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 29 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 146 111 115
Rank change year-on-year -35 +4 +22
Contract jobs citing DNS 730 730 926
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.98% 2.19% 2.14%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.46% 17.22% 15.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 457 454 592
10th Percentile £213 £223 £213
25th Percentile £400 £350 £370
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -2.56% -7.14%
75th Percentile £600 £595 £600
90th Percentile £677 £738 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £434 £500
% change year-on-year +15.27% -13.25% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 10 18
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.88 £25.70
25th Percentile £25.70 £21.71 £31.44
Median hourly rate £57.50 £23.59 £55.70
Median % change year-on-year +143.75% -57.65% +112.19%
75th Percentile £77.50 £28.83 £65.25
90th Percentile £85.60 £39.20 £72.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £23.35 £58.20
% change year-on-year +178.37% -59.88% +51.17%

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 3,954 4,240 5,896
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.72% 12.73% 13.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,586 2,496 3,643
10th Percentile £206 £220 £210
25th Percentile £356 £365 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £473 £473
% change year-on-year -4.76% - +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 136 326
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.78 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.00 £21.13 £23.00
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% -38.04% +61.40%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.03 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.63 £75.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £32.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +30.77% -43.48% +41.71%

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 29 December 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 29 December 2025.

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 29 December 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 -17 654 £525 +10.53% 871
UK excluding London -24 452 £500 +15.27% 793
London -1 222 £550 +4.76% 153
Work from Home -45 181 £500 - 296
North of England -28 135 £470 +17.50% 180
Midlands +14 118 £401 +4.16% 122
South East +4 115 £500 +8.11% 239
West Midlands +36 113 £401 -5.65% 63
North West +2 91 £500 +5.26% 102
South West -13 61 £575 +12.20% 87
Yorkshire -30 51 £447 +49.00% 63
East of England -22 38 £363 +28.32% 126
Scotland -23 25 £460 +2.11% 36
North East -13 7 £575 +283.33% 17
East Midlands -37 5 £363 -3.33% 54
Wales -10 3 £550 +33.33% 18

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 91 (12.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 71 (9.73%) SharePoint
3 32 (4.38%) Skype for Business
4 23 (3.15%) Confluence
5 13 (1.78%) nginx
6 12 (1.64%) Exchange Server 2010
7 11 (1.51%) SharePoint Server
8 10 (1.37%) Exchange Server 2013
9 9 (1.23%) IIS
10 7 (0.96%) Exchange Server 2003
10 7 (0.96%) Exchange Server 2007
10 7 (0.96%) Office Communications Server
11 6 (0.82%) OpenStack
12 5 (0.68%) Apache
13 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
14 2 (0.27%) Apache Spark
14 2 (0.27%) Cloud Foundry
14 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
14 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
14 2 (0.27%) WordPress
Applications
1 47 (6.44%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.37%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 10 (1.37%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.55%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.27%) Windchill
6 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.14%) Eikon
2 1 (0.14%) Eze OMS
2 1 (0.14%) Fidessa
2 1 (0.14%) Pegasus Opera
Cloud Services
1 238 (32.60%) Azure
2 182 (24.93%) AWS
3 150 (20.55%) Microsoft 365
4 99 (13.56%) Entra ID
5 69 (9.45%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 57 (7.81%) Amazon EC2
7 56 (7.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 56 (7.67%) Amazon S3
8 49 (6.71%) GitHub
9 46 (6.30%) GCP
10 42 (5.75%) Amazon ELB
11 39 (5.34%) IaaS
12 33 (4.52%) AWS CloudFormation
13 32 (4.38%) SaaS
