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 10 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 124 114
Rank change year-on-year -18 -10 +11
Contract jobs citing DNS 630 561 776
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.01% 2.07% 2.14%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.00% 16.24% 15.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 395 352 509
10th Percentile £219 £223 £209
25th Percentile £400 £325 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% - -9.52%
75th Percentile £603 £596 £588
90th Percentile £689 £715 £650
UK median daily rate £518 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +8.95% - -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 5 16
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.78 £24.63
25th Percentile £25.43 £18.50 £29.94
Median hourly rate £61.25 £23.59 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +159.64% -57.11% +92.98%
75th Percentile £78.75 £25.30 £67.13
90th Percentile £85.70 £40.12 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £61.25 £23.59 £55.00
% change year-on-year +159.64% -57.11% +92.98%

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 3,315 3,454 5,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.59% 12.77% 13.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,133 2,013 3,141
10th Percentile £204 £220 £207
25th Percentile £356 £375 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £680 £687 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 100 313
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £18.93
25th Percentile £20.00 £20.30 £24.00
Median hourly rate £38.50 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -38.04% +125.96%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £75.59
UK median hourly rate £38.50 £33.75 £56.49
% change year-on-year +14.07% -40.25% +125.96%

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 10 January 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 10 January 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 10 January 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 -5 209 £550 +4.76% 61
North of England -27 128 £460 +15.00% 74
Midlands +14 116 £402 -5.41% 42
South East -1 116 £500 +8.11% 126
West Midlands +34 112 £414 -2.71% 21
North West -8 88 £450 -5.26% 37
South West -22 61 £575 +9.52% 46
Yorkshire -37 47 £454 +45.12% 32
East of England -23 37 £363 +31.82% 49
North East -13 7 £575 +283.33% 7
East Midlands -35 4 £275 -41.18% 21
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 84 (13.33%) Microsoft Exchange
2 69 (10.95%) SharePoint
3 31 (4.92%) Skype for Business
4 21 (3.33%) Confluence
5 11 (1.75%) nginx
6 10 (1.59%) SharePoint Server
7 9 (1.43%) Exchange Server 2010
8 8 (1.27%) Exchange Server 2013
8 8 (1.27%) IIS
9 6 (0.95%) Exchange Server 2003
9 6 (0.95%) Exchange Server 2007
9 6 (0.95%) Office Communications Server
10 5 (0.79%) Apache
11 3 (0.48%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.48%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
12 2 (0.32%) Apache Spark
12 2 (0.32%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.32%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.32%) WebLogic
Applications
1 42 (6.67%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.59%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 10 (1.59%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.32%) Windchill
4 1 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.32%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 208 (33.02%) Azure
2 160 (25.40%) AWS
3 134 (21.27%) Microsoft 365
4 84 (13.33%) Entra ID
5 65 (10.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 54 (8.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 54 (8.57%) Amazon S3
7 49 (7.78%) Amazon EC2
8 47 (7.46%) GitHub
9 43 (6.83%) GCP
10 41 (6.51%) Amazon ELB
11 33 (5.24%) Amazon ECS
12 32 (5.08%) AWS CloudFormation
13 27 (4.29%) IaaS
14 25 (3.97%) SaaS
14 25 (3.97%) Serverless
15 23 (3.65%) AWS Lambda
15 23 (3.65%) GitHub Actions
16 19 (3.02%) AWS KMS
17 18 (2.86%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 268 (42.54%) DHCP
2 208 (33.02%) TCP/IP
3 202 (32.06%) Firewall
4 160 (25.40%) VPN
5 95 (15.08%) Network Security
6 93 (14.76%) SSL
7 71 (11.27%) HTTP
8 69 (10.95%) WAN
9 57 (9.05%) LAN
10 55 (8.73%) VLAN
11 49 (7.78%) SMTP
