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 25 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 132 112 141
Rank change year-on-year -20 +29 -7
Contract jobs citing DNS 801 594 614
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.94% 2.48% 1.68%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.40% 19.01% 12.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 498 415 426
10th Percentile £294 £272 £225
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £550 £485
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +13.52% -7.71%
75th Percentile £576 £609 £600
90th Percentile £638 £662 £675
UK median daily rate £495 £550 £475
% change year-on-year -10.00% +15.79% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 9 23
10th Percentile £19.49 £26.10 £18.80
25th Percentile £25.58 £45.75 £23.53
Median hourly rate £35.22 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.34% +101.69% -23.27%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.35 -
90th Percentile £74.41 £82.48 £51.27
UK median hourly rate £36.36 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -54.93% +101.69% -23.27%

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 3,927 3,124 4,800
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.49% 13.03% 13.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,438 1,953 2,892
10th Percentile £263 £219 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.03%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £695
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £490
% change year-on-year +2.56% -0.51% -4.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 117 386
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.33 £15.44 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.86 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.71% -6.25% +128.57%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £70.33
UK median hourly rate £29.04 £38.41 £40.00
% change year-on-year -24.39% -3.98% +116.22%

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 25 May 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 25 May 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 25 May 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 -45 255 £500 -4.76% 60
North of England +9 225 £446 -6.21% 57
South East -7 161 £525 -4.55% 91
North West +34 152 £446 +4.82% 36
Midlands +14 110 £413 -25.00% 40
West Midlands +11 97 £406 +1.56% 23
Yorkshire -38 67 £447 -18.77% 16
South West -28 56 £500 -15.79% 36
East of England -46 40 £450 -18.18% 31
East Midlands -25 12 £394 -30.62% 17
North East -31 6 £306 -12.50% 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 79 (9.86%) Microsoft Exchange
2 42 (5.24%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.87%) Confluence
4 14 (1.75%) nginx
5 11 (1.37%) IIS
6 9 (1.12%) Apache
7 4 (0.50%) Skype for Business
7 4 (0.50%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.25%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.25%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.12%) Traefik
Applications
1 16 (2.00%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.37%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 277 (34.58%) Azure
2 147 (18.35%) AWS
3 128 (15.98%) Entra ID
4 105 (13.11%) Microsoft 365
5 90 (11.24%) GCP
6 61 (7.62%) GitHub
7 47 (5.87%) IaaS
8 37 (4.62%) PaaS
9 36 (4.49%) SaaS
10 31 (3.87%) AWS CloudFormation
10 31 (3.87%) Serverless
11 30 (3.75%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 29 (3.62%) Amazon EC2
13 28 (3.50%) Amazon S3
13 28 (3.50%) AWS Lambda
14 27 (3.37%) Amazon EKS
14 27 (3.37%) GitHub Actions
15 26 (3.25%) Route 53
16 20 (2.50%) OneDrive
16 20 (2.50%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 347 (43.32%) DHCP
2 242 (30.21%) Firewall
3 199 (24.84%) VPN
4 187 (23.35%) TCP/IP
5 106 (13.23%) WAN
6 97 (12.11%) LAN
7 89 (11.11%) Network Security
8 87 (10.86%) SSL
9 82 (10.24%) BIG-IP
10 80 (9.99%) BGP
11 79 (9.86%) VLAN
12 73 (9.11%) HTTP
13 47 (5.87%) Wireless
14 45 (5.62%) OSPF
15 43 (5.37%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 43 (5.37%) Wi-Fi
16 41 (5.12%) SAN
17 38 (4.74%) DMZ
17 38 (4.74%) Kerberos
