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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 130 160
Rank change year-on-year -13 +30 -24
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,011 717 607
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.91% 2.18% 1.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.31% 18.17% 12.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 622 477 422
10th Percentile £294 £254 £250
25th Percentile £401 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -2.50%
75th Percentile £580 £600 £588
90th Percentile £639 £653 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% +4.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 32 16
10th Percentile £20.88 £29.00 £19.25
25th Percentile £27.25 £37.06 £22.85
Median hourly rate £40.10 £57.50 £24.59
Median % change year-on-year -30.26% +133.83% -38.53%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.33 £42.19
90th Percentile £91.91 £89.17 £61.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.71 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -29.67% +36.84% +41.79%

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 4,979 3,947 4,876
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.40% 12.03% 12.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,971 2,411 2,952
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 196 342
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.01
Median hourly rate £26.29 £48.75 £45.44
Median % change year-on-year -46.07% +7.28% -9.12%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.50 £74.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £44.00 £51.50
% change year-on-year -39.41% -14.56% -10.30%

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 30 July 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 30 July 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 30 July 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 -11 913 £500 -4.76% 356
UK excluding London -8 627 £500 -4.76% 278
London -36 315 £475 -6.86% 132
North of England +12 230 £450 -10.00% 54
Work from Home -36 229 £510 -2.86% 139
South East +6 193 £538 -2.27% 93
North West +27 151 £450 -7.69% 33
Midlands -14 113 £450 -5.26% 46
West Midlands -24 93 £450 -5.26% 28
South West -1 81 £500 -13.04% 41
Yorkshire -20 73 £475 -13.64% 19
Scotland +10 36 £513 +13.89% 15
East of England -51 29 £450 -18.18% 36
East Midlands -3 18 £413 -25.00% 18
Wales -13 9 £500 +15.34% 3
North East -48 6 £413 +19.57% 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 97 (9.59%) Microsoft Exchange
2 80 (7.91%) SharePoint
3 22 (2.18%) Confluence
4 17 (1.68%) Apache
5 15 (1.48%) IIS
6 14 (1.38%) nginx
7 9 (0.89%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.49%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
10 2 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.099%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.099%) Traefik
Applications
1 21 (2.08%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.19%) MS Visio
3 7 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.20%) Houdini
5 2 (0.20%) NUKE
6 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 10 (0.99%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.099%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 385 (38.08%) Azure
2 199 (19.68%) AWS
3 168 (16.62%) Microsoft 365
4 161 (15.92%) Entra ID
5 110 (10.88%) GCP
6 75 (7.42%) GitHub
7 57 (5.64%) IaaS
8 52 (5.14%) OneDrive
9 43 (4.25%) Azure DevOps
9 43 (4.25%) PaaS
10 42 (4.15%) SaaS
11 36 (3.56%) Azure Monitor
12 31 (3.07%) OpenShift
13 29 (2.87%) GitHub Actions
14 27 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
14 27 (2.67%) Serverless
15 26 (2.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 25 (2.47%) Akamai
16 25 (2.47%) Amazon EC2
17 24 (2.37%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 453 (44.81%) DHCP
2 363 (35.91%) Firewall
3 284 (28.09%) TCP/IP
4 275 (27.20%) VPN
5 137 (13.55%) WAN
6 125 (12.36%) Network Security
7 124 (12.27%) VLAN
8 118 (11.67%) LAN
9 103 (10.19%) BGP
9 103 (10.19%) SSL
10 83 (8.21%) BIG-IP
11 73 (7.22%) HTTP
12 69 (6.82%) Wireless
13 68 (6.73%) Wi-Fi
14 63 (6.23%) SAN
15 58 (5.74%) OSPF
16 54 (5.34%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 42 (4.15%) DMZ
