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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 123 162
Rank change year-on-year -12 +39 -23
Contract jobs citing DNS 961 674 659
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.93% 2.30% 1.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.02% 18.36% 12.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 594 476 446
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £401 £405 £353
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £475
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +15.79% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £588
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £548 £500
% change year-on-year -12.33% +9.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 14 25
10th Percentile £19.49 - £19.10
25th Percentile £25.58 £29.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £56.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.96% +40.00% -23.27%
75th Percentile £73.00 £81.27 -
90th Percentile £74.26 £81.88 £50.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £61.09 £40.00
% change year-on-year -46.80% +52.72% -16.56%

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 4,801 3,672 5,408
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.66% 12.54% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,942 2,266 3,205
10th Percentile £263 £216 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -3.03% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £466 £485
% change year-on-year +2.04% -3.92% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 165 420
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £27.88 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.82% +3.75% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.61 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year +4.57% -34.57% +156.76%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -16 844 £500 -9.09% 299
UK excluding London -1 606 £480 -12.33% 274
London -30 277 £500 -2.20% 70
North of England +13 236 £447 -5.89% 57
Work from Home -32 210 £525 -2.60% 135
South East +4 173 £525 -4.55% 93
North West +40 155 £458 +7.65% 36
Midlands +5 111 £444 -12.13% 32
West Midlands +7 98 £450 +2.86% 21
Yorkshire -26 75 £447 -18.73% 16
South West -31 56 £480 -21.95% 39
Scotland +31 50 £550 +22.22% 11
East of England -52 38 £450 -18.18% 33
East Midlands -29 12 £394 -30.62% 11
Wales -17 6 £300 -33.33% 12
North East -31 6 £306 -12.50% 6

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 88 (9.16%) Microsoft Exchange
2 56 (5.83%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.98%) Confluence
4 17 (1.77%) nginx
5 15 (1.56%) IIS
6 14 (1.46%) Apache
7 9 (0.94%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.52%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.42%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.21%) Exchange Server 2013
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 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
11 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.10%) Traefik
Applications
1 18 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.35%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.62%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 340 (35.38%) Azure
2 182 (18.94%) AWS
3 152 (15.82%) Entra ID
4 133 (13.84%) Microsoft 365
5 104 (10.82%) GCP
6 75 (7.80%) GitHub
7 59 (6.14%) IaaS
8 42 (4.37%) PaaS
9 39 (4.06%) SaaS
10 34 (3.54%) OneDrive
10 34 (3.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 33 (3.43%) GitHub Actions
12 32 (3.33%) Amazon EC2
12 32 (3.33%) Amazon S3
13 31 (3.23%) Amazon EKS
14 30 (3.12%) AWS CloudFormation
14 30 (3.12%) Serverless
15 28 (2.91%) Route 53
16 27 (2.81%) AWS Lambda
17 26 (2.71%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 421 (43.81%) DHCP
2 289 (30.07%) Firewall
3 237 (24.66%) TCP/IP
4 230 (23.93%) VPN
5 128 (13.32%) WAN
6 113 (11.76%) LAN
7 106 (11.03%) SSL
8 100 (10.41%) Network Security
9 96 (9.99%) VLAN
10 94 (9.78%) BIG-IP
11 87 (9.05%) BGP
12 78 (8.12%) HTTP
13 57 (5.93%) Wi-Fi
14 55 (5.72%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 52 (5.41%) Wireless
16 49 (5.10%) SAN
17 48 (4.99%) OSPF
