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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 126 159
Rank change year-on-year -11 +33 -17
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,030 719 652
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.96% 2.21% 1.55%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.55% 18.19% 12.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 631 478 436
10th Percentile £281 £278 £240
25th Percentile £400 £401 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £484
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +8.36% -5.47%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £575
90th Percentile £638 £657 £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 47 30 24
10th Percentile £20.95 £29.00 £20.00
25th Percentile £26.00 £31.69 £23.80
Median hourly rate £35.22 £61.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -42.50% +75.00% -16.42%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.78 £40.00
90th Percentile £79.90 £89.63 £50.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.22 £65.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -45.82% +62.50% -

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 5,011 3,952 5,259
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 12.15% 12.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,028 2,401 3,103
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £370 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £670 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.58% -4.04% +7.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 329 192 405
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.11 £17.63
Median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.76% +21.88% +23.08%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.90 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £42.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -38.31% -10.53% -0.48%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -10 923 £500 -5.66% 285
UK excluding London -6 643 £500 -4.76% 240
London -43 313 £475 -6.86% 86
North of England +17 240 £450 -10.00% 38
Work from Home -28 237 £516 -1.76% 102
South East +8 193 £537 -2.45% 90
North West +36 156 £450 -1.64% 15
Midlands -2 113 £450 -5.26% 34
West Midlands -10 94 £450 -5.26% 24
Yorkshire -9 78 £455 -17.27% 18
South West -12 77 £500 -14.89% 40
Scotland +18 41 £525 +16.67% 12
East of England -49 35 £463 -15.91% 32
East Midlands -9 17 £413 -17.50% 10
Wales -10 9 £500 +13.70% 3
North East -40 6 £413 +19.57% 9

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 (9.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 72 (6.99%) SharePoint
3 24 (2.33%) Confluence
4 18 (1.75%) nginx
5 16 (1.55%) Apache
6 15 (1.46%) IIS
7 9 (0.87%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.49%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.39%) Exchange Server 2010
10 2 (0.19%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.097%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.097%) Skype for Business
11 1 (0.097%) Traefik
Applications
1 17 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.17%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.39%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.19%) Houdini
5 2 (0.19%) NUKE
6 1 (0.097%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 8 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.097%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 375 (36.41%) Azure
2 193 (18.74%) AWS
3 168 (16.31%) Entra ID
4 159 (15.44%) Microsoft 365
5 108 (10.49%) GCP
6 70 (6.80%) GitHub
7 58 (5.63%) IaaS
8 47 (4.56%) OneDrive
9 44 (4.27%) SaaS
10 43 (4.17%) PaaS
11 37 (3.59%) Azure DevOps
12 29 (2.82%) Amazon EC2
12 29 (2.82%) AWS CloudFormation
12 29 (2.82%) Serverless
13 28 (2.72%) Azure Monitor
13 28 (2.72%) OpenShift
13 28 (2.72%) Route 53
13 28 (2.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 26 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
