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 22 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 112 124
Rank change year-on-year -31 +12 -1
Contract jobs citing DNS 812 739 839
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.99% 2.40% 1.88%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.47% 18.20% 14.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 518 477 533
10th Percentile £213 £243 £200
25th Percentile £400 £383 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £510 £465
Median % change year-on-year -1.47% +9.68% -11.43%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £600
90th Percentile £675 £750 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £463 £500
% change year-on-year +10.81% -7.50% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 10 28
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.88 £23.95
25th Percentile £17.75 £21.84 £31.25
Median hourly rate £26.33 £23.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.59% -41.03% -
75th Percentile £74.26 £56.94 £55.35
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.12 £62.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £22.50 £43.75
% change year-on-year +11.11% -48.57% -5.11%

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 4,170 4,061 5,964
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.23% 13.21% 13.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,719 2,428 3,563
10th Percentile £204 £209 £205
25th Percentile £356 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £485
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +3.09% -6.73%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -2.13% -1.05% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 169 131 398
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.33
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.46 £19.99
Median hourly rate £28.88 £32.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.14% -31.58% +141.24%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £30.04 £51.89
% change year-on-year +34.95% -42.11% +161.00%

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 22 February 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 22 February 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 22 February 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 -14 725 £518 +3.50% 319
UK excluding London -25 516 £513 +10.81% 279
London -2 236 £525 - 83
Work from Home -46 190 £500 -6.54% 104
North of England -19 182 £465 -1.59% 75
South East +4 142 £525 - 84
North West +4 117 £603 +26.84% 42
Midlands +19 111 £378 -16.11% 35
West Midlands +17 107 £380 -1.30% 27
Yorkshire -36 68 £447 -0.67% 27
South West -32 63 £575 +5.12% 38
East of England -24 38 £475 +5.56% 35
Scotland -12 34 £465 +3.33% 16
North East -29 6 £411 +26.38% 10
Wales -14 4 £550 +25.71% 4
East Midlands -34 4 £325 -41.96% 8

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
1 100 (12.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 56 (6.90%) SharePoint
3 29 (3.57%) Skype for Business
4 18 (2.22%) Confluence
5 15 (1.85%) nginx
6 5 (0.62%) Apache
6 5 (0.62%) IIS
7 4 (0.49%) Exchange Server 2010
7 4 (0.49%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.49%) SharePoint Server
8 2 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.25%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.25%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.25%) WordPress
9 1 (0.12%) Traefik
Applications
1 39 (4.80%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.85%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.37%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.12%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 278 (34.24%) Azure
2 170 (20.94%) AWS
3 149 (18.35%) Microsoft 365
4 128 (15.76%) Entra ID
5 55 (6.77%) GCP
6 54 (6.65%) GitHub
7 53 (6.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 45 (5.54%) Amazon S3
9 39 (4.80%) Amazon EC2
9 39 (4.80%) IaaS
10 36 (4.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 32 (3.94%) AWS CloudFormation
11 32 (3.94%) Serverless
12 30 (3.69%) AWS Lambda
13 29 (3.57%) SaaS
14 28 (3.45%) Route 53
15 24 (2.96%) Amazon ECS
16 23 (2.83%) Amazon EKS
16 23 (2.83%) PaaS
17 22 (2.71%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 368 (45.32%) DHCP
2 261 (32.14%) TCP/IP
3 260 (32.02%) Firewall
4 199 (24.51%) VPN
5 103 (12.68%) WAN
6 94 (11.58%) LAN
6 94 (11.58%) SSL
7 88 (10.84%) Network Security
8 78 (9.61%) HTTP
9 75 (9.24%) VLAN
