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 21 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 133 127 112
Rank change year-on-year -6 -15 +18
Contract jobs citing DNS 663 582 802
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.11% 2.02% 2.17%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.57% 15.79% 15.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 410 364 515
10th Percentile £219 £223 £213
25th Percentile £400 £325 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -2.56% -7.14%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £593
90th Percentile £688 £700 £650
UK median daily rate £525 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +10.53% -5.00% -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 6 17
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.40 £25.60
25th Percentile £26.94 £19.65 £31.25
Median hourly rate £56.50 £23.90 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +136.45% -56.55% +64.18%
75th Percentile £78.75 £28.83 £67.00
90th Percentile £87.09 £40.00 £73.20
UK median hourly rate £56.50 £23.59 £55.00
% change year-on-year +139.51% -57.11% +64.18%

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 3,387 3,685 5,242
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.80% 12.80% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,190 2,163 3,259
10th Percentile £206 £220 £210
25th Percentile £356 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -0.99%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 113 314
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £18.68
25th Percentile £20.56 £21.46 £23.02
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% -38.04% +25.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £76.21
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £56.45
% change year-on-year -8.57% -37.99% +37.57%

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 21 December 2025.

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 21 December 2025.

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 21 December 2025. 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 +12 237 £548 +4.29% 76
North of England -17 128 £475 +18.75% 73
Midlands +19 120 £401 +6.93% 35
West Midlands +35 115 £401 -5.65% 24
South East -11 110 £500 +8.11% 123
North West -1 86 £518 +8.95% 41
South West -13 61 £575 +36.90% 41
Yorkshire -33 49 £447 +43.04% 29
East of England -19 39 £363 +31.82% 41
North East -11 7 £575 +283.33% 6
East Midlands -36 5 £363 -3.33% 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 88 (13.27%) Microsoft Exchange
2 72 (10.86%) SharePoint
3 32 (4.83%) Skype for Business
4 24 (3.62%) Confluence
5 11 (1.66%) nginx
5 11 (1.66%) SharePoint Server
6 10 (1.51%) Exchange Server 2010
7 9 (1.36%) Exchange Server 2013
8 7 (1.06%) Exchange Server 2003
8 7 (1.06%) Exchange Server 2007
8 7 (1.06%) IIS
8 7 (1.06%) Office Communications Server
9 4 (0.60%) Apache
9 4 (0.60%) OpenStack
10 3 (0.45%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.30%) Apache Spark
11 2 (0.30%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.30%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 2 (0.30%) WordPress
Applications
1 49 (7.39%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.51%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 10 (1.51%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.30%) Windchill
6 1 (0.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.30%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.30%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.15%) Eikon
2 1 (0.15%) Eze OMS
2 1 (0.15%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 213 (32.13%) Azure
2 169 (25.49%) AWS
3 142 (21.42%) Microsoft 365
4 89 (13.42%) Entra ID
5 71 (10.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 57 (8.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 56 (8.45%) Amazon S3
8 55 (8.30%) Amazon EC2
9 45 (6.79%) GitHub
10 44 (6.64%) GCP
11 43 (6.49%) Amazon ELB
12 33 (4.98%) IaaS
13 31 (4.68%) SaaS
14 29 (4.37%) Amazon ECS
14 29 (4.37%) AWS CloudFormation
15 25 (3.77%) AWS KMS
15 25 (3.77%) Serverless
16 23 (3.47%) AWS Lambda
17 22 (3.32%) GitHub Actions
18 18 (2.71%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 287 (43.29%) DHCP
2 239 (36.05%) Firewall
3 219 (33.03%) TCP/IP
4 166 (25.04%) VPN
5 104 (15.69%) Network Security
