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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 139 121 157
Rank change year-on-year -18 +36 -16
Contract jobs citing DNS 953 677 666
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.88% 2.27% 1.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.74% 18.24% 12.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 584 475 452
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £407 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £545 £475
Median % change year-on-year -9.17% +14.74% -9.52%
75th Percentile £583 £613 £588
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -10.91% +10.00% -2.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 15 25
10th Percentile £18.89 - £19.10
25th Percentile £23.13 £29.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £54.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.37% +36.25% -23.27%
75th Percentile £62.87 £81.18 -
90th Percentile £74.05 £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 4,827 3,712 5,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.53% 12.43% 12.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,280 3,213
10th Percentile £250 £225 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -1.48%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £471 £488
% change year-on-year +1.91% -3.38% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 171 425
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.69 £20.93 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.94 £45.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.91% +12.50% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.69 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.13 £80.00 £72.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £32.77 £47.50
% change year-on-year -18.46% -31.01% +150.00%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -22 846 £495 -10.00% 276
UK excluding London -16 597 £490 -10.91% 271
London -36 284 £500 - 62
North of England +6 233 £449 -10.20% 46
Work from Home -27 212 £525 -2.60% 121
South East 0 169 £525 -4.55% 94
North West +38 153 £458 +1.67% 29
Midlands 0 109 £450 -5.26% 38
West Midlands +2 95 £438 -7.89% 21
Yorkshire -27 74 £447 -18.77% 13
South West -24 62 £500 -18.70% 34
Scotland +26 44 £525 +16.67% 7
East of England -57 35 £450 -18.18% 34
East Midlands -16 13 £450 -20.00% 17
Wales -15 6 £300 -32.74% 11
North East -41 6 £413 +17.86% 5

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 83 (8.71%) Microsoft Exchange
2 60 (6.30%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.99%) Confluence
4 16 (1.68%) IIS
5 15 (1.57%) nginx
6 14 (1.47%) Apache
7 9 (0.94%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.52%) 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 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
11 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.10%) Traefik
Applications
1 19 (1.99%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.47%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 337 (35.36%) Azure
2 177 (18.57%) AWS
3 155 (16.26%) Entra ID
4 128 (13.43%) Microsoft 365
5 103 (10.81%) GCP
6 72 (7.56%) GitHub
7 55 (5.77%) IaaS
8 40 (4.20%) PaaS
8 40 (4.20%) SaaS
9 39 (4.09%) OneDrive
10 32 (3.36%) Serverless
11 30 (3.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 29 (3.04%) Amazon EC2
12 29 (3.04%) Route 53
13 28 (2.94%) Amazon S3
13 28 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
14 27 (2.83%) Amazon EKS
14 27 (2.83%) GitHub Actions
15 26 (2.73%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (2.73%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 416 (43.65%) DHCP
2 294 (30.85%) Firewall
3 233 (24.45%) TCP/IP
4 231 (24.24%) VPN
5 139 (14.59%) WAN
6 118 (12.38%) LAN
7 105 (11.02%) Network Security
8 104 (10.91%) SSL
9 96 (10.07%) BIG-IP
9 96 (10.07%) VLAN
10 87 (9.13%) BGP
11 77 (8.08%) HTTP
12 63 (6.61%) Wi-Fi
13 58 (6.09%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 53 (5.56%) Wireless
