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 9 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 118 151
Rank change year-on-year -15 +33 -16
Contract jobs citing DNS 934 648 532
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.04% 2.33% 1.60%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 21.70% 18.83% 12.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 577 429 362
10th Percentile £282 £263 £260
25th Percentile £400 £400 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £488
% change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 31 14
10th Percentile £26.00 £29.00 £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £34.38 £23.28
Median hourly rate £58.74 £57.50 £24.19
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% +137.70% -27.79%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.55 £44.06
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £65.45
UK median hourly rate £58.49 £57.50 £24.19
% change year-on-year +1.73% +137.70% -39.53%

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 4,305 3,442 4,159
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.41% 12.37% 12.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,611 2,137 2,567
10th Percentile £263 £250 £243
25th Percentile £400 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £680 £680 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 165 281
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.48
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £27.94 £44.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.50% -20.00% +7.52%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £86.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.44 £46.88 £49.00
% change year-on-year -43.59% -4.34% -2.82%

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 9 August 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 9 August 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 9 August 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 -45 324 £475 -5.94% 170
North of England +19 224 £455 -9.00% 64
South East +6 202 £538 -2.27% 88
North West +36 149 £450 -1.64% 38
Midlands -16 115 £450 -5.26% 36
West Midlands -20 95 £431 -9.21% 25
South West -3 84 £500 -13.98% 41
Yorkshire -21 64 £475 -13.64% 20
East of England -51 32 £450 -18.18% 31
East Midlands -1 18 £413 -26.67% 11
North East -41 11 £438 +7.36% 7
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 91 (9.74%) Microsoft Exchange
2 76 (8.14%) SharePoint
3 19 (2.03%) Confluence
4 16 (1.71%) Apache
5 15 (1.61%) nginx
6 13 (1.39%) IIS
7 6 (0.64%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
10 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 20 (2.14%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.96%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.21%) Houdini
4 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.21%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 9 (0.96%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 368 (39.40%) Azure
2 190 (20.34%) AWS
3 160 (17.13%) Microsoft 365
4 157 (16.81%) Entra ID
5 103 (11.03%) GCP
6 67 (7.17%) GitHub
7 52 (5.57%) IaaS
8 48 (5.14%) OneDrive
9 38 (4.07%) SaaS
10 37 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
10 37 (3.96%) PaaS
11 34 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
12 31 (3.32%) OpenShift
13 28 (3.00%) AWS CloudFormation
13 28 (3.00%) GitHub Actions
14 26 (2.78%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 24 (2.57%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 22 (2.36%) Serverless
17 21 (2.25%) Amazon EC2
17 21 (2.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 435 (46.57%) DHCP
2 351 (37.58%) Firewall
3 277 (29.66%) TCP/IP
4 263 (28.16%) VPN
5 126 (13.49%) WAN
6 122 (13.06%) Network Security
7 112 (11.99%) VLAN
8 108 (11.56%) LAN
9 103 (11.03%) BGP
10 96 (10.28%) SSL
11 78 (8.35%) BIG-IP
12 68 (7.28%) HTTP
12 68 (7.28%) Wireless
13 60 (6.42%) OSPF
14 58 (6.21%) Wi-Fi
15 54 (5.78%) SAN
16 48 (5.14%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 44 (4.71%) DMZ