6 99 (14.93%) SSL
7 78 (11.76%) WAN
8 73 (11.01%) HTTP
9 64 (9.65%) LAN
10 63 (9.50%) VLAN
11 50 (7.54%) SMTP
12 49 (7.39%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 47 (7.09%) Wireless
14 41 (6.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 39 (5.88%) BGP
15 39 (5.88%) FTP
16 35 (5.28%) Wi-Fi
17 34 (5.13%) DMZ
18 30 (4.52%) Wireshark
19 29 (4.37%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (4.68%) Amazon RDS
2 22 (3.32%) SQL Server
3 21 (3.17%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.96%) Amazon Aurora
5 10 (1.51%) MongoDB
6 5 (0.75%) BigQuery
6 5 (0.75%) Data Hub
7 4 (0.60%) Big Data
7 4 (0.60%) MySQL
8 3 (0.45%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (0.45%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.30%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.30%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.30%) Hadoop
9 2 (0.30%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.30%) Parquet
9 2 (0.30%) Power BI
9 2 (0.30%) Redis
10 1 (0.15%) CouchDB
Development Applications
1 82 (12.37%) Jenkins
2 67 (10.11%) Git
3 46 (6.94%) GitLab
4 44 (6.64%) JIRA
5 19 (2.87%) Fiddler
6 18 (2.71%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.21%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.75%) Subversion
9 4 (0.60%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.60%) TeamCity
10 3 (0.45%) Visual Studio Code
11 2 (0.30%) Browser DevTools
11 2 (0.30%) MLflow
11 2 (0.30%) Poetry
11 2 (0.30%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.30%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.30%) Vite
11 2 (0.30%) webpack
12 1 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.15%) Postman
General
1 209 (31.52%) Social Skills
2 114 (17.19%) Analytical Skills
3 79 (11.92%) Public Sector
4 48 (7.24%) Finance
5 47 (7.09%) Banking
6 38 (5.73%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (5.43%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.71%) Presentation Skills
9 17 (2.56%) Legal
9 17 (2.56%) Telecoms
10 12 (1.81%) Law
11 10 (1.51%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.36%) Military
13 7 (1.06%) Aerospace
13 7 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.75%) Manufacturing
14 5 (0.75%) Marketing
15 4 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.45%) Front Office
16 3 (0.45%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 86 (12.97%) Network Engineer
2 75 (11.31%) Support Engineer
3 68 (10.26%) Architect
3 68 (10.26%) Senior
4 67 (10.11%) Analyst
5 66 (9.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 49 (7.39%) Platform Engineer
7 48 (7.24%) DevOps Engineer
8 41 (6.18%) IT Support
9 37 (5.58%) Security Engineer
10 34 (5.13%) AWS Engineer
11 26 (3.92%) Cloud Platform Engineer
12 25 (3.77%) 2nd Line Support
13 24 (3.62%) AWS DevOps
13 24 (3.62%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 24 (3.62%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 23 (3.47%) Administrator
14 23 (3.47%) Operations Engineer
15 21 (3.17%) IT Engineer
15 21 (3.17%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.49%) LDAP
2 23 (3.47%) SAML
3 18 (2.71%) OAuth
4 15 (2.26%) OpenID
5 14 (2.11%) Elastic Stack
5 14 (2.11%) OAuth2
6 12 (1.81%) 802.1X
7 10 (1.51%) Middleware
8 9 (1.36%) Kafka
9 7 (1.06%) AngularJS
9 7 (1.06%) React
10 6 (0.90%) cloud-init
10 6 (0.90%) Keycloak
10 6 (0.90%) REST
10 6 (0.90%) YAML
11 5 (0.75%) Flask
11 5 (0.75%) JSON
12 4 (0.60%) ASP.NET Web API
12 4 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.60%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 54 (8.14%) Replication
2 53 (7.99%) Management Information System
3 51 (7.69%) PKI
4 50 (7.54%) Data Centre
5 29 (4.37%) Analytical Mindset
6 26 (3.92%) Onboarding
7 21 (3.17%) Enterprise Software
8 18 (2.71%) Cyberattack
9 17 (2.56%) Security Operations Centre
10 16 (2.41%) Cyber Threat
11 15 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
12 13 (1.96%) CSOC
13 12 (1.81%) Video Conferencing
14 11 (1.66%) Cloud Native
15 10 (1.51%) Private Cloud
15 10 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
16 9 (1.36%) Clustering
17 8 (1.21%) SCADA
18 7 (1.06%) NHS
18 7 (1.06%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 328 (49.47%) Windows
2 147 (22.17%) Linux
3 146 (22.02%) Windows Server
4 64 (9.65%) Windows 10
5 31 (4.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 27 (4.07%) VMS
