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 19 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 111 128
Rank change year-on-year -30 +17 -9
Contract jobs citing DNS 815 747 827
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.00% 2.42% 1.88%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.43% 18.42% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 521 482 525
10th Percentile £213 £243 £200
25th Percentile £400 £381 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £465
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% +7.63% -11.43%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £600
90th Percentile £675 £749 £695
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £463 £500
% change year-on-year +10.27% -7.50% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 8 28
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.64 £23.95
25th Percentile £17.75 £20.56 £31.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £23.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -41.03% -
75th Percentile £72.56 £27.31 £55.35
90th Percentile £75.00 £45.58 £62.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £19.00 £43.75
% change year-on-year +18.42% -56.57% -5.11%

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 4,195 4,055 5,881
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.30% 13.16% 13.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,740 2,421 3,508
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £356 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £487
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.72% -6.39%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -3.62% -1.05% +0.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 127 399
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.93 £14.34
25th Percentile £18.94 £21.46 £20.00
Median hourly rate £28.88 £32.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.14% -31.58% +143.59%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.06 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £26.75 £51.42
% change year-on-year +51.55% -47.98% +157.87%

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 19 February 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 19 February 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 19 February 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 -16 725 £519 +3.71% 348
UK excluding London -23 516 £510 +10.27% 301
London -20 239 £525 - 96
Work from Home -56 192 £500 -6.54% 124
North of England -22 179 £473 +2.44% 73
South East -2 137 £525 - 92
North West +5 116 £603 +26.84% 42
Midlands +11 111 £380 -15.56% 36
West Midlands +19 107 £390 +1.30% 29
South West -29 68 £575 +5.12% 42
Yorkshire -34 67 £449 +2.51% 25
East of England -21 38 £475 +28.38% 39
Scotland -3 37 £454 +0.89% 23
North East -24 6 £411 +26.38% 9
Wales -15 4 £550 +29.41% 4
East Midlands -32 4 £325 -41.96% 7

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 (12.39%) Microsoft Exchange
2 58 (7.12%) SharePoint
3 30 (3.68%) Skype for Business
4 19 (2.33%) Confluence
5 16 (1.96%) nginx
6 8 (0.98%) IIS
7 5 (0.61%) Apache
7 5 (0.61%) Exchange Server 2010
7 5 (0.61%) SharePoint Server
8 4 (0.49%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.37%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.25%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.25%) WordPress
11 1 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2003
11 1 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2007
11 1 (0.12%) Office Communications Server
11 1 (0.12%) Traefik
Applications
1 40 (4.91%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.84%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.49%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.25%) Windchill
5 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.25%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.25%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 276 (33.87%) Azure
2 172 (21.10%) AWS
3 152 (18.65%) Microsoft 365
4 126 (15.46%) Entra ID
5 55 (6.75%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 53 (6.50%) GCP
7 52 (6.38%) GitHub
8 46 (5.64%) Amazon S3
9 40 (4.91%) Amazon EC2
10 39 (4.79%) IaaS
11 37 (4.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 33 (4.05%) AWS CloudFormation
13 32 (3.93%) Serverless
14 30 (3.68%) AWS Lambda
15 29 (3.56%) Route 53
15 29 (3.56%) SaaS
16 26 (3.19%) Amazon ECS
17 23 (2.82%) Amazon EKS
18 22 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
18 22 (2.70%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 368 (45.15%) DHCP
