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 15 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 125 162
Rank change year-on-year -9 +37 -18
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,028 720 655
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.95% 2.22% 1.53%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.56% 18.20% 12.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 631 480 435
10th Percentile £281 £285 £240
25th Percentile £401 £402 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -4.88%
75th Percentile £579 £600 £575
90th Percentile £638 £663 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% +1.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 27 25
10th Percentile £20.88 - £20.00
25th Percentile £26.00 £29.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £33.86 £54.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.87% +36.25% -4.48%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.35 -
90th Percentile £80.75 £84.40 £50.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.86 £55.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -38.44% +37.50% -

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 5,000 3,956 5,360
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 12.19% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,037 2,407 3,158
10th Percentile £239 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £364 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% +5.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 193 425
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.64
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.44 £47.50 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.34% +10.47% +39.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £73.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £42.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -38.31% -10.53% +5.56%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 -13 919 £500 -5.66% 332
UK excluding London -8 643 £500 -4.76% 306
London -31 311 £500 - 81
North of England +20 242 £450 -10.00% 52
Work from Home -29 238 £523 -0.48% 170
South East +10 190 £538 -2.27% 105
North West +37 158 £450 -1.64% 22
Midlands +3 115 £450 -2.70% 37
West Midlands -11 96 £450 +2.62% 23
Yorkshire -22 78 £450 -18.18% 23
South West -7 75 £490 -16.60% 44
Scotland +21 42 £550 +22.22% 17
East of England -52 35 £463 -15.91% 47
East Midlands -7 17 £413 -17.50% 14
Wales -9 9 £500 +13.70% 9
North East -43 6 £413 +17.86% 11

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 96 (9.34%) Microsoft Exchange
2 72 (7.00%) SharePoint
3 21 (2.04%) Confluence
4 17 (1.65%) nginx
5 15 (1.46%) Apache
5 15 (1.46%) IIS
6 9 (0.88%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.49%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.39%) Exchange Server 2010
9 2 (0.19%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.19%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.19%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.097%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.097%) Traefik
Applications
1 19 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.26%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.39%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.097%) Houdini
6 1 (0.097%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.097%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 7 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.097%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 373 (36.28%) Azure
2 191 (18.58%) AWS
3 170 (16.54%) Entra ID
4 156 (15.18%) Microsoft 365
5 106 (10.31%) GCP
6 69 (6.71%) GitHub
7 58 (5.64%) IaaS
8 46 (4.47%) OneDrive
9 43 (4.18%) PaaS
9 43 (4.18%) SaaS
10 36 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
11 29 (2.82%) Amazon EC2
11 29 (2.82%) AWS CloudFormation
11 29 (2.82%) Route 53
11 29 (2.82%) Serverless
12 28 (2.72%) Azure Monitor
12 28 (2.72%) OpenShift
12 28 (2.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 26 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
14 24 (2.33%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 455 (44.26%) DHCP
2 339 (32.98%) Firewall
3 281 (27.33%) TCP/IP
4 259 (25.19%) VPN
5 138 (13.42%) WAN
6 121 (11.77%) Network Security
7 119 (11.58%) LAN
8 110 (10.70%) VLAN
