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

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 107 130
Rank change year-on-year -27 +23 -5
Contract jobs citing DNS 853 712 776
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 2.45% 1.75%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.28% 18.75% 13.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 534 486 505
10th Percentile £263 £250 £201
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 £612 £606 £588
90th Percentile £673 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 11 26
10th Percentile £13.35 £18.50 £21.63
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £45.71 £54.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.12% +36.25% -18.56%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.18 £51.12
90th Percentile £76.05 £82.10 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -39.61% +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 4,425 3,797 5,893
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.06% 13.06% 13.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,841 2,357 3,552
10th Percentile £220 £213 £205
25th Percentile £375 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £490 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.41% +3.16% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 145 397
10th Percentile £15.51 £14.99 £13.94
25th Percentile £18.97 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £38.50 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% +7.69% +69.71%
75th Percentile £67.31 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £76.35 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £32.50 £45.44
% change year-on-year +30.00% -28.48% +140.30%

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 26 March 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 26 March 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 26 March 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 -23 750 £500 -4.76% 306
UK excluding London -22 550 £500 - 265
London -33 240 £500 -1.04% 81
North of England -1 212 £447 -5.95% 68
Work from Home -68 185 £528 +0.48% 93
South East +5 156 £525 -4.55% 80
North West +20 138 £475 +11.76% 37
Midlands +20 107 £400 -27.93% 45
West Midlands +22 97 £400 -19.40% 29
Yorkshire -26 76 £443 -19.55% 22
South West -42 49 £693 +26.37% 33
Scotland +15 46 £518 +15.17% 15
East of England -32 39 £475 -5.00% 24
East Midlands -36 9 £375 -33.92% 16
Wales -18 4 £550 +22.22% 3
North East -22 4 £200 -42.86% 11

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 (11.14%) Microsoft Exchange
2 44 (5.16%) SharePoint
3 19 (2.23%) Skype for Business
4 16 (1.88%) Confluence
5 14 (1.64%) nginx
6 9 (1.06%) IIS
7 6 (0.70%) Apache
8 4 (0.47%) Exchange Server 2010
9 3 (0.35%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.23%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.23%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.23%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.23%) WebSphere Portal
10 2 (0.23%) WordPress
11 1 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.12%) Traefik
Applications
1 26 (3.05%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.76%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.23%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 300 (35.17%) Azure
2 166 (19.46%) AWS
3 141 (16.53%) Entra ID
4 140 (16.41%) Microsoft 365
5 86 (10.08%) GCP
6 64 (7.50%) GitHub
7 53 (6.21%) IaaS
8 40 (4.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 37 (4.34%) Amazon S3
9 37 (4.34%) AWS CloudFormation
10 36 (4.22%) Serverless
11 35 (4.10%) Amazon EC2
11 35 (4.10%) PaaS
12 32 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
12 32 (3.75%) Route 53
13 29 (3.40%) SaaS
14 28 (3.28%) OpenShift
15 27 (3.17%) Amazon EKS
16 24 (2.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 24 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 366 (42.91%) DHCP
2 276 (32.36%) Firewall
3 241 (28.25%) TCP/IP
4 203 (23.80%) VPN
5 117 (13.72%) WAN
6 106 (12.43%) LAN
7 85 (9.96%) Network Security
7 85 (9.96%) SSL
8 81 (9.50%) VLAN
9 79 (9.26%) HTTP
10 77 (9.03%) BIG-IP
11 76 (8.91%) BGP
12 64 (7.50%) Wi-Fi
