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 11 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 108 132
Rank change year-on-year -36 +24 -12
Contract jobs citing DNS 823 735 805
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.93% 2.49% 1.80%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.18% 18.70% 13.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 526 493 521
10th Percentile £231 £250 £200
25th Percentile £400 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £525 £465
Median % change year-on-year -2.62% +12.90% -11.43%
75th Percentile £612 £613 £588
90th Percentile £675 £738 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £516 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +8.68% -5.00% -1.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 11 26
10th Percentile £12.74 £18.50 £21.63
25th Percentile £20.56 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £33.50 £54.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.53% +36.25% -4.48%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.18 £54.49
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.10 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.10 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -56.49% +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 4,291 3,930 6,037
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.08% 13.33% 13.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,780 2,405 3,620
10th Percentile £206 £208 £205
25th Percentile £363 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% +5.26% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £473 £475
% change year-on-year -0.74% -0.53% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 140 399
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.32 £14.27
25th Percentile £20.28 £21.46 £18.97
Median hourly rate £40.02 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.34% -12.50% +110.53%
75th Percentile £67.31 £63.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £33.75 £47.50
% change year-on-year +25.19% -28.95% +151.19%

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 11 March 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 11 March 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 11 March 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 -18 728 £515 -1.90% 291
UK excluding London -26 526 £516 +8.68% 272
London -25 230 £519 -1.23% 53
North of England -11 203 £450 -5.26% 74
Work from Home -54 185 £525 - 83
South East +8 150 £525 -3.67% 89
North West +18 132 £569 +20.37% 39
Midlands +7 103 £375 -18.03% 29
West Midlands +15 98 £375 -11.76% 18
Yorkshire -38 73 £447 -14.95% 26
South West -34 53 £693 +26.60% 25
East of England -29 38 £475 +5.56% 34
Scotland +11 37 £500 +11.11% 19
North East -21 6 £411 +21.70% 10
Wales -14 4 £550 +25.71% 6
East Midlands -40 4 £325 -42.73% 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 98 (11.91%) Microsoft Exchange
2 49 (5.95%) SharePoint
3 25 (3.04%) Skype for Business
4 14 (1.70%) Confluence
5 13 (1.58%) nginx
6 7 (0.85%) IIS
7 6 (0.73%) Apache
8 4 (0.49%) Exchange Server 2010
9 2 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.24%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.24%) WordPress
10 1 (0.12%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.12%) Traefik
10 1 (0.12%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.12%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 30 (3.65%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (1.94%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.24%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 280 (34.02%) Azure
2 148 (17.98%) AWS
3 143 (17.38%) Microsoft 365
4 134 (16.28%) Entra ID
5 73 (8.87%) GCP
6 59 (7.17%) GitHub
7 49 (5.95%) IaaS
8 39 (4.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 37 (4.50%) AWS CloudFormation
10 32 (3.89%) Amazon S3
11 31 (3.77%) PaaS
11 31 (3.77%) Serverless
12 30 (3.65%) Amazon EC2
13 29 (3.52%) AWS Lambda
13 29 (3.52%) Route 53
13 29 (3.52%) SaaS
14 25 (3.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 24 (2.92%) Amazon EKS
16 23 (2.79%) OpenShift
17 22 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 366 (44.47%) DHCP
2 255 (30.98%) Firewall
3 245 (29.77%) TCP/IP
4 191 (23.21%) VPN
5 109 (13.24%) WAN
6 100 (12.15%) LAN
7 84 (10.21%) SSL
8 83 (10.09%) Network Security
