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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 148 131 157
Rank change year-on-year -17 +26 -24
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,040 704 600
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.93% 2.15% 1.55%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.40% 18.17% 12.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 638 452 413
10th Percentile £300 £251 £240
25th Percentile £413 £388 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £588
90th Percentile £641 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 31 15
10th Percentile £26.00 - £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.45
Median hourly rate £61.11 £57.50 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year +6.27% +137.60% -39.50%
75th Percentile £74.20 £82.18 £49.38
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £63.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £65.00 £48.03
% change year-on-year -2.34% +35.33% +84.73%

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 5,098 3,875 4,715
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.47% 11.81% 12.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,009 2,366 2,844
10th Percentile £250 £242 £225
25th Percentile £400 £369 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +2.77% -6.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 375 201 309
10th Percentile £15.07 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.48% -7.50% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.35 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £44.50 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.26% -18.91% -2.86%

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 22 August 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 22 August 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 22 August 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 -7 940 £500 -4.76% 550
UK excluding London -10 650 £500 - 358
London -43 320 £500 -0.99% 251
Work from Home -6 241 £510 -0.49% 187
North of England +29 234 £479 -4.20% 63
South East +12 185 £538 -2.27% 125
North West +31 150 £474 +1.94% 37
Midlands -19 119 £450 -5.26% 49
West Midlands -22 97 £450 -5.26% 34
South West +6 96 £550 +0.46% 57
Yorkshire -5 70 £500 -9.09% 18
Scotland +6 37 £525 +15.64% 17
East of England -51 34 £450 -18.18% 43
East Midlands -6 20 £431 -21.59% 15
North East -39 14 £413 +21.32% 9
Wales -16 9 £455 +19.97% 6

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
1 106 (10.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 93 (8.94%) SharePoint
3 24 (2.31%) Confluence
4 19 (1.83%) Apache
5 16 (1.54%) IIS
6 12 (1.15%) nginx
7 9 (0.87%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.58%) Skype for Business
9 5 (0.48%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2010
10 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2013
11 2 (0.19%) IBM HTTP Server
11 2 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.19%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
11 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Portal
12 1 (0.096%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 24 (2.31%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.15%) MS Visio
3 10 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.19%) Houdini
5 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.19%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 11 (1.06%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.096%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 423 (40.67%) Azure
2 219 (21.06%) AWS
3 185 (17.79%) Microsoft 365
4 181 (17.40%) Entra ID
5 111 (10.67%) GCP
6 74 (7.12%) GitHub
7 57 (5.48%) IaaS
8 55 (5.29%) OneDrive
9 46 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
10 41 (3.94%) Azure Monitor
11 40 (3.85%) PaaS
12 39 (3.75%) SaaS
13 38 (3.65%) GitHub Actions
14 30 (2.88%) OpenShift
15 28 (2.69%) AWS CloudFormation
15 28 (2.69%) Serverless
16 26 (2.50%) Amazon EKS
16 26 (2.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
17 25 (2.40%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 24 (2.31%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 484 (46.54%) DHCP
2 370 (35.58%) Firewall
3 295 (28.37%) TCP/IP
4 288 (27.69%) VPN
5 135 (12.98%) VLAN
6 131 (12.60%) Network Security
7 130 (12.50%) WAN