13 55 (6.45%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 45 (5.28%) OSPF
15 42 (4.92%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 40 (4.69%) Wireshark
17 38 (4.45%) Wireless
18 37 (4.34%) DMZ
19 36 (4.22%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.05%) SQL Server
2 20 (2.34%) Elasticsearch
3 18 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (1.06%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.82%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.82%) Redis
7 6 (0.70%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (0.70%) Data Hub
7 6 (0.70%) MySQL
8 5 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (0.47%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.47%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.47%) Power BI
9 4 (0.47%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.35%) BigQuery
10 3 (0.35%) MariaDB
11 1 (0.12%) CouchDB
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 64 (7.50%) Jenkins
2 40 (4.69%) JIRA
3 33 (3.87%) Git
3 33 (3.87%) GitLab
4 30 (3.52%) Fiddler
5 8 (0.94%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.82%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.70%) Browser DevTools
7 6 (0.70%) Chocolatey
8 5 (0.59%) Terragrunt
9 4 (0.47%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.23%) Introscope
10 2 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.12%) Subversion
11 1 (0.12%) Travis CI
General
1 212 (24.85%) Social Skills
2 96 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
3 72 (8.44%) Banking
4 66 (7.74%) Finance
5 54 (6.33%) Public Sector
6 49 (5.74%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (5.28%) Investment Banking
8 30 (3.52%) Legal
9 19 (2.23%) Telecoms
10 17 (1.99%) Military
11 11 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.82%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.59%) Law
14 5 (0.59%) Local Government
15 4 (0.47%) Aerospace
15 4 (0.47%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.35%) Presentation Skills
17 2 (0.23%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 144 (16.88%) Network Engineer
2 123 (14.42%) Architect
3 85 (9.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 84 (9.85%) Analyst
5 78 (9.14%) Senior
6 57 (6.68%) Support Engineer
7 52 (6.10%) Security Engineer
8 49 (5.74%) Web Engineer
9 44 (5.16%) IT Support
10 36 (4.22%) Lead
11 35 (4.10%) IT Engineer
12 31 (3.63%) Network Security Engineer
13 29 (3.40%) Platform Engineer
14 28 (3.28%) Cisco Engineer
14 28 (3.28%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 27 (3.17%) IT Support Engineer
16 26 (3.05%) Azure Engineer
16 26 (3.05%) SOC Analyst
17 23 (2.70%) Data Engineer
17 23 (2.70%) Data Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (7.97%) LDAP
2 47 (5.51%) SAML
3 40 (4.69%) OAuth
4 32 (3.75%) OpenID
5 28 (3.28%) 802.1X
6 23 (2.70%) OpenTelemetry
7 20 (2.34%) OAuth2
8 10 (1.17%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (1.17%) Kafka
9 8 (0.94%) ARM Templates
9 8 (0.94%) REST
10 7 (0.82%) JSON
10 7 (0.82%) XMPP
11 6 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
12 5 (0.59%) Middleware
12 5 (0.59%) RESTful
12 5 (0.59%) Spring Boot
13 4 (0.47%) Hibernate
13 4 (0.47%) JPA
13 4 (0.47%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 70 (8.21%) Data Centre
2 69 (8.09%) PKI
3 49 (5.74%) Cloud Native
4 48 (5.63%) Replication
5 37 (4.34%) Management Information System
6 33 (3.87%) Clustering
7 30 (3.52%) Onboarding
8 29 (3.40%) Public Cloud
9 27 (3.17%) Security Operations Centre
10 26 (3.05%) Cyberattack
10 26 (3.05%) Hybrid Cloud
11 22 (2.58%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 19 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
13 17 (1.99%) Cyber Threat
13 17 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
14 15 (1.76%) Analytical Mindset
15 14 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
16 13 (1.52%) Product Ownership
17 12 (1.41%) NHS
18 11 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 383 (44.90%) Windows
2 205 (24.03%) Windows Server
3 131 (15.36%) Linux
4 45 (5.28%) Windows 10
5 32 (3.75%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.34%) Android
7 16 (1.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (1.88%) Unix
