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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 121 151
Rank change year-on-year -13 +30 -20
Contract jobs citing DNS 915 665 691
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.29% 1.62%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.10% 18.00% 12.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 568 480 460
10th Percentile £270 £262 £212
25th Percentile £400 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £540 £475
Median % change year-on-year -11.57% +13.68% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £611 £598
90th Percentile £640 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £540 £500
% change year-on-year -12.04% +8.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 10 25
10th Percentile £19.49 £23.08 £19.10
25th Percentile £25.70 £32.44 £23.80
Median hourly rate £48.72 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.61% +101.69% -23.27%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.35 -
90th Percentile £75.30 £82.29 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £81.01 £40.00
% change year-on-year -39.86% +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 4,553 3,694 5,417
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.55% 12.71% 12.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,819 2,276 3,232
10th Percentile £263 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £362 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £490
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -0.51% -5.41%
75th Percentile £588 £591 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +2.70% -2.63% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 244 164 416
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £39.02 £31.79 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.74% -20.53% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £57.80 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £24.66 £45.88
% change year-on-year +71.33% -46.25% +151.88%

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 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 15 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 15 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 -25 799 £480 -12.41% 297
UK excluding London -3 586 £475 -12.04% 256
London -44 255 £500 -4.14% 74
North of England +7 221 £444 -6.53% 55
Work from Home -24 200 £525 -1.87% 107
South East -5 165 £525 -4.55% 88
North West +39 150 £446 +4.82% 30
Midlands +16 111 £400 -27.27% 39
West Midlands +21 97 £390 -2.50% 25
Yorkshire -31 65 £447 -18.82% 19
South West -34 55 £508 -13.62% 36
Scotland +41 51 £543 +20.72% 8
East of England -45 40 £450 -18.18% 28
East Midlands -28 13 £394 -30.62% 14
North East -24 6 £306 -11.23% 8
Wales -14 5 £300 -33.33% 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 91 (9.95%) Microsoft Exchange
2 50 (5.46%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.64%) Confluence
3 15 (1.64%) nginx
4 13 (1.42%) IIS
5 11 (1.20%) Apache
6 5 (0.55%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.44%) Skype for Business
7 4 (0.44%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2010
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 19 (2.08%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.31%) 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 3 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 317 (34.64%) Azure
2 162 (17.70%) AWS
3 149 (16.28%) Entra ID
4 133 (14.54%) Microsoft 365
5 96 (10.49%) GCP
6 66 (7.21%) GitHub
7 53 (5.79%) IaaS
8 42 (4.59%) PaaS
9 40 (4.37%) SaaS
10 37 (4.04%) AWS CloudFormation
11 34 (3.72%) Serverless
12 32 (3.50%) Amazon EC2
12 32 (3.50%) GitHub Actions
12 32 (3.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 31 (3.39%) Amazon S3
14 30 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
15 29 (3.17%) Amazon EKS
16 28 (3.06%) OneDrive
16 28 (3.06%) Route 53
17 25 (2.73%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 394 (43.06%) DHCP
2 281 (30.71%) Firewall
3 233 (25.46%) TCP/IP
4 226 (24.70%) VPN
5 117 (12.79%) WAN
6 110 (12.02%) LAN
7 93 (10.16%) SSL
8 91 (9.95%) Network Security
9 86 (9.40%) BIG-IP
9 86 (9.40%) VLAN
10 82 (8.96%) HTTP
11 79 (8.63%) BGP
12 57 (6.23%) Wi-Fi
13 48 (5.25%) Wireless
