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

6 months to
24 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 142 118 113
Rank change year-on-year -24 -5 +23
Contract jobs citing DNS 752 722 930
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.03% 2.13% 2.15%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.78% 16.67% 15.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 473 447 587
10th Percentile £219 £223 £237
25th Percentile £400 £350 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -3.06% -6.67%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £600
90th Percentile £688 £719 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £425 £500
% change year-on-year +17.65% -15.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 10 20
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.88 £25.90
25th Percentile £26.25 £21.71 £31.81
Median hourly rate £57.50 £23.59 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +143.75% -57.11% +109.52%
75th Percentile £80.00 £28.83 £61.75
90th Percentile £87.45 £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 4,004 4,331 5,969
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.82% 12.76% 13.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,619 2,538 3,677
10th Percentile £206 £220 £210
25th Percentile £356 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £601
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 147 329
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.13 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.00 £21.46 £23.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -38.04% +37.68%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.00 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.75 £75.76
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year +21.43% -38.04% +25.53%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -13 669 £525 +10.53% 579
UK excluding London -18 456 £500 +17.65% 528
London +6 235 £550 +4.76% 111
Work from Home -34 184 £506 +1.25% 144
North of England -25 131 £475 +21.02% 126
Midlands +12 119 £401 +5.53% 77
South East -2 115 £500 +8.11% 173
West Midlands +39 114 £401 -5.65% 41
North West -5 87 £518 +9.52% 67
South West -8 61 £575 +36.90% 52
Yorkshire -22 51 £447 +49.00% 50
East of England -11 40 £363 +31.82% 82
Scotland -18 28 £465 +3.33% 23
North East -13 7 £575 +283.33% 13
East Midlands -34 5 £363 -3.33% 34
Wales -9 3 £550 +37.50% 10

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 (12.23%) Microsoft Exchange
2 74 (9.84%) SharePoint
3 32 (4.26%) Skype for Business
4 24 (3.19%) Confluence
5 13 (1.73%) nginx
6 12 (1.60%) Exchange Server 2010
7 11 (1.46%) SharePoint Server
8 10 (1.33%) Exchange Server 2013
9 9 (1.20%) IIS
10 7 (0.93%) Exchange Server 2003
10 7 (0.93%) Exchange Server 2007
10 7 (0.93%) Office Communications Server
11 6 (0.80%) OpenStack
12 5 (0.66%) Apache
13 3 (0.40%) 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 50 (6.65%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.33%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 10 (1.33%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.53%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.27%) Windchill
6 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
2 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.13%) Eikon
3 1 (0.13%) Eze OMS
3 1 (0.13%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.13%) Pegasus Opera
Cloud Services
1 240 (31.91%) Azure
2 195 (25.93%) AWS
3 154 (20.48%) Microsoft 365
4 98 (13.03%) Entra ID
5 77 (10.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 59 (7.85%) Amazon EC2
7 58 (7.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 58 (7.71%) Amazon S3
8 49 (6.52%) GCP
8 49 (6.52%) GitHub
9 43 (5.72%) Amazon ELB
10 40 (5.32%) IaaS
11 34 (4.52%) SaaS
12 33 (4.39%) AWS CloudFormation
13 30 (3.99%) Amazon ECS
14 27 (3.59%) Serverless
15 26 (3.46%) AWS KMS
16 25 (3.32%) AWS Lambda
17 24 (3.19%) GitHub Actions
18 23 (3.06%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 323 (42.95%) DHCP
2 276 (36.70%) Firewall
3 256 (34.04%) TCP/IP
4 183 (24.34%) VPN