10 64 (7.88%) BIG-IP
11 63 (7.76%) BGP
12 55 (6.77%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 53 (6.53%) Wi-Fi
14 45 (5.54%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 44 (5.42%) Wireshark
16 39 (4.80%) OSPF
17 37 (4.56%) DMZ
18 36 (4.43%) Kerberos
19 35 (4.31%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.59%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.22%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (2.09%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (1.97%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (0.86%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.86%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.86%) Redis
7 6 (0.74%) Data Hub
7 6 (0.74%) MySQL
8 4 (0.49%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.49%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.49%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.37%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.12%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (0.12%) CouchDB
10 1 (0.12%) Electronic Patient Records
10 1 (0.12%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.12%) Power BI
10 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 71 (8.74%) Jenkins
2 53 (6.53%) Git
3 44 (5.42%) GitLab
4 43 (5.30%) JIRA
5 30 (3.69%) Fiddler
6 7 (0.86%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.86%) Terragrunt
7 6 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.62%) Vagrant
9 4 (0.49%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.37%) Chocolatey
10 3 (0.37%) Subversion
11 2 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.25%) TeamCity
12 1 (0.12%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.12%) MSI
12 1 (0.12%) Travis CI
12 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
12 1 (0.12%) Vite
12 1 (0.12%) webpack
General
1 229 (28.20%) Social Skills
2 106 (13.05%) Analytical Skills
3 62 (7.64%) Banking
4 58 (7.14%) Public Sector
5 49 (6.03%) Finance
6 45 (5.54%) Documentation Skills
6 45 (5.54%) Investment Banking
7 22 (2.71%) Legal
8 20 (2.46%) Telecoms
9 17 (2.09%) Military
10 10 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (0.86%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.62%) Law
14 4 (0.49%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.49%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.49%) Local Government
14 4 (0.49%) Marketing
15 3 (0.37%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 126 (15.52%) Network Engineer
2 108 (13.30%) Architect
3 79 (9.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 76 (9.36%) Analyst
5 69 (8.50%) Senior
6 67 (8.25%) Support Engineer
7 53 (6.53%) IT Support
8 46 (5.67%) Security Engineer
9 36 (4.43%) Platform Engineer
9 36 (4.43%) Web Engineer
10 33 (4.06%) Lead
11 32 (3.94%) DevOps Engineer
12 31 (3.82%) IT Engineer
13 29 (3.57%) Network Security Engineer
14 26 (3.20%) SOC Analyst
15 24 (2.96%) 2nd Line Support
15 24 (2.96%) IT Support Engineer
16 23 (2.83%) Cisco Engineer
16 23 (2.83%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 22 (2.71%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (8.62%) LDAP
2 43 (5.30%) SAML
3 37 (4.56%) OAuth
4 30 (3.69%) OpenID
5 21 (2.59%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.46%) OAuth2
7 15 (1.85%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.23%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (1.23%) Kafka
8 10 (1.23%) REST
9 6 (0.74%) ARM Templates
9 6 (0.74%) JSON
9 6 (0.74%) Microsoft Graph
9 6 (0.74%) Middleware
9 6 (0.74%) XMPP
10 5 (0.62%) AngularJS
10 5 (0.62%) AWS CDK
10 5 (0.62%) React
10 5 (0.62%) RESTful
10 5 (0.62%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 71 (8.74%) PKI
2 59 (7.27%) Data Centre
3 52 (6.40%) Replication
4 40 (4.93%) Management Information System
5 39 (4.80%) Cloud Native
6 30 (3.69%) Onboarding
7 25 (3.08%) Security Operations Centre
8 24 (2.96%) Cyberattack
9 23 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
9 23 (2.83%) Public Cloud
10 22 (2.71%) Clustering
11 21 (2.59%) Enterprise Software
12 20 (2.46%) Hybrid Cloud
13 15 (1.85%) Self-Motivation
14 14 (1.72%) Cyber Threat
15 13 (1.60%) NHS
16 12 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
17 11 (1.35%) Private Cloud
18 10 (1.23%) Product Ownership
18 10 (1.23%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 395 (48.65%) Windows
2 189 (23.28%) Windows Server
3 150 (18.47%) Linux
4 61 (7.51%) Windows 10
5 34 (4.19%) Windows Server 2019
