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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 139 122 163
Rank change year-on-year -17 +41 -27
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,016 721 595
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.91% 2.19% 1.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.44% 18.24% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 622 476 411
10th Percentile £294 £263 £250
25th Percentile £403 £400 £369
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £588
90th Percentile £650 £651 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 32 15
10th Percentile £21.63 £29.00 £20.00
25th Percentile £30.69 £37.06 £23.45
Median hourly rate £52.00 £57.50 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year -9.57% +137.60% -39.50%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.33 £39.38
90th Percentile £97.44 £89.17 £63.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.38 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -14.81% +36.84% +82.69%

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 4,970 3,953 4,763
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 12.01% 12.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,953 2,417 2,892
10th Percentile £250 £235 £220
25th Percentile £400 £373 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 353 195 327
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.27
Median hourly rate £26.66 £50.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -46.68% +5.26% -5.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.60 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £45.00 £53.69
% change year-on-year -40.76% -16.18% -6.49%

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 5 August 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 5 August 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 5 August 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 -21 918 £500 -6.41% 448
UK excluding London -9 625 £500 -4.76% 316
London -35 320 £500 -2.91% 176
Work from Home -21 239 £510 -3.64% 181
North of England +25 219 £450 -10.00% 70
South East +7 199 £538 -2.27% 98
North West +35 148 £450 -3.33% 44
Midlands -20 114 £450 -5.26% 46
West Midlands -27 94 £450 -5.26% 30
South West -6 82 £500 -13.98% 55
Yorkshire -26 64 £475 -13.64% 21
Scotland +11 35 £550 +22.22% 14
East of England -49 32 £450 -18.18% 34
East Midlands 0 18 £413 -26.67% 16
Wales -10 8 £463 +6.69% 3
North East -41 7 £319 -21.78% 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 97 (9.55%) Microsoft Exchange
2 82 (8.07%) SharePoint
3 25 (2.46%) Confluence
4 19 (1.87%) Apache
5 16 (1.57%) nginx
6 15 (1.48%) IIS
7 9 (0.89%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.49%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.39%) Exchange Server 2010
10 2 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.098%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.098%) Traefik
Applications
1 21 (2.07%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.18%) MS Visio
3 8 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.20%) Houdini
5 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.20%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 10 (0.98%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 395 (38.88%) Azure
2 205 (20.18%) AWS
3 168 (16.54%) Microsoft 365
4 166 (16.34%) Entra ID
5 111 (10.93%) GCP
6 73 (7.19%) GitHub
7 57 (5.61%) IaaS
8 52 (5.12%) OneDrive
9 45 (4.43%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (4.13%) PaaS
11 40 (3.94%) SaaS
12 37 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
13 30 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
13 30 (2.95%) OpenShift
14 28 (2.76%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (2.66%) Serverless
16 26 (2.56%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 25 (2.46%) Amazon EC2
17 25 (2.46%) Azure ExpressRoute
18 24 (2.36%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 461 (45.37%) DHCP
2 370 (36.42%) Firewall
3 290 (28.54%) TCP/IP
4 276 (27.17%) VPN
5 138 (13.58%) WAN
6 127 (12.50%) Network Security
7 124 (12.20%) VLAN
8 118 (11.61%) LAN
9 106 (10.43%) BGP
9 106 (10.43%) SSL
10 80 (7.87%) BIG-IP
11 76 (7.48%) HTTP
12 70 (6.89%) Wireless
