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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 118 126
Rank change year-on-year -8 +8 -3
Contract jobs citing DNS 743 586 703
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.09% 2.28% 1.86%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.68% 17.27% 13.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 473 387 457
10th Percentile £219 £243 £200
25th Percentile £400 £375 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £463
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +8.11% -11.90%
75th Percentile £613 £613 £575
90th Percentile £690 £700 £650
UK median daily rate £515 £510 £465
% change year-on-year +0.88% +9.68% -11.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 6 26
10th Percentile £13.35 £15.40 £23.75
25th Percentile £16.25 £19.77 £26.56
Median hourly rate £26.33 £39.05 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.58% -2.39% -
75th Percentile £74.26 £76.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.56 £72.75
UK median hourly rate £26.33 £23.59 £40.00
% change year-on-year +11.59% -41.03% -

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 3,593 3,393 5,302
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.11% 13.21% 14.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,322 2,036 3,190
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 £481 £500 £480
% change year-on-year -3.75% +4.17% -7.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 100 363
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.32 £14.27
25th Percentile £19.75 £21.46 £19.99
Median hourly rate £35.50 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% -22.22% +133.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.06 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £35.00 £43.12
% change year-on-year +1.43% -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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -13 238 £525 - 76
North of England -15 196 £473 -0.26% 68
South East +5 147 £525 - 88
North West +4 128 £575 +21.05% 37
Midlands +15 108 £375 -16.67% 33
West Midlands +25 104 £375 -7.41% 25
Yorkshire -36 70 £447 -0.67% 26
South West -34 62 £575 +5.02% 32
East of England -22 39 £463 +2.78% 25
North East -22 6 £411 +26.38% 8
East Midlands -26 4 £325 -41.96% 8
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 98 (13.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 58 (7.81%) SharePoint
3 28 (3.77%) Skype for Business
4 17 (2.29%) Confluence
5 13 (1.75%) 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 2 (0.27%) 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
1 259 (34.86%) Azure
2 156 (21.00%) AWS
3 133 (17.90%) Microsoft 365
4 121 (16.29%) Entra ID
5 61 (8.21%) GCP
6 52 (7.00%) GitHub
7 48 (6.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 41 (5.52%) Amazon S3
9 39 (5.25%) Amazon EC2
10 38 (5.11%) IaaS
11 37 (4.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 34 (4.58%) AWS CloudFormation
13 30 (4.04%) Serverless
14 29 (3.90%) Route 53
14 29 (3.90%) SaaS
15 28 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
16 23 (3.10%) PaaS
17 22 (2.96%) Amazon ECS
17 22 (2.96%) Amazon EKS
18 21 (2.83%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 336 (45.22%) DHCP
2 231 (31.09%) Firewall
3 221 (29.74%) TCP/IP
4 181 (24.36%) VPN
5 90 (12.11%) WAN
6 86 (11.57%) SSL
7 82 (11.04%) LAN
7 82 (11.04%) Network Security
8 73 (9.83%) VLAN
9 65 (8.75%) BGP
10 63 (8.48%) BIG-IP
10 63 (8.48%) HTTP
11 49 (6.59%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 48 (6.46%) Wi-Fi
13 43 (5.79%) Wireshark
14 40 (5.38%) OSPF
15 39 (5.25%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 37 (4.98%) DMZ
17 33 (4.44%) Kerberos
17 33 (4.44%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (3.23%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.15%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (1.88%) Elasticsearch
3 14 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.08%) Amazon Aurora
5 7 (0.94%) DynamoDB
5 7 (0.94%) MongoDB
6 6 (0.81%) MySQL
6 6 (0.81%) Redis
7 5 (0.67%) Data Hub
8 4 (0.54%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.54%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.54%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (0.40%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.13%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (0.13%) Electronic Patient Records
10 1 (0.13%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.13%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 70 (9.42%) Jenkins
2 44 (5.92%) Git
3 41 (5.52%) GitLab
4 35 (4.71%) JIRA
5 30 (4.04%) 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
10 3 (0.40%) Subversion
10 3 (0.40%) Vagrant
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
1 202 (27.19%) Social Skills
2 102 (13.73%) Analytical Skills
3 63 (8.48%) Banking
4 54 (7.27%) Public Sector
5 48 (6.46%) Finance
6 45 (6.06%) Documentation Skills
6 45 (6.06%) Investment Banking
7 19 (2.56%) Legal
8 18 (2.42%) Military
9 13 (1.75%) Telecoms
10 9 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 8 (1.08%) 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
1 124 (16.69%) Network Engineer
2 112 (15.07%) Architect
3 66 (8.88%) Senior
4 65 (8.75%) Analyst
5 64 (8.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 61 (8.21%) Support Engineer
7 51 (6.86%) Security Engineer
8 44 (5.92%) IT Support
9 38 (5.11%) Web Engineer
10 33 (4.44%) Platform Engineer
11 31 (4.17%) DevOps Engineer
