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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 128 157
Rank change year-on-year -15 +29 -19
Contract jobs citing DNS 953 683 657
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.88% 2.28% 1.51%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.78% 18.35% 12.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 582 477 447
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £408 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £545 £475
Median % change year-on-year -9.17% +14.74% -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £581
90th Percentile £630 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -10.00% +10.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 17 25
10th Percentile £18.89 - £19.10
25th Percentile £23.13 £29.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.69% +3.75% -23.27%
75th Percentile £62.87 £81.01 -
90th Percentile £74.05 £81.65 £50.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £41.45 £40.00
% change year-on-year -21.59% +3.63% -23.27%

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 4,817 3,722 5,393
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.49% 12.42% 12.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,962 2,284 3,181
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% -3.45% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £473 £488
% change year-on-year +1.59% -3.23% +2.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 298 174 428
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.56 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.69 £44.50 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.78% +7.23% +118.42%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.97 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.08 £78.50 £72.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £35.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -23.66% -26.32% +150.00%

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 23 June 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 23 June 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 23 June 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 -18 848 £495 -10.00% 280
UK excluding London -11 596 £495 -10.00% 268
London -42 284 £495 -1.00% 62
North of England +11 232 £447 -10.60% 48
Work from Home -16 217 £525 -2.60% 119
South East +5 170 £525 -4.55% 96
North West +40 153 £450 - 27
Midlands +7 110 £450 -5.26% 39
West Midlands +2 96 £444 -6.58% 23
Yorkshire -23 73 £447 -18.82% 17
South West -26 63 £500 -18.70% 36
Scotland +17 41 £500 +11.11% 8
East of England -53 35 £450 -18.18% 38
East Midlands -16 13 £450 -20.00% 16
Wales -16 6 £300 -32.74% 11
North East -41 6 £413 +17.86% 9

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 85 (8.92%) Microsoft Exchange
2 60 (6.30%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.99%) Confluence
4 16 (1.68%) IIS
5 15 (1.57%) nginx
6 14 (1.47%) Apache
7 9 (0.94%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.52%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.42%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
11 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.10%) Traefik
Applications
1 19 (1.99%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.57%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 341 (35.78%) Azure
2 182 (19.10%) AWS
3 155 (16.26%) Entra ID
4 128 (13.43%) Microsoft 365
5 105 (11.02%) GCP
6 71 (7.45%) GitHub
7 54 (5.67%) IaaS
8 41 (4.30%) SaaS
9 39 (4.09%) OneDrive
9 39 (4.09%) PaaS
10 35 (3.67%) Route 53
11 32 (3.36%) Serverless
12 31 (3.25%) AWS CloudFormation
13 30 (3.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 29 (3.04%) Amazon EC2
15 28 (2.94%) Amazon S3
15 28 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
16 27 (2.83%) Amazon EKS
16 27 (2.83%) GitHub Actions
17 26 (2.73%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 419 (43.97%) DHCP
2 299 (31.37%) Firewall
3 234 (24.55%) TCP/IP
4 230 (24.13%) VPN
5 139 (14.59%) WAN
6 118 (12.38%) LAN
7 105 (11.02%) Network Security
8 104 (10.91%) SSL
9 96 (10.07%) VLAN
10 95 (9.97%) BIG-IP
11 88 (9.23%) BGP
12 77 (8.08%) HTTP