17 38 (4.74%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (3.87%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.25%) Elasticsearch
3 12 (1.50%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (1.00%) Power BI
6 6 (0.75%) MySQL
7 5 (0.62%) Amazon Aurora
7 5 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.62%) DynamoDB
7 5 (0.62%) MongoDB
8 4 (0.50%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.50%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.50%) Redis
9 2 (0.25%) Data Hub
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.12%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 1 (0.12%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 55 (6.87%) Jenkins
2 52 (6.49%) JIRA
3 28 (3.50%) Git
3 28 (3.50%) GitLab
4 26 (3.25%) Fiddler
5 9 (1.12%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.87%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.87%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.75%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.50%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.50%) Terragrunt
9 3 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.25%) Introscope
11 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.12%) Spinnaker
11 1 (0.12%) Travis CI
General
1 164 (20.47%) Social Skills
2 78 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
3 70 (8.74%) Banking
4 63 (7.87%) Finance
5 50 (6.24%) Public Sector
6 39 (4.87%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (4.62%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.37%) Legal
9 17 (2.12%) Military
10 15 (1.87%) Telecoms
11 9 (1.12%) Law
12 8 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.62%) Local Government
14 5 (0.62%) Police
15 4 (0.50%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.37%) Advertising
16 3 (0.37%) Manufacturing
17 2 (0.25%) Aerospace
17 2 (0.25%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 152 (18.98%) Network Engineer
2 106 (13.23%) Architect
3 100 (12.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 67 (8.36%) Analyst
5 62 (7.74%) Security Engineer
6 53 (6.62%) Senior
7 49 (6.12%) Web Engineer
8 47 (5.87%) Support Engineer
9 41 (5.12%) Network Security Engineer
10 34 (4.24%) Cisco Engineer
10 34 (4.24%) Cisco Network Engineer
10 34 (4.24%) IT Support
11 33 (4.12%) Cloud Engineer
11 33 (4.12%) Data Engineer
11 33 (4.12%) Data Network Engineer
12 32 (4.00%) Cisco Security Engineer
13 31 (3.87%) Administrator
14 30 (3.75%) IT Engineer
15 28 (3.50%) Azure Engineer
16 27 (3.37%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (8.49%) LDAP
2 45 (5.62%) SAML
3 37 (4.62%) OAuth
4 36 (4.49%) 802.1X
5 25 (3.12%) OpenID
6 20 (2.50%) OpenTelemetry
7 10 (1.25%) ARM Templates
7 10 (1.25%) JSON
8 9 (1.12%) Kafka
8 9 (1.12%) OAuth2
8 9 (1.12%) REST
9 8 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
10 5 (0.62%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (0.62%) XMPP
11 4 (0.50%) Hibernate
11 4 (0.50%) JPA
11 4 (0.50%) RESTful
11 4 (0.50%) Spring
11 4 (0.50%) Spring Cloud
11 4 (0.50%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 83 (10.36%) Data Centre
2 54 (6.74%) PKI
3 49 (6.12%) Cloud Native
4 42 (5.24%) Onboarding
5 39 (4.87%) Management Information System
5 39 (4.87%) Replication
6 38 (4.74%) Clustering
7 35 (4.37%) Public Cloud
8 26 (3.25%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 25 (3.12%) Hybrid Cloud
10 18 (2.25%) Cyber Threat
11 17 (2.12%) Security Operations Centre
12 16 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
13 15 (1.87%) Cyberattack
13 15 (1.87%) Enterprise Cloud
14 12 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
14 12 (1.50%) Legacy Systems
15 11 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
15 11 (1.37%) Enterprise Storage
15 11 (1.37%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 327 (40.82%) Windows
2 192 (23.97%) Windows Server
3 99 (12.36%) Linux
4 43 (5.37%) Windows 10
5 33 (4.12%) Windows Server 2019
6 24 (3.00%) Unix
7 18 (2.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 17 (2.12%) Mac OS
8 17 (2.12%) Windows Server 2012
9 15 (1.87%) Windows Server 2016
10 13 (1.62%) Apple iOS
11 12 (1.50%) Android
12 8 (1.00%) Windows Server 2003
13 7 (0.87%) CentOS
13 7 (0.87%) Ubuntu
