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

 6 months to
5 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 133 159
Rank change year-on-year -14 +26 -29
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,016 690 603
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.88% 2.12% 1.59%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.01% 18.15% 13.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 624 434 401
10th Percentile £300 £245 £225
25th Percentile £409 £380 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £600 £598
90th Percentile £650 £653 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 29 13
10th Percentile £26.66 £28.80 £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.10
Median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +41.07% +86.10% -39.55%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.35 £48.75
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £51.52
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +41.07% -5.26% +18.75%

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 5,078 3,802 4,519
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.41% 11.69% 11.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,992 2,331 2,674
10th Percentile £235 £235 £231
25th Percentile £398 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £609
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £466 £500
% change year-on-year +3.11% -6.90% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 379 200 275
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.11 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.11 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.00 £43.00 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -39.53% -16.50% -7.88%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.92 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -39.01% -25.89% +1.52%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 -17 919 £500 - 625
UK excluding London -2 636 £500 - 407
London -45 313 £500 - 288
Work from Home -13 236 £500 +3.95% 203
North of England +24 214 £500 +7.53% 75
South East +2 179 £538 +2.38% 142
North West +14 133 £465 - 45
Midlands -29 117 £450 -5.26% 45
South West +14 102 £550 - 66
West Midlands -35 95 £450 -5.26% 27
Yorkshire -6 67 £500 -4.76% 16
Scotland -10 37 £500 +10.13% 24
East of England -48 35 £463 -15.91% 44
East Midlands -6 20 £431 -21.59% 18
North East -34 14 £413 +21.32% 15
Wales -12 10 £440 +16.02% 5

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
1 110 (10.83%) Microsoft Exchange
2 91 (8.96%) SharePoint
3 28 (2.76%) Confluence
4 16 (1.57%) Apache
5 15 (1.48%) IIS
6 13 (1.28%) nginx
7 8 (0.79%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.69%) Skype for Business
9 4 (0.39%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.39%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2010
10 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2013
11 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
11 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
11 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
12 1 (0.098%) CMS
12 1 (0.098%) Drupal
12 1 (0.098%) SharePoint Server
12 1 (0.098%) WordPress
Applications
1 25 (2.46%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.18%) MS Visio
3 11 (1.08%) 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
6 1 (0.098%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 12 (1.18%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.098%) Magento
2 1 (0.098%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 418 (41.14%) Azure
2 209 (20.57%) AWS
3 189 (18.60%) Microsoft 365
4 187 (18.41%) Entra ID
5 96 (9.45%) GCP
6 79 (7.78%) GitHub
7 56 (5.51%) OneDrive
8 53 (5.22%) IaaS
9 50 (4.92%) Azure DevOps
10 43 (4.23%) Azure Monitor
10 43 (4.23%) GitHub Actions
11 37 (3.64%) SaaS
12 34 (3.35%) PaaS
13 31 (3.05%) OpenShift
14 27 (2.66%) Serverless
15 26 (2.56%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 25 (2.46%) Amazon EKS
17 23 (2.26%) AWS CloudFormation
17 23 (2.26%) Azure Key Vault
17 23 (2.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 481 (47.34%) DHCP
2 364 (35.83%) Firewall
3 289 (28.44%) TCP/IP
4 282 (27.76%) VPN
5 134 (13.19%) Network Security
6 126 (12.40%) VLAN
