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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 126 159
Rank change year-on-year -14 +33 -20
Contract jobs citing DNS 952 677 664
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.89% 2.27% 1.51%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.86% 18.18% 12.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 578 476 452
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £406 £359
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £543 £475
Median % change year-on-year -8.76% +14.21% -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £611 £588
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -12.73% +10.00% -2.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 15 25
10th Percentile £20.50 - £19.10
25th Percentile £25.00 £29.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £54.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.37% +36.25% -32.28%
75th Percentile £53.75 £81.18 -
90th Percentile £74.00 £81.80 £50.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £41.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -21.69% +3.75% -23.27%

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 4,793 3,724 5,432
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.51% 12.51% 12.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,942 2,288 3,212
10th Percentile £250 £220 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +2.13% -3.59% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 291 175 422
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.04 £19.14 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.88 £44.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.64% +10.00% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.00 £71.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year -9.91% -34.57% +150.46%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 -16 843 £493 -10.45% 284
UK excluding London -8 596 £480 -12.73% 272
London -23 284 £500 - 65
North of England +11 234 £447 -10.60% 48
Work from Home -29 211 £525 -2.60% 113
South East +4 166 £525 -4.55% 96
North West +41 153 £450 - 32
Midlands +7 110 £450 -5.26% 39
West Midlands +14 96 £444 -6.58% 22
Yorkshire -28 75 £447 -18.77% 10
South West -22 62 £500 -18.70% 34
Scotland +26 46 £550 +22.22% 7
East of England -53 34 £450 -18.18% 33
East Midlands -22 13 £450 -18.92% 17
Wales -15 6 £300 -32.74% 12
North East -42 6 £306 -12.50% 7

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 85 (8.93%) Microsoft Exchange
2 58 (6.09%) SharePoint
3 19 (2.00%) Confluence
4 16 (1.68%) IIS
5 15 (1.58%) nginx
6 14 (1.47%) Apache
7 9 (0.95%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.53%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.42%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
11 1 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
11 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 20 (2.10%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.47%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 337 (35.40%) Azure
2 172 (18.07%) AWS
3 155 (16.28%) Entra ID
4 134 (14.08%) Microsoft 365
5 100 (10.50%) GCP
6 71 (7.46%) GitHub
7 59 (6.20%) IaaS
8 41 (4.31%) PaaS
9 39 (4.10%) SaaS
10 38 (3.99%) OneDrive
11 32 (3.36%) Serverless
12 29 (3.05%) Amazon EC2
13 28 (2.94%) Amazon S3
13 28 (2.94%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 27 (2.84%) Amazon EKS
14 27 (2.84%) Azure DevOps
15 26 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
15 26 (2.73%) OpenShift
15 26 (2.73%) Route 53
16 23 (2.42%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 421 (44.22%) DHCP
2 289 (30.36%) Firewall
3 226 (23.74%) TCP/IP
4 225 (23.63%) VPN
5 136 (14.29%) WAN
6 115 (12.08%) LAN
7 104 (10.92%) SSL
8 103 (10.82%) Network Security
9 94 (9.87%) BIG-IP
10 93 (9.77%) VLAN
11 85 (8.93%) BGP
12 77 (8.09%) HTTP
13 61 (6.41%) Wi-Fi
14 56 (5.88%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 53 (5.57%) Wireless