18 39 (3.86%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 36 (3.56%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (5.04%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.48%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (1.29%) Elasticsearch
4 12 (1.19%) Azure SQL Database
5 10 (0.99%) Power BI
6 8 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
7 6 (0.59%) Data Lake
7 6 (0.59%) MongoDB
7 6 (0.59%) MySQL
8 4 (0.40%) Db2
8 4 (0.40%) MariaDB
9 3 (0.30%) Big Data
10 2 (0.20%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.20%) SQLPlus
11 1 (0.099%) Cloud Spanner
11 1 (0.099%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.099%) KDB
11 1 (0.099%) Power Query
11 1 (0.099%) Redis
11 1 (0.099%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 74 (7.32%) JIRA
2 56 (5.54%) Jenkins
3 38 (3.76%) Git
4 23 (2.27%) GitLab
5 19 (1.88%) Fiddler
6 10 (0.99%) Bitbucket
6 10 (0.99%) Browser DevTools
7 9 (0.89%) Chocolatey
8 5 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (0.40%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.20%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.20%) Introscope
10 2 (0.20%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
10 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.099%) MSI
11 1 (0.099%) Visual Studio
General
1 248 (24.53%) Social Skills
2 112 (11.08%) Analytical Skills
3 94 (9.30%) Finance
4 81 (8.01%) Public Sector
5 73 (7.22%) Banking
6 54 (5.34%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (3.36%) Investment Banking
8 29 (2.87%) Telecoms
9 23 (2.27%) Military
10 21 (2.08%) Legal
11 14 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
12 12 (1.19%) Local Government
13 11 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 10 (0.99%) Police
15 6 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
16 5 (0.49%) Law
16 5 (0.49%) Publishing
17 4 (0.40%) Italian Language
17 4 (0.40%) Manufacturing
17 4 (0.40%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 189 (18.69%) Network Engineer
2 170 (16.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 112 (11.08%) Senior
4 99 (9.79%) Architect
5 94 (9.30%) Support Engineer
6 76 (7.52%) Cloud Engineer
7 64 (6.33%) Security Engineer
8 55 (5.44%) Analyst
9 53 (5.24%) IT Support
10 50 (4.95%) IT Engineer
11 44 (4.35%) Azure Engineer
12 42 (4.15%) Network Security Engineer
13 41 (4.06%) Web Engineer
14 39 (3.86%) Administrator
14 39 (3.86%) DevOps Engineer
15 38 (3.76%) Cisco Engineer
16 36 (3.56%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 34 (3.36%) Platform Engineer
17 34 (3.36%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 33 (3.26%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (5.04%) 802.1X
2 38 (3.76%) SAML
3 29 (2.87%) LDAP
4 25 (2.47%) ARM Templates
4 25 (2.47%) OpenID
5 24 (2.37%) OAuth
6 20 (1.98%) OpenTelemetry
7 18 (1.78%) JSON
8 10 (0.99%) REST
8 10 (0.99%) YAML
9 8 (0.79%) Kafka
10 7 (0.69%) Middleware
10 7 (0.69%) OAuth2
11 5 (0.49%) CSS
12 4 (0.40%) .NET
12 4 (0.40%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.40%) React
12 4 (0.40%) Software Packaging
12 4 (0.40%) Web Services
13 3 (0.30%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 131 (12.96%) Data Centre
2 108 (10.68%) PKI
3 63 (6.23%) Onboarding
4 62 (6.13%) Hybrid Cloud
5 59 (5.84%) Cloud Native
6 48 (4.75%) Management Information System
7 45 (4.45%) Clustering
8 44 (4.35%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 30 (2.97%) Public Cloud
10 28 (2.77%) Self-Motivation
11 22 (2.18%) Replication
12 19 (1.88%) Enterprise Cloud
12 19 (1.88%) Security Posture
13 16 (1.58%) Cyber Threat
14 14 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
14 14 (1.38%) Linux Command Line
15 13 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
15 13 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
16 12 (1.19%) Driving Licence
17 11 (1.09%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 457 (45.20%) Windows
2 241 (23.84%) Windows Server
3 187 (18.50%) Linux
4 51 (5.04%) Windows 10
5 45 (4.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 40 (3.96%) Windows Server 2019
7 34 (3.36%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.67%) Unix
9 22 (2.18%) Windows Server 2012
10 18 (1.78%) Ubuntu
11 17 (1.68%) VMS
12 16 (1.58%) Apple iOS
13 15 (1.48%) CentOS
14 14 (1.38%) Android
14 14 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