9 102 (9.92%) SSL
10 100 (9.73%) BGP
11 89 (8.66%) BIG-IP
12 74 (7.20%) HTTP
13 67 (6.52%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (5.93%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 60 (5.84%) Wireless
16 59 (5.74%) SAN
17 55 (5.35%) OSPF
18 45 (4.38%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 44 (4.28%) DMZ
20 36 (3.50%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (3.99%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.75%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (1.26%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.17%) Azure SQL Database
5 11 (1.07%) Power BI
6 8 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
7 6 (0.58%) Data Lake
7 6 (0.58%) MongoDB
7 6 (0.58%) MySQL
8 4 (0.39%) MariaDB
9 3 (0.29%) Big Data
9 3 (0.29%) Db2
10 2 (0.19%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.19%) SQLPlus
11 1 (0.097%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.097%) KDB
11 1 (0.097%) Power Query
11 1 (0.097%) Redis
11 1 (0.097%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.097%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 73 (7.10%) JIRA
2 53 (5.16%) Jenkins
3 36 (3.50%) Git
4 20 (1.95%) Fiddler
5 18 (1.75%) GitLab
6 10 (0.97%) Bitbucket
6 10 (0.97%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.68%) Chocolatey
7 7 (0.68%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.19%) Introscope
9 2 (0.19%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.097%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.097%) MSI
10 1 (0.097%) Visual Studio
General
1 252 (24.51%) Social Skills
2 102 (9.92%) Analytical Skills
3 88 (8.56%) Finance
4 78 (7.59%) Public Sector
5 70 (6.81%) Banking
6 61 (5.93%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (3.31%) Investment Banking
8 23 (2.24%) Legal
9 20 (1.95%) Military
9 20 (1.95%) Telecoms
10 13 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
11 11 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 10 (0.97%) Local Government
13 9 (0.88%) Police
14 6 (0.58%) Publishing
15 5 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.49%) Law
15 5 (0.49%) Manufacturing
16 4 (0.39%) Italian Language
16 4 (0.39%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 180 (17.51%) Network Engineer
2 158 (15.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 116 (11.28%) Architect
4 90 (8.75%) Senior
4 90 (8.75%) Support Engineer
5 68 (6.61%) Cloud Engineer
6 63 (6.13%) Analyst
7 61 (5.93%) Security Engineer
8 53 (5.16%) IT Support
9 51 (4.96%) IT Engineer
10 43 (4.18%) Web Engineer
11 42 (4.09%) Network Security Engineer
12 41 (3.99%) DevOps Engineer
13 40 (3.89%) Azure Engineer
14 39 (3.79%) Cisco Engineer
15 38 (3.70%) Administrator
16 37 (3.60%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 34 (3.31%) IT Support Engineer
18 33 (3.21%) Data Engineer
18 33 (3.21%) Data Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (5.25%) LDAP
2 46 (4.47%) 802.1X
2 46 (4.47%) SAML
3 31 (3.02%) OAuth
4 28 (2.72%) OpenID
5 18 (1.75%) OpenTelemetry
6 17 (1.65%) ARM Templates
6 17 (1.65%) JSON
7 9 (0.88%) REST
7 9 (0.88%) YAML
8 6 (0.58%) Kafka
9 5 (0.49%) CSS
9 5 (0.49%) Microsoft Graph
9 5 (0.49%) Middleware
10 4 (0.39%) AWS CDK
10 4 (0.39%) OAuth2
10 4 (0.39%) Web Services
11 3 (0.29%) LEMP Stack
11 3 (0.29%) Node.js
11 3 (0.29%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 125 (12.16%) Data Centre
2 95 (9.24%) PKI
3 60 (5.84%) Cloud Native
4 54 (5.25%) Onboarding
5 47 (4.57%) Hybrid Cloud
6 43 (4.18%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 43 (4.18%) Management Information System
7 42 (4.09%) Clustering
8 39 (3.79%) Replication
9 28 (2.72%) Public Cloud
10 25 (2.43%) Self-Motivation
11 20 (1.95%) Security Posture
12 18 (1.75%) Enterprise Cloud
13 14 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
13 14 (1.36%) Security Operations Centre
14 13 (1.26%) Cyber Threat
14 13 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
15 12 (1.17%) Linux Command Line
16 11 (1.07%) Product Ownership
17 10 (0.97%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 442 (43.00%) Windows
2 231 (22.47%) Windows Server
3 168 (16.34%) Linux
4 46 (4.47%) Windows 10
5 44 (4.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (3.79%) Windows Server 2019
7 36 (3.50%) Mac OS
8 26 (2.53%) Unix