15 49 (5.14%) SAN
16 48 (5.04%) OSPF
17 44 (4.62%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 41 (4.30%) DMZ
19 37 (3.88%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (3.78%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.99%) Elasticsearch
3 17 (1.78%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
6 10 (1.05%) Power BI
7 8 (0.84%) MySQL
8 6 (0.63%) MongoDB
8 6 (0.63%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.52%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.52%) DynamoDB
10 4 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (0.42%) DocumentDB
10 4 (0.42%) MariaDB
10 4 (0.42%) Redis
11 3 (0.31%) Big Data
12 2 (0.21%) SQLPlus
13 1 (0.10%) Relational Database
13 1 (0.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.10%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 65 (6.82%) JIRA
2 59 (6.19%) Jenkins
3 32 (3.36%) Git
4 24 (2.52%) Fiddler
4 24 (2.52%) GitLab
5 9 (0.94%) Browser DevTools
6 8 (0.84%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.73%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.63%) Chocolatey
9 3 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.21%) Introscope
10 2 (0.21%) Spinnaker
11 1 (0.10%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.10%) MSI
11 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio
General
1 217 (22.77%) Social Skills
2 82 (8.60%) Analytical Skills
3 74 (7.76%) Finance
4 69 (7.24%) Banking
5 65 (6.82%) Public Sector
6 51 (5.35%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (3.78%) Investment Banking
8 25 (2.62%) Legal
9 18 (1.89%) Military
10 16 (1.68%) 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 (0.52%) Law
14 5 (0.52%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.42%) Advertising
15 4 (0.42%) Italian Language
15 4 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 176 (18.47%) Network Engineer
2 136 (14.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 116 (12.17%) Architect
4 71 (7.45%) Support Engineer
5 70 (7.35%) Senior
6 64 (6.72%) Analyst
7 60 (6.30%) Security Engineer
8 50 (5.25%) Cloud Engineer
9 48 (5.04%) IT Support
10 46 (4.83%) Web Engineer
11 41 (4.30%) IT Engineer
11 41 (4.30%) Network Security Engineer
12 37 (3.88%) Cisco Engineer
12 37 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
13 35 (3.67%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 34 (3.57%) Administrator
15 33 (3.46%) Data Engineer
15 33 (3.46%) Data Network Engineer
16 32 (3.36%) Azure Engineer
16 32 (3.36%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (5.98%) LDAP
2 52 (5.46%) SAML
3 44 (4.62%) 802.1X
4 40 (4.20%) OAuth
5 33 (3.46%) OpenID
6 21 (2.20%) OpenTelemetry
7 15 (1.57%) JSON
8 13 (1.36%) ARM Templates
9 11 (1.15%) REST
10 10 (1.05%) OAuth2
11 8 (0.84%) Kafka
12 5 (0.52%) CSS
12 5 (0.52%) gRPC
12 5 (0.52%) XMPP
13 4 (0.42%) Hibernate
13 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Graph
13 4 (0.42%) Spring
13 4 (0.42%) Spring Boot
13 4 (0.42%) Spring Cloud
13 4 (0.42%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 109 (11.44%) Data Centre
2 72 (7.56%) PKI
3 62 (6.51%) Cloud Native
4 51 (5.35%) Onboarding
5 43 (4.51%) Hybrid Cloud
6 39 (4.09%) Clustering
6 39 (4.09%) Replication
7 37 (3.88%) Management Information System
8 34 (3.57%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 32 (3.36%) Public Cloud
10 21 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.68%) Enterprise Cloud
11 16 (1.68%) Security Operations Centre
12 15 (1.57%) Security Posture
13 13 (1.36%) Cyberattack
13 13 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
14 12 (1.26%) Cyber Threat
14 12 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
14 12 (1.26%) Virtual Team
15 11 (1.15%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 395 (41.45%) Windows
2 220 (23.08%) Windows Server
3 139 (14.59%) Linux
4 42 (4.41%) Windows 10
5 36 (3.78%) Windows Server 2019
6 34 (3.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 33 (3.46%) Mac OS
8 24 (2.52%) Unix
9 19 (1.99%) Apple iOS