15 25 (2.43%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 456 (44.27%) DHCP
2 348 (33.79%) Firewall
3 283 (27.48%) TCP/IP
4 265 (25.73%) VPN
5 139 (13.50%) WAN
6 123 (11.94%) Network Security
7 117 (11.36%) LAN
8 113 (10.97%) VLAN
9 106 (10.29%) SSL
10 101 (9.81%) BGP
11 88 (8.54%) BIG-IP
12 75 (7.28%) HTTP
13 67 (6.50%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (6.21%) Wireless
15 61 (5.92%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 61 (5.92%) SAN
16 56 (5.44%) OSPF
17 45 (4.37%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 44 (4.27%) DMZ
19 35 (3.40%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (3.98%) 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%) Db2
8 4 (0.39%) MariaDB
9 3 (0.29%) Big Data
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 77 (7.48%) JIRA
2 53 (5.15%) Jenkins
3 37 (3.59%) Git
4 20 (1.94%) Fiddler
4 20 (1.94%) GitLab
5 11 (1.07%) Bitbucket
6 10 (0.97%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.68%) Chocolatey
7 7 (0.68%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.29%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.19%) Introscope
10 2 (0.19%) Spinnaker
11 1 (0.097%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.097%) MSI
11 1 (0.097%) Visual Studio
General
1 251 (24.37%) Social Skills
2 106 (10.29%) Analytical Skills
3 89 (8.64%) Finance
4 81 (7.86%) Public Sector
5 70 (6.80%) Banking
6 61 (5.92%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (3.30%) Investment Banking
8 23 (2.23%) Telecoms
9 21 (2.04%) Legal
10 20 (1.94%) Military
11 13 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
12 11 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 11 (1.07%) Local Government
13 9 (0.87%) Police
14 6 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (0.58%) Publishing
15 5 (0.49%) Law
15 5 (0.49%) Manufacturing
16 4 (0.39%) Italian Language
16 4 (0.39%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 184 (17.86%) Network Engineer
2 160 (15.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 112 (10.87%) Architect
4 93 (9.03%) Senior
5 90 (8.74%) Support Engineer
6 70 (6.80%) Cloud Engineer
7 64 (6.21%) Security Engineer
8 60 (5.83%) Analyst
9 52 (5.05%) IT Support
10 51 (4.95%) IT Engineer
11 44 (4.27%) Network Security Engineer
12 43 (4.17%) Web Engineer
13 41 (3.98%) DevOps Engineer
14 40 (3.88%) Azure Engineer
15 39 (3.79%) Cisco Engineer
16 38 (3.69%) Administrator
17 37 (3.59%) Cisco Network Engineer
18 34 (3.30%) IT Support Engineer
19 33 (3.20%) Data Engineer
19 33 (3.20%) Data Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (5.05%) LDAP
2 50 (4.85%) 802.1X
3 42 (4.08%) SAML
4 28 (2.72%) OAuth
5 27 (2.62%) OpenID
6 18 (1.75%) OpenTelemetry
7 17 (1.65%) ARM Templates
7 17 (1.65%) JSON
8 9 (0.87%) REST
8 9 (0.87%) YAML
9 6 (0.58%) Kafka
9 6 (0.58%) Middleware
10 5 (0.49%) CSS
10 5 (0.49%) Microsoft Graph
11 4 (0.39%) AWS CDK
11 4 (0.39%) OAuth2
11 4 (0.39%) Web Services
12 3 (0.29%) Node.js
12 3 (0.29%) RabbitMQ
12 3 (0.29%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 129 (12.52%) Data Centre
2 101 (9.81%) PKI
3 60 (5.83%) Cloud Native
4 54 (5.24%) Onboarding
5 48 (4.66%) Hybrid Cloud
6 44 (4.27%) Management Information System
7 43 (4.17%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 42 (4.08%) Clustering
9 38 (3.69%) Replication
10 31 (3.01%) Public Cloud
11 26 (2.52%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (1.84%) Security Posture
13 18 (1.75%) Enterprise Cloud
14 14 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
15 13 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
15 13 (1.26%) Linux Command Line
16 12 (1.17%) Cyber Threat
17 11 (1.07%) Distributed Systems
17 11 (1.07%) Product Ownership
17 11 (1.07%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 439 (42.62%) Windows
2 225 (21.84%) Windows Server
3 171 (16.60%) Linux
4 47 (4.56%) Windows 10
5 44 (4.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 37 (3.59%) Windows Server 2019