5 109 (14.49%) Network Security
6 105 (13.96%) SSL
7 89 (11.84%) HTTP
8 82 (10.90%) WAN
9 71 (9.44%) VLAN
10 66 (8.78%) LAN
11 51 (6.78%) SMTP
11 51 (6.78%) Wireless
12 50 (6.65%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 42 (5.59%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 41 (5.45%) BGP
15 39 (5.19%) FTP
16 36 (4.79%) Wi-Fi
17 35 (4.65%) DMZ
18 31 (4.12%) SD-WAN
18 31 (4.12%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (4.39%) Amazon RDS
2 24 (3.19%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (3.19%) SQL Server
3 15 (1.99%) Amazon Aurora
4 11 (1.46%) MongoDB
5 8 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
6 6 (0.80%) Data Hub
7 5 (0.66%) BigQuery
8 4 (0.53%) Apache Cassandra
8 4 (0.53%) Big Data
8 4 (0.53%) MySQL
8 4 (0.53%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.40%) DynamoDB
9 3 (0.40%) 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 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 92 (12.23%) Jenkins
2 82 (10.90%) Git
3 54 (7.18%) GitLab
4 52 (6.91%) JIRA
5 19 (2.53%) Fiddler
6 18 (2.39%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.06%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.66%) Subversion
9 4 (0.53%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.53%) TeamCity
10 3 (0.40%) 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 (0.13%) GCC
12 1 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 233 (30.98%) Social Skills
2 122 (16.22%) Analytical Skills
3 82 (10.90%) Public Sector
4 55 (7.31%) Finance
5 54 (7.18%) Banking
6 40 (5.32%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (5.19%) Investment Banking
8 24 (3.19%) Telecoms
9 19 (2.53%) Legal
10 18 (2.39%) Presentation Skills
11 11 (1.46%) Law
12 10 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (1.20%) Military
14 8 (1.06%) Aerospace
15 7 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
16 5 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 5 (0.66%) Manufacturing
16 5 (0.66%) Marketing
17 3 (0.40%) Financial Institution
17 3 (0.40%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 91 (12.10%) Network Engineer
2 79 (10.51%) Architect
3 78 (10.37%) Support Engineer
4 77 (10.24%) Senior
5 76 (10.11%) Analyst
5 76 (10.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 51 (6.78%) DevOps Engineer
7 49 (6.52%) Platform Engineer
8 41 (5.45%) IT Support
9 38 (5.05%) Security Engineer
10 35 (4.65%) AWS Engineer
11 31 (4.12%) SOC Analyst
12 28 (3.72%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 27 (3.59%) Administrator
13 27 (3.59%) Lead
14 26 (3.46%) Cloud Platform Engineer
15 25 (3.32%) 2nd Line Support
15 25 (3.32%) Operations Engineer
16 24 (3.19%) AWS DevOps
16 24 (3.19%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (7.05%) LDAP
2 25 (3.32%) SAML
3 20 (2.66%) OAuth
4 18 (2.39%) Elastic Stack
5 16 (2.13%) OpenID
6 15 (1.99%) 802.1X
7 14 (1.86%) OAuth2
7 14 (1.86%) REST
8 12 (1.60%) SOAP
9 11 (1.46%) AngularJS
10 10 (1.33%) Kafka
10 10 (1.33%) Middleware
11 7 (0.93%) React
12 6 (0.80%) cloud-init
12 6 (0.80%) Keycloak
12 6 (0.80%) YAML
13 5 (0.66%) Flask
13 5 (0.66%) JSON
14 4 (0.53%) ASP.NET Web API
14 4 (0.53%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 59 (7.85%) PKI
2 57 (7.58%) Data Centre
3 56 (7.45%) Management Information System
3 56 (7.45%) Replication
4 33 (4.39%) Onboarding
5 31 (4.12%) Analytical Mindset
6 28 (3.72%) Security Operations Centre
7 27 (3.59%) Cyberattack
8 23 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
9 18 (2.39%) Cyber Threat
9 18 (2.39%) Hybrid Cloud
10 14 (1.86%) Cloud Native
11 13 (1.73%) CSOC
11 13 (1.73%) Video Conferencing
12 12 (1.60%) Private Cloud
13 11 (1.46%) Clustering
13 11 (1.46%) Security Posture
13 11 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (1.33%) SCADA
15 8 (1.06%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 373 (49.60%) Windows
2 183 (24.34%) Linux
3 165 (21.94%) Windows Server
4 63 (8.38%) Windows 10
5 31 (4.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (4.12%) Unix
6 28 (3.72%) VMS
7 27 (3.59%) Windows Server 2016
8 26 (3.46%) Windows Server 2019
9 23 (3.06%) Windows Server 2012
