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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 152 142 146
Rank change year-on-year -10 +4 -14
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,001 694 652
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.82% 2.10% 1.72%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.59% 18.28% 14.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 629 444 409
10th Percentile £299 £215 £223
25th Percentile £413 £375 £344
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £650 £650 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £475 £439
% change year-on-year +7.37% +8.26% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 31 11
10th Percentile £26.13 £15.50 £21.25
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.45
Median hourly rate £62.00 £45.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +37.78% +86.10% -39.55%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.18 £34.00
90th Percentile £98.06 £89.63 £48.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £27.10
% change year-on-year +41.07% +66.05% -42.95%

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 5,111 3,796 4,510
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.31% 11.48% 11.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,952 2,381 2,593
10th Percentile £235 £219 £225
25th Percentile £390 £362 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.69% +5.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 428 204 206
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £23.94 £24.18
Median hourly rate £32.75 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.94% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £72.15 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -35.62% -25.89% -0.26%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 -22 905 £500 - 784
UK excluding London -16 611 £510 +7.37% 476
London -26 322 £500 -3.51% 330
Work from Home -19 242 £500 +4.60% 292
North of England +13 196 £500 +11.48% 104
South East 0 173 £538 +7.50% 122
North West +6 120 £500 +11.48% 72
Midlands -52 103 £450 - 69
South West +1 98 £575 +2.22% 76
West Midlands -43 87 £438 - 39
Yorkshire -5 61 £500 - 20
East of England -39 42 £513 -6.82% 43
Scotland +1 37 £450 -0.88% 38
East Midlands -5 15 £450 - 29
North East -34 15 £425 +25.00% 15
Wales -8 10 £440 +16.02% 16

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
1 113 (11.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 91 (9.09%) SharePoint
3 34 (3.40%) Confluence
4 16 (1.60%) Apache
5 14 (1.40%) IIS
5 14 (1.40%) nginx
6 8 (0.80%) Skype for Business
6 8 (0.80%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.50%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.20%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.100%) Apache Spark
10 1 (0.100%) CMS
10 1 (0.100%) Drupal
10 1 (0.100%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.100%) Traefik
10 1 (0.100%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (2.40%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.10%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.20%) Houdini
4 2 (0.20%) NUKE
4 2 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.100%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.100%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.100%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 16 (1.60%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.100%) Magento
2 1 (0.100%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.100%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.100%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 419 (41.86%) Azure
2 202 (20.18%) AWS
3 196 (19.58%) Entra ID
3 196 (19.58%) Microsoft 365
4 83 (8.29%) GCP
5 82 (8.19%) GitHub
6 54 (5.39%) IaaS
7 53 (5.29%) Azure DevOps
8 51 (5.09%) OneDrive
9 50 (5.00%) GitHub Actions
10 44 (4.40%) Azure Monitor
11 37 (3.70%) SaaS
12 30 (3.00%) PaaS
13 28 (2.80%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 27 (2.70%) Azure Key Vault
15 25 (2.50%) OpenShift
16 24 (2.40%) Serverless
17 23 (2.30%) Amazon EKS
18 22 (2.20%) Azure AKS
18 22 (2.20%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 487 (48.65%) DHCP
2 363 (36.26%) Firewall
3 291 (29.07%) TCP/IP
4 280 (27.97%) VPN
5 138 (13.79%) Network Security
6 128 (12.79%) VLAN
7 113 (11.29%) WAN
8 101 (10.09%) SSL
9 87 (8.69%) LAN
10 80 (7.99%) BGP
10 80 (7.99%) Wireless
