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 24 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 112 127
Rank change year-on-year -24 +15 -4
Contract jobs citing DNS 746 589 672
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.99% 2.42% 1.78%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.98% 18.16% 12.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 467 409 446
10th Percentile £263 £250 £200
25th Percentile £400 £390 £321
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £465
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +12.91% -11.43%
75th Percentile £609 £606 £575
90th Percentile £680 £663 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 9 24
10th Percentile £13.04 £17.26 £20.98
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £42.71 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.07% +101.69% -13.24%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £42.19
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.48 £65.25
UK median hourly rate £42.71 £54.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -21.64% +36.25% -18.56%

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 3,734 3,244 5,236
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.97% 13.34% 13.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,399 2,020 3,162
10th Percentile £213 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £369 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £490 £490 £475
% change year-on-year - +3.16% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 117 374
10th Percentile £15.62 £14.99 £13.90
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +7.69% +71.05%
75th Percentile £66.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.01 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.14% +7.69% +71.05%

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 24 March 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 24 March 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 24 March 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 -41 233 £506 -2.41% 78
North of England -4 214 £447 -5.95% 69
South East +10 156 £525 -4.55% 80
North West +23 141 £475 +11.76% 37
Midlands +13 108 £400 -27.27% 43
West Midlands +22 99 £400 -12.57% 28
Yorkshire -35 76 £443 -19.55% 23
South West -45 51 £684 +24.77% 36
East of England -30 39 £475 -5.00% 27
East Midlands -36 8 £375 -33.92% 15
North East -27 4 £200 -42.86% 11
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 90 (12.06%) Microsoft Exchange
2 42 (5.63%) SharePoint
3 20 (2.68%) Skype for Business
4 14 (1.88%) Confluence
5 12 (1.61%) nginx
6 7 (0.94%) IIS
7 5 (0.67%) Apache
8 3 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
9 2 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.27%) WordPress
10 1 (0.13%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.13%) Traefik
10 1 (0.13%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 25 (3.35%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.01%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.13%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 262 (35.12%) Azure
2 143 (19.17%) AWS
3 127 (17.02%) Entra ID
4 119 (15.95%) Microsoft 365
5 75 (10.05%) GCP
6 59 (7.91%) GitHub
7 43 (5.76%) IaaS
8 35 (4.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 34 (4.56%) AWS CloudFormation
10 32 (4.29%) Serverless
11 31 (4.16%) Amazon S3
12 30 (4.02%) Route 53
13 29 (3.89%) Amazon EC2
13 29 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (3.75%) PaaS
15 27 (3.62%) OpenShift
16 26 (3.49%) SaaS
17 24 (3.22%) Amazon EKS
18 22 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 22 (2.95%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 320 (42.90%) DHCP
2 232 (31.10%) Firewall
3 195 (26.14%) TCP/IP
4 174 (23.32%) VPN
5 101 (13.54%) WAN
6 92 (12.33%) LAN
7 81 (10.86%) Network Security
8 75 (10.05%) SSL
9 73 (9.79%) BGP
10 71 (9.52%) BIG-IP
11 67 (8.98%) VLAN
12 65 (8.71%) HTTP
13 52 (6.97%) Wi-Fi
14 51 (6.84%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 43 (5.76%) OSPF
16 41 (5.50%) Wireshark
17 40 (5.36%) DMZ
