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

 6 months to
2 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 125 161
Rank change year-on-year -12 +36 -20
Contract jobs citing DNS 995 690 648
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.93% 2.23% 1.49%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.31% 18.13% 11.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 614 476 440
10th Percentile £300 £263 £225
25th Percentile £401 £406 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £536 £475
Median % change year-on-year -6.72% +12.84% -8.65%
75th Percentile £581 £606 £588
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £535 £500
% change year-on-year -6.54% +7.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 19 25
10th Percentile £18.89 - £19.10
25th Percentile £23.13 £29.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.69% +3.75% -16.56%
75th Percentile £62.87 £81.18 -
90th Percentile £74.05 £82.48 £50.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £41.45 £40.00
% change year-on-year -21.59% +3.63% -4.48%

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 4,900 3,805 5,424
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 12.29% 12.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,984 2,324 3,203
10th Percentile £250 £230 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.38%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £474 £490
% change year-on-year +1.95% -3.22% +3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 305 179 430
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £19.34 £23.37 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.44 £45.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.24% - +114.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.38 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £80.20 £73.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £36.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -28.16% -23.16% +115.91%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -12 884 £500 -7.41% 355
UK excluding London -13 623 £500 -6.54% 308
London -45 295 £500 - 91
North of England +24 243 £450 -10.00% 40
Work from Home -26 227 £527 -2.81% 145
South East +3 178 £527 -4.14% 109
North West +44 161 £458 +2.35% 20
Midlands +9 117 £450 -5.26% 54
West Midlands +4 100 £444 -6.58% 33
Yorkshire -11 76 £447 -18.73% 17
South West -16 67 £480 -21.63% 51
Scotland +21 42 £525 +16.67% 10
East of England -46 35 £463 -15.91% 40
East Midlands -15 15 £450 -10.00% 21
Wales -11 9 £500 +13.70% 9
North East -35 6 £413 - 8

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 (9.15%) Microsoft Exchange
2 63 (6.33%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.91%) Confluence
4 15 (1.51%) IIS
4 15 (1.51%) nginx
5 13 (1.31%) Apache
6 9 (0.90%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.50%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.40%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.10%) Traefik
Applications
1 21 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (1.61%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.10%) Houdini
5 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.10%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 5 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 356 (35.78%) Azure
2 184 (18.49%) AWS
3 160 (16.08%) Entra ID
4 134 (13.47%) Microsoft 365
5 106 (10.65%) GCP
6 69 (6.93%) GitHub
7 57 (5.73%) IaaS
8 42 (4.22%) PaaS
8 42 (4.22%) SaaS
9 41 (4.12%) OneDrive
10 33 (3.32%) Route 53
11 29 (2.91%) Amazon EC2
11 29 (2.91%) AWS CloudFormation
11 29 (2.91%) Azure DevOps
11 29 (2.91%) Serverless
11 29 (2.91%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 27 (2.71%) OpenShift
13 26 (2.61%) GitHub Actions
14 25 (2.51%) Amazon S3
15 24 (2.41%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 440 (44.22%) DHCP
2 314 (31.56%) Firewall
3 250 (25.13%) TCP/IP
3 250 (25.13%) VPN
4 147 (14.77%) WAN
5 126 (12.66%) LAN
6 115 (11.56%) Network Security
7 104 (10.45%) VLAN
8 102 (10.25%) SSL
9 96 (9.65%) BGP
10 94 (9.45%) BIG-IP
11 76 (7.64%) HTTP
12 66 (6.63%) Wi-Fi
13 60 (6.03%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 59 (5.93%) Wireless