11 64 (6.39%) HTTP
12 63 (6.29%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (6.09%) BIG-IP
14 60 (5.99%) SAN
15 58 (5.79%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 54 (5.39%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 43 (4.30%) IPsec
17 43 (4.30%) OSPF
18 39 (3.90%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (4.80%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (1.60%) Amazon RDS
4 13 (1.30%) MySQL
5 12 (1.20%) MongoDB
6 9 (0.90%) Data Lake
7 8 (0.80%) NoSQL
7 8 (0.80%) Power BI
8 7 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
8 7 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
8 7 (0.70%) Redis
9 5 (0.50%) Big Data
10 4 (0.40%) Db2
11 3 (0.30%) MariaDB
11 3 (0.30%) Metadata
12 2 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (0.20%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.20%) DynamoDB
12 2 (0.20%) Flink
12 2 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 83 (8.29%) JIRA
2 58 (5.79%) Jenkins
3 55 (5.49%) Git
4 40 (4.00%) GitLab
5 12 (1.20%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.10%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.50%) Selenium
9 4 (0.40%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.40%) Chocolatey
10 3 (0.30%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (0.30%) MSI
11 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.20%) Vagrant
12 1 (0.100%) Locust
12 1 (0.100%) Newman
12 1 (0.100%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.100%) TestCafe
General
1 268 (26.77%) Social Skills
2 115 (11.49%) Analytical Skills
3 88 (8.79%) Finance
4 81 (8.09%) Public Sector
5 55 (5.49%) Documentation Skills
6 52 (5.19%) Banking
7 33 (3.30%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.30%) Investment Banking
9 17 (1.70%) Legal
10 14 (1.40%) Aerospace
11 13 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.20%) Police
13 11 (1.10%) Local Government
14 10 (1.00%) Military
15 9 (0.90%) Front Office
15 9 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 9 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
16 8 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
17 7 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
17 7 (0.70%) Law
Job Titles
1 193 (19.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 163 (16.28%) Network Engineer
3 126 (12.59%) Senior
4 103 (10.29%) Support Engineer
5 84 (8.39%) Cloud Engineer
6 68 (6.79%) Architect
7 50 (5.00%) IT Support
8 49 (4.90%) Platform Engineer
9 48 (4.80%) Azure Engineer
10 47 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
11 46 (4.60%) IT Engineer
11 46 (4.60%) Security Engineer
11 46 (4.60%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 44 (4.40%) Analyst
13 36 (3.60%) Senior Network Engineer
14 35 (3.50%) Administrator
15 32 (3.20%) IT Support Engineer
16 31 (3.10%) Cisco Engineer
16 31 (3.10%) Network Security Engineer
17 29 (2.90%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 217 (21.68%) Terraform
2 43 (4.30%) SAML
3 35 (3.50%) 802.1X
4 34 (3.40%) OAuth
5 31 (3.10%) REST
6 29 (2.90%) OpenID
7 28 (2.80%) ARM Templates
8 27 (2.70%) LDAP
9 21 (2.10%) Kafka
10 18 (1.80%) JSON
11 15 (1.50%) YAML
12 12 (1.20%) Elastic Stack
13 11 (1.10%) OAuth2
13 11 (1.10%) OpenTelemetry
14 10 (1.00%) CSS
15 8 (0.80%) React
16 7 (0.70%) .NET
16 7 (0.70%) Jinja
16 7 (0.70%) Software Packaging
17 6 (0.60%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 129 (12.89%) Data Centre
2 113 (11.29%) PKI
3 76 (7.59%) Onboarding
4 74 (7.39%) Hybrid Cloud
5 53 (5.29%) Management Information System
6 41 (4.10%) Cloud Native
7 32 (3.20%) Replication
8 28 (2.80%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.60%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 25 (2.50%) Clustering
11 22 (2.20%) Linux Command Line
12 21 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
13 17 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
14 16 (1.60%) Driving Licence
15 15 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
15 15 (1.50%) Security Posture
16 14 (1.40%) Cyber Threat
17 12 (1.20%) Operational Technology
18 11 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
19 10 (1.00%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 490 (48.95%) Windows
2 276 (27.57%) Windows Server
3 228 (22.78%) Linux
4 60 (5.99%) Windows 10
5 45 (4.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 43 (4.30%) Windows Server 2019
7 36 (3.60%) Mac OS
