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 15 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 136 143 133
Rank change year-on-year +7 -10 +15
Contract jobs citing DNS 708 669 931
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.13% 1.78% 1.95%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.81% 14.72% 14.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 445 407 594
10th Percentile £219 £220 £250
25th Percentile £380 £325 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.10% -3.01% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £594
90th Percentile £657 £700 £668
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £488
% change year-on-year +11.76% -12.82% +3.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 12 18
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.78 £21.48
25th Percentile £29.00 £22.64 £25.25
Median hourly rate £43.25 £23.99 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +80.28% -40.03% +81.82%
75th Percentile £75.00 £32.00 £64.35
90th Percentile £88.24 £47.68 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.48 £24.20 £40.00
% change year-on-year +71.38% -39.50% +79.78%

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 3,763 4,545 6,470
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.33% 12.07% 13.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,404 2,616 4,055
10th Percentile £213 £225 £225
25th Percentile £356 £369 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £677 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £480 £465
% change year-on-year -6.25% +3.23% +3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 180 323
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.15 £17.22
25th Percentile £20.00 £24.80 £22.75
Median hourly rate £34.00 £48.56 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -29.98% -14.04% +37.73%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.50 £53.75 £57.42
% change year-on-year -22.79% -6.38% +27.59%

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 15 October 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 15 October 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for DNS in the UK

DNS
Top 17 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 15 October 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 +25 649 £510 +4.62% 399
UK excluding London +2 407 £475 +11.76% 365
London +20 249 £525 - 86
Work from Home -1 180 £500 -4.76% 182
Midlands +15 112 £450 +20.00% 43
West Midlands +33 107 £425 +11.84% 26
North of England -10 95 £463 -2.63% 67
South East -2 90 £500 - 135
North West -3 62 £450 -10.00% 35
East of England +25 61 £550 +100.00% 43
South West +16 55 £575 +13.58% 65
Yorkshire -19 31 £500 +11.11% 25
Scotland -36 15 £454 +89.17% 9
North East -6 12 £420 +189.66% 11
East Midlands -26 5 £450 +20.00% 17
Wales -3 4 £379 +37.91% 7
Channel Islands - 1 £440 -

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 74 (10.45%) Microsoft Exchange
2 65 (9.18%) SharePoint
3 49 (6.92%) Confluence
4 27 (3.81%) Skype for Business
5 16 (2.26%) OpenStack
6 14 (1.98%) SharePoint Server
7 12 (1.69%) Exchange Server 2010
8 11 (1.55%) Exchange Server 2013
8 11 (1.55%) IIS
9 10 (1.41%) Apache
9 10 (1.41%) Exchange Server 2003
9 10 (1.41%) Exchange Server 2007
9 10 (1.41%) nginx
9 10 (1.41%) Office Communications Server
10 3 (0.42%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
11 2 (0.28%) Apache Spark
11 2 (0.28%) Cloud Foundry
11 2 (0.28%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 66 (9.32%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.41%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 5 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.28%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 4 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.28%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.14%) Eikon
3 1 (0.14%) Eze OMS
3 1 (0.14%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.14%) Pegasus Opera
3 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.14%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 192 (27.12%) AWS
2 180 (25.42%) Azure
3 128 (18.08%) Microsoft 365
4 73 (10.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 59 (8.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 58 (8.19%) Amazon EC2
7 56 (7.91%) Entra ID
8 55 (7.77%) Amazon S3
9 44 (6.21%) Amazon ELB
