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

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 130 110 140
Rank change year-on-year -20 +30 -13
Contract jobs citing DNS 802 585 610
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.95% 2.41% 1.68%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.73% 18.51% 12.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 500 414 414
10th Percentile £281 £250 £221
25th Percentile £400 £396 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £549 £486
Median % change year-on-year -12.57% +12.90% -7.38%
75th Percentile £583 £610 £600
90th Percentile £639 £661 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £545 £475
% change year-on-year -12.84% +14.74% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 9 23
10th Percentile £18.60 £26.10 £18.80
25th Percentile £25.43 £45.75 £23.53
Median hourly rate £45.71 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.34% +101.69% -18.56%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.35 -
90th Percentile £75.45 £82.48 £51.27
UK median hourly rate £48.72 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -39.61% +101.69% -23.27%

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 3,869 3,161 4,788
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.43% 13.03% 13.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,418 1,966 2,877
10th Percentile £250 £220 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year - +1.01% -5.71%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £495 £488 £490
% change year-on-year +1.54% -0.51% -5.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 227 117 390
10th Percentile £16.64 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.33 £15.44 £16.44
Median hourly rate £41.94 £29.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.62% -27.50% +122.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.15 £70.07
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £31.79 £40.00
% change year-on-year +17.96% -20.53% +116.22%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 May 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 -44 257 £500 -4.14% 73
North of England +5 221 £444 -6.53% 63
South East -9 165 £525 -4.55% 84
North West +40 150 £446 +4.82% 37
Midlands +14 111 £400 -27.27% 38
West Midlands +19 97 £390 -2.50% 24
Yorkshire -32 65 £447 -18.82% 20
South West -41 56 £504 -14.26% 34
East of England -45 40 £450 -18.18% 29
East Midlands -25 13 £394 -30.62% 14
North East -26 6 £306 -11.23% 9
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 85 (10.60%) Microsoft Exchange
2 43 (5.36%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.62%) nginx
4 12 (1.50%) Confluence
5 11 (1.37%) IIS
6 9 (1.12%) Apache
7 4 (0.50%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2010
9 2 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.25%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.25%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.25%) WebSphere Portal
9 2 (0.25%) WordPress
10 1 (0.12%) Traefik
Applications
1 18 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.37%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 280 (34.91%) Azure
2 147 (18.33%) AWS
3 135 (16.83%) Entra ID
4 109 (13.59%) Microsoft 365
5 89 (11.10%) GCP
6 60 (7.48%) GitHub
7 44 (5.49%) IaaS
8 37 (4.61%) SaaS
9 36 (4.49%) AWS CloudFormation
9 36 (4.49%) PaaS
10 33 (4.11%) Serverless
11 29 (3.62%) AWS Lambda
11 29 (3.62%) GitHub Actions
11 29 (3.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 28 (3.49%) Amazon EC2
13 27 (3.37%) Amazon EKS
13 27 (3.37%) Amazon S3
14 26 (3.24%) Route 53
15 20 (2.49%) OpenShift
16 19 (2.37%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 350 (43.64%) DHCP
2 245 (30.55%) Firewall
3 201 (25.06%) VPN
4 192 (23.94%) TCP/IP
5 103 (12.84%) WAN
6 96 (11.97%) LAN
7 85 (10.60%) Network Security
8 80 (9.98%) SSL
9 79 (9.85%) BIG-IP
10 78 (9.73%) BGP
10 78 (9.73%) VLAN
11 71 (8.85%) HTTP
12 45 (5.61%) Wireless
13 44 (5.49%) OSPF
13 44 (5.49%) Wi-Fi
14 40 (4.99%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 39 (4.86%) Wireshark
16 38 (4.74%) Kerberos
17 37 (4.61%) DMZ