7 23 (3.47%) Windows Server 2016
8 22 (3.32%) Windows Server 2019
9 21 (3.17%) Amazon Linux
9 21 (3.17%) Unix
10 19 (2.87%) Android
10 19 (2.87%) Windows Server 2012
11 18 (2.71%) Ubuntu
12 15 (2.26%) CentOS
12 15 (2.26%) Mac OS
13 12 (1.81%) Apple iOS
14 10 (1.51%) Windows Server 2003
15 9 (1.36%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.75%) Solaris
17 3 (0.45%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 150 (22.62%) Problem-Solving
2 122 (18.40%) ITIL
3 118 (17.80%) DevOps
4 115 (17.35%) CI/CD
5 103 (15.54%) Load Balancing
6 96 (14.48%) Infrastructure as Code
7 89 (13.42%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 77 (11.61%) Change Management
9 73 (11.01%) Cybersecurity
10 65 (9.80%) High Availability
10 65 (9.80%) Migration
11 62 (9.35%) Incident Response
12 56 (8.45%) Platform Engineering
13 55 (8.30%) Root Cause Analysis
14 52 (7.84%) Continuous Improvement
15 51 (7.69%) Service Management
16 49 (7.39%) Disaster Recovery
16 49 (7.39%) SIEM
17 46 (6.94%) Containerisation
18 44 (6.64%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 198 (29.86%) PowerShell
2 164 (24.74%) Python
3 80 (12.07%) Bash
4 45 (6.79%) SQL
5 21 (3.17%) Perl
6 20 (3.02%) Groovy
7 16 (2.41%) Java
8 13 (1.96%) Bicep
9 11 (1.66%) Go
9 11 (1.66%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (1.21%) Ruby
11 7 (1.06%) Lisp
11 7 (1.06%) VBScript
12 6 (0.90%) VB
13 5 (0.75%) C++
14 4 (0.60%) JavaScript
15 3 (0.45%) C#
15 3 (0.45%) T-SQL
15 3 (0.45%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 252 (38.01%) Security Cleared
2 180 (27.15%) SC Cleared
3 79 (11.92%) DV Cleared
4 65 (9.80%) Degree
5 62 (9.35%) Microsoft Certification
6 57 (8.60%) Cisco Certification
7 48 (7.24%) CCNP
8 40 (6.03%) Azure Certification
9 27 (4.07%) AWS Certification
10 20 (3.02%) CCNA
11 19 (2.87%) CISSP
12 17 (2.56%) Network+ Certification
13 11 (1.66%) CCIE
13 11 (1.66%) CompTIA Security+
13 11 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
13 11 (1.66%) MCSE
13 11 (1.66%) Server+ Certification
14 9 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
14 9 (1.36%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (1.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.52%) GDPR
2 17 (2.56%) SLA
3 13 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 13 (1.96%) NIST
4 10 (1.51%) NCSC
5 9 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
6 7 (1.06%) Accessibility
7 6 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.75%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.60%) Data Quality
9 4 (0.60%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.30%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.30%) QA
10 2 (0.30%) WCAG
11 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 290 (43.74%) Active Directory
2 163 (24.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 87 (13.12%) Docker
4 42 (6.33%) Hyper-V
5 39 (5.88%) VMware NSX
6 30 (4.52%) Virtual Machines
7 24 (3.62%) vSphere
8 22 (3.32%) Firmware
9 21 (3.17%) DFS Replication
10 16 (2.41%) Dovecot
10 16 (2.41%) Postfix
10 16 (2.41%) VMware ESXi
11 14 (2.11%) Terminal Services
12 10 (1.51%) Squid
13 9 (1.36%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
15 7 (1.06%) Brightmail
15 7 (1.06%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.90%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.90%) NFS
Systems Management
1 137 (20.66%) Terraform
2 102 (15.38%) Ansible
3 73 (11.01%) SCCM
4 72 (10.86%) Microsoft Intune
5 60 (9.05%) Kubernetes
6 41 (6.18%) Grafana
7 40 (6.03%) vCenter Server
8 39 (5.88%) Single Sign-On
9 35 (5.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 33 (4.98%) Prometheus
11 20 (3.02%) WSUS
12 16 (2.41%) Argo
12 16 (2.41%) Nessus
13 15 (2.26%) FortiGate
14 13 (1.96%) Packer
14 13 (1.96%) Proxmox
15 11 (1.66%) SCOM
16 10 (1.51%) Microsoft Clustering
17 9 (1.36%) Progress Chef
18 8 (1.21%) Puppet
Vendors
1 253 (38.16%) Microsoft
2 196 (29.56%) VMware
3 109 (16.44%) F5
4 103 (15.54%) Cisco
5 74 (11.16%) ServiceNow
6 55 (8.30%) CheckPoint
7 54 (8.14%) Palo Alto
8 45 (6.79%) Splunk
9 38 (5.73%) Citrix
10 34 (5.13%) Blue Coat
10 34 (5.13%) SolarWinds
11 33 (4.98%) Red Hat
12 30 (4.52%) Juniper
13 25 (3.77%) Veeam
14 23 (3.47%) McAfee
15 22 (3.32%) NetApp
16 20 (3.02%) Zscaler
17 19 (2.87%) Google
18 18 (2.71%) Fortinet
19 16 (2.41%) Dell