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

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 126 158
Rank change year-on-year -15 +32 -21
Contract jobs citing DNS 973 687 653
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.91% 2.25% 1.50%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.12% 18.23% 12.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 594 474 442
10th Percentile £300 £263 £225
25th Percentile £401 £406 £353
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £536 £475
Median % change year-on-year -6.72% +12.84% -9.18%
75th Percentile £586 £606 £588
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £538 £500
% change year-on-year -7.06% +7.60% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 19 25
10th Percentile £18.89 - £19.10
25th Percentile £23.13 £29.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.69% +3.75% -16.56%
75th Percentile £62.87 £81.18 -
90th Percentile £74.05 £82.48 £50.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £41.45 £40.00
% change year-on-year -21.59% +3.63% -4.48%

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 4,836 3,768 5,421
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.48% 12.33% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,961 2,296 3,192
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.43%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £472 £490
% change year-on-year +2.28% -3.62% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 299 179 433
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £19.83 £21.99 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.50 £45.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.89% - +114.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.05 £80.20 £73.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £36.57 £47.50
% change year-on-year -27.10% -23.01% +115.91%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -15 866 £500 -7.41% 279
UK excluding London -11 604 £500 -7.06% 269
London -35 294 £500 - 60
North of England +24 234 £450 -10.10% 44
Work from Home -31 222 £527 -2.36% 123
South East +4 172 £525 -4.55% 100
North West +46 155 £465 +4.03% 24
Midlands 0 112 £450 -5.26% 41
West Midlands +4 98 £444 -6.58% 27
Yorkshire -15 73 £447 -18.77% 15
South West -22 65 £500 -18.37% 38
Scotland +22 41 £500 +11.11% 9
East of England -52 35 £463 -15.91% 36
East Midlands -11 13 £450 -18.18% 14
Wales -16 8 £475 +8.02% 6
North East -41 6 £413 - 10

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 89 (9.15%) Microsoft Exchange
2 61 (6.27%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.95%) Confluence
4 15 (1.54%) IIS
4 15 (1.54%) nginx
5 13 (1.34%) Apache
6 9 (0.92%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.51%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.41%) Skype for Business
9 3 (0.31%) Exchange Server 2010
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%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.10%) Traefik
Applications
1 19 (1.95%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (1.64%) 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 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 348 (35.77%) Azure
2 186 (19.12%) AWS
3 156 (16.03%) Entra ID
4 130 (13.36%) Microsoft 365
5 106 (10.89%) GCP
6 71 (7.30%) GitHub
7 56 (5.76%) IaaS
8 42 (4.32%) SaaS
9 41 (4.21%) PaaS
10 39 (4.01%) OneDrive
11 36 (3.70%) Route 53
12 32 (3.29%) AWS CloudFormation
12 32 (3.29%) Serverless
12 32 (3.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 29 (2.98%) Amazon EC2
14 28 (2.88%) Amazon S3
14 28 (2.88%) Azure DevOps
14 28 (2.88%) GitHub Actions
15 27 (2.77%) Amazon EKS
15 27 (2.77%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 428 (43.99%) DHCP
2 309 (31.76%) Firewall
3 241 (24.77%) VPN
4 240 (24.67%) TCP/IP
5 145 (14.90%) WAN
6 123 (12.64%) LAN
7 110 (11.31%) Network Security
8 102 (10.48%) SSL
9 101 (10.38%) VLAN
10 95 (9.76%) BIG-IP
11 93 (9.56%) BGP
12 75 (7.71%) HTTP
13 65 (6.68%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (6.06%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 55 (5.65%) SAN
15 55 (5.65%) Wireless
16 52 (5.34%) OSPF
