DNS Contracts

Domain Name System (DNS)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring DNS skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited DNS over the 6 months leading up to 30 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 126 159 142
Rank change year-on-year +33 -17 +6
Contract jobs citing DNS 687 647 1,043
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.24% 1.50% 1.87%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.99% 12.00% 14.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 474 439 720
10th Percentile £263 £225 £250
25th Percentile £406 £363 £397
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £475 £520
Median % change year-on-year +12.84% -8.65% +4.00%
75th Percentile £606 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +7.60% -2.44% +13.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 25 16
10th Percentile - £19.10 £18.50
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.80 £24.06
Median hourly rate £41.50 £40.00 £47.94
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% -16.56% +61.14%
75th Percentile £81.18 - £80.75
90th Percentile £82.48 £50.64 £86.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.45 £40.00 £41.88
% change year-on-year +3.63% -4.48% +90.34%

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 3,819 5,390 7,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.46% 12.49% 12.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,297 3,176 4,600
10th Percentile £225 £213 £240
25th Percentile £363 £350 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £506
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -1.19% +1.20%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £675 £688 £721
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £490 £475
% change year-on-year -3.57% +3.16% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 432 434
10th Percentile £14.40 £13.87 £9.80
25th Percentile £19.46 £17.69 £10.63
Median hourly rate £42.50 £45.00 £21.11
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +113.17% -25.93%
75th Percentile £60.13 £63.75 £62.55
90th Percentile £78.00 £73.21 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.93 £47.50 £22.13
% change year-on-year -32.79% +114.64% -1.64%

DNS
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing DNS as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for DNS in the UK

DNS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing DNS.

Daily rate trend for DNS in the UK

DNS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DNS over the 6 months to 30 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for DNS in the UK

DNS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing DNS.

Hourly rate trend for DNS in the UK

DNS
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DNS over the 6 months to 30 June 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for DNS in the UK

DNS
Top 18 Contract 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 30 June 2025. 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 +39 615 £540 +10.77% 1,723
UK excluding London +26 356 £538 +7.60% 1,059
London +56 262 £500 +11.11% 736
Work from Home +45 192 £540 +8.00% 673
North of England +33 88 £500 +5.26% 284
South East +1 82 £550 +4.76% 254
East of England +76 68 £550 +89.66% 108
South West +38 51 £613 +13.95% 153
Midlands -24 43 £475 -7.09% 153
Yorkshire +16 42 £550 - 108
North West +17 35 £447 -0.67% 162
West Midlands -23 32 £475 -13.64% 90
Scotland -11 13 £450 +87.50% 70
North East +10 11 £413 -26.67% 17
East Midlands -3 11 £550 +46.67% 63
Wales +13 7 £440 +35.31% 35
Northern Ireland -5 5 £160 - 20
Channel Islands - 1 £440 -