10 40 (5.65%) GCP
11 39 (5.51%) GitHub
12 29 (4.10%) SaaS
13 28 (3.95%) AWS KMS
14 27 (3.81%) AWS CloudFormation
15 24 (3.39%) IaaS
16 22 (3.11%) Amazon ECS
17 21 (2.97%) Cohesity
18 19 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
19 18 (2.54%) Route 53
20 17 (2.40%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 319 (45.06%) DHCP
2 255 (36.02%) Firewall
3 226 (31.92%) TCP/IP
4 180 (25.42%) VPN
5 106 (14.97%) Network Security
6 94 (13.28%) SSL
7 88 (12.43%) WAN
8 80 (11.30%) HTTP
9 77 (10.88%) VLAN
10 76 (10.73%) LAN
11 67 (9.46%) Wireless
12 61 (8.62%) SAN
13 57 (8.05%) SMTP
14 51 (7.20%) BGP
15 38 (5.37%) IPsec
16 37 (5.23%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 37 (5.23%) OSPF
17 35 (4.94%) FTP
18 32 (4.52%) SSH
18 32 (4.52%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (5.79%) Amazon RDS
2 18 (2.54%) SQL Server
3 16 (2.26%) Amazon Aurora
4 15 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (1.27%) MongoDB
6 8 (1.13%) Big Data
7 6 (0.85%) BigQuery
7 6 (0.85%) Elasticsearch
8 5 (0.71%) Apache Cassandra
8 5 (0.71%) MySQL
9 3 (0.42%) DynamoDB
9 3 (0.42%) GIS
9 3 (0.42%) Hadoop
9 3 (0.42%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.42%) Power BI
10 2 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
10 2 (0.28%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.28%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.28%) Parquet
10 2 (0.28%) Redis
Development Applications
1 94 (13.28%) Jenkins
2 84 (11.86%) JIRA
3 81 (11.44%) Git
4 53 (7.49%) GitLab
5 22 (3.11%) Vagrant
6 12 (1.69%) TeamCity
7 10 (1.41%) Fiddler
8 6 (0.85%) Visual Studio Code
9 5 (0.71%) Browser DevTools
9 5 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.71%) Vite
9 5 (0.71%) webpack
10 4 (0.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 4 (0.56%) Subversion
10 4 (0.56%) Terragrunt
11 3 (0.42%) Oracle APEX
11 3 (0.42%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.28%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.28%) Poetry
12 2 (0.28%) PyCharm
General
1 221 (31.21%) Social Skills
2 95 (13.42%) Analytical Skills
3 81 (11.44%) Public Sector
4 73 (10.31%) Finance
5 33 (4.66%) Banking
6 25 (3.53%) Investment Banking
7 23 (3.25%) Documentation Skills
8 22 (3.11%) Telecoms
9 18 (2.54%) Manufacturing
10 17 (2.40%) Legal
11 16 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
12 14 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (1.27%) Law
15 8 (1.13%) Marketing
15 8 (1.13%) Military
16 6 (0.85%) Local Government
17 4 (0.56%) Aerospace
17 4 (0.56%) Financial Institution
17 4 (0.56%) Retail
Job Titles
1 96 (13.56%) Network Engineer
2 89 (12.57%) Support Engineer
3 74 (10.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 63 (8.90%) DevOps Engineer
5 62 (8.76%) Senior
6 59 (8.33%) Analyst
7 48 (6.78%) Architect
8 36 (5.08%) AWS Engineer
8 36 (5.08%) IT Support
9 33 (4.66%) Platform Engineer
10 32 (4.52%) Administrator
11 30 (4.24%) Security Engineer
12 29 (4.10%) AWS DevOps
13 27 (3.81%) Consultant
14 26 (3.67%) AWS DevOps Engineer
15 21 (2.97%) Cloud Platform Engineer
15 21 (2.97%) Support Analyst
16 20 (2.82%) IT Engineer
16 20 (2.82%) Operations Engineer
16 20 (2.82%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (5.23%) LDAP
2 14 (1.98%) Elastic Stack
3 13 (1.84%) 802.1X
3 13 (1.84%) YAML
4 12 (1.69%) AngularJS
4 12 (1.69%) REST
5 10 (1.41%) CSS
5 10 (1.41%) HTML
5 10 (1.41%) SOAP
6 9 (1.27%) React
7 8 (1.13%) Kafka
7 8 (1.13%) NETCONF
7 8 (1.13%) RESTCONF
8 7 (0.99%) cloud-init
8 7 (0.99%) Keycloak
8 7 (0.99%) Middleware
9 6 (0.85%) JSON
9 6 (0.85%) SAML
10 5 (0.71%) .NET
10 5 (0.71%) Parceljs
Miscellaneous
1 56 (7.91%) Data Centre
2 55 (7.77%) PKI
3 54 (7.63%) Replication
4 44 (6.21%) Management Information System
5 27 (3.81%) Onboarding
6 21 (2.97%) Analytical Mindset
7 17 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
7 17 (2.40%) Security Operations Centre
8 16 (2.26%) Video Conferencing
9 15 (2.12%) Hybrid Cloud
10 14 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (1.84%) Cloud Native
12 12 (1.69%) Cyberattack
12 12 (1.69%) Virtual Team
13 11 (1.55%) Operational Technology
13 11 (1.55%) SCADA
14 9 (1.27%) Clustering
14 9 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
14 9 (1.27%) Linux Command Line
15 8 (1.13%) CSOC
Operating Systems
1 332 (46.89%) Windows
2 156 (22.03%) Linux