14 47 (5.14%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 44 (4.81%) OSPF
16 41 (4.48%) Kerberos
17 40 (4.37%) SAN
18 39 (4.26%) Wireshark
19 37 (4.04%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (3.39%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.30%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (1.75%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (0.87%) MongoDB
4 8 (0.87%) Power BI
5 5 (0.55%) Amazon Aurora
5 5 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
5 5 (0.55%) DynamoDB
5 5 (0.55%) MySQL
6 4 (0.44%) Data Hub
6 4 (0.44%) DocumentDB
6 4 (0.44%) NoSQL
6 4 (0.44%) Redis
7 3 (0.33%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 1 (0.11%) SQLPlus
8 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 51 (5.57%) Jenkins
1 51 (5.57%) JIRA
2 34 (3.72%) Git
3 29 (3.17%) GitLab
4 27 (2.95%) Fiddler
5 9 (0.98%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.77%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.77%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.66%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.44%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.44%) Terragrunt
9 3 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.22%) Introscope
11 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.11%) Spinnaker
11 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 199 (21.75%) Social Skills
2 85 (9.29%) Analytical Skills
3 72 (7.87%) Banking
3 72 (7.87%) Finance
4 62 (6.78%) Public Sector
5 45 (4.92%) Documentation Skills
6 37 (4.04%) Investment Banking
7 27 (2.95%) Legal
8 22 (2.40%) Telecoms
9 18 (1.97%) Military
10 10 (1.09%) Law
10 10 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (0.66%) Financial Institution
13 5 (0.55%) Police
14 4 (0.44%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.44%) Italian Language
14 4 (0.44%) Local Government
14 4 (0.44%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.33%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 165 (18.03%) Network Engineer
2 113 (12.35%) Architect
3 112 (12.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 89 (9.73%) Analyst
5 71 (7.76%) Senior
6 65 (7.10%) Security Engineer
7 50 (5.46%) Web Engineer
8 48 (5.25%) Support Engineer
9 43 (4.70%) IT Support
9 43 (4.70%) Network Security Engineer
10 37 (4.04%) IT Engineer
11 34 (3.72%) Cisco Engineer
11 34 (3.72%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 34 (3.72%) Lead
12 33 (3.61%) Data Engineer
12 33 (3.61%) Data Network Engineer
13 32 (3.50%) Administrator
13 32 (3.50%) Cisco Security Engineer
14 30 (3.28%) Azure Engineer
15 28 (3.06%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (7.87%) LDAP
2 51 (5.57%) SAML
3 42 (4.59%) OAuth
4 35 (3.83%) 802.1X
5 30 (3.28%) OpenID
6 20 (2.19%) OpenTelemetry
7 13 (1.42%) JSON
8 10 (1.09%) ARM Templates
8 10 (1.09%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (1.09%) OAuth2
8 10 (1.09%) REST
9 9 (0.98%) Kafka
10 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (0.55%) Web Services
10 5 (0.55%) XMPP
11 4 (0.44%) AWS CDK
11 4 (0.44%) gRPC
11 4 (0.44%) Hibernate
11 4 (0.44%) Middleware
11 4 (0.44%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 82 (8.96%) Data Centre
2 69 (7.54%) PKI
3 51 (5.57%) Cloud Native
4 41 (4.48%) Replication
5 40 (4.37%) Onboarding
6 39 (4.26%) Management Information System
7 38 (4.15%) Clustering
8 34 (3.72%) Public Cloud
9 28 (3.06%) Security Operations Centre
10 26 (2.84%) Cyberattack
11 25 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
12 24 (2.62%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 21 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
14 17 (1.86%) Cyber Threat
14 17 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
15 15 (1.64%) Enterprise Cloud
16 14 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
17 13 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (1.42%) Virtual Team
18 12 (1.31%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 388 (42.40%) Windows
2 213 (23.28%) Windows Server
3 131 (14.32%) Linux
4 41 (4.48%) Windows 10
5 35 (3.83%) Windows Server 2019
6 25 (2.73%) Mac OS
7 22 (2.40%) Unix
8 21 (2.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 16 (1.75%) Android
9 16 (1.75%) Apple iOS
9 16 (1.75%) Windows Server 2012
10 15 (1.64%) Windows Server 2016
11 11 (1.20%) VMS
12 8 (0.87%) Windows Server 2003
