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

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 133 125 115
Rank change year-on-year -8 -10 +15
Contract jobs citing DNS 662 580 810
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.12% 2.00% 2.17%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.59% 15.70% 15.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 408 364 520
10th Percentile £219 £223 £213
25th Percentile £400 £325 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -4.04% -5.71%
75th Percentile £608 £588 £594
90th Percentile £696 £700 £664
UK median daily rate £525 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +10.53% -5.00% -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 6 18
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.40 £24.78
25th Percentile £29.00 £19.65 £31.25
Median hourly rate £57.50 £23.90 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +140.64% -49.69% +41.79%
75th Percentile £80.00 £28.83 £65.25
90th Percentile £87.45 £40.00 £72.40
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £23.59 £55.00
% change year-on-year +143.75% -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 3,380 3,694 5,287
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.82% 12.75% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,186 2,173 3,282
10th Percentile £206 £220 £210
25th Percentile £358 £369 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £610
90th Percentile £675 £681 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 115 322
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.64 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.63 £21.46 £23.00
Median hourly rate £34.00 £41.00 £55.70
Median % change year-on-year -17.07% -26.39% +23.78%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.18
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.24
UK median hourly rate £34.50 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -8.00% -31.82% +34.05%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +15 239 £550 +4.76% 102
North of England -24 125 £478 +19.38% 152
Midlands +12 120 £400 +6.67% 114
West Midlands +32 114 £400 -5.88% 68
South East -12 106 £500 +8.11% 218
North West +5 85 £535 +12.63% 73
South West -9 61 £575 +36.90% 81
Yorkshire -31 48 £447 +43.04% 67
East of England -18 41 £363 +31.82% 94
North East -13 6 £575 +283.33% 15
East Midlands -32 6 £363 -3.33% 41
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 86 (12.99%) Microsoft Exchange
2 72 (10.88%) SharePoint
3 33 (4.98%) Skype for Business
4 25 (3.78%) Confluence
5 12 (1.81%) SharePoint Server
6 11 (1.66%) Exchange Server 2010
6 11 (1.66%) nginx
7 9 (1.36%) Exchange Server 2013
8 8 (1.21%) Exchange Server 2003
8 8 (1.21%) Exchange Server 2007
8 8 (1.21%) Office Communications Server
9 7 (1.06%) IIS
10 4 (0.60%) Apache
10 4 (0.60%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.45%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.30%) Apache Spark
12 2 (0.30%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.30%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.30%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.30%) WordPress
Applications
1 51 (7.70%) 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
6 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
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
2 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 208 (31.42%) Azure
2 169 (25.53%) AWS
3 137 (20.69%) Microsoft 365
4 85 (12.84%) Entra ID
5 72 (10.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 57 (8.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 56 (8.46%) Amazon S3
8 55 (8.31%) Amazon EC2
9 45 (6.80%) GitHub
10 44 (6.65%) GCP
11 43 (6.50%) Amazon ELB
12 31 (4.68%) SaaS
13 30 (4.53%) Amazon ECS
13 30 (4.53%) AWS CloudFormation
14 28 (4.23%) IaaS
15 25 (3.78%) AWS KMS
15 25 (3.78%) Serverless
