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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 116 160
Rank change year-on-year -19 +44 -25
Contract jobs citing DNS 914 659 543
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.02% 2.39% 1.60%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 21.51% 19.20% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 568 439 377
10th Percentile £300 £263 £256
25th Percentile £401 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £488
% change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 32 17
10th Percentile £21.25 £29.00 £19.40
25th Percentile £29.00 £37.06 £23.10
Median hourly rate £48.72 £57.50 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year -15.27% +137.60% -39.50%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.33 £40.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.17 £59.64
UK median hourly rate £50.11 £57.50 £24.20
% change year-on-year -12.85% +137.60% -39.50%

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 4,250 3,433 4,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.38% 12.47% 12.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,576 2,141 2,650
10th Percentile £263 £235 £231
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 323 163 305
10th Percentile £16.02 £14.99 £14.26
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £18.27
Median hourly rate £27.88 £45.00 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -38.04% -10.89% +1.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.21 £87.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.66 £50.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -46.68% +8.98% -8.24%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 -35 318 £483 -5.62% 139
North of England +15 227 £450 -10.00% 53
South East +7 194 £538 -2.27% 90
North West +28 149 £450 -7.69% 32
Midlands -14 112 £450 -5.26% 46
West Midlands -28 92 £450 -5.26% 30
South West -3 82 £500 -13.04% 40
Yorkshire -24 72 £475 -13.64% 18
East of England -55 29 £450 -18.18% 31
East Midlands -4 18 £413 -25.00% 16
North East -46 6 £413 +19.57% 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 88 (9.63%) Microsoft Exchange
2 70 (7.66%) SharePoint
3 17 (1.86%) Confluence
4 15 (1.64%) Apache
4 15 (1.64%) nginx
5 12 (1.31%) IIS
6 6 (0.66%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
7 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.22%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
8 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 20 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.98%) MS Visio
3 7 (0.77%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.22%) Houdini
5 2 (0.22%) NUKE
6 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 9 (0.98%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 346 (37.86%) Azure
2 183 (20.02%) AWS
3 147 (16.08%) Microsoft 365
4 144 (15.75%) Entra ID
5 102 (11.16%) GCP
6 67 (7.33%) GitHub
7 52 (5.69%) IaaS
8 44 (4.81%) OneDrive
9 40 (4.38%) SaaS
10 39 (4.27%) PaaS
11 36 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
12 30 (3.28%) OpenShift
13 29 (3.17%) Azure Monitor
14 28 (3.06%) AWS CloudFormation
15 25 (2.74%) GitHub Actions
15 25 (2.74%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 23 (2.52%) Amazon EC2
16 23 (2.52%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 23 (2.52%) Serverless
17 22 (2.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 416 (45.51%) DHCP
2 338 (36.98%) Firewall
3 266 (29.10%) TCP/IP
4 256 (28.01%) VPN
5 125 (13.68%) WAN
6 119 (13.02%) Network Security
7 113 (12.36%) VLAN
8 107 (11.71%) LAN
9 103 (11.27%) BGP
10 94 (10.28%) SSL
11 80 (8.75%) BIG-IP
12 66 (7.22%) Wireless
13 64 (7.00%) HTTP
14 60 (6.56%) OSPF
15 56 (6.13%) Wi-Fi
16 55 (6.02%) SAN
17 51 (5.58%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 42 (4.60%) DMZ
19 36 (3.94%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
20 35 (3.83%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (5.36%) SQL Server
