DNS Contract Job Trends

Domain Name System (DNS)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring DNS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 138 114 150
Rank change year-on-year -24 +36 -21
Contract jobs citing DNS 910 681 682
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.89% 2.33% 1.60%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.81% 18.42% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 569 488 459
10th Percentile £279 £254 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £359
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £548 £475
Median % change year-on-year -11.50% +15.37% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £608 £599
90th Percentile £639 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £546 £500
% change year-on-year -13.00% +9.20% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 10 24
10th Percentile £17.72 £23.08 £18.95
25th Percentile £25.15 £32.44 £23.66
Median hourly rate £42.71 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.07% +101.69% -23.27%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.35 -
90th Percentile £74.56 £82.29 £57.57
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £81.01 £40.00
% change year-on-year -39.86% +102.53% -13.24%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,594 3,697 5,396
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.54% 12.67% 12.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,838 2,286 3,217
10th Percentile £263 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £358 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £485 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.06% -1.02% -5.31%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £455 £475
% change year-on-year +4.40% -4.21% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 162 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.52 £36.57 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.88% -8.57% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £58.73 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £26.25 £45.88
% change year-on-year +59.77% -42.79% +151.88%

DNS
Job Vacancy Trend

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

DNS job vacancy trend in the UK

DNS
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

DNS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DNS over the 6 months to 20 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DNS in the UK

DNS
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

DNS
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DNS over the 6 months to 20 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DNS in the UK

DNS
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 20 May 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
England -27 795 £488 -11.36% 302
UK excluding London -1 583 £475 -13.00% 268
London -33 255 £500 -4.76% 67
North of England +11 223 £446 -6.11% 63
Work from Home -45 195 £538 -0.09% 111
South East -11 159 £525 -4.55% 89
North West +39 151 £447 +5.24% 38
Midlands +19 110 £406 -26.14% 41
West Midlands +28 96 £400 - 23
Yorkshire -32 66 £447 -18.77% 19
South West -35 56 £500 -14.89% 34
Scotland +32 52 £550 +22.22% 11
East of England -45 40 £450 -18.18% 27
East Midlands -29 13 £394 -30.62% 18
North East -29 6 £306 -12.50% 8
Wales -18 5 £300 -33.33% 9

