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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 117 128
Rank change year-on-year -14 +11 -7
Contract jobs citing DNS 730 582 706
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.09% 2.29% 1.87%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.51% 17.19% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 464 381 458
10th Percentile £219 £243 £200
25th Percentile £400 £375 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £464
Median % change year-on-year +3.71% +7.82% -11.67%
75th Percentile £601 £613 £575
90th Percentile £689 £700 £650
UK median daily rate £509 £510 £467
% change year-on-year -0.25% +9.21% -11.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 6 25
10th Percentile £13.04 £15.40 £23.65
25th Percentile £15.50 £19.77 £25.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £39.05 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.59% -2.39% -
75th Percentile £74.26 £76.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.56 £64.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £23.59 £40.00
% change year-on-year +6.61% -41.03% -

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 3,559 3,385 5,275
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.17% 13.34% 13.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,298 2,018 3,162
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £357 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £486
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.88% -6.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 101 367
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.27
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.75 £19.99
Median hourly rate £28.38 £35.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -18.91% -23.71% +130.78%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £28.38 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -12.68% -29.16% +130.78%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 -9 239 £525 - 80
North of England -21 183 £463 -2.37% 75
South East 0 144 £525 - 88
North West +3 117 £603 +26.84% 42
Midlands +13 109 £375 -16.67% 37
West Midlands +17 105 £378 -6.79% 29
Yorkshire -31 69 £447 -0.67% 27
South West -28 63 £575 +5.02% 33
East of England -20 39 £463 +2.78% 34
North East -23 6 £411 +26.38% 9
East Midlands -36 4 £325 -41.96% 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 95 (13.01%) Microsoft Exchange
2 58 (7.95%) SharePoint
3 29 (3.97%) Skype for Business
4 17 (2.33%) Confluence
5 13 (1.78%) nginx
6 5 (0.68%) Apache
7 4 (0.55%) IIS
7 4 (0.55%) SharePoint Server
8 3 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.41%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.27%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.27%) WordPress
10 1 (0.14%) Traefik
Applications
1 37 (5.07%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.05%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.41%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.14%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.14%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.14%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 252 (34.52%) Azure
2 153 (20.96%) AWS
3 131 (17.95%) Microsoft 365
4 120 (16.44%) Entra ID
5 53 (7.26%) GCP
6 50 (6.85%) GitHub
7 48 (6.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 41 (5.62%) Amazon S3
9 38 (5.21%) Amazon EC2
10 37 (5.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 34 (4.66%) IaaS
12 33 (4.52%) AWS CloudFormation
13 30 (4.11%) Serverless
14 28 (3.84%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (3.84%) Route 53
14 28 (3.84%) SaaS
15 23 (3.15%) Amazon ECS
16 21 (2.88%) Amazon EKS
16 21 (2.88%) OpenShift
16 21 (2.88%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 331 (45.34%) DHCP
2 224 (30.68%) Firewall
3 219 (30.00%) TCP/IP
4 178 (24.38%) VPN
5 92 (12.60%) WAN
6 87 (11.92%) SSL
7 84 (11.51%) LAN
7 84 (11.51%) Network Security
8 68 (9.32%) VLAN
9 62 (8.49%) BGP
10 60 (8.22%) BIG-IP
10 60 (8.22%) HTTP
11 50 (6.85%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 47 (6.44%) Wi-Fi
13 43 (5.89%) Wireshark
14 40 (5.48%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 39 (5.34%) OSPF
16 37 (5.07%) DMZ
17 34 (4.66%) Skype
