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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 121 150
Rank change year-on-year -22 +29 -15
Contract jobs citing DNS 917 645 550
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.98% 2.32% 1.67%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 21.12% 19.39% 13.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 570 406 350
10th Percentile £286 £246 £256
25th Percentile £408 £380 £382
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £650 £653 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 30 11
10th Percentile £26.66 £27.72 £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.45
Median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +41.07% +86.10% -49.09%
75th Percentile £76.50 £79.76 £39.38
90th Percentile £98.06 £89.63 £50.00
UK median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +41.07% +86.10% -49.09%

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 4,341 3,326 3,982
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.37% 11.95% 12.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,593 2,071 2,335
10th Percentile £252 £235 £248
25th Percentile £400 £364 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £508
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -3.05% +1.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £614
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 364 168 229
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.96 £24.75 £22.40
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.23 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -21.16% -28.12% +1.52%
75th Percentile £67.48 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £84.40 £76.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £27.11 £42.50 £52.00
% change year-on-year -36.21% -18.27% -7.95%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 -44 316 £500 - 266
North of England +21 213 £500 +9.29% 75
South East +6 176 £538 +2.38% 145
North West +26 134 £458 - 48
Midlands -35 117 £450 -5.26% 59
South West +4 98 £555 +0.86% 61
West Midlands -37 96 £450 -5.26% 35
Yorkshire -12 64 £500 -4.76% 17
East of England -40 39 £475 -13.64% 33
East Midlands -4 20 £413 -17.50% 24
North East -39 15 £419 +23.16% 13
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
1 105 (11.45%) Microsoft Exchange
2 85 (9.27%) SharePoint
3 22 (2.40%) Confluence
4 14 (1.53%) Apache
4 14 (1.53%) nginx
5 12 (1.31%) IIS
6 8 (0.87%) Skype for Business
7 6 (0.65%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.44%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.33%) Exchange Server 2013
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Spark
10 1 (0.11%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.11%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.11%) Traefik
10 1 (0.11%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.11%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.11%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 25 (2.73%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.87%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.22%) Houdini
5 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.22%) NUKE
6 1 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 12 (1.31%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 377 (41.11%) Azure
2 188 (20.50%) AWS
3 179 (19.52%) Microsoft 365
4 167 (18.21%) Entra ID
5 80 (8.72%) GCP
6 67 (7.31%) GitHub
7 51 (5.56%) IaaS
7 51 (5.56%) OneDrive
8 39 (4.25%) Azure DevOps
9 37 (4.03%) GitHub Actions
10 36 (3.93%) SaaS
11 34 (3.71%) Azure Monitor
12 33 (3.60%) PaaS
13 28 (3.05%) OpenShift
14 26 (2.84%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 26 (2.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 25 (2.73%) AWS CloudFormation
16 21 (2.29%) Serverless
17 20 (2.18%) Azure Sentinel
18 19 (2.07%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 451 (49.18%) DHCP
2 340 (37.08%) Firewall
3 279 (30.43%) TCP/IP
4 271 (29.55%) VPN
5 125 (13.63%) Network Security
6 119 (12.98%) VLAN
7 113 (12.32%) WAN
8 92 (10.03%) SSL
9 88 (9.60%) LAN
10 86 (9.38%) BGP
11 75 (8.18%) Wireless
12 62 (6.76%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (6.65%) BIG-IP
13 61 (6.65%) HTTP
14 56 (6.11%) SAN