DNS
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 87 (9.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 48 (5.27%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.76%) Confluence
4 15 (1.65%) nginx
5 13 (1.43%) IIS
6 10 (1.10%) Apache
7 6 (0.66%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.55%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.44%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2010
10 2 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 18 (1.98%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.32%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.22%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 311 (34.18%) Azure
2 164 (18.02%) AWS
3 142 (15.60%) Entra ID
4 125 (13.74%) Microsoft 365
5 98 (10.77%) GCP
6 67 (7.36%) GitHub
7 51 (5.60%) IaaS
8 42 (4.62%) PaaS
9 39 (4.29%) SaaS
10 35 (3.85%) Serverless
11 34 (3.74%) AWS CloudFormation
12 33 (3.63%) Amazon EC2
12 33 (3.63%) GitHub Actions
12 33 (3.63%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 32 (3.52%) Amazon S3
14 31 (3.41%) AWS Lambda
15 29 (3.19%) Amazon EKS
16 28 (3.08%) OneDrive
16 28 (3.08%) Route 53
17 25 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 391 (42.97%) DHCP
2 272 (29.89%) Firewall
3 230 (25.27%) TCP/IP
4 224 (24.62%) VPN
5 118 (12.97%) WAN
6 109 (11.98%) LAN
7 95 (10.44%) SSL
8 93 (10.22%) Network Security
9 87 (9.56%) VLAN
10 86 (9.45%) BIG-IP
11 83 (9.12%) HTTP
12 79 (8.68%) BGP
13 57 (6.26%) Wi-Fi
14 48 (5.27%) Wireless
15 47 (5.16%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 44 (4.84%) OSPF
17 43 (4.73%) SAN
18 41 (4.51%) Kerberos
19 39 (4.29%) Wireshark
20 38 (4.18%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (3.74%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.31%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (0.88%) MongoDB
5 8 (0.88%) Power BI
6 5 (0.55%) Amazon Aurora
6 5 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (0.55%) DynamoDB
6 5 (0.55%) MySQL
7 4 (0.44%) Data Hub
7 4 (0.44%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.44%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.44%) Redis
8 3 (0.33%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.11%) SQLPlus
9 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 53 (5.82%) Jenkins
2 52 (5.71%) JIRA
3 35 (3.85%) Git
4 30 (3.30%) GitLab
5 27 (2.97%) Fiddler
6 9 (0.99%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.77%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.77%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.66%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.44%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.44%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.22%) Introscope
12 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.11%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 194 (21.32%) Social Skills
2 87 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
3 73 (8.02%) Finance
4 72 (7.91%) Banking
5 62 (6.81%) Public Sector
6 44 (4.84%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (4.07%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.97%) Legal
9 19 (2.09%) Telecoms
10 18 (1.98%) Military
11 10 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (0.99%) Law
13 7 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 6 (0.66%) Financial Institution
15 4 (0.44%) Italian Language
15 4 (0.44%) Local Government
15 4 (0.44%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.44%) Police
16 3 (0.33%) Advertising
16 3 (0.33%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 165 (18.13%) Network Engineer
2 114 (12.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 113 (12.42%) Architect
4 86 (9.45%) Analyst
5 66 (7.25%) Security Engineer
5 66 (7.25%) Senior
6 53 (5.82%) Support Engineer
7 50 (5.49%) Web Engineer
8 43 (4.73%) Network Security Engineer
9 42 (4.62%) IT Support
10 37 (4.07%) IT Engineer
11 36 (3.96%) Lead
12 34 (3.74%) Cisco Engineer
12 34 (3.74%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 33 (3.63%) Data Engineer
13 33 (3.63%) Data Network Engineer
14 32 (3.52%) Cisco Security Engineer
14 32 (3.52%) Cloud Engineer
15 31 (3.41%) Administrator
16 30 (3.30%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (7.91%) LDAP
2 51 (5.60%) SAML
3 42 (4.62%) OAuth
4 35 (3.85%) 802.1X
5 30 (3.30%) OpenID
6 20 (2.20%) OpenTelemetry
7 14 (1.54%) JSON
8 12 (1.32%) ARM Templates
9 10 (1.10%) Elastic Stack
9 10 (1.10%) REST
10 9 (0.99%) Kafka
10 9 (0.99%) OAuth2
11 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (0.55%) Web Services
11 5 (0.55%) XMPP
12 4 (0.44%) AWS CDK
12 4 (0.44%) Hibernate
12 4 (0.44%) Middleware
12 4 (0.44%) RESTful
12 4 (0.44%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 83 (9.12%) Data Centre
2 65 (7.14%) PKI
3 51 (5.60%) Cloud Native
4 41 (4.51%) Onboarding
5 40 (4.40%) Management Information System
5 40 (4.40%) Replication
6 38 (4.18%) Clustering
7 34 (3.74%) Public Cloud
8 28 (3.08%) Hybrid Cloud
8 28 (3.08%) Security Operations Centre
9 26 (2.86%) Cyberattack
