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

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 115 135
Rank change year-on-year -26 +20 -13
Contract jobs citing DNS 889 693 752
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.36% 1.72%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.82% 18.36% 13.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 555 493 500
10th Percentile £263 £263 £212
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 £592 £613 £600
90th Percentile £653 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £507
% change year-on-year -4.76% +3.60% -1.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 12 27
10th Percentile £15.96 - £20.00
25th Percentile £23.20 £23.59 £24.63
Median hourly rate £55.50 £67.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.88% +68.97% -23.27%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £50.33
90th Percentile £75.90 £82.03 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £81.01 £40.00
% change year-on-year -19.77% +102.53% -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 4,485 3,775 5,721
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 12.83% 13.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,814 2,340 3,428
10th Percentile £238 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% - -5.89%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +2.70% -2.63% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 205 170 422
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.85
25th Percentile £20.75 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £47.50 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.67% -6.25% +110.53%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.44 £62.38
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £69.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £28.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +96.43% -41.05% +156.76%

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 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 19 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 19 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 -26 782 £500 -4.76% 288
UK excluding London -15 572 £500 -4.76% 260
London -33 251 £500 -2.20% 65
North of England -2 218 £447 -5.89% 61
Work from Home -42 188 £525 - 107
South East +1 157 £525 -4.55% 84
North West +32 141 £450 +5.88% 28
Midlands +18 116 £400 -27.93% 34
West Midlands +25 103 £400 -19.40% 16
Yorkshire -30 77 £445 -19.18% 24
South West -47 50 £575 +4.55% 37
Scotland +33 47 £550 +22.22% 12
East of England -28 43 £450 -10.00% 32
East Midlands -32 12 £394 -30.62% 17
Wales -16 4 £550 +22.22% 8
North East -24 4 £200 -41.18% 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
1 101 (11.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 44 (4.95%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.69%) nginx
4 13 (1.46%) Confluence
5 11 (1.24%) IIS
5 11 (1.24%) Skype for Business
6 10 (1.12%) Apache
7 4 (0.45%) Exchange Server 2010
7 4 (0.45%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.34%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
9 2 (0.22%) WordPress
10 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
1 301 (33.86%) Azure
2 156 (17.55%) AWS
3 151 (16.99%) Entra ID
4 140 (15.75%) Microsoft 365
5 93 (10.46%) GCP
6 60 (6.75%) GitHub
7 54 (6.07%) IaaS
8 43 (4.84%) SaaS
9 41 (4.61%) PaaS
10 37 (4.16%) Serverless
11 36 (4.05%) AWS CloudFormation
11 36 (4.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 33 (3.71%) Amazon S3
13 32 (3.60%) Amazon EC2
13 32 (3.60%) AWS Lambda
14 31 (3.49%) Route 53
15 26 (2.92%) Amazon EKS
16 24 (2.70%) OpenShift
17 23 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
18 21 (2.36%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 390 (43.87%) DHCP
2 289 (32.51%) Firewall
3 230 (25.87%) TCP/IP
4 210 (23.62%) VPN
5 122 (13.72%) WAN
6 114 (12.82%) LAN
7 88 (9.90%) SSL
8 85 (9.56%) Network Security
8 85 (9.56%) VLAN
9 81 (9.11%) BIG-IP
10 79 (8.89%) BGP
11 78 (8.77%) HTTP
12 61 (6.86%) Wi-Fi
13 53 (5.96%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 48 (5.40%) OSPF
15 42 (4.72%) Wireless
16 39 (4.39%) Wireshark
17 38 (4.27%) Kerberos
18 37 (4.16%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 36 (4.05%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (3.37%) 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 52 (5.85%) Jenkins
2 45 (5.06%) JIRA
3 29 (3.26%) GitLab
4 28 (3.15%) Fiddler
4 28 (3.15%) Git
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
1 205 (23.06%) Social Skills
2 92 (10.35%) Analytical Skills
3 73 (8.21%) Banking
4 66 (7.42%) Finance
5 63 (7.09%) Public Sector
6 51 (5.74%) 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 7 (0.79%) Law
13 6 (0.67%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.56%) Local Government
15 4 (0.45%) Aerospace
15 4 (0.45%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.34%) Italian Language
16 3 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 148 (16.65%) Network Engineer
2 125 (14.06%) Architect
3 103 (11.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 84 (9.45%) Analyst
5 75 (8.44%) Senior
6 56 (6.30%) Security Engineer
7 48 (5.40%) Support Engineer
7 48 (5.40%) Web Engineer
8 44 (4.95%) IT Support