17 43 (4.42%) DMZ
17 43 (4.42%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 39 (4.01%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (4.01%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.85%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (1.64%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (1.13%) Azure SQL Database
6 10 (1.03%) Power BI
7 9 (0.92%) MySQL
8 6 (0.62%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.51%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.51%) DynamoDB
9 5 (0.51%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.41%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (0.41%) DocumentDB
10 4 (0.41%) MariaDB
10 4 (0.41%) Redis
11 3 (0.31%) Big Data
12 2 (0.21%) Db2
12 2 (0.21%) SQLPlus
13 1 (0.10%) KDB
13 1 (0.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 66 (6.78%) JIRA
2 57 (5.86%) Jenkins
3 30 (3.08%) Git
4 23 (2.36%) Fiddler
5 22 (2.26%) GitLab
6 9 (0.92%) Browser DevTools
7 8 (0.82%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.72%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.62%) Chocolatey
10 5 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.21%) Introscope
11 2 (0.21%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.10%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.10%) MSI
12 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio
General
1 226 (23.23%) Social Skills
2 90 (9.25%) Analytical Skills
3 79 (8.12%) Finance
4 68 (6.99%) Banking
5 67 (6.89%) Public Sector
6 58 (5.96%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (3.70%) Investment Banking
8 25 (2.57%) Legal
9 19 (1.95%) Military
9 19 (1.95%) Telecoms
10 13 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (0.92%) Local Government
12 8 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (0.62%) Police
13 6 (0.62%) Publishing
14 5 (0.51%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.51%) Law
14 5 (0.51%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.41%) Advertising
15 4 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 179 (18.40%) Network Engineer
2 138 (14.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 125 (12.85%) Architect
4 76 (7.81%) Support Engineer
5 74 (7.61%) Senior
6 62 (6.37%) Security Engineer
7 59 (6.06%) Analyst
8 53 (5.45%) Cloud Engineer
9 47 (4.83%) IT Support
10 46 (4.73%) Web Engineer
11 44 (4.52%) IT Engineer
12 43 (4.42%) Network Security Engineer
13 39 (4.01%) Cisco Engineer
14 38 (3.91%) DevOps Engineer
15 37 (3.80%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 36 (3.70%) Administrator
17 34 (3.49%) Data Engineer
17 34 (3.49%) Data Network Engineer
18 33 (3.39%) Azure Engineer
18 33 (3.39%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (6.06%) LDAP
2 52 (5.34%) SAML
3 45 (4.62%) 802.1X
4 40 (4.11%) OAuth
5 33 (3.39%) OpenID
6 21 (2.16%) OpenTelemetry
7 15 (1.54%) JSON
8 14 (1.44%) ARM Templates
9 11 (1.13%) REST
10 10 (1.03%) OAuth2
11 9 (0.92%) Kafka
12 5 (0.51%) CSS
12 5 (0.51%) gRPC
12 5 (0.51%) YAML
13 4 (0.41%) Microsoft Graph
13 4 (0.41%) Middleware
13 4 (0.41%) RESTful
13 4 (0.41%) Spring Boot
13 4 (0.41%) Spring Cloud
13 4 (0.41%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 115 (11.82%) Data Centre
2 78 (8.02%) PKI
3 65 (6.68%) Cloud Native
4 50 (5.14%) Onboarding
5 46 (4.73%) Hybrid Cloud
6 42 (4.32%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 41 (4.21%) Clustering
8 40 (4.11%) Management Information System
8 40 (4.11%) Replication
9 29 (2.98%) Public Cloud
10 21 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
11 17 (1.75%) Enterprise Cloud
11 17 (1.75%) Security Posture
12 13 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
12 13 (1.34%) Security Operations Centre
13 12 (1.23%) Virtual Team
14 11 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
14 11 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
14 11 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (1.13%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 400 (41.11%) Windows
2 223 (22.92%) Windows Server
3 139 (14.29%) Linux
4 42 (4.32%) Windows 10
5 38 (3.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 36 (3.70%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.39%) Mac OS