18 42 (4.37%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 41 (4.27%) Kerberos
20 38 (3.95%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (3.85%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.19%) Elasticsearch
3 19 (1.98%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (0.94%) MongoDB
5 9 (0.94%) Power BI
6 8 (0.83%) MySQL
7 6 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
7 6 (0.62%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.52%) DynamoDB
9 4 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
9 4 (0.42%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.42%) MariaDB
9 4 (0.42%) Redis
10 2 (0.21%) Big Data
10 2 (0.21%) SQLPlus
11 1 (0.10%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.10%) Relational Database
11 1 (0.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.10%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 64 (6.66%) JIRA
2 63 (6.56%) Jenkins
3 34 (3.54%) Git
4 32 (3.33%) GitLab
5 25 (2.60%) Fiddler
6 9 (0.94%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.73%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.73%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.62%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.42%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.31%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.21%) Introscope
12 1 (0.10%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.10%) Spinnaker
General
1 215 (22.37%) Social Skills
2 90 (9.37%) Analytical Skills
3 75 (7.80%) Banking
3 75 (7.80%) Finance
4 63 (6.56%) Public Sector
5 49 (5.10%) Documentation Skills
6 38 (3.95%) Investment Banking
7 27 (2.81%) Legal
8 17 (1.77%) Military
9 14 (1.46%) Telecoms
10 9 (0.94%) Law
10 9 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (0.73%) Local Government
12 5 (0.52%) Manufacturing
12 5 (0.52%) Police
13 4 (0.42%) Advertising
13 4 (0.42%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
13 4 (0.42%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 173 (18.00%) Network Engineer
2 134 (13.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 116 (12.07%) Architect
4 81 (8.43%) Analyst
5 72 (7.49%) Senior
6 64 (6.66%) Security Engineer
6 64 (6.66%) Support Engineer
7 48 (4.99%) Web Engineer
8 46 (4.79%) Cloud Engineer
8 46 (4.79%) IT Support
9 43 (4.47%) Network Security Engineer
10 37 (3.85%) Cisco Engineer
10 37 (3.85%) IT Engineer
11 35 (3.64%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 34 (3.54%) Administrator
12 34 (3.54%) Data Engineer
12 34 (3.54%) Data Network Engineer
12 34 (3.54%) Lead
13 33 (3.43%) Azure Engineer
13 33 (3.43%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (6.66%) LDAP
2 53 (5.52%) SAML
3 42 (4.37%) OAuth
4 40 (4.16%) 802.1X
5 31 (3.23%) OpenID
6 20 (2.08%) OpenTelemetry
7 15 (1.56%) JSON
8 12 (1.25%) ARM Templates
9 10 (1.04%) Kafka
9 10 (1.04%) REST
10 9 (0.94%) OAuth2
11 7 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
12 5 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
12 5 (0.52%) XMPP
13 4 (0.42%) CSS
13 4 (0.42%) Hibernate
13 4 (0.42%) JPA
13 4 (0.42%) Spring
13 4 (0.42%) Web Services
13 4 (0.42%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 102 (10.61%) Data Centre
2 73 (7.60%) PKI
3 59 (6.14%) Cloud Native
4 53 (5.52%) Onboarding
5 42 (4.37%) Replication
6 40 (4.16%) Management Information System
7 39 (4.06%) Clustering
8 36 (3.75%) Public Cloud
9 35 (3.64%) Hybrid Cloud
10 29 (3.02%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 26 (2.71%) Security Operations Centre
12 23 (2.39%) Cyberattack
13 21 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
14 16 (1.66%) Cyber Threat
14 16 (1.66%) Enterprise Cloud
15 14 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
16 13 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
16 13 (1.35%) Security Posture
16 13 (1.35%) Virtual Team
17 12 (1.25%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 409 (42.56%) Windows
2 226 (23.52%) Windows Server
3 148 (15.40%) Linux
4 42 (4.37%) Windows 10
5 40 (4.16%) Windows Server 2019
6 31 (3.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 29 (3.02%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.81%) Unix
9 20 (2.08%) Windows Server 2012
