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 16 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 113 144
Rank change year-on-year -18 +31 -7
Contract jobs citing DNS 840 604 601
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.96% 2.45% 1.61%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.77% 19.01% 12.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 514 420 410
10th Percentile £300 £263 £224
25th Percentile £400 £400 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £550 £488
Median % change year-on-year -10.45% +12.82% -6.61%
75th Percentile £580 £606 £600
90th Percentile £638 £653 £675
UK median daily rate £495 £545 £475
% change year-on-year -9.17% +14.74% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 15 25
10th Percentile £18.08 - £19.10
25th Percentile £22.19 £29.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £54.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.37% +36.25% -39.45%
75th Percentile £67.14 £81.18 -
90th Percentile £74.08 £81.80 £50.64
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £54.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -40.37% +36.25% -39.39%

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 4,045 3,178 4,807
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.44% 12.87% 12.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,504 1,980 2,860
10th Percentile £263 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.58%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £690
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.52% -3.40% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 272 129 393
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.59 £13.57
25th Percentile £21.33 £16.30 £17.69
Median hourly rate £30.77 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.95% -6.25% +122.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £81.50 £72.82
UK median hourly rate £27.69 £41.25 £40.00
% change year-on-year -32.87% +3.13% +111.30%

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 16 June 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 16 June 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 16 June 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 -34 282 £500 - 85
North of England +8 232 £447 -5.89% 54
South East +3 170 £525 -4.55% 119
North West +37 151 £450 +0.67% 36
Midlands +3 107 £444 -6.58% 41
West Midlands +5 95 £444 +1.43% 25
Yorkshire -23 75 £447 -18.73% 10
South West -25 61 £500 -18.70% 37
East of England -56 34 £450 -18.18% 36
East Midlands -25 11 £413 -27.31% 16
North East -39 6 £306 -12.50% 10
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 81 (9.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 49 (5.83%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.79%) nginx
4 14 (1.67%) Confluence
5 13 (1.55%) IIS
6 11 (1.31%) Apache
7 6 (0.71%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.48%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.24%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.24%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.24%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.24%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
10 1 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.12%) Traefik
Applications
1 18 (2.14%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.31%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 298 (35.48%) Azure
2 158 (18.81%) AWS
3 142 (16.90%) Entra ID
4 112 (13.33%) Microsoft 365
5 94 (11.19%) GCP
6 63 (7.50%) GitHub
7 53 (6.31%) IaaS
8 37 (4.40%) PaaS
9 36 (4.29%) SaaS
10 31 (3.69%) Serverless
11 28 (3.33%) OneDrive
11 28 (3.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 26 (3.10%) Amazon EC2
12 26 (3.10%) Amazon EKS
12 26 (3.10%) Amazon S3
12 26 (3.10%) Route 53
13 25 (2.98%) AWS CloudFormation
14 24 (2.86%) OpenShift
15 23 (2.74%) AWS Lambda
15 23 (2.74%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 372 (44.29%) DHCP
2 256 (30.48%) Firewall
3 204 (24.29%) VPN
4 195 (23.21%) TCP/IP
5 115 (13.69%) WAN
6 98 (11.67%) LAN
7 93 (11.07%) Network Security
8 89 (10.60%) SSL
9 86 (10.24%) BIG-IP
10 83 (9.88%) BGP
11 81 (9.64%) VLAN
12 66 (7.86%) HTTP
