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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 122 163
Rank change year-on-year -25 +41 -27
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,006 721 595
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 2.19% 1.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.38% 18.24% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 618 476 411
10th Percentile £300 £263 £250
25th Percentile £406 £400 £369
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 £651 £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 52 32 15
10th Percentile £21.63 £29.00 £20.00
25th Percentile £30.69 £37.06 £23.45
Median hourly rate £52.00 £57.50 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year -9.57% +137.60% -39.50%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.33 £39.38
90th Percentile £97.44 £89.17 £63.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.38 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -14.81% +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 4,937 3,953 4,763
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 12.01% 12.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,934 2,417 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 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 195 327
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.27
Median hourly rate £26.66 £50.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -46.68% +5.26% -5.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.60 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.69 £45.00 £53.69
% change year-on-year -40.69% -16.18% -6.49%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -17 908 £500 -6.41% 435
UK excluding London -7 616 £500 -4.76% 309
London -34 319 £500 -2.91% 171
Work from Home -26 235 £510 -3.64% 174
North of England +22 214 £450 -10.00% 68
South East +9 199 £538 -2.27% 96
North West +34 144 £450 -3.33% 44
Midlands -19 109 £450 -5.26% 44
West Midlands -30 89 £450 -5.26% 28
South West -7 82 £500 -13.98% 51
Yorkshire -24 64 £475 -13.64% 19
Scotland +9 35 £550 +22.22% 15
East of England -54 29 £450 -18.18% 34
East Midlands +1 18 £413 -26.67% 16
Wales -12 8 £463 +6.69% 2
North East -43 6 £413 +1.23% 6

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 97 (9.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 81 (8.05%) SharePoint
3 25 (2.49%) Confluence
4 19 (1.89%) Apache
5 16 (1.59%) nginx
6 15 (1.49%) IIS
7 9 (0.89%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.50%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
10 2 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.099%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.099%) Traefik
Applications
1 21 (2.09%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.19%) MS Visio
3 8 (0.80%) 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%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.20%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 10 (0.99%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 395 (39.26%) Azure
2 205 (20.38%) AWS
3 166 (16.50%) Microsoft 365
4 165 (16.40%) Entra ID
5 111 (11.03%) GCP
6 73 (7.26%) GitHub
7 57 (5.67%) IaaS
8 52 (5.17%) OneDrive
9 45 (4.47%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (4.17%) PaaS
11 40 (3.98%) SaaS
12 37 (3.68%) Azure Monitor
13 30 (2.98%) GitHub Actions
13 30 (2.98%) OpenShift
14 28 (2.78%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (2.68%) Serverless
16 26 (2.58%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 25 (2.49%) Amazon EC2
17 25 (2.49%) Azure ExpressRoute
18 24 (2.39%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 458 (45.53%) DHCP
2 370 (36.78%) Firewall
3 286 (28.43%) TCP/IP
4 274 (27.24%) VPN
5 138 (13.72%) WAN
6 126 (12.52%) Network Security
7 124 (12.33%) VLAN
8 118 (11.73%) LAN
9 105 (10.44%) SSL
10 104 (10.34%) BGP
11 78 (7.75%) BIG-IP
12 72 (7.16%) HTTP
13 70 (6.96%) Wireless
14 64 (6.36%) Wi-Fi
15 62 (6.16%) SAN
16 60 (5.96%) OSPF
17 49 (4.87%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
18 42 (4.17%) DMZ
19 39 (3.88%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
20 38 (3.78%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (5.07%) 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 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (0.70%) 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 (7.36%) JIRA
2 54 (5.37%) Jenkins
3 40 (3.98%) Git
4 25 (2.49%) GitLab
5 17 (1.69%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.09%) Bitbucket
7 10 (0.99%) Browser DevTools
8 8 (0.80%) Chocolatey
9 6 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.20%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.20%) Introscope
11 2 (0.20%) MSI
11 2 (0.20%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.099%) Maven
12 1 (0.099%) Visual Studio
General
1 250 (24.85%) Social Skills
2 115 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
3 90 (8.95%) Finance
4 83 (8.25%) Public Sector
5 68 (6.76%) Banking
6 56 (5.57%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (3.08%) Investment Banking
8 30 (2.98%) Telecoms
9 21 (2.09%) Legal
9 21 (2.09%) Military
10 14 (1.39%) 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%) Aerospace
15 5 (0.50%) Law
16 4 (0.40%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 187 (18.59%) Network Engineer
2 171 (17.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 116 (11.53%) Senior
4 93 (9.24%) Architect
5 92 (9.15%) Support Engineer
6 76 (7.55%) Cloud Engineer
7 60 (5.96%) Security Engineer
8 55 (5.47%) Analyst
9 49 (4.87%) IT Support
10 48 (4.77%) IT Engineer
11 43 (4.27%) Azure Engineer
12 41 (4.08%) Network Security Engineer
13 39 (3.88%) Administrator
13 39 (3.88%) Web Engineer
14 38 (3.78%) Cisco Engineer