18 33 (4.52%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (3.29%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.33%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.78%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (1.23%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (0.96%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.96%) MongoDB
7 6 (0.82%) MySQL
7 6 (0.82%) Redis
8 5 (0.68%) Data Hub
9 4 (0.55%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.55%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.41%) BigQuery
11 2 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
12 1 (0.14%) Apache Cassandra
12 1 (0.14%) CouchDB
12 1 (0.14%) GIS
12 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
12 1 (0.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 68 (9.32%) Jenkins
2 43 (5.89%) Git
3 41 (5.62%) GitLab
4 36 (4.93%) JIRA
5 30 (4.11%) Fiddler
6 7 (0.96%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.96%) Terragrunt
7 6 (0.82%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.55%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.55%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.55%) Vagrant
9 3 (0.41%) Subversion
10 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.27%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.14%) Browser DevTools
11 1 (0.14%) GCC
11 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
11 1 (0.14%) Vite
General
1 202 (27.67%) Social Skills
2 101 (13.84%) Analytical Skills
3 61 (8.36%) Banking
4 54 (7.40%) Public Sector
5 45 (6.16%) Finance
5 45 (6.16%) Investment Banking
6 43 (5.89%) Documentation Skills
7 18 (2.47%) Legal
8 17 (2.33%) Military
9 14 (1.92%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.68%) Law
14 4 (0.55%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.55%) Local Government
15 3 (0.41%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.41%) Marketing
16 2 (0.27%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 117 (16.03%) Network Engineer
2 106 (14.52%) Architect
3 66 (9.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 64 (8.77%) Analyst
5 63 (8.63%) Senior
6 61 (8.36%) Support Engineer
7 45 (6.16%) IT Support
7 45 (6.16%) Security Engineer
8 36 (4.93%) Web Engineer
9 34 (4.66%) Platform Engineer
10 29 (3.97%) DevOps Engineer
11 28 (3.84%) Network Security Engineer
12 26 (3.56%) IT Engineer
13 25 (3.42%) Lead
14 23 (3.15%) 2nd Line Support
14 23 (3.15%) Cisco Engineer
14 23 (3.15%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 21 (2.88%) Solutions Architect
16 19 (2.60%) IT Support Engineer
16 19 (2.60%) Junior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (8.36%) LDAP
2 40 (5.48%) SAML
3 35 (4.79%) OAuth
4 28 (3.84%) OpenID
5 22 (3.01%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.74%) OAuth2
7 15 (2.05%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.37%) Kafka
8 10 (1.37%) REST
9 8 (1.10%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (0.82%) JSON
10 6 (0.82%) Microsoft Graph
10 6 (0.82%) Middleware
10 6 (0.82%) XMPP
11 5 (0.68%) AngularJS
11 5 (0.68%) ARM Templates
11 5 (0.68%) AWS CDK
11 5 (0.68%) React
11 5 (0.68%) RESTful
12 4 (0.55%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 66 (9.04%) PKI
2 55 (7.53%) Data Centre
3 52 (7.12%) Replication
4 37 (5.07%) Cloud Native
5 36 (4.93%) Management Information System
6 29 (3.97%) Onboarding
7 23 (3.15%) Public Cloud
8 22 (3.01%) Analytical Mindset
8 22 (3.01%) Clustering
9 21 (2.88%) Enterprise Software
10 20 (2.74%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (1.92%) Cyber Threat
11 14 (1.92%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.78%) Cyberattack
12 13 (1.78%) Security Operations Centre
13 12 (1.64%) NHS
14 11 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
14 11 (1.51%) Private Cloud
15 10 (1.37%) Product Ownership
16 9 (1.23%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 346 (47.40%) Windows
2 173 (23.70%) Windows Server
3 123 (16.85%) Linux
4 59 (8.08%) Windows 10
5 29 (3.97%) Windows Server 2019
6 19 (2.60%) Unix
7 18 (2.47%) Android
8 16 (2.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (2.19%) Windows Server 2016
9 14 (1.92%) Windows Server 2012
10 13 (1.78%) Apple iOS
11 11 (1.51%) Windows 7
12 9 (1.23%) CentOS
