DNS Contract Job Trends in the South West

Domain Name System (DNS)
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South West requiring DNS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 28 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 77 99
Rank change year-on-year +17 +22 -6
Contract jobs citing DNS 98 42 43
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 2.68% 2.19% 1.57%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 31.21% 16.80% 9.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 27 30
10th Percentile £221 £254 £173
25th Percentile £400 £325 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £546
Median % change year-on-year - +0.69% -4.21%
75th Percentile £656 £638 £588
90th Percentile £731 £649 £656
England median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 0 1
10th Percentile £31.90 - -
25th Percentile £88.75 - £63.75
Median hourly rate £96.91 - £67.50
75th Percentile £99.12 - £71.25
90th Percentile £100.00 - -
England median hourly rate £63.48 £57.50 £24.18
% change year-on-year +10.40% +137.80% -34.65%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
South West

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 the South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 314 250 441
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 8.58% 13.02% 16.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 159 279
10th Percentile £209 £213 £323
25th Percentile £363 £320 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -6.67% -
75th Percentile £638 £613 £625
90th Percentile £723 £670 £675
England median daily rate £500 £492 £505
% change year-on-year +1.63% -2.57% +1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 4 39
10th Percentile £12.71 £26.70 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.33 £40.07 £13.30
Median hourly rate £59.25 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.04% -11.54% +15.06%
75th Percentile £90.00 £65.00 £71.25
90th Percentile £100.00 - £75.00
England median hourly rate £26.72 £42.50 £54.94
% change year-on-year -37.13% -22.64% -2.75%

DNS
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing DNS relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West.

DNS job vacancy trend in the South West

DNS
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing DNS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing DNS

DNS
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DNS in the South West over the 6 months to 28 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DNS in the South West

DNS
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing DNS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing DNS

DNS
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DNS in the South West over the 6 months to 28 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DNS in the South West

DNS
Contract Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DNS within the South West region over the 6 months to 28 August 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
Somerset -1 34 £623 -1.58% 12
Wiltshire +2 24 £519 -17.00% 11
Bristol -2 24 £575 +76.92% 8
Gloucestershire -13 8 £340 -22.29% 18
Dorset -10 2 - - 1
DNS
England