3 118 (16.67%) Windows Server
4 61 (8.62%) Windows 10
5 44 (6.21%) Windows Server 2016
6 41 (5.79%) Windows Server 2019
7 32 (4.52%) Unix
8 30 (4.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 30 (4.24%) VMS
9 25 (3.53%) Mac OS
10 23 (3.25%) Ubuntu
11 22 (3.11%) Amazon Linux
11 22 (3.11%) CentOS
12 18 (2.54%) Windows Server 2003
13 17 (2.40%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (1.98%) Android
15 8 (1.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.85%) Apple iOS
17 4 (0.56%) Solaris
18 3 (0.42%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (19.21%) DevOps
2 130 (18.36%) Problem-Solving
3 117 (16.53%) CI/CD
3 117 (16.53%) ITIL
4 93 (13.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 89 (12.57%) High Availability
5 89 (12.57%) Infrastructure as Code
6 70 (9.89%) Migration
7 64 (9.04%) Change Management
7 64 (9.04%) Load Balancing
8 60 (8.47%) Agile
8 60 (8.47%) Cybersecurity
9 55 (7.77%) Service Management
9 55 (7.77%) SIEM
10 51 (7.20%) Incident Response
11 50 (7.06%) Containerisation
11 50 (7.06%) Root Cause Analysis
12 49 (6.92%) Computer Science
12 49 (6.92%) Infrastructure Automation
12 49 (6.92%) Patch Management
Programming Languages
1 172 (24.29%) Python
2 160 (22.60%) PowerShell
3 81 (11.44%) Bash
4 44 (6.21%) SQL
5 31 (4.38%) Perl
6 26 (3.67%) Java
7 25 (3.53%) Shell Script
8 24 (3.39%) Groovy
9 16 (2.26%) JavaScript
10 15 (2.12%) Go
11 9 (1.27%) Bicep
12 6 (0.85%) C++
12 6 (0.85%) TypeScript
13 5 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
14 4 (0.56%) Apex Code
14 4 (0.56%) Lisp
14 4 (0.56%) VBScript
15 3 (0.42%) C#
15 3 (0.42%) Search Processing Language
15 3 (0.42%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 245 (34.60%) Security Cleared
2 173 (24.44%) SC Cleared
3 95 (13.42%) Cisco Certification
4 92 (12.99%) Degree
5 71 (10.03%) DV Cleared
6 65 (9.18%) CCNP
7 46 (6.50%) CCNA
8 45 (6.36%) Microsoft Certification
9 30 (4.24%) AWS Certification
10 29 (4.10%) Azure Certification
10 29 (4.10%) Computer Science Degree
11 18 (2.54%) CISSP
12 15 (2.12%) CCIE
13 14 (1.98%) Network+ Certification
14 13 (1.84%) MCSE
15 12 (1.69%) MCSA
16 11 (1.55%) Server+ Certification
17 10 (1.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 10 (1.41%) ITIL Certification
18 9 (1.27%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.11%) GDPR
2 21 (2.97%) SLA
3 12 (1.69%) NIST
3 12 (1.69%) PCI DSS
4 11 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 9 (1.27%) Accessibility
5 9 (1.27%) NCSC
6 6 (0.85%) SOC 2
7 5 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.71%) Data Quality
7 5 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.71%) WCAG
8 4 (0.56%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.28%) QA
10 1 (0.14%) COBIT
System Software
1 284 (40.11%) Active Directory
2 165 (23.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 88 (12.43%) Docker
4 56 (7.91%) Hyper-V
5 30 (4.24%) VMware ESXi
6 28 (3.95%) Virtual Servers
6 28 (3.95%) vSphere
7 25 (3.53%) DFS Replication
7 25 (3.53%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 22 (3.11%) Virtual Machines
9 20 (2.82%) VMware NSX
10 16 (2.26%) Dovecot
10 16 (2.26%) Postfix
11 15 (2.12%) Firmware
11 15 (2.12%) Terminal Services
12 12 (1.69%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (1.41%) Brightmail
13 10 (1.41%) ISA Server
13 10 (1.41%) Squid
13 10 (1.41%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 139 (19.63%) Ansible
2 118 (16.67%) Terraform
3 79 (11.16%) SCCM
4 50 (7.06%) Kubernetes
5 47 (6.64%) Grafana
6 44 (6.21%) Prometheus
7 39 (5.51%) WSUS
8 34 (4.80%) Microsoft Intune
9 32 (4.52%) vCenter Server
10 23 (3.25%) Puppet
11 21 (2.97%) Single Sign-On
12 20 (2.82%) Progress Chef
13 18 (2.54%) Nessus
14 16 (2.26%) FortiGate
15 13 (1.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 13 (1.84%) Microsoft Clustering
15 13 (1.84%) Proxmox
16 12 (1.69%) Packer
17 10 (1.41%) Argo
17 10 (1.41%) Nagios
Vendors
1 253 (35.73%) Microsoft
2 202 (28.53%) VMware
3 145 (20.48%) Cisco
4 95 (13.42%) F5
5 92 (12.99%) ServiceNow
6 62 (8.76%) Splunk
7 58 (8.19%) CheckPoint
8 42 (5.93%) Palo Alto
9 41 (5.79%) Citrix
10 38 (5.37%) SolarWinds
11 34 (4.80%) NetApp
12 32 (4.52%) Red Hat
13 30 (4.24%) Juniper
14 29 (4.10%) Dell
14 29 (4.10%) Google
15 27 (3.81%) Veeam
16 21 (2.97%) Blue Coat
16 21 (2.97%) Remedy
16 21 (2.97%) Zscaler
17 20 (2.82%) Fortinet