DNS Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Domain Name System (DNS)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring DNS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 113 96 98
Rank change year-on-year -17 +2 +9
Contract jobs citing DNS 630 372 372
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.24% 2.44% 2.09%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 21.44% 18.17% 14.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 364 241 235
10th Percentile £300 £219 £213
25th Percentile £413 £353 £319
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +6.05% - -2.56%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £608
90th Percentile £650 £612 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 26 6
10th Percentile £26.00 £28.50 £19.88
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £21.71
Median hourly rate £67.00 £45.00 £27.10
Median % change year-on-year +48.89% +66.05% -32.25%
75th Percentile £80.75 £82.59 £44.06
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £49.38
UK median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £23.99
% change year-on-year +41.07% +87.58% -49.49%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 2,938 2,047 2,558
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.46% 13.44% 14.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,626 1,274 1,424
10th Percentile £210 £200 £213
25th Percentile £350 £325 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £454 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.74% -9.30% +9.89%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £640 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £478 £505
% change year-on-year +4.69% -5.43% +1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 131 226
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.90 £18.50 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -38.49% -25.89% -0.26%
75th Percentile £65.88 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.85 £85.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £27.11 £43.00 £51.00
% change year-on-year -36.95% -15.69% -9.72%

DNS
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing DNS relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

DNS job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

DNS
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing DNS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing DNS

DNS
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DNS in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 15 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DNS in the UK excluding London

DNS
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing DNS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing DNS

DNS
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DNS in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 15 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DNS in the UK excluding London

DNS
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DNS within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 15 September 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
North of England +25 211 £500 +11.48% 105
South East -1 175 £538 +2.38% 185
North West +23 130 £483 +7.33% 69
Midlands -33 114 £450 -2.70% 95
South West -3 96 £567 +3.14% 86
West Midlands -43 93 £450 -5.26% 57
Yorkshire +4 67 £500 - 26
East of England -44 41 £475 -13.64% 48
Scotland +6 38 £488 +7.38% 54
East Midlands +3 20 £413 -8.33% 38
North East -33 14 £419 +23.16% 13
Wales -6 10 £440 +16.02% 10
DNS
UK

