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

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 148 126 156
Rank change year-on-year -22 +30 -16
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,008 729 594
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 2.20% 1.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.28% 18.33% 12.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 620 481 412
10th Percentile £300 £263 £251
25th Percentile £406 £400 £372
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 £650 £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 48 32 15
10th Percentile £21.25 £29.00 £20.00
25th Percentile £29.00 £37.06 £23.45
Median hourly rate £50.11 £57.50 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year -12.85% +137.60% -39.50%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.33 £39.38
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.17 £63.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.00 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -20.00% +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 3,978 4,735
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.35% 12.01% 12.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,954 2,428 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 £591 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 345 195 327
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.27
Median hourly rate £26.44 £50.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -47.12% +5.26% -5.00%
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% -6.63%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -20 909 £500 -4.76% 399
UK excluding London -12 617 £500 -4.76% 297
London -31 320 £495 -3.41% 150
Work from Home -29 234 £510 -2.86% 160
North of England +11 219 £450 -10.00% 59
South East +5 195 £538 -2.27% 96
North West +22 144 £450 -5.37% 38
Midlands -13 110 £450 -5.26% 49
West Midlands -27 90 £450 -5.26% 33
South West 0 82 £500 -13.98% 51
Yorkshire -22 69 £475 -13.64% 18
Scotland +18 36 £550 +22.22% 15
East of England -53 29 £450 -18.18% 32
East Midlands -6 18 £413 -26.67% 16
Wales -13 8 £463 +6.69% 2
North East -40 6 £413 +21.32% 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 96 (9.52%) Microsoft Exchange
2 80 (7.94%) SharePoint
3 22 (2.18%) Confluence
4 18 (1.79%) Apache
5 15 (1.49%) IIS
5 15 (1.49%) nginx
6 9 (0.89%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.50%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
9 2 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2013
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 (0.099%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.099%) Traefik
Applications
1 21 (2.08%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.19%) MS Visio
3 7 (0.69%) 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%) NUKE
6 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 10 (0.99%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.099%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 390 (38.69%) Azure
2 205 (20.34%) AWS
3 163 (16.17%) Entra ID
3 163 (16.17%) Microsoft 365
4 112 (11.11%) GCP
5 75 (7.44%) GitHub
6 56 (5.56%) IaaS
7 51 (5.06%) OneDrive
8 45 (4.46%) Azure DevOps
9 42 (4.17%) PaaS
10 41 (4.07%) SaaS
11 36 (3.57%) Azure Monitor
12 31 (3.08%) OpenShift
13 30 (2.98%) GitHub Actions
14 28 (2.78%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (2.68%) Serverless
16 26 (2.58%) Amazon EC2
16 26 (2.58%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 24 (2.38%) Akamai
17 24 (2.38%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 457 (45.34%) DHCP
2 364 (36.11%) Firewall
3 285 (28.27%) TCP/IP
4 271 (26.88%) VPN
5 138 (13.69%) WAN
6 126 (12.50%) Network Security
7 124 (12.30%) VLAN
8 118 (11.71%) LAN
9 105 (10.42%) SSL
10 104 (10.32%) BGP
11 79 (7.84%) BIG-IP
12 72 (7.14%) HTTP
13 70 (6.94%) Wireless
14 63 (6.25%) Wi-Fi
15 62 (6.15%) SAN
16 60 (5.95%) OSPF
17 50 (4.96%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 41 (4.07%) DMZ
19 38 (3.77%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 38 (3.77%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (5.06%) SQL Server