9 19 (1.99%) Windows Server 2012
10 13 (1.36%) Android
11 12 (1.26%) Ubuntu
12 11 (1.15%) VMS
12 11 (1.15%) Windows Server 2016
13 10 (1.05%) CentOS
14 7 (0.73%) Windows 7
14 7 (0.73%) Windows Server 2003
15 3 (0.31%) AIX
16 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
16 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (20.36%) Problem-Solving
2 178 (18.68%) Load Balancing
3 171 (17.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 161 (16.89%) Migration
5 150 (15.74%) High Availability
6 137 (14.38%) DevOps
7 134 (14.06%) ITIL
8 118 (12.38%) CI/CD
8 118 (12.38%) Infrastructure as Code
9 96 (10.07%) ITSM
10 82 (8.60%) Observability
11 81 (8.50%) Disaster Recovery
12 80 (8.39%) Identity Access Management
13 77 (8.08%) Agile
14 70 (7.35%) Project Delivery
15 64 (6.72%) Cybersecurity
16 59 (6.19%) RBAC
16 59 (6.19%) Runbook
17 57 (5.98%) Root Cause Analysis
18 54 (5.67%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 187 (19.62%) PowerShell
2 150 (15.74%) Python
3 94 (9.86%) Bash
4 55 (5.77%) SQL
5 25 (2.62%) JavaScript
6 24 (2.52%) Bicep
7 13 (1.36%) Java
8 10 (1.05%) ActionScript
8 10 (1.05%) Go
9 9 (0.94%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.94%) VBA
10 8 (0.84%) Perl
11 6 (0.63%) VBScript
12 5 (0.52%) Groovy
12 5 (0.52%) Ruby
13 4 (0.42%) C
13 4 (0.42%) VB
14 3 (0.31%) Lisp
15 2 (0.21%) Jython
15 2 (0.21%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 314 (32.95%) Security Cleared
2 198 (20.78%) SC Cleared
3 113 (11.86%) DV Cleared
4 93 (9.76%) Cisco Certification
5 76 (7.97%) Degree
6 61 (6.40%) CCNP
7 51 (5.35%) CCNA
8 33 (3.46%) Microsoft Certification
9 30 (3.15%) Azure Certification
10 26 (2.73%) Network+ Certification
11 24 (2.52%) CompTIA Security+
12 17 (1.78%) Server+ Certification
13 16 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
14 15 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
15 14 (1.47%) CISSP
16 13 (1.36%) AWS Certification
16 13 (1.36%) MCSE
17 12 (1.26%) CCIE
18 11 (1.15%) JNCIA
18 11 (1.15%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.04%) NIST
1 29 (3.04%) SLA
2 21 (2.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 20 (2.10%) GDPR
4 14 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 12 (1.26%) QA
6 9 (0.94%) NCSC
7 5 (0.52%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.10%) COBIT
10 1 (0.10%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.10%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.10%) PMO
10 1 (0.10%) RMADS
System Software
1 369 (38.72%) Active Directory
2 207 (21.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 94 (9.86%) Hyper-V
4 57 (5.98%) VMware NSX
5 56 (5.88%) vSphere
6 51 (5.35%) VMware ESXi
7 40 (4.20%) Virtual Machines
8 34 (3.57%) Docker
8 34 (3.57%) Virtual Desktop
9 25 (2.62%) Firmware
10 18 (1.89%) NFS
11 16 (1.68%) BitLocker
12 15 (1.57%) Squid
13 12 (1.26%) Microsoft App-V
14 11 (1.15%) vCloud
15 10 (1.05%) Postfix
16 8 (0.84%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.73%) Varnish
18 5 (0.52%) Ceph
19 4 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 151 (15.84%) Terraform
2 123 (12.91%) Ansible
3 93 (9.76%) Kubernetes
4 74 (7.76%) Microsoft Intune
4 74 (7.76%) Single Sign-On
5 53 (5.56%) FortiGate
6 51 (5.35%) Grafana
6 51 (5.35%) vCenter Server
7 46 (4.83%) SCCM
8 39 (4.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 37 (3.88%) Prometheus
10 24 (2.52%) Argo
10 24 (2.52%) WSUS
11 18 (1.89%) SCOM
12 16 (1.68%) Puppet
13 14 (1.47%) HAProxy
14 13 (1.36%) Jamf Pro
14 13 (1.36%) Nessus
14 13 (1.36%) vMotion
15 8 (0.84%) Consul
Vendors
1 304 (31.90%) Microsoft
2 245 (25.71%) VMware
3 176 (18.47%) Cisco
4 158 (16.58%) F5
5 87 (9.13%) ServiceNow
6 79 (8.29%) Splunk
7 62 (6.51%) Infoblox
8 58 (6.09%) Citrix
9 53 (5.56%) Google
10 52 (5.46%) SolarWinds
11 49 (5.14%) Red Hat
12 45 (4.72%) Juniper
13 38 (3.99%) Palo Alto
14 31 (3.25%) Blue Coat
14 31 (3.25%) Dynatrace
14 31 (3.25%) NetApp
15 26 (2.73%) McAfee
16 24 (2.52%) Okta
17 23 (2.41%) Fortinet
18 22 (2.31%) Extreme Networks