8 31 (3.10%) Unix
9 25 (2.50%) Windows Server 2012
10 24 (2.40%) Ubuntu
11 22 (2.20%) Apple iOS
12 20 (2.00%) CentOS
13 19 (1.90%) Android
13 19 (1.90%) VMS
14 15 (1.50%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (1.20%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.70%) Rocky
16 7 (0.70%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.40%) Data ONTAP
17 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 266 (26.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 214 (21.38%) Problem-Solving
3 205 (20.48%) Infrastructure as Code
4 203 (20.28%) ITIL
5 173 (17.28%) DevOps
6 168 (16.78%) CI/CD
7 159 (15.88%) Load Balancing
8 158 (15.78%) Migration
9 128 (12.79%) ITSM
10 114 (11.39%) Continuous Improvement
11 105 (10.49%) High Availability
12 104 (10.39%) Agile
13 97 (9.69%) Technical Leadership
14 96 (9.59%) Cybersecurity
15 93 (9.29%) Disaster Recovery
16 92 (9.19%) Observability
17 91 (9.09%) Project Delivery
17 91 (9.09%) Runbook
18 89 (8.89%) Platform Engineering
19 88 (8.79%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 279 (27.87%) PowerShell
2 208 (20.78%) Python
3 138 (13.79%) Bash
4 70 (6.99%) SQL
5 51 (5.09%) Bicep
6 20 (2.00%) Shell Script
7 18 (1.80%) ActionScript
8 15 (1.50%) Go
9 14 (1.40%) Java
9 14 (1.40%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.00%) VBScript
11 8 (0.80%) Perl
12 7 (0.70%) TypeScript
13 6 (0.60%) Groovy
13 6 (0.60%) VB
14 5 (0.50%) VBA
15 4 (0.40%) C#
15 4 (0.40%) C++
15 4 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
15 4 (0.40%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 386 (38.56%) Security Cleared
2 215 (21.48%) SC Cleared
3 169 (16.88%) DV Cleared
4 83 (8.29%) Degree
5 80 (7.99%) Cisco Certification
6 69 (6.89%) CCNP
7 57 (5.69%) Azure Certification
8 56 (5.59%) Microsoft Certification
9 40 (4.00%) CCNA
10 26 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
10 26 (2.60%) Network+ Certification
11 24 (2.40%) AWS Certification
12 20 (2.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 17 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
14 16 (1.60%) CCIE
14 16 (1.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 15 (1.50%) VCAP
16 13 (1.30%) MCSE
17 11 (1.10%) A+ Certification
18 10 (1.00%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (4.00%) SLA
2 20 (2.00%) QA
3 19 (1.90%) NIST
4 15 (1.50%) NCSC
5 13 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.50%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
8 4 (0.40%) GDPR
8 4 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.30%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.30%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.20%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.20%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 455 (45.45%) Active Directory
2 286 (28.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 129 (12.89%) Hyper-V
4 94 (9.39%) VMware ESXi
5 90 (8.99%) vSphere
6 67 (6.69%) VMware NSX
7 66 (6.59%) Docker
8 52 (5.19%) Virtual Machines
9 41 (4.10%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (2.00%) Firmware
10 20 (2.00%) NFS
11 16 (1.60%) vCloud
12 13 (1.30%) Virtual Servers
13 11 (1.10%) BitLocker
14 9 (0.90%) Postfix
15 8 (0.80%) UAG
16 6 (0.60%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.60%) Squid
16 6 (0.60%) VMware Workstation
17 5 (0.50%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 150 (14.99%) Ansible
2 125 (12.49%) Kubernetes
3 114 (11.39%) Microsoft Intune
4 85 (8.49%) SCCM
5 70 (6.99%) vCenter Server
6 61 (6.09%) Grafana
7 57 (5.69%) Single Sign-On
8 52 (5.19%) Prometheus
9 42 (4.20%) SCOM
10 33 (3.30%) WSUS
11 21 (2.10%) FortiGate
12 18 (1.80%) NetBackup
13 17 (1.70%) Puppet
14 16 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
14 16 (1.60%) Packer
14 16 (1.60%) VxRail
15 14 (1.40%) Istio
16 12 (1.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (1.20%) Argo
16 12 (1.20%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 413 (41.26%) Microsoft
2 347 (34.67%) VMware
3 177 (17.68%) Cisco
4 123 (12.29%) F5
5 88 (8.79%) ServiceNow
6 55 (5.49%) Citrix
6 55 (5.49%) Palo Alto
7 52 (5.19%) Google
8 50 (5.00%) SolarWinds
9 48 (4.80%) Infoblox
10 42 (4.20%) Splunk
11 40 (4.00%) Juniper
12 38 (3.80%) NetApp
12 38 (3.80%) Red Hat
13 34 (3.40%) Dynatrace
14 33 (3.30%) CheckPoint
15 30 (3.00%) Fortinet
15 30 (3.00%) Zscaler
16 28 (2.80%) Veeam
17 24 (2.40%) CyberArk