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 27 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 147 115 116
Rank change year-on-year -32 +1 +21
Contract jobs citing DNS 738 733 931
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.98% 2.18% 2.13%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.50% 17.07% 15.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 463 457 591
10th Percentile £214 £223 £213
25th Percentile £400 £350 £369
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £477 £488
Median % change year-on-year +10.06% -2.15% -6.92%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £600
90th Percentile £675 £738 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £438 £488
% change year-on-year +14.29% -10.26% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 10 20
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.88 £25.90
25th Percentile £25.98 £21.71 £31.81
Median hourly rate £61.25 £23.59 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +159.64% -57.11% +109.52%
75th Percentile £80.75 £28.83 £61.75
90th Percentile £87.82 £39.20 £70.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £23.35 £55.70
% change year-on-year +178.37% -58.08% +44.68%

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 3,990 4,295 5,982
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.73% 12.77% 13.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,611 2,528 3,692
10th Percentile £206 £220 £210
25th Percentile £356 £364 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £602
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £473 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.53% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 141 333
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.00 £21.46 £22.75
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £56.40
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -37.94% +50.96%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.00 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.30 £70.00 £75.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year +21.43% -38.04% +38.45%

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 27 December 2025.

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 27 December 2025.

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 27 December 2025. 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 -15 661 £525 +10.53% 749
UK excluding London -23 456 £500 +14.29% 651
London +1 227 £550 +4.76% 160
Work from Home -41 180 £500 - 156
North of England -24 135 £470 +17.50% 152
Midlands +16 119 £400 +3.90% 101
South East -5 115 £500 +8.11% 202
West Midlands +39 114 £400 -5.88% 55
North West +2 91 £500 +5.26% 80
South West -13 61 £575 +12.20% 69
Yorkshire -26 51 £447 +49.00% 61
East of England -22 39 £363 +28.32% 104
Scotland -18 27 £460 +2.11% 28
North East -13 7 £575 +283.33% 15
East Midlands -37 5 £363 -3.33% 43
Wales -11 3 £550 +33.33% 12