18 40 (4.28%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 35 (3.75%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (5.25%) SQL Server
2 10 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
2 10 (1.07%) Elasticsearch
2 10 (1.07%) Power BI
3 9 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
3 9 (0.96%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (0.86%) MySQL
5 5 (0.54%) Data Lake
5 5 (0.54%) NoSQL
6 4 (0.43%) Db2
6 4 (0.43%) MongoDB
7 3 (0.32%) Big Data
7 3 (0.32%) Redis
8 1 (0.11%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.11%) Cloud Spanner
8 1 (0.11%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.11%) KDB
8 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 66 (7.07%) JIRA
2 56 (6.00%) Jenkins
3 38 (4.07%) Git
4 31 (3.32%) GitLab
5 18 (1.93%) Fiddler
6 10 (1.07%) Browser DevTools
7 8 (0.86%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.75%) Chocolatey
8 7 (0.75%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.54%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.32%) MSI
11 2 (0.21%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.21%) Introscope
11 2 (0.21%) Selenium
11 2 (0.21%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.21%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.11%) Maven
12 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio
General
1 221 (23.66%) Social Skills
2 105 (11.24%) Analytical Skills
3 84 (8.99%) Finance
4 73 (7.82%) Public Sector
5 69 (7.39%) Banking
6 41 (4.39%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (3.53%) Investment Banking
8 32 (3.43%) Telecoms
9 20 (2.14%) Military
10 19 (2.03%) Legal
11 12 (1.28%) Local Government
12 11 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 11 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
13 10 (1.07%) Police
14 8 (0.86%) Manufacturing
15 6 (0.64%) Influencing Skills
15 6 (0.64%) Publishing
16 5 (0.54%) Aerospace
16 5 (0.54%) Law
16 5 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 179 (19.16%) Network Engineer
2 151 (16.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 104 (11.13%) Senior
4 91 (9.74%) Support Engineer
5 89 (9.53%) Architect
6 72 (7.71%) Cloud Engineer
7 58 (6.21%) Security Engineer
8 47 (5.03%) Analyst
8 47 (5.03%) IT Support
9 45 (4.82%) IT Engineer
10 42 (4.50%) Network Security Engineer
11 41 (4.39%) Azure Engineer
12 40 (4.28%) Web Engineer
13 39 (4.18%) Cisco Engineer
14 37 (3.96%) Administrator
14 37 (3.96%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 37 (3.96%) DevOps Engineer
15 34 (3.64%) Platform Engineer
16 33 (3.53%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 32 (3.43%) Data Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (5.57%) 802.1X
2 30 (3.21%) SAML
3 29 (3.10%) LDAP
4 23 (2.46%) ARM Templates
5 18 (1.93%) OAuth
5 18 (1.93%) OpenID
6 14 (1.50%) OpenTelemetry
7 13 (1.39%) JSON
7 13 (1.39%) REST
8 12 (1.28%) YAML
9 8 (0.86%) CSS
10 7 (0.75%) Kafka
10 7 (0.75%) Middleware
11 5 (0.54%) Elastic Stack
11 5 (0.54%) RabbitMQ
11 5 (0.54%) Software Packaging
12 4 (0.43%) .NET
12 4 (0.43%) HTML
12 4 (0.43%) RESTful
12 4 (0.43%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 130 (13.92%) Data Centre
2 101 (10.81%) PKI
3 64 (6.85%) Onboarding
4 63 (6.75%) Hybrid Cloud
5 52 (5.57%) Cloud Native
6 50 (5.35%) Management Information System
7 44 (4.71%) Clustering
8 41 (4.39%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 27 (2.89%) Public Cloud
10 22 (2.36%) Replication
11 21 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (2.03%) Enterprise Cloud
13 17 (1.82%) Security Posture
14 15 (1.61%) Linux Command Line
15 14 (1.50%) Cyber Threat
15 14 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
16 11 (1.18%) Driving Licence
16 11 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
17 9 (0.96%) Distributed Systems
17 9 (0.96%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 439 (47.00%) Windows
2 235 (25.16%) Windows Server
3 188 (20.13%) Linux
4 55 (5.89%) Windows 10
5 38 (4.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 37 (3.96%) Windows Server 2019
7 30 (3.21%) Unix
8 28 (3.00%) Mac OS
9 23 (2.46%) Windows Server 2012
10 20 (2.14%) Ubuntu
11 15 (1.61%) CentOS