10 25 (2.75%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 19 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
12 18 (1.98%) Cyber Threat
13 15 (1.65%) Enterprise Cloud
13 15 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.43%) Security Posture
14 13 (1.43%) Virtual Team
15 12 (1.32%) Analytical Mindset
15 12 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 384 (42.20%) Windows
2 213 (23.41%) Windows Server
3 130 (14.29%) Linux
4 43 (4.73%) Windows 10
5 39 (4.29%) Windows Server 2019
6 25 (2.75%) Mac OS
7 23 (2.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 23 (2.53%) Unix
8 18 (1.98%) Windows Server 2012
9 16 (1.76%) Android
9 16 (1.76%) Apple iOS
10 15 (1.65%) Windows Server 2016
11 11 (1.21%) VMS
12 8 (0.88%) Windows Server 2003
13 7 (0.77%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.66%) CentOS
14 6 (0.66%) Ubuntu
15 4 (0.44%) CatOS
16 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
17 2 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (20.66%) Problem-Solving
2 168 (18.46%) Load Balancing
3 147 (16.15%) Migration
4 142 (15.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 141 (15.49%) High Availability
6 124 (13.63%) DevOps
7 123 (13.52%) ITIL
8 115 (12.64%) Infrastructure as Code
9 112 (12.31%) CI/CD
10 84 (9.23%) Cybersecurity
10 84 (9.23%) Disaster Recovery
11 82 (9.01%) ITSM
12 79 (8.68%) Observability
13 75 (8.24%) Identity Access Management
14 65 (7.14%) Agile
15 64 (7.03%) Change Management
16 61 (6.70%) Project Delivery
17 60 (6.59%) SIEM
18 59 (6.48%) Incident Response
18 59 (6.48%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 177 (19.45%) PowerShell
2 133 (14.62%) Python
3 79 (8.68%) Bash
4 46 (5.05%) SQL
5 24 (2.64%) Bicep
6 22 (2.42%) JavaScript
7 15 (1.65%) Java
8 12 (1.32%) Go
9 11 (1.21%) Ruby
9 11 (1.21%) Shell Script
10 7 (0.77%) VBA
11 6 (0.66%) VBScript
12 5 (0.55%) Perl
13 4 (0.44%) Groovy
13 4 (0.44%) VB
14 3 (0.33%) C
15 2 (0.22%) Jython
15 2 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
16 1 (0.11%) Lisp
16 1 (0.11%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 300 (32.97%) Security Cleared
2 203 (22.31%) SC Cleared
3 101 (11.10%) DV Cleared
4 79 (8.68%) Cisco Certification
5 63 (6.92%) Degree
6 48 (5.27%) CCNP
7 40 (4.40%) CCNA
8 32 (3.52%) CompTIA Security+
9 29 (3.19%) Microsoft Certification
10 26 (2.86%) Azure Certification
11 25 (2.75%) Network+ Certification
12 21 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
13 17 (1.87%) CompTIA CySA+
14 15 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
15 14 (1.54%) Server+ Certification
16 12 (1.32%) AWS Certification
17 11 (1.21%) CISSP
18 10 (1.10%) JNCIA
18 10 (1.10%) JNCIS
19 8 (0.88%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.52%) SLA
2 25 (2.75%) NIST
3 23 (2.53%) GDPR
4 21 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 16 (1.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 8 (0.88%) QA
7 7 (0.77%) NCSC
8 5 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
9 4 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 4 (0.44%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.22%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.22%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.22%) PMO
11 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.11%) COBIT
11 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.11%) RMADS
11 1 (0.11%) SOC 2
System Software
1 356 (39.12%) Active Directory
2 197 (21.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 91 (10.00%) Hyper-V
4 53 (5.82%) VMware NSX
5 51 (5.60%) vSphere
6 43 (4.73%) Docker
7 35 (3.85%) Virtual Machines
8 34 (3.74%) VMware ESXi
9 24 (2.64%) Firmware
10 22 (2.42%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (1.54%) BitLocker
12 13 (1.43%) NFS
12 13 (1.43%) Squid
13 10 (1.10%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.77%) VMware Workstation
15 6 (0.66%) Postfix
15 6 (0.66%) Varnish
15 6 (0.66%) vCloud
16 5 (0.55%) Sendmail
17 4 (0.44%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 144 (15.82%) Terraform
2 111 (12.20%) Ansible
3 94 (10.33%) Kubernetes
4 78 (8.57%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (7.91%) Single Sign-On
6 51 (5.60%) SCCM
7 50 (5.49%) FortiGate
8 47 (5.16%) Grafana
9 42 (4.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 41 (4.51%) vCenter Server
11 31 (3.41%) Prometheus
12 29 (3.19%) WSUS
13 22 (2.42%) Argo
14 15 (1.65%) SCOM
15 11 (1.21%) Nessus
15 11 (1.21%) Puppet
16 10 (1.10%) HAProxy
17 9 (0.99%) vMotion
18 8 (0.88%) Consul
19 7 (0.77%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 279 (30.66%) Microsoft
2 238 (26.15%) VMware
3 158 (17.36%) Cisco
4 148 (16.26%) F5
5 85 (9.34%) Splunk
6 83 (9.12%) ServiceNow
7 56 (6.15%) Citrix
8 53 (5.82%) Infoblox
9 47 (5.16%) SolarWinds
10 43 (4.73%) Google
11 42 (4.62%) Juniper
12 39 (4.29%) Red Hat
13 35 (3.85%) Blue Coat
14 34 (3.74%) Palo Alto
15 32 (3.52%) NetApp
16 30 (3.30%) McAfee
17 27 (2.97%) Dynatrace
18 23 (2.53%) CheckPoint
19 22 (2.42%) Extreme Networks
19 22 (2.42%) Okta