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 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
11 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 133 152
Rank change year-on-year -14 +19 -22
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,017 710 624
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.86% 2.15% 1.62%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.86% 18.46% 13.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 624 449 405
10th Percentile £300 £229 £225
25th Percentile £408 £380 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £653 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 30 13
10th Percentile £26.66 £27.72 £20.25
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.10
Median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +41.07% +86.10% -49.09%
75th Percentile £77.00 £79.76 £38.00
90th Percentile £97.29 £89.63 £49.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.24 £45.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +49.41% +50.00% -25.00%

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 5,121 3,847 4,573
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.38% 11.65% 11.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,996 2,371 2,670
10th Percentile £233 £235 £228
25th Percentile £390 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £609
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £465 £500
% change year-on-year +2.58% -7.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 201 268
10th Percentile £14.28 £15.33 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.66 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.27% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £66.28 £63.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.11 £73.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.82% -25.89% +1.52%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 11 September 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 -12 921 £500 - 490
UK excluding London -8 638 £500 - 363
London -44 316 £500 -0.99% 196
Work from Home -30 237 £500 +3.95% 153
North of England +19 212 £500 +9.29% 61
South East +7 177 £538 +2.38% 134
North West +26 133 £458 - 37
Midlands -32 118 £450 -5.26% 51
South West 0 100 £550 - 53
West Midlands -38 96 £450 -5.26% 30
Yorkshire -8 64 £500 -4.76% 15
East of England -48 40 £475 -13.64% 36
Scotland +9 39 £500 +10.13% 28
East Midlands +1 21 £431 -13.75% 21
North East -40 15 £419 +23.16% 12
Wales -8 10 £440 +16.02% 3

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
1 112 (11.01%) Microsoft Exchange
2 94 (9.24%) SharePoint
3 31 (3.05%) Confluence
4 16 (1.57%) Apache
5 14 (1.38%) IIS
6 13 (1.28%) nginx
7 8 (0.79%) Skype for Business
7 8 (0.79%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.39%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2010
9 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2013
9 3 (0.29%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.098%) CMS
10 1 (0.098%) Drupal
10 1 (0.098%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.098%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.098%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.098%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.098%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.098%) WordPress
Applications
1 25 (2.46%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.08%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.20%) Houdini
4 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.20%) NUKE
5 1 (0.098%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 13 (1.28%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.098%) Magento
2 1 (0.098%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 419 (41.20%) Azure
2 212 (20.85%) AWS
3 189 (18.58%) Microsoft 365
4 184 (18.09%) Entra ID
5 91 (8.95%) GCP
6 80 (7.87%) GitHub
7 56 (5.51%) OneDrive
8 55 (5.41%) IaaS
9 49 (4.82%) Azure DevOps
10 45 (4.42%) GitHub Actions
11 41 (4.03%) Azure Monitor
12 37 (3.64%) SaaS
13 35 (3.44%) PaaS
14 30 (2.95%) OpenShift
15 28 (2.75%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 27 (2.65%) Serverless
17 26 (2.56%) Amazon EKS
17 26 (2.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 24 (2.36%) AWS CloudFormation
18 24 (2.36%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 485 (47.69%) DHCP
2 366 (35.99%) Firewall
