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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 115 129
Rank change year-on-year -22 +14 -6
Contract jobs citing DNS 733 601 685
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.99% 2.45% 1.81%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.85% 18.05% 12.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 461 412 448
10th Percentile £240 £250 £193
25th Percentile £400 £400 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% +16.67% -14.29%
75th Percentile £613 £611 £569
90th Percentile £688 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £465
% change year-on-year -3.81% +12.91% -11.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 9 25
10th Percentile £12.74 £17.26 £21.30
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £38.50 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -52.28% +101.69% -8.57%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £48.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.48 £64.50
UK median hourly rate £38.50 £54.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -29.36% +36.25% -8.57%

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 3,692 3,330 5,302
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.02% 13.55% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,373 2,049 3,199
10th Percentile £212 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £375 £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 £488 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.50% +5.26% -9.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 170 114 375
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.37 £21.46 £18.93
Median hourly rate £40.02 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.34% +7.69% +71.05%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.25 £75.00 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £40.54 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +15.83% +7.69% +71.05%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -37 231 £513 -2.38% 72
North of England -9 204 £450 -5.26% 70
South East +10 152 £525 -3.67% 83
North West +22 133 £559 +25.56% 39
Midlands +18 103 £378 -31.05% 39
West Midlands +14 97 £378 -17.49% 25
Yorkshire -33 72 £447 -18.82% 22
South West -40 55 £684 +24.89% 27
East of England -31 39 £475 -5.00% 26
North East -20 6 £575 +70.37% 11
East Midlands -37 5 £375 -34.78% 14
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 93 (12.69%) Microsoft Exchange
2 47 (6.41%) SharePoint
3 24 (3.27%) Skype for Business
4 14 (1.91%) Confluence
5 11 (1.50%) nginx
6 7 (0.95%) IIS
7 5 (0.68%) Apache
8 3 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2010
9 2 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.27%) WordPress
10 1 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.14%) Traefik
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 27 (3.68%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (2.18%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.14%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 257 (35.06%) Azure
2 136 (18.55%) AWS
3 128 (17.46%) Entra ID
4 122 (16.64%) Microsoft 365
5 74 (10.10%) GCP
6 56 (7.64%) GitHub
7 43 (5.87%) IaaS
8 35 (4.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 34 (4.64%) AWS CloudFormation
10 29 (3.96%) Serverless
11 28 (3.82%) Amazon S3
11 28 (3.82%) PaaS
12 27 (3.68%) AWS Lambda
12 27 (3.68%) Route 53
13 26 (3.55%) Amazon EC2
13 26 (3.55%) SaaS
14 24 (3.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 23 (3.14%) Amazon EKS
15 23 (3.14%) OpenShift
16 22 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 324 (44.20%) DHCP
2 226 (30.83%) Firewall
3 199 (27.15%) TCP/IP
4 173 (23.60%) VPN
5 97 (13.23%) WAN
6 89 (12.14%) LAN
7 75 (10.23%) Network Security
8 73 (9.96%) SSL
9 68 (9.28%) BGP
9 68 (9.28%) BIG-IP
10 65 (8.87%) HTTP
11 63 (8.59%) VLAN
12 48 (6.55%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 48 (6.55%) Wi-Fi
13 39 (5.32%) OSPF
13 39 (5.32%) Wireshark
14 38 (5.18%) DMZ
14 38 (5.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 35 (4.77%) Kerberos