2 16 (1.59%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (1.29%) Elasticsearch
4 12 (1.19%) Azure SQL Database
5 10 (0.99%) Power BI
6 8 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (0.69%) MongoDB
8 6 (0.60%) Data Lake
8 6 (0.60%) MySQL
9 5 (0.50%) MariaDB
10 4 (0.40%) Db2
11 3 (0.30%) Big Data
11 3 (0.30%) SQLPlus
12 2 (0.20%) NoSQL
13 1 (0.099%) Cloud Spanner
13 1 (0.099%) DynamoDB
13 1 (0.099%) KDB
13 1 (0.099%) Power Query
13 1 (0.099%) Redis
13 1 (0.099%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 74 (7.34%) JIRA
2 57 (5.65%) Jenkins
3 40 (3.97%) Git
4 25 (2.48%) GitLab
5 17 (1.69%) Fiddler
6 10 (0.99%) Bitbucket
6 10 (0.99%) Browser DevTools
7 8 (0.79%) Chocolatey
8 6 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (0.40%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.20%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.20%) Introscope
10 2 (0.20%) MSI
10 2 (0.20%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
10 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.099%) Maven
11 1 (0.099%) Visual Studio
General
1 247 (24.50%) Social Skills
2 113 (11.21%) Analytical Skills
3 91 (9.03%) Finance
4 83 (8.23%) Public Sector
5 69 (6.85%) Banking
6 55 (5.46%) Documentation Skills
7 32 (3.17%) Investment Banking
8 29 (2.88%) Telecoms
9 21 (2.08%) Legal
9 21 (2.08%) Military
10 13 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
11 12 (1.19%) Local Government
12 11 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (0.99%) Police
14 6 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (0.60%) Manufacturing
14 6 (0.60%) Publishing
15 5 (0.50%) Law
16 4 (0.40%) Automotive
16 4 (0.40%) Italian Language
Job Titles
1 188 (18.65%) Network Engineer
2 172 (17.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 115 (11.41%) Senior
4 97 (9.62%) Architect
5 92 (9.13%) Support Engineer
6 76 (7.54%) Cloud Engineer
7 60 (5.95%) Security Engineer
8 55 (5.46%) Analyst
9 49 (4.86%) IT Support
10 48 (4.76%) IT Engineer
11 43 (4.27%) Azure Engineer
12 41 (4.07%) Network Security Engineer
13 39 (3.87%) Administrator
13 39 (3.87%) DevOps Engineer
13 39 (3.87%) Web Engineer
14 38 (3.77%) Cisco Engineer
15 36 (3.57%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 36 (3.57%) Platform Engineer
15 36 (3.57%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 31 (3.08%) Data Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (5.16%) 802.1X
2 39 (3.87%) SAML
3 30 (2.98%) LDAP
4 26 (2.58%) ARM Templates
5 25 (2.48%) OpenID
6 24 (2.38%) OAuth
7 20 (1.98%) OpenTelemetry
8 17 (1.69%) JSON
9 11 (1.09%) YAML
10 10 (0.99%) REST
11 8 (0.79%) Kafka
12 7 (0.69%) Middleware
12 7 (0.69%) OAuth2
13 5 (0.50%) CSS
14 4 (0.40%) .NET
14 4 (0.40%) Microsoft Graph
14 4 (0.40%) React
14 4 (0.40%) Software Packaging
14 4 (0.40%) Web Services
15 3 (0.30%) Redfish
Miscellaneous
1 134 (13.29%) Data Centre
2 111 (11.01%) PKI
3 63 (6.25%) Hybrid Cloud
3 63 (6.25%) Onboarding
4 57 (5.65%) Cloud Native
5 47 (4.66%) Management Information System
6 45 (4.46%) Clustering
7 42 (4.17%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 28 (2.78%) Public Cloud
8 28 (2.78%) Self-Motivation
9 22 (2.18%) Replication
10 19 (1.88%) Enterprise Cloud
10 19 (1.88%) Security Posture
11 15 (1.49%) Cyber Threat
11 15 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
11 15 (1.49%) Linux Command Line
12 13 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
13 12 (1.19%) Driving Licence
13 12 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
14 10 (0.99%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 461 (45.73%) Windows
2 242 (24.01%) Windows Server
3 199 (19.74%) Linux
4 52 (5.16%) Windows 10
5 47 (4.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 40 (3.97%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.27%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.68%) Unix
9 22 (2.18%) Windows Server 2012
10 20 (1.98%) Ubuntu
11 17 (1.69%) VMS
12 16 (1.59%) Apple iOS
13 15 (1.49%) CentOS
14 14 (1.39%) Android
14 14 (1.39%) Windows Server 2016
15 7 (0.69%) Rocky