13 65 (6.40%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (6.10%) SAN
15 60 (5.91%) OSPF
16 51 (5.02%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 45 (4.43%) DMZ
18 42 (4.13%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 38 (3.74%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (5.02%) SQL Server
2 19 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (1.28%) Elasticsearch
4 12 (1.18%) Azure SQL Database
5 10 (0.98%) MongoDB
5 10 (0.98%) Power BI
6 9 (0.89%) MySQL
7 8 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
8 6 (0.59%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.49%) MariaDB
9 5 (0.49%) NoSQL
10 4 (0.39%) Db2
10 4 (0.39%) Redis
11 3 (0.30%) Big Data
11 3 (0.30%) SQLPlus
12 1 (0.098%) Cloud Spanner
12 1 (0.098%) DynamoDB
12 1 (0.098%) KDB
12 1 (0.098%) Power Query
12 1 (0.098%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 74 (7.28%) JIRA
2 57 (5.61%) Jenkins
3 43 (4.23%) Git
4 28 (2.76%) GitLab
5 18 (1.77%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 10 (0.98%) Browser DevTools
8 8 (0.79%) Chocolatey
9 6 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.20%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.20%) Introscope
11 2 (0.20%) MSI
11 2 (0.20%) Selenium
11 2 (0.20%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.098%) Maven
12 1 (0.098%) Visual Studio
General
1 251 (24.70%) Social Skills
2 115 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
3 90 (8.86%) Finance
4 83 (8.17%) Public Sector
5 70 (6.89%) Banking
6 56 (5.51%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (3.25%) Investment Banking
7 33 (3.25%) Telecoms
8 22 (2.17%) Legal
9 21 (2.07%) Military
10 14 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
11 12 (1.18%) Local Government
12 11 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (0.98%) Police
14 7 (0.69%) Manufacturing
15 6 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
15 6 (0.59%) Publishing
16 5 (0.49%) Aerospace
16 5 (0.49%) Law
16 5 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 190 (18.70%) Network Engineer
2 172 (16.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 116 (11.42%) Senior
4 94 (9.25%) Architect
5 93 (9.15%) Support Engineer
6 76 (7.48%) Cloud Engineer
7 62 (6.10%) Security Engineer
8 55 (5.41%) Analyst
9 50 (4.92%) IT Support
10 49 (4.82%) IT Engineer
11 43 (4.23%) Azure Engineer
11 43 (4.23%) Network Security Engineer
12 41 (4.04%) Web Engineer
13 40 (3.94%) Cisco Engineer
14 39 (3.84%) Administrator
15 38 (3.74%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 38 (3.74%) DevOps Engineer
16 37 (3.64%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 36 (3.54%) Platform Engineer
18 33 (3.25%) Data Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (5.12%) 802.1X
2 39 (3.84%) SAML
3 30 (2.95%) LDAP
4 27 (2.66%) ARM Templates
5 25 (2.46%) OpenID
6 24 (2.36%) OAuth
7 17 (1.67%) OpenTelemetry
8 15 (1.48%) JSON
9 13 (1.28%) REST
10 12 (1.18%) YAML
11 10 (0.98%) Kafka
12 8 (0.79%) CSS
13 7 (0.69%) Middleware
13 7 (0.69%) OAuth2
14 5 (0.49%) Elastic Stack
14 5 (0.49%) RabbitMQ
15 4 (0.39%) .NET
15 4 (0.39%) HTML
15 4 (0.39%) Software Packaging
15 4 (0.39%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 133 (13.09%) Data Centre
2 110 (10.83%) PKI
3 65 (6.40%) Hybrid Cloud
4 64 (6.30%) Onboarding
5 55 (5.41%) Cloud Native
6 50 (4.92%) Management Information System
7 45 (4.43%) Clustering
8 42 (4.13%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 26 (2.56%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.56%) Self-Motivation
10 22 (2.17%) Replication
11 19 (1.87%) Enterprise Cloud
11 19 (1.87%) Security Posture
12 15 (1.48%) Cyber Threat
12 15 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (1.48%) Linux Command Line
13 13 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
14 12 (1.18%) Driving Licence
14 12 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
15 10 (0.98%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 466 (45.87%) Windows
2 245 (24.11%) Windows Server
3 206 (20.28%) Linux
4 53 (5.22%) Windows 10
5 46 (4.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (3.84%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.25%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.66%) Unix