12 44 (6.98%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 41 (6.51%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 39 (6.19%) Wireless
15 37 (5.87%) FTP
16 35 (5.56%) DMZ
17 33 (5.24%) BGP
17 33 (5.24%) Wireshark
18 32 (5.08%) Wi-Fi
19 29 (4.60%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (5.08%) Amazon RDS
2 27 (4.29%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (3.33%) SQL Server
4 17 (2.70%) Amazon Aurora
5 10 (1.59%) MongoDB
6 7 (1.11%) DynamoDB
6 7 (1.11%) MySQL
7 6 (0.95%) NoSQL
7 6 (0.95%) Redis
8 5 (0.79%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
9 4 (0.63%) BigQuery
9 4 (0.63%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.63%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.48%) Big Data
11 2 (0.32%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.32%) Hadoop
11 2 (0.32%) Parquet
12 1 (0.16%) CouchDB
12 1 (0.16%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 81 (12.86%) Jenkins
2 63 (10.00%) Git
3 47 (7.46%) GitLab
4 39 (6.19%) JIRA
5 22 (3.49%) Fiddler
6 16 (2.54%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.27%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.79%) Subversion
9 4 (0.63%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.63%) TeamCity
10 3 (0.48%) Visual Studio Code
11 2 (0.32%) MLflow
11 2 (0.32%) Poetry
11 2 (0.32%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.32%) SonarQube
12 1 (0.16%) Bitbucket
12 1 (0.16%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.16%) Vite
12 1 (0.16%) webpack
General
1 196 (31.11%) Social Skills
2 106 (16.83%) Analytical Skills
3 70 (11.11%) Public Sector
4 52 (8.25%) Banking
5 40 (6.35%) Investment Banking
6 38 (6.03%) Finance
7 33 (5.24%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (2.54%) Presentation Skills
8 16 (2.54%) Telecoms
9 15 (2.38%) Legal
10 10 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.43%) Law
12 8 (1.27%) Military
13 7 (1.11%) Aerospace
14 6 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
15 4 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 4 (0.63%) Marketing
16 3 (0.48%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.48%) Local Government
17 2 (0.32%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 86 (13.65%) Network Engineer
2 71 (11.27%) Architect
3 70 (11.11%) Support Engineer
4 63 (10.00%) Analyst
4 63 (10.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 61 (9.68%) Senior
6 47 (7.46%) Platform Engineer
7 45 (7.14%) DevOps Engineer
8 41 (6.51%) IT Support
9 32 (5.08%) AWS Engineer
10 30 (4.76%) Security Engineer
11 26 (4.13%) 2nd Line Support
12 25 (3.97%) Cloud Platform Engineer
13 23 (3.65%) AWS DevOps
13 23 (3.65%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 23 (3.65%) Operations Engineer
14 22 (3.49%) Lead
14 22 (3.49%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 22 (3.49%) SOC Analyst
15 21 (3.33%) Web Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (6.67%) LDAP
2 23 (3.65%) SAML
3 21 (3.33%) OAuth
4 19 (3.02%) OpenID
5 18 (2.86%) OAuth2
6 13 (2.06%) Kafka
7 12 (1.90%) 802.1X
7 12 (1.90%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (1.59%) REST
9 7 (1.11%) Middleware
9 7 (1.11%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (0.95%) cloud-init
10 6 (0.95%) Keycloak
10 6 (0.95%) YAML
11 5 (0.79%) AngularJS
11 5 (0.79%) Flask
11 5 (0.79%) React
11 5 (0.79%) RESTful
12 4 (0.63%) JPA
12 4 (0.63%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 51 (8.10%) PKI
2 50 (7.94%) Management Information System
2 50 (7.94%) Replication
3 45 (7.14%) Data Centre
4 29 (4.60%) Analytical Mindset
5 27 (4.29%) Onboarding
6 22 (3.49%) Enterprise Software
7 20 (3.17%) Cyberattack
8 19 (3.02%) Security Operations Centre
9 17 (2.70%) Cloud Native
9 17 (2.70%) Cyber Threat
10 13 (2.06%) CSOC
10 13 (2.06%) Hybrid Cloud
11 12 (1.90%) Public Cloud
12 11 (1.75%) Clustering
12 11 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (1.59%) Private Cloud
13 10 (1.59%) Video Conferencing
14 8 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
15 7 (1.11%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 310 (49.21%) Windows
2 146 (23.17%) Windows Server
3 132 (20.95%) Linux
4 59 (9.37%) Windows 10
5 27 (4.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (3.81%) Windows Server 2019
7 22 (3.49%) VMS
8 21 (3.33%) Windows Server 2016
9 19 (3.02%) Amazon Linux
