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

6 months to
8 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 145 109 118
Rank change year-on-year -36 +9 +6
Contract jobs citing DNS 768 729 901
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.96% 2.34% 1.99%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.89% 17.90% 14.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 489 464 581
10th Percentile £213 £225 £203
25th Percentile £400 £355 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £600
90th Percentile £675 £750 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 9 28
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.26 £23.95
25th Percentile £17.75 £21.25 £31.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £23.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -41.03% -
75th Percentile £69.00 £38.00 £55.35
90th Percentile £76.50 £52.65 £62.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £20.75 £43.75
% change year-on-year +8.43% -52.57% -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 4,065 4,072 6,131
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.39% 13.10% 13.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,677 2,390 3,688
10th Percentile £204 £210 £206
25th Percentile £350 £358 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £490
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% -5.77%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £467 £475
% change year-on-year -3.54% -1.79% +1.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 136 414
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.85 £14.40
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.46 £21.00
Median hourly rate £29.44 £33.75 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.77% -32.50% +150.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.24 £30.04 £53.00
% change year-on-year +37.28% -43.32% +166.60%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -17 687 £522 +4.35% 376
UK excluding London -19 484 £500 +11.11% 331
London -5 231 £538 +2.38% 93
Work from Home -54 181 £500 -6.54% 126
North of England -25 164 £455 +7.06% 83
South East -2 122 £513 +9.33% 84
Midlands +16 110 £390 -10.86% 42
West Midlands +28 106 £395 +6.76% 29
North West +1 105 £584 +22.89% 43
South West -26 66 £575 +5.12% 46
Yorkshire -24 63 £447 +49.00% 33
East of England -19 39 £475 +68.14% 56
Scotland -5 34 £454 +0.89% 21
North East -23 7 £247 -24.15% 10
East Midlands -33 4 £275 -45.54% 13
Wales -10 3 £550 +33.33% 9

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 93 (12.11%) Microsoft Exchange
2 61 (7.94%) SharePoint
3 30 (3.91%) Skype for Business
4 19 (2.47%) Confluence
5 15 (1.95%) nginx
6 8 (1.04%) IIS
7 5 (0.65%) Apache
7 5 (0.65%) SharePoint Server
8 4 (0.52%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.52%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.39%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.26%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.26%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.26%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.26%) WordPress
11 1 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2003
11 1 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
11 1 (0.13%) Office Communications Server
Applications
1 41 (5.34%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.95%) MS Visio
3 6 (0.78%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.26%) Windchill
5 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.26%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.26%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.13%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 271 (35.29%) Azure
2 172 (22.40%) AWS
3 151 (19.66%) Microsoft 365
4 126 (16.41%) Entra ID
5 56 (7.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 47 (6.12%) Amazon S3
6 47 (6.12%) GCP
6 47 (6.12%) GitHub
7 41 (5.34%) Amazon EC2
8 40 (5.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 37 (4.82%) IaaS
10 33 (4.30%) AWS CloudFormation
11 31 (4.04%) Serverless
12 30 (3.91%) Route 53
13 29 (3.78%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (3.65%) Amazon ECS
15 26 (3.39%) SaaS
16 25 (3.26%) Amazon ELB
17 22 (2.86%) Amazon EKS
18 21 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 347 (45.18%) DHCP
2 248 (32.29%) TCP/IP
3 233 (30.34%) Firewall
4 184 (23.96%) VPN
5 90 (11.72%) WAN
6 86 (11.20%) Network Security
7 85 (11.07%) SSL
8 79 (10.29%) HTTP
