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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 115 136
Rank change year-on-year -20 +21 -14
Contract jobs citing DNS 885 699 762
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.38% 1.74%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.77% 18.48% 13.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 555 494 506
10th Percentile £263 £252 £206
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 £597 £608 £600
90th Percentile £654 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £513
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.44% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 11 27
10th Percentile £15.96 - £20.00
25th Percentile £23.20 £23.59 £24.63
Median hourly rate £55.50 £54.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.83% +36.25% -18.56%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.18 £50.33
90th Percentile £75.90 £82.10 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -19.43% +101.69% -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 4,477 3,783 5,767
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.73% 12.89% 13.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,814 2,337 3,463
10th Percentile £232 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £488 £488
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% - -5.34%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £466 £475
% change year-on-year +1.93% -1.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 170 422
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.85
25th Percentile £20.63 £21.12 £17.69
Median hourly rate £42.71 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.88% -6.25% +110.53%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.44 £61.94
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £67.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.00 £28.00 £46.14
% change year-on-year +92.86% -39.31% +149.38%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -19 779 £500 -4.76% 260
UK excluding London -11 571 £500 -4.76% 234
London -49 250 £500 -0.05% 54
North of England -2 218 £447 -5.89% 58
Work from Home -41 187 £525 - 99
South East -5 155 £525 -4.55% 80
North West +33 141 £450 +5.88% 24
Midlands +13 116 £400 -27.93% 32
West Midlands +30 103 £400 -19.40% 16
Yorkshire -31 77 £445 -19.18% 24
South West -48 51 £575 +4.74% 30
Scotland +29 47 £550 +22.22% 10
East of England -25 43 £450 -10.00% 28
East Midlands -33 12 £394 -30.62% 16
Wales -15 4 £550 +22.22% 4
North East -23 4 £200 -51.52% 11

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 (11.41%) Microsoft Exchange
2 45 (5.08%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.69%) nginx
4 13 (1.47%) Confluence
5 12 (1.36%) Skype for Business
6 11 (1.24%) IIS
7 10 (1.13%) Apache
8 4 (0.45%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.45%) WebSphere
9 3 (0.34%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.23%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.23%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.23%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.23%) WebSphere Portal
10 2 (0.23%) WordPress
11 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 27 (3.05%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.58%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.23%) 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
1 300 (33.90%) Azure
2 157 (17.74%) AWS
3 151 (17.06%) Entra ID
4 142 (16.05%) Microsoft 365
5 94 (10.62%) GCP
6 59 (6.67%) GitHub
7 54 (6.10%) IaaS
8 43 (4.86%) SaaS
9 41 (4.63%) PaaS
10 37 (4.18%) Serverless
11 36 (4.07%) AWS CloudFormation
11 36 (4.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 33 (3.73%) Amazon S3
13 32 (3.62%) Amazon EC2
13 32 (3.62%) AWS Lambda
14 31 (3.50%) Route 53
15 26 (2.94%) Amazon EKS
16 23 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
16 23 (2.60%) OpenShift
17 21 (2.37%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 391 (44.18%) DHCP
2 289 (32.66%) Firewall