13 63 (6.61%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (5.98%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 54 (5.67%) Wireless
16 50 (5.25%) SAN
17 48 (5.04%) OSPF
18 43 (4.51%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 40 (4.20%) DMZ
20 38 (3.99%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (3.88%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.89%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (1.68%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
6 10 (1.05%) Power BI
7 8 (0.84%) MySQL
8 6 (0.63%) MongoDB
8 6 (0.63%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.52%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.52%) DynamoDB
10 4 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (0.42%) DocumentDB
10 4 (0.42%) MariaDB
10 4 (0.42%) Redis
11 3 (0.31%) Big Data
12 2 (0.21%) SQLPlus
13 1 (0.10%) Relational Database
13 1 (0.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.10%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 65 (6.82%) JIRA
2 58 (6.09%) Jenkins
3 31 (3.25%) Git
4 24 (2.52%) Fiddler
5 23 (2.41%) GitLab
6 9 (0.94%) Browser DevTools
7 8 (0.84%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.63%) Chocolatey
10 3 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.21%) Introscope
11 2 (0.21%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.10%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.10%) MSI
12 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio
General
1 219 (22.98%) Social Skills
2 87 (9.13%) Analytical Skills
3 75 (7.87%) Finance
4 68 (7.14%) Banking
5 65 (6.82%) Public Sector
6 55 (5.77%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (3.78%) Investment Banking
8 25 (2.62%) Legal
9 19 (1.99%) Military
10 17 (1.78%) Telecoms
11 10 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
12 8 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (0.84%) Local Government
13 6 (0.63%) Police
13 6 (0.63%) Publishing
14 5 (0.52%) Law
14 5 (0.52%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.42%) Advertising
15 4 (0.42%) Italian Language
15 4 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 176 (18.47%) Network Engineer
2 135 (14.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 120 (12.59%) Architect
4 73 (7.66%) Support Engineer
5 70 (7.35%) Senior
6 61 (6.40%) Analyst
7 60 (6.30%) Security Engineer
8 51 (5.35%) Cloud Engineer
9 48 (5.04%) IT Support
10 46 (4.83%) Web Engineer
11 41 (4.30%) IT Engineer
11 41 (4.30%) Network Security Engineer
12 37 (3.88%) Cisco Engineer
12 37 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
13 35 (3.67%) Administrator
13 35 (3.67%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 33 (3.46%) Data Engineer
14 33 (3.46%) Data Network Engineer
15 32 (3.36%) Azure Engineer
15 32 (3.36%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (6.09%) LDAP
2 52 (5.46%) SAML
3 44 (4.62%) 802.1X
4 40 (4.20%) OAuth
5 33 (3.46%) OpenID
6 21 (2.20%) OpenTelemetry
7 15 (1.57%) JSON
8 14 (1.47%) ARM Templates
9 11 (1.15%) REST
10 10 (1.05%) OAuth2
11 8 (0.84%) Kafka
12 5 (0.52%) CSS
12 5 (0.52%) gRPC
12 5 (0.52%) XMPP
13 4 (0.42%) Hibernate
13 4 (0.42%) Microsoft Graph
13 4 (0.42%) Spring
13 4 (0.42%) Spring Boot
13 4 (0.42%) Spring Cloud
13 4 (0.42%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 110 (11.54%) Data Centre
2 73 (7.66%) PKI
3 61 (6.40%) Cloud Native
4 50 (5.25%) Onboarding
5 43 (4.51%) Hybrid Cloud
6 39 (4.09%) Clustering
6 39 (4.09%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 39 (4.09%) Management Information System
6 39 (4.09%) Replication
7 31 (3.25%) Public Cloud
8 21 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
9 16 (1.68%) Enterprise Cloud
10 15 (1.57%) Security Posture
11 13 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (1.36%) Security Operations Centre
12 12 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
12 12 (1.26%) Virtual Team
13 11 (1.15%) Cyber Threat
13 11 (1.15%) Product Ownership
14 9 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 392 (41.13%) Windows
2 219 (22.98%) Windows Server
3 134 (14.06%) Linux
4 42 (4.41%) Windows 10
5 35 (3.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 35 (3.67%) Windows Server 2019
6 33 (3.46%) Mac OS
7 24 (2.52%) Unix
