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 16 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 114 132
Rank change year-on-year -21 +18 -9
Contract jobs citing DNS 889 701 764
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 2.39% 1.74%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.76% 18.54% 13.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 559 493 507
10th Percentile £263 £251 £206
25th Percentile £400 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
75th Percentile £597 £608 £600
90th Percentile £655 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £515
% change year-on-year -4.76% +1.94% +0.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 11 26
10th Percentile £15.96 - £20.00
25th Percentile £23.20 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £55.50 £54.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.83% +36.25% -18.56%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.18 £51.12
90th Percentile £75.90 £82.10 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -19.43% +101.69% -18.56%

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 4,500 3,781 5,766
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.80% 12.91% 13.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,832 2,335 3,457
10th Percentile £232 £213 £205
25th Percentile £398 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £486
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% +0.31% -5.63%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £467 £475
% change year-on-year +1.82% -1.79% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 204 170 423
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £13.85
25th Percentile £20.46 £21.46 £17.69
Median hourly rate £42.60 £38.41 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.92% -3.98% +110.53%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.06 £61.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £67.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £53.25 £28.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year +90.18% -38.97% +148.00%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 -20 783 £500 -4.76% 260
UK excluding London -9 574 £500 -4.76% 231
London -34 250 £500 - 58
North of England +5 217 £447 -5.89% 56
Work from Home -47 191 £525 - 94
South East -4 160 £525 -4.55% 84
North West +31 141 £450 +5.88% 22
Midlands +18 116 £400 -27.93% 30
West Midlands +28 103 £400 -19.40% 16
Yorkshire -30 76 £445 -19.18% 26
South West -44 52 £575 +4.74% 28
Scotland +28 47 £550 +22.22% 9
East of England -36 41 £450 -10.00% 28
East Midlands -34 12 £394 -30.62% 14
Wales -20 4 £550 +22.22% 5
North East -22 4 £200 -51.52% 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
1 101 (11.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 46 (5.17%) SharePoint
3 14 (1.57%) nginx
4 13 (1.46%) Confluence
4 13 (1.46%) Skype for Business
5 11 (1.24%) IIS
6 9 (1.01%) Apache
7 4 (0.45%) Exchange Server 2010
7 4 (0.45%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.22%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
8 2 (0.22%) WordPress
9 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 27 (3.04%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.57%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.22%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
1 1 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.11%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 305 (34.31%) Azure
2 162 (18.22%) AWS
3 151 (16.99%) Entra ID
4 143 (16.09%) Microsoft 365
5 94 (10.57%) GCP
6 59 (6.64%) GitHub
6 59 (6.64%) IaaS
7 43 (4.84%) SaaS
8 41 (4.61%) PaaS
9 37 (4.16%) Serverless
10 36 (4.05%) AWS CloudFormation
10 36 (4.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 33 (3.71%) Amazon S3
12 32 (3.60%) Amazon EC2
12 32 (3.60%) AWS Lambda
13 31 (3.49%) Route 53
14 28 (3.15%) OpenShift
15 26 (2.92%) Amazon EKS
16 22 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
17 21 (2.36%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 390 (43.87%) DHCP
2 287 (32.28%) Firewall
3 231 (25.98%) TCP/IP
4 210 (23.62%) VPN
5 119 (13.39%) WAN
6 113 (12.71%) LAN
7 87 (9.79%) Network Security
7 87 (9.79%) SSL
8 86 (9.67%) VLAN
9 80 (9.00%) BIG-IP
10 79 (8.89%) BGP
11 78 (8.77%) HTTP
12 62 (6.97%) Wi-Fi
13 53 (5.96%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 47 (5.29%) OSPF