16 51 (5.36%) SAN
17 46 (4.83%) OSPF
18 44 (4.62%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 40 (4.20%) DMZ
20 37 (3.89%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (3.78%) SQL Server
2 19 (2.00%) Elasticsearch
3 17 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (1.16%) Azure SQL Database
6 9 (0.95%) Power BI
7 8 (0.84%) MySQL
8 6 (0.63%) MongoDB
8 6 (0.63%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.53%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.53%) DynamoDB
10 4 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (0.42%) DocumentDB
10 4 (0.42%) MariaDB
10 4 (0.42%) Redis
11 3 (0.32%) Big Data
12 2 (0.21%) SQLPlus
13 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
13 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 63 (6.62%) JIRA
2 59 (6.20%) Jenkins
3 32 (3.36%) Git
4 24 (2.52%) GitLab
5 23 (2.42%) Fiddler
6 9 (0.95%) Browser DevTools
7 8 (0.84%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.74%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.63%) Chocolatey
10 3 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.21%) Introscope
11 2 (0.21%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
General
1 213 (22.37%) Social Skills
2 81 (8.51%) Analytical Skills
3 75 (7.88%) Finance
4 70 (7.35%) Banking
5 66 (6.93%) Public Sector
6 49 (5.15%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (3.78%) Investment Banking
8 26 (2.73%) Legal
9 18 (1.89%) Military
10 15 (1.58%) Telecoms
11 10 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
12 8 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (0.84%) Local Government
13 6 (0.63%) Police
13 6 (0.63%) Publishing
14 5 (0.53%) Law
14 5 (0.53%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.42%) Advertising
15 4 (0.42%) Financial Institution
15 4 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 176 (18.49%) Network Engineer
2 137 (14.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 112 (11.76%) Architect
4 69 (7.25%) Senior
4 69 (7.25%) Support Engineer
5 67 (7.04%) Analyst
6 61 (6.41%) Security Engineer
7 51 (5.36%) Cloud Engineer
8 48 (5.04%) IT Support
9 46 (4.83%) Web Engineer
10 41 (4.31%) Network Security Engineer
11 39 (4.10%) IT Engineer
12 37 (3.89%) Cisco Engineer
12 37 (3.89%) DevOps Engineer
13 35 (3.68%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 34 (3.57%) Administrator
15 33 (3.47%) Azure Engineer
15 33 (3.47%) Data Engineer
15 33 (3.47%) Data Network Engineer
16 32 (3.36%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (5.99%) LDAP
2 52 (5.46%) SAML
3 43 (4.52%) 802.1X
4 40 (4.20%) OAuth
5 33 (3.47%) OpenID
6 21 (2.21%) OpenTelemetry
7 15 (1.58%) JSON
8 13 (1.37%) ARM Templates
9 10 (1.05%) OAuth2
9 10 (1.05%) REST
10 8 (0.84%) Kafka
11 5 (0.53%) CSS
11 5 (0.53%) gRPC
11 5 (0.53%) XMPP
12 4 (0.42%) Hibernate
12 4 (0.42%) JPA
12 4 (0.42%) Spring
12 4 (0.42%) Spring Cloud
12 4 (0.42%) Web Services
12 4 (0.42%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 110 (11.55%) Data Centre
2 70 (7.35%) PKI
3 60 (6.30%) Cloud Native
4 51 (5.36%) Onboarding
5 40 (4.20%) Hybrid Cloud
6 39 (4.10%) Clustering
6 39 (4.10%) Replication
7 37 (3.89%) Management Information System
8 33 (3.47%) Public Cloud
9 30 (3.15%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 21 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.68%) Enterprise Cloud
11 16 (1.68%) Security Operations Centre
12 14 (1.47%) Security Posture
13 13 (1.37%) Cyberattack
13 13 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
13 13 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
14 12 (1.26%) Cyber Threat
14 12 (1.26%) Virtual Team
15 11 (1.16%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 399 (41.91%) Windows
2 223 (23.42%) Windows Server
3 137 (14.39%) Linux
4 42 (4.41%) Windows 10
5 37 (3.89%) Windows Server 2019
6 33 (3.47%) Mac OS
6 33 (3.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 24 (2.52%) Unix
8 20 (2.10%) Apple iOS
8 20 (2.10%) Windows Server 2012