14 30 (4.11%) Amazon ECS
15 26 (3.56%) Serverless
16 24 (3.29%) AWS KMS
16 24 (3.29%) AWS Lambda
16 24 (3.29%) GitHub Actions
17 20 (2.74%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 307 (42.05%) DHCP
2 258 (35.34%) Firewall
3 251 (34.38%) TCP/IP
4 178 (24.38%) VPN
5 103 (14.11%) Network Security
6 102 (13.97%) SSL
7 89 (12.19%) HTTP
8 76 (10.41%) WAN
9 66 (9.04%) VLAN
10 61 (8.36%) LAN
11 50 (6.85%) SMTP
12 47 (6.44%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 46 (6.30%) Wireless
14 43 (5.89%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 38 (5.21%) BGP
15 38 (5.21%) FTP
16 36 (4.93%) DMZ
17 34 (4.66%) Wi-Fi
18 33 (4.52%) Wireshark
19 29 (3.97%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (4.25%) Amazon RDS
2 24 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (3.15%) SQL Server
4 15 (2.05%) Amazon Aurora
5 10 (1.37%) MongoDB
6 8 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
7 6 (0.82%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.68%) BigQuery
9 4 (0.55%) Apache Cassandra
9 4 (0.55%) Big Data
9 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.41%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.41%) MySQL
10 3 (0.41%) Redis
11 2 (0.27%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.27%) Hadoop
11 2 (0.27%) NoSQL
11 2 (0.27%) Parquet
11 2 (0.27%) Power BI
12 1 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 89 (12.19%) Jenkins
2 79 (10.82%) Git
3 49 (6.71%) GitLab
3 49 (6.71%) JIRA
4 21 (2.88%) Fiddler
5 17 (2.33%) Vagrant
6 8 (1.10%) Terragrunt
7 5 (0.68%) Subversion
8 4 (0.55%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.55%) TeamCity
9 3 (0.41%) Visual Studio Code
10 2 (0.27%) Browser DevTools
10 2 (0.27%) MLflow
10 2 (0.27%) Poetry
10 2 (0.27%) PyCharm
10 2 (0.27%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.27%) Vite
10 2 (0.27%) webpack
11 1 (0.14%) Postman
11 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 229 (31.37%) Social Skills
2 118 (16.16%) Analytical Skills
3 78 (10.68%) Public Sector
4 54 (7.40%) Banking
5 52 (7.12%) Finance
6 39 (5.34%) Investment Banking
7 38 (5.21%) Documentation Skills
8 24 (3.29%) Telecoms
9 18 (2.47%) Legal
9 18 (2.47%) Presentation Skills
10 10 (1.37%) Law
10 10 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.23%) Military
12 8 (1.10%) Aerospace
13 7 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.68%) Marketing
15 4 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 3 (0.41%) Local Government
16 3 (0.41%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 91 (12.47%) Network Engineer
2 77 (10.55%) Support Engineer
3 76 (10.41%) Senior
4 74 (10.14%) Analyst
4 74 (10.14%) Architect
4 74 (10.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 50 (6.85%) DevOps Engineer
6 49 (6.71%) Platform Engineer
7 42 (5.75%) IT Support
8 37 (5.07%) Security Engineer
9 35 (4.79%) AWS Engineer
10 31 (4.25%) SOC Analyst
11 28 (3.84%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 27 (3.70%) Lead
13 26 (3.56%) 2nd Line Support
13 26 (3.56%) Cloud Platform Engineer
14 25 (3.42%) Operations Engineer
15 24 (3.29%) AWS DevOps
15 24 (3.29%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 23 (3.15%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (7.26%) LDAP
2 25 (3.42%) SAML
3 19 (2.60%) OAuth
4 17 (2.33%) Elastic Stack
5 16 (2.19%) OpenID
6 15 (2.05%) 802.1X
7 14 (1.92%) OAuth2
8 12 (1.64%) REST
9 10 (1.37%) Kafka
9 10 (1.37%) Middleware
9 10 (1.37%) SOAP
10 9 (1.23%) AngularJS
11 7 (0.96%) React
12 6 (0.82%) cloud-init
12 6 (0.82%) Keycloak
12 6 (0.82%) YAML
13 5 (0.68%) Flask
13 5 (0.68%) JSON
14 4 (0.55%) ASP.NET Web API
14 4 (0.55%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 58 (7.95%) PKI
2 56 (7.67%) Data Centre
2 56 (7.67%) Management Information System
3 54 (7.40%) Replication
4 32 (4.38%) Onboarding
5 30 (4.11%) Analytical Mindset
6 28 (3.84%) Security Operations Centre
7 27 (3.70%) Cyberattack
8 23 (3.15%) Enterprise Software
9 18 (2.47%) Cyber Threat
9 18 (2.47%) Hybrid Cloud
10 16 (2.19%) Cloud Native
11 13 (1.78%) CSOC
12 12 (1.64%) Private Cloud
12 12 (1.64%) Video Conferencing
13 11 (1.51%) Clustering
13 11 (1.51%) Security Posture
13 11 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (1.37%) Public Cloud
14 10 (1.37%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 365 (50.00%) Windows