10 18 (1.87%) Apple iOS
11 15 (1.56%) Android
12 13 (1.35%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (1.14%) VMS
14 10 (1.04%) Ubuntu
15 9 (0.94%) CentOS
16 8 (0.83%) Windows Server 2003
17 7 (0.73%) Windows 7
18 3 (0.31%) AIX
19 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
19 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 198 (20.60%) Problem-Solving
2 179 (18.63%) Load Balancing
3 166 (17.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 161 (16.75%) Migration
5 147 (15.30%) High Availability
6 137 (14.26%) DevOps
7 134 (13.94%) ITIL
8 121 (12.59%) CI/CD
9 120 (12.49%) Infrastructure as Code
10 95 (9.89%) ITSM
11 84 (8.74%) Observability
12 83 (8.64%) Disaster Recovery
13 82 (8.53%) Cybersecurity
14 81 (8.43%) Identity Access Management
15 76 (7.91%) Agile
16 70 (7.28%) Project Delivery
17 62 (6.45%) Runbook
18 61 (6.35%) Root Cause Analysis
18 61 (6.35%) SIEM
19 58 (6.04%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 190 (19.77%) PowerShell
2 148 (15.40%) Python
3 92 (9.57%) Bash
4 53 (5.52%) SQL
5 25 (2.60%) JavaScript
6 23 (2.39%) Bicep
7 17 (1.77%) Java
8 12 (1.25%) Go
9 11 (1.14%) Shell Script
10 9 (0.94%) VBA
11 8 (0.83%) ActionScript
12 7 (0.73%) Perl
13 6 (0.62%) Ruby
13 6 (0.62%) VBScript
14 5 (0.52%) Groovy
15 4 (0.42%) C
15 4 (0.42%) VB
16 3 (0.31%) Lisp
17 2 (0.21%) Jython
17 2 (0.21%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 322 (33.51%) Security Cleared
2 206 (21.44%) SC Cleared
3 113 (11.76%) DV Cleared
4 87 (9.05%) Cisco Certification
5 75 (7.80%) Degree
6 56 (5.83%) CCNP
7 46 (4.79%) CCNA
8 31 (3.23%) CompTIA Security+
8 31 (3.23%) Microsoft Certification
9 28 (2.91%) Network+ Certification
10 26 (2.71%) Azure Certification
11 20 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
12 17 (1.77%) CompTIA CySA+
12 17 (1.77%) Server+ Certification
13 15 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
14 12 (1.25%) AWS Certification
15 11 (1.14%) CISSP
15 11 (1.14%) JNCIA
16 10 (1.04%) JNCIS
16 10 (1.04%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (3.54%) SLA
2 28 (2.91%) NIST
3 23 (2.39%) GDPR
4 19 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 16 (1.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 11 (1.14%) QA
7 7 (0.73%) NCSC
8 4 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.42%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.10%) COBIT
11 1 (0.10%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.10%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.10%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.10%) PMO
11 1 (0.10%) RMADS
System Software
1 380 (39.54%) Active Directory
2 209 (21.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 97 (10.09%) Hyper-V
4 58 (6.04%) vSphere
5 54 (5.62%) VMware NSX
6 46 (4.79%) VMware ESXi
7 43 (4.47%) Docker
8 37 (3.85%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (2.81%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.60%) Firmware
11 18 (1.87%) NFS
12 16 (1.66%) BitLocker
13 15 (1.56%) Squid
14 12 (1.25%) Microsoft App-V
15 10 (1.04%) Postfix
15 10 (1.04%) vCloud
16 8 (0.83%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.73%) Varnish
18 5 (0.52%) Ceph
18 5 (0.52%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 149 (15.50%) Terraform
2 125 (13.01%) Ansible
3 97 (10.09%) Kubernetes
4 79 (8.22%) Microsoft Intune
5 74 (7.70%) Single Sign-On
6 51 (5.31%) FortiGate
7 49 (5.10%) Grafana
8 48 (4.99%) vCenter Server
9 46 (4.79%) SCCM
10 44 (4.58%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 32 (3.33%) Prometheus
12 26 (2.71%) WSUS
13 22 (2.29%) Argo
14 18 (1.87%) SCOM
15 14 (1.46%) HAProxy
15 14 (1.46%) Puppet
16 13 (1.35%) vMotion
17 11 (1.14%) Jamf Pro
17 11 (1.14%) Nessus
18 9 (0.94%) Nagios
Vendors
1 297 (30.91%) Microsoft
2 247 (25.70%) VMware
3 170 (17.69%) Cisco
4 157 (16.34%) F5
5 92 (9.57%) ServiceNow
6 86 (8.95%) Splunk
7 58 (6.04%) Citrix
8 56 (5.83%) Infoblox
9 51 (5.31%) SolarWinds
10 48 (4.99%) Red Hat
11 47 (4.89%) Juniper
12 46 (4.79%) Google
13 33 (3.43%) Blue Coat
13 33 (3.43%) Palo Alto
14 32 (3.33%) NetApp
15 28 (2.91%) Dynatrace
16 27 (2.81%) McAfee
17 26 (2.71%) Okta
18 22 (2.29%) Extreme Networks
18 22 (2.29%) Fortinet