3 231 (26.10%) TCP/IP
4 210 (23.73%) VPN
5 121 (13.67%) WAN
6 114 (12.88%) LAN
7 87 (9.83%) SSL
8 86 (9.72%) Network Security
8 86 (9.72%) VLAN
9 80 (9.04%) BGP
9 80 (9.04%) BIG-IP
10 78 (8.81%) HTTP
11 62 (7.01%) Wi-Fi
12 52 (5.88%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 48 (5.42%) OSPF
14 42 (4.75%) Wireless
15 39 (4.41%) Wireshark
16 38 (4.29%) Kerberos
17 37 (4.18%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 36 (4.07%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (3.39%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.37%) Elasticsearch
3 18 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (0.90%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.79%) DynamoDB
7 6 (0.68%) 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 51 (5.76%) Jenkins
2 45 (5.08%) JIRA
3 29 (3.28%) Git
3 29 (3.28%) GitLab
4 28 (3.16%) Fiddler
5 9 (1.02%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.79%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.79%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.68%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.45%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.45%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.23%) Introscope
9 2 (0.23%) 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
1 207 (23.39%) Social Skills
2 93 (10.51%) Analytical Skills
3 73 (8.25%) Banking
4 65 (7.34%) Finance
5 61 (6.89%) Public Sector
6 52 (5.88%) Documentation Skills
7 41 (4.63%) Investment Banking
8 30 (3.39%) Legal
9 22 (2.49%) Telecoms
10 18 (2.03%) Military
11 10 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.68%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (0.68%) Law
13 5 (0.56%) Local Government
14 4 (0.45%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.45%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.34%) Italian Language
15 3 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 149 (16.84%) Network Engineer
2 124 (14.01%) Architect
3 102 (11.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 83 (9.38%) Analyst
5 76 (8.59%) Senior
6 56 (6.33%) Security Engineer
7 50 (5.65%) Support Engineer
8 48 (5.42%) Web Engineer
9 45 (5.08%) IT Support
10 38 (4.29%) IT Engineer
11 37 (4.18%) Lead
11 37 (4.18%) Network Security Engineer
12 30 (3.39%) Administrator
12 30 (3.39%) Cisco Engineer
12 30 (3.39%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 27 (3.05%) Azure Engineer
13 27 (3.05%) Data Engineer
13 27 (3.05%) Data Network Engineer
13 27 (3.05%) IT Support Engineer
13 27 (3.05%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (7.80%) LDAP
2 58 (6.55%) SAML
3 49 (5.54%) OAuth
4 38 (4.29%) OpenID
5 30 (3.39%) 802.1X
6 22 (2.49%) OpenTelemetry
7 21 (2.37%) OAuth2
8 12 (1.36%) JSON
9 11 (1.24%) REST
10 9 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
10 9 (1.02%) Kafka
11 7 (0.79%) XMPP
12 6 (0.68%) 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%) JPA
14 4 (0.45%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 75 (8.47%) Data Centre
2 70 (7.91%) PKI
3 51 (5.76%) Cloud Native
4 48 (5.42%) Replication
5 40 (4.52%) Management Information System
6 38 (4.29%) Clustering
7 32 (3.62%) Public Cloud
8 31 (3.50%) Onboarding
9 28 (3.16%) Hybrid Cloud
10 27 (3.05%) Security Operations Centre
11 26 (2.94%) Cyberattack
12 22 (2.49%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 20 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
14 18 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
15 16 (1.81%) Cyber Threat
15 16 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
16 14 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (1.47%) Product Ownership
18 12 (1.36%) Enterprise Storage
18 12 (1.36%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 403 (45.54%) Windows
2 221 (24.97%) Windows Server
3 132 (14.92%) Linux
4 47 (5.31%) Windows 10
5 34 (3.84%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.37%) Android
7 20 (2.26%) Unix
8 18 (2.03%) Mac OS
8 18 (2.03%) Windows Server 2012