8 25 (2.57%) Unix
9 20 (2.06%) Windows Server 2012
10 18 (1.85%) Apple iOS
11 13 (1.34%) Ubuntu
11 13 (1.34%) VMS
12 12 (1.23%) Android
12 12 (1.23%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (1.13%) CentOS
14 7 (0.72%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.62%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.31%) AIX
16 3 (0.31%) Rocky
17 2 (0.21%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (20.97%) Problem-Solving
2 186 (19.12%) Load Balancing
3 176 (18.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 162 (16.65%) Migration
5 156 (16.03%) High Availability
6 141 (14.49%) ITIL
7 138 (14.18%) DevOps
8 126 (12.95%) Infrastructure as Code
9 121 (12.44%) CI/CD
10 95 (9.76%) ITSM
11 83 (8.53%) Identity Access Management
11 83 (8.53%) Observability
12 81 (8.32%) Disaster Recovery
13 77 (7.91%) Agile
14 74 (7.61%) Project Delivery
15 65 (6.68%) Cybersecurity
16 61 (6.27%) RBAC
16 61 (6.27%) Root Cause Analysis
17 59 (6.06%) Runbook
18 55 (5.65%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 197 (20.25%) PowerShell
2 162 (16.65%) Python
3 101 (10.38%) Bash
4 54 (5.55%) SQL
5 25 (2.57%) Bicep
5 25 (2.57%) JavaScript
6 11 (1.13%) Go
6 11 (1.13%) Java
7 10 (1.03%) ActionScript
8 9 (0.92%) Shell Script
8 9 (0.92%) VBA
9 8 (0.82%) Perl
10 6 (0.62%) VBScript
11 5 (0.51%) Groovy
11 5 (0.51%) Ruby
12 4 (0.41%) C
12 4 (0.41%) VB
13 3 (0.31%) Lisp
14 2 (0.21%) Jython
14 2 (0.21%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 330 (33.92%) Security Cleared
2 211 (21.69%) SC Cleared
3 113 (11.61%) DV Cleared
4 97 (9.97%) Cisco Certification
5 77 (7.91%) Degree
6 65 (6.68%) CCNP
7 52 (5.34%) CCNA
8 36 (3.70%) Microsoft Certification
9 32 (3.29%) Azure Certification
10 26 (2.67%) Network+ Certification
11 21 (2.16%) CompTIA Security+
12 17 (1.75%) Server+ Certification
13 16 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
14 15 (1.54%) CCIE
14 15 (1.54%) CISSP
14 15 (1.54%) MCSE
15 13 (1.34%) AWS Certification
15 13 (1.34%) Computer Science Degree
16 11 (1.13%) JNCIA
16 11 (1.13%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.08%) NIST
2 27 (2.77%) SLA
3 22 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 21 (2.16%) GDPR
5 14 (1.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 12 (1.23%) NCSC
6 12 (1.23%) QA
7 6 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (0.51%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.21%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.21%) NIST 800
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%) PMO
11 1 (0.10%) RMADS
System Software
1 375 (38.54%) Active Directory
2 204 (20.97%) VMware Infrastructure
3 91 (9.35%) Hyper-V
4 57 (5.86%) VMware NSX
5 56 (5.76%) vSphere
6 51 (5.24%) VMware ESXi
7 42 (4.32%) Virtual Machines
8 34 (3.49%) Virtual Desktop
9 32 (3.29%) Docker
10 26 (2.67%) Firmware
11 20 (2.06%) NFS
12 15 (1.54%) BitLocker
12 15 (1.54%) Squid
13 12 (1.23%) vCloud
14 11 (1.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 10 (1.03%) Postfix
16 8 (0.82%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.72%) Varnish
18 5 (0.51%) Ceph
19 4 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 162 (16.65%) Terraform
2 123 (12.64%) Ansible
3 92 (9.46%) Kubernetes
4 76 (7.81%) Single Sign-On
5 73 (7.50%) Microsoft Intune
6 54 (5.55%) FortiGate
7 51 (5.24%) vCenter Server
8 50 (5.14%) Grafana
9 45 (4.62%) SCCM
10 39 (4.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 38 (3.91%) Prometheus
12 27 (2.77%) WSUS
13 24 (2.47%) Argo
14 18 (1.85%) SCOM
15 15 (1.54%) Puppet
16 14 (1.44%) HAProxy
16 14 (1.44%) Nessus
17 13 (1.34%) Jamf Pro
18 12 (1.23%) vMotion
19 8 (0.82%) Consul
Vendors
1 318 (32.68%) Microsoft
2 244 (25.08%) VMware
3 182 (18.71%) Cisco
4 158 (16.24%) F5
5 88 (9.04%) ServiceNow
6 75 (7.71%) Splunk
7 69 (7.09%) Infoblox
8 61 (6.27%) Google
9 59 (6.06%) Citrix
10 53 (5.45%) Red Hat
10 53 (5.45%) SolarWinds
11 46 (4.73%) Juniper
12 40 (4.11%) Palo Alto
13 33 (3.39%) NetApp
14 32 (3.29%) Dynatrace
15 30 (3.08%) Blue Coat
16 28 (2.88%) McAfee
17 25 (2.57%) Fortinet
18 24 (2.47%) Okta
19 23 (2.36%) Zscaler