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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 118 158
Rank change year-on-year -18 +40 -27
Contract jobs citing DNS 928 652 535
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.03% 2.35% 1.62%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 21.50% 19.30% 13.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 569 416 355
10th Percentile £292 £250 £256
25th Percentile £406 £388 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% +4.50% -0.30%
75th Percentile £581 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £519 £500
% change year-on-year -3.68% +3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 31 13
10th Percentile £26.53 - £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.10
Median hourly rate £63.48 £57.50 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +10.40% +137.80% -34.65%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.18 £48.75
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £51.52
UK median hourly rate £63.48 £57.50 £24.18
% change year-on-year +10.40% +137.80% -38.03%

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 4,316 3,379 4,039
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.43% 12.18% 12.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,598 2,100 2,418
10th Percentile £263 £242 £250
25th Percentile £400 £364 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £505
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -2.57% +1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £677 £681 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 169 253
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £27.11 £42.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -36.21% -25.89% +1.52%
75th Percentile £65.88 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.68 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £45.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -42.22% -10.00% -9.62%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 -35 316 £500 -0.99% 176
North of England +21 219 £479 -1.74% 62
South East +7 185 £538 +2.38% 111
North West +21 137 £450 -1.64% 38
Midlands -20 121 £450 -5.26% 37
South West +3 99 £550 - 53
West Midlands -21 99 £450 -5.26% 23
Yorkshire -12 68 £500 -9.09% 18
East of England -46 34 £450 -18.18% 40
East Midlands -1 20 £431 -21.59% 14
North East -32 14 £413 +21.32% 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 98 (10.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 81 (8.73%) SharePoint
3 18 (1.94%) Confluence
4 15 (1.62%) Apache
5 13 (1.40%) IIS
5 13 (1.40%) nginx
6 7 (0.75%) Skype for Business
7 6 (0.65%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.43%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.22%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 24 (2.59%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.97%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.22%) Houdini
5 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.22%) NUKE
6 1 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 10 (1.08%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 380 (40.95%) Azure
2 189 (20.37%) AWS
3 176 (18.97%) Microsoft 365
4 169 (18.21%) Entra ID
5 92 (9.91%) GCP
6 65 (7.00%) GitHub
7 51 (5.50%) OneDrive
8 48 (5.17%) IaaS
9 41 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
10 37 (3.99%) Azure Monitor
11 36 (3.88%) GitHub Actions
11 36 (3.88%) SaaS
12 34 (3.66%) PaaS
13 30 (3.23%) OpenShift
14 24 (2.59%) AWS CloudFormation
14 24 (2.59%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 22 (2.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 21 (2.26%) Azure Sentinel
16 21 (2.26%) Serverless
17 20 (2.16%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 449 (48.38%) DHCP
2 341 (36.75%) Firewall
3 285 (30.71%) TCP/IP
4 272 (29.31%) VPN
5 125 (13.47%) Network Security
6 119 (12.82%) WAN
7 117 (12.61%) VLAN
8 96 (10.34%) LAN
9 90 (9.70%) BGP
9 90 (9.70%) SSL
10 72 (7.76%) Wireless
11 65 (7.00%) Wi-Fi
12 64 (6.90%) BIG-IP
12 64 (6.90%) HTTP
13 55 (5.93%) SAN
14 52 (5.60%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 48 (5.17%) OSPF
16 46 (4.96%) DMZ
17 45 (4.85%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 36 (3.88%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (5.06%) SQL Server