2 176 (24.11%) Linux
3 161 (22.05%) Windows Server
4 62 (8.49%) Windows 10
5 28 (3.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (3.84%) Unix
6 27 (3.70%) VMS
7 25 (3.42%) Windows Server 2016
7 25 (3.42%) Windows Server 2019
8 21 (2.88%) Windows Server 2012
9 20 (2.74%) Amazon Linux
10 18 (2.47%) Android
11 16 (2.19%) Ubuntu
12 14 (1.92%) CentOS
12 14 (1.92%) Mac OS
13 13 (1.78%) Apple iOS
14 12 (1.64%) Windows Server 2003
15 8 (1.10%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.68%) Solaris
17 3 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (23.42%) Problem-Solving
2 134 (18.36%) ITIL
3 127 (17.40%) CI/CD
4 123 (16.85%) DevOps
5 110 (15.07%) Infrastructure as Code
5 110 (15.07%) Load Balancing
6 101 (13.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 88 (12.05%) Cybersecurity
8 78 (10.68%) Change Management
9 76 (10.41%) Incident Response
10 74 (10.14%) High Availability
10 74 (10.14%) Migration
11 67 (9.18%) SIEM
12 63 (8.63%) Root Cause Analysis
12 63 (8.63%) Service Management
13 58 (7.95%) Disaster Recovery
14 57 (7.81%) Platform Engineering
15 56 (7.67%) Agile
16 55 (7.53%) Continuous Improvement
17 51 (6.99%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 214 (29.32%) PowerShell
2 180 (24.66%) Python
3 87 (11.92%) Bash
4 49 (6.71%) SQL
5 23 (3.15%) Perl
6 20 (2.74%) Java
7 19 (2.60%) Groovy
8 14 (1.92%) Bicep
8 14 (1.92%) Go
9 13 (1.78%) Shell Script
10 10 (1.37%) Ruby
11 8 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
12 7 (0.96%) Lisp
12 7 (0.96%) VBScript
13 6 (0.82%) JavaScript
13 6 (0.82%) VB
14 5 (0.68%) C++
15 3 (0.41%) C#
15 3 (0.41%) T-SQL
15 3 (0.41%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 268 (36.71%) Security Cleared
2 193 (26.44%) SC Cleared
3 87 (11.92%) DV Cleared
4 74 (10.14%) Degree
5 65 (8.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 53 (7.26%) Cisco Certification
7 42 (5.75%) CCNP
8 40 (5.48%) Azure Certification
9 24 (3.29%) AWS Certification
10 22 (3.01%) CompTIA Security+
11 21 (2.88%) CISSP
12 19 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
13 18 (2.47%) CCNA
14 17 (2.33%) Network+ Certification
15 13 (1.78%) MCSE
16 12 (1.64%) CCIE
16 12 (1.64%) CompTIA CySA+
17 11 (1.51%) Server+ Certification
18 10 (1.37%) MCSA
19 9 (1.23%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.25%) GDPR
2 18 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 18 (2.47%) SLA
3 14 (1.92%) NIST
4 10 (1.37%) NCSC
5 8 (1.10%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.10%) Cyber Essentials
6 7 (0.96%) PCI DSS
6 7 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.55%) Data Quality
8 3 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.27%) PMO
9 2 (0.27%) QA
9 2 (0.27%) WCAG
10 1 (0.14%) COBIT
10 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 322 (44.11%) Active Directory
2 188 (25.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 95 (13.01%) Docker
4 55 (7.53%) Hyper-V
5 41 (5.62%) VMware NSX
6 30 (4.11%) Virtual Machines
7 29 (3.97%) vSphere
8 20 (2.74%) DFS Replication
8 20 (2.74%) Firmware
9 19 (2.60%) VMware ESXi
10 16 (2.19%) Dovecot
10 16 (2.19%) Postfix
11 15 (2.05%) Terminal Services
12 10 (1.37%) Squid
12 10 (1.37%) Virtual Desktop
13 9 (1.23%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.96%) BitLocker
14 7 (0.96%) Brightmail
14 7 (0.96%) ISA Server
15 5 (0.68%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 143 (19.59%) Terraform
2 121 (16.58%) Ansible
3 77 (10.55%) Microsoft Intune
4 76 (10.41%) SCCM
5 66 (9.04%) Kubernetes
6 49 (6.71%) Single Sign-On
7 45 (6.16%) Grafana
8 42 (5.75%) vCenter Server
9 36 (4.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (4.79%) Prometheus
11 21 (2.88%) WSUS
12 17 (2.33%) Nessus
13 16 (2.19%) Argo
14 15 (2.05%) FortiGate
15 13 (1.78%) Packer
15 13 (1.78%) Proxmox
16 12 (1.64%) SCOM
17 11 (1.51%) Microsoft Clustering
17 11 (1.51%) Progress Chef
17 11 (1.51%) Puppet
Vendors
1 267 (36.58%) Microsoft
2 224 (30.68%) VMware
3 113 (15.48%) F5
4 107 (14.66%) Cisco
5 81 (11.10%) ServiceNow
6 61 (8.36%) Splunk
7 60 (8.22%) Palo Alto
8 51 (6.99%) CheckPoint
9 38 (5.21%) Citrix
10 37 (5.07%) Blue Coat
11 34 (4.66%) Red Hat
12 32 (4.38%) SolarWinds
13 26 (3.56%) Juniper
13 26 (3.56%) Veeam
14 25 (3.42%) McAfee
15 24 (3.29%) NetApp
16 21 (2.88%) Fortinet
17 19 (2.60%) Oracle
17 19 (2.60%) Zscaler
18 18 (2.47%) Google