17 37 (4.61%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (3.49%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.24%) Elasticsearch
3 12 (1.50%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (1.00%) Power BI
6 5 (0.62%) Amazon Aurora
6 5 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (0.62%) DynamoDB
6 5 (0.62%) MongoDB
6 5 (0.62%) MySQL
7 4 (0.50%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.50%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.50%) Redis
8 3 (0.37%) Data Hub
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.12%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.12%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 50 (6.23%) Jenkins
2 47 (5.86%) JIRA
3 28 (3.49%) Git
4 27 (3.37%) Fiddler
4 27 (3.37%) GitLab
5 9 (1.12%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.87%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.87%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.75%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.50%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.50%) Terragrunt
9 3 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.25%) Introscope
11 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.12%) Spinnaker
11 1 (0.12%) Travis CI
General
1 165 (20.57%) Social Skills
2 73 (9.10%) Analytical Skills
3 70 (8.73%) Banking
4 65 (8.10%) Finance
5 53 (6.61%) Public Sector
6 42 (5.24%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (4.61%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.37%) Legal
9 17 (2.12%) Military
9 17 (2.12%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.25%) Law
11 8 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.75%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.62%) Police
14 4 (0.50%) Local Government
15 3 (0.37%) Advertising
15 3 (0.37%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.37%) Manufacturing
16 2 (0.25%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 152 (18.95%) Network Engineer
2 107 (13.34%) Architect
3 98 (12.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 72 (8.98%) Analyst
5 61 (7.61%) Security Engineer
6 58 (7.23%) Senior
7 50 (6.23%) Web Engineer
8 44 (5.49%) Support Engineer
9 42 (5.24%) Network Security Engineer
10 34 (4.24%) Cisco Engineer
10 34 (4.24%) Cisco Network Engineer
10 34 (4.24%) IT Support
11 33 (4.11%) Data Engineer
11 33 (4.11%) Data Network Engineer
12 32 (3.99%) Cisco Security Engineer
13 30 (3.74%) IT Engineer
14 28 (3.49%) Administrator
14 28 (3.49%) Azure Engineer
15 25 (3.12%) DevOps Engineer
15 25 (3.12%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (8.60%) LDAP
2 45 (5.61%) SAML
3 38 (4.74%) OAuth
4 35 (4.36%) 802.1X
5 25 (3.12%) OpenID
6 20 (2.49%) OpenTelemetry
7 10 (1.25%) ARM Templates
7 10 (1.25%) JSON
7 10 (1.25%) OAuth2
8 9 (1.12%) Kafka
8 9 (1.12%) REST
9 8 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
10 5 (0.62%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (0.62%) Web Services
10 5 (0.62%) XMPP
11 4 (0.50%) Hibernate
11 4 (0.50%) JPA
11 4 (0.50%) Middleware
11 4 (0.50%) RESTful
11 4 (0.50%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 76 (9.48%) Data Centre
2 59 (7.36%) PKI
3 49 (6.11%) Cloud Native
4 40 (4.99%) Replication
5 39 (4.86%) Onboarding
6 37 (4.61%) Clustering
7 36 (4.49%) Management Information System
8 34 (4.24%) Public Cloud
9 24 (2.99%) Hybrid Cloud
10 23 (2.87%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 18 (2.24%) Self-Motivation
12 16 (2.00%) Cyber Threat
12 16 (2.00%) Security Operations Centre
13 15 (1.87%) Cyberattack
13 15 (1.87%) Enterprise Cloud
13 15 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
14 14 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
15 12 (1.50%) Virtual Team
16 11 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
16 11 (1.37%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 331 (41.27%) Windows
2 193 (24.06%) Windows Server
3 102 (12.72%) Linux
4 42 (5.24%) Windows 10
5 29 (3.62%) Windows Server 2019
6 23 (2.87%) Unix
7 17 (2.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (2.00%) Mac OS
8 16 (2.00%) Windows Server 2012
9 15 (1.87%) Windows Server 2016
10 12 (1.50%) Android
10 12 (1.50%) Apple iOS
11 8 (1.00%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (0.75%) CentOS