8 108 (10.38%) LAN
9 101 (9.71%) SSL
10 96 (9.23%) BGP
11 75 (7.21%) HTTP
11 75 (7.21%) Wireless
12 74 (7.12%) Wi-Fi
13 72 (6.92%) BIG-IP
14 64 (6.15%) SAN
15 56 (5.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 52 (5.00%) OSPF
17 49 (4.71%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 48 (4.62%) DMZ
19 38 (3.65%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (5.38%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
4 10 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
4 10 (0.96%) MongoDB
4 10 (0.96%) MySQL
4 10 (0.96%) Power BI
5 9 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (0.58%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.48%) MariaDB
7 5 (0.48%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.38%) Db2
8 4 (0.38%) Redis
9 3 (0.29%) Big Data
9 3 (0.29%) SQLPlus
10 2 (0.19%) KDB
11 1 (0.096%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.096%) Cloud Spanner
11 1 (0.096%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.096%) Flink
Development Applications
1 73 (7.02%) JIRA
2 52 (5.00%) Jenkins
3 42 (4.04%) Git
4 33 (3.17%) GitLab
5 17 (1.63%) Fiddler
6 12 (1.15%) Bitbucket
7 10 (0.96%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (0.67%) Chocolatey
8 7 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.29%) MSI
11 2 (0.19%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.19%) Introscope
11 2 (0.19%) Selenium
11 2 (0.19%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.096%) Maven
12 1 (0.096%) SonarQube
12 1 (0.096%) Visual Studio
General
1 267 (25.67%) Social Skills
2 123 (11.83%) Analytical Skills
3 98 (9.42%) Finance
4 86 (8.27%) Public Sector
5 71 (6.83%) Banking
6 59 (5.67%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (3.17%) Investment Banking
8 31 (2.98%) Telecoms
9 22 (2.12%) Legal
10 13 (1.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.15%) Military
12 11 (1.06%) Local Government
12 11 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
12 11 (1.06%) Police
13 10 (0.96%) Aerospace
14 9 (0.87%) Manufacturing
15 8 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
16 6 (0.58%) Front Office
16 6 (0.58%) Law
16 6 (0.58%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 186 (17.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 184 (17.69%) Network Engineer
3 125 (12.02%) Senior
4 98 (9.42%) Support Engineer
5 89 (8.56%) Architect
6 76 (7.31%) Cloud Engineer
7 56 (5.38%) Analyst
8 55 (5.29%) Security Engineer
9 48 (4.62%) IT Engineer
9 48 (4.62%) IT Support
10 45 (4.33%) Azure Engineer
10 45 (4.33%) Platform Engineer
11 42 (4.04%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 41 (3.94%) DevOps Engineer
13 40 (3.85%) Cisco Engineer
14 39 (3.75%) Web Engineer
15 38 (3.65%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 37 (3.56%) Administrator
16 37 (3.56%) Network Security Engineer
17 35 (3.37%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 220 (21.15%) Terraform
2 48 (4.62%) SAML
3 39 (3.75%) 802.1X
4 33 (3.17%) OAuth
5 29 (2.79%) OpenID
6 28 (2.69%) LDAP
7 27 (2.60%) ARM Templates
8 19 (1.83%) JSON
9 17 (1.63%) OpenTelemetry
9 17 (1.63%) REST
10 16 (1.54%) Kafka
11 13 (1.25%) YAML
12 11 (1.06%) OAuth2
13 8 (0.77%) React
14 7 (0.67%) CSS
14 7 (0.67%) Middleware
15 6 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
15 6 (0.58%) Software Packaging
16 5 (0.48%) gRPC
16 5 (0.48%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 128 (12.31%) Data Centre
2 109 (10.48%) PKI
3 71 (6.83%) Hybrid Cloud
4 70 (6.73%) Onboarding
5 55 (5.29%) Management Information System
6 50 (4.81%) Cloud Native
7 40 (3.85%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 33 (3.17%) Clustering
9 29 (2.79%) Replication
10 27 (2.60%) Public Cloud
11 25 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (1.83%) Enterprise Cloud
13 17 (1.63%) Linux Command Line
14 16 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
14 16 (1.54%) Driving Licence
14 16 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
15 14 (1.35%) Cyber Threat
15 14 (1.35%) Security Posture
16 10 (0.96%) Enterprise Storage
16 10 (0.96%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 474 (45.58%) Windows
2 264 (25.38%) Windows Server
3 219 (21.06%) Linux
4 62 (5.96%) Windows 10
5 48 (4.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 40 (3.85%) Windows Server 2019