7 125 (12.30%) WAN
8 103 (10.14%) SSL
9 96 (9.45%) LAN
10 87 (8.56%) BGP
11 79 (7.78%) Wireless
12 71 (6.99%) Wi-Fi
13 68 (6.69%) BIG-IP
14 67 (6.59%) HTTP
15 60 (5.91%) SAN
16 57 (5.61%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 50 (4.92%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 46 (4.53%) OSPF
19 44 (4.33%) DMZ
20 41 (4.04%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (5.02%) SQL Server
2 26 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (1.18%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (1.18%) MongoDB
3 12 (1.18%) MySQL
4 10 (0.98%) Power BI
5 8 (0.79%) Azure SQL Database
5 8 (0.79%) Data Lake
5 8 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
6 7 (0.69%) NoSQL
7 6 (0.59%) Redis
8 5 (0.49%) MariaDB
9 4 (0.39%) Big Data
9 4 (0.39%) Db2
10 3 (0.30%) SQLPlus
11 2 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
11 2 (0.20%) KDB
11 2 (0.20%) Metadata
12 1 (0.098%) Cloud Spanner
12 1 (0.098%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 81 (7.97%) JIRA
2 56 (5.51%) Jenkins
3 46 (4.53%) Git
4 36 (3.54%) GitLab
5 15 (1.48%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.49%) Browser DevTools
8 5 (0.49%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.39%) Selenium
10 3 (0.30%) MSI
11 2 (0.20%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.20%) Introscope
11 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.20%) Vagrant
12 1 (0.098%) Locust
12 1 (0.098%) Newman
12 1 (0.098%) TestCafe
General
1 270 (26.57%) Social Skills
2 119 (11.71%) Analytical Skills
3 87 (8.56%) Finance
4 82 (8.07%) Public Sector
5 63 (6.20%) Banking
6 56 (5.51%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (3.44%) Telecoms
8 29 (2.85%) Investment Banking
9 19 (1.87%) Legal
10 13 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.18%) Aerospace
12 11 (1.08%) Local Government
12 11 (1.08%) Military
12 11 (1.08%) Police
13 10 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.89%) Manufacturing
15 8 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
16 7 (0.69%) Front Office
16 7 (0.69%) Law
17 6 (0.59%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 186 (18.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 174 (17.13%) Network Engineer
3 123 (12.11%) Senior
4 99 (9.74%) Support Engineer
5 81 (7.97%) Cloud Engineer
6 78 (7.68%) Architect
7 51 (5.02%) Security Engineer
8 50 (4.92%) Analyst
9 48 (4.72%) IT Engineer
9 48 (4.72%) IT Support
9 48 (4.72%) Platform Engineer
10 44 (4.33%) Azure Engineer
10 44 (4.33%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 43 (4.23%) DevOps Engineer
12 37 (3.64%) Administrator
12 37 (3.64%) Cisco Engineer
13 36 (3.54%) Network Security Engineer
14 35 (3.44%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 34 (3.35%) Senior Network Engineer
16 32 (3.15%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 220 (21.65%) Terraform
2 43 (4.23%) SAML
3 37 (3.64%) 802.1X
4 30 (2.95%) OAuth
5 29 (2.85%) ARM Templates
6 27 (2.66%) LDAP
7 26 (2.56%) OpenID
8 20 (1.97%) REST
9 18 (1.77%) JSON
9 18 (1.77%) Kafka
10 15 (1.48%) OpenTelemetry
11 13 (1.28%) YAML
12 12 (1.18%) OAuth2
13 9 (0.89%) CSS
14 8 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
14 8 (0.79%) React
15 7 (0.69%) Middleware
16 6 (0.59%) .NET
16 6 (0.59%) Jinja
16 6 (0.59%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 126 (12.40%) Data Centre
2 105 (10.33%) PKI
3 74 (7.28%) Hybrid Cloud
4 72 (7.09%) Onboarding
5 54 (5.31%) Management Information System
6 49 (4.82%) Cloud Native
7 33 (3.25%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 28 (2.76%) Clustering
9 27 (2.66%) Public Cloud
9 27 (2.66%) Replication
10 24 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
11 19 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
12 18 (1.77%) Linux Command Line
13 16 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
13 16 (1.57%) Enterprise Cloud
14 15 (1.48%) Driving Licence
14 15 (1.48%) Security Posture
15 12 (1.18%) Cyber Threat
16 11 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
17 10 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 478 (47.05%) Windows
2 271 (26.67%) Windows Server
3 227 (22.34%) Linux
4 65 (6.40%) Windows 10