16 6 (0.60%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
17 5 (0.50%) Windows Server 2003
18 3 (0.30%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (23.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 228 (22.62%) Problem-Solving
3 180 (17.86%) ITIL
4 177 (17.56%) Load Balancing
5 165 (16.37%) Migration
6 163 (16.17%) Infrastructure as Code
7 157 (15.58%) DevOps
8 149 (14.78%) CI/CD
9 142 (14.09%) High Availability
10 115 (11.41%) ITSM
11 99 (9.82%) Observability
12 91 (9.03%) Continuous Improvement
13 90 (8.93%) Project Delivery
14 86 (8.53%) Agile
15 85 (8.43%) Cybersecurity
16 82 (8.13%) Disaster Recovery
17 80 (7.94%) Identity Access Management
18 72 (7.14%) Technical Leadership
19 71 (7.04%) Platform Engineering
20 70 (6.94%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 223 (22.12%) PowerShell
2 198 (19.64%) Python
3 148 (14.68%) Bash
4 59 (5.85%) SQL
5 43 (4.27%) Bicep
6 23 (2.28%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.19%) Go
8 10 (0.99%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.99%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.89%) Java
10 8 (0.79%) Perl
10 8 (0.79%) VBA
11 5 (0.50%) C
11 5 (0.50%) Groovy
11 5 (0.50%) Ruby
12 4 (0.40%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.30%) Lisp
14 2 (0.20%) Objective-C
14 2 (0.20%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.20%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 371 (36.81%) Security Cleared
2 212 (21.03%) SC Cleared
3 154 (15.28%) DV Cleared
4 112 (11.11%) Cisco Certification
5 77 (7.64%) CCNP
6 75 (7.44%) Degree
7 57 (5.65%) CCNA
8 50 (4.96%) Microsoft Certification
9 43 (4.27%) Azure Certification
10 32 (3.17%) Network+ Certification
11 18 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
11 18 (1.79%) CCIE
12 17 (1.69%) CISSP
12 17 (1.69%) MCSE
12 17 (1.69%) Server+ Certification
13 16 (1.59%) AWS Certification
14 15 (1.49%) CompTIA Security+
14 15 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
15 13 (1.29%) JNCIS
15 13 (1.29%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.67%) SLA
2 29 (2.88%) NIST
3 19 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (1.59%) NCSC
5 8 (0.79%) GDPR
5 8 (0.79%) QA
6 5 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
6 5 (0.50%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 3 (0.30%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.099%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.099%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 419 (41.57%) Active Directory
2 245 (24.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 120 (11.90%) Hyper-V
4 70 (6.94%) vSphere
5 67 (6.65%) VMware ESXi
6 65 (6.45%) VMware NSX
7 50 (4.96%) Docker
8 44 (4.37%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (3.67%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (2.38%) Firmware
11 22 (2.18%) NFS
12 13 (1.29%) vCloud
13 11 (1.09%) Squid
14 10 (0.99%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.89%) BitLocker
15 9 (0.89%) Postfix
16 8 (0.79%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.69%) Ceph
17 7 (0.69%) Virtual Servers
18 6 (0.60%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 203 (20.14%) Terraform
2 154 (15.28%) Ansible
3 119 (11.81%) Kubernetes
4 98 (9.72%) Microsoft Intune
5 62 (6.15%) SCCM
5 62 (6.15%) vCenter Server
6 56 (5.56%) Single Sign-On
7 53 (5.26%) Grafana
8 45 (4.46%) FortiGate
9 39 (3.87%) Prometheus
10 31 (3.08%) SCOM
11 28 (2.78%) WSUS
12 24 (2.38%) Argo
13 15 (1.49%) Puppet
14 14 (1.39%) Nessus
14 14 (1.39%) NetBackup
14 14 (1.39%) VxRail
15 13 (1.29%) Jamf Pro
16 11 (1.09%) vMotion
17 10 (0.99%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 344 (34.13%) Microsoft
2 300 (29.76%) VMware
3 198 (19.64%) Cisco
4 142 (14.09%) F5
5 90 (8.93%) ServiceNow
6 77 (7.64%) Splunk
7 68 (6.75%) SolarWinds
8 66 (6.55%) Citrix
9 65 (6.45%) Google
9 65 (6.45%) Infoblox
10 60 (5.95%) Juniper
11 52 (5.16%) Red Hat
12 44 (4.37%) Palo Alto
13 35 (3.47%) Dynatrace
13 35 (3.47%) NetApp
14 30 (2.98%) Zscaler
15 27 (2.68%) Blue Coat
15 27 (2.68%) Fortinet
16 26 (2.58%) CheckPoint
17 23 (2.28%) McAfee