DNS
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 60 (9.52%) Microsoft Exchange
2 52 (8.25%) SharePoint
3 19 (3.02%) Confluence
4 10 (1.59%) Apache
4 10 (1.59%) IIS
5 9 (1.43%) nginx
6 8 (1.27%) Skype for Business
7 7 (1.11%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.48%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.48%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.48%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.16%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.16%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 1 (0.16%) Traefik
9 1 (0.16%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.16%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 16 (2.54%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (1.43%) MS Visio
3 6 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.32%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.32%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.32%) Houdini
4 2 (0.32%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 8 (1.27%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.16%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 224 (35.56%) Azure
2 125 (19.84%) AWS
3 98 (15.56%) Microsoft 365
4 82 (13.02%) Entra ID
5 47 (7.46%) GCP
6 39 (6.19%) GitHub
7 30 (4.76%) Azure Monitor
7 30 (4.76%) OneDrive
8 28 (4.44%) IaaS
9 23 (3.65%) Azure DevOps
10 20 (3.17%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 18 (2.86%) OpenShift
12 15 (2.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 14 (2.22%) Amazon EKS
13 14 (2.22%) AWS CloudFormation
13 14 (2.22%) Azure AKS
13 14 (2.22%) Azure Sentinel
13 14 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
13 14 (2.22%) Serverless
14 13 (2.06%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 306 (48.57%) DHCP
2 223 (35.40%) Firewall
3 180 (28.57%) TCP/IP
4 167 (26.51%) VPN
5 96 (15.24%) VLAN
6 86 (13.65%) Network Security
7 75 (11.90%) WAN
8 70 (11.11%) BGP
9 68 (10.79%) SSL
10 64 (10.16%) LAN
11 57 (9.05%) Wireless
12 56 (8.89%) BIG-IP
13 48 (7.62%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 45 (7.14%) Wi-Fi
15 42 (6.67%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 41 (6.51%) DMZ
16 41 (6.51%) SAN
17 39 (6.19%) HTTP
18 35 (5.56%) OSPF
19 32 (5.08%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.49%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (1.75%) MongoDB
4 8 (1.27%) MySQL
5 7 (1.11%) Data Lake
6 5 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (0.79%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (0.79%) MariaDB
6 5 (0.79%) Redis
7 4 (0.63%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.48%) SQLPlus
9 2 (0.32%) Big Data
10 1 (0.16%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.16%) Metadata
10 1 (0.16%) Power Query
10 1 (0.16%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 57 (9.05%) JIRA
2 38 (6.03%) Jenkins
3 21 (3.33%) GitLab
4 18 (2.86%) Git
5 13 (2.06%) Fiddler
6 9 (1.43%) Bitbucket
7 6 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.79%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.48%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.48%) Selenium
10 2 (0.32%) Spinnaker
10 2 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.16%) Introscope
General
1 175 (27.78%) Social Skills
2 74 (11.75%) Analytical Skills
3 42 (6.67%) Public Sector
4 41 (6.51%) Banking
5 38 (6.03%) Documentation Skills
6 27 (4.29%) Finance
7 26 (4.13%) Investment Banking
8 15 (2.38%) Telecoms
9 12 (1.90%) Aerospace
9 12 (1.90%) Legal
10 9 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 9 (1.43%) Military
10 9 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (1.11%) Manufacturing
11 7 (1.11%) Police
12 5 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
13 4 (0.63%) Italian Language
14 3 (0.48%) Retail
15 2 (0.32%) Influencing Skills
15 2 (0.32%) Law
Job Titles
1 121 (19.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
1 121 (19.21%) Network Engineer
2 75 (11.90%) Senior
3 65 (10.32%) Cloud Engineer
4 54 (8.57%) Architect
5 53 (8.41%) Support Engineer
6 39 (6.19%) Platform Engineer
7 33 (5.24%) Security Engineer
8 32 (5.08%) Analyst
8 32 (5.08%) IT Support
8 32 (5.08%) Network Security Engineer
9 30 (4.76%) Cisco Engineer
9 30 (4.76%) IT Engineer
10 29 (4.60%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 25 (3.97%) Cisco Security Engineer
11 25 (3.97%) Data Engineer
11 25 (3.97%) Data Network Engineer
11 25 (3.97%) Web Engineer
12 24 (3.81%) Administrator
12 24 (3.81%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 137 (21.75%) Terraform
2 24 (3.81%) 802.1X
3 20 (3.17%) ARM Templates
4 18 (2.86%) SAML
5 16 (2.54%) OAuth
6 14 (2.22%) JSON
6 14 (2.22%) LDAP
7 11 (1.75%) Kafka
7 11 (1.75%) OpenID
7 11 (1.75%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.59%) REST
8 10 (1.59%) YAML
9 8 (1.27%) CSS
9 8 (1.27%) OAuth2
10 5 (0.79%) gRPC
10 5 (0.79%) React
10 5 (0.79%) WebSockets
11 4 (0.63%) HTML
11 4 (0.63%) RabbitMQ