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 92 (12.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 72 (9.76%) SharePoint
3 32 (4.34%) Skype for Business
4 23 (3.12%) Confluence
5 13 (1.76%) nginx
6 12 (1.63%) Exchange Server 2010
7 11 (1.49%) SharePoint Server
8 10 (1.36%) Exchange Server 2013
9 9 (1.22%) IIS
10 7 (0.95%) Exchange Server 2003
10 7 (0.95%) Exchange Server 2007
10 7 (0.95%) Office Communications Server
11 6 (0.81%) OpenStack
12 5 (0.68%) Apache
13 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.27%) Apache Spark
14 2 (0.27%) Cloud Foundry
14 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
14 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
14 2 (0.27%) WordPress
Applications
1 47 (6.37%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 10 (1.36%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.27%) Windchill
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.14%) Eikon
2 1 (0.14%) Eze OMS
2 1 (0.14%) Fidessa
2 1 (0.14%) Pegasus Opera
Cloud Services
1 241 (32.66%) Azure
2 187 (25.34%) AWS
3 153 (20.73%) Microsoft 365
4 99 (13.41%) Entra ID
5 70 (9.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 58 (7.86%) Amazon EC2
7 57 (7.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 57 (7.72%) Amazon S3
8 49 (6.64%) GitHub
9 48 (6.50%) GCP
10 42 (5.69%) Amazon ELB
11 40 (5.42%) IaaS
12 34 (4.61%) SaaS
13 33 (4.47%) AWS CloudFormation
14 30 (4.07%) Amazon ECS
15 27 (3.66%) Serverless
16 25 (3.39%) AWS KMS
16 25 (3.39%) AWS Lambda
17 24 (3.25%) GitHub Actions
18 20 (2.71%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 315 (42.68%) DHCP
2 261 (35.37%) Firewall
3 253 (34.28%) TCP/IP
4 182 (24.66%) VPN
5 107 (14.50%) Network Security
6 105 (14.23%) SSL
7 89 (12.06%) HTTP
8 81 (10.98%) WAN
9 71 (9.62%) VLAN
10 65 (8.81%) LAN
11 50 (6.78%) SMTP
12 49 (6.64%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 49 (6.64%) Wireless
13 42 (5.69%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 41 (5.56%) BGP
15 38 (5.15%) FTP
16 36 (4.88%) DMZ
16 36 (4.88%) Wi-Fi
17 33 (4.47%) Wireshark
18 30 (4.07%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (4.34%) Amazon RDS
2 24 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (3.25%) SQL Server
3 15 (2.03%) Amazon Aurora
4 10 (1.36%) MongoDB
5 8 (1.08%) Elasticsearch
6 6 (0.81%) Data Hub
7 5 (0.68%) BigQuery
8 4 (0.54%) Apache Cassandra
8 4 (0.54%) Big Data
8 4 (0.54%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.41%) DynamoDB
9 3 (0.41%) MySQL
9 3 (0.41%) Redis
10 2 (0.27%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.27%) Hadoop
10 2 (0.27%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.27%) Parquet
10 2 (0.27%) Power BI
11 1 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 90 (12.20%) Jenkins
2 80 (10.84%) Git
3 50 (6.78%) JIRA
4 49 (6.64%) GitLab
5 21 (2.85%) Fiddler
6 17 (2.30%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.08%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.68%) Subversion
9 4 (0.54%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.54%) TeamCity
10 3 (0.41%) Visual Studio Code
11 2 (0.27%) Browser DevTools
11 2 (0.27%) MLflow
11 2 (0.27%) Poetry
11 2 (0.27%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.27%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.27%) Vite
11 2 (0.27%) webpack
12 1 (0.14%) GCC
12 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 232 (31.44%) Social Skills
2 119 (16.12%) Analytical Skills
3 80 (10.84%) Public Sector
4 55 (7.45%) Banking
5 53 (7.18%) Finance
6 40 (5.42%) Investment Banking
7 39 (5.28%) Documentation Skills
8 24 (3.25%) Telecoms
9 18 (2.44%) Legal
9 18 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
10 10 (1.36%) Law
10 10 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.22%) Military
12 8 (1.08%) Aerospace
13 7 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.68%) Marketing
15 4 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.41%) Local Government
16 3 (0.41%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 92 (12.47%) Network Engineer
2 77 (10.43%) Support Engineer
3 76 (10.30%) Senior
4 75 (10.16%) Analyst
4 75 (10.16%) Architect
4 75 (10.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 50 (6.78%) DevOps Engineer
6 49 (6.64%) Platform Engineer
7 42 (5.69%) IT Support
8 38 (5.15%) Security Engineer
9 35 (4.74%) AWS Engineer
10 31 (4.20%) SOC Analyst
11 28 (3.79%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 27 (3.66%) Lead
13 26 (3.52%) 2nd Line Support
13 26 (3.52%) Administrator
13 26 (3.52%) Cloud Platform Engineer
14 25 (3.39%) Operations Engineer
15 24 (3.25%) AWS DevOps
15 24 (3.25%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (7.18%) LDAP
2 25 (3.39%) SAML
3 20 (2.71%) OAuth
4 17 (2.30%) Elastic Stack
5 16 (2.17%) OpenID
6 15 (2.03%) 802.1X
7 14 (1.90%) OAuth2
8 13 (1.76%) REST
9 11 (1.49%) SOAP
10 10 (1.36%) AngularJS
10 10 (1.36%) Kafka
10 10 (1.36%) Middleware
11 7 (0.95%) React
12 6 (0.81%) cloud-init
12 6 (0.81%) Keycloak
12 6 (0.81%) YAML
13 5 (0.68%) Flask
13 5 (0.68%) JSON
14 4 (0.54%) ASP.NET Web API
