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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 139 113 129
Rank change year-on-year -26 +16 -7
Contract jobs citing DNS 719 600 696
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.00% 2.41% 1.83%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.92% 17.87% 12.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 460 405 458
10th Percentile £224 £250 £198
25th Percentile £400 £385 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £525 £456
Median % change year-on-year -1.67% +15.07% -13.10%
75th Percentile £612 £606 £573
90th Percentile £688 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £465
% change year-on-year -2.38% +12.90% -11.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 9 24
10th Percentile £12.74 £17.26 £20.98
25th Percentile £20.56 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £33.50 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.48% +101.69% -4.48%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £42.19
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.48 £65.25
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £38.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -11.84% -5.00% -4.48%

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 3,609 3,358 5,362
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.02% 13.48% 14.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,327 2,051 3,220
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £366 £366 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -4.00% +5.26% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 112 380
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.01 £14.27
25th Percentile £20.32 £21.46 £19.83
Median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -12.50% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £72.97
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% -12.50% +110.53%

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 9 March 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 9 March 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 9 March 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 -27 230 £519 -1.23% 65
North of England -10 197 £450 -5.26% 70
South East +6 146 £525 -3.67% 94
North West +22 131 £569 +20.05% 39
Midlands +10 104 £375 -17.36% 33
West Midlands +18 100 £375 -11.76% 20
Yorkshire -38 68 £447 -14.95% 23
South West -45 53 £675 +23.40% 26
East of England -35 38 £475 - 32
North East -20 6 £411 +21.70% 10
East Midlands -38 4 £325 -41.96% 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 92 (12.80%) Microsoft Exchange
2 49 (6.82%) SharePoint
3 25 (3.48%) Skype for Business
4 14 (1.95%) Confluence
5 11 (1.53%) nginx
6 7 (0.97%) Apache
7 4 (0.56%) IIS
8 3 (0.42%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.42%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.28%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.28%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.28%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.28%) WordPress
10 1 (0.14%) Traefik
Applications
1 29 (4.03%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.09%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.28%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.14%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 248 (34.49%) Azure
2 133 (18.50%) AWS
3 125 (17.39%) Microsoft 365
4 120 (16.69%) Entra ID
5 64 (8.90%) GCP
6 53 (7.37%) GitHub
7 40 (5.56%) IaaS
8 35 (4.87%) AWS CloudFormation
8 35 (4.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 29 (4.03%) Serverless
10 28 (3.89%) Amazon S3
11 27 (3.76%) AWS Lambda
11 27 (3.76%) Route 53
12 26 (3.62%) Amazon EC2
12 26 (3.62%) SaaS
13 25 (3.48%) PaaS
14 24 (3.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 22 (3.06%) Amazon EKS
15 22 (3.06%) OpenShift
16 20 (2.78%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 322 (44.78%) DHCP
2 214 (29.76%) Firewall
3 203 (28.23%) TCP/IP
4 169 (23.50%) VPN
5 90 (12.52%) WAN
6 82 (11.40%) LAN
7 76 (10.57%) SSL
8 70 (9.74%) Network Security
9 66 (9.18%) BIG-IP
9 66 (9.18%) HTTP
10 64 (8.90%) BGP
10 64 (8.90%) VLAN
11 50 (6.95%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 48 (6.68%) Wi-Fi
13 40 (5.56%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 39 (5.42%) DMZ