2 265 (32.52%) TCP/IP
3 259 (31.78%) Firewall
4 197 (24.17%) VPN
5 102 (12.52%) WAN
6 96 (11.78%) LAN
7 90 (11.04%) SSL
8 89 (10.92%) Network Security
9 82 (10.06%) HTTP
10 75 (9.20%) VLAN
11 63 (7.73%) BIG-IP
12 61 (7.48%) BGP
13 56 (6.87%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 54 (6.63%) Wi-Fi
15 46 (5.64%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 44 (5.40%) Wireshark
17 38 (4.66%) OSPF
18 37 (4.54%) DMZ
19 36 (4.42%) Kerberos
20 33 (4.05%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (2.70%) SQL Server
2 20 (2.45%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (2.21%) Elasticsearch
3 18 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.23%) Amazon Aurora
5 8 (0.98%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.86%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.86%) MySQL
6 7 (0.86%) Redis
7 6 (0.74%) Data Hub
8 4 (0.49%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.49%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.49%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.37%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.25%) Power BI
11 1 (0.12%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.12%) CouchDB
11 1 (0.12%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.12%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 70 (8.59%) Jenkins
2 52 (6.38%) Git
3 45 (5.52%) GitLab
3 45 (5.52%) JIRA
4 30 (3.68%) Fiddler
5 8 (0.98%) Terragrunt
6 7 (0.86%) Bitbucket
7 6 (0.74%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.74%) Vagrant
8 4 (0.49%) CircleCI
9 3 (0.37%) Chocolatey
9 3 (0.37%) Subversion
10 2 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.25%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.12%) Browser DevTools
11 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.12%) Travis CI
11 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (0.12%) Vite
11 1 (0.12%) webpack
General
1 233 (28.59%) Social Skills
2 108 (13.25%) Analytical Skills
3 64 (7.85%) Banking
4 63 (7.73%) Public Sector
5 49 (6.01%) Finance
6 48 (5.89%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (5.64%) Investment Banking
8 21 (2.58%) Legal
9 19 (2.33%) Telecoms
10 16 (1.96%) Military
11 10 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 10 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.86%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.61%) Law
14 4 (0.49%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.49%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.49%) Local Government
14 4 (0.49%) Marketing
15 3 (0.37%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 122 (14.97%) Network Engineer
2 108 (13.25%) Architect
3 78 (9.57%) Analyst
3 78 (9.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 67 (8.22%) Senior
4 67 (8.22%) Support Engineer
5 52 (6.38%) IT Support
6 43 (5.28%) Security Engineer
7 37 (4.54%) Platform Engineer
8 35 (4.29%) Lead
8 35 (4.29%) Web Engineer
9 34 (4.17%) DevOps Engineer
10 30 (3.68%) IT Engineer
11 27 (3.31%) Network Security Engineer
12 26 (3.19%) SOC Analyst
13 25 (3.07%) 2nd Line Support
14 23 (2.82%) IT Support Engineer
15 22 (2.70%) Cisco Engineer
15 22 (2.70%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 21 (2.58%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (8.71%) LDAP
2 43 (5.28%) SAML
3 37 (4.54%) OAuth
4 30 (3.68%) OpenID
5 20 (2.45%) OAuth2
6 18 (2.21%) 802.1X
7 15 (1.84%) OpenTelemetry
8 13 (1.60%) REST
9 12 (1.47%) Kafka
10 10 (1.23%) Elastic Stack
11 7 (0.86%) SOAP
12 6 (0.74%) ARM Templates
12 6 (0.74%) AWS CDK
12 6 (0.74%) JSON
12 6 (0.74%) Microsoft Graph
12 6 (0.74%) Middleware
13 5 (0.61%) AngularJS
13 5 (0.61%) React
13 5 (0.61%) Spring Boot
13 5 (0.61%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 70 (8.59%) PKI
2 59 (7.24%) Data Centre
3 54 (6.63%) Replication
4 41 (5.03%) Management Information System
5 36 (4.42%) Cloud Native
6 29 (3.56%) Onboarding
7 27 (3.31%) Security Operations Centre
8 24 (2.94%) Cyberattack
9 23 (2.82%) Public Cloud
10 22 (2.70%) Analytical Mindset
11 21 (2.58%) Clustering
11 21 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
12 19 (2.33%) Hybrid Cloud
13 14 (1.72%) Cyber Threat
13 14 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
14 13 (1.60%) NHS
15 12 (1.47%) Security Posture
16 11 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
16 11 (1.35%) Private Cloud
17 9 (1.10%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 400 (49.08%) Windows
2 190 (23.31%) Windows Server
3 156 (19.14%) Linux
4 61 (7.48%) Windows 10