16 32 (4.37%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.86%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.18%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (1.77%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.64%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (0.95%) DynamoDB
6 6 (0.82%) Amazon Aurora
6 6 (0.82%) MongoDB
6 6 (0.82%) Redis
7 5 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.68%) Data Hub
7 5 (0.68%) MySQL
8 4 (0.55%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.55%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.55%) Power BI
8 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.41%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.14%) CouchDB
10 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 60 (8.19%) Jenkins
2 37 (5.05%) JIRA
3 33 (4.50%) GitLab
4 30 (4.09%) Fiddler
5 29 (3.96%) Git
6 8 (1.09%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.95%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.82%) Browser DevTools
8 6 (0.82%) Terragrunt
9 5 (0.68%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.55%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.14%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.14%) GCC
12 1 (0.14%) Introscope
12 1 (0.14%) MSI
12 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.14%) Subversion
12 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
General
1 184 (25.10%) Social Skills
2 92 (12.55%) Analytical Skills
3 68 (9.28%) Banking
4 57 (7.78%) Finance
5 49 (6.68%) Public Sector
6 46 (6.28%) Documentation Skills
6 46 (6.28%) Investment Banking
7 22 (3.00%) Legal
8 16 (2.18%) Military
9 12 (1.64%) Telecoms
10 9 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (0.82%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.68%) Law
14 4 (0.55%) Local Government
15 3 (0.41%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.41%) Manufacturing
16 2 (0.27%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 127 (17.33%) Network Engineer
2 111 (15.14%) Architect
3 65 (8.87%) Analyst
3 65 (8.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 63 (8.59%) Senior
5 55 (7.50%) Support Engineer
6 48 (6.55%) Security Engineer
7 45 (6.14%) Web Engineer
8 36 (4.91%) IT Support
9 29 (3.96%) Network Security Engineer
9 29 (3.96%) Platform Engineer
10 27 (3.68%) Cisco Engineer
10 27 (3.68%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 26 (3.55%) Lead
12 25 (3.41%) IT Engineer
13 24 (3.27%) Azure Engineer
14 22 (3.00%) DevOps Engineer
15 21 (2.86%) Data Engineer
15 21 (2.86%) Data Network Engineer
15 21 (2.86%) Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (8.73%) LDAP
2 45 (6.14%) SAML
3 38 (5.18%) OAuth
4 30 (4.09%) OpenID
5 27 (3.68%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.73%) OAuth2
7 18 (2.46%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.36%) Kafka
9 8 (1.09%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (1.09%) REST
10 7 (0.95%) Microsoft Graph
10 7 (0.95%) XMPP
11 6 (0.82%) ARM Templates
11 6 (0.82%) JSON
12 5 (0.68%) RESTful
13 4 (0.55%) gRPC
13 4 (0.55%) Hibernate
13 4 (0.55%) JPA
13 4 (0.55%) Middleware
13 4 (0.55%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.87%) Data Centre
2 64 (8.73%) PKI
3 48 (6.55%) Replication
4 40 (5.46%) Cloud Native
5 35 (4.77%) Management Information System
6 30 (4.09%) Clustering
7 29 (3.96%) Onboarding
8 27 (3.68%) Public Cloud
9 21 (2.86%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 20 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
11 18 (2.46%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (2.05%) Analytical Mindset
12 15 (2.05%) Cyber Threat
12 15 (2.05%) Cyberattack
12 15 (2.05%) Security Operations Centre
13 13 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (1.64%) NHS
14 12 (1.64%) Product Ownership
15 11 (1.50%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 329 (44.88%) Windows
2 179 (24.42%) Windows Server
3 103 (14.05%) Linux
4 46 (6.28%) Windows 10
5 25 (3.41%) Windows Server 2019
6 18 (2.46%) Android
6 18 (2.46%) Unix
7 15 (2.05%) Windows Server 2012
8 12 (1.64%) Apple iOS
8 12 (1.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (1.64%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (1.50%) Windows 7