15 7 (0.69%) Rocky
16 5 (0.49%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.49%) Windows Server 2003
16 5 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
17 3 (0.30%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 229 (22.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 228 (22.55%) Problem-Solving
3 181 (17.90%) ITIL
4 178 (17.61%) Load Balancing
5 166 (16.42%) Migration
6 160 (15.83%) Infrastructure as Code
7 155 (15.33%) DevOps
8 147 (14.54%) CI/CD
9 143 (14.14%) High Availability
10 114 (11.28%) ITSM
11 98 (9.69%) Observability
12 90 (8.90%) Project Delivery
13 89 (8.80%) Continuous Improvement
14 86 (8.51%) Cybersecurity
15 85 (8.41%) Agile
16 81 (8.01%) Disaster Recovery
17 80 (7.91%) Identity Access Management
18 69 (6.82%) Technical Leadership
19 68 (6.73%) Containerisation
19 68 (6.73%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 216 (21.36%) PowerShell
2 197 (19.49%) Python
3 139 (13.75%) Bash
4 58 (5.74%) SQL
5 42 (4.15%) Bicep
6 24 (2.37%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.19%) Go
8 10 (0.99%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.99%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.89%) Java
9 9 (0.89%) VBA
10 8 (0.79%) Perl
11 5 (0.49%) C
11 5 (0.49%) Groovy
11 5 (0.49%) Ruby
12 4 (0.40%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.30%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.30%) Lisp
14 2 (0.20%) Jython
14 2 (0.20%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 364 (36.00%) Security Cleared
2 207 (20.47%) SC Cleared
3 150 (14.84%) DV Cleared
4 109 (10.78%) Cisco Certification
5 76 (7.52%) CCNP
5 76 (7.52%) Degree
6 55 (5.44%) CCNA
7 49 (4.85%) Microsoft Certification
8 44 (4.35%) Azure Certification
9 32 (3.17%) Network+ Certification
10 18 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
10 18 (1.78%) CCIE
11 17 (1.68%) CISSP
11 17 (1.68%) MCSE
11 17 (1.68%) Server+ Certification
12 15 (1.48%) AWS Certification
12 15 (1.48%) CompTIA Security+
12 15 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
13 13 (1.29%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 12 (1.19%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (3.76%) SLA
2 30 (2.97%) NIST
3 19 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (1.58%) NCSC
5 8 (0.79%) GDPR
5 8 (0.79%) QA
6 5 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
6 5 (0.49%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 3 (0.30%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.099%) COBIT
10 1 (0.099%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.099%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 415 (41.05%) Active Directory
2 240 (23.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 114 (11.28%) Hyper-V
4 70 (6.92%) vSphere
5 66 (6.53%) VMware ESXi
6 65 (6.43%) VMware NSX
7 48 (4.75%) Docker
8 44 (4.35%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (3.76%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.47%) Firmware
11 22 (2.18%) NFS
12 13 (1.29%) vCloud
13 10 (0.99%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (0.99%) Squid
14 9 (0.89%) BitLocker
14 9 (0.89%) Postfix
15 8 (0.79%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.69%) Virtual Servers
17 6 (0.59%) Varnish
18 5 (0.49%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 199 (19.68%) Terraform
2 150 (14.84%) Ansible
3 117 (11.57%) Kubernetes
4 98 (9.69%) Microsoft Intune
5 62 (6.13%) vCenter Server
6 59 (5.84%) SCCM
7 56 (5.54%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (5.24%) Grafana
9 44 (4.35%) FortiGate
10 38 (3.76%) Prometheus
11 28 (2.77%) WSUS
12 27 (2.67%) SCOM
13 25 (2.47%) Argo
14 15 (1.48%) Puppet
15 14 (1.38%) Nessus
16 13 (1.29%) Jamf Pro
17 12 (1.19%) VxRail
18 11 (1.09%) NetBackup
18 11 (1.09%) vMotion
19 10 (0.99%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 345 (34.12%) Microsoft
2 294 (29.08%) VMware
3 197 (19.49%) Cisco
4 149 (14.74%) F5
5 88 (8.70%) ServiceNow
6 75 (7.42%) Splunk
7 66 (6.53%) Infoblox
8 64 (6.33%) Google
9 63 (6.23%) Citrix
9 63 (6.23%) SolarWinds
10 58 (5.74%) Juniper
11 50 (4.95%) Red Hat
12 45 (4.45%) Palo Alto
13 36 (3.56%) NetApp
14 35 (3.46%) Dynatrace
15 30 (2.97%) Zscaler
16 29 (2.87%) Blue Coat
17 28 (2.77%) Fortinet
18 25 (2.47%) CheckPoint
18 25 (2.47%) McAfee