18 39 (5.23%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 35 (4.69%) Wireless
20 33 (4.42%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (2.95%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.28%) Elasticsearch
3 12 (1.61%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (1.61%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (0.94%) DynamoDB
5 6 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
5 6 (0.80%) Redis
6 5 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (0.67%) Data Hub
6 5 (0.67%) MongoDB
6 5 (0.67%) MySQL
7 4 (0.54%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.54%) Power BI
7 4 (0.54%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.40%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.13%) CouchDB
9 1 (0.13%) Electronic Patient Records
9 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 61 (8.18%) Jenkins
2 36 (4.83%) JIRA
3 31 (4.16%) Fiddler
4 30 (4.02%) GitLab
5 29 (3.89%) Git
6 8 (1.07%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.94%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.80%) Browser DevTools
9 5 (0.67%) Chocolatey
9 5 (0.67%) Terragrunt
10 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.13%) Introscope
12 1 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.13%) Subversion
12 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
General
1 183 (24.53%) Social Skills
2 88 (11.80%) Analytical Skills
3 71 (9.52%) Banking
4 61 (8.18%) Finance
5 48 (6.43%) Public Sector
6 47 (6.30%) Investment Banking
7 46 (6.17%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (2.82%) Legal
9 16 (2.14%) Military
10 13 (1.74%) Telecoms
11 10 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.94%) Financial Institution
12 7 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
13 6 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.67%) Law
14 5 (0.67%) Local Government
15 4 (0.54%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.40%) Aerospace
17 2 (0.27%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 135 (18.10%) Network Engineer
2 117 (15.68%) Architect
3 68 (9.12%) Analyst
4 66 (8.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 64 (8.58%) Senior
6 52 (6.97%) Support Engineer
7 49 (6.57%) Security Engineer
8 48 (6.43%) Web Engineer
9 36 (4.83%) IT Support
10 30 (4.02%) Network Security Engineer
11 29 (3.89%) IT Engineer
11 29 (3.89%) Platform Engineer
12 28 (3.75%) Cisco Engineer
12 28 (3.75%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 28 (3.75%) Lead
13 24 (3.22%) Azure Engineer
14 23 (3.08%) Data Engineer
14 23 (3.08%) Data Network Engineer
15 22 (2.95%) Infrastructure Architect
15 22 (2.95%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (8.45%) LDAP
2 43 (5.76%) SAML
3 37 (4.96%) OAuth
4 29 (3.89%) 802.1X
4 29 (3.89%) OpenID
5 22 (2.95%) OpenTelemetry
6 20 (2.68%) OAuth2
7 9 (1.21%) Kafka
8 8 (1.07%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (1.07%) REST
9 7 (0.94%) XMPP
10 6 (0.80%) ARM Templates
10 6 (0.80%) JSON
10 6 (0.80%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (0.67%) RESTful
12 4 (0.54%) Hibernate
12 4 (0.54%) JPA
12 4 (0.54%) Middleware
12 4 (0.54%) Spring
12 4 (0.54%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.71%) Data Centre
2 62 (8.31%) PKI
3 47 (6.30%) Cloud Native
3 47 (6.30%) Replication
4 36 (4.83%) Management Information System
5 31 (4.16%) Clustering
6 30 (4.02%) Onboarding
7 29 (3.89%) Public Cloud
8 25 (3.35%) Hybrid Cloud
9 21 (2.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 17 (2.28%) Enterprise Software
11 15 (2.01%) Cyber Threat
11 15 (2.01%) Cyberattack
11 15 (2.01%) Security Operations Centre
12 14 (1.88%) Analytical Mindset
13 13 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (1.61%) NHS
14 12 (1.61%) Product Ownership
15 11 (1.47%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 324 (43.43%) Windows
2 180 (24.13%) Windows Server
3 100 (13.40%) Linux
4 46 (6.17%) Windows 10
5 25 (3.35%) Windows Server 2019
6 18 (2.41%) Android
7 15 (2.01%) Unix
7 15 (2.01%) Windows Server 2012
8 12 (1.61%) Apple iOS
