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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 124 125
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing DNS 742 585 697
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.09% 2.28% 1.86%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.65% 17.21% 13.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 470 386 452
10th Percentile £219 £243 £200
25th Percentile £400 £375 £312
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £456
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +9.59% -13.10%
75th Percentile £612 £613 £575
90th Percentile £690 £700 £650
UK median daily rate £514 £510 £465
% change year-on-year +0.78% +9.68% -11.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 6 26
10th Percentile £13.04 £15.40 £23.75
25th Percentile £15.50 £19.77 £26.56
Median hourly rate £25.15 £39.05 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.59% -2.39% -4.48%
75th Percentile £74.26 £76.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.56 £72.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £23.59 £40.00
% change year-on-year +6.61% -41.03% -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 3,594 3,400 5,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.14% 13.23% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,317 2,035 3,151
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £363 £363 £350
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 £680 £700
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £485
% change year-on-year -4.00% +3.09% -6.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 166 101 363
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.33 £14.27
25th Percentile £18.90 £21.46 £19.99
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -22.22% +133.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £43.12
% change year-on-year -2.86% -18.82% +123.39%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -15 239 £525 - 80
North of England -18 193 £473 -0.26% 67
South East +2 146 £525 - 88
North West +6 125 £593 +24.74% 37
Midlands +22 112 £375 -16.67% 34
West Midlands +26 108 £378 -6.79% 25
Yorkshire -38 71 £447 -0.67% 25
South West -34 63 £575 +5.12% 34
East of England -28 39 £463 +2.78% 26
North East -25 6 £411 +26.38% 8
East Midlands -31 4 £325 -41.96% 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 96 (12.94%) Microsoft Exchange
2 59 (7.95%) SharePoint
3 29 (3.91%) Skype for Business
4 18 (2.43%) Confluence
5 14 (1.89%) nginx
6 6 (0.81%) Apache
7 4 (0.54%) IIS
7 4 (0.54%) SharePoint Server
8 3 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.40%) 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 (0.13%) Traefik
Applications
1 36 (4.85%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.02%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.40%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.13%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.13%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.13%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 256 (34.50%) Azure
2 155 (20.89%) AWS
3 133 (17.92%) Microsoft 365
4 120 (16.17%) Entra ID
5 58 (7.82%) GCP
6 52 (7.01%) GitHub
7 49 (6.60%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 42 (5.66%) Amazon S3
9 40 (5.39%) Amazon EC2
10 38 (5.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 37 (4.99%) IaaS
12 34 (4.58%) AWS CloudFormation
13 31 (4.18%) Serverless
14 30 (4.04%) Route 53
15 29 (3.91%) AWS Lambda
15 29 (3.91%) SaaS
16 23 (3.10%) Amazon ECS
16 23 (3.10%) PaaS
17 22 (2.96%) Amazon EKS
18 21 (2.83%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 336 (45.28%) DHCP
2 232 (31.27%) Firewall
3 220 (29.65%) TCP/IP
4 182 (24.53%) VPN
5 91 (12.26%) WAN
6 88 (11.86%) SSL
7 84 (11.32%) Network Security
8 82 (11.05%) LAN
9 73 (9.84%) VLAN
10 65 (8.76%) BGP
11 64 (8.63%) BIG-IP
12 61 (8.22%) HTTP
13 51 (6.87%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 48 (6.47%) Wi-Fi
15 44 (5.93%) Wireshark
16 41 (5.53%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 40 (5.39%) OSPF
18 39 (5.26%) DMZ
19 34 (4.58%) Skype