10 9 (1.23%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.95%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (0.82%) CentOS
13 5 (0.68%) VMS
14 4 (0.55%) CatOS
15 3 (0.41%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
16 2 (0.27%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (23.19%) Problem-Solving
2 164 (22.37%) Load Balancing
3 112 (15.28%) Migration
4 103 (14.05%) CI/CD
4 103 (14.05%) DevOps
4 103 (14.05%) ITIL
5 95 (12.96%) Infrastructure as Code
6 92 (12.55%) High Availability
7 88 (12.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 73 (9.96%) Identity Access Management
9 65 (8.87%) Disaster Recovery
10 62 (8.46%) Cybersecurity
11 60 (8.19%) RBAC
12 56 (7.64%) ITSM
13 55 (7.50%) Observability
14 53 (7.23%) Service Management
15 52 (7.09%) Incident Response
16 51 (6.96%) Change Management
17 49 (6.68%) Continuous Improvement
17 49 (6.68%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 208 (28.38%) PowerShell
2 126 (17.19%) Python
3 60 (8.19%) Bash
4 41 (5.59%) SQL
5 13 (1.77%) Bicep
5 13 (1.77%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.77%) VBScript
6 11 (1.50%) Java
7 10 (1.36%) VB
8 9 (1.23%) Ruby
8 9 (1.23%) Shell Script
9 7 (0.95%) Go
9 7 (0.95%) Lisp
10 5 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (0.68%) Perl
11 2 (0.27%) C
11 2 (0.27%) C#
11 2 (0.27%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.27%) VBA
12 1 (0.14%) PHP
Qualifications
1 253 (34.52%) Security Cleared
2 164 (22.37%) SC Cleared
3 91 (12.41%) DV Cleared
4 60 (8.19%) Cisco Certification
5 46 (6.28%) Degree
6 45 (6.14%) Microsoft Certification
7 39 (5.32%) CCNP
8 26 (3.55%) Azure Certification
9 19 (2.59%) CCNA
10 16 (2.18%) AWS Certification
10 16 (2.18%) CompTIA Security+
11 14 (1.91%) CISSP
11 14 (1.91%) Network+ Certification
12 10 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
12 10 (1.36%) JNCIA
12 10 (1.36%) JNCIS
13 9 (1.23%) CCIE
13 9 (1.23%) JNCIP
14 8 (1.09%) MCSA
14 8 (1.09%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.96%) GDPR
2 21 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 21 (2.86%) NIST
3 20 (2.73%) SLA
4 16 (2.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 9 (1.23%) PCI DSS
6 8 (1.09%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (1.09%) NCSC
7 6 (0.82%) QA
8 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.27%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.14%) COBIT
9 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.14%) RMADS
System Software
1 319 (43.52%) Active Directory
2 164 (22.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 58 (7.91%) Hyper-V
4 56 (7.64%) VMware NSX
5 53 (7.23%) Docker
6 43 (5.87%) vSphere
7 28 (3.82%) Firmware
8 22 (3.00%) Virtual Machines
9 19 (2.59%) VMware ESXi
10 17 (2.32%) BitLocker
11 14 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
12 8 (1.09%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (1.09%) Squid
13 5 (0.68%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.55%) NFS
15 3 (0.41%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.41%) Postfix
15 3 (0.41%) Sendmail
15 3 (0.41%) Varnish
15 3 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 140 (19.10%) Terraform
2 113 (15.42%) Ansible
3 86 (11.73%) Microsoft Intune
4 80 (10.91%) Kubernetes
5 68 (9.28%) Single Sign-On
6 66 (9.00%) SCCM
7 60 (8.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 42 (5.73%) FortiGate
9 40 (5.46%) vCenter Server
10 34 (4.64%) Grafana
11 22 (3.00%) Argo
12 19 (2.59%) Prometheus
13 14 (1.91%) SCOM
14 11 (1.50%) Puppet
15 9 (1.23%) WSUS
16 8 (1.09%) HAProxy
17 7 (0.95%) Consul
17 7 (0.95%) vMotion
18 6 (0.82%) Nagios
18 6 (0.82%) Nessus
Vendors
1 269 (36.70%) Microsoft
2 211 (28.79%) VMware
3 135 (18.42%) F5
4 116 (15.83%) Cisco
5 66 (9.00%) ServiceNow
6 62 (8.46%) Splunk
7 43 (5.87%) Citrix
8 42 (5.73%) SolarWinds
9 41 (5.59%) Blue Coat
10 35 (4.77%) Juniper
10 35 (4.77%) McAfee
11 34 (4.64%) Red Hat
12 32 (4.37%) Palo Alto
13 29 (3.96%) Google
14 28 (3.82%) NetApp
15 22 (3.00%) Infoblox
16 20 (2.73%) Pure Storage
17 19 (2.59%) CheckPoint
17 19 (2.59%) Extreme Networks
17 19 (2.59%) Fortinet