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

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 115 123
Rank change year-on-year -19 +8 -3
Contract jobs citing DNS 733 589 695
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.07% 2.29% 1.86%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.39% 17.20% 13.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 466 387 451
10th Percentile £219 £243 £200
25th Percentile £400 £375 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% +11.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £611 £610 £575
90th Percentile £689 £700 £650
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £465
% change year-on-year +0.49% +9.68% -11.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 6 25
10th Percentile £13.04 £15.40 £23.65
25th Percentile £15.50 £19.77 £25.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £39.05 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.59% -2.39% -
75th Percentile £74.26 £76.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.56 £64.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £23.59 £40.00
% change year-on-year +6.61% -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 3,595 3,425 5,213
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.17% 13.29% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,317 2,043 3,128
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 £676 £700
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £481
% change year-on-year -4.00% +4.06% -7.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 101 361
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.27
25th Percentile £18.94 £20.75 £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 £32.50 £43.12
% change year-on-year +4.62% -24.62% +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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -9 239 £525 - 80
North of England -18 188 £473 -0.26% 74
South East -3 142 £525 - 91
North West +7 121 £602 +26.79% 43
Midlands +18 109 £375 -16.67% 34
West Midlands +23 105 £378 -6.79% 26
Yorkshire -35 70 £447 -0.67% 25
South West -34 63 £575 +5.12% 34
East of England -18 39 £463 +2.78% 31
North East -22 6 £411 +26.38% 9
East Midlands -35 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 96 (13.10%) Microsoft Exchange
2 58 (7.91%) SharePoint
3 29 (3.96%) Skype for Business
4 18 (2.46%) Confluence
5 14 (1.91%) nginx
6 5 (0.68%) Apache
7 4 (0.55%) IIS
7 4 (0.55%) SharePoint Server
8 3 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.41%) 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 (0.14%) Traefik
Applications
1 36 (4.91%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.05%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.41%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.14%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.14%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.14%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 253 (34.52%) Azure
2 154 (21.01%) AWS
3 132 (18.01%) Microsoft 365
4 120 (16.37%) Entra ID
5 55 (7.50%) GCP
6 52 (7.09%) GitHub
7 49 (6.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 42 (5.73%) Amazon S3
9 40 (5.46%) Amazon EC2
10 38 (5.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 35 (4.77%) IaaS
12 34 (4.64%) AWS CloudFormation
13 31 (4.23%) Serverless
14 30 (4.09%) Route 53
15 29 (3.96%) AWS Lambda
16 28 (3.82%) SaaS
17 23 (3.14%) Amazon ECS
18 22 (3.00%) Amazon EKS
19 21 (2.86%) OpenShift
19 21 (2.86%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 332 (45.29%) DHCP
2 227 (30.97%) Firewall
3 216 (29.47%) TCP/IP
4 177 (24.15%) VPN
5 89 (12.14%) WAN
6 87 (11.87%) SSL
7 82 (11.19%) Network Security
8 80 (10.91%) LAN
9 71 (9.69%) VLAN
10 61 (8.32%) BGP
11 60 (8.19%) BIG-IP
12 59 (8.05%) HTTP
13 50 (6.82%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 47 (6.41%) Wi-Fi
15 43 (5.87%) Wireshark
16 40 (5.46%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 38 (5.18%) OSPF
18 37 (5.05%) DMZ
19 34 (4.64%) Skype