10 21 (2.79%) Amazon Linux
11 19 (2.53%) Android
12 18 (2.39%) Ubuntu
13 15 (1.99%) CentOS
13 15 (1.99%) Mac OS
14 12 (1.60%) Apple iOS
14 12 (1.60%) Windows Server 2003
15 9 (1.20%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.66%) Solaris
17 3 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (23.01%) Problem-Solving
2 135 (17.95%) ITIL
3 132 (17.55%) CI/CD
4 127 (16.89%) DevOps
5 112 (14.89%) Infrastructure as Code
6 109 (14.49%) Load Balancing
7 103 (13.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 91 (12.10%) Cybersecurity
9 81 (10.77%) Change Management
10 78 (10.37%) Incident Response
11 77 (10.24%) Migration
12 76 (10.11%) High Availability
13 68 (9.04%) SIEM
14 66 (8.78%) Root Cause Analysis
15 63 (8.38%) Service Management
16 58 (7.71%) Agile
16 58 (7.71%) Disaster Recovery
16 58 (7.71%) Platform Engineering
17 56 (7.45%) Continuous Improvement
18 52 (6.91%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 219 (29.12%) PowerShell
2 184 (24.47%) Python
3 92 (12.23%) Bash
4 52 (6.91%) SQL
5 26 (3.46%) Perl
6 23 (3.06%) Java
7 20 (2.66%) Groovy
8 15 (1.99%) Go
9 14 (1.86%) Bicep
10 13 (1.73%) Shell Script
11 10 (1.33%) Ruby
12 8 (1.06%) JavaScript
12 8 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
13 7 (0.93%) Lisp
13 7 (0.93%) VBScript
14 6 (0.80%) VB
15 5 (0.66%) C++
16 3 (0.40%) Search Processing Language
16 3 (0.40%) T-SQL
16 3 (0.40%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 278 (36.97%) Security Cleared
2 202 (26.86%) SC Cleared
3 87 (11.57%) DV Cleared
4 75 (9.97%) Degree
5 66 (8.78%) Microsoft Certification
6 60 (7.98%) Cisco Certification
7 48 (6.38%) CCNP
8 41 (5.45%) Azure Certification
9 31 (4.12%) AWS Certification
10 22 (2.93%) CISSP
10 22 (2.93%) CompTIA Security+
11 21 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
12 20 (2.66%) CCNA
13 17 (2.26%) Network+ Certification
14 13 (1.73%) CCIE
14 13 (1.73%) MCSE
15 12 (1.60%) CompTIA CySA+
16 11 (1.46%) Server+ Certification
17 10 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
17 10 (1.33%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (4.26%) GDPR
2 19 (2.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 19 (2.53%) SLA
3 15 (1.99%) NIST
4 10 (1.33%) NCSC
5 9 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (1.06%) Accessibility
7 7 (0.93%) PCI DSS
7 7 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.53%) Data Quality
8 4 (0.53%) 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 (0.13%) COBIT
10 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 329 (43.75%) Active Directory
2 187 (24.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 97 (12.90%) Docker
4 55 (7.31%) Hyper-V
5 41 (5.45%) VMware NSX
6 31 (4.12%) Virtual Machines
7 30 (3.99%) vSphere
8 22 (2.93%) Firmware
9 21 (2.79%) DFS Replication
10 20 (2.66%) VMware ESXi
11 16 (2.13%) Dovecot
11 16 (2.13%) Postfix
11 16 (2.13%) Terminal Services
12 10 (1.33%) Squid
12 10 (1.33%) Virtual Desktop
13 9 (1.20%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.93%) BitLocker
14 7 (0.93%) Brightmail
14 7 (0.93%) ISA Server
15 6 (0.80%) NFS
Systems Management
1 146 (19.41%) Terraform
2 121 (16.09%) Ansible
3 77 (10.24%) SCCM
4 76 (10.11%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (9.71%) Kubernetes
6 50 (6.65%) Single Sign-On
7 47 (6.25%) Grafana
8 44 (5.85%) vCenter Server
9 37 (4.92%) Prometheus
10 36 (4.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 22 (2.93%) WSUS
12 17 (2.26%) Argo
12 17 (2.26%) Nessus
13 15 (1.99%) FortiGate
14 13 (1.73%) Packer
14 13 (1.73%) Proxmox
15 12 (1.60%) SCOM
16 11 (1.46%) Microsoft Clustering
16 11 (1.46%) Progress Chef
16 11 (1.46%) Puppet
Vendors
1 272 (36.17%) Microsoft
2 223 (29.65%) VMware
3 116 (15.43%) F5
4 111 (14.76%) Cisco
5 83 (11.04%) ServiceNow
6 62 (8.24%) Palo Alto
6 62 (8.24%) Splunk
7 55 (7.31%) CheckPoint
8 40 (5.32%) Citrix
9 36 (4.79%) Red Hat
10 35 (4.65%) Blue Coat
10 35 (4.65%) SolarWinds
11 31 (4.12%) Juniper
12 27 (3.59%) Veeam
13 23 (3.06%) McAfee
13 23 (3.06%) NetApp
14 22 (2.93%) Fortinet
15 20 (2.66%) Google
15 20 (2.66%) Zscaler
16 19 (2.53%) Oracle