9 78 (10.16%) LAN
10 67 (8.72%) VLAN
11 57 (7.42%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 49 (6.38%) BIG-IP
13 48 (6.25%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 48 (6.25%) Wi-Fi
14 44 (5.73%) BGP
15 42 (5.47%) Wireshark
16 38 (4.95%) DMZ
17 36 (4.69%) Kerberos
18 33 (4.30%) Skype
19 32 (4.17%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (2.86%) Amazon RDS
1 22 (2.86%) SQL Server
2 20 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (1.95%) Elasticsearch
4 12 (1.56%) Amazon Aurora
5 8 (1.04%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.91%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.91%) MySQL
6 7 (0.91%) Redis
7 6 (0.78%) Data Hub
8 4 (0.52%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.52%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.52%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.39%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.26%) Power BI
11 1 (0.13%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.13%) CouchDB
11 1 (0.13%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.13%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 67 (8.72%) Jenkins
2 53 (6.90%) Git
3 44 (5.73%) JIRA
4 43 (5.60%) GitLab
5 28 (3.65%) Fiddler
6 8 (1.04%) Terragrunt
6 8 (1.04%) Vagrant
7 6 (0.78%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.52%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.39%) Subversion
11 2 (0.26%) Chocolatey
11 2 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.26%) TeamCity
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.13%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.13%) MSI
12 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
12 1 (0.13%) Vite
12 1 (0.13%) webpack
General
1 232 (30.21%) Social Skills
2 109 (14.19%) Analytical Skills
3 63 (8.20%) Public Sector
4 60 (7.81%) Banking
5 47 (6.12%) Documentation Skills
6 46 (5.99%) Finance
7 44 (5.73%) Investment Banking
8 18 (2.34%) Telecoms
9 17 (2.21%) Legal
10 12 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.17%) Military
11 9 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.65%) Law
14 4 (0.52%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.52%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.52%) Marketing
15 3 (0.39%) Local Government
15 3 (0.39%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 103 (13.41%) Network Engineer
2 102 (13.28%) Architect
3 78 (10.16%) Analyst
4 77 (10.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 65 (8.46%) Support Engineer
6 60 (7.81%) Senior
7 48 (6.25%) IT Support
8 40 (5.21%) Platform Engineer
9 38 (4.95%) Security Engineer
10 35 (4.56%) DevOps Engineer
11 31 (4.04%) Lead
11 31 (4.04%) Web Engineer
12 26 (3.39%) 2nd Line Support
12 26 (3.39%) IT Engineer
12 26 (3.39%) SOC Analyst
13 22 (2.86%) AWS Engineer
14 21 (2.73%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 20 (2.60%) Cisco Engineer
15 20 (2.60%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 20 (2.60%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (8.72%) LDAP
2 43 (5.60%) SAML
3 37 (4.82%) OAuth
4 29 (3.78%) OpenID
5 20 (2.60%) OAuth2
6 12 (1.56%) Kafka
6 12 (1.56%) OpenTelemetry
6 12 (1.56%) REST
7 10 (1.30%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (0.91%) 802.1X
8 7 (0.91%) JSON
8 7 (0.91%) SOAP
9 6 (0.78%) AWS CDK
9 6 (0.78%) Middleware
10 5 (0.65%) AngularJS
10 5 (0.65%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (0.65%) React
10 5 (0.65%) RESTful
10 5 (0.65%) Spring Boot
10 5 (0.65%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 58 (7.55%) PKI
1 58 (7.55%) Replication
2 50 (6.51%) Data Centre
3 41 (5.34%) Management Information System
4 31 (4.04%) Onboarding
5 29 (3.78%) Cloud Native
6 26 (3.39%) Security Operations Centre
7 24 (3.13%) Cyberattack
8 23 (2.99%) Enterprise Software
9 22 (2.86%) Analytical Mindset
9 22 (2.86%) Public Cloud
10 17 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (1.82%) Private Cloud
12 13 (1.69%) Cyber Threat
12 13 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (1.56%) NHS
14 9 (1.17%) SCADA
14 9 (1.17%) Video Conferencing
14 9 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 8 (1.04%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 374 (48.70%) Windows
2 185 (24.09%) Windows Server
3 144 (18.75%) Linux
4 62 (8.07%) Windows 10
5 35 (4.56%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.60%) Android
6 20 (2.60%) Windows Server 2016
7 19 (2.47%) Unix
