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

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 110 123
Rank change year-on-year -32 +13 +2
Contract jobs citing DNS 786 740 863
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.97% 2.39% 1.95%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.03% 18.24% 14.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 503 477 552
10th Percentile £213 £225 £200
25th Percentile £400 £375 £355
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £600
90th Percentile £675 £750 £699
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £458 £500
% change year-on-year +9.84% -8.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 8 28
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.64 £23.95
25th Percentile £17.75 £20.56 £31.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £23.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -41.03% -
75th Percentile £69.00 £27.31 £55.35
90th Percentile £76.50 £45.58 £62.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £19.00 £43.75
% change year-on-year +18.42% -56.57% -5.11%

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 4,130 4,057 5,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.37% 13.10% 13.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,715 2,396 3,578
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £355 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -6.25%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £473 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.53% +0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 133 405
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.63 £14.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.46 £21.00
Median hourly rate £28.38 £32.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.68% -31.58% +143.59%
75th Percentile £65.00 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £29.00 £51.89
% change year-on-year +39.79% -44.11% +163.52%

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 12 February 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 12 February 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 12 February 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 -12 699 £519 +3.71% 347
UK excluding London -21 492 £503 +9.84% 314
London -8 236 £525 - 81
Work from Home -53 188 £500 -6.54% 117
North of England -20 169 £450 -4.76% 65
South East -8 124 £525 +13.51% 95
Midlands +12 111 £390 -10.86% 41
North West +4 109 £538 +13.16% 37
West Midlands +25 107 £395 +6.76% 30
South West -27 66 £575 +5.02% 48
Yorkshire -38 63 £447 -0.67% 24
East of England -20 39 £475 +63.79% 50
Scotland -2 35 £454 +0.89% 17
North East -23 7 £247 -24.15% 8
East Midlands -31 4 £275 -45.54% 11
Wales -11 3 £550 +33.33% 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 95 (12.09%) Microsoft Exchange
2 60 (7.63%) SharePoint
3 30 (3.82%) Skype for Business
4 20 (2.54%) Confluence
5 16 (2.04%) nginx
6 8 (1.02%) IIS
7 5 (0.64%) Apache
7 5 (0.64%) SharePoint Server
8 4 (0.51%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.51%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.38%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.25%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.25%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.25%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.25%) WordPress
11 1 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2003
11 1 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
11 1 (0.13%) Office Communications Server
Applications
1 41 (5.22%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.91%) MS Visio
3 6 (0.76%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.25%) Windchill
5 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.25%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.25%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.13%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 275 (34.99%) Azure
2 175 (22.26%) AWS
3 152 (19.34%) Microsoft 365
4 124 (15.78%) Entra ID
5 58 (7.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 50 (6.36%) GCP
6 50 (6.36%) GitHub
7 48 (6.11%) Amazon S3
8 42 (5.34%) Amazon EC2
9 40 (5.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 37 (4.71%) IaaS
11 33 (4.20%) AWS CloudFormation
12 32 (4.07%) Serverless
13 31 (3.94%) Route 53
14 30 (3.82%) AWS Lambda
15 28 (3.56%) Amazon ECS
16 27 (3.44%) SaaS
17 25 (3.18%) Amazon ELB
18 23 (2.93%) Amazon EKS
19 22 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 346 (44.02%) DHCP
