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 6 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 122 145
Rank change year-on-year -19 +23 -17
Contract jobs citing DNS 901 678 722
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.89% 2.31% 1.67%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.72% 18.15% 13.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 563 486 474
10th Percentile £270 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £370
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £536 £485
Median % change year-on-year -9.51% +10.63% -7.71%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £600
90th Percentile £650 £691 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £539 £513
% change year-on-year -11.87% +5.17% -0.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 11 27
10th Percentile £16.84 £23.59 £19.40
25th Percentile £24.18 £25.80 £23.80
Median hourly rate £54.00 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.06% +101.69% -23.27%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £44.38
90th Percentile £75.75 £82.10 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.25 £81.01 £40.00
% change year-on-year -25.63% +102.53% -13.24%

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 4,568 3,736 5,525
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.59% 12.74% 12.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,839 2,302 3,306
10th Percentile £250 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £495
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -1.52% -4.81%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 234 174 420
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.22 £16.72
Median hourly rate £40.54 £36.57 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.85% -8.57% +112.54%
75th Percentile £65.97 £58.39 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £24.71 £45.88
% change year-on-year +97.17% -46.14% +148.00%

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 6 May 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 6 May 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 6 May 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 -25 788 £485 -11.33% 290
UK excluding London -9 571 £475 -11.87% 256
London -26 258 £500 -4.76% 76
North of England +3 216 £425 -10.53% 62
Work from Home -40 192 £505 -5.61% 99
South East +3 159 £525 -4.55% 92
North West +35 146 £425 - 31
Midlands +17 113 £390 -30.36% 33
West Midlands +28 99 £380 -28.97% 22
Yorkshire -42 66 £447 -18.82% 24
South West -47 49 £538 -7.53% 29
Scotland +36 48 £550 +22.22% 16
East of England -36 42 £450 -10.00% 29
East Midlands -29 13 £394 -30.62% 11
Wales -20 7 £488 +8.33% 8
North East -26 6 £306 -9.93% 7

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 95 (10.54%) Microsoft Exchange
2 45 (4.99%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.66%) nginx
4 13 (1.44%) Confluence
4 13 (1.44%) IIS
5 10 (1.11%) Apache
6 5 (0.55%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.44%) Exchange Server 2010
7 4 (0.44%) Skype for Business
7 4 (0.44%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
8 2 (0.22%) WordPress
9 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 21 (2.33%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.33%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.22%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 305 (33.85%) Azure
2 151 (16.76%) AWS
3 148 (16.43%) Entra ID
4 133 (14.76%) Microsoft 365
5 92 (10.21%) GCP
6 65 (7.21%) GitHub
7 53 (5.88%) IaaS
8 42 (4.66%) SaaS
9 41 (4.55%) PaaS
10 34 (3.77%) AWS CloudFormation
10 34 (3.77%) Serverless
11 32 (3.55%) Amazon EC2
11 32 (3.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 31 (3.44%) Amazon S3
13 30 (3.33%) AWS Lambda
14 29 (3.22%) GitHub Actions
15 28 (3.11%) Amazon EKS
15 28 (3.11%) Route 53
16 25 (2.77%) OneDrive
17 23 (2.55%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 384 (42.62%) DHCP
2 274 (30.41%) Firewall
3 226 (25.08%) TCP/IP
4 219 (24.31%) VPN
5 115 (12.76%) WAN
6 108 (11.99%) LAN
7 92 (10.21%) SSL
8 91 (10.10%) Network Security
9 85 (9.43%) BIG-IP
10 81 (8.99%) HTTP
11 79 (8.77%) BGP
12 78 (8.66%) VLAN
13 56 (6.22%) Wi-Fi
14 49 (5.44%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 45 (4.99%) OSPF