12 30 (4.04%) Network Security Engineer
13 26 (3.50%) IT Engineer
13 26 (3.50%) Lead
14 24 (3.23%) Cisco Engineer
14 24 (3.23%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 22 (2.96%) 2nd Line Support
15 22 (2.96%) Azure Engineer
15 22 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
16 20 (2.69%) Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (8.21%) LDAP
2 40 (5.38%) SAML
3 35 (4.71%) OAuth
4 29 (3.90%) OpenID
5 23 (3.10%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.69%) OAuth2
7 15 (2.02%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.35%) Kafka
8 10 (1.35%) REST
9 8 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
10 7 (0.94%) XMPP
11 6 (0.81%) JSON
11 6 (0.81%) Microsoft Graph
11 6 (0.81%) Middleware
12 5 (0.67%) ARM Templates
12 5 (0.67%) AWS CDK
12 5 (0.67%) RESTful
13 4 (0.54%) JPA
13 4 (0.54%) Spring
13 4 (0.54%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 66 (8.88%) PKI
2 61 (8.21%) Data Centre
3 52 (7.00%) Replication
4 38 (5.11%) Cloud Native
5 37 (4.98%) Management Information System
6 29 (3.90%) Onboarding
7 24 (3.23%) Clustering
7 24 (3.23%) Public Cloud
8 22 (2.96%) Analytical Mindset
9 20 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
10 19 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
11 15 (2.02%) Cyber Threat
12 14 (1.88%) Cyberattack
12 14 (1.88%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 14 (1.88%) Security Operations Centre
12 14 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
13 12 (1.62%) NHS
14 11 (1.48%) Private Cloud
14 11 (1.48%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 348 (46.84%) Windows
2 176 (23.69%) Windows Server
3 124 (16.69%) Linux
4 56 (7.54%) Windows 10
5 29 (3.90%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.69%) Unix
7 18 (2.42%) Android
8 16 (2.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (2.15%) 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
13 8 (1.08%) VMS
14 6 (0.81%) Amazon Linux
14 6 (0.81%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.67%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.54%) CatOS
16 4 (0.54%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (24.09%) Problem-Solving
2 155 (20.86%) Load Balancing
3 113 (15.21%) ITIL
4 109 (14.67%) CI/CD
4 109 (14.67%) DevOps
5 98 (13.19%) Infrastructure as Code
6 97 (13.06%) High Availability
6 97 (13.06%) Migration
7 87 (11.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 75 (10.09%) Disaster Recovery
9 68 (9.15%) Service Management
10 67 (9.02%) Identity Access Management
11 59 (7.94%) Change Management
11 59 (7.94%) Cybersecurity
12 58 (7.81%) Incident Response
13 54 (7.27%) RBAC
14 52 (7.00%) ITSM
15 50 (6.73%) Mentoring
15 50 (6.73%) Root Cause Analysis
16 49 (6.59%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 209 (28.13%) PowerShell
2 139 (18.71%) Python
3 70 (9.42%) Bash
4 42 (5.65%) 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 3 (0.40%) C#
13 3 (0.40%) Groovy
13 3 (0.40%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.27%) C++
14 2 (0.27%) VBA
Qualifications
1 274 (36.88%) Security Cleared
2 186 (25.03%) SC Cleared
3 91 (12.25%) DV Cleared
4 63 (8.48%) Microsoft Certification
5 59 (7.94%) Cisco Certification
6 54 (7.27%) Degree
7 45 (6.06%) CCNP
8 34 (4.58%) Azure Certification
9 23 (3.10%) Network+ Certification
10 19 (2.56%) AWS Certification
10 19 (2.56%) CCNA
11 16 (2.15%) CISSP
12 15 (2.02%) CompTIA Security+
12 15 (2.02%) Server+ Certification
13 12 (1.62%) MCSE
14 10 (1.35%) CCIE
14 10 (1.35%) ITIL Certification
14 10 (1.35%) JNCIA
14 10 (1.35%) JNCIS
15 9 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.04%) GDPR
2 22 (2.96%) SLA
3 18 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (2.42%) NIST
3 18 (2.42%) 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
1 327 (44.01%) Active Directory
2 176 (23.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 68 (9.15%) Docker
4 58 (7.81%) Hyper-V
5 56 (7.54%) VMware NSX
6 41 (5.52%) vSphere
7 27 (3.63%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (3.23%) Firmware
9 18 (2.42%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (2.02%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (1.88%) BitLocker
12 10 (1.35%) Squid
13 7 (0.94%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.81%) DFS Replication
14 6 (0.81%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.67%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 5 (0.67%) NFS
16 4 (0.54%) Postfix
16 4 (0.54%) Terminal Services
17 3 (0.40%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 140 (18.84%) Terraform
2 120 (16.15%) Ansible
3 93 (12.52%) Microsoft Intune
4 79 (10.63%) SCCM
5 77 (10.36%) Kubernetes
6 65 (8.75%) Single Sign-On
7 61 (8.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 42 (5.65%) vCenter Server
9 39 (5.25%) FortiGate
10 35 (4.71%) Grafana
11 21 (2.83%) Prometheus
12 20 (2.69%) Argo
13 16 (2.15%) WSUS
14 14 (1.88%) SCOM
15 9 (1.21%) Puppet
16 8 (1.08%) Nagios
16 8 (1.08%) Nessus
17 7 (0.94%) Consul
17 7 (0.94%) HAProxy
18 6 (0.81%) Packer
Vendors
1 290 (39.03%) Microsoft
2 223 (30.01%) VMware
3 140 (18.84%) F5
4 120 (16.15%) Cisco
5 70 (9.42%) ServiceNow
6 69 (9.29%) Splunk
7 43 (5.79%) Blue Coat
8 42 (5.65%) Citrix
8 42 (5.65%) SolarWinds
9 41 (5.52%) Palo Alto
10 35 (4.71%) McAfee
11 34 (4.58%) Juniper
12 33 (4.44%) Red Hat
13 32 (4.31%) CheckPoint
14 25 (3.36%) NetApp
15 20 (2.69%) Google
16 19 (2.56%) Okta
16 19 (2.56%) Pure Storage
16 19 (2.56%) Veeam
17 18 (2.42%) Zscaler