DNS
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 11 (11.22%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (4.08%) SharePoint
3 2 (2.04%) IIS
3 2 (2.04%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (3.06%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (2.04%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 29 (29.59%) AWS
2 23 (23.47%) GCP
3 21 (21.43%) Azure
4 9 (9.18%) Entra ID
4 9 (9.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 7 (7.14%) GitHub
5 7 (7.14%) SaaS
6 5 (5.10%) Microsoft 365
7 4 (4.08%) Amazon EKS
7 4 (4.08%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 4 (4.08%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 4 (4.08%) Azure Functions
7 4 (4.08%) Azure Key Vault
7 4 (4.08%) Azure Storage
7 4 (4.08%) GitHub Actions
7 4 (4.08%) Google Workspace
7 4 (4.08%) Serverless
8 3 (3.06%) Asana
8 3 (3.06%) Google Drive
9 2 (2.04%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 54 (55.10%) DHCP
2 40 (40.82%) Firewall
3 37 (37.76%) TCP/IP
4 19 (19.39%) VSAN
5 15 (15.31%) VPN
6 9 (9.18%) SAN
7 7 (7.14%) VLAN
7 7 (7.14%) WAN
8 5 (5.10%) Network Security
8 5 (5.10%) VoIP
9 4 (4.08%) Cisco Nexus
9 4 (4.08%) Kerberos
10 3 (3.06%) BGP
10 3 (3.06%) DKIM
10 3 (3.06%) DMARC
11 2 (2.04%) IPsec
11 2 (2.04%) MPLS
11 2 (2.04%) tcpdump
11 2 (2.04%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (2.04%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (4.08%) Azure SQL Database
1 4 (4.08%) Data Lake
1 4 (4.08%) SQL Server
2 1 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (1.02%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 8 (8.16%) Jenkins
2 7 (7.14%) GitLab
3 5 (5.10%) JIRA
4 4 (4.08%) Git
5 2 (2.04%) Spinnaker
General
1 15 (15.31%) Social Skills
2 14 (14.29%) Public Sector
3 10 (10.20%) Documentation Skills
4 5 (5.10%) Military
5 4 (4.08%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (4.08%) Finance
6 3 (3.06%) Aerospace
7 2 (2.04%) Banking
7 2 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (2.04%) Law
7 2 (2.04%) Police
8 1 (1.02%) Advertising
8 1 (1.02%) Legal
8 1 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 26 (26.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 15 (15.31%) Platform Engineer
3 11 (11.22%) Administrator
3 11 (11.22%) Principal Engineer
3 11 (11.22%) Senior
4 9 (9.18%) GCP Engineer
5 8 (8.16%) Network Engineer
5 8 (8.16%) Systems Administrator
6 7 (7.14%) Architect
6 7 (7.14%) DevOps Engineer
6 7 (7.14%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 5 (5.10%) Cloud Engineer
7 5 (5.10%) Technical Specialist
8 4 (4.08%) Cloud Platform Engineer
8 4 (4.08%) GCP DevOps
8 4 (4.08%) GCP DevOps Engineer
8 4 (4.08%) QA Engineer
8 4 (4.08%) QA Test Engineer
8 4 (4.08%) Test Engineer
8 4 (4.08%) Virtualisation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (42.86%) Terraform
2 7 (7.14%) LDAP
2 7 (7.14%) OAuth
3 4 (4.08%) SAML
4 1 (1.02%) 802.1X
4 1 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (1.02%) OAuth2
4 1 (1.02%) OpenID
4 1 (1.02%) OpenTofu
Miscellaneous
1 27 (27.55%) PKI
2 18 (18.37%) Data Centre
3 5 (5.10%) Hybrid Cloud
3 5 (5.10%) Management Information System
3 5 (5.10%) Public Cloud
4 4 (4.08%) Cloud Native
4 4 (4.08%) Clustering
4 4 (4.08%) Onboarding
4 4 (4.08%) Replication
5 3 (3.06%) Enterprise Storage
5 3 (3.06%) Fat Client
5 3 (3.06%) Freedom of Information
5 3 (3.06%) Linux Command Line
5 3 (3.06%) Smartcard
5 3 (3.06%) Thin Client
6 2 (2.04%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 2 (2.04%) Driving Licence
6 2 (2.04%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 52 (53.06%) Windows
2 41 (41.84%) Linux
3 25 (25.51%) Windows Server
4 12 (12.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (5.10%) Unix
6 3 (3.06%) Android
6 3 (3.06%) CentOS
6 3 (3.06%) Data ONTAP
6 3 (3.06%) Ubuntu
6 3 (3.06%) Windows 10
7 2 (2.04%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (1.02%) AIX
8 1 (1.02%) Apple iOS
8 1 (1.02%) Rocky
8 1 (1.02%) Solaris
8 1 (1.02%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (33.67%) Infrastructure as Code
2 31 (31.63%) CI/CD
2 31 (31.63%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 25 (25.51%) Platform Engineering
4 23 (23.47%) Problem-Solving
5 22 (22.45%) Cybersecurity
5 22 (22.45%) Technical Leadership
6 19 (19.39%) DevSecOps
6 19 (19.39%) Systems Engineering
7 18 (18.37%) SIEM
8 17 (17.35%) Mentoring
9 16 (16.33%) Containerisation
9 16 (16.33%) Continuous Improvement
10 15 (15.31%) Customer Requirements
11 14 (14.29%) Converged Infrastructure
11 14 (14.29%) DevOps
11 14 (14.29%) Network Virtualisation
12 13 (13.27%) Migration
13 12 (12.24%) High Availability
14 10 (10.20%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 33 (33.67%) Python
2 32 (32.65%) Bash
3 29 (29.59%) PowerShell
4 7 (7.14%) SQL
5 6 (6.12%) Go
6 3 (3.06%) Shell Script
7 2 (2.04%) JavaScript
8 1 (1.02%) C
Qualifications
1 64 (65.31%) Security Cleared
2 44 (44.90%) DV Cleared
3 23 (23.47%) SC Cleared
4 15 (15.31%) VCAP
5 9 (9.18%) AWS Certification
6 5 (5.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 4 (4.08%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (4.08%) Degree
8 1 (1.02%) CCNA
8 1 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (1.02%) CISM
8 1 (1.02%) CISSP
8 1 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (1.02%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.08%) QA
2 3 (3.06%) SLA
3 1 (1.02%) NCSC
System Software
1 55 (56.12%) Active Directory
2 40 (40.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 32 (32.65%) Hyper-V
4 19 (19.39%) VMware NSX
4 19 (19.39%) vSphere
5 17 (17.35%) Docker
6 8 (8.16%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (5.10%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (4.08%) NFS
8 4 (4.08%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (3.06%) VirtualBox
9 3 (3.06%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (1.02%) BitLocker
10 1 (1.02%) iptables
10 1 (1.02%) KVM
10 1 (1.02%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (1.02%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 1 (1.02%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 36 (36.73%) Kubernetes
2 34 (34.69%) Ansible
3 14 (14.29%) VxRail
4 6 (6.12%) WSUS
5 4 (4.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 4 (4.08%) Grafana
5 4 (4.08%) Istio
5 4 (4.08%) PowerCLI
5 4 (4.08%) Prometheus
5 4 (4.08%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (4.08%) vCenter Server
6 3 (3.06%) Argo
6 3 (3.06%) Failover Clustering
7 2 (2.04%) Kustomize
7 2 (2.04%) linkerd
7 2 (2.04%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (2.04%) Nagios
7 2 (2.04%) OPNET
7 2 (2.04%) Red Hat Satellite
8 1 (1.02%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 44 (44.90%) VMware
2 19 (19.39%) Microsoft
3 16 (16.33%) Cisco
4 9 (9.18%) Google
5 8 (8.16%) CyberArk
5 8 (8.16%) Red Hat
6 6 (6.12%) ServiceNow
7 4 (4.08%) Dynatrace
7 4 (4.08%) NetApp
7 4 (4.08%) SaltStack
8 3 (3.06%) Juniper
8 3 (3.06%) McAfee
8 3 (3.06%) Splunk
8 3 (3.06%) Thales
9 2 (2.04%) Atlassian
9 2 (2.04%) BMC
9 2 (2.04%) F5
9 2 (2.04%) Infoblox
9 2 (2.04%) Oracle
9 2 (2.04%) Remedy