9 22 (2.17%) Windows Server 2012
10 20 (1.97%) Ubuntu
11 17 (1.67%) Apple iOS
11 17 (1.67%) VMS
12 15 (1.48%) Android
12 15 (1.48%) CentOS
13 14 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
14 7 (0.69%) Rocky
15 6 (0.59%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.59%) Windows Server 2008
16 5 (0.49%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.30%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 233 (22.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 231 (22.74%) Problem-Solving
3 186 (18.31%) ITIL
4 180 (17.72%) Load Balancing
5 167 (16.44%) Migration
6 166 (16.34%) Infrastructure as Code
7 160 (15.75%) DevOps
8 147 (14.47%) CI/CD
9 141 (13.88%) High Availability
10 117 (11.52%) ITSM
11 100 (9.84%) Observability
12 93 (9.15%) Continuous Improvement
13 89 (8.76%) Agile
13 89 (8.76%) Project Delivery
14 88 (8.66%) Cybersecurity
15 84 (8.27%) Disaster Recovery
16 81 (7.97%) Identity Access Management
17 73 (7.19%) Technical Leadership
18 72 (7.09%) Platform Engineering
19 70 (6.89%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 226 (22.24%) PowerShell
2 200 (19.69%) Python
3 150 (14.76%) Bash
4 63 (6.20%) SQL
5 43 (4.23%) Bicep
6 23 (2.26%) JavaScript
7 13 (1.28%) Shell Script
8 11 (1.08%) Go
9 10 (0.98%) ActionScript
10 9 (0.89%) Java
10 9 (0.89%) Perl
11 7 (0.69%) VBA
12 5 (0.49%) C
12 5 (0.49%) Groovy
12 5 (0.49%) Ruby
13 4 (0.39%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.30%) Lisp
15 2 (0.20%) Kotlin
15 2 (0.20%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.20%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 375 (36.91%) Security Cleared
2 216 (21.26%) SC Cleared
3 154 (15.16%) DV Cleared
4 112 (11.02%) Cisco Certification
5 80 (7.87%) Degree
6 77 (7.58%) CCNP
7 57 (5.61%) CCNA
8 51 (5.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 45 (4.43%) Azure Certification
10 32 (3.15%) Network+ Certification
11 19 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
12 18 (1.77%) BPSS Clearance
12 18 (1.77%) CCIE
13 17 (1.67%) CISSP
13 17 (1.67%) MCSE
13 17 (1.67%) Server+ Certification
14 16 (1.57%) AWS Certification
15 15 (1.48%) CompTIA Security+
16 14 (1.38%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 13 (1.28%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.64%) SLA
2 28 (2.76%) NIST
3 19 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (1.57%) NCSC
5 11 (1.08%) QA
6 8 (0.79%) GDPR
7 5 (0.49%) 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 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.098%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.098%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 425 (41.83%) Active Directory
2 249 (24.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 124 (12.20%) Hyper-V
4 69 (6.79%) VMware ESXi
5 68 (6.69%) vSphere
6 63 (6.20%) VMware NSX
7 54 (5.31%) Docker
8 45 (4.43%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (3.64%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.46%) Firmware
11 22 (2.17%) NFS
12 13 (1.28%) vCloud
13 11 (1.08%) Squid
14 10 (0.98%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.89%) BitLocker
15 9 (0.89%) Postfix
16 8 (0.79%) Virtual Servers
16 8 (0.79%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.69%) Ceph
18 6 (0.59%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 203 (19.98%) Terraform
2 151 (14.86%) Ansible
3 117 (11.52%) Kubernetes
4 99 (9.74%) Microsoft Intune
5 64 (6.30%) SCCM
6 60 (5.91%) vCenter Server
7 56 (5.51%) Single Sign-On
8 54 (5.31%) Grafana
9 46 (4.53%) FortiGate
10 41 (4.04%) Prometheus
11 31 (3.05%) SCOM
12 29 (2.85%) WSUS
13 21 (2.07%) Argo
14 15 (1.48%) Puppet
15 14 (1.38%) Nessus
15 14 (1.38%) NetBackup
15 14 (1.38%) VxRail
16 13 (1.28%) Jamf Pro
17 11 (1.08%) Packer
17 11 (1.08%) vMotion
Vendors
1 354 (34.84%) Microsoft
2 304 (29.92%) VMware
3 201 (19.78%) Cisco
4 144 (14.17%) F5
5 91 (8.96%) ServiceNow
6 76 (7.48%) Splunk
7 69 (6.79%) SolarWinds
8 67 (6.59%) Citrix
9 64 (6.30%) Google
10 63 (6.20%) Infoblox
11 60 (5.91%) Juniper
12 50 (4.92%) Red Hat
13 44 (4.33%) Palo Alto
14 36 (3.54%) NetApp
15 34 (3.35%) Dynatrace
16 30 (2.95%) Zscaler
17 28 (2.76%) Blue Coat
18 27 (2.66%) Fortinet
19 26 (2.56%) CheckPoint
20 24 (2.36%) McAfee