12 14 (1.50%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (1.39%) Apple iOS
14 11 (1.18%) Android
14 11 (1.18%) VMS
15 8 (0.86%) Windows Server 2008
16 7 (0.75%) Rocky
16 7 (0.75%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.43%) Windows Server 2003
18 3 (0.32%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 215 (23.02%) Problem-Solving
2 211 (22.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 178 (19.06%) Load Balancing
4 172 (18.42%) ITIL
5 163 (17.45%) Infrastructure as Code
6 156 (16.70%) Migration
7 146 (15.63%) DevOps
8 139 (14.88%) CI/CD
8 139 (14.88%) High Availability
9 109 (11.67%) ITSM
10 94 (10.06%) Observability
11 89 (9.53%) Continuous Improvement
12 86 (9.21%) Cybersecurity
13 85 (9.10%) Agile
14 78 (8.35%) Project Delivery
15 73 (7.82%) Technical Leadership
16 72 (7.71%) Disaster Recovery
17 70 (7.49%) Identity Access Management
18 67 (7.17%) Platform Engineering
19 66 (7.07%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 204 (21.84%) PowerShell
2 183 (19.59%) Python
3 134 (14.35%) Bash
4 57 (6.10%) SQL
5 38 (4.07%) Bicep
6 23 (2.46%) JavaScript
7 14 (1.50%) Shell Script
8 11 (1.18%) Go
9 10 (1.07%) Perl
10 9 (0.96%) ActionScript
11 7 (0.75%) VBA
12 6 (0.64%) Groovy
12 6 (0.64%) Java
13 5 (0.54%) C
13 5 (0.54%) Ruby
14 3 (0.32%) Lisp
14 3 (0.32%) VBScript
15 2 (0.21%) Jython
15 2 (0.21%) Objective-C
15 2 (0.21%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 346 (37.04%) Security Cleared
2 192 (20.56%) SC Cleared
3 144 (15.42%) DV Cleared
4 107 (11.46%) Cisco Certification
5 73 (7.82%) CCNP
6 71 (7.60%) Degree
7 53 (5.67%) CCNA
8 44 (4.71%) Microsoft Certification
9 43 (4.60%) Azure Certification
10 30 (3.21%) Network+ Certification
11 18 (1.93%) AWS Certification
11 18 (1.93%) CCIE
12 16 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
13 15 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
13 15 (1.61%) Server+ Certification
13 15 (1.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 13 (1.39%) CISSP
14 13 (1.39%) JNCIS
15 12 (1.28%) MCSA
15 12 (1.28%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.43%) SLA
2 24 (2.57%) NIST
3 15 (1.61%) NCSC
4 14 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 10 (1.07%) QA
6 6 (0.64%) GDPR
7 5 (0.54%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.43%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.43%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.21%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.11%) Data Quality
System Software
1 398 (42.61%) Active Directory
2 238 (25.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 114 (12.21%) Hyper-V
4 68 (7.28%) VMware ESXi
5 66 (7.07%) vSphere
6 63 (6.75%) VMware NSX
7 55 (5.89%) Docker
8 43 (4.60%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (3.96%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.68%) Firmware
11 18 (1.93%) NFS
12 13 (1.39%) vCloud
13 9 (0.96%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (0.96%) Postfix
14 8 (0.86%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.86%) VMware Workstation
15 7 (0.75%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.64%) Squid
16 6 (0.64%) Varnish
17 5 (0.54%) UAG
Systems Management
1 200 (21.41%) Terraform
2 139 (14.88%) Ansible
3 113 (12.10%) Kubernetes
4 98 (10.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 64 (6.85%) SCCM
6 58 (6.21%) vCenter Server
7 55 (5.89%) Grafana
8 49 (5.25%) Single Sign-On
9 43 (4.60%) FortiGate
10 41 (4.39%) Prometheus
11 29 (3.10%) WSUS
12 27 (2.89%) SCOM
13 15 (1.61%) Argo
13 15 (1.61%) VxRail
14 14 (1.50%) Jamf Pro
14 14 (1.50%) Nessus
14 14 (1.50%) Puppet
15 11 (1.18%) NetBackup
15 11 (1.18%) Packer
16 10 (1.07%) Nagios
Vendors
1 335 (35.87%) Microsoft
2 289 (30.94%) VMware
3 192 (20.56%) Cisco
4 141 (15.10%) F5
5 86 (9.21%) ServiceNow
6 66 (7.07%) Splunk
7 65 (6.96%) SolarWinds
8 63 (6.75%) Google
9 62 (6.64%) Infoblox
10 60 (6.42%) Juniper
11 57 (6.10%) Citrix
12 42 (4.50%) Palo Alto
12 42 (4.50%) Red Hat
13 32 (3.43%) NetApp
14 30 (3.21%) Dynatrace
15 28 (3.00%) Blue Coat
16 26 (2.78%) CheckPoint
16 26 (2.78%) Zscaler
17 25 (2.68%) Fortinet
17 25 (2.68%) McAfee