15 55 (5.53%) SAN
16 54 (5.43%) OSPF
17 45 (4.52%) DMZ
18 44 (4.42%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 39 (3.92%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (3.92%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.81%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.11%) Azure SQL Database
5 10 (1.01%) Power BI
6 9 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
7 6 (0.60%) MySQL
8 5 (0.50%) Data Lake
8 5 (0.50%) MongoDB
9 4 (0.40%) MariaDB
10 3 (0.30%) Big Data
10 3 (0.30%) NoSQL
11 2 (0.20%) Db2
11 2 (0.20%) DynamoDB
11 2 (0.20%) SQLPlus
12 1 (0.10%) Amazon Aurora
12 1 (0.10%) KDB
12 1 (0.10%) Redis
12 1 (0.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 1 (0.10%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 66 (6.63%) JIRA
2 54 (5.43%) Jenkins
3 30 (3.02%) Git
4 22 (2.21%) Fiddler
5 19 (1.91%) GitLab
6 9 (0.90%) Browser DevTools
7 8 (0.80%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.70%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.60%) Chocolatey
10 5 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.20%) Introscope
11 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.10%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.10%) MSI
12 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio
General
1 237 (23.82%) Social Skills
2 93 (9.35%) Analytical Skills
3 79 (7.94%) Finance
4 69 (6.93%) Banking
4 69 (6.93%) Public Sector
5 61 (6.13%) Documentation Skills
6 36 (3.62%) Investment Banking
7 25 (2.51%) Legal
8 19 (1.91%) Military
8 19 (1.91%) Telecoms
9 13 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
10 9 (0.90%) Local Government
11 8 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 8 (0.80%) Police
12 6 (0.60%) Publishing
13 5 (0.50%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.50%) Law
13 5 (0.50%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.40%) Advertising
14 4 (0.40%) Italian Language
Job Titles
1 182 (18.29%) Network Engineer
2 144 (14.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 122 (12.26%) Architect
4 78 (7.84%) Support Engineer
5 77 (7.74%) Senior
6 63 (6.33%) Security Engineer
7 62 (6.23%) Analyst
8 60 (6.03%) Cloud Engineer
9 47 (4.72%) IT Support
10 46 (4.62%) Web Engineer
11 44 (4.42%) IT Engineer
11 44 (4.42%) Network Security Engineer
12 41 (4.12%) Cisco Engineer
13 39 (3.92%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 38 (3.82%) DevOps Engineer
15 37 (3.72%) Azure Engineer
16 36 (3.62%) Administrator
17 35 (3.52%) Data Engineer
17 35 (3.52%) Data Network Engineer
18 34 (3.42%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (5.93%) LDAP
2 52 (5.23%) SAML
3 45 (4.52%) 802.1X
4 37 (3.72%) OAuth
5 30 (3.02%) OpenID
6 19 (1.91%) OpenTelemetry
7 16 (1.61%) ARM Templates
8 15 (1.51%) JSON
9 8 (0.80%) REST
10 7 (0.70%) OAuth2
11 6 (0.60%) Kafka
12 5 (0.50%) CSS
12 5 (0.50%) Microsoft Graph
12 5 (0.50%) YAML
13 4 (0.40%) AWS CDK
13 4 (0.40%) Middleware
13 4 (0.40%) Web Services
13 4 (0.40%) XMPP
14 3 (0.30%) RabbitMQ
14 3 (0.30%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 117 (11.76%) Data Centre
2 81 (8.14%) PKI
3 62 (6.23%) Cloud Native
4 50 (5.03%) Onboarding
5 46 (4.62%) Hybrid Cloud
6 42 (4.22%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 42 (4.22%) Management Information System
7 41 (4.12%) Clustering
8 40 (4.02%) Replication
9 29 (2.91%) Public Cloud
10 23 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
11 18 (1.81%) Security Posture
12 17 (1.71%) Enterprise Cloud
13 13 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (1.31%) Security Operations Centre
14 12 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
14 12 (1.21%) Virtual Team
15 11 (1.11%) Cyber Threat
15 11 (1.11%) Product Ownership
16 10 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 413 (41.51%) Windows
2 229 (23.02%) Windows Server
3 144 (14.47%) Linux
4 42 (4.22%) Windows 10
5 39 (3.92%) Windows Server 2019
6 38 (3.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 34 (3.42%) Mac OS
8 25 (2.51%) Unix
9 21 (2.11%) Windows Server 2012
10 18 (1.81%) Apple iOS
11 15 (1.51%) VMS
12 14 (1.41%) Android