20 33 (4.45%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (3.37%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.29%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (2.16%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (1.89%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (1.21%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (0.94%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.94%) MongoDB
7 6 (0.81%) MySQL
7 6 (0.81%) Redis
8 5 (0.67%) Data Hub
9 4 (0.54%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.54%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
10 3 (0.40%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.13%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.13%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.13%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.13%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 71 (9.57%) Jenkins
2 45 (6.06%) Git
3 41 (5.53%) GitLab
4 36 (4.85%) JIRA
5 31 (4.18%) Fiddler
6 8 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.94%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.94%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.67%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.54%) Vagrant
10 3 (0.40%) Subversion
11 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.27%) TeamCity
12 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.13%) GCC
12 1 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
12 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 203 (27.36%) Social Skills
2 98 (13.21%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (8.76%) Banking
4 54 (7.28%) Public Sector
5 47 (6.33%) Investment Banking
6 46 (6.20%) Finance
7 45 (6.06%) Documentation Skills
8 18 (2.43%) Legal
9 17 (2.29%) Military
10 14 (1.89%) Telecoms
11 9 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.67%) Law
14 4 (0.54%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.54%) Local Government
15 3 (0.40%) Aerospace
16 2 (0.27%) Advertising
16 2 (0.27%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 125 (16.85%) Network Engineer
2 112 (15.09%) Architect
3 66 (8.89%) Senior
4 65 (8.76%) Analyst
4 65 (8.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 61 (8.22%) Support Engineer
6 48 (6.47%) Security Engineer
7 44 (5.93%) IT Support
8 38 (5.12%) Web Engineer
9 34 (4.58%) Platform Engineer
10 31 (4.18%) DevOps Engineer
11 30 (4.04%) Network Security Engineer
12 26 (3.50%) IT Engineer
12 26 (3.50%) Lead
13 24 (3.23%) Cisco Engineer
13 24 (3.23%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 22 (2.96%) 2nd Line Support
14 22 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
15 21 (2.83%) Azure Engineer
16 20 (2.70%) Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (8.36%) LDAP
2 40 (5.39%) SAML
3 35 (4.72%) OAuth
4 29 (3.91%) OpenID
5 24 (3.23%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.70%) OAuth2
7 15 (2.02%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.35%) Kafka
8 10 (1.35%) REST
9 8 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (0.81%) JSON
10 6 (0.81%) Microsoft Graph
10 6 (0.81%) Middleware
10 6 (0.81%) XMPP
11 5 (0.67%) ARM Templates
11 5 (0.67%) AWS CDK
11 5 (0.67%) RESTful
12 4 (0.54%) JPA
12 4 (0.54%) Spring
12 4 (0.54%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 67 (9.03%) PKI
2 61 (8.22%) Data Centre
3 53 (7.14%) Replication
4 38 (5.12%) Cloud Native
4 38 (5.12%) Management Information System
5 30 (4.04%) Onboarding
6 24 (3.23%) Clustering
6 24 (3.23%) Public Cloud
7 22 (2.96%) Analytical Mindset
8 20 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
9 19 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
10 15 (2.02%) Cyber Threat
11 14 (1.89%) Cyberattack
11 14 (1.89%) Security Operations Centre
11 14 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (1.62%) NHS
13 11 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
13 11 (1.48%) Private Cloud
14 10 (1.35%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 10 (1.35%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 348 (46.90%) Windows
2 174 (23.45%) Windows Server
3 125 (16.85%) Linux
4 57 (7.68%) Windows 10
5 29 (3.91%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.70%) Unix
7 18 (2.43%) Android
8 16 (2.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (2.16%) Windows Server 2016
9 15 (2.02%) Windows Server 2012
10 13 (1.75%) Apple iOS