20 33 (4.50%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (3.41%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.32%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (1.91%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (1.23%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (0.95%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.95%) MongoDB
7 6 (0.82%) MySQL
7 6 (0.82%) Redis
8 5 (0.68%) Data Hub
9 4 (0.55%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.55%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.41%) Azure SQL Database
10 3 (0.41%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.14%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.14%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.14%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 70 (9.55%) Jenkins
2 45 (6.14%) Git
3 41 (5.59%) GitLab
4 37 (5.05%) JIRA
5 30 (4.09%) Fiddler
6 8 (1.09%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.95%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.95%) Terragrunt
8 4 (0.55%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.55%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.55%) Vagrant
9 3 (0.41%) Subversion
10 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.27%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.14%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.14%) GCC
11 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
11 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (0.14%) webpack
General
1 204 (27.83%) Social Skills
2 99 (13.51%) Analytical Skills
3 61 (8.32%) Banking
4 54 (7.37%) Public Sector
5 46 (6.28%) Finance
6 45 (6.14%) Documentation Skills
6 45 (6.14%) Investment Banking
7 18 (2.46%) Legal
8 17 (2.32%) Military
9 14 (1.91%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.68%) Law
14 4 (0.55%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.55%) Local Government
15 3 (0.41%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.41%) Marketing
16 2 (0.27%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 120 (16.37%) Network Engineer
2 110 (15.01%) Architect
3 66 (9.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 64 (8.73%) Analyst
4 64 (8.73%) Senior
5 61 (8.32%) Support Engineer
6 45 (6.14%) Security Engineer
7 44 (6.00%) IT Support
8 36 (4.91%) Web Engineer
9 34 (4.64%) Platform Engineer
10 31 (4.23%) DevOps Engineer
11 28 (3.82%) Network Security Engineer
12 26 (3.55%) IT Engineer
13 25 (3.41%) Lead
14 22 (3.00%) 2nd Line Support
14 22 (3.00%) Cisco Engineer
14 22 (3.00%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 22 (3.00%) Solutions Architect
15 20 (2.73%) Azure Engineer
15 20 (2.73%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (8.46%) LDAP
2 40 (5.46%) SAML
3 35 (4.77%) OAuth
4 29 (3.96%) OpenID
5 22 (3.00%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.73%) OAuth2
7 15 (2.05%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.36%) Kafka
8 10 (1.36%) REST
9 8 (1.09%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (0.82%) JSON
10 6 (0.82%) Microsoft Graph
10 6 (0.82%) Middleware
10 6 (0.82%) XMPP
11 5 (0.68%) AngularJS
11 5 (0.68%) ARM Templates
11 5 (0.68%) AWS CDK
11 5 (0.68%) React
11 5 (0.68%) RESTful
12 4 (0.55%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.87%) PKI
2 59 (8.05%) Data Centre
3 53 (7.23%) Replication
4 38 (5.18%) Cloud Native
5 37 (5.05%) Management Information System
6 30 (4.09%) Onboarding
7 23 (3.14%) Public Cloud
8 22 (3.00%) Analytical Mindset
8 22 (3.00%) Clustering
9 20 (2.73%) Enterprise Software
9 20 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
10 14 (1.91%) Cyber Threat
10 14 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (1.77%) Cyberattack
11 13 (1.77%) Security Operations Centre
12 12 (1.64%) NHS
13 11 (1.50%) Legacy Systems
13 11 (1.50%) Private Cloud
14 10 (1.36%) Product Ownership
15 9 (1.23%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 345 (47.07%) Windows
2 174 (23.74%) Windows Server
3 123 (16.78%) Linux
4 58 (7.91%) Windows 10
5 28 (3.82%) Windows Server 2019
6 19 (2.59%) Unix
7 18 (2.46%) Android
8 16 (2.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 15 (2.05%) Windows Server 2016
10 14 (1.91%) Windows Server 2012
11 13 (1.77%) Apple iOS
12 11 (1.50%) Windows 7
13 9 (1.23%) CentOS
13 9 (1.23%) Mac OS
13 9 (1.23%) VMS
14 7 (0.95%) Amazon Linux