14 38 (3.78%) DevOps Engineer
15 37 (3.68%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 36 (3.58%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 36 (3.58%) Platform Engineer
17 31 (3.08%) Data Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (5.17%) 802.1X
2 39 (3.88%) SAML
3 30 (2.98%) LDAP
4 27 (2.68%) ARM Templates
5 25 (2.49%) OpenID
6 24 (2.39%) OAuth
7 17 (1.69%) OpenTelemetry
8 15 (1.49%) JSON
9 11 (1.09%) YAML
10 10 (0.99%) REST
11 8 (0.80%) Kafka
12 7 (0.70%) Middleware
12 7 (0.70%) 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%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 133 (13.22%) Data Centre
2 110 (10.93%) PKI
3 65 (6.46%) Hybrid Cloud
4 64 (6.36%) Onboarding
5 55 (5.47%) Cloud Native
6 48 (4.77%) Management Information System
7 45 (4.47%) Clustering
8 42 (4.17%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 26 (2.58%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.58%) Self-Motivation
10 22 (2.19%) Replication
11 19 (1.89%) Enterprise Cloud
11 19 (1.89%) Security Posture
12 15 (1.49%) Cyber Threat
12 15 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
12 15 (1.49%) Linux Command Line
13 13 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
14 12 (1.19%) Driving Licence
14 12 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
15 10 (0.99%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 464 (46.12%) Windows
2 243 (24.16%) Windows Server
3 202 (20.08%) Linux
4 53 (5.27%) Windows 10
5 46 (4.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 39 (3.88%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.28%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.68%) Unix
9 22 (2.19%) Windows Server 2012
10 20 (1.99%) Ubuntu
11 17 (1.69%) Apple iOS
11 17 (1.69%) VMS
12 15 (1.49%) Android
12 15 (1.49%) CentOS
13 14 (1.39%) Windows Server 2016
14 7 (0.70%) Rocky
15 6 (0.60%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
16 5 (0.50%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.30%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (23.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 231 (22.96%) Problem-Solving
3 185 (18.39%) ITIL
4 176 (17.50%) Load Balancing
5 165 (16.40%) Migration
6 164 (16.30%) Infrastructure as Code
7 157 (15.61%) DevOps
8 144 (14.31%) CI/CD
9 141 (14.02%) High Availability
10 116 (11.53%) ITSM
11 100 (9.94%) Observability
12 93 (9.24%) Continuous Improvement
13 89 (8.85%) Project Delivery
14 88 (8.75%) Cybersecurity
15 87 (8.65%) Agile
16 84 (8.35%) Disaster Recovery
17 81 (8.05%) Identity Access Management
18 73 (7.26%) Technical Leadership
19 72 (7.16%) Platform Engineering
20 70 (6.96%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 226 (22.47%) PowerShell
2 196 (19.48%) Python
3 147 (14.61%) Bash
4 59 (5.86%) SQL
5 43 (4.27%) Bicep
6 22 (2.19%) JavaScript
7 11 (1.09%) Go
8 10 (0.99%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.99%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.89%) Java
10 8 (0.80%) Perl
11 7 (0.70%) VBA
12 5 (0.50%) C
12 5 (0.50%) Groovy
12 5 (0.50%) Ruby
13 4 (0.40%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.30%) Lisp
15 2 (0.20%) Jython
15 2 (0.20%) Objective-C
15 2 (0.20%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 374 (37.18%) Security Cleared
2 216 (21.47%) SC Cleared
3 154 (15.31%) DV Cleared
4 112 (11.13%) Cisco Certification
5 77 (7.65%) CCNP
5 77 (7.65%) Degree
6 57 (5.67%) CCNA
7 51 (5.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 45 (4.47%) Azure Certification
9 32 (3.18%) Network+ Certification
10 18 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
10 18 (1.79%) CCIE
11 17 (1.69%) CISSP
11 17 (1.69%) MCSE
11 17 (1.69%) Server+ Certification
12 16 (1.59%) AWS Certification
12 16 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
13 15 (1.49%) CompTIA Security+
14 14 (1.39%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 13 (1.29%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.68%) SLA
2 28 (2.78%) NIST
3 19 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (1.59%) NCSC
5 8 (0.80%) GDPR
5 8 (0.80%) 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
7 4 (0.40%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.099%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.099%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 423 (42.05%) Active Directory
2 246 (24.45%) VMware Infrastructure
3 122 (12.13%) Hyper-V
4 69 (6.86%) VMware ESXi
5 68 (6.76%) vSphere
6 63 (6.26%) VMware NSX
7 51 (5.07%) Docker
8 45 (4.47%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (3.68%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (2.39%) Firmware
11 22 (2.19%) 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 (0.80%) Virtual Servers
16 8 (0.80%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.70%) Ceph
18 6 (0.60%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 203 (20.18%) Terraform
2 151 (15.01%) Ansible
3 117 (11.63%) Kubernetes
4 98 (9.74%) Microsoft Intune
5 63 (6.26%) SCCM
6 60 (5.96%) vCenter Server
7 56 (5.57%) Single Sign-On
8 52 (5.17%) Grafana
9 46 (4.57%) FortiGate
10 39 (3.88%) Prometheus
11 31 (3.08%) SCOM
12 29 (2.88%) WSUS
13 21 (2.09%) Argo
14 15 (1.49%) Puppet
15 14 (1.39%) Nessus
15 14 (1.39%) NetBackup
15 14 (1.39%) VxRail
16 13 (1.29%) Jamf Pro
17 11 (1.09%) Packer
17 11 (1.09%) vMotion
Vendors
1 352 (34.99%) Microsoft
2 301 (29.92%) VMware
3 199 (19.78%) Cisco
4 139 (13.82%) F5
5 91 (9.05%) ServiceNow
6 76 (7.55%) Splunk
7 69 (6.86%) SolarWinds
8 66 (6.56%) Citrix
9 64 (6.36%) Google
10 62 (6.16%) Infoblox
11 60 (5.96%) Juniper
12 50 (4.97%) Red Hat
13 44 (4.37%) Palo Alto
14 35 (3.48%) NetApp
15 34 (3.38%) Dynatrace
16 30 (2.98%) Zscaler
17 27 (2.68%) Blue Coat
17 27 (2.68%) Fortinet
18 26 (2.58%) CheckPoint
19 23 (2.29%) McAfee