12 9 (1.23%) Mac OS
12 9 (1.23%) VMS
13 7 (0.96%) Amazon Linux
13 7 (0.96%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.68%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.55%) CatOS
15 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (24.52%) Problem-Solving
2 151 (20.68%) Load Balancing
3 115 (15.75%) ITIL
4 105 (14.38%) CI/CD
4 105 (14.38%) DevOps
5 96 (13.15%) Migration
6 92 (12.60%) High Availability
6 92 (12.60%) Infrastructure as Code
7 88 (12.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 73 (10.00%) Disaster Recovery
9 66 (9.04%) Service Management
10 65 (8.90%) Identity Access Management
11 61 (8.36%) Change Management
12 59 (8.08%) Cybersecurity
13 53 (7.26%) RBAC
14 52 (7.12%) Incident Response
15 50 (6.85%) Mentoring
15 50 (6.85%) Root Cause Analysis
16 48 (6.58%) Containerisation
17 47 (6.44%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 209 (28.63%) PowerShell
2 133 (18.22%) Python
3 66 (9.04%) Bash
4 40 (5.48%) SQL
5 13 (1.78%) VBScript
6 12 (1.64%) Java
7 11 (1.51%) Bicep
8 10 (1.37%) Perl
8 10 (1.37%) VB
9 9 (1.23%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.23%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.10%) Go
10 8 (1.10%) Ruby
11 7 (0.96%) Lisp
12 5 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
13 4 (0.55%) Groovy
14 3 (0.41%) C#
14 3 (0.41%) C++
14 3 (0.41%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.27%) C
Qualifications
1 267 (36.58%) Security Cleared
2 180 (24.66%) SC Cleared
3 91 (12.47%) DV Cleared
4 63 (8.63%) Microsoft Certification
5 56 (7.67%) Degree
6 55 (7.53%) Cisco Certification
7 43 (5.89%) CCNP
8 35 (4.79%) Azure Certification
9 20 (2.74%) AWS Certification
9 20 (2.74%) Network+ Certification
10 16 (2.19%) CCNA
10 16 (2.19%) CISSP
11 14 (1.92%) CompTIA Security+
12 12 (1.64%) MCSE
12 12 (1.64%) Server+ Certification
13 10 (1.37%) CCIE
13 10 (1.37%) ITIL Certification
13 10 (1.37%) JNCIA
13 10 (1.37%) JNCIS
14 9 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.25%) GDPR
2 22 (3.01%) SLA
3 18 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (2.47%) NIST
3 18 (2.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 9 (1.23%) PCI DSS
5 8 (1.10%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (1.10%) NCSC
6 6 (0.82%) QA
7 3 (0.41%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.41%) Data Quality
7 3 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.14%) COBIT
9 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.14%) RMADS
9 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 325 (44.52%) Active Directory
2 174 (23.84%) VMware Infrastructure
3 69 (9.45%) Docker
4 57 (7.81%) Hyper-V
5 56 (7.67%) VMware NSX
6 41 (5.62%) vSphere
7 28 (3.84%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (3.29%) Firmware
9 17 (2.33%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (1.92%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.92%) Virtual Desktop
11 10 (1.37%) Squid
12 7 (0.96%) DFS Replication
12 7 (0.96%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.82%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.68%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.55%) NFS
15 4 (0.55%) Postfix
15 4 (0.55%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.41%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 136 (18.63%) Terraform
2 120 (16.44%) Ansible
3 90 (12.33%) Microsoft Intune
4 78 (10.68%) SCCM
5 76 (10.41%) Kubernetes
6 64 (8.77%) Single Sign-On
7 62 (8.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (5.89%) vCenter Server
9 36 (4.93%) FortiGate
10 35 (4.79%) Grafana
11 21 (2.88%) Prometheus
12 20 (2.74%) Argo
13 16 (2.19%) WSUS
14 14 (1.92%) SCOM
15 9 (1.23%) Nessus
15 9 (1.23%) Puppet
16 8 (1.10%) Nagios
17 6 (0.82%) Consul
17 6 (0.82%) HAProxy
17 6 (0.82%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 287 (39.32%) Microsoft
2 220 (30.14%) VMware
3 137 (18.77%) F5
4 116 (15.89%) Cisco
5 68 (9.32%) ServiceNow
6 66 (9.04%) Splunk
7 44 (6.03%) Blue Coat
8 42 (5.75%) SolarWinds
9 41 (5.62%) Palo Alto
10 39 (5.34%) Citrix
11 35 (4.79%) McAfee
12 34 (4.66%) CheckPoint
12 34 (4.66%) Juniper
13 32 (4.38%) Red Hat
14 25 (3.42%) NetApp
15 20 (2.74%) Veeam
16 19 (2.60%) Okta
16 19 (2.60%) Pure Storage
17 18 (2.47%) Google
17 18 (2.47%) Zscaler