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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 110 131
Rank change year-on-year -23 +21 -8
Contract jobs citing DNS 874 718 779
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.96% 2.47% 1.76%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.57% 19.07% 13.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 553 489 511
10th Percentile £263 £250 £203
25th Percentile £400 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £514
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.19% +0.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 12 27
10th Percentile £14.25 £19.01 £20.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £48.72 £41.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.11% +3.13% -18.56%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.10 £50.33
90th Percentile £76.05 £82.03 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.50 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -31.21% +101.69% -18.56%

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 4,466 3,766 5,915
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.00% 12.97% 13.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,866 2,332 3,562
10th Percentile £224 £213 £205
25th Percentile £380 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% +3.16% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £473 £475
% change year-on-year +0.53% -0.53% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 148 408
10th Percentile £15.56 £14.99 £13.96
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £41.94 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.83% +7.69% +71.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.38 £62.50
90th Percentile £76.50 £75.00 £67.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £31.79 £44.00
% change year-on-year +53.26% -27.75% +137.84%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 -21 770 £500 -4.76% 306
UK excluding London -16 559 £500 -4.76% 265
London -46 251 £500 -0.05% 81
North of England -6 215 £449 -5.58% 68
Work from Home -49 193 £525 - 93
South East +7 156 £525 -4.55% 80
North West +20 138 £528 +24.12% 37
Midlands +13 110 £400 -27.93% 45
West Midlands +25 99 £400 -19.40% 29
Yorkshire -32 78 £447 -18.82% 22
South West -45 48 £575 +4.93% 33
Scotland +14 46 £518 +15.17% 15
East of England -25 43 £450 -10.00% 24
East Midlands -34 10 £375 -33.92% 16
North East -17 4 £200 -51.52% 11
Wales -17 4 £550 +22.22% 3

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 95 (10.87%) Microsoft Exchange
2 42 (4.81%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.83%) Skype for Business
4 14 (1.60%) Confluence
4 14 (1.60%) nginx
5 9 (1.03%) IIS
6 8 (0.92%) Apache
7 4 (0.46%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.34%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.23%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.23%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.23%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.23%) WebSphere Portal
9 2 (0.23%) WordPress
10 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.11%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 26 (2.97%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.60%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.23%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 306 (35.01%) Azure
2 166 (18.99%) AWS
3 145 (16.59%) Entra ID
4 136 (15.56%) Microsoft 365
5 88 (10.07%) GCP
6 64 (7.32%) GitHub
7 58 (6.64%) IaaS
8 40 (4.58%) PaaS
9 38 (4.35%) AWS CloudFormation
9 38 (4.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 37 (4.23%) Serverless
11 35 (4.00%) Amazon S3
12 33 (3.78%) Amazon EC2
12 33 (3.78%) AWS Lambda
12 33 (3.78%) SaaS
13 32 (3.66%) Route 53
14 29 (3.32%) OpenShift
15 26 (2.97%) Amazon EKS
16 24 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
17 22 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 378 (43.25%) DHCP
2 287 (32.84%) Firewall
3 240 (27.46%) TCP/IP
4 206 (23.57%) VPN
5 118 (13.50%) WAN
6 108 (12.36%) LAN
7 86 (9.84%) Network Security
8 85 (9.73%) SSL
9 83 (9.50%) VLAN
10 81 (9.27%) BIG-IP
11 80 (9.15%) HTTP
12 78 (8.92%) BGP
13 62 (7.09%) Wi-Fi
14 55 (6.29%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 46 (5.26%) OSPF