2 14 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (1.19%) MySQL
3 11 (1.19%) Power BI
4 9 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
5 7 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
5 7 (0.75%) NoSQL
6 6 (0.65%) Data Lake
6 6 (0.65%) MongoDB
7 5 (0.54%) Redis
8 4 (0.43%) Db2
9 3 (0.32%) Big Data
10 2 (0.22%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (0.22%) KDB
11 1 (0.11%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.11%) Cloud Spanner
11 1 (0.11%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.11%) Metadata
11 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 67 (7.22%) JIRA
2 50 (5.39%) Jenkins
3 38 (4.09%) Git
4 32 (3.45%) GitLab
5 16 (1.72%) Fiddler
6 9 (0.97%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.75%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.75%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.54%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.54%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.43%) Selenium
10 3 (0.32%) MSI
11 2 (0.22%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.22%) Introscope
11 2 (0.22%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.22%) Vagrant
12 1 (0.11%) Maven
12 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio
General
1 234 (25.22%) Social Skills
2 108 (11.64%) Analytical Skills
3 86 (9.27%) Finance
4 69 (7.44%) Public Sector
5 63 (6.79%) Banking
6 42 (4.53%) Documentation Skills
7 32 (3.45%) Telecoms
8 31 (3.34%) Investment Banking
9 16 (1.72%) Legal
10 12 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (1.19%) Local Government
11 11 (1.19%) Police
12 10 (1.08%) Aerospace
12 10 (1.08%) Military
13 8 (0.86%) Manufacturing
13 8 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (0.75%) Front Office
14 7 (0.75%) Law
14 7 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (0.65%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 166 (17.89%) Network Engineer
2 164 (17.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 107 (11.53%) Senior
4 98 (10.56%) Support Engineer
5 77 (8.30%) Architect
6 76 (8.19%) Cloud Engineer
7 48 (5.17%) Security Engineer
8 47 (5.06%) IT Support
9 46 (4.96%) IT Engineer
10 45 (4.85%) Analyst
11 44 (4.74%) Platform Engineer
12 39 (4.20%) Azure Engineer
12 39 (4.20%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 37 (3.99%) Cisco Engineer
13 37 (3.99%) Network Security Engineer
14 36 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
14 36 (3.88%) Web Engineer
15 35 (3.77%) Administrator
15 35 (3.77%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 33 (3.56%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 206 (22.20%) Terraform
2 36 (3.88%) 802.1X
3 35 (3.77%) SAML
4 26 (2.80%) LDAP
5 25 (2.69%) ARM Templates
6 22 (2.37%) OAuth
7 17 (1.83%) OpenID
7 17 (1.83%) REST
8 13 (1.40%) JSON
9 12 (1.29%) OpenTelemetry
9 12 (1.29%) YAML
10 11 (1.19%) Kafka
11 9 (0.97%) CSS
12 8 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
13 7 (0.75%) Middleware
14 6 (0.65%) RabbitMQ
14 6 (0.65%) Software Packaging
15 5 (0.54%) Flask
15 5 (0.54%) Jinja
15 5 (0.54%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 119 (12.82%) Data Centre
2 95 (10.24%) PKI
3 71 (7.65%) Hybrid Cloud
4 67 (7.22%) Onboarding
5 54 (5.82%) Management Information System
6 43 (4.63%) Cloud Native
7 33 (3.56%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 30 (3.23%) Clustering
9 26 (2.80%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.80%) Replication
10 20 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
11 17 (1.83%) Enterprise Cloud
11 17 (1.83%) Linux Command Line
12 14 (1.51%) Driving Licence
12 14 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
13 13 (1.40%) Security Posture
14 12 (1.29%) Cyber Threat
15 10 (1.08%) Distributed Systems
15 10 (1.08%) Enterprise Storage
16 9 (0.97%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 444 (47.84%) Windows
2 252 (27.16%) Windows Server
3 200 (21.55%) Linux
4 65 (7.00%) Windows 10
5 40 (4.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 37 (3.99%) Windows Server 2019
7 29 (3.13%) Mac OS
8 28 (3.02%) Unix
9 24 (2.59%) Ubuntu
10 23 (2.48%) Windows Server 2012
11 18 (1.94%) Apple iOS