15 41 (4.61%) Wireless
16 39 (4.39%) Wireshark
17 38 (4.27%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 38 (4.27%) Kerberos
18 37 (4.16%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (3.26%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.36%) Elasticsearch
3 18 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (0.90%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.79%) DynamoDB
7 6 (0.67%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.56%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.56%) MySQL
8 5 (0.56%) Redis
9 4 (0.45%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.45%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.45%) Power BI
9 4 (0.45%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.34%) MariaDB
11 1 (0.11%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.11%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 56 (6.30%) Jenkins
2 45 (5.06%) JIRA
3 29 (3.26%) Git
4 28 (3.15%) Fiddler
4 28 (3.15%) GitLab
5 9 (1.01%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.79%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.79%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.67%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.45%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.45%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.22%) Introscope
9 2 (0.22%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.11%) Subversion
10 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 210 (23.62%) Social Skills
2 95 (10.69%) Analytical Skills
3 73 (8.21%) Banking
4 65 (7.31%) Finance
5 60 (6.75%) Public Sector
6 52 (5.85%) Documentation Skills
7 41 (4.61%) Investment Banking
8 30 (3.37%) Legal
9 22 (2.47%) Telecoms
10 18 (2.02%) Military
11 10 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.67%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (0.67%) Law
13 5 (0.56%) Local Government
14 4 (0.45%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.45%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.34%) Italian Language
15 3 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 148 (16.65%) Network Engineer
2 128 (14.40%) Architect
3 100 (11.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 83 (9.34%) Analyst
5 76 (8.55%) Senior
6 56 (6.30%) Security Engineer
7 51 (5.74%) Support Engineer
8 48 (5.40%) Web Engineer
9 45 (5.06%) IT Support
10 38 (4.27%) IT Engineer
11 37 (4.16%) Lead
11 37 (4.16%) Network Security Engineer
12 30 (3.37%) Cisco Engineer
12 30 (3.37%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 29 (3.26%) Administrator
14 27 (3.04%) Azure Engineer
14 27 (3.04%) Data Engineer
14 27 (3.04%) Data Network Engineer
14 27 (3.04%) IT Support Engineer
14 27 (3.04%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (7.65%) LDAP
2 57 (6.41%) SAML
3 48 (5.40%) OAuth
4 37 (4.16%) OpenID
5 30 (3.37%) 802.1X
6 22 (2.47%) OpenTelemetry
7 20 (2.25%) OAuth2
8 12 (1.35%) JSON
9 10 (1.12%) REST
10 9 (1.01%) Elastic Stack
10 9 (1.01%) Kafka
11 7 (0.79%) XMPP
12 6 (0.67%) ARM Templates
13 5 (0.56%) Microsoft Graph
13 5 (0.56%) Middleware
13 5 (0.56%) Spring Boot
13 5 (0.56%) Web Services
14 4 (0.45%) Hibernate
14 4 (0.45%) RESTful
14 4 (0.45%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 75 (8.44%) Data Centre
2 69 (7.76%) PKI
3 51 (5.74%) Cloud Native
4 48 (5.40%) Replication
5 40 (4.50%) Management Information System
6 38 (4.27%) Clustering
7 32 (3.60%) Public Cloud
8 31 (3.49%) Onboarding
9 27 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
9 27 (3.04%) Security Operations Centre
10 26 (2.92%) Cyberattack
11 23 (2.59%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 20 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
13 19 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
14 17 (1.91%) Cyber Threat
15 16 (1.80%) Legacy Systems
16 14 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (1.46%) Product Ownership
18 12 (1.35%) Enterprise Storage
18 12 (1.35%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 401 (45.11%) Windows
2 219 (24.63%) Windows Server
3 135 (15.19%) Linux
4 47 (5.29%) Windows 10
5 34 (3.82%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.36%) Android
7 19 (2.14%) Unix
8 18 (2.02%) Mac OS
8 18 (2.02%) Windows Server 2012
9 16 (1.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 15 (1.69%) Apple iOS