16 23 (3.47%) AWS Lambda
17 22 (3.32%) GitHub Actions
18 19 (2.87%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 287 (43.35%) DHCP
2 239 (36.10%) Firewall
3 219 (33.08%) TCP/IP
4 167 (25.23%) VPN
5 105 (15.86%) Network Security
6 100 (15.11%) SSL
7 81 (12.24%) WAN
8 73 (11.03%) HTTP
9 66 (9.97%) LAN
9 66 (9.97%) VLAN
10 49 (7.40%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 49 (7.40%) SMTP
11 47 (7.10%) Wireless
12 41 (6.19%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 39 (5.89%) BGP
13 39 (5.89%) FTP
14 35 (5.29%) Wi-Fi
15 34 (5.14%) DMZ
16 30 (4.53%) Wireshark
17 29 (4.38%) 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 11 (1.66%) MongoDB
6 5 (0.76%) BigQuery
6 5 (0.76%) 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 83 (12.54%) Jenkins
2 67 (10.12%) Git
3 47 (7.10%) GitLab
4 45 (6.80%) JIRA
5 19 (2.87%) Fiddler
6 18 (2.72%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.21%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.76%) 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
1 211 (31.87%) Social Skills
2 112 (16.92%) Analytical Skills
3 79 (11.93%) Public Sector
4 47 (7.10%) Finance
5 46 (6.95%) Banking
6 40 (6.04%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (5.44%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.87%) Presentation Skills
9 17 (2.57%) Telecoms
10 16 (2.42%) Legal
11 12 (1.81%) Law
12 10 (1.51%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (1.36%) Military
14 8 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (1.06%) Aerospace
16 6 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 6 (0.91%) Manufacturing
17 5 (0.76%) Marketing
18 4 (0.60%) Local Government
19 3 (0.45%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 87 (13.14%) Network Engineer
2 77 (11.63%) Support Engineer
3 70 (10.57%) Architect
4 68 (10.27%) Senior
5 67 (10.12%) Analyst
6 63 (9.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 48 (7.25%) DevOps Engineer
7 48 (7.25%) Platform Engineer
8 40 (6.04%) IT Support
9 36 (5.44%) Security Engineer
10 34 (5.14%) AWS Engineer
11 26 (3.93%) Cloud Platform Engineer
12 25 (3.78%) Administrator
13 24 (3.63%) AWS DevOps
13 24 (3.63%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 24 (3.63%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 23 (3.47%) 2nd Line Support
14 23 (3.47%) Operations Engineer
15 21 (3.17%) IT Engineer
15 21 (3.17%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.50%) LDAP
2 23 (3.47%) SAML
3 18 (2.72%) OAuth
4 15 (2.27%) OpenID
5 14 (2.11%) Elastic Stack
5 14 (2.11%) OAuth2
6 12 (1.81%) 802.1X
7 10 (1.51%) Kafka
7 10 (1.51%) Middleware
8 7 (1.06%) AngularJS
8 7 (1.06%) cloud-init
8 7 (1.06%) Keycloak
8 7 (1.06%) React
9 6 (0.91%) REST
9 6 (0.91%) YAML
10 5 (0.76%) Flask
10 5 (0.76%) JSON
11 4 (0.60%) ASP.NET Web API
11 4 (0.60%) SOAP
11 4 (0.60%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 59 (8.91%) Replication
2 54 (8.16%) Data Centre
3 53 (8.01%) Management Information System
3 53 (8.01%) PKI
4 29 (4.38%) Analytical Mindset
5 26 (3.93%) Onboarding
6 20 (3.02%) Enterprise Software
7 18 (2.72%) Cyberattack
8 17 (2.57%) Security Operations Centre
9 16 (2.42%) Cyber Threat
10 15 (2.27%) Hybrid Cloud
11 13 (1.96%) CSOC
11 13 (1.96%) Video Conferencing
12 11 (1.66%) Cloud Native
13 10 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (1.36%) Clustering
14 9 (1.36%) Private Cloud
15 8 (1.21%) SCADA
16 7 (1.06%) iPhone
16 7 (1.06%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 323 (48.79%) Windows
2 151 (22.81%) Linux
3 142 (21.45%) Windows Server
4 64 (9.67%) Windows 10
5 32 (4.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 27 (4.08%) VMS
7 24 (3.63%) Windows Server 2016
8 23 (3.47%) Unix
8 23 (3.47%) Windows Server 2019
9 21 (3.17%) Amazon Linux
10 18 (2.72%) Android
10 18 (2.72%) Ubuntu
10 18 (2.72%) Windows Server 2012