13 49 (5.83%) Wireless
14 46 (5.48%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 45 (5.36%) OSPF
15 45 (5.36%) Wi-Fi
16 42 (5.00%) SAN
17 37 (4.40%) DMZ
18 36 (4.29%) Kerberos
19 34 (4.05%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (4.05%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.14%) Elasticsearch
3 12 (1.43%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.19%) Azure SQL Database
5 9 (1.07%) Power BI
6 8 (0.95%) MySQL
7 6 (0.71%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.60%) DynamoDB
9 4 (0.48%) Amazon Aurora
9 4 (0.48%) Data Lake
9 4 (0.48%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.48%) Redis
10 3 (0.36%) Big Data
10 3 (0.36%) MongoDB
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.12%) Relational Database
11 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.12%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 57 (6.79%) Jenkins
2 56 (6.67%) JIRA
3 27 (3.21%) Git
4 24 (2.86%) Fiddler
4 24 (2.86%) GitLab
5 9 (1.07%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.83%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.83%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.71%) Chocolatey
8 3 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.24%) Introscope
9 2 (0.24%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.12%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.12%) Terragrunt
General
1 172 (20.48%) Social Skills
2 70 (8.33%) Banking
3 69 (8.21%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (8.10%) Finance
5 50 (5.95%) Public Sector
6 36 (4.29%) Documentation Skills
6 36 (4.29%) Investment Banking
7 19 (2.26%) Legal
8 16 (1.90%) Military
9 13 (1.55%) Telecoms
10 7 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 7 (0.83%) Local Government
10 7 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
11 6 (0.71%) Law
11 6 (0.71%) Police
11 6 (0.71%) Publishing
12 4 (0.48%) Advertising
12 4 (0.48%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.48%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.36%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 161 (19.17%) Network Engineer
2 116 (13.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 109 (12.98%) Architect
4 59 (7.02%) Analyst
4 59 (7.02%) Security Engineer
4 59 (7.02%) Support Engineer
5 57 (6.79%) Senior
6 47 (5.60%) Web Engineer
7 44 (5.24%) Cloud Engineer
8 42 (5.00%) Network Security Engineer
9 38 (4.52%) IT Support
10 37 (4.40%) Cisco Engineer
11 35 (4.17%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 33 (3.93%) Administrator
12 33 (3.93%) Data Engineer
12 33 (3.93%) Data Network Engineer
13 32 (3.81%) Cisco Security Engineer
13 32 (3.81%) DevOps Engineer
14 31 (3.69%) Azure Engineer
14 31 (3.69%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (6.79%) LDAP
2 42 (5.00%) SAML
3 41 (4.88%) 802.1X
4 35 (4.17%) OAuth
5 25 (2.98%) OpenID
6 20 (2.38%) OpenTelemetry
7 11 (1.31%) ARM Templates
7 11 (1.31%) JSON
8 9 (1.07%) REST
9 8 (0.95%) OAuth2
10 7 (0.83%) Kafka
11 5 (0.60%) CSS
11 5 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (0.60%) XMPP
12 4 (0.48%) Hibernate
12 4 (0.48%) JPA
12 4 (0.48%) RESTful
12 4 (0.48%) Spring
12 4 (0.48%) Web Services
12 4 (0.48%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 101 (12.02%) Data Centre
2 64 (7.62%) PKI
3 56 (6.67%) Cloud Native
4 47 (5.60%) Onboarding
5 39 (4.64%) Clustering
5 39 (4.64%) Replication
6 35 (4.17%) Hybrid Cloud
6 35 (4.17%) Management Information System
7 33 (3.93%) Public Cloud
8 29 (3.45%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 16 (1.90%) Enterprise Cloud
9 16 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.67%) Cyber Threat
11 12 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
11 12 (1.43%) Security Operations Centre
11 12 (1.43%) Security Posture
11 12 (1.43%) Virtual Team
12 11 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
13 10 (1.19%) Cyberattack
13 10 (1.19%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 349 (41.55%) Windows
2 200 (23.81%) Windows Server
3 114 (13.57%) Linux
4 41 (4.88%) Windows 10
5 31 (3.69%) Windows Server 2019
6 25 (2.98%) Unix
7 24 (2.86%) Mac OS