DNS
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 81 (11.79%) Microsoft Exchange
2 45 (6.55%) SharePoint
3 41 (5.97%) Confluence
4 21 (3.06%) IIS
5 16 (2.33%) Skype for Business
6 15 (2.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 12 (1.75%) Apache
8 10 (1.46%) OpenStack
9 6 (0.87%) Exchange Server 2003
9 6 (0.87%) Exchange Server 2007
9 6 (0.87%) Exchange Server 2010
9 6 (0.87%) Exchange Server 2013
9 6 (0.87%) Office Communications Server
9 6 (0.87%) SharePoint Server
10 3 (0.44%) CMS
11 2 (0.29%) WordPress
12 1 (0.15%) nginx
12 1 (0.15%) SAS
12 1 (0.15%) Tomcat
Applications
1 73 (10.63%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (1.31%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.29%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 218 (31.73%) Azure
2 191 (27.80%) AWS
3 92 (13.39%) Microsoft 365
4 61 (8.88%) Entra ID
5 58 (8.44%) GCP
5 58 (8.44%) IaaS
6 55 (8.01%) AWS CloudFormation
7 48 (6.99%) GitHub
8 41 (5.97%) PaaS
9 34 (4.95%) Amazon EC2
10 29 (4.22%) SaaS
11 27 (3.93%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 26 (3.78%) Amazon EKS
13 23 (3.35%) Cohesity
13 23 (3.35%) OpenShift
14 21 (3.06%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 20 (2.91%) Azure DevOps
16 19 (2.77%) Amazon S3
17 18 (2.62%) Azure Monitor
17 18 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 356 (51.82%) DHCP
2 261 (37.99%) Firewall
3 189 (27.51%) TCP/IP
4 174 (25.33%) VPN
5 87 (12.66%) WAN
6 79 (11.50%) HTTP
7 74 (10.77%) Network Security
8 72 (10.48%) LAN
9 69 (10.04%) BGP
10 67 (9.75%) VLAN
11 60 (8.73%) OSPF
11 60 (8.73%) SAN
12 56 (8.15%) Wireless
13 55 (8.01%) SMTP
14 54 (7.86%) SSL
15 35 (5.09%) SD-WAN
16 29 (4.22%) IPsec
16 29 (4.22%) Wi-Fi
17 27 (3.93%) FTP
18 26 (3.78%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (6.26%) Amazon RDS
2 30 (4.37%) SQL Server
3 17 (2.47%) Oracle Database
4 13 (1.89%) Elasticsearch
5 12 (1.75%) Big Data
6 10 (1.46%) Amazon Aurora
7 7 (1.02%) DynamoDB
8 6 (0.87%) MongoDB
9 4 (0.58%) Power BI
10 3 (0.44%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.44%) PostgreSQL
11 2 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.29%) GIS
11 2 (0.29%) Hadoop
11 2 (0.29%) MariaDB
11 2 (0.29%) MySQL
12 1 (0.15%) Apache Cassandra
12 1 (0.15%) BigQuery
12 1 (0.15%) InfluxDB
12 1 (0.15%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 64 (9.32%) JIRA
2 58 (8.44%) Jenkins
3 44 (6.40%) Git
4 30 (4.37%) GitLab
5 15 (2.18%) Sonatype Nexus
5 15 (2.18%) TeamCity
6 9 (1.31%) Subversion
7 7 (1.02%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.73%) Vagrant
8 5 (0.73%) Visual Studio Code
9 4 (0.58%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.44%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (0.44%) Oracle APEX
10 3 (0.44%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.44%) Vite
10 3 (0.44%) webpack
11 2 (0.29%) Maven
12 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
General
1 167 (24.31%) Social Skills
2 91 (13.25%) Finance
3 55 (8.01%) Public Sector
4 54 (7.86%) Analytical Skills
5 31 (4.51%) Banking
6 19 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
6 19 (2.77%) Manufacturing
7 18 (2.62%) Telecoms
8 16 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 12 (1.75%) Legal
10 10 (1.46%) Investment Banking
11 9 (1.31%) Law
12 7 (1.02%) Local Government
12 7 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.87%) French Language
13 6 (0.87%) Marketing
14 5 (0.73%) Electronics
14 5 (0.73%) Military
14 5 (0.73%) Spanish Language
15 4 (0.58%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 113 (16.45%) Network Engineer
2 97 (14.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 83 (12.08%) Support Engineer
4 68 (9.90%) Architect
5 48 (6.99%) Azure Engineer
6 46 (6.70%) Analyst
7 45 (6.55%) Senior
8 42 (6.11%) Administrator
9 36 (5.24%) DevOps Engineer
10 23 (3.35%) Network Support
10 23 (3.35%) Network Support Engineer
11 22 (3.20%) 3rd Line Engineer
11 22 (3.20%) Cloud Architect
12 21 (3.06%) AWS Architect
12 21 (3.06%) IT Engineer
12 21 (3.06%) IT Support
12 21 (3.06%) Lead
12 21 (3.06%) Security Architect
12 21 (3.06%) Technical Architect
13 20 (2.91%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (3.06%) Elastic Stack
2 19 (2.77%) LDAP
3 17 (2.47%) .NET
4 16 (2.33%) ADO
5 14 (2.04%) REST
6 13 (1.89%) YAML
7 11 (1.60%) CSS
8 10 (1.46%) HTML
9 8 (1.16%) NETCONF
9 8 (1.16%) Node.js
9 8 (1.16%) OAuth
9 8 (1.16%) OpenTelemetry
9 8 (1.16%) RESTCONF
10 7 (1.02%) JSON
10 7 (1.02%) OAuth2
10 7 (1.02%) OpenID
11 5 (0.73%) AngularJS
11 5 (0.73%) ASP.NET
11 5 (0.73%) Kafka
11 5 (0.73%) React
Miscellaneous
1 62 (9.02%) PKI
2 50 (7.28%) Data Centre
3 33 (4.80%) Clustering
4 27 (3.93%) Replication
5 26 (3.78%) Cloud Native
6 25 (3.64%) Linux Command Line
7 20 (2.91%) Management Information System
8 18 (2.62%) Anti-Spyware
9 15 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (1.75%) Security Operations Centre
