10 68 (9.25%) BGP
11 66 (8.98%) HTTP
12 63 (8.57%) VLAN
13 49 (6.67%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 49 (6.67%) Wi-Fi
14 40 (5.44%) Wireshark
15 39 (5.31%) OSPF
16 38 (5.17%) DMZ
16 38 (5.17%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 34 (4.63%) Kerberos
18 33 (4.49%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.86%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.18%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (1.77%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (0.95%) DynamoDB
6 6 (0.82%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (0.82%) MongoDB
6 6 (0.82%) Redis
7 5 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.68%) Data Hub
7 5 (0.68%) MySQL
8 4 (0.54%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.54%) Power BI
8 4 (0.54%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.41%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.14%) CouchDB
10 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 62 (8.44%) Jenkins
2 37 (5.03%) JIRA
3 33 (4.49%) GitLab
4 30 (4.08%) Fiddler
5 29 (3.95%) Git
6 8 (1.09%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.95%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.82%) Browser DevTools
8 6 (0.82%) Terragrunt
9 5 (0.68%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.14%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.14%) GCC
12 1 (0.14%) Introscope
12 1 (0.14%) MSI
12 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.14%) Subversion
12 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
General
1 185 (25.17%) Social Skills
2 90 (12.24%) Analytical Skills
3 68 (9.25%) Banking
4 56 (7.62%) Finance
5 49 (6.67%) Public Sector
6 46 (6.26%) Documentation Skills
6 46 (6.26%) Investment Banking
7 22 (2.99%) Legal
8 16 (2.18%) Military
9 13 (1.77%) Telecoms
10 9 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (0.82%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.68%) Law
14 4 (0.54%) Local Government
15 3 (0.41%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.41%) Manufacturing
16 2 (0.27%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 128 (17.41%) Network Engineer
2 112 (15.24%) Architect
3 65 (8.84%) Analyst
3 65 (8.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 63 (8.57%) Senior
5 55 (7.48%) Support Engineer
6 48 (6.53%) Security Engineer
7 45 (6.12%) Web Engineer
8 36 (4.90%) IT Support
9 29 (3.95%) Network Security Engineer
9 29 (3.95%) Platform Engineer
10 28 (3.81%) Lead
11 27 (3.67%) Cisco Engineer
11 27 (3.67%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 25 (3.40%) IT Engineer
13 24 (3.27%) Azure Engineer
14 22 (2.99%) DevOps Engineer
15 21 (2.86%) Data Engineer
15 21 (2.86%) Data Network Engineer
15 21 (2.86%) Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (8.57%) LDAP
2 44 (5.99%) SAML
3 37 (5.03%) OAuth
4 29 (3.95%) OpenID
5 28 (3.81%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.72%) OAuth2
6 20 (2.72%) OpenTelemetry
7 10 (1.36%) Kafka
8 8 (1.09%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (1.09%) REST
9 7 (0.95%) Microsoft Graph
9 7 (0.95%) XMPP
10 6 (0.82%) ARM Templates
10 6 (0.82%) JSON
11 5 (0.68%) RESTful
12 4 (0.54%) gRPC
12 4 (0.54%) Hibernate
12 4 (0.54%) JPA
12 4 (0.54%) Middleware
12 4 (0.54%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.84%) Data Centre
2 64 (8.71%) PKI
3 47 (6.39%) Replication
4 42 (5.71%) Cloud Native
5 35 (4.76%) Management Information System
6 30 (4.08%) Clustering
7 29 (3.95%) Onboarding
8 27 (3.67%) Public Cloud
9 23 (3.13%) Hybrid Cloud
10 22 (2.99%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 18 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (2.04%) Analytical Mindset
12 15 (2.04%) Cyber Threat
12 15 (2.04%) Cyberattack
12 15 (2.04%) Security Operations Centre
13 13 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (1.63%) NHS
14 12 (1.63%) Product Ownership
15 11 (1.50%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 329 (44.76%) Windows
2 179 (24.35%) Windows Server
3 101 (13.74%) Linux
4 46 (6.26%) Windows 10
5 25 (3.40%) Windows Server 2019
6 18 (2.45%) Android
7 16 (2.18%) Unix
8 15 (2.04%) Windows Server 2012