2 12 (1.31%) Elasticsearch
3 10 (1.09%) Azure SQL Database
3 10 (1.09%) Power BI
4 8 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (0.66%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (0.55%) Data Lake
6 5 (0.55%) MySQL
7 4 (0.44%) Db2
8 3 (0.33%) Big Data
9 2 (0.22%) NoSQL
10 1 (0.11%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.11%) Cloud Spanner
10 1 (0.11%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.11%) KDB
10 1 (0.11%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 67 (7.33%) JIRA
2 55 (6.02%) Jenkins
3 34 (3.72%) Git
4 23 (2.52%) GitLab
5 19 (2.08%) Fiddler
6 10 (1.09%) Browser DevTools
7 9 (0.98%) Chocolatey
8 7 (0.77%) Bitbucket
9 6 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.22%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.22%) Introscope
11 2 (0.22%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.22%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.11%) Maven
12 1 (0.11%) MSI
12 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio
General
1 210 (22.98%) Social Skills
2 101 (11.05%) Analytical Skills
3 85 (9.30%) Finance
4 72 (7.88%) Banking
5 69 (7.55%) Public Sector
6 41 (4.49%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (3.72%) Investment Banking
8 28 (3.06%) Telecoms
9 20 (2.19%) Military
10 15 (1.64%) Legal
11 12 (1.31%) Local Government
12 11 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
13 10 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (1.09%) Police
14 6 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (0.66%) Publishing
15 5 (0.55%) Law
16 4 (0.44%) Automotive
16 4 (0.44%) Manufacturing
17 3 (0.33%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 181 (19.80%) Network Engineer
2 151 (16.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 100 (10.94%) Senior
4 95 (10.39%) Architect
5 85 (9.30%) Support Engineer
6 71 (7.77%) Cloud Engineer
7 59 (6.46%) Security Engineer
8 46 (5.03%) Analyst
9 45 (4.92%) IT Support
10 44 (4.81%) IT Engineer
11 42 (4.60%) Network Security Engineer
12 41 (4.49%) Azure Engineer
12 41 (4.49%) Web Engineer
13 39 (4.27%) Cisco Engineer
14 37 (4.05%) Administrator
14 37 (4.05%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 34 (3.72%) DevOps Engineer
16 32 (3.50%) Data Engineer
16 32 (3.50%) Data Network Engineer
17 31 (3.39%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (5.69%) 802.1X
2 30 (3.28%) LDAP
3 28 (3.06%) SAML
4 21 (2.30%) ARM Templates
5 18 (1.97%) OpenTelemetry
6 17 (1.86%) OAuth
6 17 (1.86%) OpenID
7 12 (1.31%) JSON
8 10 (1.09%) YAML
9 9 (0.98%) REST
10 7 (0.77%) Middleware
11 5 (0.55%) CSS
12 4 (0.44%) .NET
12 4 (0.44%) Kafka
12 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.44%) Software Packaging
12 4 (0.44%) Web Services
13 3 (0.33%) Elastic Stack
13 3 (0.33%) LEMP Stack
13 3 (0.33%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 129 (14.11%) Data Centre
2 102 (11.16%) PKI
3 59 (6.46%) Hybrid Cloud
3 59 (6.46%) Onboarding
4 55 (6.02%) Cloud Native
5 47 (5.14%) Management Information System
6 45 (4.92%) Clustering
7 42 (4.60%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 31 (3.39%) Public Cloud
9 23 (2.52%) Self-Motivation
10 22 (2.41%) Replication
11 19 (2.08%) Enterprise Cloud
12 17 (1.86%) Security Posture
13 16 (1.75%) Cyber Threat
14 14 (1.53%) Linux Command Line
15 12 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
16 11 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
17 10 (1.09%) Driving Licence
17 10 (1.09%) Product Ownership
18 9 (0.98%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 415 (45.40%) Windows
2 221 (24.18%) Windows Server
3 167 (18.27%) Linux
4 52 (5.69%) Windows 10
5 38 (4.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 36 (3.94%) Windows Server 2019
7 27 (2.95%) Mac OS
7 27 (2.95%) Unix
8 20 (2.19%) Ubuntu
8 20 (2.19%) Windows Server 2012
9 15 (1.64%) CentOS
10 13 (1.42%) Windows Server 2016
11 12 (1.31%) Apple iOS
12 10 (1.09%) Android