7 32 (3.08%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.60%) Unix
8 27 (2.60%) Windows Server 2012
9 22 (2.12%) Ubuntu
10 20 (1.92%) Apple iOS
11 18 (1.73%) Android
11 18 (1.73%) VMS
12 17 (1.63%) CentOS
13 16 (1.54%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (1.15%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.67%) Rocky
15 7 (0.67%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.29%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 249 (23.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 226 (21.73%) Problem-Solving
3 189 (18.17%) ITIL
4 185 (17.79%) Infrastructure as Code
5 183 (17.60%) Load Balancing
6 171 (16.44%) Migration
7 168 (16.15%) DevOps
8 156 (15.00%) CI/CD
9 128 (12.31%) ITSM
10 127 (12.21%) High Availability
11 110 (10.58%) Continuous Improvement
12 98 (9.42%) Observability
13 97 (9.33%) Agile
13 97 (9.33%) Cybersecurity
14 92 (8.85%) Disaster Recovery
15 90 (8.65%) Project Delivery
16 88 (8.46%) Runbook
17 87 (8.37%) Technical Leadership
18 86 (8.27%) Platform Engineering
19 78 (7.50%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 261 (25.10%) PowerShell
2 215 (20.67%) Python
3 158 (15.19%) Bash
4 67 (6.44%) SQL
5 46 (4.42%) Bicep
6 23 (2.21%) JavaScript
7 16 (1.54%) Shell Script
8 13 (1.25%) Go
9 10 (0.96%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.96%) Java
9 10 (0.96%) Perl
10 9 (0.87%) VBScript
11 7 (0.67%) VBA
12 6 (0.58%) Groovy
12 6 (0.58%) TypeScript
12 6 (0.58%) VB
13 5 (0.48%) Ruby
14 3 (0.29%) C
14 3 (0.29%) Lisp
15 2 (0.19%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 386 (37.12%) Security Cleared
2 220 (21.15%) SC Cleared
3 162 (15.58%) DV Cleared
4 103 (9.90%) Cisco Certification
5 84 (8.08%) Degree
6 77 (7.40%) CCNP
7 55 (5.29%) CCNA
8 51 (4.90%) Azure Certification
9 49 (4.71%) Microsoft Certification
10 31 (2.98%) Network+ Certification
11 23 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 21 (2.02%) AWS Certification
13 18 (1.73%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
14 17 (1.63%) CCIE
15 15 (1.44%) Server+ Certification
15 15 (1.44%) VCAP
16 13 (1.25%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 11 (1.06%) ITIL Certification
17 11 (1.06%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (4.04%) SLA
2 26 (2.50%) NIST
3 17 (1.63%) NCSC
4 16 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 13 (1.25%) QA
6 8 (0.77%) GDPR
7 5 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
7 5 (0.48%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.38%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.19%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.19%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.096%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.096%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 440 (42.31%) Active Directory
2 278 (26.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 128 (12.31%) Hyper-V
4 76 (7.31%) vSphere
5 75 (7.21%) VMware ESXi
6 69 (6.63%) VMware NSX
7 57 (5.48%) Docker
8 43 (4.13%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (3.56%) Virtual Desktop
10 27 (2.60%) Firmware
11 22 (2.12%) NFS
12 14 (1.35%) BitLocker
12 14 (1.35%) vCloud
13 10 (0.96%) Virtual Servers
14 9 (0.87%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.87%) Postfix
14 9 (0.87%) Squid
15 8 (0.77%) Ceph
15 8 (0.77%) VMware Workstation
16 6 (0.58%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 162 (15.58%) Ansible
2 131 (12.60%) Kubernetes
3 110 (10.58%) Microsoft Intune
4 82 (7.88%) SCCM
5 64 (6.15%) Single Sign-On
6 62 (5.96%) vCenter Server
7 56 (5.38%) Grafana
8 44 (4.23%) Prometheus
9 33 (3.17%) FortiGate
10 32 (3.08%) SCOM
10 32 (3.08%) WSUS
11 18 (1.73%) Argo
12 16 (1.54%) VxRail
13 15 (1.44%) NetBackup
14 14 (1.35%) Packer
14 14 (1.35%) Puppet
15 13 (1.25%) Jamf Pro
16 12 (1.15%) Istio
16 12 (1.15%) vMotion
17 11 (1.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 382 (36.73%) Microsoft
2 334 (32.12%) VMware
3 193 (18.56%) Cisco
4 134 (12.88%) F5
5 91 (8.75%) ServiceNow
6 64 (6.15%) Citrix
7 63 (6.06%) Infoblox
8 61 (5.87%) Google
9 57 (5.48%) Splunk
10 56 (5.38%) SolarWinds
11 46 (4.42%) Red Hat
12 45 (4.33%) Palo Alto
13 44 (4.23%) Juniper
14 38 (3.65%) Dynatrace
14 38 (3.65%) NetApp
15 31 (2.98%) Fortinet
16 30 (2.88%) CheckPoint
17 28 (2.69%) Zscaler
18 25 (2.40%) McAfee
19 24 (2.31%) CyberArk