14 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 59 (7.99%) PKI
2 57 (7.72%) Data Centre
2 57 (7.72%) Management Information System
3 55 (7.45%) Replication
4 33 (4.47%) Onboarding
5 30 (4.07%) Analytical Mindset
6 28 (3.79%) Security Operations Centre
7 27 (3.66%) Cyberattack
8 23 (3.12%) Enterprise Software
9 18 (2.44%) Cyber Threat
9 18 (2.44%) Hybrid Cloud
10 16 (2.17%) Cloud Native
11 13 (1.76%) CSOC
11 13 (1.76%) Video Conferencing
12 12 (1.63%) Private Cloud
13 11 (1.49%) Clustering
13 11 (1.49%) Security Posture
13 11 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (1.36%) Public Cloud
14 10 (1.36%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 368 (49.86%) Windows
2 178 (24.12%) Linux
3 163 (22.09%) Windows Server
4 63 (8.54%) Windows 10
5 29 (3.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (3.93%) Unix
6 27 (3.66%) VMS
7 25 (3.39%) Windows Server 2016
7 25 (3.39%) Windows Server 2019
8 21 (2.85%) Windows Server 2012
9 20 (2.71%) Amazon Linux
10 19 (2.57%) Android
11 17 (2.30%) Ubuntu
12 15 (2.03%) Mac OS
13 14 (1.90%) CentOS
14 13 (1.76%) Apple iOS
15 12 (1.63%) Windows Server 2003
16 9 (1.22%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.68%) Solaris
18 3 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (23.44%) Problem-Solving
2 134 (18.16%) ITIL
3 128 (17.34%) CI/CD
4 124 (16.80%) DevOps
5 110 (14.91%) Infrastructure as Code
5 110 (14.91%) Load Balancing
6 102 (13.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 91 (12.33%) Cybersecurity
8 79 (10.70%) Change Management
9 77 (10.43%) Incident Response
10 76 (10.30%) Migration
11 74 (10.03%) High Availability
12 68 (9.21%) SIEM
13 64 (8.67%) Root Cause Analysis
14 63 (8.54%) Service Management
15 58 (7.86%) Disaster Recovery
16 57 (7.72%) Agile
16 57 (7.72%) Platform Engineering
17 56 (7.59%) Continuous Improvement
18 51 (6.91%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 215 (29.13%) PowerShell
2 181 (24.53%) Python
3 88 (11.92%) Bash
4 50 (6.78%) SQL
5 24 (3.25%) Perl
6 21 (2.85%) Java
7 19 (2.57%) Groovy
8 14 (1.90%) Bicep
8 14 (1.90%) Go
9 13 (1.76%) Shell Script
10 10 (1.36%) Ruby
11 8 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
12 7 (0.95%) JavaScript
12 7 (0.95%) Lisp
12 7 (0.95%) VBScript
13 6 (0.81%) VB
14 5 (0.68%) C++
15 3 (0.41%) C#
15 3 (0.41%) T-SQL
15 3 (0.41%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 270 (36.59%) Security Cleared
2 194 (26.29%) SC Cleared
3 87 (11.79%) DV Cleared
4 74 (10.03%) Degree
5 65 (8.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 57 (7.72%) Cisco Certification
7 46 (6.23%) CCNP
8 40 (5.42%) Azure Certification
9 25 (3.39%) AWS Certification
10 22 (2.98%) CISSP
10 22 (2.98%) CompTIA Security+
11 19 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
12 18 (2.44%) CCNA
13 17 (2.30%) Network+ Certification
14 13 (1.76%) CCIE
14 13 (1.76%) MCSE
15 12 (1.63%) CompTIA CySA+
16 11 (1.49%) Server+ Certification
17 10 (1.36%) MCSA
18 9 (1.22%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.20%) GDPR
2 19 (2.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 19 (2.57%) SLA
3 15 (2.03%) NIST
4 10 (1.36%) NCSC
5 9 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (1.08%) Accessibility
7 7 (0.95%) PCI DSS
7 7 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.54%) Data Quality
8 4 (0.54%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.27%) PMO
9 2 (0.27%) QA
9 2 (0.27%) WCAG
10 1 (0.14%) COBIT
10 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 326 (44.17%) Active Directory
2 188 (25.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 95 (12.87%) Docker
4 55 (7.45%) Hyper-V
5 42 (5.69%) VMware NSX
6 31 (4.20%) Virtual Machines
7 29 (3.93%) vSphere
8 22 (2.98%) Firmware
9 20 (2.71%) DFS Replication
10 19 (2.57%) VMware ESXi
11 16 (2.17%) Dovecot
11 16 (2.17%) Postfix
12 15 (2.03%) Terminal Services
13 10 (1.36%) Squid
13 10 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
14 9 (1.22%) Virtual Servers
15 7 (0.95%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.95%) Brightmail
15 7 (0.95%) ISA Server
16 5 (0.68%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 143 (19.38%) Terraform
2 121 (16.40%) Ansible
3 77 (10.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 76 (10.30%) SCCM
5 66 (8.94%) Kubernetes
6 50 (6.78%) Single Sign-On
7 45 (6.10%) Grafana
8 43 (5.83%) vCenter Server
9 36 (4.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (4.74%) Prometheus
11 21 (2.85%) WSUS
12 17 (2.30%) Nessus
13 16 (2.17%) Argo
14 14 (1.90%) FortiGate
15 13 (1.76%) Packer
15 13 (1.76%) Proxmox
16 12 (1.63%) SCOM
17 11 (1.49%) Microsoft Clustering
17 11 (1.49%) Progress Chef
17 11 (1.49%) Puppet
Vendors
1 270 (36.59%) Microsoft
2 225 (30.49%) VMware
3 116 (15.72%) F5
4 110 (14.91%) Cisco
5 81 (10.98%) ServiceNow
6 61 (8.27%) Palo Alto
6 61 (8.27%) Splunk
7 54 (7.32%) CheckPoint
8 38 (5.15%) Citrix
9 37 (5.01%) Blue Coat
10 34 (4.61%) Red Hat
10 34 (4.61%) SolarWinds
11 29 (3.93%) Juniper
12 27 (3.66%) Veeam
13 25 (3.39%) McAfee
14 24 (3.25%) NetApp
15 22 (2.98%) Fortinet
16 20 (2.71%) Zscaler
17 19 (2.57%) Google
17 19 (2.57%) Oracle