9 22 (2.14%) Windows Server 2012
10 17 (1.65%) Apple iOS
11 16 (1.56%) Ubuntu
12 15 (1.46%) Android
12 15 (1.46%) VMS
13 14 (1.36%) CentOS
13 14 (1.36%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.58%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.49%) Rocky
15 5 (0.49%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.29%) AIX
16 3 (0.29%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 226 (21.98%) Problem-Solving
2 206 (20.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 184 (17.90%) Load Balancing
4 173 (16.83%) Migration
5 163 (15.86%) ITIL
6 155 (15.08%) High Availability
7 147 (14.30%) DevOps
8 144 (14.01%) Infrastructure as Code
9 138 (13.42%) CI/CD
10 111 (10.80%) ITSM
11 87 (8.46%) Identity Access Management
12 86 (8.37%) Observability
13 85 (8.27%) Disaster Recovery
13 85 (8.27%) Project Delivery
14 82 (7.98%) Agile
15 81 (7.88%) Cybersecurity
16 73 (7.10%) Continuous Improvement
17 66 (6.42%) Containerisation
17 66 (6.42%) Runbook
18 63 (6.13%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 217 (21.11%) PowerShell
2 185 (18.00%) Python
3 119 (11.58%) Bash
4 52 (5.06%) SQL
5 32 (3.11%) Bicep
6 24 (2.33%) JavaScript
7 11 (1.07%) Go
7 11 (1.07%) Shell Script
8 10 (0.97%) ActionScript
9 9 (0.88%) VBA
10 8 (0.78%) Java
10 8 (0.78%) Perl
11 5 (0.49%) C
11 5 (0.49%) Groovy
11 5 (0.49%) Ruby
12 4 (0.39%) VBScript
13 3 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.29%) Lisp
14 2 (0.19%) Jython
14 2 (0.19%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 363 (35.31%) Security Cleared
2 223 (21.69%) SC Cleared
3 134 (13.04%) DV Cleared
4 104 (10.12%) Cisco Certification
5 79 (7.68%) Degree
6 72 (7.00%) CCNP
7 55 (5.35%) CCNA
8 44 (4.28%) Microsoft Certification
9 38 (3.70%) Azure Certification
10 29 (2.82%) Network+ Certification
11 20 (1.95%) CompTIA Security+
12 18 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
13 17 (1.65%) CCIE
13 17 (1.65%) MCSE
13 17 (1.65%) Server+ Certification
14 16 (1.56%) CISSP
15 14 (1.36%) AWS Certification
15 14 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
16 12 (1.17%) MCSA
17 11 (1.07%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.02%) SLA
2 29 (2.82%) NIST
3 18 (1.75%) GDPR
4 17 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 16 (1.56%) NCSC
6 10 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 8 (0.78%) QA
8 5 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
8 5 (0.49%) NIST 800
9 4 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.29%) JSP 440
11 2 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.097%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.097%) COBIT
12 1 (0.097%) Data Quality
12 1 (0.097%) PCI DSS
12 1 (0.097%) PMO
12 1 (0.097%) RMADS
System Software
1 411 (39.98%) Active Directory
2 223 (21.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 102 (9.92%) Hyper-V
4 66 (6.42%) vSphere
5 63 (6.13%) VMware NSX
6 62 (6.03%) VMware ESXi
7 45 (4.38%) Virtual Machines
8 40 (3.89%) Docker
9 39 (3.79%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.43%) Firmware
11 21 (2.04%) NFS
12 15 (1.46%) Squid
13 13 (1.26%) vCloud
14 12 (1.17%) BitLocker
15 10 (0.97%) Microsoft App-V
15 10 (0.97%) Postfix
16 8 (0.78%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.68%) Varnish
18 5 (0.49%) Ceph
18 5 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 183 (17.80%) Terraform
2 134 (13.04%) Ansible
3 107 (10.41%) Kubernetes
4 79 (7.68%) Microsoft Intune
5 72 (7.00%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (5.84%) vCenter Server
7 56 (5.45%) Grafana
8 53 (5.16%) FortiGate
9 49 (4.77%) SCCM
10 43 (4.18%) Prometheus
11 33 (3.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 27 (2.63%) WSUS
13 26 (2.53%) SCOM
14 25 (2.43%) Argo
15 14 (1.36%) Nessus
15 14 (1.36%) Puppet
16 13 (1.26%) Jamf Pro
17 12 (1.17%) HAProxy
18 11 (1.07%) vMotion
19 8 (0.78%) Packer
Vendors
1 343 (33.37%) Microsoft
2 270 (26.26%) VMware
3 186 (18.09%) Cisco
4 154 (14.98%) F5
5 91 (8.85%) ServiceNow
6 78 (7.59%) Splunk
7 67 (6.52%) Infoblox
8 63 (6.13%) Citrix
8 63 (6.13%) Google
9 60 (5.84%) SolarWinds
10 55 (5.35%) Red Hat
11 51 (4.96%) Juniper
12 39 (3.79%) Palo Alto
13 34 (3.31%) Dynatrace
13 34 (3.31%) NetApp
14 27 (2.63%) Blue Coat
15 25 (2.43%) Fortinet
15 25 (2.43%) McAfee
16 24 (2.33%) Zscaler
17 22 (2.14%) Okta