11 14 (1.57%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (1.24%) Windows 7
13 10 (1.12%) VMS
14 8 (0.90%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.45%) CatOS
16 3 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
17 2 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
17 2 (0.22%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
17 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 197 (22.16%) Problem-Solving
2 181 (20.36%) Load Balancing
3 143 (16.09%) Migration
4 128 (14.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 124 (13.95%) High Availability
6 122 (13.72%) ITIL
7 114 (12.82%) DevOps
8 108 (12.15%) CI/CD
9 102 (11.47%) Infrastructure as Code
10 93 (10.46%) Cybersecurity
11 84 (9.45%) Identity Access Management
12 82 (9.22%) Disaster Recovery
13 75 (8.44%) ITSM
14 71 (7.99%) RBAC
15 67 (7.54%) Observability
16 64 (7.20%) Change Management
17 63 (7.09%) SIEM
18 60 (6.75%) Incident Response
18 60 (6.75%) Roadmaps
19 59 (6.64%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 219 (24.63%) PowerShell
2 138 (15.52%) Python
3 79 (8.89%) Bash
4 40 (4.50%) SQL
5 19 (2.14%) JavaScript
6 15 (1.69%) Bicep
7 13 (1.46%) Java
7 13 (1.46%) VBScript
8 12 (1.35%) Ruby
9 9 (1.01%) Go
9 9 (1.01%) Shell Script
9 9 (1.01%) VB
10 5 (0.56%) VBA
11 4 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
11 4 (0.45%) Lisp
11 4 (0.45%) Perl
12 3 (0.34%) C
13 2 (0.22%) C#
13 2 (0.22%) Jython
13 2 (0.22%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 297 (33.41%) Security Cleared
2 200 (22.50%) SC Cleared
3 107 (12.04%) DV Cleared
4 71 (7.99%) Cisco Certification
5 60 (6.75%) Degree
6 43 (4.84%) CCNP
7 40 (4.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 32 (3.60%) CompTIA Security+
9 28 (3.15%) CCNA
10 27 (3.04%) Azure Certification
11 21 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
12 18 (2.02%) AWS Certification
12 18 (2.02%) CompTIA CySA+
13 17 (1.91%) CISSP
14 15 (1.69%) Network+ Certification
15 11 (1.24%) BPSS Clearance
16 10 (1.12%) JNCIA
16 10 (1.12%) JNCIS
17 9 (1.01%) CCIE
17 9 (1.01%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.49%) GDPR
2 30 (3.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 29 (3.26%) NIST
4 24 (2.70%) SLA
5 16 (1.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (1.12%) NCSC
7 9 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
8 8 (0.90%) PCI DSS
9 6 (0.67%) QA
10 4 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 3 (0.34%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.34%) PMO
12 2 (0.22%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
13 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.11%) COBIT
13 1 (0.11%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
13 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 366 (41.17%) Active Directory
2 196 (22.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 79 (8.89%) Hyper-V
4 58 (6.52%) VMware NSX
5 55 (6.19%) vSphere
6 51 (5.74%) Docker
7 27 (3.04%) Virtual Machines
7 27 (3.04%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (2.92%) Firmware
9 18 (2.02%) BitLocker
10 15 (1.69%) Virtual Desktop
11 12 (1.35%) Squid
12 8 (0.90%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.90%) NFS
13 6 (0.67%) Sendmail
14 5 (0.56%) Postfix
14 5 (0.56%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.56%) Varnish
15 4 (0.45%) Ceph
15 4 (0.45%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 150 (16.87%) Terraform
2 117 (13.16%) Ansible
3 96 (10.80%) Kubernetes
4 89 (10.01%) Microsoft Intune
5 81 (9.11%) Single Sign-On
6 61 (6.86%) SCCM
7 59 (6.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 49 (5.51%) FortiGate
9 45 (5.06%) vCenter Server
10 38 (4.27%) Grafana
11 30 (3.37%) Argo
12 23 (2.59%) Prometheus
13 20 (2.25%) WSUS
14 14 (1.57%) SCOM
15 9 (1.01%) HAProxy
15 9 (1.01%) Puppet
16 8 (0.90%) vMotion
17 7 (0.79%) Consul
17 7 (0.79%) Nessus
18 6 (0.67%) Nagios
Vendors
1 302 (33.97%) Microsoft
2 238 (26.77%) VMware
3 146 (16.42%) F5
4 144 (16.20%) Cisco
5 80 (9.00%) Splunk
6 75 (8.44%) ServiceNow
7 52 (5.85%) Citrix
8 47 (5.29%) SolarWinds
9 44 (4.95%) Infoblox
10 43 (4.84%) Red Hat
11 39 (4.39%) Google
11 39 (4.39%) Juniper
11 39 (4.39%) Palo Alto
12 37 (4.16%) Blue Coat
13 32 (3.60%) McAfee
14 30 (3.37%) NetApp
15 24 (2.70%) Pure Storage
16 21 (2.36%) Extreme Networks
16 21 (2.36%) Fortinet
17 20 (2.25%) Okta