3 291 (28.61%) TCP/IP
4 283 (27.83%) VPN
5 132 (12.98%) Network Security
6 130 (12.78%) VLAN
7 119 (11.70%) WAN
8 106 (10.42%) SSL
9 90 (8.85%) LAN
10 87 (8.55%) BGP
11 79 (7.77%) Wireless
12 69 (6.78%) HTTP
12 69 (6.78%) Wi-Fi
13 66 (6.49%) BIG-IP
14 62 (6.10%) SAN
15 58 (5.70%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 51 (5.01%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 46 (4.52%) OSPF
18 44 (4.33%) DMZ
19 42 (4.13%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (5.11%) SQL Server
2 26 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.18%) MongoDB
4 12 (1.18%) MySQL
5 9 (0.88%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (0.88%) Power BI
6 8 (0.79%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
7 7 (0.69%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.59%) Redis
9 5 (0.49%) MariaDB
10 4 (0.39%) Big Data
10 4 (0.39%) Db2
11 3 (0.29%) Metadata
11 3 (0.29%) SQLPlus
12 2 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (0.20%) Flink
12 2 (0.20%) KDB
13 1 (0.098%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 83 (8.16%) JIRA
2 55 (5.41%) Jenkins
3 46 (4.52%) Git
4 36 (3.54%) GitLab
5 15 (1.47%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.49%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.39%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.39%) Selenium
10 3 (0.29%) MSI
11 2 (0.20%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.20%) Vagrant
12 1 (0.098%) Locust
12 1 (0.098%) Newman
12 1 (0.098%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.098%) TestCafe
General
1 275 (27.04%) Social Skills
2 120 (11.80%) Analytical Skills
3 87 (8.55%) Finance
4 79 (7.77%) Public Sector
5 62 (6.10%) Banking
6 56 (5.51%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (3.44%) Telecoms
8 29 (2.85%) Investment Banking
9 18 (1.77%) Legal
10 13 (1.28%) Aerospace
10 13 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (1.08%) Police
12 10 (0.98%) Local Government
12 10 (0.98%) Military
12 10 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (0.88%) Manufacturing
14 8 (0.79%) Front Office
14 8 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (0.69%) Law
16 6 (0.59%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 188 (18.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 173 (17.01%) Network Engineer
3 122 (12.00%) Senior
4 99 (9.73%) Support Engineer
5 85 (8.36%) Cloud Engineer
6 78 (7.67%) Architect
7 52 (5.11%) Analyst
8 51 (5.01%) Security Engineer
9 50 (4.92%) IT Support
10 49 (4.82%) IT Engineer
11 48 (4.72%) Platform Engineer
12 45 (4.42%) Azure Engineer
13 43 (4.23%) DevOps Engineer
13 43 (4.23%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 38 (3.74%) Administrator
15 37 (3.64%) Cisco Engineer
15 37 (3.64%) Network Security Engineer
16 35 (3.44%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 34 (3.34%) Senior Network Engineer
18 33 (3.24%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 221 (21.73%) Terraform
2 40 (3.93%) SAML
3 36 (3.54%) 802.1X
4 30 (2.95%) OAuth
5 29 (2.85%) ARM Templates
5 29 (2.85%) LDAP
6 26 (2.56%) OpenID
7 22 (2.16%) REST
8 18 (1.77%) JSON
8 18 (1.77%) Kafka
9 15 (1.47%) OpenTelemetry
10 13 (1.28%) YAML
11 12 (1.18%) OAuth2
12 9 (0.88%) CSS
12 9 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
13 8 (0.79%) React
14 6 (0.59%) .NET
14 6 (0.59%) Jinja
14 6 (0.59%) Middleware
15 5 (0.49%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 126 (12.39%) Data Centre
2 107 (10.52%) PKI
3 74 (7.28%) Hybrid Cloud
4 71 (6.98%) Onboarding
5 56 (5.51%) Management Information System
6 48 (4.72%) Cloud Native
7 29 (2.85%) Replication
8 28 (2.75%) Public Cloud
9 27 (2.65%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 26 (2.56%) Clustering
11 22 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
12 21 (2.06%) Linux Command Line
13 16 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
13 16 (1.57%) Enterprise Cloud
14 15 (1.47%) Cyber Threat
14 15 (1.47%) Driving Licence
14 15 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
14 15 (1.47%) Security Posture
15 12 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
16 10 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 480 (47.20%) Windows
2 270 (26.55%) Windows Server
3 229 (22.52%) Linux
4 64 (6.29%) Windows 10
5 49 (4.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 42 (4.13%) Windows Server 2019