13 13 (1.31%) Ubuntu
14 12 (1.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (1.11%) CentOS
16 7 (0.70%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.60%) Windows Server 2003
18 3 (0.30%) AIX
18 3 (0.30%) Rocky
19 2 (0.20%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 212 (21.31%) Problem-Solving
2 189 (18.99%) Load Balancing
3 186 (18.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 167 (16.78%) Migration
5 157 (15.78%) High Availability
6 146 (14.67%) ITIL
7 138 (13.87%) DevOps
8 127 (12.76%) Infrastructure as Code
9 119 (11.96%) CI/CD
10 101 (10.15%) ITSM
11 85 (8.54%) Identity Access Management
12 84 (8.44%) Disaster Recovery
13 82 (8.24%) Observability
14 79 (7.94%) Project Delivery
15 78 (7.84%) Agile
16 66 (6.63%) Cybersecurity
17 64 (6.43%) RBAC
18 63 (6.33%) Runbook
19 61 (6.13%) Continuous Improvement
19 61 (6.13%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 204 (20.50%) PowerShell
2 164 (16.48%) Python
3 105 (10.55%) Bash
4 50 (5.03%) SQL
5 29 (2.91%) Bicep
6 25 (2.51%) JavaScript
7 11 (1.11%) Go
8 10 (1.01%) ActionScript
9 9 (0.90%) Java
9 9 (0.90%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.90%) VBA
10 8 (0.80%) Perl
11 6 (0.60%) VBScript
12 5 (0.50%) Groovy
12 5 (0.50%) Ruby
13 4 (0.40%) C
13 4 (0.40%) VB
14 3 (0.30%) Lisp
15 2 (0.20%) Jython
15 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 342 (34.37%) Security Cleared
2 217 (21.81%) SC Cleared
3 118 (11.86%) DV Cleared
4 100 (10.05%) Cisco Certification
5 80 (8.04%) Degree
6 68 (6.83%) CCNP
7 53 (5.33%) CCNA
8 40 (4.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 33 (3.32%) Azure Certification
10 27 (2.71%) Network+ Certification
11 21 (2.11%) CompTIA Security+
12 17 (1.71%) MCSE
12 17 (1.71%) Server+ Certification
13 16 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
13 16 (1.61%) CCIE
14 15 (1.51%) CISSP
15 14 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
16 13 (1.31%) AWS Certification
17 12 (1.21%) MCSA
18 11 (1.11%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (2.81%) SLA
2 27 (2.71%) NIST
3 21 (2.11%) GDPR
4 18 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 13 (1.31%) NCSC
5 13 (1.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (0.90%) QA
7 6 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.30%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.30%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.20%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.10%) COBIT
11 1 (0.10%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.10%) PMO
11 1 (0.10%) RMADS
System Software
1 389 (39.10%) Active Directory
2 215 (21.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 93 (9.35%) Hyper-V
4 60 (6.03%) vSphere
5 56 (5.63%) VMware NSX
6 54 (5.43%) VMware ESXi
7 44 (4.42%) Virtual Machines
8 35 (3.52%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (3.02%) Docker
10 26 (2.61%) Firmware
11 21 (2.11%) NFS
12 15 (1.51%) BitLocker
12 15 (1.51%) Squid
13 12 (1.21%) vCloud
14 11 (1.11%) Microsoft App-V
15 10 (1.01%) Postfix
16 8 (0.80%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.70%) Varnish
18 5 (0.50%) Ceph
19 4 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 163 (16.38%) Terraform
2 122 (12.26%) Ansible
3 90 (9.05%) Kubernetes
4 77 (7.74%) Single Sign-On
5 75 (7.54%) Microsoft Intune
6 54 (5.43%) FortiGate
6 54 (5.43%) vCenter Server
7 51 (5.13%) Grafana
8 48 (4.82%) SCCM
9 39 (3.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (3.82%) Prometheus
11 27 (2.71%) WSUS
12 24 (2.41%) Argo
13 23 (2.31%) SCOM
14 15 (1.51%) Puppet
15 14 (1.41%) HAProxy
15 14 (1.41%) Nessus
16 13 (1.31%) Jamf Pro
17 12 (1.21%) vMotion
18 8 (0.80%) Consul
Vendors
1 328 (32.96%) Microsoft
2 254 (25.53%) VMware
3 186 (18.69%) Cisco
4 159 (15.98%) F5
5 90 (9.05%) ServiceNow
6 78 (7.84%) Splunk
7 69 (6.93%) Infoblox
8 62 (6.23%) Citrix
9 61 (6.13%) Google
10 58 (5.83%) SolarWinds
11 53 (5.33%) Red Hat
12 47 (4.72%) Juniper
13 40 (4.02%) Palo Alto
14 34 (3.42%) NetApp
15 32 (3.22%) Dynatrace
16 29 (2.91%) Blue Coat
17 27 (2.71%) McAfee
18 25 (2.51%) Fortinet
18 25 (2.51%) Okta
19 23 (2.31%) Zscaler
399 DNS jobs Nationwide