7 19 (2.47%) Windows Server 2012
8 17 (2.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 14 (1.82%) Apple iOS
10 13 (1.69%) VMS
11 12 (1.56%) Mac OS
12 11 (1.43%) Amazon Linux
12 11 (1.43%) CentOS
12 11 (1.43%) Ubuntu
13 10 (1.30%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.78%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.52%) CatOS
16 3 (0.39%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (24.48%) Problem-Solving
2 138 (17.97%) Load Balancing
3 126 (16.41%) ITIL
4 112 (14.58%) CI/CD
5 106 (13.80%) DevOps
6 99 (12.89%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 97 (12.63%) Migration
8 95 (12.37%) Infrastructure as Code
9 84 (10.94%) Cybersecurity
10 83 (10.81%) High Availability
11 72 (9.38%) Change Management
11 72 (9.38%) Disaster Recovery
12 70 (9.11%) Incident Response
13 65 (8.46%) Service Management
14 60 (7.81%) SIEM
15 59 (7.68%) Root Cause Analysis
16 54 (7.03%) Mentoring
17 53 (6.90%) RBAC
18 51 (6.64%) Containerisation
19 49 (6.38%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 229 (29.82%) PowerShell
2 144 (18.75%) Python
3 67 (8.72%) Bash
4 39 (5.08%) SQL
5 14 (1.82%) Java
6 13 (1.69%) Bicep
6 13 (1.69%) Perl
7 12 (1.56%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.56%) VBScript
8 11 (1.43%) Go
9 10 (1.30%) Ruby
9 10 (1.30%) VB
10 8 (1.04%) Groovy
11 7 (0.91%) Lisp
12 6 (0.78%) Kusto Query Language
13 5 (0.65%) JavaScript
14 4 (0.52%) C++
15 3 (0.39%) C#
15 3 (0.39%) Search Processing Language
15 3 (0.39%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 269 (35.03%) Security Cleared
2 194 (25.26%) SC Cleared
3 88 (11.46%) DV Cleared
4 74 (9.64%) Degree
5 58 (7.55%) Microsoft Certification
6 41 (5.34%) Cisco Certification
7 39 (5.08%) CCNP
8 37 (4.82%) Azure Certification
9 23 (2.99%) AWS Certification
10 22 (2.86%) CompTIA Security+
10 22 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
11 17 (2.21%) Network+ Certification
12 16 (2.08%) CompTIA CySA+
13 15 (1.95%) CCNA
14 12 (1.56%) CISSP
15 11 (1.43%) Server+ Certification
16 9 (1.17%) ITIL Certification
17 8 (1.04%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 8 (1.04%) CCIE
17 8 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.04%) GDPR
2 23 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 23 (2.99%) SLA
3 21 (2.73%) NIST
4 19 (2.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 9 (1.17%) NCSC
5 9 (1.17%) PCI DSS
6 8 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.78%) QA
8 5 (0.65%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.39%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.39%) PMO
10 2 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.26%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.13%) RMADS
11 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 349 (45.44%) Active Directory
2 191 (24.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 76 (9.90%) Docker
4 55 (7.16%) Hyper-V
5 51 (6.64%) VMware NSX
6 41 (5.34%) vSphere
7 26 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
8 22 (2.86%) Firmware
9 16 (2.08%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
11 13 (1.69%) BitLocker
12 12 (1.56%) Squid
13 11 (1.43%) DFS Replication
14 7 (0.91%) Postfix
14 7 (0.91%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.78%) Dovecot
15 6 (0.78%) Microsoft App-V
16 5 (0.65%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 5 (0.65%) Terminal Services
17 4 (0.52%) NFS
Systems Management
1 130 (16.93%) Terraform
2 124 (16.15%) Ansible
3 91 (11.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 77 (10.03%) SCCM
5 75 (9.77%) Kubernetes
6 73 (9.51%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (8.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 42 (5.47%) vCenter Server
9 36 (4.69%) Grafana
10 26 (3.39%) FortiGate
11 25 (3.26%) Prometheus
12 20 (2.60%) WSUS
13 19 (2.47%) Argo
14 13 (1.69%) SCOM
15 10 (1.30%) Packer
16 9 (1.17%) Proxmox
17 8 (1.04%) Puppet
18 7 (0.91%) Nessus
19 6 (0.78%) Nagios
20 5 (0.65%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 301 (39.19%) Microsoft
2 233 (30.34%) VMware
3 124 (16.15%) F5
4 104 (13.54%) Cisco
5 83 (10.81%) ServiceNow
6 61 (7.94%) Splunk
7 48 (6.25%) Palo Alto
8 40 (5.21%) Blue Coat
9 35 (4.56%) CheckPoint
10 33 (4.30%) Citrix
10 33 (4.30%) McAfee
11 31 (4.04%) SolarWinds
12 28 (3.65%) Red Hat
13 25 (3.26%) NetApp
14 24 (3.13%) Veeam
15 22 (2.86%) Dell
15 22 (2.86%) Fortinet
16 21 (2.73%) Okta
17 19 (2.47%) Infoblox
17 19 (2.47%) Juniper