8 19 (1.99%) Apple iOS
9 18 (1.89%) Windows Server 2012
10 13 (1.36%) Android
11 12 (1.26%) Ubuntu
11 12 (1.26%) VMS
12 10 (1.05%) CentOS
12 10 (1.05%) Windows Server 2016
13 7 (0.73%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.63%) Windows Server 2003
15 3 (0.31%) AIX
16 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
16 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (20.88%) Problem-Solving
2 180 (18.89%) Load Balancing
3 170 (17.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 162 (17.00%) Migration
5 153 (16.05%) High Availability
6 135 (14.17%) DevOps
7 134 (14.06%) ITIL
8 122 (12.80%) Infrastructure as Code
9 117 (12.28%) CI/CD
10 95 (9.97%) ITSM
11 81 (8.50%) Identity Access Management
11 81 (8.50%) Observability
12 80 (8.39%) Disaster Recovery
13 76 (7.97%) Agile
14 70 (7.35%) Project Delivery
15 63 (6.61%) Cybersecurity
16 60 (6.30%) Root Cause Analysis
17 59 (6.19%) RBAC
18 58 (6.09%) Runbook
19 54 (5.67%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 192 (20.15%) PowerShell
2 156 (16.37%) Python
3 99 (10.39%) Bash
4 55 (5.77%) SQL
5 25 (2.62%) JavaScript
6 24 (2.52%) Bicep
7 12 (1.26%) Java
8 10 (1.05%) ActionScript
8 10 (1.05%) Go
9 9 (0.94%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.94%) VBA
10 8 (0.84%) Perl
11 6 (0.63%) VBScript
12 5 (0.52%) Groovy
12 5 (0.52%) Ruby
13 4 (0.42%) C
13 4 (0.42%) VB
14 3 (0.31%) Lisp
15 2 (0.21%) Jython
15 2 (0.21%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 317 (33.26%) Security Cleared
2 201 (21.09%) SC Cleared
3 110 (11.54%) DV Cleared
4 93 (9.76%) Cisco Certification
5 74 (7.76%) Degree
6 61 (6.40%) CCNP
7 51 (5.35%) CCNA
8 33 (3.46%) Microsoft Certification
9 31 (3.25%) Azure Certification
10 26 (2.73%) Network+ Certification
11 21 (2.20%) CompTIA Security+
12 17 (1.78%) Server+ Certification
13 16 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
14 14 (1.47%) CISSP
15 13 (1.36%) AWS Certification
15 13 (1.36%) MCSE
16 12 (1.26%) CCIE
16 12 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
17 11 (1.15%) JNCIA
17 11 (1.15%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.04%) NIST
2 27 (2.83%) SLA
3 22 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 21 (2.20%) GDPR
5 14 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 12 (1.26%) QA
7 9 (0.94%) NCSC
8 5 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (0.52%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.10%) COBIT
11 1 (0.10%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.10%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.10%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.10%) PMO
11 1 (0.10%) RMADS
System Software
1 369 (38.72%) Active Directory
2 203 (21.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 93 (9.76%) Hyper-V
4 56 (5.88%) VMware NSX
4 56 (5.88%) vSphere
5 50 (5.25%) VMware ESXi
6 40 (4.20%) Virtual Machines
7 34 (3.57%) Virtual Desktop
8 32 (3.36%) Docker
9 25 (2.62%) Firmware
10 19 (1.99%) NFS
11 15 (1.57%) BitLocker
11 15 (1.57%) Squid
12 12 (1.26%) vCloud
13 11 (1.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (1.05%) Postfix
15 8 (0.84%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.73%) Varnish
17 5 (0.52%) Ceph
18 4 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 156 (16.37%) Terraform
2 121 (12.70%) Ansible
3 91 (9.55%) Kubernetes
4 74 (7.76%) Microsoft Intune
4 74 (7.76%) Single Sign-On
5 53 (5.56%) FortiGate
6 50 (5.25%) Grafana
6 50 (5.25%) vCenter Server
7 44 (4.62%) SCCM
8 39 (4.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 37 (3.88%) Prometheus
10 25 (2.62%) WSUS
11 24 (2.52%) Argo
12 18 (1.89%) SCOM
13 15 (1.57%) Puppet
14 14 (1.47%) HAProxy
15 13 (1.36%) Jamf Pro
15 13 (1.36%) Nessus
16 12 (1.26%) vMotion
17 8 (0.84%) Consul
Vendors
1 309 (32.42%) Microsoft
2 241 (25.29%) VMware
3 177 (18.57%) Cisco
4 156 (16.37%) F5
5 87 (9.13%) ServiceNow
6 75 (7.87%) Splunk
7 68 (7.14%) Infoblox
8 57 (5.98%) Citrix
8 57 (5.98%) Google
9 52 (5.46%) SolarWinds
10 50 (5.25%) Red Hat
11 45 (4.72%) Juniper
12 38 (3.99%) Palo Alto
13 31 (3.25%) Blue Coat
13 31 (3.25%) Dynatrace
14 30 (3.15%) NetApp
15 27 (2.83%) McAfee
16 24 (2.52%) Fortinet
16 24 (2.52%) Okta
17 22 (2.31%) Extreme Networks