14 7 (0.95%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.68%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.55%) CatOS
16 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 178 (24.28%) Problem-Solving
2 150 (20.46%) Load Balancing
3 113 (15.42%) ITIL
4 108 (14.73%) DevOps
5 107 (14.60%) CI/CD
6 95 (12.96%) Migration
7 93 (12.69%) High Availability
7 93 (12.69%) Infrastructure as Code
8 88 (12.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 73 (9.96%) Disaster Recovery
10 66 (9.00%) Service Management
11 65 (8.87%) Identity Access Management
12 61 (8.32%) Change Management
13 57 (7.78%) Cybersecurity
14 53 (7.23%) RBAC
15 52 (7.09%) Incident Response
16 50 (6.82%) ITSM
16 50 (6.82%) Mentoring
16 50 (6.82%) Root Cause Analysis
17 48 (6.55%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 209 (28.51%) PowerShell
2 134 (18.28%) Python
3 67 (9.14%) Bash
4 43 (5.87%) SQL
5 13 (1.77%) VBScript
6 12 (1.64%) Java
7 11 (1.50%) Bicep
8 10 (1.36%) VB
9 9 (1.23%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.23%) Perl
9 9 (1.23%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.09%) Go
10 8 (1.09%) Ruby
11 7 (0.95%) Lisp
12 5 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
13 4 (0.55%) Groovy
14 3 (0.41%) C#
14 3 (0.41%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.27%) C++
15 2 (0.27%) VBA
Qualifications
1 272 (37.11%) Security Cleared
2 185 (25.24%) SC Cleared
3 91 (12.41%) DV Cleared
4 63 (8.59%) Microsoft Certification
5 56 (7.64%) Cisco Certification
6 55 (7.50%) Degree
7 44 (6.00%) CCNP
8 35 (4.77%) Azure Certification
9 23 (3.14%) Network+ Certification
10 20 (2.73%) AWS Certification
11 18 (2.46%) CCNA
12 16 (2.18%) CISSP
13 15 (2.05%) Server+ Certification
14 14 (1.91%) CompTIA Security+
15 12 (1.64%) MCSE
16 10 (1.36%) CCIE
16 10 (1.36%) ITIL Certification
17 9 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
17 9 (1.23%) JNCIA
17 9 (1.23%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.23%) GDPR
2 22 (3.00%) SLA
3 18 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (2.46%) NIST
3 18 (2.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 9 (1.23%) PCI DSS
5 8 (1.09%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (1.09%) NCSC
6 6 (0.82%) QA
7 3 (0.41%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.41%) Data Quality
7 3 (0.41%) 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
9 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 325 (44.34%) Active Directory
2 174 (23.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 69 (9.41%) Docker
4 57 (7.78%) Hyper-V
5 56 (7.64%) VMware NSX
6 41 (5.59%) vSphere
7 28 (3.82%) Virtual Machines
8 23 (3.14%) Firmware
9 17 (2.32%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (1.91%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
11 11 (1.50%) Squid
12 7 (0.95%) DFS Replication
12 7 (0.95%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.82%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.68%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.55%) NFS
15 4 (0.55%) Postfix
15 4 (0.55%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.41%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 140 (19.10%) Terraform
2 120 (16.37%) Ansible
3 91 (12.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 78 (10.64%) SCCM
5 77 (10.50%) Kubernetes
6 65 (8.87%) Single Sign-On
7 62 (8.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (5.87%) vCenter Server
9 37 (5.05%) FortiGate
10 36 (4.91%) Grafana
11 22 (3.00%) Prometheus
12 20 (2.73%) Argo
13 16 (2.18%) WSUS
14 14 (1.91%) SCOM
15 9 (1.23%) Nessus
15 9 (1.23%) Puppet
16 8 (1.09%) Nagios
17 7 (0.95%) Consul
18 6 (0.82%) HAProxy
18 6 (0.82%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 288 (39.29%) Microsoft
2 221 (30.15%) VMware
3 137 (18.69%) F5
4 117 (15.96%) Cisco
5 71 (9.69%) ServiceNow
6 66 (9.00%) Splunk
7 44 (6.00%) Blue Coat
8 41 (5.59%) Palo Alto
8 41 (5.59%) SolarWinds
9 40 (5.46%) Citrix
10 35 (4.77%) McAfee
11 33 (4.50%) CheckPoint
11 33 (4.50%) Juniper
11 33 (4.50%) Red Hat
12 25 (3.41%) NetApp
13 20 (2.73%) Google
13 20 (2.73%) Veeam
14 19 (2.59%) Okta
14 19 (2.59%) Pure Storage
15 18 (2.46%) Zscaler