7 24 (2.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (2.38%) Windows Server 2012
9 16 (1.90%) Apple iOS
10 11 (1.31%) Android
10 11 (1.31%) Ubuntu
10 11 (1.31%) Windows Server 2016
11 9 (1.07%) CentOS
12 7 (0.83%) Windows 7
12 7 (0.83%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.60%) VMS
14 3 (0.36%) AIX
15 2 (0.24%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (20.71%) Problem-Solving
2 169 (20.12%) Load Balancing
3 148 (17.62%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 146 (17.38%) Migration
5 137 (16.31%) High Availability
6 122 (14.52%) DevOps
7 108 (12.86%) CI/CD
8 107 (12.74%) Infrastructure as Code
9 106 (12.62%) ITIL
10 81 (9.64%) ITSM
11 78 (9.29%) Observability
12 70 (8.33%) Identity Access Management
13 69 (8.21%) Agile
14 66 (7.86%) Disaster Recovery
15 61 (7.26%) Project Delivery
16 58 (6.90%) Cybersecurity
17 54 (6.43%) RBAC
18 50 (5.95%) Containerisation
19 49 (5.83%) Root Cause Analysis
19 49 (5.83%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 158 (18.81%) PowerShell
2 126 (15.00%) Python
3 76 (9.05%) Bash
4 49 (5.83%) SQL
5 23 (2.74%) JavaScript
6 19 (2.26%) Bicep
7 11 (1.31%) Go
7 11 (1.31%) Java
8 10 (1.19%) Shell Script
9 9 (1.07%) VBA
10 8 (0.95%) ActionScript
11 7 (0.83%) Perl
12 6 (0.71%) VBScript
13 5 (0.60%) Groovy
13 5 (0.60%) Ruby
14 4 (0.48%) C
14 4 (0.48%) VB
15 3 (0.36%) Lisp
16 2 (0.24%) Jython
16 2 (0.24%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 273 (32.50%) Security Cleared
2 168 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 92 (10.95%) DV Cleared
4 83 (9.88%) Cisco Certification
5 61 (7.26%) Degree
6 52 (6.19%) CCNP
7 43 (5.12%) CCNA
8 26 (3.10%) Microsoft Certification
9 23 (2.74%) Azure Certification
9 23 (2.74%) Network+ Certification
10 16 (1.90%) CompTIA Security+
11 15 (1.79%) Server+ Certification
12 14 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
13 11 (1.31%) AWS Certification
13 11 (1.31%) CCIE
14 10 (1.19%) CISSP
14 10 (1.19%) JNCIA
14 10 (1.19%) JNCIS
15 9 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
16 8 (0.95%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.57%) SLA
2 24 (2.86%) NIST
3 21 (2.50%) GDPR
4 17 (2.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 14 (1.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.07%) QA
7 6 (0.71%) NCSC
8 5 (0.60%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.24%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.12%) COBIT
11 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.12%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.12%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.12%) RMADS
System Software
1 339 (40.36%) Active Directory
2 182 (21.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 84 (10.00%) Hyper-V
4 53 (6.31%) VMware NSX
5 49 (5.83%) vSphere
6 47 (5.60%) VMware ESXi
7 38 (4.52%) Virtual Machines
8 36 (4.29%) Docker
9 34 (4.05%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (2.86%) Firmware
11 16 (1.90%) BitLocker
12 14 (1.67%) NFS
13 12 (1.43%) Microsoft App-V
13 12 (1.43%) Squid
14 11 (1.31%) vCloud
15 10 (1.19%) Postfix
16 8 (0.95%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.83%) Varnish
18 6 (0.71%) Terminal Services
19 4 (0.48%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 138 (16.43%) Terraform
2 107 (12.74%) Ansible
3 91 (10.83%) Kubernetes
4 74 (8.81%) Microsoft Intune
5 70 (8.33%) Single Sign-On
6 51 (6.07%) Grafana
7 47 (5.60%) vCenter Server
8 44 (5.24%) FortiGate
8 44 (5.24%) SCCM
9 40 (4.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (4.17%) Prometheus
11 21 (2.50%) Argo
11 21 (2.50%) WSUS
12 18 (2.14%) SCOM
13 16 (1.90%) Puppet
14 14 (1.67%) HAProxy
15 13 (1.55%) Jamf Pro
15 13 (1.55%) vMotion
16 11 (1.31%) Nessus
17 8 (0.95%) Consul
Vendors
1 274 (32.62%) Microsoft
2 218 (25.95%) VMware
3 154 (18.33%) Cisco
4 146 (17.38%) F5
5 80 (9.52%) ServiceNow
6 71 (8.45%) Splunk
7 53 (6.31%) Infoblox
8 51 (6.07%) Citrix
9 48 (5.71%) Google
10 47 (5.60%) SolarWinds
11 45 (5.36%) Juniper
12 42 (5.00%) Red Hat
13 33 (3.93%) Palo Alto
14 32 (3.81%) Blue Coat
15 30 (3.57%) NetApp
16 29 (3.45%) Dynatrace
17 26 (3.10%) McAfee
18 22 (2.62%) Extreme Networks
19 21 (2.50%) CheckPoint
19 21 (2.50%) Fortinet