11 11 (1.48%) Windows 7
12 9 (1.21%) CentOS
12 9 (1.21%) Mac OS
12 9 (1.21%) VMS
13 7 (0.94%) Amazon Linux
13 7 (0.94%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.67%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.54%) CatOS
15 4 (0.54%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (23.85%) Problem-Solving
2 157 (21.16%) Load Balancing
3 113 (15.23%) ITIL
4 110 (14.82%) DevOps
5 108 (14.56%) CI/CD
6 97 (13.07%) Migration
7 96 (12.94%) High Availability
8 95 (12.80%) Infrastructure as Code
9 88 (11.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 75 (10.11%) Disaster Recovery
11 67 (9.03%) Service Management
12 66 (8.89%) Identity Access Management
13 61 (8.22%) Change Management
14 59 (7.95%) Cybersecurity
15 54 (7.28%) Incident Response
15 54 (7.28%) RBAC
16 52 (7.01%) ITSM
17 51 (6.87%) Root Cause Analysis
18 50 (6.74%) Mentoring
19 48 (6.47%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 209 (28.17%) PowerShell
2 138 (18.60%) Python
3 70 (9.43%) Bash
4 43 (5.80%) SQL
5 13 (1.75%) VBScript
6 12 (1.62%) Java
7 11 (1.48%) Bicep
8 10 (1.35%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.35%) VB
9 9 (1.21%) Perl
9 9 (1.21%) Ruby
10 8 (1.08%) Go
10 8 (1.08%) JavaScript
11 7 (0.94%) Lisp
12 5 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
13 4 (0.54%) Groovy
14 3 (0.40%) C#
14 3 (0.40%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.27%) C++
15 2 (0.27%) VBA
Qualifications
1 275 (37.06%) Security Cleared
2 186 (25.07%) SC Cleared
3 92 (12.40%) DV Cleared
4 63 (8.49%) Microsoft Certification
5 59 (7.95%) Cisco Certification
6 55 (7.41%) Degree
7 45 (6.06%) CCNP
8 35 (4.72%) Azure Certification
9 23 (3.10%) Network+ Certification
10 20 (2.70%) AWS Certification
11 19 (2.56%) CCNA
12 16 (2.16%) CISSP
13 15 (2.02%) CompTIA Security+
13 15 (2.02%) Server+ Certification
14 12 (1.62%) MCSE
15 10 (1.35%) CCIE
15 10 (1.35%) ITIL Certification
15 10 (1.35%) JNCIA
15 10 (1.35%) JNCIS
16 9 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.18%) GDPR
2 22 (2.96%) SLA
3 18 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (2.43%) NIST
3 18 (2.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 9 (1.21%) PCI DSS
5 8 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (1.08%) NCSC
6 6 (0.81%) QA
7 3 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.27%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.13%) COBIT
9 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.13%) RMADS
9 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 325 (43.80%) Active Directory
2 177 (23.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 69 (9.30%) Docker
4 57 (7.68%) Hyper-V
4 57 (7.68%) VMware NSX
5 41 (5.53%) vSphere
6 28 (3.77%) Virtual Machines
7 24 (3.23%) Firmware
8 18 (2.43%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (2.02%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (1.89%) BitLocker
11 11 (1.48%) Squid
12 7 (0.94%) DFS Replication
12 7 (0.94%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.81%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.67%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 5 (0.67%) NFS
14 5 (0.67%) Postfix
15 4 (0.54%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.40%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 141 (19.00%) Terraform
2 121 (16.31%) Ansible
3 92 (12.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 79 (10.65%) SCCM
5 77 (10.38%) Kubernetes
6 66 (8.89%) Single Sign-On
7 62 (8.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (5.80%) vCenter Server
9 39 (5.26%) FortiGate
10 36 (4.85%) Grafana
11 22 (2.96%) Prometheus
12 20 (2.70%) Argo
13 16 (2.16%) WSUS
14 14 (1.89%) SCOM
15 9 (1.21%) Nessus
15 9 (1.21%) Puppet
16 8 (1.08%) Nagios
17 7 (0.94%) Consul
17 7 (0.94%) HAProxy
18 6 (0.81%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 288 (38.81%) Microsoft
2 223 (30.05%) VMware
3 143 (19.27%) F5
4 121 (16.31%) Cisco
5 71 (9.57%) ServiceNow
6 69 (9.30%) Splunk
7 45 (6.06%) Blue Coat
8 43 (5.80%) SolarWinds
9 41 (5.53%) Palo Alto
10 40 (5.39%) Citrix
11 36 (4.85%) McAfee
12 35 (4.72%) Juniper
13 33 (4.45%) CheckPoint
13 33 (4.45%) Red Hat
14 26 (3.50%) NetApp
15 20 (2.70%) Google
15 20 (2.70%) Veeam
16 19 (2.56%) Okta
16 19 (2.56%) Pure Storage
17 18 (2.43%) Zscaler