6 19 (2.34%) Unix
7 18 (2.22%) Android
7 18 (2.22%) Windows Server 2016
8 16 (1.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (1.97%) Windows Server 2012
9 14 (1.72%) Mac OS
10 13 (1.60%) Apple iOS
11 11 (1.35%) VMS
11 11 (1.35%) Windows 7
12 9 (1.11%) CentOS
13 8 (0.99%) Amazon Linux
14 7 (0.86%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.62%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.49%) CatOS
16 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
2 155 (19.09%) Load Balancing
3 136 (16.75%) ITIL
4 115 (14.16%) CI/CD
5 111 (13.67%) DevOps
6 105 (12.93%) High Availability
7 104 (12.81%) Infrastructure as Code
8 103 (12.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 102 (12.56%) Migration
10 81 (9.98%) Cybersecurity
11 77 (9.48%) Disaster Recovery
12 76 (9.36%) Service Management
13 72 (8.87%) Change Management
14 67 (8.25%) Identity Access Management
15 66 (8.13%) Incident Response
16 61 (7.51%) SIEM
17 60 (7.39%) Root Cause Analysis
18 57 (7.02%) RBAC
19 55 (6.77%) ITSM
19 55 (6.77%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 231 (28.45%) PowerShell
2 146 (17.98%) Python
3 77 (9.48%) Bash
4 40 (4.93%) SQL
5 13 (1.60%) Java
5 13 (1.60%) VBScript
6 12 (1.48%) Bicep
6 12 (1.48%) Perl
7 11 (1.35%) Go
8 10 (1.23%) Ruby
8 10 (1.23%) VB
9 9 (1.11%) Shell Script
10 8 (0.99%) JavaScript
11 7 (0.86%) Lisp
12 5 (0.62%) Groovy
12 5 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.37%) C#
13 3 (0.37%) C++
13 3 (0.37%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.25%) C
Qualifications
1 281 (34.61%) Security Cleared
2 193 (23.77%) SC Cleared
3 98 (12.07%) DV Cleared
4 69 (8.50%) Degree
5 66 (8.13%) Microsoft Certification
6 57 (7.02%) Cisco Certification
7 46 (5.67%) CCNP
8 36 (4.43%) Azure Certification
9 30 (3.69%) CompTIA Security+
10 22 (2.71%) AWS Certification
11 21 (2.59%) CISSP
11 21 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
12 20 (2.46%) Network+ Certification
13 19 (2.34%) CCNA
14 16 (1.97%) CompTIA CySA+
15 13 (1.60%) MCSE
15 13 (1.60%) Server+ Certification
16 10 (1.23%) CCIE
16 10 (1.23%) ITIL Certification
16 10 (1.23%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.94%) GDPR
2 26 (3.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (2.83%) NIST
4 21 (2.59%) SLA
5 19 (2.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.11%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (0.99%) NCSC
8 6 (0.74%) QA
9 4 (0.49%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.37%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.37%) PMO
11 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.12%) COBIT
12 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.12%) RMADS
12 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 358 (44.09%) Active Directory
2 194 (23.89%) VMware Infrastructure
3 76 (9.36%) Docker
4 63 (7.76%) Hyper-V
5 55 (6.77%) VMware NSX
6 47 (5.79%) vSphere
7 29 (3.57%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (2.96%) Firmware
9 18 (2.22%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (1.72%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
11 10 (1.23%) Squid
12 8 (0.99%) DFS Replication
13 7 (0.86%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.74%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.62%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 4 (0.49%) NFS
16 4 (0.49%) Postfix
16 4 (0.49%) Terminal Services
17 3 (0.37%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 140 (17.24%) Terraform
2 132 (16.26%) Ansible
3 93 (11.45%) Microsoft Intune
4 81 (9.98%) Kubernetes
5 76 (9.36%) SCCM
6 74 (9.11%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (7.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (5.30%) vCenter Server
9 40 (4.93%) FortiGate
10 37 (4.56%) Grafana
11 24 (2.96%) Prometheus
12 22 (2.71%) Argo
13 18 (2.22%) WSUS
14 14 (1.72%) SCOM
15 9 (1.11%) Puppet
16 8 (0.99%) Nessus
16 8 (0.99%) QRadar
17 7 (0.86%) Nagios
18 6 (0.74%) HAProxy
18 6 (0.74%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 308 (37.93%) Microsoft
2 239 (29.43%) VMware
3 141 (17.36%) F5
4 126 (15.52%) Cisco
5 84 (10.34%) ServiceNow
6 81 (9.98%) Splunk
7 49 (6.03%) Palo Alto
8 45 (5.54%) Blue Coat
9 42 (5.17%) SolarWinds
10 40 (4.93%) Citrix
11 35 (4.31%) CheckPoint
11 35 (4.31%) McAfee
12 33 (4.06%) Juniper
13 32 (3.94%) Red Hat
14 25 (3.08%) NetApp
15 22 (2.71%) Fortinet
16 21 (2.59%) Veeam
17 20 (2.46%) Dell
17 20 (2.46%) Infoblox
17 20 (2.46%) Zscaler