16 41 (4.69%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 39 (4.46%) Kerberos
17 39 (4.46%) Wireshark
18 38 (4.35%) DMZ
18 38 (4.35%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (3.09%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.40%) Elasticsearch
3 18 (2.06%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (1.03%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.80%) DynamoDB
7 6 (0.69%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.57%) MySQL
8 5 (0.57%) Redis
9 4 (0.46%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.46%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.46%) Power BI
9 4 (0.46%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.34%) BigQuery
10 3 (0.34%) MariaDB
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.11%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 63 (7.21%) Jenkins
2 41 (4.69%) JIRA
3 32 (3.66%) Git
3 32 (3.66%) GitLab
4 29 (3.32%) Fiddler
5 7 (0.80%) Bitbucket
5 7 (0.80%) Browser DevTools
5 7 (0.80%) SonarQube
6 6 (0.69%) Chocolatey
7 5 (0.57%) Terragrunt
8 4 (0.46%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.23%) Introscope
9 2 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.11%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.11%) Subversion
10 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 212 (24.26%) Social Skills
2 96 (10.98%) Analytical Skills
3 75 (8.58%) Banking
4 67 (7.67%) Finance
5 54 (6.18%) Public Sector
6 51 (5.84%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (4.92%) Investment Banking
8 30 (3.43%) Legal
9 21 (2.40%) Telecoms
10 16 (1.83%) Military
11 10 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.69%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (0.69%) Law
13 5 (0.57%) Local Government
14 4 (0.46%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.46%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
16 2 (0.23%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 144 (16.48%) Network Engineer
2 130 (14.87%) Architect
3 94 (10.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 83 (9.50%) Analyst
5 75 (8.58%) Senior
6 54 (6.18%) Security Engineer
7 52 (5.95%) Support Engineer
8 50 (5.72%) Web Engineer
9 43 (4.92%) IT Support
10 36 (4.12%) IT Engineer
10 36 (4.12%) Lead
11 33 (3.78%) Network Security Engineer
12 29 (3.32%) Cisco Engineer
12 29 (3.32%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 28 (3.20%) Azure Engineer
13 28 (3.20%) Platform Engineer
14 27 (3.09%) IT Support Engineer
15 26 (2.97%) SOC Analyst
16 25 (2.86%) Data Engineer
16 25 (2.86%) Data Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (7.89%) LDAP
2 53 (6.06%) SAML
3 42 (4.81%) OAuth
4 36 (4.12%) OpenID
5 29 (3.32%) 802.1X
6 23 (2.63%) OpenTelemetry
7 20 (2.29%) OAuth2
8 10 (1.14%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (1.14%) JSON
8 10 (1.14%) Kafka
9 9 (1.03%) REST
10 8 (0.92%) ARM Templates
11 7 (0.80%) XMPP
12 6 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
13 5 (0.57%) Middleware
13 5 (0.57%) RESTful
13 5 (0.57%) Spring Boot
13 5 (0.57%) Web Services
14 4 (0.46%) Hibernate
14 4 (0.46%) JPA
Miscellaneous
1 73 (8.35%) Data Centre
2 70 (8.01%) PKI
3 50 (5.72%) Cloud Native
4 49 (5.61%) Replication
5 36 (4.12%) Management Information System
6 35 (4.00%) Clustering
7 33 (3.78%) Public Cloud
8 32 (3.66%) Onboarding
9 27 (3.09%) Hybrid Cloud
9 27 (3.09%) Security Operations Centre
10 26 (2.97%) Cyberattack
11 23 (2.63%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 19 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
13 17 (1.95%) Cyber Threat
13 17 (1.95%) Self-Motivation
14 16 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
15 14 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (1.49%) NHS
16 13 (1.49%) Product Ownership
17 12 (1.37%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 391 (44.74%) Windows
2 212 (24.26%) Windows Server
3 140 (16.02%) Linux
4 45 (5.15%) Windows 10
5 32 (3.66%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.40%) Android
7 18 (2.06%) Unix
8 17 (1.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 16 (1.83%) Windows Server 2012
10 15 (1.72%) Mac OS
11 14 (1.60%) Apple iOS