15 54 (5.89%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 47 (5.13%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 46 (5.02%) OSPF
18 44 (4.80%) DMZ
19 39 (4.25%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (5.23%) SQL Server
2 14 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
4 11 (1.20%) MySQL
5 9 (0.98%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (0.98%) Power BI
6 7 (0.76%) Data Lake
6 7 (0.76%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.76%) NoSQL
7 5 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.55%) Redis
8 4 (0.44%) Big Data
8 4 (0.44%) Db2
9 3 (0.33%) Metadata
10 2 (0.22%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (0.22%) Flink
10 2 (0.22%) KDB
11 1 (0.11%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.11%) Cloud Spanner
11 1 (0.11%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 70 (7.63%) JIRA
2 51 (5.56%) Jenkins
3 38 (4.14%) Git
4 33 (3.60%) GitLab
5 15 (1.64%) Fiddler
6 7 (0.76%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.76%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 5 (0.55%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.44%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.44%) Selenium
9 3 (0.33%) MSI
10 2 (0.22%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.22%) Spinnaker
10 2 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.22%) Vagrant
11 1 (0.11%) Locust
11 1 (0.11%) Newman
11 1 (0.11%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.11%) TestCafe
General
1 242 (26.39%) Social Skills
2 110 (12.00%) Analytical Skills
3 78 (8.51%) Finance
4 66 (7.20%) Public Sector
5 60 (6.54%) Banking
6 41 (4.47%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (3.60%) Telecoms
8 29 (3.16%) Investment Banking
9 15 (1.64%) Legal
10 12 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (1.20%) Aerospace
11 11 (1.20%) Police
12 10 (1.09%) Local Government
12 10 (1.09%) Military
13 8 (0.87%) Front Office
13 8 (0.87%) Manufacturing
13 8 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (0.76%) Law
14 7 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (0.65%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 165 (17.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 159 (17.34%) Network Engineer
3 104 (11.34%) Senior
4 94 (10.25%) Support Engineer
5 78 (8.51%) Cloud Engineer
6 75 (8.18%) Architect
7 49 (5.34%) IT Support
8 48 (5.23%) Security Engineer
9 47 (5.13%) IT Engineer
10 44 (4.80%) Analyst
11 40 (4.36%) Platform Engineer
12 39 (4.25%) Azure Engineer
13 38 (4.14%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 37 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
14 37 (4.03%) Network Security Engineer
15 36 (3.93%) Administrator
16 35 (3.82%) Cisco Engineer
17 33 (3.60%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 33 (3.60%) IT Support Engineer
18 32 (3.49%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 202 (22.03%) Terraform
2 33 (3.60%) 802.1X
3 27 (2.94%) LDAP
3 27 (2.94%) SAML
4 25 (2.73%) ARM Templates
5 20 (2.18%) OAuth
6 19 (2.07%) REST
7 16 (1.74%) OpenID
8 13 (1.42%) JSON
9 12 (1.31%) Kafka
9 12 (1.31%) YAML
10 10 (1.09%) OpenTelemetry
11 9 (0.98%) CSS
11 9 (0.98%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (0.65%) .NET
12 6 (0.65%) Middleware
13 5 (0.55%) HTML
13 5 (0.55%) Jinja
13 5 (0.55%) OAuth2
13 5 (0.55%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 120 (13.09%) Data Centre
2 93 (10.14%) PKI
3 70 (7.63%) Hybrid Cloud
4 68 (7.42%) Onboarding
5 55 (6.00%) Management Information System
6 39 (4.25%) Cloud Native
7 27 (2.94%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 27 (2.94%) Public Cloud
7 27 (2.94%) Replication
8 25 (2.73%) Clustering
9 20 (2.18%) Linux Command Line
10 19 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.74%) Enterprise Cloud
12 15 (1.64%) Cyber Threat
13 14 (1.53%) Driving Licence
14 13 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.42%) Security Posture
15 10 (1.09%) Distributed Systems
15 10 (1.09%) Video Conferencing
16 9 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 445 (48.53%) Windows
2 252 (27.48%) Windows Server
3 200 (21.81%) Linux
4 64 (6.98%) Windows 10
5 40 (4.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (4.25%) Windows Server 2019