9 80 (9.72%) HTTP
10 73 (8.87%) BIG-IP
10 73 (8.87%) VLAN
11 66 (8.02%) BGP
12 59 (7.17%) Wi-Fi
13 55 (6.68%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 45 (5.47%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 39 (4.74%) DMZ
15 39 (4.74%) Wireshark
16 38 (4.62%) Kerberos
16 38 (4.62%) OSPF
17 35 (4.25%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (2.67%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.19%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (1.58%) Amazon RDS
3 13 (1.58%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (0.85%) DynamoDB
4 7 (0.85%) MongoDB
4 7 (0.85%) Redis
5 6 (0.73%) Amazon Aurora
5 6 (0.73%) Data Hub
6 5 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (0.61%) MySQL
7 4 (0.49%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.49%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.49%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.36%) BigQuery
8 3 (0.36%) Power BI
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.12%) CouchDB
9 1 (0.12%) Electronic Patient Records
9 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 61 (7.41%) Jenkins
2 38 (4.62%) JIRA
3 36 (4.37%) GitLab
4 35 (4.25%) Git
5 31 (3.77%) Fiddler
6 8 (0.97%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.85%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.85%) Terragrunt
8 6 (0.73%) Browser DevTools
9 5 (0.61%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.49%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.24%) Subversion
12 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.12%) GCC
12 1 (0.12%) MSI
12 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.12%) TeamCity
12 1 (0.12%) Travis CI
General
1 215 (26.12%) Social Skills
2 102 (12.39%) Analytical Skills
3 71 (8.63%) Banking
4 61 (7.41%) Finance
5 54 (6.56%) Public Sector
6 47 (5.71%) Documentation Skills
6 47 (5.71%) Investment Banking
7 28 (3.40%) Legal
8 18 (2.19%) Telecoms
9 16 (1.94%) Military
10 10 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (0.73%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.61%) Law
14 4 (0.49%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (0.49%) Local Government
15 3 (0.36%) Manufacturing
16 2 (0.24%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 132 (16.04%) Network Engineer
2 114 (13.85%) Architect
3 77 (9.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 76 (9.23%) Analyst
5 70 (8.51%) Senior
6 64 (7.78%) Support Engineer
7 51 (6.20%) Security Engineer
8 46 (5.59%) IT Support
9 43 (5.22%) Web Engineer
10 36 (4.37%) Lead
11 33 (4.01%) IT Engineer
12 30 (3.65%) Network Security Engineer
12 30 (3.65%) Platform Engineer
13 26 (3.16%) IT Support Engineer
13 26 (3.16%) SOC Analyst
14 25 (3.04%) Cisco Engineer
14 25 (3.04%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 24 (2.92%) Azure Engineer
16 22 (2.67%) DevOps Engineer
17 21 (2.55%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (8.38%) LDAP
2 49 (5.95%) SAML
3 41 (4.98%) OAuth
4 33 (4.01%) OpenID
5 28 (3.40%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.43%) OAuth2
7 18 (2.19%) OpenTelemetry
8 11 (1.34%) Kafka
9 10 (1.22%) Elastic Stack
10 9 (1.09%) REST
11 7 (0.85%) ARM Templates
11 7 (0.85%) JSON
11 7 (0.85%) XMPP
12 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Graph
13 5 (0.61%) AWS CDK
13 5 (0.61%) RESTful
13 5 (0.61%) Spring Boot
14 4 (0.49%) gRPC
14 4 (0.49%) JPA
14 4 (0.49%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 70 (8.51%) PKI
2 69 (8.38%) Data Centre
3 50 (6.08%) Replication
4 40 (4.86%) Cloud Native
4 40 (4.86%) Management Information System
5 32 (3.89%) Onboarding
6 29 (3.52%) Clustering
7 26 (3.16%) Public Cloud
7 26 (3.16%) Security Operations Centre
8 25 (3.04%) Cyberattack
9 21 (2.55%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 21 (2.55%) Hybrid Cloud
10 20 (2.43%) Enterprise Software
11 16 (1.94%) Analytical Mindset
11 16 (1.94%) Cyber Threat
12 15 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
13 14 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
14 12 (1.46%) NHS
14 12 (1.46%) Product Ownership
15 11 (1.34%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 385 (46.78%) Windows
2 197 (23.94%) Windows Server
3 130 (15.80%) Linux
4 47 (5.71%) Windows 10
5 31 (3.77%) Windows Server 2019
6 19 (2.31%) Unix
7 18 (2.19%) Android
8 16 (1.94%) Windows Server 2012