2 259 (32.95%) TCP/IP
3 240 (30.53%) Firewall
4 192 (24.43%) VPN
5 89 (11.32%) WAN
6 88 (11.20%) Network Security
6 88 (11.20%) SSL
7 84 (10.69%) HTTP
8 79 (10.05%) LAN
9 68 (8.65%) VLAN
10 58 (7.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 51 (6.49%) BIG-IP
12 50 (6.36%) Wi-Fi
13 48 (6.11%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 47 (5.98%) BGP
15 44 (5.60%) Wireshark
16 38 (4.83%) DMZ
17 36 (4.58%) Kerberos
18 33 (4.20%) Skype
19 32 (4.07%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (2.80%) Amazon RDS
1 22 (2.80%) SQL Server
2 20 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (2.29%) Elasticsearch
4 12 (1.53%) Amazon Aurora
5 8 (1.02%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.89%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.89%) MySQL
6 7 (0.89%) Redis
7 6 (0.76%) Data Hub
8 4 (0.51%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.51%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.51%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.38%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.25%) Power BI
11 1 (0.13%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.13%) CouchDB
11 1 (0.13%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.13%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 69 (8.78%) Jenkins
2 54 (6.87%) Git
3 45 (5.73%) GitLab
3 45 (5.73%) JIRA
4 30 (3.82%) Fiddler
5 8 (1.02%) Terragrunt
5 8 (1.02%) Vagrant
6 7 (0.89%) Bitbucket
7 6 (0.76%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.51%) CircleCI
9 3 (0.38%) Subversion
10 2 (0.25%) Chocolatey
10 2 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.25%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.13%) Browser DevTools
11 1 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
11 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (0.13%) Vite
11 1 (0.13%) webpack
General
1 234 (29.77%) Social Skills
2 108 (13.74%) Analytical Skills
3 64 (8.14%) Public Sector
4 61 (7.76%) Banking
5 49 (6.23%) Documentation Skills
6 46 (5.85%) Finance
7 45 (5.73%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.42%) Telecoms
9 17 (2.16%) Legal
10 12 (1.53%) Military
10 12 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.64%) Law
14 4 (0.51%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.51%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.51%) Local Government
14 4 (0.51%) Marketing
15 3 (0.38%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 110 (13.99%) Network Engineer
2 104 (13.23%) Architect
3 79 (10.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 78 (9.92%) Analyst
5 65 (8.27%) Support Engineer
6 62 (7.89%) Senior
7 49 (6.23%) IT Support
8 40 (5.09%) Platform Engineer
8 40 (5.09%) Security Engineer
9 37 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
10 33 (4.20%) Web Engineer
11 31 (3.94%) Lead
12 26 (3.31%) 2nd Line Support
12 26 (3.31%) IT Engineer
12 26 (3.31%) SOC Analyst
13 22 (2.80%) AWS Engineer
13 22 (2.80%) Network Security Engineer
14 21 (2.67%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 21 (2.67%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 21 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (8.65%) LDAP
2 43 (5.47%) SAML
3 37 (4.71%) OAuth
4 30 (3.82%) OpenID
5 20 (2.54%) OAuth2
6 13 (1.65%) OpenTelemetry
6 13 (1.65%) REST
7 12 (1.53%) Kafka
8 10 (1.27%) Elastic Stack
9 7 (0.89%) 802.1X
9 7 (0.89%) JSON
9 7 (0.89%) SOAP
10 6 (0.76%) ARM Templates
10 6 (0.76%) AWS CDK
10 6 (0.76%) Microsoft Graph
10 6 (0.76%) Middleware
11 5 (0.64%) AngularJS
11 5 (0.64%) React
11 5 (0.64%) RESTful
11 5 (0.64%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 59 (7.51%) PKI
2 57 (7.25%) Replication
3 50 (6.36%) Data Centre
4 41 (5.22%) Management Information System
5 33 (4.20%) Cloud Native
6 31 (3.94%) Onboarding
7 27 (3.44%) Security Operations Centre
8 24 (3.05%) Cyberattack
9 23 (2.93%) Public Cloud
10 22 (2.80%) Analytical Mindset
10 22 (2.80%) Enterprise Software
11 18 (2.29%) Hybrid Cloud
12 13 (1.65%) Cyber Threat
12 13 (1.65%) Private Cloud
12 13 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (1.53%) NHS
14 10 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
15 9 (1.15%) SCADA
15 9 (1.15%) Video Conferencing
15 9 (1.15%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 380 (48.35%) Windows
2 186 (23.66%) Windows Server
3 152 (19.34%) Linux
4 62 (7.89%) Windows 10
5 35 (4.45%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.54%) Android
