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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 107 128
Rank change year-on-year -35 +21 -4
Contract jobs citing DNS 825 740 817
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.99% 2.43% 1.83%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.55% 18.46% 13.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 529 482 519
10th Percentile £213 £243 £200
25th Percentile £400 £386 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £510 £465
Median % change year-on-year +1.47% +9.68% -11.43%
75th Percentile £612 £623 £600
90th Percentile £678 £749 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £473 £494
% change year-on-year +11.11% -4.30% -1.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 10 28
10th Percentile £13.35 £17.88 £23.95
25th Percentile £16.25 £21.84 £29.69
Median hourly rate £26.33 £23.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.59% -41.03% -
75th Percentile £74.26 £56.94 £57.30
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.12 £70.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £22.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +11.11% -52.63% +3.03%

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 4,221 4,008 6,009
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.17% 13.17% 13.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,753 2,414 3,601
10th Percentile £204 £208 £205
25th Percentile £363 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £480
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% +4.17% -7.43%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% -1.05% +1.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 132 390
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.52 £14.27
25th Percentile £19.25 £21.46 £19.99
Median hourly rate £35.50 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% -12.50% +105.13%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.88 £74.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £31.79 £50.00
% change year-on-year +31.93% -36.42% +163.16%

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 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 1 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 1 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 -14 733 £525 +5.00% 425
UK excluding London -19 522 £525 +11.11% 387
London -19 237 £525 - 87
North of England -9 196 £473 -0.26% 93
Work from Home -49 190 £525 -0.94% 106
South East -1 141 £525 - 122
North West +5 128 £575 +21.05% 48
Midlands +17 107 £375 -16.67% 52
West Midlands +21 103 £375 -7.41% 30
Yorkshire -35 70 £447 -0.67% 38
South West -38 60 £575 +5.02% 53
East of England -29 38 £475 +5.56% 46
Scotland +2 35 £483 +7.22% 20
North East -20 6 £411 +26.38% 10
Wales -16 4 £550 +25.71% 9
East Midlands -30 4 £325 -41.96% 22

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
1 101 (12.24%) Microsoft Exchange
2 57 (6.91%) SharePoint
3 27 (3.27%) Skype for Business
4 16 (1.94%) Confluence
5 14 (1.70%) nginx
6 6 (0.73%) Apache
7 5 (0.61%) IIS
8 4 (0.48%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.48%) OpenStack
8 4 (0.48%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.24%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.24%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.24%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.24%) WordPress
10 1 (0.12%) Traefik
Applications
1 35 (4.24%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.82%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.12%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.24%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 280 (33.94%) Azure
2 168 (20.36%) AWS
3 148 (17.94%) Microsoft 365
4 127 (15.39%) Entra ID
5 66 (8.00%) GCP
6 56 (6.79%) GitHub
7 51 (6.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 45 (5.45%) IaaS
9 43 (5.21%) Amazon S3
10 41 (4.97%) Amazon EC2
11 37 (4.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 36 (4.36%) AWS CloudFormation
13 32 (3.88%) Serverless
14 31 (3.76%) SaaS
15 30 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
15 30 (3.64%) Route 53
16 27 (3.27%) PaaS
17 24 (2.91%) Amazon EKS
18 22 (2.67%) Amazon ECS
19 21 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 369 (44.73%) DHCP
2 268 (32.48%) Firewall
3 254 (30.79%) TCP/IP
4 202 (24.48%) VPN
5 101 (12.24%) WAN
6 93 (11.27%) SSL
7 92 (11.15%) LAN
8 88 (10.67%) Network Security
9 78 (9.45%) HTTP