16 44 (4.88%) Wireless
17 40 (4.44%) Kerberos
17 40 (4.44%) Wireshark
18 37 (4.11%) DMZ
19 35 (3.88%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (3.11%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.33%) Elasticsearch
3 14 (1.55%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (0.89%) MongoDB
5 7 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (0.78%) Power BI
6 5 (0.55%) Amazon Aurora
6 5 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (0.55%) DynamoDB
6 5 (0.55%) MySQL
7 4 (0.44%) Data Hub
7 4 (0.44%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.44%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.44%) Redis
8 3 (0.33%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.11%) SQLPlus
9 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 50 (5.55%) Jenkins
2 47 (5.22%) JIRA
3 30 (3.33%) Git
4 28 (3.11%) Fiddler
5 27 (3.00%) GitLab
6 9 (1.00%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.78%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.78%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.67%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.44%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.44%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.22%) Introscope
12 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 196 (21.75%) Social Skills
2 86 (9.54%) Analytical Skills
3 74 (8.21%) Banking
4 70 (7.77%) Finance
5 59 (6.55%) Public Sector
6 44 (4.88%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (4.44%) Investment Banking
8 30 (3.33%) Legal
9 23 (2.55%) Telecoms
10 18 (2.00%) Military
11 10 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.00%) Law
13 6 (0.67%) Aerospace
13 6 (0.67%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.55%) Local Government
14 5 (0.55%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.44%) Italian Language
15 4 (0.44%) Police
16 3 (0.33%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 160 (17.76%) Network Engineer
2 111 (12.32%) Architect
3 110 (12.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 88 (9.77%) Analyst
5 78 (8.66%) Senior
6 62 (6.88%) Security Engineer
7 50 (5.55%) Web Engineer
8 44 (4.88%) Support Engineer
9 41 (4.55%) Network Security Engineer
10 39 (4.33%) IT Support
11 36 (4.00%) IT Engineer
12 34 (3.77%) Lead
13 33 (3.66%) Cisco Engineer
13 33 (3.66%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 31 (3.44%) Administrator
14 31 (3.44%) Data Engineer
14 31 (3.44%) Data Network Engineer
15 30 (3.33%) Cisco Security Engineer
16 29 (3.22%) Azure Engineer
17 26 (2.89%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (7.88%) LDAP
2 52 (5.77%) SAML
3 41 (4.55%) OAuth
4 35 (3.88%) 802.1X
5 31 (3.44%) OpenID
6 22 (2.44%) OpenTelemetry
7 13 (1.44%) JSON
8 11 (1.22%) OAuth2
9 10 (1.11%) REST
10 9 (1.00%) ARM Templates
10 9 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
10 9 (1.00%) Kafka
11 6 (0.67%) XMPP
12 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Graph
13 4 (0.44%) AWS CDK
13 4 (0.44%) gRPC
13 4 (0.44%) JPA
13 4 (0.44%) RESTful
13 4 (0.44%) Spring Boot
13 4 (0.44%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 75 (8.32%) PKI
2 74 (8.21%) Data Centre
3 53 (5.88%) Cloud Native
4 41 (4.55%) Replication
5 39 (4.33%) Clustering
5 39 (4.33%) Management Information System
6 38 (4.22%) Onboarding
7 33 (3.66%) Public Cloud
8 28 (3.11%) Security Operations Centre
9 27 (3.00%) Hybrid Cloud
10 26 (2.89%) Cyberattack
11 23 (2.55%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 21 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
13 18 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
14 16 (1.78%) Cyber Threat
14 16 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
15 14 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
15 14 (1.55%) Enterprise Cloud
15 14 (1.55%) Virtual Team
16 12 (1.33%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 394 (43.73%) Windows
2 219 (24.31%) Windows Server
3 126 (13.98%) Linux
4 41 (4.55%) Windows 10
5 37 (4.11%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.33%) Unix
7 20 (2.22%) Windows Server 2012
8 19 (2.11%) Mac OS
9 18 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 17 (1.89%) Android
10 17 (1.89%) Windows Server 2016