5 34 (4.17%) Windows Server 2019
6 24 (2.94%) Unix
7 19 (2.33%) Android
7 19 (2.33%) Windows Server 2012
8 18 (2.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 18 (2.21%) Windows Server 2016
9 15 (1.84%) Mac OS
10 14 (1.72%) Apple iOS
11 12 (1.47%) VMS
12 11 (1.35%) Windows 7
13 10 (1.23%) CentOS
14 9 (1.10%) Amazon Linux
15 8 (0.98%) Ubuntu
16 6 (0.74%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.49%) CatOS
17 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (24.91%) Problem-Solving
2 155 (19.02%) Load Balancing
3 138 (16.93%) ITIL
4 114 (13.99%) CI/CD
5 110 (13.50%) DevOps
6 103 (12.64%) High Availability
6 103 (12.64%) Migration
7 102 (12.52%) Infrastructure as Code
7 102 (12.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 85 (10.43%) Cybersecurity
9 76 (9.33%) Disaster Recovery
10 74 (9.08%) Service Management
11 70 (8.59%) Change Management
11 70 (8.59%) Incident Response
12 64 (7.85%) Identity Access Management
12 64 (7.85%) SIEM
13 62 (7.61%) Root Cause Analysis
14 55 (6.75%) ITSM
14 55 (6.75%) Mentoring
14 55 (6.75%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 230 (28.22%) PowerShell
2 148 (18.16%) Python
3 75 (9.20%) Bash
4 40 (4.91%) SQL
5 13 (1.60%) Java
5 13 (1.60%) VBScript
6 12 (1.47%) Go
6 12 (1.47%) Perl
6 12 (1.47%) Shell Script
7 11 (1.35%) Bicep
8 10 (1.23%) Ruby
8 10 (1.23%) VB
9 8 (0.98%) JavaScript
10 7 (0.86%) Lisp
11 6 (0.74%) Groovy
12 5 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.37%) C#
13 3 (0.37%) C++
13 3 (0.37%) Search Processing Language
13 3 (0.37%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 285 (34.97%) Security Cleared
2 196 (24.05%) SC Cleared
3 100 (12.27%) DV Cleared
4 70 (8.59%) Degree
5 65 (7.98%) Microsoft Certification
6 56 (6.87%) Cisco Certification
7 46 (5.64%) CCNP
8 36 (4.42%) Azure Certification
9 30 (3.68%) CompTIA Security+
10 23 (2.82%) AWS Certification
11 21 (2.58%) CISSP
11 21 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
12 20 (2.45%) Network+ Certification
13 19 (2.33%) CCNA
14 16 (1.96%) CompTIA CySA+
15 13 (1.60%) MCSE
15 13 (1.60%) Server+ Certification
16 10 (1.23%) CCIE
17 9 (1.10%) JNCIA
17 9 (1.10%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.93%) GDPR
2 26 (3.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (2.82%) NIST
3 23 (2.82%) SLA
4 19 (2.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 9 (1.10%) NCSC
5 9 (1.10%) PCI DSS
6 8 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.74%) QA
8 5 (0.61%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.37%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.37%) PMO
10 2 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.12%) COBIT
11 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.12%) RMADS
11 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 359 (44.05%) Active Directory
2 196 (24.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 77 (9.45%) Docker
4 61 (7.48%) Hyper-V
5 54 (6.63%) VMware NSX
6 46 (5.64%) vSphere
7 29 (3.56%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (2.94%) Firmware
9 18 (2.21%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (1.72%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
11 11 (1.35%) Squid
12 9 (1.10%) DFS Replication
13 7 (0.86%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.74%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.61%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 5 (0.61%) Postfix
15 5 (0.61%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.49%) Dovecot
16 4 (0.49%) NFS
Systems Management
1 138 (16.93%) Terraform
2 132 (16.20%) Ansible
3 94 (11.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 81 (9.94%) Kubernetes
5 76 (9.33%) SCCM
6 75 (9.20%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (7.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (5.40%) vCenter Server
9 39 (4.79%) FortiGate
10 38 (4.66%) Grafana
11 25 (3.07%) Prometheus
12 21 (2.58%) Argo
12 21 (2.58%) WSUS
13 13 (1.60%) SCOM
14 10 (1.23%) Nessus
15 9 (1.10%) Puppet
16 8 (0.98%) QRadar
17 7 (0.86%) Nagios
17 7 (0.86%) Packer
17 7 (0.86%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 310 (38.04%) Microsoft
2 239 (29.33%) VMware
3 138 (16.93%) F5
4 122 (14.97%) Cisco
5 86 (10.55%) ServiceNow
6 84 (10.31%) Splunk
7 49 (6.01%) Palo Alto
8 43 (5.28%) Blue Coat
9 42 (5.15%) SolarWinds
10 39 (4.79%) Citrix
11 35 (4.29%) McAfee
12 33 (4.05%) CheckPoint
13 32 (3.93%) Red Hat
14 30 (3.68%) Juniper
15 25 (3.07%) NetApp
16 22 (2.70%) Fortinet
16 22 (2.70%) Veeam
17 21 (2.58%) Dell
17 21 (2.58%) Okta
18 20 (2.45%) Zscaler