5 50 (4.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 40 (3.94%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.25%) Mac OS
8 28 (2.76%) Unix
9 26 (2.56%) Windows Server 2012
10 25 (2.46%) Ubuntu
11 22 (2.17%) Apple iOS
12 20 (1.97%) Android
13 19 (1.87%) CentOS
14 17 (1.67%) VMS
15 14 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
16 12 (1.18%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.69%) Rocky
17 7 (0.69%) Windows Server 2008
18 4 (0.39%) AIX
18 4 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 252 (24.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 225 (22.15%) Problem-Solving
3 196 (19.29%) ITIL
4 190 (18.70%) Infrastructure as Code
5 176 (17.32%) DevOps
6 173 (17.03%) Load Balancing
7 163 (16.04%) Migration
8 162 (15.94%) CI/CD
9 123 (12.11%) ITSM
10 121 (11.91%) High Availability
11 111 (10.93%) Continuous Improvement
12 104 (10.24%) Agile
13 96 (9.45%) Cybersecurity
14 93 (9.15%) Observability
15 92 (9.06%) Technical Leadership
16 91 (8.96%) Disaster Recovery
17 88 (8.66%) Project Delivery
18 87 (8.56%) Platform Engineering
19 81 (7.97%) Runbook
20 80 (7.87%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 267 (26.28%) PowerShell
2 214 (21.06%) Python
3 154 (15.16%) Bash
4 69 (6.79%) SQL
5 49 (4.82%) Bicep
6 21 (2.07%) JavaScript
7 16 (1.57%) Shell Script
8 14 (1.38%) Go
9 13 (1.28%) ActionScript
10 11 (1.08%) Java
11 10 (0.98%) Perl
12 9 (0.89%) VBScript
13 8 (0.79%) Groovy
14 7 (0.69%) VBA
15 6 (0.59%) TypeScript
15 6 (0.59%) VB
16 4 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
16 4 (0.39%) Ruby
17 3 (0.30%) C
17 3 (0.30%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 379 (37.30%) Security Cleared
2 213 (20.96%) SC Cleared
3 163 (16.04%) DV Cleared
4 91 (8.96%) Cisco Certification
5 85 (8.37%) Degree
6 73 (7.19%) CCNP
7 58 (5.71%) Azure Certification
8 54 (5.31%) Microsoft Certification
9 49 (4.82%) CCNA
10 27 (2.66%) Network+ Certification
11 25 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
12 23 (2.26%) AWS Certification
13 19 (1.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
14 17 (1.67%) CCIE
15 15 (1.48%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 15 (1.48%) VCAP
16 12 (1.18%) ITIL Certification
16 12 (1.18%) MCSE
17 11 (1.08%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (4.04%) SLA
2 26 (2.56%) NIST
3 17 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (1.67%) QA
4 16 (1.57%) NCSC
5 8 (0.79%) GDPR
6 6 (0.59%) 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 3 (0.30%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.20%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.098%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.098%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 442 (43.50%) Active Directory
2 282 (27.76%) VMware Infrastructure
3 128 (12.60%) Hyper-V
4 81 (7.97%) VMware ESXi
5 76 (7.48%) vSphere
6 70 (6.89%) VMware NSX
7 64 (6.30%) Docker
8 45 (4.43%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (3.64%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.46%) Firmware
11 21 (2.07%) NFS
12 16 (1.57%) vCloud
13 13 (1.28%) BitLocker
14 10 (0.98%) Squid
14 10 (0.98%) Virtual Servers
15 9 (0.89%) Postfix
16 8 (0.79%) Ceph
16 8 (0.79%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.59%) VMware Workstation
18 5 (0.49%) UAG
Systems Management
1 161 (15.85%) Ansible
2 131 (12.89%) Kubernetes
3 113 (11.12%) Microsoft Intune
4 82 (8.07%) SCCM
5 67 (6.59%) vCenter Server
6 60 (5.91%) Single Sign-On
7 59 (5.81%) Grafana
8 45 (4.43%) Prometheus
9 37 (3.64%) SCOM
10 34 (3.35%) WSUS
11 27 (2.66%) FortiGate
12 17 (1.67%) Argo
12 17 (1.67%) NetBackup
13 16 (1.57%) VxRail
14 15 (1.48%) Packer
14 15 (1.48%) Puppet
15 13 (1.28%) Istio
15 13 (1.28%) Jamf Pro
16 12 (1.18%) vMotion
17 10 (0.98%) Nessus
Vendors
1 391 (38.48%) Microsoft
2 336 (33.07%) VMware
3 189 (18.60%) Cisco
4 131 (12.89%) F5
5 88 (8.66%) ServiceNow
6 59 (5.81%) Citrix
6 59 (5.81%) Infoblox
7 56 (5.51%) Google
8 52 (5.12%) SolarWinds
9 51 (5.02%) Palo Alto
9 51 (5.02%) Splunk
10 48 (4.72%) Red Hat
11 44 (4.33%) Juniper
12 37 (3.64%) NetApp
13 35 (3.44%) CheckPoint
13 35 (3.44%) Dynatrace
14 30 (2.95%) Fortinet
14 30 (2.95%) Zscaler
15 26 (2.56%) Blue Coat
16 24 (2.36%) CyberArk
689 DNS jobs Nationwide