7 16 (1.88%) Windows Server 2012
8 15 (1.76%) Mac OS
9 14 (1.64%) Apple iOS
10 12 (1.41%) Windows Server 2016
11 11 (1.29%) Windows 7
12 9 (1.06%) VMS
13 7 (0.82%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.47%) CatOS
15 3 (0.35%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.35%) CentOS
15 3 (0.35%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (23.33%) Problem-Solving
2 184 (21.57%) Load Balancing
3 127 (14.89%) Migration
4 119 (13.95%) ITIL
5 118 (13.83%) CI/CD
6 115 (13.48%) DevOps
7 114 (13.36%) High Availability
8 110 (12.90%) Infrastructure as Code
8 110 (12.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 86 (10.08%) Cybersecurity
10 82 (9.61%) Disaster Recovery
11 80 (9.38%) Identity Access Management
12 69 (8.09%) ITSM
13 68 (7.97%) Incident Response
13 68 (7.97%) RBAC
14 63 (7.39%) Observability
14 63 (7.39%) SIEM
15 60 (7.03%) Roadmaps
16 59 (6.92%) Change Management
17 58 (6.80%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 230 (26.96%) PowerShell
2 148 (17.35%) Python
3 83 (9.73%) Bash
4 44 (5.16%) SQL
5 14 (1.64%) Bicep
5 14 (1.64%) JavaScript
6 13 (1.52%) VBScript
7 12 (1.41%) Java
8 11 (1.29%) Ruby
9 10 (1.17%) Go
10 9 (1.06%) VB
11 8 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 6 (0.70%) Lisp
13 5 (0.59%) Perl
14 4 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
15 2 (0.23%) C
15 2 (0.23%) C#
15 2 (0.23%) Jython
15 2 (0.23%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.23%) VBA
Qualifications
1 277 (32.47%) Security Cleared
2 189 (22.16%) SC Cleared
3 101 (11.84%) DV Cleared
4 69 (8.09%) Cisco Certification
5 59 (6.92%) Degree
6 46 (5.39%) Microsoft Certification
7 44 (5.16%) CCNP
8 32 (3.75%) CompTIA Security+
9 27 (3.17%) Azure Certification
10 26 (3.05%) CCNA
11 21 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (2.23%) CISSP
13 18 (2.11%) AWS Certification
13 18 (2.11%) CompTIA CySA+
14 15 (1.76%) Network+ Certification
15 10 (1.17%) BPSS Clearance
15 10 (1.17%) JNCIA
15 10 (1.17%) JNCIS
16 9 (1.06%) CCIE
16 9 (1.06%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.52%) GDPR
2 28 (3.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 27 (3.17%) NIST
4 22 (2.58%) SLA
5 16 (1.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (0.94%) NCSC
7 8 (0.94%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.70%) QA
9 3 (0.35%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.35%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.35%) PMO
10 2 (0.23%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.12%) COBIT
11 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.12%) RMADS
System Software
1 352 (41.27%) Active Directory
2 187 (21.92%) VMware Infrastructure
3 70 (8.21%) Hyper-V
4 60 (7.03%) VMware NSX
5 59 (6.92%) Docker
6 55 (6.45%) vSphere
7 29 (3.40%) Firmware
8 23 (2.70%) Virtual Machines
9 20 (2.34%) VMware ESXi
10 17 (1.99%) BitLocker
11 14 (1.64%) Virtual Desktop
12 11 (1.29%) Squid
13 7 (0.82%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.59%) NFS
14 5 (0.59%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.47%) Ceph
15 4 (0.47%) Sendmail
16 3 (0.35%) DFS Replication
16 3 (0.35%) Varnish
16 3 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 152 (17.82%) Terraform
2 127 (14.89%) Ansible
3 93 (10.90%) Kubernetes
4 92 (10.79%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (8.56%) Single Sign-On
6 63 (7.39%) SCCM
7 58 (6.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 49 (5.74%) FortiGate
9 41 (4.81%) vCenter Server
10 40 (4.69%) Grafana
11 29 (3.40%) Argo
12 24 (2.81%) Prometheus
13 14 (1.64%) SCOM
13 14 (1.64%) WSUS
14 9 (1.06%) Puppet
15 8 (0.94%) HAProxy
16 7 (0.82%) Consul
16 7 (0.82%) vMotion
17 6 (0.70%) Nessus
17 6 (0.70%) QRadar
Vendors
1 293 (34.35%) Microsoft
2 233 (27.32%) VMware
3 143 (16.76%) F5
4 128 (15.01%) Cisco
5 83 (9.73%) Splunk
6 73 (8.56%) ServiceNow
7 45 (5.28%) Citrix
8 43 (5.04%) SolarWinds
9 41 (4.81%) Blue Coat
9 41 (4.81%) Palo Alto
10 40 (4.69%) Red Hat
11 37 (4.34%) Juniper
12 35 (4.10%) McAfee
13 33 (3.87%) Infoblox
14 31 (3.63%) Google
15 28 (3.28%) NetApp
16 24 (2.81%) Pure Storage
17 22 (2.58%) Fortinet
18 20 (2.34%) Extreme Networks
19 19 (2.23%) Okta