9 19 (3.02%) Unix
10 17 (2.70%) Windows Server 2012
11 16 (2.54%) Android
12 15 (2.38%) Ubuntu
13 13 (2.06%) CentOS
14 11 (1.75%) Apple iOS
14 11 (1.75%) Mac OS
14 11 (1.75%) Windows Server 2003
15 7 (1.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.79%) Solaris
17 3 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (22.70%) Problem-Solving
2 114 (18.10%) DevOps
2 114 (18.10%) ITIL
3 110 (17.46%) CI/CD
4 105 (16.67%) Load Balancing
5 90 (14.29%) Infrastructure as Code
6 80 (12.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 71 (11.27%) Change Management
8 65 (10.32%) Cybersecurity
9 61 (9.68%) Incident Response
10 60 (9.52%) High Availability
10 60 (9.52%) Migration
11 56 (8.89%) Root Cause Analysis
12 53 (8.41%) Platform Engineering
13 52 (8.25%) Service Management
14 51 (8.10%) Continuous Improvement
15 50 (7.94%) Disaster Recovery
16 47 (7.46%) SIEM
17 44 (6.98%) Containerisation
18 43 (6.83%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 183 (29.05%) PowerShell
2 151 (23.97%) Python
3 71 (11.27%) Bash
4 44 (6.98%) SQL
5 20 (3.17%) Java
6 19 (3.02%) Perl
7 18 (2.86%) Groovy
8 13 (2.06%) Bicep
9 9 (1.43%) Go
9 9 (1.43%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.27%) Ruby
11 7 (1.11%) Lisp
11 7 (1.11%) VBScript
12 6 (0.95%) Kusto Query Language
12 6 (0.95%) VB
13 5 (0.79%) C++
14 3 (0.48%) C#
14 3 (0.48%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.32%) JavaScript
16 1 (0.16%) PHP
Qualifications
1 247 (39.21%) Security Cleared
2 175 (27.78%) SC Cleared
3 82 (13.02%) DV Cleared
4 58 (9.21%) Degree
5 57 (9.05%) Microsoft Certification
6 43 (6.83%) Cisco Certification
7 38 (6.03%) Azure Certification
8 37 (5.87%) CCNP
9 22 (3.49%) AWS Certification
10 17 (2.70%) Network+ Certification
11 14 (2.22%) CCNA
12 12 (1.90%) CISSP
13 11 (1.75%) Server+ Certification
14 9 (1.43%) CCIE
15 8 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
15 8 (1.27%) CompTIA Security+
15 8 (1.27%) ITIL Certification
15 8 (1.27%) MCSE
15 8 (1.27%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 7 (1.11%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (4.60%) GDPR
2 18 (2.86%) SLA
3 17 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (2.54%) NIST
5 10 (1.59%) NCSC
6 9 (1.43%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 7 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
9 6 (0.95%) QA
10 5 (0.79%) Accessibility
11 3 (0.48%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 2 (0.32%) JSP 440
13 1 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 1 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
13 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
13 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 272 (43.17%) Active Directory
2 166 (26.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 89 (14.13%) Docker
4 47 (7.46%) Hyper-V
5 37 (5.87%) VMware NSX
6 26 (4.13%) Virtual Machines
7 21 (3.33%) vSphere
8 20 (3.17%) Firmware
9 19 (3.02%) DFS Replication
9 19 (3.02%) VMware ESXi
10 16 (2.54%) Dovecot
10 16 (2.54%) Postfix
11 12 (1.90%) Terminal Services
12 10 (1.59%) Squid
13 9 (1.43%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (1.27%) BitLocker
14 8 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
15 6 (0.95%) Brightmail
15 6 (0.95%) ISA Server
15 6 (0.95%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 127 (20.16%) Terraform
2 104 (16.51%) Ansible
3 73 (11.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 71 (11.27%) SCCM
5 59 (9.37%) Kubernetes
6 39 (6.19%) Single Sign-On
6 39 (6.19%) vCenter Server
7 36 (5.71%) Grafana
8 32 (5.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 28 (4.44%) Prometheus
10 19 (3.02%) WSUS
11 14 (2.22%) Argo
11 14 (2.22%) FortiGate
12 13 (2.06%) Nessus
12 13 (2.06%) Packer
12 13 (2.06%) Proxmox
13 12 (1.90%) SCOM
14 10 (1.59%) Puppet
15 9 (1.43%) Microsoft Clustering
16 8 (1.27%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 237 (37.62%) Microsoft
2 201 (31.90%) VMware
3 106 (16.83%) F5
4 94 (14.92%) Cisco
5 71 (11.27%) ServiceNow
6 51 (8.10%) Palo Alto
7 49 (7.78%) CheckPoint
8 44 (6.98%) Splunk
9 38 (6.03%) Blue Coat
10 34 (5.40%) Citrix
11 31 (4.92%) SolarWinds
12 29 (4.60%) Red Hat
13 27 (4.29%) McAfee
14 25 (3.97%) NetApp
15 23 (3.65%) Juniper
15 23 (3.65%) Veeam
16 18 (2.86%) Zscaler
17 17 (2.70%) Dell
17 17 (2.70%) Fortinet
18 14 (2.22%) Oracle