11 16 (2.42%) CentOS
11 16 (2.42%) Mac OS
12 11 (1.66%) Apple iOS
12 11 (1.66%) Windows Server 2003
13 10 (1.51%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.76%) Solaris
15 3 (0.45%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 148 (22.36%) Problem-Solving
2 121 (18.28%) ITIL
3 117 (17.67%) CI/CD
4 115 (17.37%) DevOps
5 102 (15.41%) Load Balancing
6 94 (14.20%) Infrastructure as Code
7 85 (12.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 78 (11.78%) Change Management
9 70 (10.57%) Cybersecurity
10 69 (10.42%) High Availability
11 68 (10.27%) Migration
12 62 (9.37%) Incident Response
13 56 (8.46%) Platform Engineering
14 54 (8.16%) Root Cause Analysis
15 53 (8.01%) Continuous Improvement
16 51 (7.70%) Disaster Recovery
16 51 (7.70%) Service Management
17 48 (7.25%) SIEM
18 47 (7.10%) Containerisation
19 44 (6.65%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 196 (29.61%) PowerShell
2 164 (24.77%) Python
3 81 (12.24%) Bash
4 46 (6.95%) SQL
5 21 (3.17%) Perl
6 20 (3.02%) Groovy
7 16 (2.42%) Java
8 13 (1.96%) Bicep
9 12 (1.81%) Go
10 11 (1.66%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.21%) Ruby
12 7 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
12 7 (1.06%) Lisp
12 7 (1.06%) VBScript
13 6 (0.91%) VB
14 5 (0.76%) C++
15 4 (0.60%) JavaScript
16 3 (0.45%) C#
16 3 (0.45%) T-SQL
16 3 (0.45%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 255 (38.52%) Security Cleared
2 183 (27.64%) SC Cleared
3 80 (12.08%) DV Cleared
4 67 (10.12%) Degree
5 61 (9.21%) Microsoft Certification
6 60 (9.06%) Cisco Certification
7 50 (7.55%) CCNP
8 40 (6.04%) Azure Certification
9 27 (4.08%) AWS Certification
10 21 (3.17%) CCNA
11 19 (2.87%) CISSP
12 17 (2.57%) Network+ Certification
13 13 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
14 12 (1.81%) CCIE
15 11 (1.66%) CompTIA Security+
15 11 (1.66%) MCSE
15 11 (1.66%) Server+ Certification
16 9 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
16 9 (1.36%) ITIL Certification
16 9 (1.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (4.38%) GDPR
2 14 (2.11%) SLA
3 13 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 13 (1.96%) NIST
4 11 (1.66%) NCSC
5 10 (1.51%) Cyber Essentials
6 7 (1.06%) Accessibility
7 6 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.76%) 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
1 285 (43.05%) Active Directory
2 163 (24.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 86 (12.99%) Docker
4 45 (6.80%) Hyper-V
5 40 (6.04%) VMware NSX
6 32 (4.83%) Virtual Machines
7 22 (3.32%) Firmware
8 21 (3.17%) vSphere
9 18 (2.72%) DFS Replication
10 17 (2.57%) VMware ESXi
11 16 (2.42%) Dovecot
11 16 (2.42%) Postfix
12 12 (1.81%) Terminal Services
13 10 (1.51%) Squid
13 10 (1.51%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (1.21%) Brightmail
14 8 (1.21%) ISA Server
15 7 (1.06%) NFS
16 6 (0.91%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 139 (21.00%) Terraform
2 103 (15.56%) Ansible
3 72 (10.88%) SCCM
4 68 (10.27%) Microsoft Intune
5 60 (9.06%) Kubernetes
6 42 (6.34%) Grafana
7 40 (6.04%) vCenter Server
8 38 (5.74%) Single Sign-On
9 34 (5.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 34 (5.14%) Prometheus
10 21 (3.17%) WSUS
11 16 (2.42%) Argo
11 16 (2.42%) Nessus
12 15 (2.27%) FortiGate
13 14 (2.11%) Packer
14 13 (1.96%) Proxmox
15 11 (1.66%) Microsoft Clustering
15 11 (1.66%) SCOM
16 9 (1.36%) Progress Chef
17 8 (1.21%) Puppet
Vendors
1 248 (37.46%) Microsoft
2 198 (29.91%) VMware
3 108 (16.31%) F5
4 105 (15.86%) Cisco
5 72 (10.88%) ServiceNow
6 55 (8.31%) CheckPoint
7 54 (8.16%) Palo Alto
8 46 (6.95%) Splunk
9 37 (5.59%) Citrix
10 34 (5.14%) Blue Coat
10 34 (5.14%) Red Hat
10 34 (5.14%) SolarWinds
11 30 (4.53%) Juniper
12 25 (3.78%) Veeam
13 23 (3.47%) McAfee
13 23 (3.47%) NetApp
14 20 (3.02%) Zscaler
15 19 (2.87%) Google
16 18 (2.72%) Dell
16 18 (2.72%) Fortinet