11 13 (1.44%) Apple iOS
12 10 (1.11%) VMS
13 8 (0.89%) Windows Server 2003
14 6 (0.67%) Windows 7
15 5 (0.55%) CentOS
15 5 (0.55%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.44%) CatOS
17 2 (0.22%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
17 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 189 (20.98%) Problem-Solving
2 170 (18.87%) Load Balancing
3 141 (15.65%) Migration
4 137 (15.21%) High Availability
4 137 (15.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 124 (13.76%) ITIL
6 119 (13.21%) DevOps
7 112 (12.43%) CI/CD
8 108 (11.99%) Infrastructure as Code
9 87 (9.66%) Cybersecurity
10 83 (9.21%) Disaster Recovery
11 77 (8.55%) Identity Access Management
12 75 (8.32%) ITSM
12 75 (8.32%) Observability
13 69 (7.66%) Agile
14 62 (6.88%) Change Management
15 60 (6.66%) SIEM
16 57 (6.33%) Incident Response
16 57 (6.33%) Project Delivery
17 55 (6.10%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 193 (21.42%) PowerShell
2 130 (14.43%) Python
3 78 (8.66%) Bash
4 44 (4.88%) SQL
5 21 (2.33%) JavaScript
6 17 (1.89%) Bicep
7 14 (1.55%) Java
8 11 (1.22%) Go
9 10 (1.11%) Ruby
9 10 (1.11%) Shell Script
10 7 (0.78%) VBA
10 7 (0.78%) VBScript
11 4 (0.44%) VB
12 3 (0.33%) C
12 3 (0.33%) Groovy
12 3 (0.33%) Perl
13 2 (0.22%) Jython
13 2 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.22%) Lisp
14 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 293 (32.52%) Security Cleared
2 201 (22.31%) SC Cleared
3 96 (10.65%) DV Cleared
4 75 (8.32%) Cisco Certification
5 58 (6.44%) Degree
6 44 (4.88%) CCNP
7 34 (3.77%) CCNA
7 34 (3.77%) CompTIA Security+
7 34 (3.77%) Microsoft Certification
8 30 (3.33%) Azure Certification
9 21 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (2.11%) Network+ Certification
11 17 (1.89%) CompTIA CySA+
12 16 (1.78%) AWS Certification
13 14 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
14 11 (1.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 11 (1.22%) CISSP
15 10 (1.11%) JNCIA
15 10 (1.11%) JNCIS
16 9 (1.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.22%) SLA
2 26 (2.89%) GDPR
2 26 (2.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 25 (2.77%) NIST
4 16 (1.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 8 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
6 7 (0.78%) NCSC
7 6 (0.67%) QA
8 4 (0.44%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.33%) PMO
10 2 (0.22%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.22%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.11%) COBIT
11 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 367 (40.73%) Active Directory
2 196 (21.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (9.99%) Hyper-V
4 51 (5.66%) VMware NSX
5 49 (5.44%) vSphere
6 44 (4.88%) Docker
7 33 (3.66%) Virtual Machines
8 28 (3.11%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (2.89%) Firmware
10 17 (1.89%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (1.55%) BitLocker
12 12 (1.33%) Squid
13 10 (1.11%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (1.00%) NFS
15 6 (0.67%) Sendmail
16 5 (0.55%) Postfix
16 5 (0.55%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.55%) Varnish
16 5 (0.55%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.44%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 142 (15.76%) Terraform
2 112 (12.43%) Ansible
3 95 (10.54%) Kubernetes
4 85 (9.43%) Microsoft Intune
5 75 (8.32%) Single Sign-On
6 59 (6.55%) SCCM
7 50 (5.55%) FortiGate
8 45 (4.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 42 (4.66%) Grafana
10 41 (4.55%) vCenter Server
11 29 (3.22%) WSUS
12 27 (3.00%) Prometheus
13 23 (2.55%) Argo
14 15 (1.66%) SCOM
15 11 (1.22%) Nessus
16 10 (1.11%) Puppet
17 9 (1.00%) HAProxy
17 9 (1.00%) vMotion
18 8 (0.89%) Consul
19 6 (0.67%) Nagios
Vendors
1 288 (31.96%) Microsoft
2 239 (26.53%) VMware
3 153 (16.98%) Cisco
4 147 (16.32%) F5
5 83 (9.21%) Splunk
6 73 (8.10%) ServiceNow
7 58 (6.44%) Citrix
8 52 (5.77%) Infoblox
9 46 (5.11%) SolarWinds
10 41 (4.55%) Google
11 40 (4.44%) Juniper
12 37 (4.11%) Blue Coat
12 37 (4.11%) Palo Alto
12 37 (4.11%) Red Hat
13 31 (3.44%) McAfee
13 31 (3.44%) NetApp
14 24 (2.66%) Dynatrace
15 22 (2.44%) Extreme Networks
16 21 (2.33%) Fortinet
16 21 (2.33%) Okta