13 9 (0.98%) VMS
14 7 (0.77%) Rocky
15 6 (0.66%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.66%) Windows Server 2008
16 5 (0.55%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.33%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 211 (23.09%) Problem-Solving
2 208 (22.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 172 (18.82%) Load Balancing
4 161 (17.61%) ITIL
5 154 (16.85%) Migration
6 151 (16.52%) Infrastructure as Code
7 138 (15.10%) High Availability
8 137 (14.99%) DevOps
9 136 (14.88%) CI/CD
10 100 (10.94%) ITSM
11 91 (9.96%) Observability
12 82 (8.97%) Continuous Improvement
13 81 (8.86%) Agile
13 81 (8.86%) Project Delivery
14 79 (8.64%) Cybersecurity
15 70 (7.66%) Technical Leadership
16 69 (7.55%) Disaster Recovery
17 66 (7.22%) Identity Access Management
18 65 (7.11%) Containerisation
19 62 (6.78%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 186 (20.35%) PowerShell
2 174 (19.04%) Python
3 122 (13.35%) Bash
4 50 (5.47%) SQL
5 36 (3.94%) Bicep
6 22 (2.41%) JavaScript
7 11 (1.20%) Go
7 11 (1.20%) Shell Script
8 9 (0.98%) ActionScript
8 9 (0.98%) VBA
9 8 (0.88%) Perl
10 6 (0.66%) Java
11 5 (0.55%) C
11 5 (0.55%) Groovy
11 5 (0.55%) Ruby
12 3 (0.33%) Lisp
13 2 (0.22%) Jython
13 2 (0.22%) Objective-C
13 2 (0.22%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.22%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 333 (36.43%) Security Cleared
2 183 (20.02%) SC Cleared
3 140 (15.32%) DV Cleared
4 106 (11.60%) Cisco Certification
5 72 (7.88%) CCNP
6 66 (7.22%) Degree
7 52 (5.69%) CCNA
8 42 (4.60%) Microsoft Certification
9 39 (4.27%) Azure Certification
10 29 (3.17%) Network+ Certification
11 18 (1.97%) CCIE
12 15 (1.64%) AWS Certification
12 15 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
12 15 (1.64%) Server+ Certification
13 13 (1.42%) CISSP
13 13 (1.42%) JNCIS
13 13 (1.42%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 12 (1.31%) CompTIA Security+
14 12 (1.31%) JNCIP
14 12 (1.31%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (3.72%) SLA
2 23 (2.52%) NIST
3 15 (1.64%) NCSC
4 14 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (0.66%) GDPR
5 6 (0.66%) QA
6 5 (0.55%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 3 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.33%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.22%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.11%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.11%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 379 (41.47%) Active Directory
2 222 (24.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 103 (11.27%) Hyper-V
4 66 (7.22%) VMware ESXi
4 66 (7.22%) VMware NSX
4 66 (7.22%) vSphere
5 48 (5.25%) Docker
6 41 (4.49%) Virtual Machines
7 36 (3.94%) Virtual Desktop
8 25 (2.74%) Firmware
9 18 (1.97%) NFS
10 13 (1.42%) vCloud
11 10 (1.09%) Microsoft App-V
12 9 (0.98%) BitLocker
12 9 (0.98%) Postfix
13 8 (0.88%) VMware Workstation
14 7 (0.77%) Squid
15 6 (0.66%) Varnish
15 6 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.55%) UAG
Systems Management
1 192 (21.01%) Terraform
2 138 (15.10%) Ansible
3 112 (12.25%) Kubernetes
4 92 (10.07%) Microsoft Intune
5 62 (6.78%) vCenter Server
6 56 (6.13%) SCCM
7 53 (5.80%) Grafana
8 47 (5.14%) Single Sign-On
9 42 (4.60%) FortiGate
10 37 (4.05%) Prometheus
11 26 (2.84%) SCOM
11 26 (2.84%) WSUS
12 19 (2.08%) Argo
13 15 (1.64%) Puppet
14 14 (1.53%) Nessus
14 14 (1.53%) VxRail
15 13 (1.42%) Jamf Pro
16 11 (1.20%) vMotion
17 10 (1.09%) HAProxy
17 10 (1.09%) Nagios
Vendors
1 315 (34.46%) Microsoft
2 275 (30.09%) VMware
3 191 (20.90%) Cisco
4 145 (15.86%) F5
5 83 (9.08%) ServiceNow
6 66 (7.22%) Splunk
7 64 (7.00%) Infoblox
8 63 (6.89%) Google
8 63 (6.89%) SolarWinds
9 60 (6.56%) Juniper
10 54 (5.91%) Citrix
11 45 (4.92%) Red Hat
12 42 (4.60%) Palo Alto
13 33 (3.61%) Dynatrace
13 33 (3.61%) NetApp
14 29 (3.17%) Blue Coat
15 26 (2.84%) Zscaler
16 25 (2.74%) CheckPoint
16 25 (2.74%) Fortinet
16 25 (2.74%) McAfee