9 16 (1.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 15 (1.69%) Apple iOS
11 14 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (1.24%) VMS
12 11 (1.24%) Windows 7
13 8 (0.90%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.45%) CatOS
15 3 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.34%) CentOS
15 3 (0.34%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 195 (22.03%) Problem-Solving
2 176 (19.89%) Load Balancing
3 141 (15.93%) Migration
4 130 (14.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 124 (14.01%) High Availability
6 122 (13.79%) ITIL
7 110 (12.43%) DevOps
8 105 (11.86%) Infrastructure as Code
9 104 (11.75%) CI/CD
10 92 (10.40%) Cybersecurity
11 83 (9.38%) Disaster Recovery
11 83 (9.38%) Identity Access Management
12 75 (8.47%) ITSM
13 68 (7.68%) Observability
14 66 (7.46%) RBAC
15 63 (7.12%) Change Management
16 62 (7.01%) SIEM
17 60 (6.78%) Incident Response
17 60 (6.78%) Roadmaps
18 59 (6.67%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 219 (24.75%) PowerShell
2 135 (15.25%) Python
3 75 (8.47%) Bash
4 40 (4.52%) SQL
5 19 (2.15%) JavaScript
6 15 (1.69%) Bicep
7 13 (1.47%) Java
7 13 (1.47%) VBScript
8 12 (1.36%) Ruby
9 9 (1.02%) Go
9 9 (1.02%) Shell Script
9 9 (1.02%) 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 (0.23%) C#
13 2 (0.23%) Jython
13 2 (0.23%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 293 (33.11%) Security Cleared
2 196 (22.15%) SC Cleared
3 106 (11.98%) DV Cleared
4 72 (8.14%) Cisco Certification
5 60 (6.78%) Degree
6 43 (4.86%) CCNP
7 40 (4.52%) Microsoft Certification
8 32 (3.62%) CompTIA Security+
9 29 (3.28%) CCNA
10 27 (3.05%) Azure Certification
11 21 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
12 18 (2.03%) CompTIA CySA+
13 17 (1.92%) AWS Certification
14 16 (1.81%) CISSP
15 15 (1.69%) Network+ Certification
16 11 (1.24%) BPSS Clearance
17 10 (1.13%) JNCIA
17 10 (1.13%) JNCIS
18 9 (1.02%) CCIE
18 9 (1.02%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.50%) GDPR
2 30 (3.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 29 (3.28%) NIST
4 24 (2.71%) SLA
5 16 (1.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.02%) NCSC
7 8 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.68%) QA
9 3 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.34%) PMO
10 2 (0.23%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.23%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.23%) 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
1 367 (41.47%) Active Directory
2 193 (21.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 80 (9.04%) Hyper-V
4 53 (5.99%) VMware NSX
5 50 (5.65%) vSphere
6 46 (5.20%) Docker
7 27 (3.05%) Virtual Machines
7 27 (3.05%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (2.94%) Firmware
9 18 (2.03%) BitLocker
10 15 (1.69%) Virtual Desktop
11 12 (1.36%) Squid
12 8 (0.90%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.90%) NFS
13 6 (0.68%) Sendmail
14 5 (0.56%) Postfix
14 5 (0.56%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.56%) Varnish
15 4 (0.45%) Ceph
15 4 (0.45%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 146 (16.50%) Terraform
2 113 (12.77%) Ansible
3 90 (10.17%) Kubernetes
3 90 (10.17%) Microsoft Intune
4 81 (9.15%) Single Sign-On
5 62 (7.01%) SCCM
6 59 (6.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 49 (5.54%) FortiGate
8 41 (4.63%) vCenter Server
9 38 (4.29%) Grafana
10 25 (2.82%) Argo
11 23 (2.60%) Prometheus
12 21 (2.37%) WSUS
13 14 (1.58%) SCOM
14 10 (1.13%) Puppet
15 9 (1.02%) HAProxy
16 8 (0.90%) Nessus
16 8 (0.90%) vMotion
17 7 (0.79%) Consul
18 6 (0.68%) QRadar
Vendors
1 301 (34.01%) Microsoft
2 234 (26.44%) VMware
3 146 (16.50%) F5
4 145 (16.38%) Cisco
5 80 (9.04%) Splunk
6 75 (8.47%) ServiceNow
7 53 (5.99%) Citrix
8 47 (5.31%) SolarWinds
9 44 (4.97%) Infoblox
10 41 (4.63%) Google
11 40 (4.52%) Red Hat
12 39 (4.41%) Juniper
12 39 (4.41%) Palo Alto
13 37 (4.18%) Blue Coat
14 32 (3.62%) McAfee
15 30 (3.39%) NetApp
16 21 (2.37%) Extreme Networks
16 21 (2.37%) Fortinet
17 20 (2.26%) Okta
18 19 (2.15%) Pure Storage