7 34 (3.34%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.65%) Unix
9 26 (2.56%) Ubuntu
9 26 (2.56%) Windows Server 2012
10 24 (2.36%) Apple iOS
11 22 (2.16%) Android
12 20 (1.97%) CentOS
13 16 (1.57%) VMS
14 14 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (1.18%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.69%) Rocky
16 7 (0.69%) Windows Server 2008
17 5 (0.49%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.39%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 255 (25.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 225 (22.12%) Problem-Solving
3 198 (19.47%) ITIL
4 193 (18.98%) Infrastructure as Code
5 178 (17.50%) DevOps
6 172 (16.91%) Load Balancing
7 160 (15.73%) CI/CD
7 160 (15.73%) Migration
8 127 (12.49%) ITSM
9 120 (11.80%) High Availability
10 113 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
11 110 (10.82%) Agile
12 96 (9.44%) Cybersecurity
13 94 (9.24%) Technical Leadership
14 92 (9.05%) Observability
15 91 (8.95%) Disaster Recovery
16 90 (8.85%) Project Delivery
17 87 (8.55%) Platform Engineering
18 82 (8.06%) Runbook
19 80 (7.87%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 273 (26.84%) PowerShell
2 212 (20.85%) Python
3 152 (14.95%) Bash
4 68 (6.69%) SQL
5 51 (5.01%) Bicep
6 16 (1.57%) Shell Script
7 15 (1.47%) JavaScript
8 14 (1.38%) Go
9 13 (1.28%) ActionScript
10 11 (1.08%) Java
11 10 (0.98%) VBScript
12 9 (0.88%) Perl
13 8 (0.79%) Groovy
14 7 (0.69%) VBA
15 6 (0.59%) TypeScript
15 6 (0.59%) VB
16 4 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
16 4 (0.39%) Ruby
17 3 (0.29%) C
17 3 (0.29%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 382 (37.56%) Security Cleared
2 214 (21.04%) SC Cleared
3 166 (16.32%) DV Cleared
4 90 (8.85%) Cisco Certification
5 87 (8.55%) Degree
6 73 (7.18%) CCNP
7 57 (5.60%) Azure Certification
8 55 (5.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 48 (4.72%) CCNA
10 27 (2.65%) Network+ Certification
11 26 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
12 23 (2.26%) AWS Certification
13 19 (1.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
14 17 (1.67%) CCIE
15 15 (1.47%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 15 (1.47%) VCAP
16 12 (1.18%) MCSE
17 11 (1.08%) A+ Certification
17 11 (1.08%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (4.13%) SLA
2 26 (2.56%) NIST
3 17 (1.67%) QA
4 16 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (1.57%) NCSC
5 7 (0.69%) GDPR
6 6 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
7 5 (0.49%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.39%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.29%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.20%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.20%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 443 (43.56%) Active Directory
2 285 (28.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 127 (12.49%) Hyper-V
4 88 (8.65%) VMware ESXi
5 80 (7.87%) vSphere
6 68 (6.69%) VMware NSX
7 65 (6.39%) Docker
8 48 (4.72%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (3.83%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.46%) Firmware
11 21 (2.06%) NFS
12 16 (1.57%) vCloud
13 13 (1.28%) BitLocker
14 10 (0.98%) Squid
14 10 (0.98%) Virtual Servers
15 9 (0.88%) Postfix
16 8 (0.79%) Ceph
16 8 (0.79%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.79%) UAG
17 6 (0.59%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 160 (15.73%) Ansible
2 133 (13.08%) Kubernetes
3 113 (11.11%) Microsoft Intune
4 82 (8.06%) SCCM
5 72 (7.08%) vCenter Server
6 60 (5.90%) Grafana
7 57 (5.60%) Single Sign-On
8 47 (4.62%) Prometheus
9 39 (3.83%) SCOM
10 34 (3.34%) WSUS
11 25 (2.46%) FortiGate
12 17 (1.67%) NetBackup
13 16 (1.57%) Argo
13 16 (1.57%) Puppet
13 16 (1.57%) VxRail
14 15 (1.47%) Packer
15 13 (1.28%) Istio
15 13 (1.28%) Jamf Pro
16 12 (1.18%) vMotion
17 10 (0.98%) systemd
Vendors
1 393 (38.64%) Microsoft
2 341 (33.53%) VMware
3 188 (18.49%) Cisco
4 131 (12.88%) F5
5 89 (8.75%) ServiceNow
6 59 (5.80%) Infoblox
7 58 (5.70%) Citrix
8 55 (5.41%) Google
9 52 (5.11%) Palo Alto
10 51 (5.01%) SolarWinds
11 49 (4.82%) Splunk
12 46 (4.52%) Red Hat
13 44 (4.33%) Juniper
14 38 (3.74%) NetApp
15 36 (3.54%) Dynatrace
16 34 (3.34%) CheckPoint
17 31 (3.05%) Fortinet
18 28 (2.75%) Zscaler
19 25 (2.46%) Blue Coat
19 25 (2.46%) CyberArk
546 DNS jobs Nationwide