12 12 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (1.26%) Windows 7
14 9 (1.03%) VMS
15 8 (0.92%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.46%) CatOS
16 4 (0.46%) CentOS
17 3 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
17 3 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
17 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 195 (22.31%) Problem-Solving
2 188 (21.51%) Load Balancing
3 134 (15.33%) Migration
4 123 (14.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 120 (13.73%) ITIL
6 118 (13.50%) High Availability
7 117 (13.39%) CI/CD
7 117 (13.39%) DevOps
8 109 (12.47%) Infrastructure as Code
9 86 (9.84%) Cybersecurity
10 84 (9.61%) Identity Access Management
11 82 (9.38%) Disaster Recovery
12 72 (8.24%) ITSM
13 70 (8.01%) RBAC
14 67 (7.67%) Incident Response
15 66 (7.55%) Observability
16 64 (7.32%) SIEM
17 61 (6.98%) Agile
17 61 (6.98%) Roadmaps
18 59 (6.75%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 231 (26.43%) PowerShell
2 150 (17.16%) Python
3 84 (9.61%) Bash
4 42 (4.81%) SQL
5 18 (2.06%) JavaScript
6 15 (1.72%) Bicep
7 13 (1.49%) VBScript
8 12 (1.37%) Java
8 12 (1.37%) Ruby
9 10 (1.14%) Go
9 10 (1.14%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.03%) VB
11 5 (0.57%) Lisp
11 5 (0.57%) Perl
11 5 (0.57%) VBA
12 4 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.23%) C
13 2 (0.23%) C#
13 2 (0.23%) Groovy
13 2 (0.23%) Jython
Qualifications
1 285 (32.61%) Security Cleared
2 194 (22.20%) SC Cleared
3 104 (11.90%) DV Cleared
4 72 (8.24%) Cisco Certification
5 59 (6.75%) Degree
6 46 (5.26%) CCNP
7 42 (4.81%) Microsoft Certification
8 32 (3.66%) CompTIA Security+
9 28 (3.20%) CCNA
10 26 (2.97%) Azure Certification
11 21 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (2.17%) CISSP
13 18 (2.06%) AWS Certification
13 18 (2.06%) CompTIA CySA+
14 15 (1.72%) Network+ Certification
15 10 (1.14%) BPSS Clearance
15 10 (1.14%) JNCIA
15 10 (1.14%) JNCIS
16 9 (1.03%) CCIE
16 9 (1.03%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.55%) GDPR
1 31 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 30 (3.43%) NIST
3 23 (2.63%) SLA
4 16 (1.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 10 (1.14%) NCSC
6 9 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (0.92%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.69%) QA
9 3 (0.34%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.34%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.34%) PMO
10 2 (0.23%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.11%) COBIT
11 1 (0.11%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.11%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 357 (40.85%) Active Directory
2 189 (21.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 74 (8.47%) Hyper-V
4 60 (6.86%) VMware NSX
5 56 (6.41%) Docker
5 56 (6.41%) vSphere
6 27 (3.09%) Firmware
7 23 (2.63%) Virtual Machines
8 22 (2.52%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (2.06%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
11 12 (1.37%) Squid
12 8 (0.92%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.80%) NFS
14 6 (0.69%) Sendmail
15 5 (0.57%) Postfix
15 5 (0.57%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.57%) Varnish
16 4 (0.46%) Ceph
17 3 (0.34%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 154 (17.62%) Terraform
2 128 (14.65%) Ansible
3 96 (10.98%) Kubernetes
4 90 (10.30%) Microsoft Intune
5 75 (8.58%) Single Sign-On
6 61 (6.98%) SCCM
7 58 (6.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 51 (5.84%) FortiGate
9 44 (5.03%) vCenter Server
10 41 (4.69%) Grafana
11 31 (3.55%) Argo
12 25 (2.86%) Prometheus
13 16 (1.83%) WSUS
14 14 (1.60%) SCOM
15 10 (1.14%) HAProxy
15 10 (1.14%) Puppet
16 8 (0.92%) vMotion
17 7 (0.80%) Consul
17 7 (0.80%) Nessus
18 6 (0.69%) Nagios
Vendors
1 296 (33.87%) Microsoft
2 235 (26.89%) VMware
3 146 (16.70%) F5
4 136 (15.56%) Cisco
5 84 (9.61%) Splunk
6 73 (8.35%) ServiceNow
7 47 (5.38%) Citrix
8 45 (5.15%) SolarWinds
9 41 (4.69%) Red Hat
10 40 (4.58%) Blue Coat
10 40 (4.58%) Palo Alto
11 39 (4.46%) Infoblox
11 39 (4.46%) Juniper
12 34 (3.89%) McAfee
13 32 (3.66%) Google
14 30 (3.43%) NetApp
15 25 (2.86%) Pure Storage
16 24 (2.75%) Fortinet
17 21 (2.40%) Extreme Networks
18 20 (2.29%) Okta