9 15 (1.58%) Android
10 11 (1.16%) Ubuntu
10 11 (1.16%) VMS
10 11 (1.16%) Windows Server 2016
11 9 (0.95%) CentOS
12 7 (0.74%) Windows 7
12 7 (0.74%) Windows Server 2003
13 3 (0.32%) AIX
14 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (20.17%) Problem-Solving
2 175 (18.38%) Load Balancing
3 174 (18.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 165 (17.33%) Migration
5 146 (15.34%) High Availability
6 139 (14.60%) DevOps
7 135 (14.18%) ITIL
8 117 (12.29%) CI/CD
9 116 (12.18%) Infrastructure as Code
10 96 (10.08%) ITSM
11 81 (8.51%) Observability
12 79 (8.30%) Disaster Recovery
13 78 (8.19%) Identity Access Management
14 75 (7.88%) Agile
15 72 (7.56%) Project Delivery
16 66 (6.93%) Cybersecurity
17 59 (6.20%) Runbook
18 57 (5.99%) RBAC
19 55 (5.78%) Root Cause Analysis
20 53 (5.57%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 182 (19.12%) PowerShell
2 148 (15.55%) Python
3 92 (9.66%) Bash
4 55 (5.78%) SQL
5 25 (2.63%) JavaScript
6 24 (2.52%) Bicep
7 13 (1.37%) Java
8 10 (1.05%) ActionScript
8 10 (1.05%) Go
9 9 (0.95%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.95%) VBA
10 8 (0.84%) Perl
11 6 (0.63%) VBScript
12 5 (0.53%) Groovy
12 5 (0.53%) Ruby
13 4 (0.42%) C
13 4 (0.42%) VB
14 3 (0.32%) Lisp
15 2 (0.21%) Jython
15 2 (0.21%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 306 (32.14%) Security Cleared
2 193 (20.27%) SC Cleared
3 107 (11.24%) DV Cleared
4 92 (9.66%) Cisco Certification
5 74 (7.77%) Degree
6 60 (6.30%) CCNP
7 51 (5.36%) CCNA
8 30 (3.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 28 (2.94%) Azure Certification
10 26 (2.73%) Network+ Certification
11 24 (2.52%) CompTIA Security+
12 17 (1.79%) Server+ Certification
13 16 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
14 15 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
15 14 (1.47%) CISSP
16 12 (1.26%) AWS Certification
16 12 (1.26%) CCIE
17 11 (1.16%) CompTIA CySA+
17 11 (1.16%) JNCIA
17 11 (1.16%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.26%) SLA
2 29 (3.05%) NIST
3 21 (2.21%) GDPR
3 21 (2.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 14 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 12 (1.26%) QA
6 7 (0.74%) NCSC
7 5 (0.53%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.11%) COBIT
11 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.11%) PMO
11 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 376 (39.50%) Active Directory
2 206 (21.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 94 (9.87%) Hyper-V
4 58 (6.09%) vSphere
5 55 (5.78%) VMware NSX
6 49 (5.15%) VMware ESXi
7 40 (4.20%) Virtual Machines
8 35 (3.68%) Docker
8 35 (3.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 25 (2.63%) Firmware
10 18 (1.89%) NFS
11 16 (1.68%) BitLocker
12 15 (1.58%) Squid
13 12 (1.26%) Microsoft App-V
14 11 (1.16%) vCloud
15 10 (1.05%) Postfix
16 8 (0.84%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.74%) Varnish
18 6 (0.63%) Terminal Services
19 5 (0.53%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 147 (15.44%) Terraform
2 122 (12.82%) Ansible
3 93 (9.77%) Kubernetes
4 77 (8.09%) Microsoft Intune
5 74 (7.77%) Single Sign-On
6 52 (5.46%) FortiGate
7 50 (5.25%) Grafana
8 49 (5.15%) vCenter Server
9 46 (4.83%) SCCM
10 40 (4.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 36 (3.78%) Prometheus
12 24 (2.52%) Argo
12 24 (2.52%) WSUS
13 18 (1.89%) SCOM
14 16 (1.68%) Puppet
15 14 (1.47%) HAProxy
16 13 (1.37%) Jamf Pro
16 13 (1.37%) vMotion
17 12 (1.26%) Nessus
18 8 (0.84%) Consul
Vendors
1 305 (32.04%) Microsoft
2 243 (25.53%) VMware
3 173 (18.17%) Cisco
4 156 (16.39%) F5
5 89 (9.35%) ServiceNow
6 78 (8.19%) Splunk
7 59 (6.20%) Infoblox
8 58 (6.09%) Citrix
9 50 (5.25%) Google
9 50 (5.25%) SolarWinds
10 49 (5.15%) Red Hat
11 45 (4.73%) Juniper
12 36 (3.78%) Palo Alto
13 31 (3.26%) Blue Coat
14 30 (3.15%) Dynatrace
14 30 (3.15%) NetApp
15 26 (2.73%) McAfee
16 24 (2.52%) Okta
17 23 (2.42%) Fortinet
18 22 (2.31%) Extreme Networks