9 15 (1.82%) Mac OS
10 14 (1.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 13 (1.58%) Apple iOS
11 13 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (1.34%) Windows 7
13 9 (1.09%) VMS
14 7 (0.85%) CentOS
15 6 (0.73%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.49%) CatOS
17 3 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
17 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
18 2 (0.24%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 193 (23.45%) Problem-Solving
2 169 (20.53%) Load Balancing
3 122 (14.82%) ITIL
4 119 (14.46%) Migration
5 110 (13.37%) CI/CD
6 104 (12.64%) Infrastructure as Code
7 103 (12.52%) DevOps
7 103 (12.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 102 (12.39%) High Availability
9 81 (9.84%) Cybersecurity
10 74 (8.99%) Identity Access Management
11 72 (8.75%) Disaster Recovery
12 65 (7.90%) ITSM
13 64 (7.78%) Incident Response
13 64 (7.78%) Service Management
14 62 (7.53%) Change Management
14 62 (7.53%) RBAC
14 62 (7.53%) SIEM
15 58 (7.05%) Observability
16 54 (6.56%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 231 (28.07%) PowerShell
2 139 (16.89%) Python
3 71 (8.63%) Bash
4 44 (5.35%) SQL
5 14 (1.70%) JavaScript
6 13 (1.58%) Bicep
6 13 (1.58%) VBScript
7 11 (1.34%) Go
7 11 (1.34%) Java
7 11 (1.34%) Ruby
7 11 (1.34%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.22%) VB
9 7 (0.85%) Lisp
9 7 (0.85%) Perl
10 5 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.24%) C
11 2 (0.24%) C#
11 2 (0.24%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.24%) VBA
12 1 (0.12%) PHP
Qualifications
1 280 (34.02%) Security Cleared
2 191 (23.21%) SC Cleared
3 101 (12.27%) DV Cleared
4 62 (7.53%) Cisco Certification
5 59 (7.17%) Degree
6 51 (6.20%) Microsoft Certification
7 42 (5.10%) CCNP
8 31 (3.77%) CompTIA Security+
9 27 (3.28%) Azure Certification
10 22 (2.67%) CCNA
11 21 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (2.31%) CISSP
13 17 (2.07%) AWS Certification
13 17 (2.07%) CompTIA CySA+
13 17 (2.07%) Network+ Certification
14 10 (1.22%) BPSS Clearance
14 10 (1.22%) MCSE
15 9 (1.09%) Server+ Certification
16 8 (0.97%) ITIL Certification
16 8 (0.97%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.77%) GDPR
2 27 (3.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (2.92%) NIST
4 21 (2.55%) SLA
5 18 (2.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.09%) NCSC
6 9 (1.09%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.73%) QA
9 3 (0.36%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.36%) PMO
10 2 (0.24%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.24%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.12%) COBIT
11 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.12%) RMADS
System Software
1 354 (43.01%) Active Directory
2 184 (22.36%) VMware Infrastructure
3 62 (7.53%) Hyper-V
4 57 (6.93%) Docker
5 56 (6.80%) VMware NSX
6 51 (6.20%) vSphere
7 25 (3.04%) Firmware
7 25 (3.04%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (2.19%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (1.82%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (0.97%) Squid
12 7 (0.85%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.61%) NFS
14 4 (0.49%) Sendmail
14 4 (0.49%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.36%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.36%) Postfix
15 3 (0.36%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 140 (17.01%) Terraform
2 123 (14.95%) Ansible
3 95 (11.54%) Microsoft Intune
4 84 (10.21%) Kubernetes
5 74 (8.99%) Single Sign-On
6 71 (8.63%) SCCM
7 61 (7.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 46 (5.59%) FortiGate
9 39 (4.74%) vCenter Server
10 35 (4.25%) Grafana
11 24 (2.92%) Argo
12 21 (2.55%) Prometheus
13 14 (1.70%) SCOM
13 14 (1.70%) WSUS
14 10 (1.22%) Puppet
15 8 (0.97%) HAProxy
16 7 (0.85%) Consul
16 7 (0.85%) QRadar
17 6 (0.73%) Nessus
17 6 (0.73%) Packer
Vendors
1 298 (36.21%) Microsoft
2 231 (28.07%) VMware
3 142 (17.25%) F5
4 127 (15.43%) Cisco
5 80 (9.72%) ServiceNow
6 79 (9.60%) Splunk
7 46 (5.59%) Blue Coat
8 43 (5.22%) Citrix
8 43 (5.22%) SolarWinds
9 39 (4.74%) Palo Alto
10 36 (4.37%) Juniper
10 36 (4.37%) McAfee
11 34 (4.13%) Red Hat
12 27 (3.28%) NetApp
13 25 (3.04%) Infoblox
14 24 (2.92%) Google
15 23 (2.79%) Okta
16 22 (2.67%) Fortinet
17 20 (2.43%) CheckPoint
17 20 (2.43%) Pure Storage