10 77 (9.33%) VLAN
11 68 (8.24%) BGP
11 68 (8.24%) BIG-IP
12 56 (6.79%) Wi-Fi
13 54 (6.55%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 44 (5.33%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 44 (5.33%) Wireshark
15 42 (5.09%) OSPF
16 37 (4.48%) DMZ
17 35 (4.24%) Kerberos
17 35 (4.24%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (3.03%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.06%) Elasticsearch
3 15 (1.82%) Amazon RDS
4 14 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (0.85%) Amazon Aurora
5 7 (0.85%) DynamoDB
5 7 (0.85%) MongoDB
5 7 (0.85%) Redis
6 6 (0.73%) Data Hub
6 6 (0.73%) MySQL
7 4 (0.48%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.48%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.48%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.36%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (0.36%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.12%) Electronic Patient Records
9 1 (0.12%) Geospatial Data
9 1 (0.12%) Power BI
9 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 71 (8.61%) Jenkins
2 51 (6.18%) Git
3 44 (5.33%) GitLab
4 40 (4.85%) JIRA
5 30 (3.64%) Fiddler
6 8 (0.97%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.85%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.85%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.61%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.48%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.24%) Subversion
10 2 (0.24%) Vagrant
11 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.12%) GCC
11 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.12%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.12%) Travis CI
11 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 227 (27.52%) Social Skills
2 100 (12.12%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (7.88%) Banking
4 55 (6.67%) Public Sector
5 51 (6.18%) Finance
6 48 (5.82%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (5.45%) Investment Banking
8 24 (2.91%) Legal
9 18 (2.18%) Military
9 18 (2.18%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.61%) Law
13 4 (0.48%) Aerospace
13 4 (0.48%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.36%) Local Government
15 2 (0.24%) Advertising
15 2 (0.24%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 134 (16.24%) Network Engineer
2 118 (14.30%) Architect
3 77 (9.33%) Analyst
4 74 (8.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 73 (8.85%) Senior
6 60 (7.27%) Support Engineer
7 52 (6.30%) IT Support
7 52 (6.30%) Security Engineer
8 38 (4.61%) Web Engineer
9 34 (4.12%) Lead
10 32 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
10 32 (3.88%) IT Engineer
10 32 (3.88%) Platform Engineer
11 31 (3.76%) Network Security Engineer
12 26 (3.15%) SOC Analyst
13 24 (2.91%) Cisco Engineer
13 24 (2.91%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 24 (2.91%) IT Support Engineer
14 23 (2.79%) Azure Engineer
14 23 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (8.36%) LDAP
2 43 (5.21%) SAML
3 37 (4.48%) OAuth
4 31 (3.76%) OpenID
5 23 (2.79%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.42%) OAuth2
7 15 (1.82%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.21%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (1.21%) Kafka
9 9 (1.09%) REST
10 7 (0.85%) XMPP
11 6 (0.73%) ARM Templates
11 6 (0.73%) JSON
11 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Graph
11 6 (0.73%) Middleware
12 5 (0.61%) AWS CDK
12 5 (0.61%) RESTful
12 5 (0.61%) Spring Boot
13 4 (0.48%) ASP.NET Web API
13 4 (0.48%) JPA
Miscellaneous
1 71 (8.61%) PKI
2 67 (8.12%) Data Centre
3 51 (6.18%) Replication
4 40 (4.85%) Cloud Native
4 40 (4.85%) Management Information System
5 30 (3.64%) Onboarding
6 26 (3.15%) Security Operations Centre
7 25 (3.03%) Cyberattack
8 24 (2.91%) Clustering
8 24 (2.91%) Public Cloud
9 20 (2.42%) Hybrid Cloud
10 19 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
11 17 (2.06%) Analytical Mindset
12 16 (1.94%) Cyber Threat
13 15 (1.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 15 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
14 13 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
15 12 (1.45%) NHS
16 11 (1.33%) Private Cloud
16 11 (1.33%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 393 (47.64%) Windows
2 193 (23.39%) Windows Server
3 141 (17.09%) Linux
4 55 (6.67%) Windows 10
5 35 (4.24%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.42%) Unix