15 38 (5.29%) Wireshark
16 37 (5.15%) OSPF
17 36 (5.01%) Kerberos
18 30 (4.17%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.06%) SQL Server
2 15 (2.09%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (1.81%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (0.97%) DynamoDB
5 7 (0.97%) MongoDB
6 6 (0.83%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (0.83%) Redis
7 5 (0.70%) Data Hub
7 5 (0.70%) MySQL
8 4 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.56%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.56%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.56%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.42%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.28%) Power BI
11 1 (0.14%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 57 (7.93%) Jenkins
2 33 (4.59%) JIRA
3 32 (4.45%) GitLab
4 31 (4.31%) Fiddler
5 29 (4.03%) Git
6 8 (1.11%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.97%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.97%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.70%) Browser DevTools
8 5 (0.70%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.56%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.28%) Subversion
11 1 (0.14%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.14%) GCC
11 1 (0.14%) MSI
11 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.14%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
General
1 189 (26.29%) Social Skills
2 96 (13.35%) Analytical Skills
3 68 (9.46%) Banking
4 55 (7.65%) Finance
5 48 (6.68%) Public Sector
6 47 (6.54%) Investment Banking
7 44 (6.12%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (2.92%) Legal
9 16 (2.23%) Military
10 13 (1.81%) Telecoms
11 9 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
13 6 (0.83%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (0.70%) Law
15 4 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.42%) Aerospace
16 3 (0.42%) Local Government
17 2 (0.28%) Manufacturing
17 2 (0.28%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 122 (16.97%) Network Engineer
2 110 (15.30%) Architect
3 65 (9.04%) Analyst
4 59 (8.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 57 (7.93%) Senior
6 56 (7.79%) Support Engineer
7 49 (6.82%) Security Engineer
8 42 (5.84%) Web Engineer
9 41 (5.70%) IT Support
10 30 (4.17%) Platform Engineer
11 29 (4.03%) Network Security Engineer
12 27 (3.76%) IT Engineer
12 27 (3.76%) Lead
13 26 (3.62%) Cisco Engineer
13 26 (3.62%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 23 (3.20%) Azure Engineer
15 21 (2.92%) Infrastructure Architect
15 21 (2.92%) IT Support Engineer
16 20 (2.78%) DevOps Engineer
17 19 (2.64%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (8.62%) LDAP
2 42 (5.84%) SAML
3 38 (5.29%) OAuth
4 30 (4.17%) OpenID
5 27 (3.76%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.78%) OAuth2
7 17 (2.36%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.39%) Kafka
9 9 (1.25%) REST
10 8 (1.11%) Elastic Stack
11 7 (0.97%) XMPP
12 6 (0.83%) JSON
12 6 (0.83%) Microsoft Graph
12 6 (0.83%) Middleware
13 5 (0.70%) ARM Templates
13 5 (0.70%) AWS CDK
13 5 (0.70%) RESTful
14 4 (0.56%) JPA
14 4 (0.56%) Spring
14 4 (0.56%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 64 (8.90%) PKI
2 62 (8.62%) Data Centre
3 49 (6.82%) Replication
4 39 (5.42%) Cloud Native
5 37 (5.15%) Management Information System
6 30 (4.17%) Onboarding
7 26 (3.62%) Clustering
7 26 (3.62%) Public Cloud
8 18 (2.50%) Hybrid Cloud
9 17 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
10 15 (2.09%) Analytical Mindset
10 15 (2.09%) Cyber Threat
10 15 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (1.95%) Cyberattack
11 14 (1.95%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 14 (1.95%) Security Operations Centre
12 13 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
13 12 (1.67%) NHS
13 12 (1.67%) Product Ownership
14 11 (1.53%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 329 (45.76%) Windows
2 174 (24.20%) Windows Server
3 106 (14.74%) Linux
4 48 (6.68%) Windows 10
5 25 (3.48%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.78%) Unix
7 18 (2.50%) Android
8 15 (2.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 14 (1.95%) Windows Server 2012
10 13 (1.81%) Apple iOS