11 4 (0.63%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 96 (15.24%) Data Centre
2 73 (11.59%) PKI
3 56 (8.89%) Hybrid Cloud
4 46 (7.30%) Management Information System
5 39 (6.19%) Onboarding
6 31 (4.92%) Cloud Native
7 22 (3.49%) Public Cloud
8 18 (2.86%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 18 (2.86%) Replication
9 17 (2.70%) Self-Motivation
10 13 (2.06%) Clustering
10 13 (2.06%) Driving Licence
11 11 (1.75%) Linux Command Line
12 8 (1.27%) Enterprise Cloud
12 8 (1.27%) Smartcard
13 7 (1.11%) ARM Cortex
13 7 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
13 7 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
13 7 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
13 7 (1.11%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 306 (48.57%) Windows
2 181 (28.73%) Windows Server
3 134 (21.27%) Linux
4 43 (6.83%) Windows 10
5 33 (5.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 30 (4.76%) Windows Server 2019
7 22 (3.49%) Mac OS
8 21 (3.33%) Apple iOS
9 17 (2.70%) CentOS
9 17 (2.70%) Unix
10 15 (2.38%) Android
11 14 (2.22%) Windows Server 2012
12 10 (1.59%) Ubuntu
13 7 (1.11%) Rocky
13 7 (1.11%) Windows 7
13 7 (1.11%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.63%) AIX
14 4 (0.63%) VMS
15 3 (0.48%) Data ONTAP
16 1 (0.16%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (26.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 149 (23.65%) Problem-Solving
3 115 (18.25%) Infrastructure as Code
4 114 (18.10%) ITIL
5 106 (16.83%) CI/CD
5 106 (16.83%) Load Balancing
6 93 (14.76%) DevOps
7 85 (13.49%) ITSM
8 82 (13.02%) Agile
9 80 (12.70%) Technical Leadership
10 77 (12.22%) Migration
11 76 (12.06%) Continuous Improvement
12 69 (10.95%) High Availability
13 68 (10.79%) Cybersecurity
14 65 (10.32%) Platform Engineering
15 57 (9.05%) Disaster Recovery
16 55 (8.73%) Network Virtualisation
16 55 (8.73%) Observability
17 54 (8.57%) Project Delivery
18 46 (7.30%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 154 (24.44%) PowerShell
2 129 (20.48%) Python
3 95 (15.08%) Bash
4 49 (7.78%) SQL
5 34 (5.40%) Bicep
6 15 (2.38%) ActionScript
7 11 (1.75%) Go
8 9 (1.43%) JavaScript
9 8 (1.27%) Shell Script
10 7 (1.11%) VBA
11 6 (0.95%) VB
11 6 (0.95%) VBScript
12 5 (0.79%) Java
12 5 (0.79%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.63%) Groovy
13 4 (0.63%) Perl
14 2 (0.32%) C#
14 2 (0.32%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.16%) C
15 1 (0.16%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 278 (44.13%) Security Cleared
2 140 (22.22%) SC Cleared
3 138 (21.90%) DV Cleared
4 56 (8.89%) Cisco Certification
5 51 (8.10%) Degree
6 42 (6.67%) CCNP
7 30 (4.76%) CCNA
8 29 (4.60%) Microsoft Certification
9 27 (4.29%) Azure Certification
10 18 (2.86%) AWS Certification
10 18 (2.86%) Network+ Certification
11 16 (2.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 15 (2.38%) VCAP
13 12 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
13 12 (1.90%) MCSE
14 11 (1.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 11 (1.75%) Server+ Certification
15 10 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
16 8 (1.27%) CCIE
17 7 (1.11%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (3.33%) SLA
2 15 (2.38%) NCSC
3 12 (1.90%) QA
4 10 (1.59%) NIST
5 5 (0.79%) Disclosure Scotland
6 4 (0.63%) JSP 440
7 3 (0.48%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.32%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 269 (42.70%) Active Directory
2 230 (36.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 98 (15.56%) Hyper-V
4 72 (11.43%) VMware ESXi
5 64 (10.16%) VMware NSX
6 63 (10.00%) vSphere
7 40 (6.35%) Docker
8 33 (5.24%) Virtual Machines
9 21 (3.33%) Firmware
9 21 (3.33%) Virtual Desktop
10 16 (2.54%) vCloud
11 9 (1.43%) NFS
12 7 (1.11%) BitLocker
12 7 (1.11%) Ceph
13 6 (0.95%) Squid
14 5 (0.79%) UAG
15 4 (0.63%) Veritas Volume Manager
16 3 (0.48%) Dovecot
16 3 (0.48%) Postfix
16 3 (0.48%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 106 (16.83%) Ansible
2 81 (12.86%) Kubernetes
3 58 (9.21%) vCenter Server
4 51 (8.10%) Microsoft Intune
5 49 (7.78%) SCCM
6 36 (5.71%) SCOM
7 29 (4.60%) WSUS
8 28 (4.44%) Grafana
9 22 (3.49%) Prometheus
10 20 (3.17%) Single Sign-On
11 16 (2.54%) VxRail
12 14 (2.22%) Argo
13 12 (1.90%) Jamf Pro
13 12 (1.90%) Packer
14 11 (1.75%) NetBackup
15 9 (1.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 8 (1.27%) FortiGate
16 8 (1.27%) Istio
17 7 (1.11%) Failover Clustering
17 7 (1.11%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 266 (42.22%) VMware
2 231 (36.67%) Microsoft
3 133 (21.11%) Cisco
4 103 (16.35%) F5
5 64 (10.16%) ServiceNow
6 47 (7.46%) SolarWinds
7 40 (6.35%) Infoblox
8 35 (5.56%) Citrix
9 34 (5.40%) Red Hat
10 33 (5.24%) NetApp
11 29 (4.60%) Juniper
11 29 (4.60%) Splunk
12 27 (4.29%) Palo Alto
13 25 (3.97%) CheckPoint
14 23 (3.65%) Google
15 19 (3.02%) Blue Coat
15 19 (3.02%) CyberArk
15 19 (3.02%) McAfee
16 16 (2.54%) Veeam
17 14 (2.22%) Meraki