7 30 (3.27%) Mac OS
8 28 (3.05%) Unix
9 25 (2.73%) Ubuntu
10 23 (2.51%) Windows Server 2012
11 20 (2.18%) Apple iOS
11 20 (2.18%) CentOS
12 18 (1.96%) Android
13 12 (1.31%) VMS
13 12 (1.31%) Windows 7
13 12 (1.31%) Windows Server 2016
14 7 (0.76%) Rocky
14 7 (0.76%) Windows Server 2008
15 5 (0.55%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.44%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 228 (24.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 208 (22.68%) Problem-Solving
3 180 (19.63%) ITIL
4 175 (19.08%) Infrastructure as Code
5 164 (17.88%) Load Balancing
6 148 (16.14%) DevOps
7 146 (15.92%) Migration
8 137 (14.94%) CI/CD
9 114 (12.43%) High Availability
10 113 (12.32%) ITSM
11 102 (11.12%) Continuous Improvement
12 96 (10.47%) Agile
13 93 (10.14%) Cybersecurity
14 91 (9.92%) Technical Leadership
15 82 (8.94%) Observability
16 78 (8.51%) Disaster Recovery
17 77 (8.40%) Project Delivery
18 74 (8.07%) Root Cause Analysis
19 71 (7.74%) Change Management
20 70 (7.63%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 234 (25.52%) PowerShell
2 180 (19.63%) Python
3 125 (13.63%) Bash
4 58 (6.32%) SQL
5 44 (4.80%) Bicep
6 16 (1.74%) Shell Script
7 13 (1.42%) Go
7 13 (1.42%) JavaScript
8 11 (1.20%) ActionScript
9 10 (1.09%) VBScript
10 9 (0.98%) Java
10 9 (0.98%) Perl
11 8 (0.87%) Groovy
12 7 (0.76%) VBA
13 6 (0.65%) VB
14 4 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
14 4 (0.44%) Ruby
15 3 (0.33%) C
15 3 (0.33%) Lisp
16 2 (0.22%) C++
Qualifications
1 346 (37.73%) Security Cleared
2 192 (20.94%) SC Cleared
3 153 (16.68%) DV Cleared
4 83 (9.05%) Cisco Certification
5 75 (8.18%) Degree
6 68 (7.42%) CCNP
7 52 (5.67%) Azure Certification
8 48 (5.23%) Microsoft Certification
9 44 (4.80%) CCNA
10 26 (2.84%) Network+ Certification
11 23 (2.51%) AWS Certification
12 20 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
13 19 (2.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 16 (1.74%) CCIE
15 15 (1.64%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 15 (1.64%) VCAP
16 12 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.20%) A+ Certification
17 11 (1.20%) Server+ Certification
18 10 (1.09%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (4.14%) SLA
2 24 (2.62%) NIST
3 16 (1.74%) NCSC
4 15 (1.64%) QA
5 14 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.65%) GDPR
7 5 (0.55%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.44%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.33%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.22%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.22%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 410 (44.71%) Active Directory
2 261 (28.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 112 (12.21%) Hyper-V
4 84 (9.16%) VMware ESXi
5 73 (7.96%) vSphere
6 67 (7.31%) VMware NSX
7 61 (6.65%) Docker
8 44 (4.80%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (3.93%) Virtual Desktop
10 23 (2.51%) Firmware
11 17 (1.85%) NFS
12 16 (1.74%) vCloud
13 13 (1.42%) BitLocker
14 9 (0.98%) Postfix
15 8 (0.87%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.87%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.65%) Squid
16 6 (0.65%) VMware Workstation
17 5 (0.55%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.55%) UAG
Systems Management
1 142 (15.49%) Ansible
2 117 (12.76%) Kubernetes
3 110 (12.00%) Microsoft Intune
4 78 (8.51%) SCCM
5 68 (7.42%) vCenter Server
6 60 (6.54%) Grafana
7 48 (5.23%) Single Sign-On
8 47 (5.13%) Prometheus
9 35 (3.82%) SCOM
10 33 (3.60%) WSUS
11 23 (2.51%) FortiGate
12 16 (1.74%) Puppet
12 16 (1.74%) VxRail
13 15 (1.64%) Packer
14 14 (1.53%) Jamf Pro
15 13 (1.42%) NetBackup
16 12 (1.31%) Istio
16 12 (1.31%) vMotion
17 10 (1.09%) Progress Chef
17 10 (1.09%) systemd
Vendors
1 362 (39.48%) Microsoft
2 314 (34.24%) VMware
3 177 (19.30%) Cisco
4 125 (13.63%) F5
5 88 (9.60%) ServiceNow
6 57 (6.22%) Infoblox
7 51 (5.56%) Google
8 49 (5.34%) Palo Alto
9 48 (5.23%) Citrix
10 46 (5.02%) SolarWinds
11 42 (4.58%) Juniper
12 38 (4.14%) Red Hat
12 38 (4.14%) Splunk
13 34 (3.71%) NetApp
14 32 (3.49%) CheckPoint
15 31 (3.38%) Dynatrace
16 28 (3.05%) Fortinet
17 24 (2.62%) Blue Coat
18 23 (2.51%) McAfee
18 23 (2.51%) Zscaler