10 13 (1.81%) Windows Server 2016
11 11 (1.53%) Windows 7
12 9 (1.25%) CentOS
12 9 (1.25%) Mac OS
13 6 (0.83%) Windows Server 2003
14 5 (0.70%) VMS
15 4 (0.56%) CatOS
15 4 (0.56%) Ubuntu
16 3 (0.42%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.42%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (23.50%) Problem-Solving
2 162 (22.53%) Load Balancing
3 103 (14.33%) ITIL
4 100 (13.91%) Migration
5 99 (13.77%) CI/CD
6 96 (13.35%) DevOps
7 93 (12.93%) Infrastructure as Code
8 90 (12.52%) High Availability
9 82 (11.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 68 (9.46%) Identity Access Management
11 64 (8.90%) Disaster Recovery
12 58 (8.07%) Cybersecurity
13 57 (7.93%) RBAC
14 55 (7.65%) Service Management
15 54 (7.51%) Change Management
15 54 (7.51%) ITSM
16 53 (7.37%) Observability
17 50 (6.95%) Incident Response
18 49 (6.82%) Containerisation
18 49 (6.82%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 202 (28.09%) PowerShell
2 127 (17.66%) Python
3 61 (8.48%) Bash
4 40 (5.56%) SQL
5 13 (1.81%) VBScript
6 12 (1.67%) Bicep
7 11 (1.53%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.39%) Java
8 10 (1.39%) VB
9 9 (1.25%) Ruby
10 8 (1.11%) Go
11 7 (0.97%) JavaScript
11 7 (0.97%) Lisp
12 6 (0.83%) Perl
13 5 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
14 3 (0.42%) C#
14 3 (0.42%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.28%) C
15 2 (0.28%) VBA
16 1 (0.14%) C++
Qualifications
1 253 (35.19%) Security Cleared
2 167 (23.23%) SC Cleared
3 89 (12.38%) DV Cleared
4 57 (7.93%) Cisco Certification
5 52 (7.23%) Microsoft Certification
6 46 (6.40%) Degree
7 38 (5.29%) CCNP
8 25 (3.48%) Azure Certification
9 18 (2.50%) CCNA
10 17 (2.36%) AWS Certification
11 15 (2.09%) CompTIA Security+
11 15 (2.09%) Network+ Certification
12 14 (1.95%) CISSP
13 9 (1.25%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 9 (1.25%) BPSS Clearance
13 9 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
13 9 (1.25%) JNCIA
13 9 (1.25%) JNCIS
13 9 (1.25%) MCSE
14 8 (1.11%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.89%) GDPR
2 20 (2.78%) SLA
3 19 (2.64%) NIST
4 18 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 17 (2.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.25%) NCSC
6 9 (1.25%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.83%) QA
9 2 (0.28%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.28%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.28%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.14%) COBIT
10 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.14%) RMADS
System Software
1 317 (44.09%) Active Directory
2 163 (22.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 55 (7.65%) VMware NSX
4 54 (7.51%) Docker
4 54 (7.51%) Hyper-V
5 42 (5.84%) vSphere
6 26 (3.62%) Firmware
7 24 (3.34%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (2.50%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (2.09%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.95%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (1.11%) Squid
12 7 (0.97%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.70%) NFS
14 4 (0.56%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.42%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.42%) Postfix
15 3 (0.42%) Sendmail
15 3 (0.42%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 132 (18.36%) Terraform
2 113 (15.72%) Ansible
3 89 (12.38%) Microsoft Intune
4 80 (11.13%) Kubernetes
5 73 (10.15%) SCCM
6 65 (9.04%) Single Sign-On
7 61 (8.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 39 (5.42%) FortiGate
8 39 (5.42%) vCenter Server
9 33 (4.59%) Grafana
10 21 (2.92%) Argo
10 21 (2.92%) Prometheus
11 14 (1.95%) SCOM
12 12 (1.67%) WSUS
13 10 (1.39%) Puppet
14 8 (1.11%) HAProxy
14 8 (1.11%) Nagios
15 7 (0.97%) Consul
16 6 (0.83%) Nessus
16 6 (0.83%) Packer
Vendors
1 271 (37.69%) Microsoft
2 211 (29.35%) VMware
3 135 (18.78%) F5
4 115 (15.99%) Cisco
5 67 (9.32%) ServiceNow
6 63 (8.76%) Splunk
7 44 (6.12%) Blue Coat
8 41 (5.70%) Citrix
9 40 (5.56%) SolarWinds
10 36 (5.01%) McAfee
11 35 (4.87%) Juniper
12 32 (4.45%) Red Hat
13 30 (4.17%) Palo Alto
14 27 (3.76%) NetApp
15 22 (3.06%) Google
16 19 (2.64%) CheckPoint
16 19 (2.64%) Infoblox
16 19 (2.64%) Okta
16 19 (2.64%) Pure Storage
17 18 (2.50%) Fortinet