7 36 (3.50%) Mac OS
8 26 (2.52%) Unix
9 21 (2.04%) Windows Server 2012
10 17 (1.65%) Apple iOS
10 17 (1.65%) Ubuntu
11 15 (1.46%) Android
11 15 (1.46%) VMS
12 14 (1.36%) CentOS
12 14 (1.36%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.58%) Rocky
14 5 (0.49%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.49%) Windows Server 2003
15 3 (0.29%) AIX
15 3 (0.29%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (22.04%) Problem-Solving
2 209 (20.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 183 (17.77%) Load Balancing
4 172 (16.70%) Migration
5 167 (16.21%) ITIL
6 149 (14.47%) DevOps
6 149 (14.47%) High Availability
7 147 (14.27%) Infrastructure as Code
8 139 (13.50%) CI/CD
9 111 (10.78%) ITSM
10 88 (8.54%) Observability
11 86 (8.35%) Project Delivery
12 84 (8.16%) Identity Access Management
13 82 (7.96%) Agile
14 81 (7.86%) Disaster Recovery
15 80 (7.77%) Cybersecurity
16 75 (7.28%) Continuous Improvement
17 66 (6.41%) Containerisation
18 64 (6.21%) Runbook
19 61 (5.92%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 218 (21.17%) PowerShell
2 187 (18.16%) Python
3 122 (11.84%) Bash
4 52 (5.05%) SQL
5 32 (3.11%) Bicep
6 24 (2.33%) JavaScript
7 11 (1.07%) Go
8 10 (0.97%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.97%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.87%) 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 3 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.29%) Lisp
12 3 (0.29%) VBScript
13 2 (0.19%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 367 (35.63%) Security Cleared
2 225 (21.84%) SC Cleared
3 135 (13.11%) DV Cleared
4 105 (10.19%) Cisco Certification
5 75 (7.28%) Degree
6 73 (7.09%) CCNP
7 54 (5.24%) CCNA
8 45 (4.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 38 (3.69%) Azure Certification
10 29 (2.82%) Network+ Certification
11 18 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
11 18 (1.75%) CompTIA Security+
12 17 (1.65%) CCIE
12 17 (1.65%) MCSE
12 17 (1.65%) Server+ Certification
13 16 (1.55%) CISSP
14 15 (1.46%) AWS Certification
15 12 (1.17%) MCSA
16 11 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
16 11 (1.07%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.11%) SLA
2 29 (2.82%) NIST
3 17 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (1.55%) NCSC
5 15 (1.46%) GDPR
6 8 (0.78%) QA
7 7 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
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
1 412 (40.00%) Active Directory
2 226 (21.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 103 (10.00%) Hyper-V
4 69 (6.70%) vSphere
5 65 (6.31%) VMware NSX
6 62 (6.02%) VMware ESXi
7 45 (4.37%) Virtual Machines
8 41 (3.98%) Docker
9 39 (3.79%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.43%) Firmware
11 22 (2.14%) NFS
12 15 (1.46%) Squid
13 13 (1.26%) vCloud
14 11 (1.07%) BitLocker
15 10 (0.97%) Microsoft App-V
16 9 (0.87%) Postfix
17 8 (0.78%) VMware Workstation
18 6 (0.58%) Varnish
19 5 (0.49%) Ceph
19 5 (0.49%) UAG
Systems Management
1 187 (18.16%) Terraform
2 137 (13.30%) Ansible
3 111 (10.78%) Kubernetes
4 80 (7.77%) Microsoft Intune
5 68 (6.60%) Single Sign-On
6 61 (5.92%) vCenter Server
7 56 (5.44%) Grafana
8 53 (5.15%) FortiGate
9 48 (4.66%) SCCM
10 43 (4.17%) Prometheus
11 30 (2.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 27 (2.62%) WSUS
13 26 (2.52%) SCOM
14 25 (2.43%) Argo
15 14 (1.36%) Nessus
15 14 (1.36%) Puppet
16 13 (1.26%) Jamf Pro
17 11 (1.07%) vMotion
18 10 (0.97%) HAProxy
19 9 (0.87%) Packer
Vendors
1 342 (33.20%) Microsoft
2 274 (26.60%) VMware
3 189 (18.35%) Cisco
4 156 (15.15%) F5
5 92 (8.93%) ServiceNow
6 75 (7.28%) Splunk
7 67 (6.50%) Infoblox
8 66 (6.41%) Google
9 63 (6.12%) Citrix
10 61 (5.92%) SolarWinds
11 55 (5.34%) Juniper
11 55 (5.34%) Red Hat
12 43 (4.17%) Palo Alto
13 35 (3.40%) NetApp
14 34 (3.30%) Dynatrace
15 30 (2.91%) Blue Coat
16 26 (2.52%) Zscaler
17 25 (2.43%) CheckPoint
17 25 (2.43%) Fortinet
17 25 (2.43%) McAfee