12 6 (0.75%) Ubuntu
12 6 (0.75%) Windows 7
13 5 (0.62%) VMS
14 4 (0.50%) CatOS
15 2 (0.25%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.25%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (20.82%) Problem-Solving
2 161 (20.07%) Load Balancing
3 132 (16.46%) Migration
4 131 (16.33%) High Availability
5 124 (15.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 108 (13.47%) DevOps
7 107 (13.34%) CI/CD
8 106 (13.22%) ITIL
9 105 (13.09%) Infrastructure as Code
10 72 (8.98%) Observability
11 69 (8.60%) Disaster Recovery
12 68 (8.48%) Identity Access Management
12 68 (8.48%) ITSM
13 67 (8.35%) Cybersecurity
14 61 (7.61%) Agile
15 52 (6.48%) Change Management
15 52 (6.48%) Containerisation
16 51 (6.36%) Project Delivery
16 51 (6.36%) RBAC
17 47 (5.86%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 160 (19.95%) PowerShell
2 121 (15.09%) Python
3 70 (8.73%) Bash
4 43 (5.36%) SQL
5 21 (2.62%) JavaScript
6 19 (2.37%) Bicep
7 12 (1.50%) Go
7 12 (1.50%) Java
8 11 (1.37%) Shell Script
9 9 (1.12%) Ruby
10 7 (0.87%) VBA
11 6 (0.75%) VBScript
12 4 (0.50%) Perl
12 4 (0.50%) VB
13 3 (0.37%) C
13 3 (0.37%) Groovy
14 2 (0.25%) Jython
14 2 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
15 1 (0.12%) C#
15 1 (0.12%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 269 (33.54%) Security Cleared
2 175 (21.82%) SC Cleared
3 86 (10.72%) DV Cleared
4 73 (9.10%) Cisco Certification
5 47 (5.86%) Degree
6 43 (5.36%) CCNP
7 35 (4.36%) CCNA
8 25 (3.12%) Microsoft Certification
9 23 (2.87%) Azure Certification
10 22 (2.74%) Network+ Certification
11 18 (2.24%) CompTIA Security+
12 14 (1.75%) AWS Certification
13 13 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
14 11 (1.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 11 (1.37%) Server+ Certification
15 10 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
15 10 (1.25%) JNCIA
15 10 (1.25%) JNCIS
16 8 (1.00%) JNCIP
17 7 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.74%) SLA
2 23 (2.87%) GDPR
3 20 (2.49%) NIST
4 18 (2.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (1.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 7 (0.87%) QA
7 6 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.75%) NCSC
8 4 (0.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.50%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.25%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.12%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.12%) COBIT
10 1 (0.12%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.12%) RMADS
10 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
System Software
1 324 (40.40%) Active Directory
2 178 (22.19%) VMware Infrastructure
3 82 (10.22%) Hyper-V
4 52 (6.48%) VMware NSX
5 44 (5.49%) Docker
6 41 (5.11%) vSphere
7 34 (4.24%) Virtual Machines
8 30 (3.74%) VMware ESXi
9 24 (2.99%) Firmware
10 22 (2.74%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (1.75%) BitLocker
12 13 (1.62%) NFS
13 10 (1.25%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (1.25%) Squid
14 6 (0.75%) Postfix
14 6 (0.75%) Varnish
14 6 (0.75%) vCloud
14 6 (0.75%) VMware Workstation
15 5 (0.62%) Sendmail
16 4 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 135 (16.83%) Terraform
2 100 (12.47%) Ansible
3 93 (11.60%) Kubernetes
4 78 (9.73%) Microsoft Intune
5 70 (8.73%) Single Sign-On
6 52 (6.48%) SCCM
7 45 (5.61%) Grafana
8 43 (5.36%) FortiGate
9 42 (5.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (4.86%) vCenter Server
11 29 (3.62%) Prometheus
12 25 (3.12%) WSUS
13 20 (2.49%) Argo
14 14 (1.75%) SCOM
15 11 (1.37%) Nessus
16 10 (1.25%) HAProxy
16 10 (1.25%) Puppet
17 9 (1.12%) vMotion
18 8 (1.00%) Consul
19 7 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 252 (31.42%) Microsoft
2 217 (27.06%) VMware
3 144 (17.96%) Cisco
4 141 (17.58%) F5
5 71 (8.85%) ServiceNow
6 69 (8.60%) Splunk
7 52 (6.48%) Citrix
8 47 (5.86%) Infoblox
8 47 (5.86%) SolarWinds
9 41 (5.11%) Google
10 39 (4.86%) Juniper
11 35 (4.36%) Blue Coat
11 35 (4.36%) Red Hat
12 32 (3.99%) NetApp
13 30 (3.74%) McAfee
13 30 (3.74%) Palo Alto
14 26 (3.24%) Dynatrace
15 23 (2.87%) CheckPoint
16 22 (2.74%) Extreme Networks
17 18 (2.24%) Tenable