11 11 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
11 11 (1.60%) Hybrid Cloud
11 11 (1.60%) Public Cloud
11 11 (1.60%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
12 10 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
12 10 (1.46%) Enterprise Storage
12 10 (1.46%) Onboarding
13 9 (1.31%) Cyberattack
13 9 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 339 (49.34%) Windows
2 172 (25.04%) Windows Server
3 162 (23.58%) Linux
4 51 (7.42%) Windows 10
5 47 (6.84%) Windows Server 2019
6 43 (6.26%) Windows Server 2016
7 37 (5.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 23 (3.35%) Windows Server 2003
9 21 (3.06%) Unix
10 19 (2.77%) CentOS
11 18 (2.62%) VMS
12 16 (2.33%) Windows Server 2012
13 15 (2.18%) Windows 7
14 14 (2.04%) Mac OS
15 13 (1.89%) Ubuntu
16 11 (1.60%) Android
17 9 (1.31%) Solaris
18 6 (0.87%) Rocky
19 5 (0.73%) Amazon Linux
20 3 (0.44%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (19.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 127 (18.49%) DevOps
3 107 (15.57%) Infrastructure as Code
4 105 (15.28%) Agile
4 105 (15.28%) Problem-Solving
5 85 (12.37%) Migration
6 83 (12.08%) ITIL
7 77 (11.21%) CI/CD
8 68 (9.90%) High Availability
9 60 (8.73%) Containerisation
10 51 (7.42%) ITSM
11 44 (6.40%) Cybersecurity
12 42 (6.11%) Computer Science
13 40 (5.82%) SIEM
14 39 (5.68%) Load Balancing
15 38 (5.53%) Deployment Automation
16 37 (5.39%) Service Management
17 34 (4.95%) Configuration Management
17 34 (4.95%) Project Management
18 33 (4.80%) Patch Management
Programming Languages
1 165 (24.02%) PowerShell
2 140 (20.38%) Python
3 80 (11.64%) Bash
4 51 (7.42%) Perl
5 40 (5.82%) SQL
6 31 (4.51%) Shell Script
7 25 (3.64%) Java
8 23 (3.35%) Bicep
9 22 (3.20%) C#
10 18 (2.62%) JavaScript
11 17 (2.47%) PL/SQL
12 13 (1.89%) VBScript
13 8 (1.16%) Groovy
13 8 (1.16%) VB
14 6 (0.87%) Kusto Query Language
15 5 (0.73%) Go
16 4 (0.58%) TypeScript
17 3 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 2 (0.29%) PHP
18 2 (0.29%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 230 (33.48%) Security Cleared
2 158 (23.00%) SC Cleared
3 120 (17.47%) Cisco Certification
4 85 (12.37%) Degree
5 77 (11.21%) CCNP
6 74 (10.77%) DV Cleared
7 51 (7.42%) CCNA
8 30 (4.37%) Computer Science Degree
9 20 (2.91%) AWS Certification
10 13 (1.89%) CCIE
11 12 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
12 10 (1.46%) A+ Certification
12 10 (1.46%) CCSA
13 9 (1.31%) CISSP
14 8 (1.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 7 (1.02%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 7 (1.02%) JNCIS
15 7 (1.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 6 (0.87%) JNCIA
16 6 (0.87%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.37%) SLA
2 15 (2.18%) GDPR
3 13 (1.89%) PCI DSS
4 10 (1.46%) NIST
4 10 (1.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 8 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.87%) NCSC
6 6 (0.87%) QA
7 5 (0.73%) SOC 2
8 4 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.58%) GRC
9 3 (0.44%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.44%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.44%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.44%) WCAG
10 2 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.29%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.29%) NIST 800
System Software
1 284 (41.34%) Active Directory
2 134 (19.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 69 (10.04%) Docker
4 63 (9.17%) Hyper-V
5 49 (7.13%) VMware ESXi
6 46 (6.70%) vSphere
7 32 (4.66%) Virtual Servers
8 26 (3.78%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 19 (2.77%) Microsoft App-V
10 17 (2.47%) Virtual Machines
11 14 (2.04%) BitLocker
11 14 (2.04%) DFS Replication
12 11 (1.60%) Terminal Services
12 11 (1.60%) VMware NSX
13 10 (1.46%) NFS
13 10 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
14 9 (1.31%) Firmware
14 9 (1.31%) XenApp
15 6 (0.87%) ISA Server
15 6 (0.87%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 143 (20.82%) Ansible
2 129 (18.78%) Terraform
3 75 (10.92%) Kubernetes
4 67 (9.75%) SCCM
5 57 (8.30%) WSUS
6 51 (7.42%) Puppet
7 48 (6.99%) Microsoft Intune
8 31 (4.51%) Grafana
8 31 (4.51%) Prometheus
9 30 (4.37%) Progress Chef
10 28 (4.08%) vCenter Server
11 15 (2.18%) Nagios
12 14 (2.04%) Microsoft Clustering
13 12 (1.75%) FortiGate
13 12 (1.75%) Tivoli
13 12 (1.75%) vMotion
14 10 (1.46%) Red Hat Satellite
15 6 (0.87%) CA Spectrum
15 6 (0.87%) OpenView
15 6 (0.87%) QRadar
Vendors
1 234 (34.06%) Microsoft
2 195 (28.38%) VMware
3 179 (26.06%) Cisco
4 70 (10.19%) CheckPoint
5 64 (9.32%) ServiceNow
6 53 (7.71%) F5
7 48 (6.99%) Red Hat
8 46 (6.70%) Palo Alto
9 42 (6.11%) Citrix
9 42 (6.11%) SolarWinds
10 40 (5.82%) Splunk
11 39 (5.68%) Fortinet
12 38 (5.53%) Infoblox
13 36 (5.24%) Google
14 31 (4.51%) Oracle
15 27 (3.93%) Dell
15 27 (3.93%) Juniper
16 25 (3.64%) HP
17 23 (3.35%) NetApp
18 18 (2.62%) Meraki