12 17 (1.83%) CentOS
13 16 (1.72%) Android
14 13 (1.40%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (1.29%) VMS
15 12 (1.29%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.75%) Rocky
16 7 (0.75%) Windows Server 2008
17 5 (0.54%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.43%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 224 (24.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 207 (22.31%) Problem-Solving
3 182 (19.61%) ITIL
4 176 (18.97%) Infrastructure as Code
5 169 (18.21%) Load Balancing
6 150 (16.16%) DevOps
6 150 (16.16%) Migration
7 140 (15.09%) CI/CD
8 118 (12.72%) High Availability
9 114 (12.28%) ITSM
10 98 (10.56%) Continuous Improvement
11 93 (10.02%) Agile
11 93 (10.02%) Cybersecurity
12 88 (9.48%) Technical Leadership
13 87 (9.38%) Observability
14 76 (8.19%) Disaster Recovery
14 76 (8.19%) Platform Engineering
14 76 (8.19%) Project Delivery
15 75 (8.08%) Root Cause Analysis
16 69 (7.44%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 232 (25.00%) PowerShell
2 183 (19.72%) Python
3 132 (14.22%) Bash
4 61 (6.57%) SQL
5 43 (4.63%) Bicep
6 19 (2.05%) JavaScript
7 17 (1.83%) Shell Script
8 12 (1.29%) Go
9 10 (1.08%) Perl
10 9 (0.97%) ActionScript
10 9 (0.97%) VBScript
11 8 (0.86%) Groovy
11 8 (0.86%) Java
12 7 (0.75%) VBA
13 6 (0.65%) VB
14 4 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
14 4 (0.43%) Ruby
15 3 (0.32%) C
15 3 (0.32%) Lisp
16 2 (0.22%) C++
Qualifications
1 343 (36.96%) Security Cleared
2 186 (20.04%) SC Cleared
3 151 (16.27%) DV Cleared
4 89 (9.59%) Cisco Certification
5 76 (8.19%) Degree
6 69 (7.44%) CCNP
7 53 (5.71%) Azure Certification
8 47 (5.06%) CCNA
9 46 (4.96%) Microsoft Certification
10 26 (2.80%) Network+ Certification
11 23 (2.48%) AWS Certification
12 20 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
13 19 (2.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.83%) CCIE
15 15 (1.62%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 15 (1.62%) VCAP
16 13 (1.40%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.19%) A+ Certification
17 11 (1.19%) ITIL Certification
17 11 (1.19%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.99%) SLA
2 26 (2.80%) NIST
3 16 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (1.72%) NCSC
4 14 (1.51%) QA
5 6 (0.65%) GDPR
6 5 (0.54%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
7 4 (0.43%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 4 (0.43%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.32%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.22%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.11%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 410 (44.18%) Active Directory
2 261 (28.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 113 (12.18%) Hyper-V
4 80 (8.62%) VMware ESXi
5 72 (7.76%) vSphere
6 69 (7.44%) VMware NSX
7 62 (6.68%) Docker
8 42 (4.53%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (3.77%) Virtual Desktop
10 26 (2.80%) Firmware
11 18 (1.94%) NFS
12 16 (1.72%) vCloud
13 14 (1.51%) BitLocker
14 10 (1.08%) Postfix
15 9 (0.97%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.86%) Virtual Servers
17 6 (0.65%) Squid
17 6 (0.65%) VMware Workstation
18 5 (0.54%) UAG
18 5 (0.54%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 148 (15.95%) Ansible
2 119 (12.82%) Kubernetes
3 106 (11.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 77 (8.30%) SCCM
5 67 (7.22%) vCenter Server
6 59 (6.36%) Grafana
7 54 (5.82%) Single Sign-On
8 47 (5.06%) Prometheus
9 32 (3.45%) SCOM
10 31 (3.34%) WSUS
11 26 (2.80%) FortiGate
12 16 (1.72%) Puppet
12 16 (1.72%) VxRail
13 14 (1.51%) Packer
14 13 (1.40%) Jamf Pro
14 13 (1.40%) vMotion
15 12 (1.29%) NetBackup
16 11 (1.19%) Argo
16 11 (1.19%) Istio
17 10 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 358 (38.58%) Microsoft
2 313 (33.73%) VMware
3 179 (19.29%) Cisco
4 127 (13.69%) F5
5 90 (9.70%) ServiceNow
6 59 (6.36%) Infoblox
7 55 (5.93%) Google
8 50 (5.39%) Citrix
9 49 (5.28%) SolarWinds
10 46 (4.96%) Palo Alto
11 43 (4.63%) Juniper
12 42 (4.53%) Splunk
13 40 (4.31%) Red Hat
14 34 (3.66%) NetApp
15 32 (3.45%) CheckPoint
16 30 (3.23%) Dynatrace
16 30 (3.23%) Fortinet
17 27 (2.91%) Zscaler
18 25 (2.69%) Blue Coat
19 24 (2.59%) McAfee