13 6 (0.66%) CentOS
13 6 (0.66%) Ubuntu
13 6 (0.66%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.44%) CatOS
15 2 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.22%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (20.98%) Problem-Solving
2 169 (18.47%) Load Balancing
3 146 (15.96%) Migration
4 140 (15.30%) High Availability
5 139 (15.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 127 (13.88%) ITIL
7 122 (13.33%) DevOps
8 115 (12.57%) CI/CD
8 115 (12.57%) Infrastructure as Code
9 88 (9.62%) Cybersecurity
10 83 (9.07%) ITSM
11 81 (8.85%) Disaster Recovery
12 76 (8.31%) Observability
13 75 (8.20%) Identity Access Management
14 68 (7.43%) Agile
15 66 (7.21%) Change Management
16 61 (6.67%) SIEM
17 60 (6.56%) Project Delivery
18 59 (6.45%) Incident Response
19 58 (6.34%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 184 (20.11%) PowerShell
2 134 (14.64%) Python
3 82 (8.96%) Bash
4 49 (5.36%) SQL
5 22 (2.40%) Bicep
5 22 (2.40%) JavaScript
6 14 (1.53%) Java
7 12 (1.31%) Go
8 11 (1.20%) Ruby
8 11 (1.20%) Shell Script
9 7 (0.77%) VBA
10 6 (0.66%) VBScript
11 5 (0.55%) Perl
12 4 (0.44%) VB
13 3 (0.33%) C
13 3 (0.33%) Groovy
14 2 (0.22%) Jython
14 2 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
15 1 (0.11%) Lisp
15 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 300 (32.79%) Security Cleared
2 203 (22.19%) SC Cleared
3 100 (10.93%) DV Cleared
4 78 (8.52%) Cisco Certification
5 62 (6.78%) Degree
6 47 (5.14%) CCNP
7 39 (4.26%) CCNA
8 32 (3.50%) CompTIA Security+
9 30 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
10 27 (2.95%) Azure Certification
11 24 (2.62%) Network+ Certification
12 21 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
13 17 (1.86%) CompTIA CySA+
14 16 (1.75%) AWS Certification
15 15 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
16 13 (1.42%) Server+ Certification
17 11 (1.20%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 11 (1.20%) CISSP
18 10 (1.09%) JNCIA
18 10 (1.09%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.28%) SLA
2 25 (2.73%) GDPR
2 25 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 25 (2.73%) NIST
3 16 (1.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 7 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
4 7 (0.77%) NCSC
4 7 (0.77%) QA
5 4 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 4 (0.44%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.33%) PMO
7 2 (0.22%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.22%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.11%) COBIT
8 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.11%) RMADS
8 1 (0.11%) SOC 2
System Software
1 362 (39.56%) Active Directory
2 193 (21.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 92 (10.05%) Hyper-V
4 52 (5.68%) VMware NSX
5 49 (5.36%) vSphere
6 47 (5.14%) Docker
7 36 (3.93%) Virtual Machines
8 30 (3.28%) VMware ESXi
9 24 (2.62%) Firmware
10 20 (2.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (1.53%) BitLocker
12 13 (1.42%) NFS
13 12 (1.31%) Squid
14 10 (1.09%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.66%) Postfix
15 6 (0.66%) Varnish
16 5 (0.55%) Sendmail
16 5 (0.55%) vCloud
16 5 (0.55%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.55%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 143 (15.63%) Terraform
2 112 (12.24%) Ansible
3 96 (10.49%) Kubernetes
4 85 (9.29%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (7.98%) Single Sign-On
6 53 (5.79%) SCCM
7 50 (5.46%) FortiGate
8 45 (4.92%) Grafana
9 43 (4.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (4.37%) vCenter Server
11 30 (3.28%) Prometheus
12 29 (3.17%) WSUS
13 22 (2.40%) Argo
14 14 (1.53%) SCOM
15 11 (1.20%) Nessus
16 10 (1.09%) HAProxy
16 10 (1.09%) Puppet
17 9 (0.98%) vMotion
18 8 (0.87%) Consul
19 7 (0.77%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 284 (31.04%) Microsoft
2 235 (25.68%) VMware
3 159 (17.38%) Cisco
4 148 (16.17%) F5
5 84 (9.18%) Splunk
6 82 (8.96%) ServiceNow
7 57 (6.23%) Citrix
8 53 (5.79%) Infoblox
9 48 (5.25%) SolarWinds
10 43 (4.70%) Google
11 40 (4.37%) Juniper
12 38 (4.15%) Palo Alto
13 37 (4.04%) Red Hat
14 35 (3.83%) Blue Coat
15 32 (3.50%) NetApp
16 30 (3.28%) McAfee
17 26 (2.84%) Dynatrace
18 23 (2.51%) CheckPoint
19 22 (2.40%) Extreme Networks
20 21 (2.30%) Okta