6 20 (2.54%) Windows Server 2016
7 19 (2.42%) Unix
7 19 (2.42%) Windows Server 2012
8 17 (2.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 14 (1.78%) Apple iOS
9 14 (1.78%) VMS
10 13 (1.65%) Mac OS
11 11 (1.40%) Amazon Linux
11 11 (1.40%) CentOS
11 11 (1.40%) Ubuntu
12 10 (1.27%) Windows 7
13 7 (0.89%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.51%) CatOS
15 3 (0.38%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (23.92%) Problem-Solving
2 141 (17.94%) Load Balancing
3 129 (16.41%) ITIL
4 113 (14.38%) CI/CD
5 109 (13.87%) DevOps
6 102 (12.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 101 (12.85%) Infrastructure as Code
8 99 (12.60%) Migration
9 87 (11.07%) High Availability
10 85 (10.81%) Cybersecurity
11 75 (9.54%) Change Management
12 73 (9.29%) Disaster Recovery
13 70 (8.91%) Incident Response
14 67 (8.52%) Service Management
15 65 (8.27%) SIEM
16 62 (7.89%) Root Cause Analysis
17 54 (6.87%) Mentoring
18 53 (6.74%) RBAC
19 52 (6.62%) Containerisation
20 51 (6.49%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 229 (29.13%) PowerShell
2 149 (18.96%) Python
3 73 (9.29%) Bash
4 41 (5.22%) SQL
5 14 (1.78%) Java
6 13 (1.65%) Perl
7 12 (1.53%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.53%) VBScript
8 11 (1.40%) Bicep
8 11 (1.40%) Go
9 10 (1.27%) Ruby
9 10 (1.27%) VB
10 8 (1.02%) Groovy
11 7 (0.89%) Lisp
12 6 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
13 5 (0.64%) JavaScript
14 4 (0.51%) C++
15 3 (0.38%) C#
15 3 (0.38%) Search Processing Language
15 3 (0.38%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 276 (35.11%) Security Cleared
2 198 (25.19%) SC Cleared
3 92 (11.70%) DV Cleared
4 74 (9.41%) Degree
5 59 (7.51%) Microsoft Certification
6 44 (5.60%) Cisco Certification
7 42 (5.34%) CCNP
8 38 (4.83%) Azure Certification
9 25 (3.18%) AWS Certification
9 25 (3.18%) CompTIA Security+
10 22 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
11 17 (2.16%) Network+ Certification
12 16 (2.04%) CCNA
12 16 (2.04%) CISSP
12 16 (2.04%) CompTIA CySA+
13 11 (1.40%) Server+ Certification
14 9 (1.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 9 (1.15%) CCIE
14 9 (1.15%) ITIL Certification
15 8 (1.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (4.07%) GDPR
2 26 (3.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (3.05%) NIST
4 23 (2.93%) SLA
5 19 (2.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.15%) NCSC
6 9 (1.15%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.76%) QA
9 5 (0.64%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.38%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.38%) PMO
11 2 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
11 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.13%) RMADS
12 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 348 (44.27%) Active Directory
2 193 (24.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 80 (10.18%) Docker
4 59 (7.51%) Hyper-V
5 53 (6.74%) VMware NSX
6 42 (5.34%) vSphere
7 29 (3.69%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (3.05%) Firmware
9 17 (2.16%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (1.78%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
11 13 (1.65%) Squid
12 11 (1.40%) DFS Replication
13 7 (0.89%) Postfix
13 7 (0.89%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.76%) Dovecot
14 6 (0.76%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.64%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 5 (0.64%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.51%) NFS
Systems Management
1 137 (17.43%) Terraform
2 131 (16.67%) Ansible
3 91 (11.58%) Microsoft Intune
4 79 (10.05%) Kubernetes
5 76 (9.67%) SCCM
6 74 (9.41%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (8.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (5.47%) vCenter Server
9 38 (4.83%) Grafana
10 27 (3.44%) FortiGate
10 27 (3.44%) Prometheus
11 21 (2.67%) Argo
12 20 (2.54%) WSUS
13 13 (1.65%) SCOM
14 9 (1.15%) Proxmox
14 9 (1.15%) Puppet
15 8 (1.02%) QRadar
16 7 (0.89%) Nessus
16 7 (0.89%) Packer
17 6 (0.76%) Nagios
Vendors
1 304 (38.68%) Microsoft
2 237 (30.15%) VMware
3 128 (16.28%) F5
4 106 (13.49%) Cisco
5 84 (10.69%) ServiceNow
6 66 (8.40%) Splunk
7 50 (6.36%) Palo Alto
8 42 (5.34%) Blue Coat
9 35 (4.45%) CheckPoint
9 35 (4.45%) Citrix
9 35 (4.45%) McAfee
10 30 (3.82%) Red Hat
10 30 (3.82%) SolarWinds
11 26 (3.31%) NetApp
12 23 (2.93%) Veeam
13 22 (2.80%) Fortinet
14 21 (2.67%) Dell
14 21 (2.67%) Okta
15 20 (2.54%) Infoblox
16 19 (2.42%) Juniper