8 12 (1.61%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 11 (1.47%) Windows 7
10 8 (1.07%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.94%) Windows Server 2003
12 5 (0.67%) VMS
13 4 (0.54%) CatOS
14 3 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
14 3 (0.40%) CentOS
14 3 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (23.59%) Load Balancing
2 173 (23.19%) Problem-Solving
3 116 (15.55%) Migration
4 106 (14.21%) DevOps
5 105 (14.08%) CI/CD
6 99 (13.27%) High Availability
7 97 (13.00%) ITIL
8 94 (12.60%) Infrastructure as Code
9 89 (11.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 74 (9.92%) Identity Access Management
11 70 (9.38%) Disaster Recovery
12 63 (8.45%) RBAC
13 61 (8.18%) Cybersecurity
14 58 (7.77%) Observability
15 55 (7.37%) ITSM
16 52 (6.97%) Incident Response
17 51 (6.84%) Agile
17 51 (6.84%) Containerisation
17 51 (6.84%) Service Management
18 50 (6.70%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 203 (27.21%) PowerShell
2 128 (17.16%) Python
3 64 (8.58%) Bash
4 39 (5.23%) SQL
5 13 (1.74%) Bicep
5 13 (1.74%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.74%) VBScript
6 11 (1.47%) Java
7 10 (1.34%) VB
8 9 (1.21%) Ruby
9 8 (1.07%) Shell Script
10 7 (0.94%) Go
11 6 (0.80%) Lisp
12 4 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.40%) Perl
14 2 (0.27%) C
14 2 (0.27%) C#
14 2 (0.27%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.27%) VBA
15 1 (0.13%) PHP
Qualifications
1 251 (33.65%) Security Cleared
2 165 (22.12%) SC Cleared
3 88 (11.80%) DV Cleared
4 63 (8.45%) Cisco Certification
5 46 (6.17%) Degree
6 42 (5.63%) Microsoft Certification
7 38 (5.09%) CCNP
8 25 (3.35%) Azure Certification
9 21 (2.82%) CCNA
10 16 (2.14%) AWS Certification
10 16 (2.14%) CompTIA Security+
11 14 (1.88%) CISSP
12 13 (1.74%) Network+ Certification
13 10 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
13 10 (1.34%) JNCIA
13 10 (1.34%) JNCIS
14 9 (1.21%) BPSS Clearance
14 9 (1.21%) CCIE
14 9 (1.21%) JNCIP
15 8 (1.07%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.75%) GDPR
2 20 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 20 (2.68%) NIST
2 20 (2.68%) SLA
3 16 (2.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 9 (1.21%) PCI DSS
5 8 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
6 7 (0.94%) NCSC
7 6 (0.80%) QA
8 3 (0.40%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.27%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.13%) COBIT
10 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.13%) RMADS
System Software
1 314 (42.09%) Active Directory
2 166 (22.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 60 (8.04%) VMware NSX
4 58 (7.77%) Hyper-V
5 53 (7.10%) Docker
6 47 (6.30%) vSphere
7 29 (3.89%) Firmware
8 23 (3.08%) Virtual Machines
9 19 (2.55%) VMware ESXi
10 17 (2.28%) BitLocker
11 13 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
12 9 (1.21%) Squid
13 7 (0.94%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.67%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.54%) NFS
16 3 (0.40%) DFS Replication
16 3 (0.40%) Postfix
16 3 (0.40%) Sendmail
16 3 (0.40%) Varnish
17 2 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 143 (19.17%) Terraform
2 114 (15.28%) Ansible
3 86 (11.53%) Kubernetes
4 84 (11.26%) Microsoft Intune
5 69 (9.25%) Single Sign-On
6 62 (8.31%) SCCM
7 58 (7.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (5.90%) vCenter Server
9 43 (5.76%) FortiGate
10 39 (5.23%) Grafana
11 27 (3.62%) Argo
12 21 (2.82%) Prometheus
13 14 (1.88%) SCOM
14 11 (1.47%) WSUS
15 9 (1.21%) Puppet
16 8 (1.07%) HAProxy
17 7 (0.94%) Consul
17 7 (0.94%) vMotion
18 6 (0.80%) Nagios
18 6 (0.80%) Nessus
Vendors
1 265 (35.52%) Microsoft
2 213 (28.55%) VMware
3 141 (18.90%) F5
4 118 (15.82%) Cisco
5 67 (8.98%) Splunk
6 61 (8.18%) ServiceNow
7 43 (5.76%) SolarWinds
8 42 (5.63%) Blue Coat
9 41 (5.50%) Citrix
10 38 (5.09%) Red Hat
11 36 (4.83%) Juniper
11 36 (4.83%) McAfee
12 33 (4.42%) Palo Alto
13 29 (3.89%) Google
13 29 (3.89%) NetApp
14 28 (3.75%) Infoblox
15 24 (3.22%) Pure Storage
16 20 (2.68%) Extreme Networks
17 19 (2.55%) Fortinet
18 18 (2.41%) CheckPoint