9 38 (4.27%) IT Engineer
10 37 (4.16%) Lead
10 37 (4.16%) Network Security Engineer
11 32 (3.60%) Administrator
12 30 (3.37%) Cisco Engineer
12 30 (3.37%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 28 (3.15%) SOC Analyst
14 27 (3.04%) Azure Engineer
14 27 (3.04%) Data Engineer
14 27 (3.04%) Data Network Engineer
14 27 (3.04%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (7.76%) LDAP
2 58 (6.52%) SAML
3 49 (5.51%) OAuth
4 38 (4.27%) OpenID
5 29 (3.26%) 802.1X
6 22 (2.47%) OpenTelemetry
7 21 (2.36%) OAuth2
8 12 (1.35%) JSON
9 11 (1.24%) 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 74 (8.32%) Data Centre
2 70 (7.87%) PKI
3 52 (5.85%) Cloud Native
4 48 (5.40%) Replication
5 41 (4.61%) Management Information System
6 38 (4.27%) Clustering
7 32 (3.60%) Onboarding
7 32 (3.60%) Public Cloud
8 27 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
8 27 (3.04%) Security Operations Centre
9 26 (2.92%) Cyberattack
10 22 (2.47%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 20 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
12 18 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
13 16 (1.80%) Cyber Threat
13 16 (1.80%) Legacy Systems
14 14 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
15 13 (1.46%) Product Ownership
16 12 (1.35%) Private Cloud
16 12 (1.35%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 405 (45.56%) Windows
2 224 (25.20%) Windows Server
3 132 (14.85%) Linux
4 47 (5.29%) Windows 10
5 34 (3.82%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.25%) Android
6 20 (2.25%) Unix
7 18 (2.02%) Mac OS
7 18 (2.02%) Windows Server 2012
8 16 (1.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 14 (1.57%) Apple iOS
9 14 (1.57%) Windows Server 2016
10 11 (1.24%) VMS
10 11 (1.24%) Windows 7
11 8 (0.90%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.45%) CatOS
13 3 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.34%) CentOS
13 3 (0.34%) Ubuntu
14 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 193 (21.71%) Problem-Solving
2 177 (19.91%) Load Balancing
3 142 (15.97%) Migration
4 131 (14.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 125 (14.06%) High Availability
6 124 (13.95%) ITIL
7 111 (12.49%) DevOps
8 105 (11.81%) CI/CD
9 104 (11.70%) Infrastructure as Code
10 93 (10.46%) Cybersecurity
11 84 (9.45%) Disaster Recovery
12 83 (9.34%) Identity Access Management
13 75 (8.44%) ITSM
14 67 (7.54%) Observability
15 66 (7.42%) RBAC
16 63 (7.09%) Change Management
16 63 (7.09%) SIEM
17 60 (6.75%) Incident Response
17 60 (6.75%) Roadmaps
18 59 (6.64%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 217 (24.41%) PowerShell
2 136 (15.30%) Python
3 76 (8.55%) 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%) Groovy
13 2 (0.22%) Jython
Qualifications
1 296 (33.30%) Security Cleared
2 198 (22.27%) SC Cleared
3 107 (12.04%) DV Cleared
4 71 (7.99%) Cisco Certification
5 61 (6.86%) Degree
6 42 (4.72%) CCNP
7 40 (4.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 32 (3.60%) CompTIA Security+
9 29 (3.26%) CCNA
10 27 (3.04%) Azure Certification
11 21 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
12 18 (2.02%) CompTIA CySA+
13 16 (1.80%) AWS Certification
13 16 (1.80%) CISSP
14 15 (1.69%) Network+ Certification
15 12 (1.35%) 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 9 (1.01%) NCSC
7 8 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.67%) QA
9 3 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.34%) PMO
10 2 (0.22%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.22%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.11%) COBIT
11 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 369 (41.51%) Active Directory
2 195 (21.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 82 (9.22%) Hyper-V
4 54 (6.07%) VMware NSX
5 51 (5.74%) vSphere
6 46 (5.17%) Docker
7 28 (3.15%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (3.04%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (2.92%) Firmware
10 18 (2.02%) BitLocker
11 15 (1.69%) Virtual Desktop
12 12 (1.35%) Squid
13 8 (0.90%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.90%) NFS
14 6 (0.67%) Sendmail
15 5 (0.56%) Postfix
15 5 (0.56%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.56%) Varnish
16 4 (0.45%) Ceph
16 4 (0.45%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 146 (16.42%) Terraform
2 113 (12.71%) Ansible
3 91 (10.24%) Kubernetes
4 89 (10.01%) Microsoft Intune
5 81 (9.11%) Single Sign-On
6 62 (6.97%) SCCM
7 59 (6.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 49 (5.51%) FortiGate
9 42 (4.72%) vCenter Server
10 37 (4.16%) Grafana
11 26 (2.92%) Argo
12 22 (2.47%) Prometheus
12 22 (2.47%) WSUS
13 14 (1.57%) SCOM
14 10 (1.12%) Puppet
15 9 (1.01%) HAProxy
15 9 (1.01%) Nessus
16 8 (0.90%) vMotion
17 7 (0.79%) Consul
18 6 (0.67%) QRadar
Vendors
1 301 (33.86%) Microsoft
2 237 (26.66%) VMware
3 147 (16.54%) F5
4 146 (16.42%) Cisco
5 80 (9.00%) Splunk
6 75 (8.44%) ServiceNow
7 53 (5.96%) Citrix
8 47 (5.29%) SolarWinds
9 44 (4.95%) Infoblox
10 41 (4.61%) Google
11 40 (4.50%) Red Hat
12 39 (4.39%) Juniper
13 38 (4.27%) Palo Alto
14 37 (4.16%) Blue Coat
15 32 (3.60%) McAfee
16 30 (3.37%) NetApp
17 22 (2.47%) Fortinet
18 21 (2.36%) Extreme Networks
19 20 (2.25%) Okta
19 20 (2.25%) Pure Storage