13 7 (0.87%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.50%) CatOS
14 4 (0.50%) VMS
15 3 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
16 2 (0.25%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (21.10%) Problem-Solving
2 162 (20.22%) Load Balancing
3 133 (16.60%) Migration
4 131 (16.35%) High Availability
5 126 (15.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 111 (13.86%) DevOps
7 104 (12.98%) CI/CD
8 101 (12.61%) Infrastructure as Code
9 100 (12.48%) ITIL
10 74 (9.24%) Observability
11 71 (8.86%) Disaster Recovery
12 70 (8.74%) ITSM
13 67 (8.36%) Identity Access Management
14 65 (8.11%) Cybersecurity
15 62 (7.74%) Agile
16 53 (6.62%) Project Delivery
17 50 (6.24%) Containerisation
17 50 (6.24%) RBAC
17 50 (6.24%) Root Cause Analysis
18 49 (6.12%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 153 (19.10%) PowerShell
2 121 (15.11%) Python
3 70 (8.74%) Bash
4 43 (5.37%) SQL
5 21 (2.62%) JavaScript
6 19 (2.37%) Bicep
7 12 (1.50%) Go
7 12 (1.50%) Java
8 11 (1.37%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.00%) Ruby
10 7 (0.87%) VBA
11 6 (0.75%) Perl
11 6 (0.75%) VBScript
12 4 (0.50%) Groovy
12 4 (0.50%) VB
13 3 (0.37%) ActionScript
13 3 (0.37%) C
14 2 (0.25%) Jython
14 2 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
15 1 (0.12%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 268 (33.46%) Security Cleared
2 172 (21.47%) SC Cleared
3 87 (10.86%) DV Cleared
4 76 (9.49%) Cisco Certification
5 51 (6.37%) Degree
6 46 (5.74%) CCNP
7 38 (4.74%) CCNA
8 24 (3.00%) Microsoft Certification
8 24 (3.00%) Network+ Certification
9 22 (2.75%) Azure Certification
10 18 (2.25%) CompTIA Security+
11 13 (1.62%) Server+ Certification
12 11 (1.37%) BPSS Clearance
13 10 (1.25%) AWS Certification
13 10 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
13 10 (1.25%) JNCIA
13 10 (1.25%) JNCIS
14 8 (1.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 8 (1.00%) JNCIP
15 7 (0.87%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.75%) SLA
2 21 (2.62%) GDPR
3 20 (2.50%) NIST
4 16 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (1.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 7 (0.87%) QA
7 6 (0.75%) NCSC
8 4 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.50%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.25%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.12%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.12%) COBIT
10 1 (0.12%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.12%) RMADS
10 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
System Software
1 319 (39.83%) Active Directory
2 180 (22.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 82 (10.24%) Hyper-V
4 53 (6.62%) VMware NSX
5 45 (5.62%) vSphere
6 41 (5.12%) Docker
7 35 (4.37%) VMware ESXi
8 33 (4.12%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (3.12%) Firmware
10 22 (2.75%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (1.75%) BitLocker
12 12 (1.50%) NFS
13 11 (1.37%) Squid
14 10 (1.25%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (1.00%) Postfix
15 8 (1.00%) vCloud
15 8 (1.00%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.87%) Varnish
17 4 (0.50%) Sendmail
18 3 (0.37%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 132 (16.48%) Terraform
2 99 (12.36%) Ansible
3 89 (11.11%) Kubernetes
4 72 (8.99%) Microsoft Intune
5 69 (8.61%) Single Sign-On
6 49 (6.12%) SCCM
7 48 (5.99%) Grafana
8 44 (5.49%) FortiGate
9 42 (5.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 42 (5.24%) vCenter Server
10 30 (3.75%) Prometheus
11 25 (3.12%) WSUS
12 20 (2.50%) Argo
13 17 (2.12%) SCOM
14 12 (1.50%) HAProxy
14 12 (1.50%) Puppet
15 11 (1.37%) Nessus
16 9 (1.12%) vMotion
17 8 (1.00%) Consul
17 8 (1.00%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 250 (31.21%) Microsoft
2 218 (27.22%) VMware
3 145 (18.10%) Cisco
4 144 (17.98%) F5
5 71 (8.86%) ServiceNow
6 70 (8.74%) Splunk
7 48 (5.99%) Citrix
7 48 (5.99%) Infoblox
8 46 (5.74%) SolarWinds
9 43 (5.37%) Juniper
10 41 (5.12%) Google
11 37 (4.62%) Red Hat
12 35 (4.37%) Blue Coat
13 32 (4.00%) NetApp
14 29 (3.62%) McAfee
15 28 (3.50%) Palo Alto
16 27 (3.37%) Dynatrace
17 24 (3.00%) CheckPoint
18 22 (2.75%) Extreme Networks
19 18 (2.25%) AppDynamics