9 12 (1.63%) Apple iOS
9 12 (1.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (1.63%) Windows Server 2016
10 11 (1.50%) Windows 7
11 9 (1.22%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.95%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.68%) VMS
14 4 (0.54%) CatOS
14 4 (0.54%) CentOS
15 3 (0.41%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
16 2 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (23.27%) Problem-Solving
2 167 (22.72%) Load Balancing
3 114 (15.51%) Migration
4 105 (14.29%) CI/CD
4 105 (14.29%) DevOps
5 103 (14.01%) ITIL
6 96 (13.06%) High Availability
7 95 (12.93%) Infrastructure as Code
8 88 (11.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 72 (9.80%) Identity Access Management
10 67 (9.12%) Disaster Recovery
11 62 (8.44%) RBAC
12 61 (8.30%) Cybersecurity
13 56 (7.62%) ITSM
14 55 (7.48%) Observability
15 53 (7.21%) Service Management
16 52 (7.07%) Incident Response
17 51 (6.94%) Change Management
18 49 (6.67%) Roadmaps
19 47 (6.39%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 207 (28.16%) PowerShell
2 126 (17.14%) Python
3 60 (8.16%) Bash
4 41 (5.58%) SQL
5 13 (1.77%) Bicep
5 13 (1.77%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.77%) VBScript
6 11 (1.50%) Java
7 10 (1.36%) VB
8 9 (1.22%) Ruby
8 9 (1.22%) Shell Script
9 7 (0.95%) Go
9 7 (0.95%) Lisp
10 5 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.41%) Perl
12 2 (0.27%) C
12 2 (0.27%) C#
12 2 (0.27%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.27%) VBA
13 1 (0.14%) PHP
Qualifications
1 253 (34.42%) Security Cleared
2 164 (22.31%) SC Cleared
3 91 (12.38%) DV Cleared
4 60 (8.16%) Cisco Certification
5 46 (6.26%) Degree
6 44 (5.99%) Microsoft Certification
7 39 (5.31%) CCNP
8 26 (3.54%) Azure Certification
9 19 (2.59%) CCNA
10 16 (2.18%) AWS Certification
10 16 (2.18%) CompTIA Security+
11 14 (1.90%) CISSP
11 14 (1.90%) Network+ Certification
12 10 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
12 10 (1.36%) JNCIA
12 10 (1.36%) JNCIS
13 9 (1.22%) CCIE
13 9 (1.22%) JNCIP
14 8 (1.09%) MCSA
14 8 (1.09%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.81%) GDPR
2 20 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 20 (2.72%) NIST
2 20 (2.72%) SLA
3 16 (2.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 9 (1.22%) PCI DSS
5 8 (1.09%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (1.09%) NCSC
6 6 (0.82%) QA
7 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.27%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.14%) COBIT
8 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.14%) RMADS
System Software
1 318 (43.27%) Active Directory
2 164 (22.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 58 (7.89%) Hyper-V
3 58 (7.89%) VMware NSX
4 51 (6.94%) Docker
5 45 (6.12%) vSphere
6 28 (3.81%) Firmware
7 22 (2.99%) Virtual Machines
8 19 (2.59%) VMware ESXi
9 17 (2.31%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (1.09%) Microsoft App-V
11 8 (1.09%) Squid
12 5 (0.68%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.54%) NFS
14 3 (0.41%) DFS Replication
14 3 (0.41%) Postfix
14 3 (0.41%) Sendmail
14 3 (0.41%) Varnish
14 3 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 142 (19.32%) Terraform
2 113 (15.37%) Ansible
3 86 (11.70%) Microsoft Intune
4 80 (10.88%) Kubernetes
5 68 (9.25%) Single Sign-On
6 66 (8.98%) SCCM
7 59 (8.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 42 (5.71%) FortiGate
8 42 (5.71%) vCenter Server
9 36 (4.90%) Grafana
10 24 (3.27%) Argo
11 19 (2.59%) Prometheus
12 14 (1.90%) SCOM
13 9 (1.22%) Puppet
13 9 (1.22%) WSUS
14 8 (1.09%) HAProxy
15 7 (0.95%) Consul
15 7 (0.95%) vMotion
16 6 (0.82%) Nagios
16 6 (0.82%) Nessus
Vendors
1 268 (36.46%) Microsoft
2 211 (28.71%) VMware
3 136 (18.50%) F5
4 117 (15.92%) Cisco
5 66 (8.98%) ServiceNow
6 64 (8.71%) Splunk
7 43 (5.85%) Citrix
8 42 (5.71%) SolarWinds
9 41 (5.58%) Blue Coat
10 35 (4.76%) Juniper
10 35 (4.76%) McAfee
11 34 (4.63%) Red Hat
12 32 (4.35%) Palo Alto
13 29 (3.95%) Google
14 28 (3.81%) NetApp
15 23 (3.13%) Infoblox
16 22 (2.99%) Pure Storage
17 19 (2.59%) CheckPoint
17 19 (2.59%) Extreme Networks
17 19 (2.59%) Fortinet