7 18 (2.18%) Android
8 17 (2.06%) Windows Server 2016
9 16 (1.94%) Windows Server 2012
10 15 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 14 (1.70%) Mac OS
12 13 (1.58%) Apple iOS
13 11 (1.33%) Windows 7
14 9 (1.09%) CentOS
14 9 (1.09%) VMS
15 5 (0.61%) Amazon Linux
15 5 (0.61%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.48%) CatOS
16 4 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (24.12%) Problem-Solving
2 160 (19.39%) Load Balancing
3 125 (15.15%) ITIL
4 117 (14.18%) CI/CD
5 112 (13.58%) DevOps
6 110 (13.33%) High Availability
6 110 (13.33%) Infrastructure as Code
7 107 (12.97%) Migration
8 100 (12.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 79 (9.58%) Cybersecurity
10 74 (8.97%) Disaster Recovery
11 72 (8.73%) Incident Response
11 72 (8.73%) Service Management
12 70 (8.48%) Identity Access Management
13 69 (8.36%) Change Management
14 66 (8.00%) SIEM
15 62 (7.52%) ITSM
16 58 (7.03%) Root Cause Analysis
17 57 (6.91%) RBAC
18 54 (6.55%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 231 (28.00%) PowerShell
2 149 (18.06%) Python
3 80 (9.70%) Bash
4 42 (5.09%) SQL
5 13 (1.58%) VBScript
6 12 (1.45%) Bicep
6 12 (1.45%) Java
7 11 (1.33%) Go
7 11 (1.33%) Ruby
8 10 (1.21%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.21%) VB
9 9 (1.09%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.09%) Perl
10 7 (0.85%) Lisp
11 5 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.36%) C#
12 3 (0.36%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.24%) C
13 2 (0.24%) C++
13 2 (0.24%) VBA
Qualifications
1 290 (35.15%) Security Cleared
2 201 (24.36%) SC Cleared
3 100 (12.12%) DV Cleared
4 65 (7.88%) Degree
5 62 (7.52%) Cisco Certification
6 59 (7.15%) Microsoft Certification
7 48 (5.82%) CCNP
8 31 (3.76%) CompTIA Security+
9 28 (3.39%) Azure Certification
10 21 (2.55%) CCNA
10 21 (2.55%) CISSP
10 21 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
11 20 (2.42%) AWS Certification
12 19 (2.30%) Network+ Certification
13 17 (2.06%) CompTIA CySA+
14 12 (1.45%) MCSE
15 11 (1.33%) Server+ Certification
16 10 (1.21%) CCIE
16 10 (1.21%) JNCIA
16 10 (1.21%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.64%) GDPR
2 26 (3.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (2.79%) NIST
4 22 (2.67%) SLA
5 18 (2.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.09%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (0.97%) NCSC
8 6 (0.73%) QA
9 3 (0.36%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.36%) PMO
10 2 (0.24%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.24%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.12%) COBIT
11 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.12%) RMADS
11 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
System Software
1 359 (43.52%) Active Directory
2 188 (22.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 73 (8.85%) Docker
4 58 (7.03%) Hyper-V
5 56 (6.79%) VMware NSX
6 49 (5.94%) vSphere
7 27 (3.27%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (2.91%) Firmware
9 18 (2.18%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (1.70%) BitLocker
12 9 (1.09%) Squid
13 6 (0.73%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.73%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.61%) DFS Replication
15 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.48%) NFS
15 4 (0.48%) Sendmail
15 4 (0.48%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.36%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 146 (17.70%) Terraform
2 131 (15.88%) Ansible
3 96 (11.64%) Microsoft Intune
4 82 (9.94%) Kubernetes
5 78 (9.45%) SCCM
6 74 (8.97%) Single Sign-On
7 62 (7.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (5.33%) FortiGate
9 41 (4.97%) vCenter Server
10 35 (4.24%) Grafana
11 22 (2.67%) Argo
11 22 (2.67%) Prometheus
12 18 (2.18%) WSUS
13 14 (1.70%) SCOM
14 9 (1.09%) Puppet
15 8 (0.97%) Nagios
16 7 (0.85%) Consul
16 7 (0.85%) HAProxy
16 7 (0.85%) Nessus
16 7 (0.85%) QRadar
Vendors
1 305 (36.97%) Microsoft
2 235 (28.48%) VMware
3 145 (17.58%) F5
4 130 (15.76%) Cisco
5 85 (10.30%) ServiceNow
6 83 (10.06%) Splunk
7 49 (5.94%) Palo Alto
8 44 (5.33%) Blue Coat
9 43 (5.21%) Citrix
10 42 (5.09%) SolarWinds
11 35 (4.24%) Juniper
11 35 (4.24%) McAfee
12 32 (3.88%) CheckPoint
12 32 (3.88%) Red Hat
13 25 (3.03%) NetApp
14 22 (2.67%) Google
14 22 (2.67%) Infoblox
15 21 (2.55%) Okta
16 20 (2.42%) Fortinet
16 20 (2.42%) Zscaler